Saturday. The first day of the Alie'e Maison case.

The morning was cold, even for mid-November. The lake, a hundred miles north, would have frozen over for sure, Lucas thought. He stood at a gas pump, trickling fifteen gallons of premium into the tank of the Porsche. Two blocks out of his driveway, running for the Alie'e Maison scene, he remembered about the gashe didn't have any. Now, at the least convenient moment, he'd had to stop.

He yawned, and peered around. The gas station attendant sat in an armored-glass booth, punching with his thumbs at a Game Boy, like a figure in an Edward Hopper tableau. Lucas didn't register Hopper; instead, he wondered idly why gas pumps no longer dinged. They used to ding with every gallon or so, he thought, and now they just rattled off yellow electronic digits, gallons and dollars, silent as the night.

Another car, a small Lincoln, the one that shared its frame with a JaguarLucas knew about the Jaguar, but could never remember the Lincoln's namepulled into the second set of gas pumps. Lucas yawned again and watched as a woman got out.

And stopped yawning. Something familiar about her, from a long time ago. He couldn't see her face, and it wasn't her face that sparked the memoryit was the way she moved, something about the movement and the stature and the hair.

Her face was turned away from him as she opened the gas flap on the car, unscrewed the cap, and maneuvered the nozzle into the mouth of the tank. She was wearing a suit and dark low heels and a dark blouse. She turned toward him to drag her credit card through the pump's card reader, but he caught only a flash of her face. A square chin, tennis-blond hair. He thought of Weather, the woman he'd almost marriedshould have married, a woman he still thought aboutbut this wasn't Weather. Weather was smaller, and he'd know her a mile away, whether her back was turned or not.