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four outlets, and a wall-mounted junction box, and now started putting them up and wiring them in.
    The job went slowly. He had to run into town for more wire, and he stopped for a late lunch and more coffee. By the time he was finished, the sun was dropping over the lake. He flipped on the lights, spent a few seconds admiring their pink glow—he’d gotten the natural fluorescents—and started filling the place up.
    He backed in two small aluminum boats on their trailers, put a utility trailer in the far corner, a John Deere Gator sideways in front of the trailer, and finally, a Kubota tractor. The Kubota belonged to a neighbor who found he couldn’t fit it in his garage. It wouldn’t start right away, so Lucas had to bleed the fuel line before it would kick over.
    A little after six o’clock, he walked in the dark back to the cabin. Just beyond, down at the lake, a merganser squawked. The edge of ice around the lake had disappeared during the day, but the temperature dropped quickly after sundown. Unless a wind came up to roil the water, the lake should ice over during the night.
    He spent two hours picking up the cabin, vacuuming, collecting garbage and old summer magazines, washing and drying sheets, cleaning out the refrigerator, wiping down the kitchen. Then a shower, with a beer sitting on the toilet stool. Dressed again, he turned off the water heater and water pump, and pushed the thermostat down to fifty. After a last check, he dragged the trash out to the Tahoe and threw it in the back.
    At eight o’clock, he locked the cabin and walked out to the truck. A red and silver Lund fishing boat was parked just beyond the new shed, dropped by another guy the week before. He’d be dragging it back to the Cities. He hooked it up, double-checked the safety chains, checked the trailer lights. Good: They worked, even the turn signals.
    All right. Ready for winter, he thought. A merganser squawked again, and then another: some kind of duck fistfight down at the lake. Or somebody rolling over in bed. And a million stars looking down at him on a moonless night; he looked up through the treetops at the Milky Way, a billion stars like bubbles. . . .
    DAVENPORT WAS A tall man; he drove a Porsche day-to-day, but fit better in the big Tahoe. He had black hair shot through with vagrant strands of gray; he was as dark as a Sicilian, with a permanent outdoor tan. The tan made his eyes seem bluer and brighter, and his smile whiter. Women had told him that his eyes seemed kindly, even priestly, but his smile made them nervous. He had the smile, one of them told him, of a predator about to eat something nasty.
    His face was touched with scars. A long thin line crossed his eyebrow into his cheek, like a knife cut, but it wasn’t. Another that looked like an exclamation mark—a thin line from a knife, a round O from a bullet wound—marked the front of his neck, along his windpipe. He’d been shot, and had almost died, but a surgeon had opened his throat with a jackknife and kept him breathing long enough to get him to an operating table. A plastic surgeon had offered to revise the scars, but he kept them, absently traced them with his fingers when he was thinking; personal history, not to be forgotten.
    The road out was narrow and dark, and he was in no hurry. He took Highway 77 into Hayward, dropped down to 70 in Spooner, headed west, across the border into Minnesota, out to I-35. By ten o’clock he was on the far northern rim of the Cities, pulling the boat. The owner of the Lund was a guy named Herb Clay who owned the remnants of a farm south of Forest Lake, not far off the interstate.
    Lucas pulled into Clay’s driveway, bounced past the house to the barnyard, and turned a tight circle. He left the engine running and climbed out of the truck as a porch light came on. A moment later, Clay stepped out on the porch, supporting himself on crutches. “That you?”
    â€œIt’s