Lucas forced himself to pay attention: "Vanish."
"Like smoke. The Bruins were looking for theft from the warehouse, or collusion between somebody in the warehouse and one of their own stores. Or, maybe, somebody just selling burgers without ringing them up, but the thefts were too big for that. Anyway, they were looking for something that happened after the burgers got to the warehouse. The thing is, the stuff never got inside."
"A fuckin' box of hamburger patties," Lucas said. "Who gives a shit? What could be in it for this guy? Jones, Slattery, whoever…"
"They're stealing enough for maybe a thousand sandwiches a week," Del said.
"A thousand…"
"Yeah. And there must be a third guy, who's running one of the McDonald's stores outside the Bruins' chain. Probably another privately owned store, and he's selling the stuff off the books. I haven't figured that out, and that's why we need surveillance."
"Still…"
"You paying attention?" Del was annoyed. "Your eyeballs are rolling around like a couple of fuckin' marbles."
"I'm paying attention."
"We're talking a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand a year-they're also stealing buns, fries, the whole thing."
Now he paid a little more attention. "Two hundred thousand dollars… in fuckin' hamburgers?"
"Yeah. Why do you think the Bruins are so pissed? This is like a major heist, dude, and you're sittin' there pulling your weenie. I need some goddamn help."
"All right. Let's take it from the top…" He tried to stop thinking about Carl Walther and Roger Walther, one or the other of them running him up and down the hills of Duluth.
At the post office, the superintendent of mails said that he didn't care what the problem was, they weren't getting any mail from him. "I'll get the guy who's sorting it-he ought to be just about done-and I'll have him deliver it up there first. I'll have him make a special stop. That's as far as I can go."
"Well, Jesus, we're right here. And he's right there," Lucas said.
"Hey-we're talking federal law. You ain't coming in here and taking the mail out. You're not even supposed to be here."
"We're cops," Del said.
"I know-that's the problem," the superintendent said. "You're not postal employees. See the sign?" He pointed. The sign on the wall said
POSTAL EMPLOYEES ONLY.
Del said, "Next time you have a massacre, who you gonna call? A mailman?"
Lucas jumped in: "Wait, wait, wait… we'll just follow the truck."
They wound up following a mail truck back through traffic to the BCA building.
"That was really helpful about the fuckin' massacre," Lucas said.
"Fuck the guy," Dell said.
"You been in that hamburger place too long."
"No shit."
The carrier, a cheerful man with an out-of-fashion brown pony-tail, dumped twenty pounds of letters and cartons at the BCA mail-room, and said, "Have at it."
There were only half a dozen candidates, and one of them, wrapped in what looked like grocery-bag paper, with six feet of Scotch tape, had Lucas's name on it.
"Probably a bomb," Del said.
"Wish you hadn't said that," Lucas said.
Del pulled on a vinyl glove and picked it up. "I'll get the lab to unwrap it, and I'll call you at your office. We oughta know in ten minutes," he said.
Chapter 31
A chunky man in a suede sport coat was looking at an NFL schedule poster outside Lucas's office; Chuck Miles, one of the state's more competent attorneys.
"Chuck: good to see you. Come on in."
Lucas took him into his office, sat him down, and explained the situation.
"… so we have a witness who is providing us with material evidence, but we don't know who she is. How do we prove we just didn't make it all up?" Lucas asked.
"Okay. We can get an affidavit from you now, about what you know about the woman. What the witnesses up north said, about the hut she lived in, about when she called you, both times. What she said. About the computer and how that paid off. About where she called from, what she says about cutting this kid, about the knife. We specify in the affidavit that you have not looked at the kid to see if he was cut, nor have you taken any DNA from him. Then, we go look at him. If he's been cut in the right area, on the left arm, and if the DNA from the knife is his, we might get the whole thing into court, especially since we've got independent corroborating evidence of this woman's existence, in the shack. Plus, the witness from Catholic Charities who has actually seen her."
