Storm Prey

  The move was so unexpected that he was gone before the cops got out of the office, and then Lucas, going after him, crunched into Honey Bee and then the Budweiser guy, and Lucas and Honey Bee went down. Shrake, who was faster than Lucas anyway, was out the door, Marcy two steps behind him. Lucas scrambled to his feet and got through the door quick enough to see Joe Mack vault a fence that separated the back of the bar from a neighboring house, and disappear.

  Shrake was thirty or forty yards behind him, but running in boots and a heavy coat, and losing ground fast. Marcy was farther back. Shrake clambered over the fence and kept running, while Lucas swerved toward the street and ran past the surveillance car where Martin had just hit the ground and shouted, "Was that him?"

  "He's running," Lucas shouted. "Get in the car, get in the car . . ."

  As SOON AS the woman cop began to talk, Joe Mack began to panic, his heart up in his throat. They knew. They had a witness, they knew about the haircut, moving the drugs, the whole works. The minute he saw the daylight, the Budweiser guy standing there with the invoice in his hand, he bolted. He didn't think about it, he ran.

  Joe Mack was fast. He'd been a sprinter in high school, and he wasn't wearing heavy winter stuff--he was wearing the light jacket and gym shoes he wore in the back end of the bar, where it was on-and-off warm, with trucks coming and going.

  Now, on the run, he needed to get inside. If he didn't, he'd freeze. He ran through a block of backyards, and then another, zigging and zagging around houses and garages and fences and parked boats and hedges, got tired, turned downhill to his left, made it across a street, and another one ... ran past a house, jumped a fence, collided with a birdfeeder, vaulted another fence in a right-angle turn, ran along a hedge and a garage.

  And there was Jill MacBride, getting into her minivan.

  Mack hit her in the back, and she screamed but he lifted her with brute strength across the driver's seat, picked up the keys she'd used to open the van's door, and shoved the keys in the ignition and slammed the door and screamed at her, "Shut up, shut up, shut up . . ." and backed out of the driveway. Ten seconds later, he was down the block and around the corner. In his rearview mirror, he saw a man sprint across the end of the street, running in the wrong direction.

  The woman was sobbing, and she cried, "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me," and Joe Mack took a long breath and said, "I'm running from the cops. I've got a gun. Fuck with me and I'll kill you in one second." He didn't have a gun, but he was scared enough that he sounded as though he might. MacBride stayed in the foot well.

  She was half upside down, her purse on the floor under Joe Mack's feet. He picked it up, dug through it, stuck her wallet in his pocket. He'd need the money The van rolled up to a red light. He ignored it--no traffic coming--and made a left turn and headed west, then a right, and another left, and he was on Highway 13 headed west again, toward the airport.

  He had to think, but couldn't seem to. He couldn't go outside or he'd freeze. He saw the airport sign.

  THEY GOT a ticket and parked in the top of the parking structure. Joe Mack said, "Get out of there and get in the back."

  MacBride clambered out of the foot well and between the two seats and into the back, and Joe Mack said, "Lay down," and then, "I'm gonna go outside and make a call so you can't hear it. If you stick your head up, or try to get out, I'll chase you down and kill your ass. If you stay here, you'll be okay. You understand what I'm telling you?"

  "Yes..."

  Joe Mack got out of the van and took his cell phone out of his pocket and called Lyle Mack. When Lyle answered, Joe said, "Jesus Christ, I'm in fuckin' big trouble, man."

  He told Lyle what had happened: "They know everything. They know about the haircut. They got me."

  "So you kidnapped a fuckin' woman, you fuckin' idiot?" Lyle was screaming at him. "They might have been bullshitting you, but now they got you for kidnapping."

  "I didn't kidnap her. She's right in the van, she's right here, she's fine, I'm gonna let her go," Joe Mack said.

  "Don't do a fuckin' thing," Lyle Mack said. "Stay right there and keep her with you. I'm gonna call Cappy and have him pick you up. Then I gotta call the cops."

  "What for?"

  "To turn you in, you dumb shit. If I don't turn you in, they'll get me, too. I'll call them and tell them you called me, but I won't tell them where you're at."

  "What about me?"

