Buried Prey

Verizon bill from him, with his cell phone number. We need to get in touch with Verizon, find out where he’s calling from. Probably need a subpoena.”
    “All of this is tomorrow,” Del said. “Let’s get Jenkins over here to sit on the house. Then tomorrow, we drop on him.”
    “Don’t want him to go to St. Peter,” Lucas said. “I want to settle this now.”
    Del looked at him, then said, “Don’t bullshit me: you’re not doing any more tonight.”
    Lucas shook his head: “No. I’m satisfied. We got him—now I’ve got to figure out a way to get him. I’m gonna stop at the store, then I’m heading home.”
    “The store?”
    “I’m gonna get some Greek yogurt and a six-pack of Coke, so I’ll have it in my hand when Letty jumps me,” Lucas said. He grinned in the dark. “She’s a piece of work. And turn off your cell, so she can’t call you. I want her up all night, worrying about what happened.”
    “That’s mean,” Del said.
    “That’s life,” Lucas said. “You mess with someone, you can’t bitch too much when they return the favor. Even when it’s your daughter.”

23
    Lucas crawled into bed and lay awake for an hour, trying to work out how they would take Roger Hanson. He thought they might have two days, before word got around that his team was working on something solid. After that, the law enforcement bureaucrats would get into it, trying to slice off a piece of the credit for breaking the case—and capturing the killer of a well-liked cop. When they got involved, it’d turn into a snake hunt, with cops all over the state beating the bushes, trying to drive Hanson into the open.
    Lucas had a couple of huge advantages: he knew who the killer was, and he knew how to find him, through the cell phone. But to avoid curiosity about how he knew—about the black bag job—he needed to lay down a logical trail of deduction. He had some help on that from Darrell Hanson and his wife, who’d pointed the finger at Roger. A pointing finger wasn’t enough to get a warrant, then go on to an arrest, but it was a start.
    What he needed to do was to ostensibly take Darrell Hanson’s suggestion, as any cop would, and build a case against Roger. He could get some way down that trail simply by redoing everything he’d done to build the case against Darrell.
    Was Roger’s white van really white, and not covered with roses or something? Did he teach school? Darrell didn’t think he ever had, but he could be wrong.
    And Lucas wondered where Hanson had gone. What if he’d taken off for Mexico, or Thailand? What if he were sitting in the airport at Seattle or Los Angeles, waiting for a plane that would take him into some foreign obscurity?
    But he hadn’t done that, Lucas thought. The house was not torn up in the way it would be if somebody were fleeing the country. It looked like a house that somebody was coming back to: all the underwear still in place in the bedroom bureau, a pile of dirty clothes sat in front of the washing machine, a stack of computer equipment was blinking into the dark, still running, a jar of coins was sitting on the kitchen counter. And with as little money as Hanson had, he would have cashed the coins.
    So he was out there, somewhere close by.
    He thought about that, then snuck out of the bedroom in his underwear, went down to the den, and called Shrake, who was babysitting the house. Shrake came up and Lucas asked, “Anything at all?”
    “Nothing. I’ve been sitting here thinking. Buster Hill hit him with at least one shot. If that’s right, and Hanson knows he can’t go to a hospital, I suspect he’s holed up somewhere, taking care of the wound. Maybe didn’t want to come back home, where people could see him and know that he was hurt. I don’t think he’ll come wandering in—but if he does, I think he’ll stay.”
    “I was hoping that he wasn’t in an airport somewhere.”
    “I thought about that, too,” Shrake said. “If I was a wounded guy, I’m not sure I’d want to take a chance with airport security, having a bullet hole in me. If they felt a bandage, and wanted to look at it . . . they find a bullet wound. It’d be taking a big chance.”
    “Hmm.” Lucas thought about it, looked at the clock: a little after one A.M. “Tell you what: we’re gonna need people around tomorrow, I think, and I’m buying what you’re saying. Why don’t you sit until two, then go on home. We’ll see you at work tomorrow morning.”
    “Jenkins was