Storm Prey

  "Not like you. For me, MacBride getting murdered was seriously annoying. That's different," she said. "You gotta handle the rage, big guy."

  THEY'D PLANNED to take Mack at his house, but the place was locked up, and when they looked in the garage windows, the garage was empty. While they were looking, a car pulled into the driveway next door, and Marcy hustled over and talked to the driver, an old guy, and then hustled back. "Neighbor's been up since six, and didn't see or hear anybody over here. He says Mack usually goes to work around ten."

  "Jeez, I hope he didn't skip," Shrake said.

  Lucas shook his head: "Ah, he's probably just out early. Like us. Let's check the bar."

  AND MACK'S CAR was parked next to the dumpster behind Cherries. They got out, and Shrake and Jenkins walked around to the front, while Lucas and Marcy went to the back door. The door was locked, and they banged on it, with no response. Lucas looked around, couldn't see a camera. Banged on the door again.

  Shrake came around the corner and said, "It's all locked up, up front, but the neon's turned on. The 'Open' sign."

  "You bang on the door?"

  "Yeah, but it's locked."

  A cop car pulled into the lot, and a uniformed officer got out, looking at them, talking on a radio. Marcy said, "Poop," and walked over to him, her badge out. They talked for a minute, then Marcy waved them over.

  "We're going to get his push bar right up by a front window," she said. "Shrake, you're the tallest, see if you can look in."

  The cop pulled up to the bar, and Shrake stood on his push bar, using a hand to block reflections. After a moment, he said, "Well, I can see ... yeah."

  He hopped down.

  "What?" Marcy asked.

  "I can see a leg on the floor on the other side of the pool table."

  "A leg. Like he's hiding?"

  "Like he's dead," Shrake said.

  THE CITY COP wasn't sure of the technical entry procedure, so Jenkins took a long switchblade out of his pants pocket, punched a hole in the front-door glass, and flipped the interior lock. Lucas led the way in, Marcy a step behind.

  Lucas called, "Mack?" but then they walked out of the main bar area and saw the body on the floor next to the pool table. A wooden chair sat over Mack's neck and chest, with a wooden crossbar at his neck, so that somebody sitting on the chair could keep Mack from sitting up or twisting away. His hands and feet were taped. He had a hole in his forehead, with burn marks around it, and a puddle of blood under the head and the legs. The front panel of the pants had been cut away, and Mack's groin was a mass of jellied blood.

  "Aw, man," Shrake said.

  Marcy asked, "What's that?" pointing at Mack's stomach.

  Jenkins bent over, then straightened up and stepped back. "I do believe that's the gentleman's testicle," he said.

  The city cop, gagging, mumbled something about calling it in, and dashed for the door. They stood there, the metallic smell of blood infusing the air, and listened to him retching in the parking lot.

  Then Shrake said, "You know what? When they did this, somebody was sitting in that chair, looking right down at his face."

  LUCAS GOT everybody moving, BCA crime scene, the ME's investigators, while Marcy called her chief. Lucas went into the back and found Jenkins in the office, with plastic gloves on his hands, going through Mack's parka. "Anything?"

  "Cell phone, I think. I can feel it, but I can't find the pocket." The pocket was under a hidden zip flap, and Jenkins pulled it out, turned it on, and said, "This is probably it: it says it's got seventy-five minutes of talk-time left."

  "Need the numbers, right now," Lucas said. "Incoming and outgoing calls."

  "Got it."

  Marcy came in: "Lucas: what do you think?"

  "We're back to square one. We don't know what's happening. MacBride is killed by somebody we don't know, Mack is tortured to death. Joe didn't do this, so ... there's gotta be somebody else. Probably a couple or three of them."

  "Another gang?"

  "Don't know. We've got a mystery guy at the hospital. We don't know about him."

  She said, "I wonder if the Macks had anything to do with it--the robbery, and all of it."

  "Sure they did," Lucas said. "If they didn't, then why that?" He nodded toward the front room. "They cut on him until they got what they wanted, and then they stopped and killed him. If they were just doing it for pure pleasure, they could have gone on for a while. And then there's Haines and Chapman, and we know they were good friends with the Macks ... and I still believe that Joe had something to do with MacBride. Maybe this is about the drugs. Maybe somebody figured out the Macks had the drugs, and came after them. You know what? I bet the drugs are still around."

