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“Shoplifters,” Devlin said. He ran a finger down the line of All Stars boxes. “Got my size, too.”
“Probably not shoplifters. More likely truck hijackers. How areyou gonna get out the door of Walmart with a hundred bottles of Tide in your yoga pants?” Langer asked.
“I’ve seen some women where I said to myself, ‘That can’t all be ass,’ and I believe I was correct,” Devlin said.
“FBI looks at this. We should make a note, and report it,” Langer said.
Letty: “Do you really care?”
Langer: “Sure. Theoretically I do. If I don’t have to do anything about it. People in my neighborhood are afraid Target’s going to close because of assholes like these people.”
“Maybe they just got a lot of babies and they need a lot of baby diapers,” Devlin said.
“And as the kids grow up, they could use all those different shoe sizes,” Letty added. “They’re honest folks, thinking ahead. Way ahead. Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m ashamed. That hadn’t even occurred to me,” Langer said, as they went. “Nice, upstanding folks, taking care of their little kids.”
—
The fourth nonresponsivehouse hit by Stuart, Huong, and Hawkins turned out to be occupied, just not by the owner. They knocked front and back, shouted, saw not a sign of a light or heard anything like movement.
“Let’s hit it,” Huong said, and Stuart knocked down the front door with a ram. As they crashed into the entry, a woman screamed, and Stuart dropped the ram and jumped backwards; Huong hit the living room with a 25,000-lumen flashlight, which, if you were in it, was like standing on the starboard side of the sun.
A young blond woman was sitting on the floor; she was wearing what looked like a pajama top with horses on it, and white underpants, and a frightened look. She was barefoot.
Stuart had his pistol out and shouted, “Hands, let me see your hands,” and the woman lifted her hands over her head and cried, “Don’t shoot us, we didn’t do anything.”
And a man, out of sight, shouted, “I’m coming out with the baby…”
Stuart: “Come out, we want to see your hands.”
A Hispanic man came out of the back bedroom, and they could see his hands, which were wrapped around a newborn who was sucking on a Binky.
Huong: “Who else is in here?”
“Nobody. Nobody,” the blonde said. “We’re alone.”
Stuart: “Let’s clear it.” To Hawkins, he said, “Watch these people.”
While Stuart and Huong were clearing the house—the blonde had been telling the truth, there was nobody else there—Hawkins asked, “What are you doing here?”
“We don’t have anyplace to go,” she said. “We knew the house was empty.”
“Were you here when we came by this morning?”
“Yes. We…didn’t mean anything. We were scared.”
Huong and Stuart came back, and the Hispanic man explained that they’d been kicked out of the trailer they’d been renting when he lost his job. “This house is owned by a company from Denver. They’re going to fix it up for rent. I was going to be on the work crew to fix it up, but they decided not to do it right away and so…no more crew. We knew it was not being used…we were using it until one of us got a job.”
Stuart asked Hawkins, “What do you think?”
“Nothing to do with us,” Hawkins said. He looked at the man and asked, “Do you know how to call the company in Denver?”
“No. The contractor who organized the work crew…he can.”
“Call the contractor and tell him to call the company and tell them that U.S. Marshals knocked down his door, and you can fix it for…what?”
“Two hundred dollars?” the man ventured.