"But you're not sure we'll get it in. Into court."
Miles shook his head: "No. There are options, different approaches, possibilities. Some of it depends on what judge we get… But I can't guarantee anything. I can guarantee that there'll be an appeal, no matter what happens."
"How about if we use the knife to push him into a plea? Say, cooperation on the spy ring, plus a plea of guilty to something, with our agreement that there might have been an element of self-defense in the killing. And, say, we don't fuck with his mother, as long as she's not shown to be directly involved."
"Now that's something we might pull off," Miles said, brightening. "If we could offer him no more than a few years in the youthful offender lockup, until he was twenty-one, or twenty-five, plus cooperation… I can see a defense attorney buying that."
"Of course, we might be giving a multiple murderer four years in prison, then turning him loose to do it again."
"Life in the big city," Miles said.
The affidavit took an hour, Lucas dictating to a secretary with Miles looking over her shoulder, and asking questions. After getting the legal angles worked through, Lucas called Harmon with the FBI, and found him in Washington. "Getting people together. We've got the Duluth guys up there holding everything down. We're sending in a counterespionage team to do the cleanup."
"You sound a little more cheerful."
"Yeah, well… against the odds, it became something."
"About the kid…"
"If it's the kid, we could probably crack him. Our interrogators could. That's if he knows something. He's the age where they're easy to manipulate," Harmon said.
"But you don't want in on the criminal investigation? I mean like, today?"
"You're going so well… keep going. I'll tell the local guys you're coming back."
Del called from the lab:
"Yellow-handled switchblade in a plastic bag. The package was addressed with a computer-printed address label. She made the label with a piece of typing paper Scotch taped to the package, and the evidence guy here says we're not going to get anything on her off the package, and he's willing to bet we're not going to get anything on her off the knife, either. She was pretty careful."
"How about the blood?"
"It's blood, all right. All gummy down in the grooves. We'll have it typed before you get up there, and we'll see if the kid has a blood type on record. You going right now?"
"Yup."
"Call you on the way."
"Hey, Del?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm really fascinated by that McDonald's stuff."
"Fuck you, pal."
More calls. He arranged for a search warrant and called Dannie Carson, a BCA investigator who had been working in Brainerd on an old case involving the killing of a hooker, and asked her to meet him in Hibbing. "We're gonna get some DNA evidence and look at a kid for murder," he said.
He called the Hibbing police chief, explained about the phone call from the laptop woman, the knife, the search warrant, and the need for somebody to take a DNA sample.
"You sure it's Carl? He always seemed like a pretty good kid to me," Hopper said in a worried tone.
"He was over there, giving her a hug. He looked like her. If it's not her kid, it's somebody she knows pretty well."
"Of course, it could all be bullshit, this call from the woman."
"Yeah, it could be. But I don't think so. The knife will tell us, the DNA.
If you got a DNA guy handy…"
"We use the pathologist over at the hospital. Be on your ticket, though. He isn't cheap."
"Tell him today at two o'clock. And we'd like you to send a car along with us."
And Lucas called Nadya: "Be ready to go."
Now things were running: Lucas was out of the building, heading north again. Listening to Tom Petty and Mary Jane's Last Dance, Lynyrd Skynyrd, That Smell. Cop songs. Closing-in music. Fast up I-35, fast through a hundred and fifty miles of aspen and birch and cattails and pine trees and small lakes with boats… cutting into Duluth, the big lake opening out below him, snatching Nadya off the blacktop at her hotel, heading north up into the Range…
"I think this is amazing," Nadya said, when he picked her up.
"I think so, too," Lucas said. "But it feels right."
Dannie Carson was a large woman, not fat, but big as a door: wide shouldered, wide hipped, like a female tackle. She was also intensely personable, and one of the best interrogators Lucas had ever met. Sympathy gushed out of her, and not many suspects could resist it.
She met him at the Hibbing police station: "What're we doing?"
