Lucas explained about her brother John. “I could see the way that Andy was acting that Marilyn knows how to get in touch with him. She’s going to do that. I suspect she’ll wait until her husband and the kid are out of the way. I don’t think she’ll use her cell phone, and she can’t get out of bed.”
“Let me make a call,” Lamy said, and he went off to do it. A pen register would only give them the phone numbers called from the phone, but that was much easier to get approved than the search warrant needed for a full phone tap.
Lamy came back ten minutes later and said, “We’re getting it done. Now, tell me everything. What in the hell is a federal marshal doing down here?”
Lucas outlined the situation, and Lamy said, “So you got two sets of maniacs chasing each other around the countryside.”
“That’s about it,” Lucas said. “In a nutshell, so to speak.”
—
BY THE TIMELucas and Lamy had finished talking, it was nearly six o’clock. Lamy said they’d have hospital security watching Campbell’s room and they’d have a squad car make a direct check of the Campbells’ house every half hour or so for the next couple of days.
Lucas got a recommendation for a motel, found it on his iPad, off I-65, wandered through a California-style outdoor shopping area, looking for food, wound up at a steakhouse, and had a decent steak. Back at the motel, he called Weather and they talked for a while, and he told her about the attack on Marilyn Campbell.
She had no trouble imagining people as bad as the attackers: she’d encountered some very bad people since marrying Lucas. Before they hung up, though, she said, “Don’t forget.”
“I’m careful.”
“But are you enjoying yourself?”
“Hey...”
“I know. You wouldn’t admit it, because it doesn’t seem... normal. But you are, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” Lucas said, smiling into the phone. “Progress has been a little slow so far, but it’s picking up. Yeah. It’s getting interesting.”
—
THERE WASnot much in the way of football on television, so he read through his Gar Poole files, including known associates—nobody named Sturgill—and then caught a movie.
The movie was old—the Coen brothers’Burn After Reading.He’d seen it before, so it gave him some space to think as he watched.
One thing he thought about was the difference between his new job and his old one. He’d already realized that he was now a small fish swimming in the ocean—and now, he thought, he hadn’t realized how different the various parts of the ocean might be.
He didn’t know Tennessee or any of the territory worked by the Dixie Hicks. The culture was different, attitudes toward cops were different, and even the food was strange. He’d already crossed grits, collard greens, okra, and black-eyed peas off his menu possibilities, and suspected he’d find others.
There were more guns around than in Minnesota—two cold-blooded killers had been chased off their target that morning by a grade-school kid who had access to a gun and knew how to use it, and waswillingto use it. The last time he’d looked, less than four percent of the Minnesota population was licensed for concealed carry. In Alabama, twelve percent of the population was licensed for concealed carry, a half-million permits, more than twice as many as in Minnesota, with a smaller population.
He didn’t know if that was good or bad: concealed-carry people actually committed fewer felonies per year than cops did... Still, the mid-South and South had a gun culture stronger than Minnesota’s, which he’d always considered pretty tough.
If he stayed with the Marshals Service, in his current job, he might find himself working in the Pacific Northwest, New England, the desert Southwest... it was going to be strange. Even unnerving;part of him was looking forward to it. Part of him was already missing Weather and the kids, on his third night alone.
He went to sleep thinking about grits and especially okra. Who in God’s name was the first guy to stick an okra in his mouth? Must have been a brave man, or starving to death...
Lamy called him at eight o’clock the next morning. “Miz Campbell made one call, to a phone we don’t know. Looks like it’s down in Orlando, Florida.”
“Wonderful,” Lucas said.
9
LUCAS GOTa late morning flight out of Nashville to Orlando on Southwest Airlines. As he was driving to the airport, he called Russell Forte, his contact in the Washington office, and gave him a full report.
“We’ll look at the phone right now,” Forte said. “Your tickets will be waiting for you when you get to the airport.”
“Hope there’s space,” Lucas said.
Forte laughed: “There’s always space, if you’re the federal government.”