  "Like you said the other day--you're headed for Mexico. Or Panama. You're gone, man."

  LYLE MACK, hurrying, not thinking, dug his clean phone out of the pocket of his old army uniform in a back closet and called Caprice Garner. "I can do that, but it'll cost you another five grand," Cappy said, when Lyle Mack explained the situation. Cappy was out test-driving his new van.

  "Five grand. That's fine. But I'm gonna have to owe it to you. We've got all that stuff we took out of the pharmacy, that's worth way more than five grand. But you'll have to be patient."

  "Hey, I'll wait," Cappy said. "For a while, anyway."

  "Deal," Lyle Mack said. He put the clean phone in his pocket and called his lawyer on the house phone. They talked for two minutes, and then the lawyer said, "I don't want to hear any more right now. Wait till the thing has settled down, then come see me."

  That didn't help. He started to pace: he felt caged, like an animal. Joe Mack might have finished them off.

  JOE MACK sat in the van and talked with MacBride: "Look, I don't want to hurt you, and I won't. But the cops are ... framing me. I took off. I freaked out and grabbed you, which I know I shouldn't have done, but now I'm in trouble for that."

  "I won't testify against you, if you let me go," MacBride said.

  Joe Mack wasn't the sharpest knife in the dishwasher, but he knew she was lying the moment the words were out of her mouth, and he almost laughed. "You'd turn me in the minute you got loose," he said. "I know that, you know that ... when my buddy gets here, we're heading for Canada. There's good jobs up there, and they don't care who you are. Just be a little bit patient, and then you can tell the cops whatever you want."

  He told her about working in the bar, and how the cops were trying to frame him for holding up the hospital. "We did not do that," he told her. "We did not. We got a good business, why'd we want to go around breaking into a hospital? But we're in an unpopular group, you know? The Seed? Have you heard of us?"

  She shook her head.

  "Well, we're really called the Bad Seed of America, Inc. We're a motorcycle club that got started in Milwaukee and Green Bay back, you know, a long time ago. My dad was a member . . ."

  He told her about riding with the Seed, and she told him about getting laid off by the West Metro Credit Union. "I've got a job interview tomorrow at Macy's, in the credit department . . ." She had two daughters, she said, and was separated from her husband, but hoping to get back together after they worked out some issues. She was a sincere-sounding, dark-haired woman, and Joe Mack liked her well enough, though she was not really his style, too thin and small-breasted, with the beginnings of a satchel ass.

  "I was just going to pick up Stacy when ... you know. They're going to wonder what happened to me ..."

  CAPPY GARNER parked in the green ramp and took the elevator down, walked through the underground plaza, found the blue ramp, and went up to the top level, pulled on a watch cap, turned up his collar, walked across the open top level, his hands thrust in the pockets of his new navy pea jacket. Joe Mack saw him coming and said to MacBride, "Here's my buddy. Now you stay down and everything will be okay. He can be a badass, so you don't want to see his face."

  "I'll stay down," she promised.

  Joe Mack got out of the van and Cappy came up and asked, "She inside there?"

  "Yeah, but I made her stay down, so she couldn't see your face."

  Cappy looked around the deck. "Don't see any cameras."

  "No, but they'll figure out who done it anyway. She'll tell them."

  "No, she won't," Cappy said. "Lyle says we get
rid of her."

  Joe Mack was taken aback. "What?"

  "Get rid of her. Doesn't nobody but her know you grabbed her, so if we get rid of her, you're in the clear."

  "Well, Jesus, we can't just... I mean, she's a nice lady."

  "Little shit's gotta fall in everybody's life," Cappy said. He grabbed the van's side door to pull it back.

  "Come on, Cappy," Joe Mack said. "Don't . . ."

  "Already got a contract," he said. He pulled the door back. MacBride was lying on her stomach, and she looked at him, startled, and then asked, "Who are you?"

  "I'm Cappy," Cappy said. He crawled into the van and pulled the door most of the way shut. Joe Mack, outside, shouted, "Goddamnit, Cappy ... "

  Cappy crawled over to her and she tried to crawl away, seized with desperation, and Cappy grabbed her left arm and yanked her halfway over on her back, but she struggled to get back on her stomach. He hit her once, hard, in the back of the head, and her face bounced off the floor, and the next time, when he yanked her over, she turned, and he lurched over her hips, one knee on each side. He tried to reach for her throat, but she cut at him with her nails, and he hit her again, on the side of the head, dazing her, and then got his thumbs under her chin.

