Page 99 of Devoted in Death

“You’re telling me? Never seen such fast e-work. Might be we got something solid with this.”

“Feeney will tag the other four, but let’s do a run on Barlow Lee Hanks and see what we get.”

She strode back into her office, gestured to Peabody. “Barlow’s Garage, Lonesome, Oklahoma. Basic data and financials. Make it fast. Banner, tag them up over there, see if you can get this guy on the ’link. If he’s there, he’s sure as hell not here. That’s one. And just get a sense of him. Don’t play cop. Ask him some truck question.”

“A truck question?”

“Five hundred says you’ve got one.”

“I’m not taking that bet.” Banner pulled out his own ’link. “I’ll take this out there.”

With a nod, Eve sat at her desk, started her run on Barlow Hanks.

One marriage, she read—with no offspring. Divorced for a dozen years. One brother, but older than he was, and the unsubs skewed younger. A nephew about the right age, she considered, so she’d do a secondary run there.

“Financials look solid, Dallas,” Peabody said, “on the surface anyway. He’s not rolling in it, but he does okay. Bought the property the place sits on about eight years ago, and he’s making the payments regularly. Four full-time employees, one part-time.”

Eve nodded as she continued her own run. “A couple minor league criminal bumps. A DUI, a bar fight, a pushy-shovy at some rodeo.”

“This isn’t our guy.”

“No, but he may be connected. Better than one-in-five chance it was his truck the Dumbass Dorrans hauled off.”

She started on the nephew. Small-time rancher, sometime bronc rider. What the hell was a “bronc”? She discovered it was some sort of horse, kept going. About the right age, she thought, with a cohab, which tipped him down the scale as she appeared to be clean and shiny on record, with solid employment.

“Could’ve ditched her,” Eve added. “Taken off in his uncle’s truck with his murderous partner.”

She rose to pace and think. The uncle doesn’t report the truck stolen—blood’s thick. Or he sold it to the nephew under the table.

But it didn’t play well, not when there was nothing to indicate the nephew suddenly developed murderous tendencies.

Still.

Banner came back in. “Hanks is definitely in Oklahoma. I just had a conversation with him about my truck—which I told him was a ’52 Bobcat.”

“Good thinking.”

“Mine’s running mighty rough, and I’ve taken it in twice to my regular, but it only smooths out for a hundred miles or so. Told him I’d heard he knew a thing or two. He agreed that he did, and had a ’52 himself once upon a time, done some work on it.”

“Is that so?”

“It is so. His opinion while not a piece of cowshit, it ain’t much after it hits ninety thousand miles or thereabouts. But he’d be happy to take a look at her if I want to bring her by.”

“Okay.” She turned to her board, nodded. “Okay. We’ll see what Carmichael and Santiago get out of him. It feels right. Meanwhile.”

Her desk ’link signaled. She walked over. “What?”

“Say thank you,” Roarke requested.

“What for?”

“For Elsie and Maddox Hornesby of Bloomingdale who own a ’58 Country Scout van, color Indigo, with an OBX sticker in the left rear window.”

“Why them and not the eighty-two others?”

“I culled that down to thirty-nine, then hit the Hornesbys who, from my subtle invasion of their privacy, I determined have spent eight weeks—January and February—the last three winters in the Bahamas where they own a beach house.”

“Can’t report the vehicle stolen if they don’t know it’s stolen.”

---