The midnight shift: The shooter was going to work.

The shooter passed the front of the red brick historic courthouse, which was guarded by a bronze Civil War infantryman with a fixed bayonet and a plaque. He paused next to a hedge, behind a tree trunk, bent over with his hands on his knees, as if catching his breath, or stretching his hamstrings, like runners do. Looked around. Said quietly, "On point."

Chuck Utecht had been the first man on the controller's list. He'd been a smooth white egg of a man, whose insides, when he cracked, flowed out like a yellow yolk. He'd given up three names. He'd given them up easily.

Bobby Sanderson strolled down Third Street with the dog on the end of its lead, a familiar nighttime sight. The dog was as regular as a quartz watch: took a small dump at eight o'clock in the morning, and a big one at eleven o'clock at night. If it wasn't out on the street, it'd be somewhere in the yard, and Sanderson would step in it the next day, sure as God made little green apples. So, twice a day, they were on the street.

The shooter was waiting behind a rampart of limestone blocks, next to the monument. Not tense, not anything — not thinking, just waiting, like a rock, or a stump, or a loaded bullet. Waiting...Then a word in his ear, one word: "Coming."

The shooter was in his shooting crouch, arms extended, and the gun recoiled a bit. There was a fast snap sound, like an electrical spark, and a mechanical ratcheting as the gun cycled. The dog dropped, shot between the eyes, and the shooter vaulted from the shadows, moving fast, right there in Sanderson's face in a quarter-second.

The shooter was trained, the shooter was a killing machine, but he was still human. Now, breathing hard, he tasted blood in his mouth like you might after a tough run; and all the time, he was looking for lights, he was looking for an alarm, a cry in the dark.

Every night, before he went to bed, Virgil Flowers thought about God.

On this hot, close night, Virgil's consideration of the wonders of the universe were discomfited by the proximity of Janey Small's naked ass, which, in Virgil's opinion, was one of the wonders of the universe. Like a planet. A small, hot planet like Mercury, pulling you both with its heat and its gravity.

Janey Small had been a rotten idea. Virgil had been in town, had dropped by the Minnesota Music Café to see what was up, and there she was, leaning on the bar, the wonder of the universe packed into a pair of women's 501s.

Virgil fumbled for the phone, peered at the view-screen, hoping against hope that it was from an 888 number, but it wasn't.

He did. "Yeah, Lucas," Virgil said into the cell phone.

Three-thirty in the morning, running not that late, he thought, ninety-five miles an hour east out of St. Paul, on an empty I-94, his grill lights flashing red and blue, hair wet from a shower, but feeling tacky in yesterday's t-shirt, underwear and jeans. Thumbed his cell, wrapped up the exit onto I-694, got the operations duty guy, got a phone number for the Stillwater chief of police, punched it in, got the guy at the scene.

Virgil was medium-tall and lanky, mid-thirties, weathered, with blond hair worn on his shoulders, too long for a cop. He'd once sported an earring, but after two weeks, decided that he looked like an asshole and got rid of it.

Virgil was a writer in his spare time; or, on occasion, got his reporting done by taking a few hours of under-time.

This case had begun in the town of New Ulm, right in the heart of Virgil's home territory, when a man named Chuck Utecht had turned up dead and mutilated at the foot of the local veterans monument. He had a lemon in his mouth and had been shot twice in the head with a .22-caliber pistol. The .22 was a target-shooter's piece, or a stone-cold killer's. It was not the kind of gun that a man would keep for self-protection or as a carry weapon. That was interesting.

Virgil had killed a man the year before, and hadn't quite gotten over it. He spoke with God about it some nights. He wasn't sure, but he thought the killing might have made him a bit more sober than he had been, might have aged him a little.

He got off at Osgood Avenue and headed north, past the cemetery, through the dark streets, through a stop sign, without hesitating, over a hump toward a barricade and all the lights of the cops beyond. At the barricade, he held up his ID and a cop came over and looked at it, said, "It's a mess," and let him through. He rolled down a slope, found a hole in the pile of cop cars, stuck the truck into it and climbed out.

They walked down to the utility fence as a group, Mattson filling him in on how the body had been found. "He was out walking his dog, a German shepherd. The dog was shot right between the eyes. It's down below, there."

They all looked over the fence at the body, which looked a little like a scarecrow, deflated and dead, and Brandt asked, "What the hell's going on?"

Sanderson had lived three blocks from the veterans memorial, up the hill, past the courthouse, and down a dark side street. Brandt walked along with him, to show him the way, and to fill him in on the dead man's background.

Walked along a bit. Then Virgil asked, "You find anybody who heard the shots? Three shots?"

Sanderson's house was an 1890s cream-and-teal clapboard near-mansion that had been reworked into a duplex, set back and screened from the street by a hedge of ancient lilacs. A scaffold was hung on one side of the house, with a pile of boards set up on 2x6s, and covered with a plastic sheet, on the ground below it.

Virgil took his notebook out of his jacket pocket. It was a black European-style notebook called a Moleskine, with an elastic band to keep it closed. He bought them a dozen at a time, one for each heavy case he worked. When he was done with a case, he put the notebook —or several of them, sometimes — on a bookshelf, a vein to be mined if he ever started writing fiction.

Ray was an Indian, an Ojibwe, a Chippewa, from Red Lake. She'd never met him, but he was an old pal of Sanderson's — Bobby never explained how they met — and the past three weeks they'd been going to vet meetings in St. Paul.

The meeting in the street, she said, had involved the cop-looking guy, the Indian, Sanderson, and a man who never got out of the car.

Owen had an extra photograph of Sanderson, taken standing next to his boat, wearing a t-shirt and shorts. "I don't need it back," she said.

They talked for a few more minutes, but she had only one more thing, having to do with the bowel regularity of the dog. "It was like the train coming through town," Owen said. "They were out the door every night, same time, within five minutes. Walked the same route. If you knew him, if you wanted to kill him..."

He left her in the kitchen, staring at the future, went out the side door; took a look at the boat. Boats had always been big in Virgil's life, and this was a nice one, a Lund Pro-V 2025, with a 200-horse Yamaha hanging on the back, Eagle trailer, Lowrance electronics, the ones with the integrated map and GPS. Sanderson had fitted it with a couple of Wave Whackers, so he did some back-trolling; walleye fisherman, probably. Nice rig, well-kept, well-used.

Virgil moved back toward the front of the house, saw a big man in a Hawaiian shirt, coming along the street, limping a little. "Shrake?"

The problem with a pro was that there'd be none of the usual skein of connections that tied a killer to a victim. The crime scene would be useless, because a pro wouldn't leave anything behind. If a bunch of bodies added up to a motive for some particular person — the person who hired the pro — that person would have an alibi for the time of the killings, and could stand silent when questioned. The pro, in the meantime, might have come from anywhere, and might have gone anywhere after the killings. With hundreds of thousands of people moving through the metro area on any given day, how did you pick the murderous needle out of the innocent haystack?

Virgil and Shrake walked together back to the veterans memorial. The TV trucks had all come in, and Mattson was standing in a pool of light, talking to three reporters. Brandt came over, and asked, "You done with Miz Owen?"

Brandt took them over, Shrake staying downwind. The mayor was a short pudgy man, a professional smiler and a meet-your-eyes-with-compassion sort of guy, whose facial muscles were now misbehaving. He said to Virgil, "What-a, what-a, what-a..."

On the way back to his car, Virgil asked Shrake if he knew anything about a veterans center on University Avenue.

As they walked away from her, Shrake said, "I think she's getting better, as she gets older."