  LUCAS NEVER liked the writing of reports, but did it; in this case, he could unload most of it on the Mendota Heights cop, and he did that, too. Weather called at eleven o'clock and said, "We're still on hold, but the kids are getting stronger. May go another day."

  "It's gonna snow tomorrow," Lucas said.

  "We're planning to operate inside the hospital, not on the parking ramp."

  "Ah. That's so clever." He told her about Lyle Mack, and she said, "Worse and worse. All because some guy got mad and kicked poor old Don Peterson."

  LUCAS TOLD MARCY, "I'm going to call Ike--notify him, and see if we can pry anything out of him. Maybe this'll loosen him up."

  The place was getting crowded, with Grace, the Mendota Heights chief, two more local cops, crime-scene and ME investigators. Lucas called the Washburn County sheriff, Stephaniak, told him what had happened, and asked, "Where'd you say he worked? I need to notify him."

  "Better you than me," Stephaniak said. "I've done that a few too many times."

  He looked the number up in the local directory, read it off, and Lucas dialed.

  A man answered, a little tired: "Larry's."

  Lucas said, "I'm a police officer from Minnesota. I'm trying to reach Ike Mack on a family issue. Can I speak to him?"

  After a few seconds of silence, the man on the other end said, "Ike didn't show up today. Don't know where he is."

  "Does that happen a lot?"

  "No, it doesn't. He's pretty reliable, when he's not drinking, and he's not drinking. Unless he started last night," the man said. "I've been calling him on his cell, and there's no answer. What'd he do?"

  "Nothing--this is a family emergency. Do you have a home phone number for him?" Lucas asked.

  "He doesn't have a home phone, only the cell phone. He usually has it with him."

  Lucas got the number, dialed it, got no answer. He called Stephaniak again and said, "Ike didn't show up this morning. What happened here was pretty bad. Is there any way you could send somebody over to his house, take a look?"

  "You think somebody might have come up here?"

  "His son was tortured," Lucas said. "Like they were interrogating him. They may be looking for those drugs from the hospital. Maybe they stashed them at Ike's, out in the woods or something ... Anyway, if you could take a look."

  "Ten minutes," Stephaniak said. "I got a guy patrolling over that way."

  LUCAS ASKED the techs if anything was coming off the body, and one of them said, "It's gonna sound weird, but I wonder if one of them was sniffing cocaine while they were cutting on him. There's this little sprinkling of powder on his legs. Doesn't look like dirt, or plaster ... it's not ground in, it's just sitting there."

  Lucas had to look closely to see it, a fine-grained, beige sprinkle.

  "Doesn't look like coke."

  "I agree. I've taken samples."

  Lucas said, "You know my wife's a surgeon?"

  "Yeah, plastic surgeon, right?" The tech was with the BCA, and they'd worked together on a number of cases.

  "Yup. And she brings home surgeon's gloves, from time to time, like when she's going to paint things. And she gave me some for my shoeshine box. The thing is, they've got this very fine powder in them, to get them on and off easier. It looks like this stuff. When you
get to the lab, check that."

  "The guy's testicle looks like it was removed with something very sharp. Like a scalpel. Not like a bar knife."

  Lucas patted the guy's shoulder a couple of times: "And we're looking for a doctor, somebody who could have set up the hospital robbery."

  JENKINS CAME BACK: "We got a full list downtown on the incoming and outgoing calls. Most of them are to one number, and five of those were in the couple hours after Joe ran."

  "That's him," Lucas said.

  "The last call from that number was at eleven o'clock last night," Jenkins said. "It went through a cell tower in Emporia, Kansas. It's right on 1-35."

  "He's running."

  Marcy said, "Maybe I should call him. You guys might scare him. If he's running, we want to engage him before he throws the phone out the window."

  "So figure out what to say," Lucas said. "Let's give him a ring."

