WHEN LUCAS GOT off the phone, Letty suggested that they might find her mother at the Duck Inn, two blocks over. They ambled over, Lucas looking in the storefronts. Small towns, he'd realized a long time ago, were a little like spaceships, or ordinary ships, for that matter-they generally had to have one of everything: one McDonald's or Burger King (couldn't support one of each), a department store, a quick oil change, a hardware store, a feed store, a satellite-TV outlet, a bar or two. Everything needed for survival. Armstrong was like that, a lifeboat, one of everything necessary for life, all packaged in yellow-brick and red-brick two-story buildings. About one in four of the storefronts was empty, and the owners hadn't bothered to put "For Rent" signs in the windows.
The Duck Inn was a cliche, a plastic faux-hunter's haven smelling of beer, with a fake old-fashioned jukebox that played CDs next to the twin coin-op pool tables. A cliche, and Letty's mother wasn't there. "Cop came and got her. I think they went over to the courthouse," the bartender said.
The courthouse was just down the block, and they found Martha West leaving the Law Enforcement Center. She was a natural blond, like Letty, but her hair had been tinted an improbable rust color. She wasn't weathered like Letty, but there were explosions of tiny red veins on her cheeks, so that she would always look rosy-cheeked. She wore a parka and khaki slacks, with pointed boots, and was carrying a beaten-up guitar case. She saw Letty and Lucas, and called to Letty, "Where you been? I been looking all over for you."
"Cops have been taking me around," Letty said, jerking a thumb at Lucas. "This is Agent Davenport."
"Lucas Davenport," Lucas said.
"Martha West." West's eyes were moving slowly, and then jerking back, like a drunk drifting out of his lane, then jerking the car back straight. She was loaded, but controlling it.
"I was about to drop Letty at your place, but I didn't want to leave her alone," Lucas said.
"We ate at the Bird," Letty said, with a slight sophisticated deprecation in her voice.
"Really?" The mother looked at Lucas like he might have done something incorrect.
"She had an open-faced meatloaf sandwich, mashed potatoes, green beans, and apple pie," Lucas said. "And about six Cokes."
"Two," Letty said. "They were free refills."
They loaded Martha and her guitar into the back seat of Lucas's car, and on the way north, he caught her eyes in his rearview mirror and said, "There'll be some reporters who want to talk with you. If I were you, I'd get in the house, get your heads straight, clean up a little bit. I can get a guy from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to talk with you about your statement. About what you should or shouldn't say or about whether you should talk at all. You could always tell them to go away."
"TV?" asked Martha. She straightened, touched her hair.
"For sure," Lucas said. "But they can be aaa… " He changed directions. "… jerks. Be a good idea if you talked with a BCA guy who knows how to deal with the media."
"All right. I'll talk to him," Martha said. "But I've been on TV many times."
"Okay. Then you know how to handle it."
"I used to work with the Chamber of Commerce, and the TV would come to me for comment." Her eyes rolled toward the westside ditch. "And I've always been a singer. So I've been around."
"Okay."
"But I'll talk to your person. That wouldn't hurt."
As they went through Broderick, they saw a collection of media trucks at the cafe, and, just down the highway, Lucas saw Del's Mustang at the victims' house, next to Dickerson's car. He slowed, did a U-turn, and said, "The guy I'm going to introduce you to is Hank Dickerson, who is the head of the whole Bureau for the northern part of the state. He'll help you out."
HE LEFT THEM in the car, and as he crossed the yard, the cop outside said, "You won't believe what they found."
"Yeah?"
Joe Barin, the BCA agent, was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and when he saw Lucas, pointed up. "Take a look," he said.
Lucas went up the creaky stairs, and found Del with Dickerson and one of Dickerson's crime scene crew in the main bedroom. The bedroom smelled of makeup and aftershave; a framed Michael Jordan poster hung on one wall, opposite a fake antique beer sign. The cops turned to Lucas when he walked in, and Dickerson said, "Del found their hidey-hole."
The hidey-hole was in the bedroom closet, and was custom-made. What appeared to be a cross-brace for the closet pole was, in fact, a cover for a four-foot-long, six-inch-high wall cache. Inside the cache, Lucas could see what appeared to be a one-kilo bag of cocaine, separated into dozens of smaller baggies; a Colt Magnum Carry Revolver, like one he had in his gun safe at home; and cash. The cash was wrapped in paper bands and took up three running feet of the cache between the bag of cocaine and the back wall.
"Holy cats. How much?"
"We don't want to take it out until we get pictures, but I figure something upward of three hundred thousand, if it's all hundreds," Del said. "All the top bundles are hundreds-and all used. Not a single new bill, as far as you can tell from looking at the sides."
Lucas said to Dickerson, "You need to have three guys here with the money all the time, until it's counted. Make sure one or two of them are sheriff's deputies. You want both agencies involved. People are gonna ask how much of the money went into cops' pockets."
Dickerson nodded. "Right, we'll do that. Another thing. I walked across the highway and talked to Gene Calb, at the truck place. He was Cash's boss. He said he had no idea what was going on, but he said there was another guy living here, part time, named Joe Kelly. He said Kelly disappeared a month ago and nobody's heard from him since. The clothes in the other bedroom are Kelly's. We got a couple charge-card receipts with his name on them."
"Check the companies for new activity."
"Under way," Dickerson said.
"We got another thing," Del said. "Maybe."
"What?"
"I want you to look at it," Del said. "Then you tell me."
Lucas followed him, Dickerson trailing, down through the house to the basement. On the way down, he told Dickerson about Washington Fowler. Dickerson was unmoved.
"You're pretty calm about it," Lucas said. "The guy goes around starting fires."
Dickerson smiled. "That's your problem, general, not mine. You're the guy who's supposed to fix shit."
THE BASEMENT WAS unfinished concrete block and exposed joists, but with a new-looking furnace, a new hot-water heater, and new wiring and fluorescent lights. In one corner, a new bathroom had been built in a beige-painted cubicle, with a standard toilet and a sink, and a fiberglass shower booth with sliding glass doors.
Del said, "Well?"
"Well, they just remodeled it," Lucas said. He looked around, saw nothing of obvious interest. Del had to be thinking about the bathroom, and Lucas went that way. The bathroom was bare, and smelled of disinfectant. Large, lots of room to move around. Lucas swung the entrance door, then knocked on it. Looked like wood, sounded like a metal fire door. Knocked on the walls: not drywall, as he'd expected, but painted plywood. And heavy, probably three-quarter inch. Yale keyhole lock with a bolt, lockable from the outside. No keyhole on the inside…
He stepped back and said to Del and Dickerson, "It's a goddamn cell."
Del turned to Dickerson. "You heard it here first."
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Lucas, Del, and Dickerson walked through the gathering collection of cop cars in the yard. Letty was sitting on the hood of the car again, while her mother waited inside. When she saw them coming, she climbed out, and Lucas introduced Dickerson. "Hank will help you with the TV commentary. And he'll get you home."