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Virgil and Lucas hurried out to the truck; Heath’s house was five minutes away.
When Cooper saw them pull away from the curb, she called Melton at work: “I know who did it,” she said. “And I know why.”
16
She has an idea about who did it,” Lucas said, as they pulled away from Cooper’s house. “Specifically, who did it. She has a name.”
“I know. Why won’t she tell us?”
“I’m afraid she might try to do something herself,” Lucas asked.
“She’s not that dumb,” Virgil said.
“She’s not dumb at all,” Lucas said. “That’s the problem. The murder clearance in St. Paul, is what? Fifty percent? Half? It’s a lot less than that in Minneapolis. Most of those are done by people dumber than a bag of hammers and we’re lucky to catch half of them. If she works at it, she’ll get away with it.”
“How would she do it? We’re talking about a large male suspect who used a gun, who has a gun and is willing to kill.”
“She’d...” Lucas looked at Virgil. “What are you getting at here?”
“She’s smart. You just said so, and I agree. If she’s going after someone, she’d do it with a gun. She has a gun, and possibly two, a Nine, which Alex Sand, we’re told, sold at a gun show. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe she’s got that hidden. But. She told Durey and Russo on the day after the killings that Alex had sold the gun. She’d still be in shock. I doubt she would have jumped to the idea of murdering somebody so quickly.”
“That would be quick,” Lucas agreed. “Keep talking.”
“If she’s planning something, revenge, who would she know about, from the investigation, who might have a good idea of where to get a cold gun?”
“Carter,” Lucas said.
“Yes. But I keep thinking, if a likely suspect gets killed... then she’d automatically be a leading suspect in that murder,” Virgil said.
“If she does it right, she hires the best defense attorneys in the state—she’s got the money to do that—and says not a single fuckin’ word to us. She’s gotten rid of the gun somewhere we’ll never find it. She’ll be guilty as hell, but she’ll be prosecution-proof.”
They thought about all that as they drove, and then Lucas said, “You know what? You could describe Heath the same way. Unless we get some of Hinton’s DNA from the house, or maybe Heath’s from the van, we’re sucking wind.”
—
Durey was waitingunder a barren maple tree on the verge outside Heath’s house. When Virgil and Lucas got out of the Tahoe, he walked over and said, “He’s in there. I saw him in a window. Russo will be here in a minute or two.”
“We, uh, just had an interesting session with Margaret Cooper,” Lucas said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We think she knows who killed her family,” Virgil said.
“What? What? What the hell is going on, Lucas?” Durey asked.
Russo arrived and Virgil said, “Let’s wait, get Jimmy in on this.”
When Russo had parked and walked over, Durey jabbed a thumb at Lucas and said, “You need to hear this.”
“Ah, God, no. I don’t like the way you said that.”
Lucas told them about the interview with Cooper; he didn’t mention Sandy’s discovery of a computer intrusion that might go back to Cooper, or the question of where Cooper might get a gun. When he finished, Russo said, “I believe you guys. It could be the kids, and if you saw her react... I don’t think you’d make this kind of a mistake.”
Durey was staring up into the branches of the maple tree. “Let me see... Basketball lessons and swimming. Maybe... the Y? Would they send their kids to a Y?”
“Not by themselves, I don’t think,” Virgil said. “Besides, they’re rich. If they sent them to a gym, it’d be a private one.”
“We can cover all of those in a couple of hours,” Durey said. “Still, we won’t know who she’s thinking of, if she’s got one guy in mind. “
