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was walking up the driveway. “I got those tarps, Sheriff. They’re right behind me in a Guard truck.”
    “Good. Get some help and cover up the whole works,” Carr said, waving at the house. “There’ll be guys in the garage.” To Lucas he said, “I got some canvas sheets from the National Guard guys and we’re gonna cover the whole house until the guys from Madison get here.”
    “Good.” Lucas nodded. “You really need the lab guys for this. Don’t let anybody touch anything. Not even the bodies.”

    The garage was warm, with deputies and firemen standing around an old-fashioned iron stove stoked with oak splits. The deputy who’d been doing the filming spotted them andcame over with one of Lucas’ Thermos jugs.
    “I saved some,” he said.
    “Thanks, Tommy.” The sheriff nodded, took a cup, hand shaking, passed it to Lucas, then took a cup for himself. “Let’s get over in the corner where we can talk,” he said. Carr walked around the nose of LaCourt’s old Chevy station wagon, away from the gathering of deputies and firemen, turned, took a sip of coffee. He said, “We’ve got a problem.” He stopped, then asked, “You’re not a Catholic, are you?”
    “Dominus vobiscum,” Lucas said. “So what?”
    “You are? I haven’t been in the Church long enough to remember the Latin business,” Carr said. He seemed to think about that for a moment, sipped coffee, then said, “I converted a few years back. I was a Lutheran until I met Father Phil. He’s the parish priest in Grant.”
    “Yeah? I don’t have much interest in the Church anymore.”
    “Hmph. You should consider . . .”
    “Tell me about the problem,” Lucas said impatiently.
    “I’m trying to, but it’s complicated,” Carr said. “Okay. We figure whoever killed these folks must’ve started the fire. It was snowing all afternoon—we had about four inches of new snow. When the firemen got here, though, the snow’d just about quit. But Frank’s body had maybe a half-inch of snow on it. That’s why I had them put the tarp over it, I thought we could fix an exact time. It wasn’t long between the time he was killed and the fire. But it was some time. That’s important. Some time. And now you tell me the girl might have been tortured . . . more time.”
    “Okay.” Lucas nodded, nodding at the emphasis.
    “Whoever started the fire did it with gasoline,” Carr said. “You can still smell it, and the house went up like a torch. Maybe the killer brought the gas with him or maybe he used Frank’s. There’re a couple boats and a snowmobile out in the back shed but there aren’t any gas cans with them, and no cans in here. The cans’d most likely have some gas in them.”
    “Anyway, the house went up fast,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah. The folks across the lake were watching television. They say that one minute there was nothing out the window but the snow. The next minute there was a fireball. They called the firehouse.”
    “The one I came by? Down at the corner?”
    “Yeah. There were two guys down there. They were making a snack and one of them saw a black Jeep go by. Just a few seconds later, the alarm came in. They thought the Jeep belonged to Phil . . . the priest. Father Philip Bergen, the pastor at All Souls.”
    “Did it?” Lucas asked.
    “Yes. They said it looked like Phil was coming out of the lake road. So I called him and asked him if he’d seen anything unusual. A fire or somebody in the road. And he said no. Then, before I could say anything else, he said he was here, at the LaCourts’.”
    “Here?” Lucas eyebrows went up.
    “Yeah. Here. He said everything was all right when he left.”
    “Huh.” Lucas thought about it. “Are we sure the time is right?”
    “It’s right. One of the firemen was standing at the microwave with one of those prefab ham sandwiches. They take two minutes to cook and it was about ready. The other one said, ‘There goes Father Phil, hell of a night to be