Stolen Prey p-22

by John Sandford

  Lucas came in behind Rivera, in time to hear him say, “… so I don’t want to hear about Mexicans this and Mexicans that. These people are criminals and they are rats and the United States of America created them with this drug market, and with these guns that you ship across the border to the narcos. Thousands of guns, black rifles that they change one part, and they have machine guns. Huh?” He patted his chest and said, “It’s my people who are dying in hundreds and thousands so your rich people can put this cocaine up their noses and smoke their Colombians, so don’t tell me about Mexicans this and Mexicans that.”

  He was shaking with anger. Behind him, Martinez was standing with her back to the wall, holding a briefcase. She glanced at Lucas and tipped her head, as if to apologize.

  Shaffer, as angry as Rivera, said, “I wasn’t trying to lecture you. I was trying to point out the obvious. You’ve apparently shipped a batch of insane killers up here from Mexico and they’re butchering children and women.”

  “I didn’t ship them. Mexico didn’t ship them. They came here because this is where the money is. Because of your market. Because you do the money laundry, huh? Why do you think we are here? This Sunnie Software was the Criminales’ bank, huh? It’s a bank. So you provide the market, you provide the bank, you provide the distribution, but it’s the Mexicanos who are at fault for all this? Bullshit.”

  Shaffer stuttered, “I–I-I just don’t want to have this debate. We’re all on the same side here. We’re just trying to clear up this murder. At least I am.”

  Lucas cleared his throat and said, “Sorry I’m late. Any returns from the TV photos last night?”

  Shaffer nodded, grateful for the interruption. He said, “Not yet. Nothing so far.”

  Lucas, looking over at the DEA agents, asked, “What about Sunnie’s accountants? What about the bank? Anything there?”

  “We’re looking at eight years’ worth of paper, trying to spot where the leak is,” said O’Brien. “Haven’t found it so far. Still interviewing the employees. Whatever Brooks was doing, it was complicated. But that … maybe that’s what we should have expected. It wouldn’t be right out there in the open.”

  Another one of the DEA agents, whose name Lucas didn’t remember, said, “Our thinking now is, he was running a computer program that diverts incoming payments, depending on where they’re coming from, to some other place. An automatic diversion. In other words, he’s not actually collecting the money, he’s simply set up a mechanism for collecting it. When it comes through, it carries a … signal of some sort … that simply moves the money elsewhere. If that’s the way it works, and that’s what we’re starting to think, then we won’t find it with an audit. We need a software guy to look at their programming.”

  Shaffer asked, “You got one of those?”

  “We could probably find one,” O’Brien said.

  Lucas said to Shaffer, “We could bring in ICE. We really need to get on top of this. We don’t need to wait a week for somebody to show up.”

  Shaffer: “She’s pretty expensive.”

  “But she’d find it,” Lucas said.

  O’Brien asked, “Who’s this ICE?”

  Lucas: “Ingrid Caroline Eccols. She was one of the people who worked with me when I was running a software company, back in the nineties. Programmer, hacker, gamer, really smart. If she’s not doing much, we could probably get her for two hundred.”

  “If you guys say she’s good, I think the federal government could come up with a couple hundred bucks,” O’Brien said.

  Lucas said, “Ah, that’d be two hundred bucks an hour. Sometimes she works sixteen or eighteen hours straight … so it could be like three grand a day. Or four. If she’s available and if she likes the idea.”

  O’Brien’s eyebrows went up: “That, I’d have to get approved,” he said. “I can probably do it, for a couple days, anyway, if you guys say she’s really good.”

  “She’s really good,” Shaffer said, and Lucas added, “She’s as good as they get.”

  “So I’ll make a call,” O’Brien said. “Why don’t you guys line her up?”

  The rest of the meeting was a review of crime-scene evidence; one of the BCA cops passed Lucas a file of printouts of all the reports made so far. “We’ve got some prints, and we’ve got DNA, so … if we can find them, we’ve got them,” Shaffer said, summing up.

  “But, you don’t really have them,” Rivera said. “You have the instruments, but you don’t have the men who ordered this done.”

