—
BEFORE HE WENT TO BED, Lucas went to his iPad and called up maps of Virginia and West Virginia. Because the mountains ran northeast to southwest, so did most of the roads. The quickest way out of the area around Smalls’s cabin and back to the D.C. area was almost straight east. If they were right about the tree trunks, they would have been ditched in Hampshire County, West Virginia, or in Frederick or Shenandoah counties in Virginia.
But the killers wouldn’t have wanted to drive in traffic with the logs on the side of their truck . . .
Lucas called up a satellite view of the area and made some notes on likely roads back toward I-66 into Washington. Avoiding towns and traffic . . .
He spent an hour at it, then did a search for the sheriff’s contact emails in the three counties. He made up three emails, explaining what he wanted to do, asking for help, and telling them that he’d arrive with two other marshals by noon. He finally put away his electronics, read the Hiaasen book for a while, and went to bed at one o’clock.
Wasn’t much of a plan, he thought, before the lights went out, but it was something.
* * *
—
THE NEXT DAY they did the pancakes and waffles, sausage links and bacon, at a greasy but otherwise decent diner off in the general direction of Capitol Hill, recommended by the hotel’s concierge.
Lucas told Bob and Rae about the emails he’d sent to the sheriffs the night before and the follow-up calls he’d made that morning. He’d gotten some grumbling, but they agreed to meet at a country store at noon and supply a few cars to methodically cruise the ditches and side roads specified by Lucas and to search turnoffs or other likely dump spots.
“And what are we going to do?” Bob asked.
“Same thing. I’ve marked some places that I think would be good prospects—close to major roads, heavy cover, and so on,” Lucas said. “I didn’t have time before we left, but I saved the stuff on a thumb drive and I’ll run down to the business center and print out maps before we leave.”
“You are a paragon of efficiency,” Bob said, “but it sounds really, really boring.”
“Probably, but I’ve also figured out a small variation on the whole plan.”
“What’s that?” Rae asked.
“I’m going to tell these sheriffs and their deputies that the reason this is so important is, we believe somebody tried to assassinate Senator Smalls, and actually did murder his friend,” Lucas said. “That this isn’t some fishing expedition looking for a minnow. And it might be something they’d like to get credit for.”
Rae stopped chewing on her strip of bacon. “Lucas, that’ll wind up in the newspapers, sooner or later. Or on TV.”
Lucas nodded. “For sure. Because if one of the sheriffs doesn’t leak it, I will.”
* * *
—
BACK AT THE HOTEL, Bob and Rae hauled their equipment bags down to their rented Tahoe, Lucas rolled out his Evoque, and at ten o’clock, dressed in jeans, long-sleeved shirts, and boots, on a day that was already sweating heavily, with thunderheads building to the southwest, they took off for West Virginia.
Included in the equipment that the two marshals had brought were radios with headsets so they wouldn’t have to talk on cell phones. Lucas set the pace, and they rolled west on I-66 and, at ten minutes to twelve, arrived in the small town of Strasburg, Virginia. Since everyone involved was a cop, they’d agreed to rendezvous at a convenience store that also sold Dunkin’ Donuts; when they arrived, the parking lot looked like a police convention, with seven sheriff’s cars scattered around the blacktop. The store wasn’t big enough to hold all the cops, so they got ice-cream cones and donuts and sacks of potato chips and gathered in the shade of an ash tree to talk.
Lucas introduced himself, Bob, and Rae. The sheriffs said that they already had deputies out looking, but without any luck at that point.
Lucas said, “Look, we appreciate your help. This is important: we have developed some evidence, which I’m not allowed to talk about, that this so-called accident was an assassination attempt aimed at Senator Smalls. The killers wound up murdering an innocent woman, but we believe she was what you call collateral damage.”
They seemed skeptical. One deputy said, “You know how many trees we have in West Virginia? If somebody said a billion, I’d say that’s probably low. Might be that many downed tree trunks, too.”
Bob jumped in. “I know what you’re thinking, that this sounds like some kind of federal horseshit, but I promise you it’s not. We’re not fancy federal cops. We’re street guys; we make our living kicking down doors and kinda, you know, looking for trees. This might be the most important case we’ll ever work on—and that you’ll ever work on. Even if you have your doubts, I hope you’ll work it hard.”
Rae: “Lucas and Bob and I will all be out there, combing through the woods, right along with y’all. If we find what we’re looking for, we’ll have hard proof that this was murder.”
After some more back-and-forth, and the purchase of massive numbers of additional donuts, Cokes, Diet Cokes, a couple of Pepsis, and water, the crowd broke up, still with some grumbling.
Lucas, Bob, and Rae caucused before they left, Lucas asking, “What do you think?”
“They’ll look,” Bob said. “At least for today. Maybe tomorrow. Not much longer, though. It’s too goddamn hot out there.”
Rae touched Lucas’s arm, and said, “Don’t get your hopes up, big guy. This is a needle in a haystack.”
* * *
—
LUCAS EFFUSIVELY THANKED all three sheriffs before they left, including the two from Virginia, but believed that the tree trunks, if they were to be found, would be in West Virginia. “They wouldn’t have gone far before they got rid of them. All they needed to do was get caught in somebody’s headlights and they’d be dealing with witnesses.”
Bob said, “They could have pulled over one minute after the accident, taken the trees, the lattice, whatever, taken it apart, thrown the trees in the bed of the truck, and taken them to a landfill somewhere.”
Lucas was shaking his head. “No. When they made the lattice, they would have wanted to protect the entire length of the truck. I looked up the F-250, their model: it’s almost twenty-one feet long. But they’ve got a short bed, and the cargo box is only like six feet nine inches long. If they put twenty-one-foot logs in a six-foot box, they’d have a fifteen-foot overhang. That’d be as noticeable as hanging them off the side.”
“Then let’s go find the needle,” Bob said.
* * *
—
THEY STARTED where the accident took place, looking down the steep slope at the river below. Rae said, “Think about it: the accident happens, do they watch to make sure they go over the cliff or do they keep going?”
“For one reason or another, they apparently kept going,” Lucas said. “Porter told me that he was afraid they’d come down the hill and finish them off, so he got a gun out of the back and hid out . . . nobody came down, and he never saw the truck again or even its lights.”
Rae: “How far would they drive before they pulled over? They’d have to be thinking that there might be a witness, so it wouldn’t be in the first two minutes they’d actually want to, you know, get away. Get out of sight.”
“Look for places they could do that,” Lucas said.
* * *
—