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“True,” Virgil said. “I suggest we put him on our list, but down a way.”
“With the other beneficiaries,” Lucas said. “I don’t... I don’t see that panning out. I think Heath and Dahl are looking like a better shot.”
They were finishing the last of their French fries when Gary Durey, the BCA agent leading the investigation, came through the door, trailed by another agent. Virgil lifted a hand to them and Lucas turned to look and Durey ambled over and asked, “You figured it out yet?”
“Probably take another twenty-four hours, give or take a month or two,” Virgil said.
The other agent, George Pope, said, “Lucky you guys are working it. I mean, Durey couldn’t find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight.”
Lucas said, “Look, Gary, we really don’t want to step on your toes.”
Durey waved them off: “Happy to have you. Okay, not outrageously happy, but honest to God, we’re not finding much at all. You guys seeing anything?”
Lucas: “We’re looking at the beneficiaries of Sand’s and Cooper’s estate plans. You know there’s a guy who’ll get a million because Sand went down, and another million if Cooper does?”
“Jesus, that’s not bad, especially not after last night,” Durey said. “You chasing them down?”
“Ah, maybe next week,” Lucas said. “Virgil’s heading back toMankato tonight, spend some time with Frankie and the kids. And probably work on another fuckin’ novel.”
Durey shrugged: “If you’re not gonna get right on top of them... We could take a look at them.”
“Good with me,” Virgil said. Lucas nodded. Neither of them mentioned Dahl or Heath. Lucas took the folded paper out of his jacket pocket and passed it to Durey. “Hot off the presses.”
—
As they wereleaving the café, Sandy called: she’d gotten Bob Dahl’s real name from IAFIS—the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.“Real name is Darrell Hinton. Has a juvie record in Minnesota, lived in West Bumfuck, so he probably knew Bob Dahl. Went to California, got in trouble, five arrests over fifteen years, all for various nonviolent hustles. Did eighteen months in Susanville, Level 2, for running a home-rental scam...”
“We’re on our way in,” Virgil told her. “We’ll want to see all the paper.”
11
Sandy had the paper ready for them when they got back to the BCA. They skimmed through it, then Virgil called a friend, Random Cosby, at the California Bureau of Investigation.
Cosby did a fast search for Darrell Hinton, as they waited on the phone, and came back with, “Yup. We got him, if it’s the right Darrell Clark Hinton, 02-22-1987.”
“That’s the one,” Sandy said.
“We’ve got a warrant for him, issued, mmm, six years back now, running a credit-card points scam through Amazon,” Cosby said.
“How’d that work?” Virgil asked.
“Let me read this...” Cosby went away for a minute, then came back. “Okay, he was working at a computer repair service. He’d check to see if the computer had an automatic link to Amazon. If it did, he’d check to see if the owner had accumulated points througha credit card. American Express was big. If there were a bunch of points, he’d use them to order stuff, have it delivered to a Whole Foods drop box, and then resell it. Looks like a lot of people didn’t even know they had points. If the merchandise was bought with points, payments wouldn’t show up on credit card bills.”
“How much did he get?”
“The LA cops managed to track down forty-two victims, their hacked accounts, but there would have been more. Total take was around fifty thousand dollars over the course of the year that he was working at the computer place. The computer owner was cooperating, but Hinton disappeared. Not a sniff of him since then.”
Virgil: “Does his sheet show any violence?”
“Mmm... nope.”
“You guys still want him?” Lucas asked.
“You’d have to talk to LA, but the case is pretty old, trying to track down witnesses and all. Be expensive for not much return...”
Lucas said, “Got it.”
“Make an excellent threat to hold over his head, though,” Cosby said. “I can send you a copy of the warrant, if you want to print it out. Get it to you in five minutes.”