  “Just for the time being, I’ll take the instruments,” Shaffer snapped. “I’ll worry about the big chief after I get the guys I know about.”

  Rivera shrugged and muttered something to Martinez in Spanish. Whatever it was, it made a couple of the DEA guys swallow smiles.

  Out in the hallway, after the meeting, Rivera caught up with Lucas, who’d been the first man out the door. He said, quietly, “This Shaffer. He’s not so smart. I was hoping for somebody smarter.”

  “He’s … effective,” Lucas said. “When he gets done, there’ll be no stone unturned.”

  “Do you think he’ll catch these killers, or the people who ordered this done?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucas said. He added, “The meeting seemed a little tense. What happened?”

  Rivera stopped in the hallway and did some straightening-out motions, shooting out his shirtsleeves, pulling his suit together. “When I came up here, I was told by your Justice Department that I could be involved in the investigation. Otherwise, what’s the point for me to come? But Shaffer will not give me copies of your reports. He says it’s for your agency only, that he has no authority to give them to me. So we sit here and tickle our thumbs. Is that right? Tickle? It makes no sense.”

  “Twiddle your thumbs,” Lucas said. “That makes no sense either, but it means this.” He put the report file under one arm and twiddled his thumbs for a few seconds; the cast made it difficult, since his left thumb was immobilized, but he got the idea across.

  “Exactly,” Rivera said. “I had the right idea, but not the word. Twiddle?”

  Lucas looked back down the hall. Shaffer and another agent were just turning the corner, and Lucas said to Rivera, “Listen, I can’t give you the report if Shaffer thinks it’d be improper. But if you want to sit in my office for a while, I’d let you read it. If you keep it under your hat…. I mean, don’t talk about it.”

  “I knew you were the bright one,” Rivera said. “Lead us to your office.”

  So they sat in Lucas’s office for an hour, passing reports back and forth, and Lucas went out once to buy Cokes, which would give Rivera a chance to make a few notes if he needed to. When he returned, he noticed a book with a foiled cover, that had slid, facedown, out of Rivera’s briefcase.

  “What’re you reading? The novel?” Lucas asked.

  Rivera looked down, saw the book, and said, “Ah. Yes. It’s bullshit. In English, I only read bullshit. I got it at the airport in San Diego.”

  Lucas couldn’t help but smile. “What kind of bullshit?”

  Rivera reached down and picked up the novel and turned it faceup. “In this one, the angels of the Lord and the devils of Hell-the fallen angels-are fighting each other, to control the future of humanity. The key to this struggle is an American CIA agent and this beautiful woman-”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course, and the agents save the world at the last minute, and we don’t all fall in the pit. It’s all bullshit. But I finish it and I think, ‘Okay, the good guys win.’ That’s wonderful. That’s why I read it. The good guys win.”

  “You don’t think the good guys are going to win?”

  “I see no evidence of it. Even worse, I don’t know who the good guys are,” Rivera said. Lucas sat down again and put his heels up on his desk, as Rivera continued: “I always look at real estate when I come to the U.S. The first day here, when we were at the Brooks house, I looked at the real estate before I went inside. You know why?”

&n
bsp; “Why is that?” Lucas asked.

  “Because I have this dream. I hear about this narco, he has ten million dollars in hundred-dollar bills, in his backpack, and I find him. He tries to shoot me, and I righteously shoot first. But then I open the backpack and here is all this money. I do not hesitate. I take the backpack, I go to Ciudad Juarez, where nobody knows me. I hire a coyote to get me across the border to Texas,” Rivera said. “In El Paso, I get on a bus with my backpack, I go to Kansas, or Minnesota, or Montana, to some small town. I buy a nice house with a span of land, ten hectares, twenty hectares. I plant some fruit trees, I plant a garden, I marry a fat white American farm woman. We live on the farm and I raise goats and maybe a cow, maybe some pigs, some corn…. Sometimes, I have a small boat, and we take it to a lake on a wheeler. Hey? I dream this all the time. My fantasy. I live in these fantasy books, where the good guys win. I live in my fantasy dream, where I win…. It’s all bullshit, but that’s what I do.”

