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Lucas: “Ah, shut the fuck up. Is Hinton running? Are you hiding him?”
“Hinton? Hinton? I don’t know any Hinton,” Heath shouted. “Get out of here. Out. Out. Out.”
Lucas yawned, turned to Virgil: “He never denied killing Sand and the boys.”
Virgil: “I noticed that. He’s the right size and shape for the killer. Look at those shoes. They must be close to size elevens.”
“My shoes, my shoes...” Heath picked up a piece of paper from his desk, balled it up and threw it at Virgil’s head. Virgil leaned sideways to let the wad fly past, and said to Lucas, “Ag assault on a police officer. If a corner of that paper had hit my eye, it could have put it out.”
“I’m a witness,” Lucas said. “Wanna put the cuffs on him?”
“Maybe we could call ’CCO before we do that,” Virgil said.
“ ’CCO? I’ve got friends at WCCO. I know all the anchors,” Heath shouted. He was on his feet, pointing at the door. “Now you—out! Out! Out! I’m calling my attorney.”
Lucas tipped his head toward the door and Virgil followed him out. On the sidewalk, Virgil looked back into the office, and said, “Jeez. Did you see his face when I asked him if he killed Hinton? He really did look like he was having a seizure.”
“We need to find Hinton,” Lucas said. “I’m kinda worried here.”
—
As the copsleft, Heath collapsed in his office chair, breathing hard, his heart pounding. He’d felt the blood drain from his face atthe first accusation, and now it came flooding back, so he could feel the actual capillaries in his cheeks swelling almost to the bursting point. A flop sweat began a moment later, the perspiration rolling down from his hairline, and he wiped it away with the heel of his hand.
But he’d told them. He’d told the fuckers, and he’d gotten away with it. Without Dahl, Hinton, whatever his name was, they had nothing.
Well. They still had Doreen.
He licked his lips and picked up his car keys. He was back at the house in five minutes, and walked around the place, looking, and wound up in the garage, at the workbench, which he couldn’t remember having ever opened. The bench was more for the staff, when there was a staff: he’d been reduced to a single Hmong woman twice a week. He looked in one drawer, and then another, finally opening a drawer that held two hammers, including a ball-peen. He liked the heft of that one.
—
White Bear Lakewas twenty minutes up Highway 61, the one Bob Dylan had revisited; Hinton’s house was dark, still, curtains pulled across the fifties-era picture window. They knocked on the front door, pushed the doorbell button but didn’t hear it ring. Hinton never appeared. They walked around the house, looking in the windows that weren’t covered.
The house next door had a patio table with four chairs, and Virgil went over and knocked on the front door. A woman came to the door and asked, “Yes?” and he held up his ID.
“We’re worried about Bob Dahl next door. A federal marshal andI are trying to see inside. We’re... worried. Could we borrow one of your patio chairs?”
He could.
Virgil dragged the chair across the lawn and put it next to a rear window, climbed up, looked in, and Lucas asked, “What?”
Virgil jumped down and said, “He’s running. That’s a bedroom and I can see an open closet door with nothing in it.”
“Goddamnit. We need to get inside,” Lucas said.
“There’s a warrant for him, from California. He’s a fugitive,” Virgil said.
“Interstate flight to avoid prosecution, even if California really doesn’t want him,” Lucas said. “That’s federal. I’m gonna kick the door.”
Virgil looked past Lucas’s shoulder. “Uh... hang on a second. We got a cop.”
A White Bear Lake patrol car, which was black-and-white, like a patrol car should be, had stopped in the street and a cop was watching them standing by the chair.
“Hope he doesn’t shoot us,” Virgil said.
Lucas took his marshal’s ID out of his jacket pocket, opened it, held it up so the cop could see it, then walked over to the car. The cop rolled down his window and asked, “What’s going on?”
“I’m a U.S. Marshal, we got a runner, a guy who called himself Bob Dahl here, but he’s actually a fugitive from California named Darrell Hinton.”
