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already checked them out.”
    “I’m with the state, not Minneapolis,” Lucas said. “I haven’t checked out anybody.”
    “Then you oughta talk to Minneapolis,” the bartender said. “They figured out who the Goths were. People knew them. Then this rumor starts that there was another one. But we don’t know if there really was, or if somebody’s confused, and the rumor’s running on its own.”
    “Huh,” Lucas said.
    “All sounds like bullshit to me,” said one of the guys at the bar. He looked like a failing insurance man, in a brown suit with a green nylon necktie rolled up at the tip. He’d had a few.
    Lucas turned his head and said, “Yeah?”
    “The more I hear about it, the hotter this chick gets,” the guy said. He hip-yanked his barstool around to face Lucas. “When you heard about her yesterday, nobody was sure who they were talking about. Now you talk to somebody, and she’s like what’s-her-name—the movie star with the big lips.”
    “She’s got big lips?”
    “That was just an example,” the barfly said. He took a calculated sip of beer, handling the glass carefully.
    The other man at the bar said, “Nobody said anything about her lips. They did say she had a terrific ass. They were sure about that.”
    “I heard that, too,” the bartender said.
    “That narrows it down,” Lucas said.
    “Shit, if this was Wisconsin, it’d be a positive ID,” said the second barfly.
    “When did the rumor start?” Lucas asked.
    “I heard it yesterday afternoon, from the noon crew,” the bartender said.
    “Me, too,” the first barfly said, and the other one said, “Yup.”
    Lucas looked around, at the people in the booths. “Doesn’t look like a Goth hangout.”
    “Things change about seven o’clock,” the bartender said. “The business guys get out and night people start showing up.”
    “Oooo, scary,” said the second barfly. He burped.
    “Could you tell me even one name of somebody who actually thinks they saw her?” Lucas asked.
    The bartender sighed and said, “You really ought to talk to Tom.”
    The first barfly said, “Jesus Christ, Jerry. Dick got killed .” To Lucas, he said, “There’s a guy named Roy. He works at a liquor store over by Dinkytown. People say Roy talked to her.”
    Lucas took out his notebook, jotted it down. “Roy, liquor store in Dinkytown.”
    “Mike’s,” the bartender added.
    “Mike’s on Fourteenth?”
    “I don’t know, I’ve never been there,” the bartender said. “I just know that Roy works at Mike’s.”
    “I’ve been there,” the second barfly said. “I don’t know the street, but it’s a hole-in-the-wall, kitty-corner from a Burger King.”
    “Got it,” Lucas said. He knew the place, but had never been inside.
    “How about a guy named Karl Lageson?”
    The bartender shook his head. “I don’t know that name.”
    “I think that’s Lurch,” the first barfly said to the bartender. To Lucas: “Big tall pale white guy. Deep eyes, big forehead. Looks like he ought to have a bolt in his neck. Don’t know about him, though.”
    “I’ve seen him with Roy,” the second barfly said. “If Lurch is the guy you’re looking for.”
    “Getting back to this Goth with the good ass,” the bartender said. “I know the Goths that the Minneapolis cops talked to. None of them have got what you’d call an amazing ass. I mean, not so you’d go around saying what an amazing ass she had.”
    “So she might be new,” Lucas suggested. “The other Goth.”
    “Could be,” the bartender said. “Or maybe she’s just a figment of somebody’s imagination.”
    “A Fig Newton of the imagination; the little cookie that nobody knew,” the first barfly said.
    The second barfly burped again, scratched some cash out of his pocket, and said, “Gimme one more. Then cut me off. I gotta drive.”
    Lucas chatted with the three of them for another five minutes, noted their names, and headed out into the failing daylight, fishing his cell