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Virgil said, “About Cooper and Melton. I’ve been mulling it over ever since... almost the beginning of the interview. Did you notice that they were aware of the small details of the investigation?”
“I did. I was even going to ask about it, but then it popped into my mind that they might have had an affair with each other. That sort of drove everything else out,” Lucas said. “Like, I forgot to ask where they got the details.”
“They knew that nobody went after the wives and girlfriends of people Sand sentenced,” Virgil said. “They suggested that the killermight have disguised himself to hide some identifying infirmity, or some other characteristic. They referred to ‘tool marks’ on the cartridge cases—that’s cop talk.”
Lucas: “They said interviews with financial advisors were perfunctory. Even if they had a source inside the investigation, if somebody was keeping them informed, no cop would admit they’d done anything perfunctory. Not in a high-profile murder case.”
Virgil said, “They’ve seen the case files. They’re trying to be cops.”
“Who’d show them?” Lucas asked.
“We could ask around...”
“Ask who? Nobody would admit it,” Lucas said. “And we need to stay on friendly terms with the B-Team.”
“Yeah. Interesting, though. That they’re inside, somehow.”
They rode in silence for a minute, then Lucas said, “You could be wrong about one thing—they might not be trying to be cops. They might want to know exactly what we’re doing so they can dodge the cops.”
“I don’t think they’re involved,” Virgil said.
“You’re ready to eliminate them?”
Virgil looked out the side window, thought about it: “No.”
—
They drove on,and as they crossed the Mississippi, Virgil recited, “There was a young girl from Edina/Who stuffed avians in her vagina/One day she sneezed/And quick as you please/Out popped a sparrow, a wren and a mynah.”
Lucas: “That’s disgusting. I’ll buy the sparrow and wren, but a mynah? C’mon.”
5
Cooper stood at the door and watched, through a small diamond-shaped inset window, as Lucas and Virgil got in their car. Without turning, she said, “They’re smart.”
“Smarter than us?” Melton asked from the living room.
The Cayenne moved away from the curb and down the street, and Cooper turned to Melton, shrugged, and said, “Maybe as smart as us. And they have experience dealing with all kinds of criminals. Like us.”
“We’re not criminals yet,” Melton said. “I guess if they found out about... I mean, John Larch gave me the BCA computer link more than a year ago, for the Karr kid, and it has nothing to do with the current situation. I doubt that John even remembers it. He thinks he was doing a good thing.”
“Even if the Karr kid was a miserable little jerk, as he obviously was?” Cooper asked.
“Even miserable little jerks get to know the exculpatory evidence, what the cops have,” Melton said. “That BCA dickhead was holding out. It wasn’t the first time, either.”
“I don’t want to argue,” Cooper said. “Did you look at the file this morning before you went to work?”
“No. We can look now. I don’t expect much. Kitchen table, make some smoothies.”
—
Cooper went tothe kitchen and got out the blender, along with an oversized tub of whey protein, a sack of frozen strawberries, and a quart of orange juice. Melton went to her bedroom and came back with her laptop and purse, set them on the kitchen table, and brought the computer up. Cooper dumped a handful of strawberries, a scoop of whey and several ounces of orange juice into the blender and hit Blend.
As the blender screeched and the computer went through its booting routine, Melton got her wallet from her purse and took out a limp dollar bill. She smoothed it on the table, and when the computer came up, she searched for a hidden file called CP5591, which was her father’s initials followed by his birth year backwards, which wasn’t hard to remember.
The file produced nothing but a blinking cursor. She spaced over two places, then entered E 26938920 I exactly as it appeared on the dollar bill she’d taken from her purse. The computer hesitated, decrypting the file, then burped up a link.
Melton carefully tucked the dollar bill back into her wallet and put the wallet back into her purse.
