disappears? Or somebody executes him? Or he kills himself?
Del was saying, 'There's this guy named Slattery who delivers bulk goods to the Bruins' warehouse-the food. The warehouse is the central supply center for the stores in their chain. But this guy is also delivering for other stores in the area.
'Then there's a guy named Jones who works in the warehouse. As the truck is unloaded, he zaps the cartons with a product-code reader and manually counts the cartons and enters the manual count in a computer. So then we have two records of the stuff coming in-the product code list and the hand count. But the thing is, they go through the same guy…'
'Jones,' Lucas said. Could the old man have been crazy enough to use his own great-grandson as an executioner? A high-school kid?
'Yeah. Jones. You listening?' Del looked at him suspiciously.
'I'm listening.'
'I know that hamburger theft isn't one of your major interests, but I've been bustin' my balls…'
'I'm listening,' Lucas said. 'Really.' And if it really was Roger, why didn't he take his fuckin' raincoat! Lucas wondered. It was raining like a sonofabitch.
Del continued. 'What happens, I think, is that Jones reads a box with his hand reader, but the box stays on the truck. He also adds the box to the hand count. So the box just seems to vanish.'
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