  Lucas said, “Well, if you make it across the border, you can stay at my house until you find the farm.”

  Rivera smiled and slapped the desktop. “Thank you. If I make it across the border, I will come here, for sure. But this won’t happen. They’ll kill me first. For the last three years, I have thought I have perhaps a year to live, probably less. So far, I defy the odds. But one of these years, I won’t. They’ll kill me. I hate them. I hate the motherfuckers. This is correct in English, right? Motherfuckers?”

  “Yup, motherfuckers,” Lucas said. “But it’s trailers, not wheelers. You put a boat on a trailer.”

  “Because it goes on trails?”

  “No, because … never mind. So … why don’t you just quit and come up north?” Lucas asked.

  “I can’t. I am a patriot. These motherfuckers are destroying my country,” Rivera said. “I have to help stop them. But in the end, I lose. This is not a fantasy.”

  “That’s pretty goddamn bitter,” Lucas said.

  Rivera nodded, held Lucas’s eyes for a second, then turned to Martinez and said, “We have to go.”

  Lucas asked, “What are you up to? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Your only, mmm, report of interest is your visit to this hotel, the Wee Blue Inn,” Rivera said. “There are Mexicans there. I have introductions here in St. Paul, I will be able to find people who know the people in this town…. Maybe I’ll find something.”

  “Be careful,” Lucas said.

  “That is my name,” Rivera said. “Careful Rivera.”

  Martinez shook her head. “Careless Rivera, I think.” She wasn’t being funny; she was absolutely morose.

  As they were walking away down the hall, Lucas stuck his head out and called, “Hey, wait a minute.” He walked down to them and asked, “Could you guys come to my house tonight? For dinner?”

  Rivera smiled and said, “This is very nice of you, but … I am afraid we have another dinner, with friends. If we could do it some other time?”

  “Sure,” Lucas said.

  When they were gone, Lucas went back to reading the reports and found an enormous amount of detail, but nothing he considered important-not yet, anyway. The techs thought they’d probably get all kinds of DNA, which meant that after they caught the killers, they could convict them. Unfortunately, they had to catch them first.

  He was still reading when Ingrid Caroline Eccols called. Lucas’s secretary stuck her head in the door and said, “ICE is on line one.”

  Lucas picked it up and said, “Hey, Ingy.”

  “If I was there, and had a gun, I’d shoot you for calling me that,” ICE said.

  “Yeah, I know, but you’re not,” Lucas said. “So how you doin’, ICE?”

  “Good. I just heard a funny joke. You want me to tell it to you?”

  “Not especially,” Lucas said. “You have a very limited sense of humor, and you don’t tell a joke very well. You tell me one every time I see you, and they’re never funny.”

  “Fuck you, Lucas. My rate just went up to two and a half.”

  “Tell the joke,” Lucas said. “Come back down to two hundred, and I might even laugh.”

  She told the joke in what was supposed to be a heavy southern accent, but actually sounded more like deep Minnesota country hick:

  Mary Sue, Brenda Sue, and Linda Sue were sitting on their front porch in Tifton, Georgia, on a hot afternoon, drinking lemon drops with a little extra vodka. After a while, Mary Sue said, “When I had my first baby, my husband gave me a brand-new Cadillac ragtop automobile.”

  Brenda Sue said, “What a marvelous, generous man he is,” and Linda Sue said, “Well, ain’t that nice?”

  And they drank some more lemon drops, with a little extra vodka, and then Brenda Sue said, “When I had my first baby, my husband gave me a brand-new split-level house, with central air.” Mary Sue said, “That’s such a magnificent gesture. You must’ve been so proud.” And Linda Sue said, “Well, ain’t that nice?”

  And they had a few more lemon drops, with a little extra vodka, and Mary Sue asked Linda Sue, “What’d you get when you had your first baby, Linda Sue?” And Linda Sue said, “When I had my first baby, my husband sent me off to Switzerland, to go to charm school.”

  Mary Sue said, “Charm school? Well, did you find that helpful, Linda Sue?”

  Linda Sue said, “Oh, ever so much. I used to just say, ‘Fuck you.’ Now I say, ‘Well, ain’t that nice?’”

