“What did you find on the car?”
“That’s where things get weird.”
“Weird how?”
“The tag came back registered to a Gloria Donovan from two states away. The problem with that is, Mrs. Donovan is seventy-nine years old and living in a group home, and she has no idea she bought a used van nine months ago.”
“Identity theft?”
“Looks that way. Someone got a hold of her personal information, name, and Social Security Number. That’s why the license plate didn’t trip any warning flags when they were initially spotted. The troopers never saw it coming.”
“Did I know them, Jane? The men who died?”
Jane shook her head. “They came on the job after you left, Hank.”
He nodded, but instead of relief, it left more questions. Just because the men had entered the force after he retired didn’t mean he didn’t know them. He might have known their brothers, or fathers…
Jane was leaning slightly forward, as if she was trying to get a better look at him on the other side of the screen. “Hank, I have to ask, what’s going on? Is this just curiosity? And where exactly are you right now? That looks like a motel room…”
He felt a flush of pride. Besides knowing he could trust her, Hank had another reason for contacting her and not someone else: A little (Okay, a big part) of him wanted to stick it to John “Mr. Perfect” Miller.
“How did you know I’m at a motel?” he asked.
“The ugly curtains, the bare wall… Who’s there with you? You keep glancing over at them.”
Dammit; I forgot she can see me, too.
“Jane, I need to tell you something,” he said, “but you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone where it came from.”
“Hank…”
“No ifs, ands, or buts, Jane. Promise me, or I’m hanging up right now,” he said, wondering if you could actually “hang up” on someone through a tablet. How did phone calls even work on this thing anyway?
“Hank, you called me, remember?” Jane said.
“I know that, kid. I have information that might help you with the case, but if you’re not going to—”
“What kind of information?”
“Promise me, and I’ll tell you.”
Jane sighed. “Hank, you do know that I’m a detective with CID now, right? That it’s been a while since you bossed me around as a trooper? The shooting’s got us all on edge. The commissioner’s stuck on the phone with the governor’s office, and every detective and chief is fanning across the state. We’re pulling everyone from every section into this one, even the commercial enforcement guys. This is bad, Hank. Real bad. So you need to really think hard about what you’re asking me, because if you have something that can help us catch these motherfuckers…”
“Kid, I don’t know who they are,” Hank said.
He kept his voice calm and even, doing everything possible to let his sincerity come through. Diane would call it his “fatherly face,” except they’d never had kids so it was anyone’s guess if he was doing it right. But he could see it on Jane’s face and hear it in her voice that she was wired. It didn’t surprise him at all. State troopers didn’t die very often, and it was unheard of to have two killed in the same day in the same action.
“That’s the honest truth,” he continued. “But I have some information that could be useful.”
“You want to stay in the dark, is that it?”
“That’s exactly it,” he nodded.
“Okay. We’ll just call you my unnamed CI.”
“That’ll work.”
“So, let’s hear it. Why are you in a motel room this time of night, and am I going to regret asking that question?”
“Someone told me to come here, and I don’t know, maybe?”
“Who told you to go there?”
“You heard about the robbery at Ben’s Diner earlier today?”
“Are you kidding? Everyone was already going all-in on that one when the troopers got killed. That was the reason they pulled the shooters over in the first place. They had orders to stop any suspicious vehicles, and unfortunately for them two guys in a van with out-of-state plates stuck out.” She paused for a moment before leaning forward again. “Wait, are you saying the two things are connected?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus…”
She already knew about him being shot, so he told her about Allie Krycek (though he never said her name and only called her “one of the robbers,” and didn’t mention she was the one who had shot him) slipping him a piece of paper with a phone number on it. He finished by telling her about the motel and meeting with “the robber’s colleague,” who informed him about the human-trafficking operation currently moving across the state.
“Oh, fuck me,” Jane said when he was finished. “Are you sure about this?”
“Trust me, I didn’t want to believe it either, but it’s true. You need to have everyone looking for more than just the van.”
“A semitrailer hauling kids from South America?”
“Among other places.”
“But you don’t know what it looks like…”
“No. I just know it’s out there somewhere.”
“Hank, you know as well as I do that’s going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Thousands of semis go through our state every day. Listen,” she said, turning her head slightly before looking back at him. “Did you hear that? That’s three more passing in less than three seconds. We can’t just randomly pull every one of them over. We don’t have that kind of manpower.”
“You’ve already set up roadblocks, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but we haven’t been looking for semis, just the van.”
“It’s time to expand your search, then.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes, Hank, they’re going to ask me why should they expand the stop-and-search to every big rig going through the state, and I won’t have an answer for them.”
Shit, he thought, because she was right. The commanders weren’t going to put more men on the roadblocks to search semis without a damn good reason, and all he had was…
He glanced over at Lucy again, watching him back from across the bed. He couldn’t see the dog Apollo, but it was there somewhere lying next to her feet like a good guard dog. The animal rarely strayed from the girl, as if it had been ordered to stick close to her at all times.
He looked back at Jane. “You’ll have to convince them.”
“Hank, we’re talking about shuffling around a lot of manpower here. I can’t just tell them it’s because some unnamed CI said so. I’m not high up enough on the totem pole to have that kind of pull yet. You know how this bureaucracy works.”
“You gotta try anyway, Jane. Talk to whoever you have to — sweet talk them, bribe them, hell, blackmail them, if that’s what it takes. But you have to get it done.”
She sighed before pursing a smile at him. “Is that how you got things done in the old days, old-timer?”
He smiled back at her. “Mostly the second and third part, rarely the first.” He got serious again, adding, “Can you do it?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll try. If you’re right, and there are kids being smuggled across our state, then fuck it, I’ll make as much noise as I need to. Even if it means backing up traffic into the next ten states.”
Hank beamed with pride. He didn’t know what to say, but he could no more stop the big grin breaking out across his mug than he could push back the hands of time.