income from using asset-forfeiture statutes. Currently the garage contained only two vehicles in addition to Eckman’s personal patrol car: a Ford F-150 pickup involved in a DUI hit-and-run and the red Dodge Demon in which Lee Shacket, alias Nathan Palmer, had fled Utah.
Having come directly from the hospital to the impoundment garage, Sheriff Eckman was too excited to sleep. He worked alone on the Dodge and its contents. Because of the extraordinary nature of the crime and the connection to a company owned by Dorian Purcell, he would not alert the media to the arrest of Shacket until noon, which would give him time to determine how to exploit this situation to his very best advantage. This case would provide him with statewide name recognition in the days to come and add momentum to his career. If he played this right, there might also be a way that he could ingratiate himself with Purcell that would result in a large financial benefit.
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