  He'd never strangled anybody, and thought there couldn't be too much to it, but she bucked and fought him, and his thumbs kept slipping off her windpipe; she tried to claw him again and he lost patience, hit her in the forehead, then caught her arms and pinned them with his legs, and went back into her throat, with his thumbs, and squeezed ...

  She was a thin woman, with no fat to protect her neck, and he felt something pop and her eyes widened and she stopped struggling and began to shake, and then her eyes rolled away.

  JOE MACK thought Cappy would shoot her or something, but after a second, heard MacBride start to scream, the scream suddenly cut off. Mack ran a few dozen yards away from the van, stopped, looked back at it, paced this way, then that, then ran back and pulled the door open. Cappy was sitting astride MacBride, strangling her. His hands were bleeding, where she'd scratched him, but she was all done with that. Her eyes had rolled up in her head, and her body had gone into a dead-shake. Cappy was riding her like a horse, a strange, stretched grin on his face, teeth showing. He held her until she was gone, then looked at Mack with his pale eyes, smiled, and said, "See, nothing to it."

  "You're not going to kill me, are you?" Joe Mack asked.

  "Why would I do that?"

  "I thought maybe, you know, Lyle said something."

  Cappy shook his head. "Nope. Didn't say nothing to me."

  Joe Mack looked at MacBride's body and thought, Man, she looks really dead. She really was dead. A few minutes ago, she'd been talking about her daughters.

  "We gotta go," Cappy said. "I'm parked in the Green Ramp."

  "Where're we going?" Joe Mack asked, as they headed for the elevators.

  "You're going over to that horse place, to start with. Hide out there for a few days."

  Joe Mack said, "I don't know--Honey Bee was pretty pissed about Mikey and Shooter."

  "Yeah, but she can't talk about it, because she was in on the hospital stickup. That's murder for her, too. So you hide out there, let your hair grow a little bit, maybe put on a mustache, and we'll clean up this witness woman, and then, you know... head for the border."

  "Yeah . . . yeah." Joe walked along for a minute, then said, "Excuse me. I gotta puke."

  8

  LUCAS, MARCY, and the others circled through the neighborhood, on foot and by car, looking for Joe Mack, confused for a few minutes about exactly which town they were in. They finally settled on Mendota Heights and they got a couple of Mendota Heights cars out, but there were only a half-dozen cops on duty. The chief, whose name was Mark Grace, was a little pissed about the ruckus, until Lucas explained that they'd thought it'd be a routine interview.

  "We were putting some pressure on the guy. We didn't think he'd do anything that stupid," Lucas said. It sounded lame in his own ears. "We sorta fucked up, but not really."

  "Yeah, yeah," Grace said. "I guess it happens. The question is, is he holed up in somebody's house?"

  "We don't know," Marcy said. "He got lost in those houses back there, and he could have gone anywhere."

  "But not too far--he didn't have a coat," Lucas said.

  "You look for tracks?"

  "Yeah, but there are a lot of tracks. When we lost sight of him--"

  "Guess we start knocking on doors," Grace said.

  "Problem is, half the people in town are at work," one of the other Mendota cops said. "If he's got a gun on somebody, and nobody answers the door, how're we gonna know he's inside?"

  Everybody looked at Lucas, who said, "You know what? We won't. So let's not do that. Could we just get a couple of your cars roaming around the streets? Put some pressure on him and let him run. He'll run sooner or later. He's not smart enough not to."

  They argued about that for a while--the chief pointed out that somebody might be held hostage, and if they knocked on doors, they'd at least eliminate places where they knew he wasn't--but finally agreed that cruising was the best option, until something better came along. They were still talking about it when Lucas got a call from the BCA duty officer.

  "You got a guy name of Lyle Mack calling you about his brother, who he says you're chasing."

  Lucas took the call, and Lyle Mack said, "I got a call from Joe. He said you guys scared the shit out of him and he ran away."

  "Where is he?" Lucas asked.

