“They’re not. They’re a bunch of jumped-up gang guys, half of them can’t even read,” Lucas said. “They’re not the FBI. They don’t have the computer backup, the crime files. That’s why they had to cut up Mrs. Poole.”
“Then how’d they get on to the Pooles in the first place?”
“The Mississippi cops think Poole was involved in that robbery,”Lucas said. “I heard about it from a marshal in St. Louis and we didn’t have anything to do with the investigation. I suspect the drug guys may have some contacts who told them about it.”
“You mean... among cops?”
“Yeah. Among cops,” Lucas said.
“Well, that sucks,” Dean said.
“It does.”
Dean thought about it for a moment, then said, “I can’t believe Miz Poole didn’t tell them about Natalie.”
“That’s the problem with torture—people lie, and there’s no way to tell when they’re doing it,” Lucas said. “If she loved her daughter... and she had to know that they were going to kill her, no matter what she said. They’d already killed her husband.”
“Tell me how you know that.”
“He had a hideout gun in the house, probably right there in the living room,” Lucas said. “He grabbed it and they had to shoot him. Otherwise, they’d have taken him apart like they did his wife. He got lucky, I guess.”
“Not the kind of luck you hope for,” Dean said.
“No, it’s not.”
—
A SHERIFF’S CARpulled off the main road, did a U-turn, and pulled up next to Lucas and Dean. The deputy inside the car dropped the passenger-side window and asked, “You here for the goat fuck?”
Five minutes later another deputy and another highway patrolman had shown up, and the whole group was bent over Lucas’s iPad, which was sitting on the hood of one of the patrol cars. “Manny andI have been down there, so we’ll lead, and we’ll try to get around behind that Quonset hut,” Lucas said, tapping the screen. “There’s gonna be a door back there. We’ll pick up anyone trying to run.”
“Think we got enough guys?” one of the deputies asked.
The patrolman said, “As long as they don’t got a machine gun.”
“In case of that, we ought to let the marshal lead,” the first deputy drawled. “I’ve volunteered to hang back so I can call for help, if needed.”
—
TEN MINUTES LATERthey were all parked on the side of the road, where Lucas and Dean had parked on the first approach. Lucas and Dean led off, while the rest of the cops waited in their cars. Nothing had changed at the salvage yard: no lights in the office, voices from the Quonset hut. Lucas and Dean went down the right side of the building; there were no windows on the side and Lucas risked using his LED light. As they walked over truck-rutted ground, a dog started to bark inside.
Lucas muttered, “Big dog.”
Dean got on his radio and said, “Y’all better come. There’s a big dog down here...” As he said it, another dog started barking from the junkyard. “Make that two big dogs...”
“On the way...”
They were behind the Quonset, where a narrow windowless door was set in the back wall. They positioned themselves on either side of the door as headlights flooded the road and then the first of the cop cars swung into the yard, continuing on until the car’s bumper was nearly at the Quonset’s front door.
Lucas and Dean couldn’t see that, but they could hear it, the doors popping open and slamming, and they could hear a woman shouting inside and the big dog began barking hysterically, which set off the other big dog, which was apparently behind a fence. A few seconds later, a thin freckled man burst through the back door.
Lucas hit him in the eyes with the flash and simultaneously stuck out a foot. The man tripped and fell facedown in the dirt, and Dean slammed the door and said, “Don’t you dare get up, Jimmy.”
The freckled man rolled onto his back, Lucas’s light still in his eyes, and said, “Is that you, Manny?”
“Yeah, it is. You steal that Blingray, Jimmy? Probably did, you dummy. Gonna make that dentist cry a river if you already cut it up. C’mon, roll over on your stomach, let me see those wrists, you know what we’re doing here.”
Lucas said, “You’re acquainted.”
