Hidden Prey

it, tried to sneak a gulp or two, behind the cover of the open refrigerator door.
    “I can make you an egg sandwich or an omelet,” Weather offered. “Or we have some instant oatmeal . . . Hey! Are you drinking out of the carton?”
     
    A SHORT , RESTLESS NIGHT . He got up with Weather, in the early red light of dawn, dressed, ate cinnamon-and-spice instant oatmeal, kissed a noisy Sam, and headed downtown.
    Del was waiting at the office. “What’s going on?”
    “We’re going to the post office to see if we can find a package with a knife in it.”
    He explained as they headed downtown in the Acura. “What I need from you is, I need you to walk the knife around to everybody. We need to get it photographed, we need to get it to the lab, we need to get the bloodwork going—we need to make sure that there even is some blood on it. I gotta head back north as soon as I talk to the lawyer. I really do need to know if there is blood on the knife before I get up there.”
    “So I’ll walk it around,” Del said. They were headed into downtown St. Paul, snarled in the early-morning rush. “I figured out the McDonald’s thing, but we’ll need some surveillance cameras. And some auditors. Even then, it’s gonna be weird.”
    “Tell me.” And Lucas thought, Should I really rush this thing on the kid? Maybe I should wait—but what if the kid disappears? Or somebody executes him? Or he kills himself?
    Del was saying, “There’s this guy named Slattery who delivers bulk goods to the Bruins’ warehouse—the food. The warehouse is the central supply center for the stores in their chain. But this guy is also delivering for other stores in the area.
    “Then there’s a guy named Jones who works in the warehouse. As the truck is unloaded, he zaps the cartons with a product-code reader and manually counts the cartons and enters the manual count in a computer. So then we have two records of the stuff coming in—the product code list and the hand count. But the thing is, they go through the same guy . . .”
    “Jones,” Lucas said. Could the old man have been crazy enough to use his own great-grandson as an executioner? A high-school kid?
    “Yeah. Jones. You listening?” Del looked at him suspiciously.
    “I’m listening.”
    “I know that hamburger theft isn’t one of your major interests, but I’ve been bustin’ my balls . . .”
    “I’m listening,” Lucas said. “Really.” And if it really was Roger, why didn’t he take his fuckin’ raincoat ? Lucas wondered. It was raining like a sonofabitch.
    Del continued. “What happens, I think, is that Jones reads a box with his hand reader, but the box stays on the truck. He also adds the box to the hand count. So the box just seems to vanish.”
    Lucas forced himself to pay attention: “Vanish.”
    “Like smoke. The Bruins were looking for theft from the warehouse, or collusion between somebody in the warehouse and one of their own stores. Or, maybe, somebody just selling burgers without ringing them up, but the thefts were too big for that. Anyway, they were looking for something that happened after the burgers got to the warehouse. The thing is, the stuff never got inside.”
    “A fuckin’ box of hamburger patties,” Lucas said. “Who gives a shit? What could be in it for this guy? Jones, Slattery, whoever . . .”
    “They’re stealing enough for maybe a thousand sandwiches a week,” Del said.
    “A thousand . . .”
    “Yeah. And there must be a third guy, who’s running one of theMcDonald’s stores outside the Bruins’ chain. Probably another privately owned store, and he’s selling the stuff off the books. I haven’t figured that out, and that’s why we need surveillance.”
    “Still . . .”
    “You paying attention?” Del was annoyed. “Your eyeballs are rolling around like a couple of fuckin’ marbles.”
    “I’m paying attention.”
    “We’re talking a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand a year—they’re also stealing buns, fries, the whole thing.”
    Now he paid a little more attention. “Two hundred thousand dollars . . . in fuckin’ hamburgers?”
    “Yeah. Why do you think the Bruins are so pissed? This is like a major heist, dude, and you’re sittin’ there pulling your weenie. I need some goddamn help.”
    “All right. Let’s take it from the top . . .” He tried to stop thinking about Carl Walther and Roger Walther, one or the other of them running him up and down the hills of