* * *
Tanner took Kaiser to his police cruiser. The crime scene crew arrived while they were talking, and Tanner got out and led them into the house. He came back ten minutes later, talked to Kaiser for another ten minutes. Then Kaiser got out of the cruiser and waved Letty over.
As they passed each other Kaiser muttered, “No problem,” and Letty went on and got in the passenger seat of the cop car. Tanner had an iPad in his lap and was reading newspaper stories from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, concerning the home invasion that Letty had stopped.
Letty settled in without saying anything, and Tanner read on; at one point he said, “Holy cow,” and glanced over at Letty.
“What can I tell you?” Letty said. “That’s pretty much the way it was. There were a couple of small errors in that story, but then, my dad says all newspaper stories have a couple of small errors and most of them have more than that. He says that most TV stories are fairy tales; I agree with that, because . . .”
“。 . . you worked for a TV station as a school reporter.”
“Unpaid intern,” Letty said.
“Let me read for another couple of minutes.”
He typed and paged, and typed and paged, and said, “My God, your father . . . Kaiser said he was a piece of work, but I had no idea. I mean, I know some of these cases. That shoot-out down in Marfa. That’s just couple-three hours south of here . . .”
He read for another minute, whistled once, shook his head, then turned the iPad off and reached into the center console and took out a digital recorder. “I talked to Mr. Kaiser, and now I’m going to ask you a series of questions about how you got to Midland and why, and what you did when you entered the house here. You understand that?”
“Yes.”
Tanner turned on the recorder, identified himself with the time, date, and location, asked Letty for her DHS identification card and her Virginia driver’s license, read that information into the recorder, and then led her through the decision to drive to Midland, beginning with the possibility of stolen oil.
Letty explained her position with DHS, about Bradley （Boxie） Blackburn’s disappearance and the fear that it might have something to do with the missing oil—that he might be involved, or that he might have discovered something that led to his disappearance. She explained her dissatisfaction with the lack of reaction by the Midland Police Department, and her decision that she needed to go to Blackburn’s house.
“We had the key and security code, which we took as permission to enter the house in what might be an emergency . . .”
When she finished, Tanner said, “Okay. Good. Clear and succinct. Since this seems to be both a federal and local problem, and your father would have jurisdiction anywhere in the country . . . are you planning to ask him to get involved in this?”
Letty shook her head: “I doubt he’d be interested. He thinks these kinds of cases are best left to people with local knowledge. Besides, I’m working it.”
“Okay. Seems like a smart guy,” Tanner said.
“He’s very smart.”
Tanner reached out and turned off the recorder, which he’d placed on the dashboard. “I don’t have any more questions, Letty, not right now. I’d like to know more about this disappearing oil. Maybe twelve thousand barrels from Hughes-Wright, maybe more from Lost Land . . . I’ll be talking to their manager . . . but you say that Hughes-Wright has lost a half-million dollars, at least. And if it’s gone on for a while . . .”
“Exactly. And if there are several victims, the money could get serious,” Letty said.
“A half-million isn’t serious?”
“Not for these people,” Letty said. “We’re told Hughes-Wright pumps about a hundred million barrels of petroleum equivalents a year. That’s better than six billion dollars at current prices. A half-million isn’t exactly a speck, but losing it won’t bankrupt anybody.”