  "I don't know. Someplace around here," Lyle Mack said. "He said he ran until he couldn't run anymore and then he went down to a shopping center where he saw a cab letting a guy out, and got a ride downtown. He said he bought a coat at Macy's, and he's leaving town."

  "Don't lie to me, man. We're past that," Lucas said.

  "Hey--I'm not," Lyle Mack said. "I'm telling you what he said. He said he ran for it because you accused him of sticking up the hospital, which he didn't, and you're trying to frame him, and he's heading out. He said hasta la vista, and he's gone."

  "How is he gone? We saw him selling his van this morning."

  "Yeah, and he's got a pocket full of cash from it, and Joe Mack's got friends," Lyle Mack said. "I told him I was gonna call you, because there was no point of both of us getting in the shit. He said 'go ahead."'

  "Where are you?" Lucas said. "We're coming to see you."

  "I'm on my way to the bar. I'll be there in five minutes."

  Lucas got off the phone and told the chief that it'd be good to keep a car or two roaming around, but that he believed Joe Mack was gone.

  SHRAKE AND THE BACKUP COPS went to Joe Mack's address, while Marcy and Lucas waited at the bar for Lyle Mack. While they waited, they pushed on Honey Bee.

  "When you came back there, you said to Joe Mack, 'They were our friends,' or something like that," Lucas said to her. "It sounds like you thought Joe had something to do with them being dead."

  Honey Bee had had a little time to think about it, and she said, "No, I don't think Joe ... Listen, they were friends of mine. They were friends of Joe and Lyle. They came here every night, and when they had the money, they were good tippers. Good guys. I couldn't believe those assholes didn't tell me they were dead. Like they were nobodies. Like they didn't care, it was like a bigger deal to pay the Budweiser guy."

  "So why'd he run?" Marcy asked.

  "I don't know--I don't know what you guys said to him. You must've scared him," she said. "Joe's a good guy, but he's not smart. Lyle's always taken care of him. I think you must've said something that panicked him."

  "We told him we thought he helped rob the hospital," Lucas said.

  Honey Bee flipped her hands in the air. "Well, that would have done it. Listen, the one thing Joe knows for sure is that cops frame people. He says he was framed twice, already."

  She'd thought about it, but she overdramatized her answers, giving them the odor of lies. Lucas smelled it, and so did Mar
cy.

  Lucas said, "As far as we know, there were no women involved in the robbery at the hospital. If you know something about that, and you're lying to us, you could go to jail as an accessory after the fact to a triple murder. That's thirty years, Honey Bee, and I'm not fooling around. This is a bad thing."

  "I'm not lying," she said, with her best earnest, honest face. But she was.

  Quick test: Lucas asked, "When did Joe get the haircut and shave?"

  She hadn't seen it coming, and she said, "Uh . . ." and she looked from one of them to the other, and finally went with the truth. "Couple days ago, I guess. Listen, I don't know why. He does that every once in a while."

  LYLE MACK came steaming through the door, looked at the three of them and said, "What happened? What happened? What'd you say to Joe? He's so scared he's peeing his pants. For Christ's sakes, Joe's a little retarded. What'd you tell him?"

  Mack was scared. They all sat in the front of the bar, in the stink of the weenie machine, arguing about what Joe Mack was up to, and Lyle Mack insisted that his brother had nothing to do with any holdup. He rapped his knuckles on the table. "He doesn't do that shit. We got a good business here. And Joe Mack is not a violent guy. He doesn't like violence."

  "Hey, we got his records," Marcy said.

  "They don't tell the whole story."

  "Oh, horseshit," Marcy said. "And we understand you're a branch of eBay."

  "Hey. That's a lie. Anybody tell you that, send them to me. I'll set them straight."

  "So where's he going?" Lucas asked. "Joe?"

  Lyle Mack shook his head: "I don't know. LA, maybe. Mexico? He's a good mechanic, I suppose he could head up to Alaska or Canada."

  "Has he got a passport?"

  "Yup. He does. But he doesn't carry it. And if you've got cops over at his apartment, then he's not going to get it. But you know LA--if he wants to go to Mexico, he can. You can buy real passports on the street corner for a thousand bucks."