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Lucas glanced at Virgil, who gave him a quick shake of the head: she wasn’t involved.
When they were done, Virgil thanked her and said, “We may want to come back and talk to you some more.”
“Yeah, that’ll be a real pleasure,” she snapped.
They called Cooper back into the living room; she came in carrying a cup of coffee, and asked, “All done?”
“For the time being,” Lucas said.
“I gotta get away from them,” Melton said, and she disappeared into the back of the house.
“Did you cut her up bad?” Cooper asked, as she watched Melton go.
“We asked the question,” Lucas said.
“I sorta heard,” she said. Cooper took a sip of the coffee. “I snuck up to the kitchen door and listened to parts of it. I couldn’t hear all of it. Nobody... none of the other investigators... I mean, they seemed to know everything about the murders. Every fact you can imagine. They knew exactly, surgically, how my family died. What each individual bullet did. Who really needs to know that? What happened was obvious... they were shot and killed.”
Virgil said, “The more you know, generally, the better off you are.”
Cooper shook her head: “I don’t believe that. They had an enormous amount of information that didn’t add up to anything. That never had a possibility of adding up to anything. They told me Alex and the boys were killed with a nine-millimeter handgun. I went online and looked up nine-millimeter handguns and guess what?They’re the most common murder weapon in America. So determining that meant absolutely nothing.”
“It does mean something—it means we can’t look for an unusual gun. It eliminated other guns,” Lucas said. “Now we’ve learned it was a Glock, and even which model of Glock, so—”
“Oh, bullshit,” Cooper said. “Are Glocks rare guns? Are they even uncommon?”
“No...”
“But, what I was getting at... You two came in here and picked up the relationship between Ann and myself,” Cooper said. “That won’t turn into anything, I promise you, but it could have. None of those fact investigators had a clue about that relationship.”
She took another sip of the coffee: “You really are the A-Team,” she said. “That gives me a little hope that you’ll find the killer.”
As Lucas and Virgil got up to leave, she asked, “Do you have cards? I have cards for everyone else. I’ll try not to bother you. Annoy you.”
“Sure,” Virgil said, and he and Lucas handed her their business cards. “Don’t worry about bothering us. We may wind up bothering you even more. If you think of anything, call.Anything.”
—
Driving away fromMelton’s house, Lucas said, “Nice that somebody thinks we’re the A-Team. Nice that somebody thinks that there evenisan A-Team.”
Virgil: “Cooper said you thought of something, she could see it on your face. What did you think of?”
“That long list of people that Sand sent to prison. A guy named Larry Brickell was on it,” Lucas said. “You remember him?”
“Mmm. Not offhand,” Virgil said.
“Wasn’t a real big deal. Two years ago, he was out on pre-sentencing bail after he was convicted of killing some wolves up north...”
“Got it. He didn’t show up for sentencing. You guys went after him—not you, but some marshals—and there was a shoot-out,” Virgil said. “Nobody hurt?”
“One of our guys got scuffed up, nobody got shot. Brickell went off to prison for the wolves and came back later for the shooting, pled guilty and got more time for ag assault. He’s still inside, so nobody’s paid attention to him. The thing is... I might be wrong...”
“Yes?”
“One guy thought it was Brickell’s old lady who was shooting at them, if I’m remembering right,” Lucas said. “Brickell pled to it, and said his wife was hiding behind a woodstove during the shooting. Our guy said he was fairly sure she was the one with the rifle. That went away when Brickell took the fall.”
“You need to call your guy,” Virgil said. “Uh, there’s something else. Not sure how it applies.”
Lucas: “What? About Brickell, or...”
