Devoted(79)
Ask and you shall receive.
The second of two suitcases in the trunk of the vehicle contained packets of hundred-and twenty-dollar bills. Never before had he seen so much cash in one place. A quick count suggested there might be as much as $100,000.
After careful consideration, he put the suitcase in the trunk of his patrol car.
Clearly, the money was intended as a run-for-it fund. This suggested that Shacket had been aware that whatever work was being done at the Springville facility might suddenly go bad and put him in serious legal jeopardy.
Megan Bookman had said that Shacket spoke of Costa Rica, where he apparently had prepared a secure retreat under a name other than his own or Nathan Palmer. If he hoped to live anonymously, he would need to get there indirectly, by a transportation scheme complex enough to be untraceable. There would be costs involved, not least of all bribes. Shacket would have millions in offshore accounts, beyond easy reach. It seemed to the sheriff that $100,000 might not be adequate cash for an escape when even the all-powerful National Security Agency was involved in a search for the guy. Given his resources and considering his dire legal liabilities in this case, Shacket would not have scrimped on his getaway stash.
Eckman walked around the Dodge, studying it. Cars were often rebuilt to create compartments in which drugs could be transported. In this case, it would be cash, and it would have to be somewhere that it could be quickly accessed. Shacket wouldn’t want to have to cut away a fender to get at the money. Which meant it would probably be inside the vehicle.
The Dodge Demon was a highly customized work of art, not merely an assembly-line vehicle with a souped-up engine. Interior finishes were equal to those in any Mercedes. A hidden compartment would be cleverly integrated, but the perfection of the upholstery stitching and other details made it more difficult for the craftsmen to hide an accessible cavity.
In ten minutes, he found the pair of pressure latches that released a concealed panel on the back of the front passenger seat. A quick tabulation, based on counting the hundred-dollar bills in one of the plastic-wrapped bundles, suggested that he’d found an additional $300,000.
He almost transferred the entire sum to his patrol car. Then he realized that once he went public with the arrest of Lee Shacket, Tio Barbizon would send Frawley and Zellman from Sacramento, this time with others, not just to claim custody of Shacket, as they previously assumed possession of the bodies of his victims, but also to take with them the additional gathered evidence, including the Dodge Demon.
They would go over the car with great care. They would discover the hidden compartment. If they found it empty, they would wonder why Shacket had gone to the trouble of having the hiding place crafted without stashing anything in it.
Reluctantly, Hayden Eckman transferred only two-thirds of the cash to his cruiser, leaving $100,000 to be found by the attorney general’s investigators. Shacket might later claim there had been three times as much, plus $100,000 in a suitcase. But he was insane, a degenerate cannibal, and not to be believed.
Anyway, by the time Eckman announced Shacket’s arrest, the prisoner might be dead. Considering Shacket’s extreme violence, a scenario could be imagined in which he’d free himself enough to attack either a deputy or someone on the hospital staff, whereupon lethal force could be rightly used against him. Sheriff Eckman had been thinking about how to engineer such an event ever since he’d overseen Shacket’s commitment to the psychiatric ward.
Leaving the $100,000 for Tio Barbizon’s investigators to find would have anguished Eckman if, mere moments later, he had not found another fortune sewn into the lining of the leather sport coat lying on the front passenger seat. The stylish garment offered nothing of interest in the pockets, but in checking it out, he felt something odd in the hem. He ripped out the silk lining; sewn to it was a plastic sleeve with thirty-six small compartments, each containing what appeared to be a diamond. At a guess, he valued this collection higher than the $300,000 he had transferred to his vehicle.
Hayden Eckman had seen Pinehaven as nothing but a stepping stone, his office just one tread in a climb toward a more powerful position. But the town was proving to be a trove of opportunities.
84
Woody’s mom sitting on the edge of the bed. Woody in her lap, in her arms, holding fast to her.
Ben in the armchair, Kipp standing at his side, tail lashing with excitement, delight.
Kipp had never known another human being as he now knew Woody.
He loved the Woody he knew. He loved Woody’s mom, whom he knew through Woody.
Although Kipp loved Dorothy, she had never been completely known to him, not down to the deepest roots of her psychology, as Woody was known.
Woody Bookman had never known another human being as he now knew Kipp.
Furthermore, in coming to know Kipp through communion on the Wire, Woody had come to know himself as never before.
Kipp could still not talk and never would—except by the use of his sixth sense, telepathy.
But the boy now talked, freed from the crippling inhibitions that had silenced him.
Maybe this meant that the cause of his developmental disability was largely psychological.
But probably not.
Kipp knew that, without a Sonicare, Woody would still brush his teeth until he had no gums.
Woody knew it, too.
And Woody would still be aware of useless things like that he was born at 4:00 a.m., July 26, and July was the seventh month, and twenty-six multiplied by seven was 182, and then if you added four, representing the hour he was born, the total was 186, which happened to be his IQ.