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“I think that happens all the time,” Burston said.
They talked for another twenty minutes, Burston getting out of his chair to roam around the office, stopping to peer at two large black-and-white flower photographs on the facing wood walls. He ran his hand through his hair, mussing it up.
He told Virgil, “The most shocking thing was to see Alex in the casket. The boys’ caskets were closed, of course, but Alex... He was my age, a couple years older, but basically, my age, healthy as I am, hardworking, intelligent, and there... he’s dead. You could see little rivulets of blood under the skin on his face. I guess the blood trickles down and hardens up in the veins after you die. You could see these purple death lines. The makeup didn’t cover all of it. He just looked... fuckin’ dead. I’m having a hard time dealing with it. I’m not sleeping. I keep seeing that casket face. I’m identifying with a dead man.”
He looked at Virgil and Lucas, as though he wanted their help.
“It will get better,” Lucas said. “If it doesn’t, if you lie in bed at night, and your mind goes round and round trying to figure out what happened, and what you could have done about it—”
Burston jabbed a finger at Lucas: “That’s exactly it! Exactly!”
“Then you may be suffering from the onset of a clinical depression. Talk to somebody.”
Burston made a dismissive gesture: “If my bosses thought I was nuts...”
“See a decent professional and you’d be safe enough,” Lucas said. “I’ve been through the depression thing twice, and believe me, pills are better than gutting it out. I could give you a name if you’d like.”
“I’ll think about it,” Burston said. He hesitated, then, “Thanks. I’d like a name. I’m messed up.”
Lucas reached across his desk, took one of his business cards, flipped it over, wrote a name and phone number on it, and pushed it across to him. “She’s a nun, over at St. Kate’s. And a serious shrink. If you need it, she’ll help, and nobody else will hear a word about it.”
“She’s really good?”
“You’ll notice I’ve memorized her phone number. Who does that anymore?”
As they were about to walk out the office door, Burston said, “This name you gave me, and the depression thing. Have you taken a close look at Maggie?”
Lucas turned and said, “We interviewed her once. With what happened to her, depression would be understandable...”
“This is something different,” Burston said. “Something broke in her. She’s changed... too much. In a bad way, an unstable way. I’m worried.”
—
Back at theTahoe, they agreed that Burston looked even less likely after the interview than he had before they talked.
“I gotta say, I believe most of what he said,” Virgil said. “Though, he seemed pretty intent on siccing us on the Home Streets people.”
“We need to take a look at them,” Lucas said. “Cooper thinks that Sand was going to come across with the money. So did Burston. A hundred thousand, a hundred and fifty. Sand hadn’t shown any sign that he was backing out. Even if the Home Streets guys are con men, would they kill the golden goose before he laid the egg?”
Virgil rubbed his nose, said, “No. It’d have to be something else, another reason. What if Sand did the research, the background, that Burston wanted him to do, and found out that theymight berunning a scam, and made the mistake of talking to them about it? They’d still want money from the others, but they might have to get rid of Sand to shut him up. They might collect from Cooper anyway, whenSand was gone. Wonder if Sand talked to them the morning of the killings, or the day before?”
“Good question,” Lucas said. “I wondered the same thing, about twenty minutes ago.”
“Bullshit. The question has my fingerprints all over it.”
“Want to go jack them up?”
“Let’s go over to the BCA and have Sandy run them through the computer. See if anything pops.”
—
At BCA headquarters,Sandy agreed to research Noah Heath and Bob Dahl, and suggested that she could probably pull a lot of information off the Internet about the charities under the Heart/Twin Cities umbrella and could get that done immediately.
Lucas and Virgil adjourned to the Parrot Café, for lunch, and when they got back, she had nearly a ream of printouts. Virgil still hadn’t finished with the Sand financial information, so they got a conference room, divided the paper, and dived into it.
With two breaks for coffee, they read until four o’clock, when Virgil said, “I’m not getting anything new, and I’m going blind reading the small print. I’m gonna quit.”
“Not a bad idea,” Lucas said. He pushed a half-inch-high stack of paper across the conference room table. “Glance through this tonight, if you get time. This guy, Heath, has built a whole charitable structure. He keeps inventing new charities with cute names. The only thing he’s missed, so far, is ‘Puppy-dog and Kitty-cat Love/Twin Cities.’ It’s making me a little nauseous.”