"Pick up the kid, bring him here, get him a lawyer. Look at his arm. If he shows any kind of scar, we arrest him on suspicion of murder and do the DNA test. Short and sweet."
Hopper, the chief, said, "Is this the end of it?"
"Can't tell. Still don't know what happened to Roger."
"Well, things are really pretty screwed up around here-Janet Walther's pretty popular, and this guy up in Virginia…"
"Spivak."
"Yeah, the TV is saying the case against him is really thin and that he was even assaulted by the Russians, much less helping them."
"I'm gonna let the FBI worry about all of that," Lucas said. "I'm just gonna worry about the kid."
"The kid's in school," Hopper said. "I checked. I didn't let on why, and told the principal to keep my call under her hat."
"What is this hat?" Nadya asked.
At two o'clock, they headed for Janet Walther's frame shop in a three-car parade-the chief, followed by Lucas, Nadya, and Dannie Carson in Lucas's Acura, and a squad car with two cops. Walther was alone in her shop, and angry when she saw Lucas; Hopper took off his hat when they walked inside, and Nadya followed quietly behind.
"What do you want now?" Walther demanded.
"We've got a search warrant for your son," Lucas said. "A warrant to search his person for bodily injuries, and to take a blood sample for DNA studies. We came to invite you to come with us. If you don't wish to come with us, we'll leave a police officer with you, to make sure you don't try to warn Carl that we're coming."
"Carl? Carl's a child!"
"Well, he's not quite a child. You keep saying a child, but he's old enough to drive. He does drive. I've seen his driver's license and the registration for a car."
"What-" She began, and then her eyes suddenly flinched to the side, and Lucas thought she'd remembered something.
"What?"
"You said bodily injuries…"
"Does he have a knife cut on his arm, Mrs. Walther?"
"What do you think he did? What do you think…?"
So he did, Lucas thought. He turned to the chief and nodded, and the chief nodded back. "We think he killed the Russian man in Duluth, and maybe the police officer. Possibly under the direction of Burt Walther."
"That's crazy…" But the fear shone from her eyes.
"Do you wish to come?" Lucas asked formally. The kid was toast, so he would be as formal as possible from now on. "We could also see that a public defender, a defense attorney, is waiting at the police station when we get there."
"At the police station…" Her eyes flooded with tears, and she covered her face with both hands. "At the police station…"
She rode with Hopper to the high school, a huge old building famous for its art deco auditorium. They all went trooping inside, down a long hall to the office. The principal met them, went back to her desk, looked at a piece of paper and said, "He's in gym class."
The principal led them to the gym, where a teacher pointed them outside. They found a group of kids standing around, in gym shorts and sweatshirts, flags hanging from the sides of their shorts, all staring at the line of cops. The gym teacher said, "He said he was sick. He went back inside."
"When was this?" Lucas asked.
"Ten minutes ago."
Lucas looked out at the street, turned to Dannie: "Shit. He saw us coming. He's running. I hope he's running."
Hopper looked at the school, a looming brick pile with kids visible in the windows. "You don't think he could… oh, shit," and he started running toward the school, his two cops trailing behind.
"What, what?" Janet Walther screamed after them.
Lucas trotted after Hopper, Dannie Carson, jogging alongside, Nadya hurrying to keep up.
Nadya: "You think he's in the school? With a gun?"
"I hope not. I hope he just took off. But I don't know. We can't take a chance… I'm trying to think, I'm just trying to think…" He looked up. "The place is just so goddamn big."
Chapter 32
Carl Walther almost stopped thinking when Grandpa killed himself.
He spent the night wide awake, sprawled on the bed, looking at the dock; the next morning he felt like he had gears in his head, turning slowly, full of sand; the world was not quite in sync.
His mother fussed at him, argued that he should stay home, but he drove into school. Random images popping up as he drove: Grandpa and Grandma dead, the images imagined. His father dead, the image right there, replaying itself-the warmth of his body, his lonely grave out in the clear-cut. The woman he killed in Dad's bed; the lady vagrant on the street, the feel of the wire cutting into her neck; the Russian agents going down.
