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“I never...” He stopped talking for a moment, looking down at his thighs. Lucas and Virgil waited. Then, quietly, “What do you want?”
“One thing we don’t want,” Virgil said, “is to spend Minnesota money to put your ass in jail and send you back to LA. But we’ll do it. We will. You gotta believe that.”
Hinton nodded. “Okay.” And, “Goddamnit. Goddamnit.”
“Was the real Bob Dahl murdered?” Virgil asked. “What can you tell us about that?”
Hinton—Dahl—shook his head: “Bob wasn’t murdered. He died of an overdose in Glendale. The Glendale cops didn’t know who he was and didn’t care because he was a street addict. His only bustshad been small-town juvie, and his prints weren’t in the system, so they couldn’t find out. They cremated him and put him in a mass grave out there. You could check that. I could give you the time, date, and place.”
“And you know all that because...?” Virgil asked.
“Because I knew him from back home... here in Minnesota. We went to the same high school.”
“California? What happened there?” Virgil asked.
“I was staying in a motel, a flophouse was what it was, but with separate rooms. Out in Glendale. On days when it was raining or cold, I’d let Bob inside when it was late, and he’d sleep in the stairwell,” Hinton said. “I wouldn’t let him in my room—I mean, I did once, and he stole some of my shit, so I didn’t let him in after that. But I let him into the stairwell when it was cold or raining. Sometimes I let him use my shower, as long as I could watch and make sure he didn’t steal any more of my shit.”
“You’re a saint, Darrell,” Virgil said.
Lucas prompted him: “The motel, and then...”
“And then, he croaked. Heroin with fentanyl or meth mixed in, and it killed him,” Hinton said. “The guy who ran the motel came knocking on my door and said Bob was tits-up in the stairwell. I ran to see and told the manager to get the cops. While he was gone... I was in some trouble out there... and I got this idea and I took his wallet.”
“And came back here as Bob Dahl.”
“He didn’t need the name anymore, and I sure as heck did,” Hinton said. “I wasn’t too long out of prison, had a hard time getting a job, and when the computer business went down, I knew I’d be back for a longer stay if they got me.”
“So you got lucky with Bob,” Virgil said.
Hinton looked down at his shoes again and mumbled, “I guess.”
“How did you hook up with Heath?” Lucas asked.
“Just... accident,” Hinton said. “Or maybe I saw that he was a hustler. He was running this medical thing, bringing in medicine from the Bahamas. I was working part time for UPS and I’d deliver to his office and we’d get to talking... I said something about the fact that the way the medical thing was set up, a guy could take some cream off the milk. He kinda looked at me, and a couple weeks later, I was working for him.”
“He was taking some cream off the milk?” Lucas asked.
“The cream and half the milk,” Hinton said. “It took me a while to figure out the numbers, but I’d done some hustling. I know a good one when I see one.”
“We know about those,” Virgil said. “Let me tell you up front, the prisons here are not like the rest home at Susanville. What I’m saying is, you best stay on our right side.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Hinton protested. “Susanville wasn’t a rest home, either. They were teaching me to fight forest fires, for Christ’s sakes. Do I look like a forest-fire fighter?”
Lucas agreed that he didn’t, and asked, “You know why we’re talking to you?”
“When you said who you were, I thought it would be about the Sand contribution to Home Streets.”
“It’s a little more about the fact that Heath is the right size to be the killer, and that Sand’s financial advisor was trying to talk him out of investing with Home Streets,” Lucas said. “Sand might not have contributed, but his wife still might. You told me on the phone that you hoped she would.”
Hinton sat back in his chair. “Oh... boy. I never thought of it that way.”
“How were you going to steal the Home Streets money?” Virgil asked.
Hinton cocked his head and frowned at Virgil for a moment, and then said, “You’re a little bit of an asshole, aren’t you?”
“A little bit,” Virgil said, “but that doesn’t answer the question.”
“I wasn’t going to steal anything. I get a paycheck,” Hinton said. “I’d get a taste of the action if it worked out. A small taste. I keep the job because Noah knows that I know what he’s doing, and he doesn’t think I’d turn on him. It’s a nice racket.”
