“Old ones, but still good. Nine years ago, he and a guy named Charles Trevino robbed a mail truck out of St. Petersburg,” Lucas said. “The truck was carrying a bunch of registered mail packages after a stamp-collectors convention. Trevino was busted a year later when he tried to unload some of the stamps. He said Poole was the other guy, and there was a third guy, whom he didn’t know, who did the research and the setup. The U.S. attorney filed an indictment on Poole and a warrant was issued, but he hasn’t been picked up since then.”
“Sounds like a smart guy who works with other smart guys, if they spotted a particular mail truck full of old stamps,” Meadows said.
“Apparently heisa smart guy, besides being a cold-blooded killer,” Lucas said. “That’s one of the reasons he interests me. That and the little girl.”
“You’ve got a daughter, right?” Meadows asked.
“Three of them,” Lucas said. “One’s going to college, one’s about to go, and I’ve got a five-year-old. A son, too.”
“Huh. Here’s a change of direction,” Meadows said. “You hear that Sandy Park got hit by a bicyclist?”
Sandra Park was another deputy marshal. Lucas had nodded to her in the hallway.
“What? A bicycle?”
“Yeah. Jerk on one of those fat-tire mountain bikes, rolling down a hill, blew through a stop sign. Sandy was out jogging and got T-boned. Anyway, she’s not hurt bad, but one ankle and one knee are messed up. She’s going to be off them for a couple of weeks. She’s good with computers. If you need some backup, she knows all the law enforcement systems inside and out. I can tell her to give your questions a priority... if you need that,” Meadows said.
“Thanks,” Lucas said. “I’ll talk to her this afternoon.”
“I’ll tell her you’re coming around.”
—
LUCAS TALKEDto Park, and found himself smoothing more ruffled feathers. Park wasnotbeing asked to do secretarial-type work because she was a woman, she was being asked to do it because Lucas didn’t know how, she had expertise that he didn’t, and she was working while injured, and becauseblah blah blah.
Feathers smoothed, Lucas asked her to dredge up everything she could find in the federal systems on Poole. Park said she would, and would have a brick of paper and a flash drive by the next day.
—
THAT NIGHT,Lucas told Weather about Poole.
“He’s an old-fashioned kind of crook. Guns and holdups, armored cars and banks or anywhere else that has cash—he likes cash. He held up the box office at a country music show one time. Doesn’t have a problem with killing people. Doesn’t do anything high-tech.”
He told her about the little girl killed in Biloxi, and she shook her head. “Brutal.”
“Yeah.” They both glanced toward their daughter Gabrielle, who was sitting on a corner chair going through a beginning-reader book with a fierce concentration, paying no attention to her parents.
“You could be going out of town for a while,” Weather said. They were sitting on the front room couch, her head on his shoulder. Weather was a short woman, a plastic surgeon. Pretty, with cool eyes and a nose she thought over-large but Lucas thought was striking.
“I could be—no longer than I have to be, but it could be a couple of weeks. I don’t think a month. I’ll probably drive, instead of flying,” Lucas said. He got up and wandered around the living room, looking at books, putting them down, thinking about it.
“Not your part of the country,” she said. “That Southern thing is different.”
“I know.”
“You think this could really interest you?” she asked.
“If a guy is bad enough... he’ll interest me. Poole is bad, and nobody’s been able to lay hands on him.”
“A challenge,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Weather said, “I don’t like the idea of you going away too often, but it’s better than having you sitting around, brooding. You’re getting to be a pain in the ass.”
Lucas nodded: “I get that way when I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Hunting.”