  THEY WERE GETTING ready to make the call when Stephaniak called back on Lucas's phone: "I don't know all the details, but Ike was killed, apparently last night, in his house. Multiple gunshot wounds to the face. You know out back, in the yard ... over toward that old shed?"

  "Yeah. By that incinerator."

  "Yes. My deputy says there are a bunch of ABS stacks from the septic system, but one of them is a fake. There's a stack, and a lid set in the ground, and when you lift it out, there's a concrete sewer tank underneath it, but it's dry. Somebody pulled the stack up last night. There are four big waterproof plastic bins, military surplus, laying on the ground next to the tank. Empty. Probably where they stashed the drugs. There's still a box with thirty or forty handguns in the tank, oiled up and sealed in Ziploc bags, and a lot of ammo. Looks like Ike was dealing guns on the side."

  "Yup, that was the dope," Lucas said. "That's why they tortured Lyle. You got a crime-scene crew that can do DNA?"

  "We do. We're talking to the guys in Madison. They'll get a crew up here. I'm going out there in two minutes."

  "Look for DNA," Lucas said. "Anything that seems worth processing. Was Ike tortured? Interrogated?"

  "Nope. The deputy says it looks like they walked in the front door and shot him in the face."

  MARCY CALLED JOE MACK from Lyle Mack's office and got him on the second ring. She said, "Joe? This is Marcy Sherrill, the police officer who was talking to you when you ran. Listen to me: Lyle's been killed. He was killed last--Listen to me, Joe. He was killed last night. Somebody--Listen to me. I'm calling on Lyle's cell phone. That's how we got your number.

  "Listen, whoever did it ... I'm so sorry to tell you ... whoever did it apparently went north and killed your father, too. Sheriff Stephaniak up there says whoever did the shooting took the top off a septic tank out back that was dry, and that there were a bunch of boxes where we think somebody hid the drugs. That's what they were after."

  She was talking fast, trying to reel him in.

  "Listen, Joe: we need to know what you know. We know you didn't do this, and we know you didn't kill Jill MacBride, because we got DNA from her body that says somebody else did it, not you. We need to know who you think did it. We need--Joe, okay, I'm on Lyle's cell phone, call me back. Call me back ..."

  She looked up at Lucas: "He's gone."

  "He listened for a while, though," Lucas said. "Maybe he'll call you back."

  JOE MACK SAT STUNNED, and Eddie, a gray-faced forty-something man with a red ponytail and acne-pocked face, said, "Maybe they're bullshitting you, man. Maybe they were trying to keep you on the phone, so they could see where we are."

  He looked up in the sky, as though scanning for black helicopters.

  Joe Mack said, "I don't think she was bullshitting me, man. I don't think so." He began to weep, sitting in the passenger seat, both hands wrapped around the phone. Eddie didn't know what to say, because he'd never seen Joe Mack weep. Joe stopped, after a minute, and wiped his eyes, and said, "We gotta go back there."

  Eddie said, "Aw, Jesus, man, we're halfway there. We gotta be in Brownsville tomorrow."

  "Got to go back," Joe Mack said. "I got business I gotta do."

  "Man, the cops are looking for you all over."

  "Eddie, goddamnit, I know who done it. If they're dead, I know who done it."

  Eddie exhaled, then said, "Look, do me a favor. Throw that fuckin' phone out the window. We can use mine. We can get another one at Wal-Mart ... but throw it out the window before somebody pulls us over and shoots our asses."

  JENKINS CAME IN from the front room: "Phone company says it came out of a cell on the Kansas Turnpike north of El Dorado ... so he's still headed south, and pretty fast."

  "Need to figure out where he got a car," Lucas said. "We saw him selling his van to that skinhead. He must've had a way to get another car. We need to run it down."

  "That bartender ... Honey Bee? She seemed pretty tight with the brothers," Jenkins said. "Why don't I pick her up, see what she has to say?"

  "Good idea," Lucas said. "I'll come with you."

  "You know where you're going?" Marcy asked. "And how'll I get back to my car?"

  "Shrake can take you. And Honey Bee--there've gotta be employee records here somewhere, with her address," Lucas said, looking around the office. "The thing is, we've got to stash her somewhere. If she knows anything, this guy, or these guys, will think about it, and go after her."