A car in front of him had a fading WWJD sticker on the back bumper: What Would Jesus Do? And he thought, What would Grandpa do? Grandpa would… work it. He'd play it like a chess game.
But exactly what would he do? In all the years they'd been together, Grandpa kept telling him what to think, but had never quite told him how.
He was playing flag football, still in silent, robot mode-no one at the school had said anything at all about Grandpa being a spy, although he could feel eyes following him in the hallways-when he saw the parade of cars turn the corner and pull up outside the main entrance.
The cars were almost a block away, and there were no sirens or lights, so nobody else paid any attention. But Carl noticed them, and focused, and saw his mother get out of the lead car with the chief, and he knew they were coming for him.
He walked over to the gym teacher and said, "I've got to get my medicine in my locker. I'm gonna puke, I'm really sick," and he turned and walked quickly across the playing field, inside, into the locker room, shedding clothes as soon as he was inside. He dressed in one minute, and was out the door, over a fence, down to the parking lot and into his old Chevy.
Where to go? Russia? He couldn't drive to Russia. He just needed to get loose, get away. Get a gun, he thought. Get out in the woods. He got a quick image of himself with a rifle and some pretty neat clothes, like the kind from Cabela's, and maybe a cowboy-type hat, looking through the trees; a Honda four-wheeler. A guerrilla…
He was rolling on teenage hormones. There was some joy in it, a little fear, lots of intensity. He had gas, he wasn't hungry yet, he had seven dollars in his pocket and he knew where he could get both food and guns and there was nobody home…
He went that way.
Chapter 33
Lucas had never felt anything quite so close to panic as when they were running back toward the school. Hopper said, "You go check the locker room in case he's there. I'm gonna go pull the trigger on the emergency plan."
There had already been two school shootings in Minnesota that year, three kids dead. The thought that a cold-blooded killer, who'd already wiped out a Russian agent and a cop, and God knows who else, was loose in the s
chool-maybe with a silenced pistol-was a possibility so grim that he could hardly bear to think about it.
He didn't argue with Hopper. Inside the door, Hopper said, "Locker room," and pointed. There were a few kids around, gawking at them, and Hopper started shouting, "Everybody go back to your classroom. Everybody back to your classroom."
Lucas ran down to the boys' locker room and inside. Dannie Carson continued on to the girls' locker room, her Glock at her side. Inside the boys', a kid was emptying a clothes basket full of towels, and he saw the urgency on Lucas's face and asked, "What?"
Lucas stepped close, one hand on his pistol, the pistol still under his jacket, and asked, quietly, "Have you seen Carl Walther?"
"Yeah, he was here two minutes ago. But I think he left…"
"Which way did he go?"
"I don't know, I didn't see him go, I only heard him…"
Lucas did a quick run through the locker room, including the showers, saw nobody else, and went back into the hallway. A gray-haired woman was walking down the hall, bouncing a basketball. Lucas said, "I'm a cop. Have you seen Carl Walther? He should have been out in the hallway just a minute ago…"
She said, "Uh…"
Overhead, a speaker burped some static, and then a man's voice said, "All teachers, we are turning lights out. All teachers, lights out."
And the gray-haired woman said, "Oh, shit. Carl? Does he have a gun?"
"We don't know. We can't find him, but he was just here. Were you walking around here?"
"No, I was in the gym…"
Dannie Carson came out of the girls' locker room and said, "Not there."
"The 'lights out' code means we're supposed to lock down and report in," the gray-haired woman said.
"Then do that," Lucas said. "Hurry."
They tore the school apart. Lucas ran through the weight room, checked the swimming pool, and two or three cops walked each row of the huge, elaborate auditorium; every room and cubbyhole was checked. No sign of Carl Walther. Twenty minutes after the search began, a teacher walked down to the office with a student and said, "Somebody needs to hear this."
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