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Rae: “Really?”
“Yeah. You know those twenty-one no-response houses?”
Rae: “Yeah?”
“We start kicking doors,” Hawkins said. He looked out at the sun, which was sliding down the western sky. “We do it all night if we have to. Forget about warrants.”
Lucas smiled and reached out a hand to be slapped: “I like the way you think.”
23
The idea was not without its detractors, including Mellon and, from what Mellon had to say, the entire city council. “We’re the ones gonna get our asses sued to hell and back, while you go back to slumming in Washington, D.C.”
“That’s my daughter. I’m from St. Paul, myself, and Rae’s from Louisiana…”
“Lucas, I know you’ve been working hard all night and day, but this is over the line,” Mellon said. “There’s no indication that Scott or Catton were ever in any of those houses…”
They were still talking when four men in dark tee-shirts and khaki slacks showed up, wandering through the cops and MPs, each carrying either a pack or a duffel bag, and Rae said, “Oh my sweet Jesus: we’re saved.”
Andres Devlin, an average-sized, average-looking black man with short-cropped hair and an easy smile, walked up to Rae, patted her on the ass and said, “How you been, Sweet Pea?”
Rae leaned over and kissed Devlin on the lips, and said to Lucas, “You already know Andres, of course, he claims that you’re his spiritual advisor; this other racially and ethnically balanced crew are Langer, Stuart, and Hoang,” Rae said, pointing to them one at a time. “Guys, this is Lucas Davenport, his daughter Letty, who shot all those people down by El Paso, Alec Hawkins, of His Majesty’s Secret Service, or something like that. Coming down the street there, that young lady is Barbara Cartwright, a sniper who works with an unspecified agency. We are about to do warrantless searches of twenty-one houses, which will probably get the shit sued out of all of us.”
“Semper fi,” Hoang said. “Who’s got a ram?”
Lucas laughed and said, “I love the Marshals Service.”
After more talk with Mellon, they agreed that the marshals would form three two-person teams, armed with rams borrowed from the Taos police department; Letty, Cartwright, and Hawkins would each be attached to a different team, as backup. Any of the Taos cops who were too tired to keep working would be sent home, and a fresh shift of MPs would make sure the area remained sealed.
“Get iton!” Langer said, and they did.
—
“Seven houses each,”Rae said, as they walked out to their first house. “I’m still tired after last night. Be lucky to get done by midnight tonight.”
“Dexies,” Lucas said.
“You got some?” she asked.
“Maybe. If you can keep your mouth shut.”
“You’re such a criminal. I don’t know why I hang out with you.”
Lucas, Rae, and Cartwright opened the festivities by taking down the front door of a stucco three-bedroom/two-bath that smelled lightly of mildewed paper, and, when the lights were on, showed bookcases in every room except the kitchen, but including the two bathrooms, all filled with paperbacks.
Lucas spent a minute looking at one bookcase that mostly contained crime novels, many of which he remembered from his youth. “Look at this,” he told Cartwright, tapping the back of a book. “John D. MacDonald,Bright Orange for the Shroud.Great stuff.”
She was mystified. “What? Who?”
“I forgot, you’re still a child.”
No sign of anything to do with Scott or Catton.
—
Letty followed Langerand Devlin into a disintegrating concrete-block/stucco house with an open back door. The only occupants were cats who seemed to come and go, apparently attracted by a leak under the kitchen sink that left a puddle of water on the floor, slowly draining off the back stoop.
One bedroom had no bed, but did have two hundred boxes of Converse All Stars sneakers in a variety of sizes; and a hundred and ten bottles of Tide laundry detergent.