  ON THE WAY SOUTH, to Honey Bee's house, Lucas called Virgil at the hospital and told him what had happened, and about the powder on Lyle Mack's body.

  "You think our guy at the hospital is taking out witnesses?" Virgil asked.

  "Don't know. But we need to find him."

  "We got nothing to work with, except that accent thing," Virgil said. "I'm thinking about it, but I got nothing right now."

  "How about the kids? Are they working?"

  "They're meeting now. We'll find out in a few minutes."

  HONEY BEE WAS SHOVELING horseshit when the cops arrived. She heard the car, looked out through the crack between the door and the jamb, and saw the dark-haired detective, the one who'd been questioning Joe when he ran, walking toward her front door. He stopped, stooped, picked something up, looked at it, and put it in his pocket. What?

  For one second, she thought about hiding; or running: she had an image of herself riding across the back pasture and into the trees. A dream. Stupid.

  They'd be coming, and she licked her lips, and said to herself, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know anything." Should she smile at them? Or look scared?

  She took a breath, saw the dark-haired man knocking on the door, took another breath and pushed open the barn door and called, "Hello?"

  HONEY BEE CAME walking across the driveway with a guilty look: that is, her face seemed to be searching for an appropriate expression, and not finding it. She was wearing a torn nylon parka, knee-high green-rubber barn boots, and rubber gloves, and said, "I was shoveling ... manure."

  "I do that a lot," Jenkins said.

  Lucas introduced himself and Jenkins, again, and then said, "I'm afraid we've got some fairly harsh news."

  Her mouth dropped open, and she said, faintly, "Joe?"

  Lucas shook his head and said, "I'm sorry, but Lyle Mack was killed last night."

  She froze, then slowly lifted her hands to the sides of her head, then broke and screamed, "Lyle? Lyle died? Oh, God ..." She sank to the ice-covered ground and began sobbing, and Lucas squatted next to her and said, "We know you were close friends. But we need to get you inside, now, and we need to talk about this. We think there are some reasons for you to be worried."

  He wasn't sure she'd heard him, or understood him. She continued sobbing, then looked up and cried, "You're sure? Lyle?"

  Lucas said, "Yeah." His eyes drifted away from her, and he picked up several pieces of straw from the ice, twirled them in his fingers, and put them in his pocket. "Yeah, it's him."

  THEY GOT her inside, and somewhere along the way she stuttered, "We thought we might get married someday," and "
Was it a heart attack? He always ate those goddamned hot fudge sundaes."

  They sat her in the kitchen and Jenkins asked if he could make her some coffee or tea, and she said yes, and Jenkins got cups and Folgers instant and stuck them in the microwave. Lucas said, "Ms. Brown? I know you're upset, but listen, Lyle wasn't killed by a heart attack. He was murdered, apparently after the bar closed. We need to know who you think might have been involved with Joe, and Lyle, these last few months."

  She asked the dreaded question: "Should I have an attorney?"

  Jenkins jumped in, trying to kill the question: "We know Joe didn't do it, because we talked to Joe, and he's down in Kansas somewhere. We think he's running for Mexico. Also, their father, Ike, was killed."

  "Ike? They killed Ike? Oh my God, who are they?"

  "We were hoping you could give us some help," Lucas said. "For one thing, it looks like they're eliminating people who knew about the hospital robbery. We think they'll try to get Joe, we think they'll try to get the witness at the hospital. We've got to stop this, right now."

  A little chip of flint appeared in her eyes, as she looked up at him: "I don't know," she said. "I don't know if they were involved. I know they were scared of you. Listen, are you sure it was Lyle?"

  "I was looking at him a half hour ago," Lucas said. "It was Lyle."

  She stared into the middle distance for a moment, chewing on her lower lip, then said, "I don't know if they were involved with this hospital thing--it sounds crazy to me--but I heard them talking a couple times about a guy they called the doc. Like doctor. But I don't know if the doc was at the hospital, or was just a guy named Doc."

  "Do you know anybody named Doc?" Jenkins asked.

  "You know, there's about one in every bar. But there wasn't one at Cherries, as far as I know," she said. "How did they do it?"