"That's gonna help?"
"No, not much, but it's better than walking around with everybody staring at you. You look kinda messed up."
"Aw, man… "
LUCAS SAID TO Del, "They bought old Toyotas across the border, brought them down here, took what they needed off the bodies, junked what was left, then transferred the papers to the ones they'd just stolen and moved them back across the border. Probably sold them out in the woods somewhere, where nobody would ever give them a second look. Even if somebody looked, the papers would match, 'cause they were legitimate papers. You'd have to take the car apart to figure out something was wrong.
"The women took them back and forth, and the body shop guys probably rigged up some kind of plug-in carriers for the drugs-a false floor, some kind of undercarriage box, that you could move from one vehicle to the next. With their tools, they could build anything. You could get a million pills into a one-inch deep false floor in the back of a Land Cruiser."
"Don't get two big crimes in a small town, without them being related," Del said.
"So the women would know about Calb's little sideline, which was bringing in a few million a year," Lucas said. Del nodded, and they both thought about it.
"Okay-I can see Calb for doing Lewis," Del said, after a moment. "But why in hell would he do the Sorrells, or Letty?"
"Because Sorrell tortured one of their guys, Joe Kelly. Who knew what Kelly told him about the whole Kansas City arrangement? That's why they had to act so fast-if Sorrell found a way to tip the cops… I mean, all we'd need is about three words, and we'd know all of it. If Sorrell called and said, 'Hey, a guy named Gene Calb is buying cars across the border and switching them with cars stolen in Kansas City by the Cash gang,' and if we'd called around, it'd take us fifteen minutes to put the parts together."
"How about Letty?"
"I don't know about Letty-but what if it was Letty's mother? She'd lived there for a long time. Would she know something was going on at the body shop? Maybe even knew exactly what it was, the stolen Toyotas? So then, her kid is hanging around with us, and again, all she'd have had to say was about three words, and we'd have been on Calb like Holy on the Pope."
"Gonna be interesting talking to Ms. Lewis today," Del said. He looked at his watch. "Funeral in two hours. They oughta be getting here."
RUTH LEWIS CALLED the Calb house a half-hour later. A deputy answered, and she asked for Lucas. The deputy handed the phone to Lucas and said, "Ruth Lewis."
"I'll take it."
"How did it happen?" Ruth asked, when Lucas came on. She was croaking, as though she'd spent the morning crying.
"We don't know, yet. We didn't know about the stolen car ring, so we didn't lean hard enough on Calb. Something happened here last night-we think your sister was killed here and the Calbs are gone. If you'd told me about this, we might have avoided it."
"Oh my God."
"Is there anything else I need to know right away?"
"Oh, god… " Ruth was weeping. Then a different woman's voice: "I don't think she can talk any more."
"Where are you? Is Letty there?"
"We're up at the church: Letty's here."
"Tell Ruth to stay there. We'll be there in ten or fifteen minutes."
THE SNOW WAS steady, but not getting any worse. There were a few little drifts around the edges of buildings and down in the ditches, and the highway was slick. Maybe an inch and a half, maybe two inches, Lucas thought. Letty was waiting by the church door with the older woman who'd watched Night of the Living Dead with Del. Letty was happy to see them. She held up her hand, in a fiberglass cast, smiled automatically, but then her lower lip came out and tears started and she said, "My mom's dead."
Lucas was not good around tears, even little-girl tears, and he tried to pat her on the back and she threw her arms around his waist and squeezed. "They say Gene Calb… "
Lucas pried her off and walked her away from the older woman, sat on a chair, and asked, "Letty, think about it. Was the guy you shot at… was that Gene Calb?"
"I don't think so," she said, shaking her head. "I would have known him. He was fat, and I couldn't see the man, but I don't think he was fat. I don't think his voice was right. Was Gene shot? Because I shot the man."
"There's a question about whether you hit him."
"I hit him."
"But if you're shooting.22 shorts, it might not even have gotten through his coat. A cold night, he might have been all bundled up."
"Then why did he fall on his butt? You don't fall on your butt if the bullet sticks in your coat."
"Maybe he was ducking."
"He wasn't ducking. He fell on his butt. Then he crawled for a while and then he ran back to the house and then the fire started."
When they finished talking, Lucas sent Letty to the TV with the older woman, who told Letty that she had to change for the service. "For the funeral," Letty said, correcting her.
Lucas wagged his head at Del, and they walked through the church to the kitchen, where they found Ruth at the kitchen table. She was red-eyed, red-faced. "Gene did this? With Gloria? That's… that's… Are you sure?" She had a brown cardigan wrapped around her shoulders.
"We're not sure. We just can't find them. There was blood on a carpet, and we found your sister hidden up under the roof."
"Why bother to hide her if she was so easy to find?" Ruth asked.
"Maybe they didn't think anyone would come looking. Or that if somebody did, they couldn't look too hard. Maybe all they expected was a head start."
"Hard to believe. Gene wasn't a bad man. I didn't think he was."
"Why didn't you tell us?"
"You know why," she said, defensively. "You could let us go, when you knew what we were doing, but you could never let Gene go."
"How did you get hooked up with him, anyway?"
She sighed. "One of our people up in Canada knew a man who bought a car from one of his… salesmen. We desperately needed different cars to bring the drugs across-you can't keep going back and forth, two or three times a week, without somebody asking why. So when we figured out where the cars were coming from, I came down here and talked with Gene. He wasn't too happy-but you know, if he'd done this, if he killed Katina… why didn't he kill me way back then?"
"Different situation," Del suggested. "No pressure then."
"Maybe. Anyway, I talked to him. I told him that we would all be committing crimes together, so nobody could talk about anyone else. He really needed people to drive the cars across, since he was starting to do some… some volume. We were perfect. Older women, forties and fifties and sixties. Who would suspect? And Gene built some special… things… for us, that fit in the Toyotas, and let us bring the drugs across. It was all very smooth."
"Did you bring a Toyota through last night?" Lucas asked.
"No. The last one was the one we had at the fire at the Wests' house. You saw it. Gene took it. It was a wreck, though. I don't think it would make another two hundred miles."
"You know what the license plates were?"
"I have no idea."
"Okay… You got some people killed," Lucas said. He said it in a soft voice, but a mean one, taunting, like a bully trying to pull another kid into a fight. Pushing her.
"But there was no connection between the kidnappings, between Deon and Jane, and the car deal," she said. She said, "Listen to me: no connection. I knew Gene pretty well, and he didn't even like Deon or Jane. He didn't trust them. Deon wasn't a big shot in this thing, he was a driver. He was a gofer. "
"But if we'd had a piece of it… "
"It wouldn't have made any difference," she shouted, tears running down her face. "You're not listening to me. The kidnappings and all the rest of it weren't connected. They weren't."