  Lucas faked a fake laugh-he actually thought the joke was kinda funny, and that she told it well-and ICE said, “Well, ain’t you nice,” and then, “Listen, I’m taking the deal. I told Shaffer that it was only as a favor for you, because you used to be my employer. Which means, you owe me.”

  “Not much, if you get two hundred bucks an hour. I might buy you a cheeseburger someday,” Lucas said.

  “It’ll be more than that, I promise you,” ICE said. “Anyway, I’m in. I need somebody to meet me at Sunnie and get me online.”

  “I’ll have somebody do that,” Lucas said. “When do you want to hook up?”

  “I’m gonna buy a bag of sliders and then I’m on my way,” she said. “An hour.”

  “Somebody will be waiting,” Lucas said.

  Lucas called Shaffer to tell him that ICE was on the way, went to the murder book, but only briefly. Then he tossed it on his desk and kicked back, and considered the problem.

  He’d had a thought when he was talking to Rivera, and Rivera and Martinez were going through all the papers, and not finding any more than he had.

  The torture of the Brookses had continued until they were all dead: the last of them had apparently died as the torture was continuing. Which probably meant that the torturers hadn’t gotten what they wanted.

  What nobody had considered was the possibility that the Brookses had no idea what they were talking about. That they hadn’t given anything up because there was nothing to give up. That Sunnie was not involved with the narcos.

  He thought about that for a moment, but couldn’t twist a story around so that it made sense. The narcos had to know who they were dealing with … didn’t they?

  But why had the Brookses taken it down to the bitter end?

  Why?

  Virgil Flowers called. “I’ve been talking to victims, and we have one more report of horse shit odor. Wasn’t mentioned in the police report because the victim didn’t think to do it. The pattern is what you said it was-I think they’re out of a triangle with the bottom line from Mankato to Owatonna to Rochester, with the point up in the Twin Cities. Or a big circle around Faribault. Somewhere in there. But there’s something else going on, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “A guy who runs a stable out by Waterville came home a year ago, after a weekend up in the Cities, and found out somebody had stolen a big pile of horse shit.”

  “You’re joking,” Lucas said.

  “I’m not joking. There’s rumors that somebody else is missing a pile of horse shit, too, but I haven’t run that down, yet,”
Flowers said. “Anyway, a couple that sounds like the pair who jumped you were in Waterville just before this shit was stolen. They were driving a big old beat-up Ford flatbed with side panels, the sort of thing you’d want if you were stealing horse shit. People say they were sort of at loose ends.”

  “Virgil, if you’re fucking with me…”

  “I knew you’d think that, but I’m not,” Flowers said.

  “All right. But if you are fuckin’ with me…”

  “Lucas … listen, this isn’t going to take long. These aren’t big-time crooks. I’ll get something in the next few days.”

  “Keep me up,” Lucas said.

  He hung up with the feeling that Flowers was fucking with him. Horse shit thieves?

  He was pushing paper again when Del called. He was talking fast: “What’re you doing? Right this minute?”

  “Trying to choose between Caspian mocha and Castilian Cafe au Lait when I paint the hallway.”

  “All right. Listen, can you get down to South St. Paul? Anderson just pulled into a junkyard by the river. I think he’s going for it, and I need some backup.”

  “The sculpture?”

  “The sculpture. You still keep your running gear in the office? The shoes and pants?”

  “Sure. You think-”

  “Change into it and get your ass down here,” Del said. “Bring somebody else, too, if you can find anybody. Down by the river, by that little airport.”

  Lucas got specific directions, then went out to the main office and found an agent named Jenkins, who wasn’t too busy, got him moving. Back in his office, he took his gym bag out of a file cabinet, sniffed it-not bad, he must’ve washed it after his last run-closed the office door, changed into gray sweatpants and a dark blue hoodie over an Iowa Hawkeyes T-shirt, and running shoes. His Beretta went under the hoodie.

  Jenkins was a very large man who, with his sidekick, Shrake, had a reputation for asking questions later. They took Jenkins’s personal car, a three-year-old Crown Vic that Lucas felt would work better with the riverside gestalt than would a Lexus.