Invisible prey

“So if it turns up missing, we should look in your garage,” Lucas said.

The cop nodded. “You got that right.”

A couple of people from the ME's office wheeled a gurney through the dining room and out a side door; a black plastic body bag sat on top of it. Peebles.

Lucas went back to the silver. Where was he? Oh yeah- must be worth a fortune. Then a stray thought: Was it really? Say, forty pounds of solid silver; 640 ounces… but silver was weighed in troy ounces, which, if he remembered correctly, were about ten percent heavier than regular ounces. Sterling wasn't pure, only about 90 percent, so you'd have some more loss.

Call it roughly 550 troy ounces of pure silver at… he didn't know how much. Ten bucks? Fifteen? Not a fortune. After fencing it off, reworking it and refining it, getting it to the end user, the guys who carried it out of the house would be lucky to take out a grand.

In the meantime, they'd be humping around a lot of silver that had the dead woman's initials all over it. Maybe, he thought, they didn't take it because it wasn't worth the effort or risk. Maybe smarter than your average cokehead.

Another gurney went by in the hall, another body bag: Bucher. Then a cop stuck his head in the dining room door: “The Lash kid is here. They've taken him into the front parlor.”

Lucas went that way, thinking about the silver, about the video games, about the way the place was trashed, the credit cards not stolen… Superficially, it looked local, but under that, he thought, it looked like something else. Smith was getting the same bad feeling about it: something was going on, and they didn't know what it was.

Ro

“They always say, get a lawyer,” Mrs. Lash said. “Ro

“We, uh, Mrs. Lash, you've got to do what you think is right,” Smith said. “We could get a lawyer here to sit with Ro

He wanted the kid alone, where he could lie to him.

Mrs. Lash was saying, “… don't have a lot of money for lawyers, but I can pay my share.”

Ro

She put a hand on his shoulder. “They always say get a lawyer, Ro

“If you need one, Ma,” the Lash kid said. “I don't need one. Jesus will take care of me. I'll just tell the truth.”

She shook a finger at him: “You talk to them then, but if they start saying stuff to you, you holler for me and we'll get a lawyer up here.” To John Smith: “I still don't understand why I can't come in. He's a juvenile.”

“Because we need to talk to Ro

“But I didn't…” she protested.

“We don't think you did, Mrs. Lash, but we've got to talk to everybody,” Smith said.

His voice had lost its edge, now that he knew he'd be able to sweat Ro

Lucas leaned against the hallway wall, listening to the exchange, mother and son going back and forth. The Lashes finally decided that Ro

“I'll call you, Ma.”

At that point, Lucas was eighty-three percent certain that Ro

They put Mrs. Lash on a settee in the music room and took Ro

“Me'n some other guys took a bus over to Mi

BenBo's was a hip-hop place. Ro

“What kind of car?” Lucas asked.

“A Cadillac SUV-I don't know exactly what they're called,” Lash said. “It was a couple of years old.”

Coming back to St. Paul, Ro

On weekends, Lash worked at a food shelf run by his church, which wasn't a Catholic church, though he went to a Catholic school. He started at nine in the morning, worked until three o'clock.

“They don't pay, but, you know, it goes on your record for college,” he said. “It's also good for your soul.”

Schuber asked, “If you're such a religious guy, how come you were out at some hip-hop club all night?”

“Jesus had no problem with a good time,” Ro

“Yeah, yeah.” Smith was rubbing his eyeballs with his fingertips. “Ro

“Know who he is,” Ro

“You hang out?” Smith asked.

“Nope. Not since I started at Catholic school,” Lash said. “I knew him most when I went to public school, but he was two grades ahead of me, so we didn't hang out then, either.”

“He's had a lot of trouble,” Schuber said.

“He's a jerk,” Ro

Smith persisted: “But you don't hang with Weldon or any of his friends?”

“No. My ma would kill me if I did,” Ro

“Ro

“Don't lie to me, sir,” Ro

Smith nodded: “Okay.”

“You were saying…” Lucas prompted.

“I was saying, I really loved Aunt Sugar and I really liked Mrs. Bucher.” A tear started down one cheek, and he let it go. “Aunt Sugar brought me up, just like my ma. When Ma was going to school, Aunt Sugar was my full-time babysitter. When Aunt Sugar got a job with Mrs. B, and I started going to Catholic school, I started coming over here, and Mrs. B gave me money for doing odd jobs. Gave me more money than she had to and she told me that if she lived long enough, she'd help me with college.

No way I want those people to get hurt. I wouldn't put the finger on them for anybody, no matter how much they stole.”

Lucas bought it. If the kid was lying, and could consciously generate those tears, then he was a natural little psychopath. Which, of course, was possible.

Lucas felt John Smith sign off, Schuber shrugged, and Lucas jumped in: “So what'd they steal, kid?”