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As they werewalking toward their cars, Lucas stopped, turned and called, “Hey, guys! Wait.”
They all walked back together, and Lucas said to Russo, “You were talking to a Minnesota state judge about that search warrant?”
“Yeah?”
“Try the federal magistrate. You’d have to get an FBI agent to front for you, but... that could be done.”
“Why couldn’t you front for me? You’re a federal law enforcement officer.”
“I’ve got too much knowledge of the case,” Lucas said. “I’d know going in that the application was bullshit.”
“But why...”
“Give the FBI guy the murders of Hinton and Pollard and tell him why we suspect Heath. And then...” Lucas smiled.
“What?”
“Show him the video of Sand’s killer, and then the video of the guy getting out of Hinton’s van at the airport.”
Russo touched his lips. “Oh...”
Durey: “We know Heath can’t be the Sand killer.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily mention that to the FBI,” Lucas said. “As far as I can tell, they’re barely monitoring this thing.”
Durey: “Jesus, Lucas, when that came out, the magistrate would putusin jail.”
“A federal magistrate dealing with the murder of a federal judge,” Lucas said. “If the search turns up something, he’s not going to throw it out, because his old buddy Sand is the victim. If it doesn’t turn up anything, well, the warrant goes in the wastebasket. There’d just be no return. The magistrate would probably never know that he’d been bullshitted.”
Russo: “Oh, man. I mean, that’s... tempting.”
“How long you got to retirement?” Durey asked.
“Never mind my retirement,” Russo said. To Lucas: “You’re a fed. Who’s the dumbest FBI agent you know?”
“I’m not sure you want a dumb one,” Lucas said. “You want an ambitious one. You’ll have to ask around.”
“I’m not involved with this,” Durey said. “But if you do it, I won’t mention it to anyone.”
They talked about it for a while longer, and Russo said he’d sleep on the idea before making any moves.
17
When they left Russo and Durey, Virgil said, “Still early. I say we drive out to Stillwater, get lunch, and hit Carter. See if he’s talked with Cooper.”
“That’s a plan. I gotta tell you, this damn thing is getting away from me,” Lucas said. “The two-psychos idea. We may even have a third and fourth, if Cooper and Melton are planning to kill somebody.”
“I don’t know if I’d class them as psychos,” Virgil said. “I mean, if somebody killed your family, Weather and the kids, I’m not sure how far I’d trust you to go with the letter of the law.”
“You’re suggesting there’s such a thing as a situational psycho.”
“Yes.”
“You might be right. But. When I look at Maggie Cooper, I see sadness, but I don’t see depression. If somebody killed my family, I’dgo right over the edge. Depression, anger, I’d be out of control. What I see in her, on top of the sadness, is calculation. She and Melton are up to something.”
They talked about Cooper’s mental state on the drive to Stillwater; they had lunch at a place on the river called The Dock and talked more about Cooper, the possibility of a federal search warrant, and Virgil’s new novel.
