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The investigator shook his head: “That body’s got so much foreign DNA it’d take a million years to sort it out.”
The cops had blocked off the dead-end 190th at the intersection with County 18 Boulevard, and three television vans were waiting there as the unnecessary cops, including Lucas and Virgil, began leaving the crime scene.
Daisy Jones was there with a crew and she tried to wave them down, but Virgil rolled his Tahoe on through the line. Daisy gavethem the finger when they didn’t slow down, and when she called them one minute later, they didn’t answer. “Done enough for Daisy,” Lucas said, with a smile. “Besides, I like teasing her.”
—
“But now what?”Virgil asked.
“Why don’t we go see Maggie again? I know damn well she’s got some idea of who the killer might be. I’d like to figure out exactly what she’s up to.”
Virgil was good with that, and Lucas called her. She was at the university, in the middle of a class, she said, but she picked up because she thought he might have some news. He told her about the discovery of the body and asked, “Can we come over and talk? When are you between classes?”
If they came soon, she said, they could take her to lunch; she had a meeting at one o’clock.
They wound up in a semicircular corner booth at a place called the Beacon; the waitress asked Lucas and Virgil, “Say, didn’t I see you onJonesing? Looking for a body?”
Virgil: “Must have been two other really, really good-looking guys.”
“Did you find the body?” she asked.
“WatchJonesingthis afternoon,” Lucas said. “Seriously.”
The waitress went away with their orders and Lucas and Virgil turned to Cooper. Virgil said, “We know you’ve got an idea of who might have killed your family. We want to know why you won’t tell us who it is. And we want a name.”
“Before we get to that... you did find a body?”
Virgil nodded: “Yes. There’ll be a lot of TV. People are still out there, but it’s Darrell Hinton, who you probably knew as Bob Dahl.”
Cooper sighed, slumped, then said, “Okay. I’ll tell you what I’m doing, if you don’t go all law-enforcement on me. Be a couple of parents.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Lucas said. “But go ahead. We won’t put it in a report.”
“I think I might know who it is. Ann and I went to his house the night before last when... we thought he might be going home,” Cooper lied. As an actress, she could lie as well as any cop. “Hewasgoing home, and we let him see us. We cruised his house three times, and we know for sure he saw us the first time, and we think the third time, too.”
“Goddamnit, Maggie,” Lucas said. “I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to pull him in to your house.”
“Yes. So far, he hasn’t shown up. We’re waiting. If he tries to break in, I’ll kill him. I’ve got my revolver. He can’t break in through the front door because it’s solid and two inches thick. He probably has to come in the back. When he does, he’ll be three feet away. It won’t be like what happened at Ann’s place, where I was shooting a long way. I’ll be shooting this close...”
She made a pistol finger and pointed it at Lucas’s chest. “Bang.”
The waitress was there with Diet Cokes and coffee. She looked from Cooper to Lucas: “Bang?”
When the waitress had gone again, Lucas said, “You can’t do that, Maggie.”
“Of course I can—you just crook a finger.” She made the pistol finger again and crooked her finger, as though it were on a trigger.“It’s what you’d do, Lucas. And probably what you’d do, Virgil. If your families were murdered, would the killer survive?”
“That’s a hypothetical,” Lucas said. “What you’re doing isn’t hypothetical, it’s the real deal.”
“You’re being evasive,” Cooper said. “Answer the question: would the killer survive?”
Virgil looked at Lucas, then shook his head: “Maybe not.”
Lucas said, “Maggie, if you kill someone, it will alter your whole life, and maybe ruin it. Do more damage than has already been done. You have a daughter, you need to take care of her, and you need to be with her to do that.”
Virgil: “You’re talking about a gunfight and I believe you’re thinking about it in TV terms—you’ll win because you’re the good guy. Last year, Lucas and I were in a gunfight that left two FBI agents dead, another one so badly injured that she had to retire, maybe permanently crippled, and Lucas and I all shot up. By one guy. One guy with an AR-15 with a bump stock. All of us, every one of us, were good with guns. Experienced with guns.Nothingsays the good guy is going to win. You could lose, and then what happens to Chelsea?”
—
