Storm prey ld-20

by John Sandford

"Just about bald," Lucas said.

  "Then he got that way since the weekend," Melicek said. "Last time I saw him, he, well, he looked like that drawing."

  Shrake said, "If you weren't short, fat, and male, I'd kiss you on the lips."

  "Hey, that's okay," Melicek said. "I can live without it."

  7

  Back at Lucas's office, late now, they went to the computers, looking for Joe Mack mug shots, found his driver's license ID photo-and Melicek had been telling the truth. When the ID photo was taken, Joe Mack had a full head of hair and a curly reddish-blond beard. Lucas pulled the photo up as a.jpg, called Letty, his daughter, a night owl, on her cell phone, and said, "I'm going to e-mail you a.jpg. Get your mom to look at it. Get her on the phone."

  "I think she's in bed."

  "Ah, poop."

  "But she says she's not working early tomorrow. I could get her up."

  "See if she's sound asleep. If she's not, get her up."

  He sent the photo along and then Letty came back and said, "She wasn't asleep. She's coming."

  "You got the photo…"

  She said, "Not yet," and then yelled, "Mom? Mom! Come here."

  A minute later Weather came on, sounding sleepy, and asked, "What photo?"

  "A guy who could be your robber," and in the background, he heard Letty say, "Got it."

  Weather said, "Hang on," and then, a moment later, "Jeez, Lucas, that could be him. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but it looks like him. I mean, I'm sixty percent."

  "All right. Is Virgil still there?"

  "Yes. He's in the front room. Jenkins comes and goes-he's cruising the neighborhood in his car."

  "What time do you go in tomorrow?"

  "They're holding the kids in the Intensive Care. They reevaluate at nine o'clock. I need to be there for that."

  "Good. We'll get some sleep. I'll be home in twenty minutes."

  He checked the time, decided not to call Marcy. There wouldn't be much to do in the middle of the night. He'd call her first thing in the morning. To Shrake, he said, "I'll drop you, you can get some sleep, and meet me back at my place at eight-thirty. Call Jenkins, tell him I'll be home in fifteen minutes, and he can take off, too. If he wants to come along, we'd appreciate seeing him at eight-thirty."

  Shrake nodded, pulled his cell phone, and speed-dialed Jenkins. "We're going after Joe?"

  "I'll talk to Marcy tomorrow, decide what we want to do. Weather couldn't give us a hundred percent, based on the photo, but she thinks it looks like him. We'll have to talk, before we hit him."

  Shrake nodded, got Jenkins up. "Got a break, big guy. Well, you know, I was doing the investigating. Davenport was backing me up…" SNOW WAS SPITTING down the street when they got to Lucas's place, small nasty hard crystals that ricocheted off the windshield and over the top. Jenkins's Crown Vic was parked in front of the neighbor's house, a curl of exhaust coming out the back, and its headlights flicked a couple of times when Lucas turned in the driveway. Lucas blinked his own lights, paused to let Shrake out, said, "See you tomorrow," eased around Virgil's 4Runner, and pulled into the garage.

  Inside the house, Virgil was standing by the kitchen arch when Lucas came in the back door; he and Letty had been watching television when they saw the lights in the driveway. "It's quiet," Virgil said. "Weather's in bed. What's the story on the photo?"

  Lucas peeled off his coat and told Virgil and Letty about the day. When he was done, Virgil said, "It sounds like ninety percent that he's the guy, forty percent that we could convict him."

  "Yeah, but these guys aren't exactly geniuses, either," Lucas said. "We'll set up surveillance with the gang guys and the Minneapolis cops, then we go in tomorrow and bust Joe's chops. See what he does. Maybe we'll panic him."

  "I'll stick with Weather," Virgil said. "She thinks she'll be downtown all day."

  Lucas said, "Don't forget, there has to be an inside guy. Stick close."

  "Close as they'll let me," Virgil said. "They get antsy about guns."

  Letty said, "Mom's pretty worried about the twins. She was talking to Gabriel tonight about which was worse, going slow or going fast. She says if they guess wrong, Sara's going to die."

  "She's a little more involved this time," Lucas said.

  "A lot more involved," Letty said, nodding. "She's not even thinking about somebody trying to kill her. She thinks that's all over, or that you guys will take care of it. She's, like, totally focused on the twins."

  In the morning, Lucas called Frank Harris, the BCA gang guy, and told him what they'd learned.

  "Pretty interesting," Harris said. "What do you want to do?"

  "My other guys are either working nights, or are covering Weather," Lucas said. "I can pull Del Capslock, have him help out, but I won't be able to get him until later. We could use one more BCA guy. I'll get Minneapolis to kick in a guy."

  "I'll send Dan Martin over. He knows most of the Seed guys by sight."

  When he was done with Harris, Lucas called Marcy Sherrill at home, filled her in. "Do we have enough for a search warrant?" she asked.

  "Not yet. I went over it with Weather. She says it could be him, but she wouldn't swear to it in a court."

  "So what do you want to do?"

  "Jack him up," Lucas said.

  "I'll come with you."

  "I thought you might. Listen, we're thinking we should leave a team behind, in case we stir something up. If you've got a guy…"

  They got Letty off to school, and Sam went with the housekeeper to toddler playtime at the Episcopal Church, and Virgil, Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins did the caravan down to the hospital. Jenkins would stay with Virgil and Weather, they decided, while Shrake and Lucas went over to Minneapolis, where they'd hook up with Marcy and one of her investigators, and Martin, the BCA gang investigator.

  Marcy showed up in her ass-busting outfit, lady-cop slacks with Spandex panels and shoes that looked like women's flats, until a closer look revealed the Nike swoosh on the back and a wedge-shaped aluminum toe-pants and shoes that you could run and fight in. She had her gun clipped on her hip, under a green military-style sweater with nylon elbow patches, which complemented her dark hair and eyes.

  After everybody was introduced, with a certain amount of dog-sniffing-Lucas didn't know Phil Dickens, the detective she'd brought along, and the Minneapolis cops hadn't known Martin-they agreed that Lucas, Marcy, and Shrake would confront Joe Mack, while Dickens and Martin bracketed the front and back doors, close enough that they could be called for help, far enough away that they could watch the bar after Lucas, Marcy, and Shrake left, in case the Macks did something interesting… like try to run.

  "We're not expecting an arrest, unless he blurts something out," Marcy said. "We're hoping he reacts somehow. Does something that'll give us something."

  "Do we know where he is right now?" Shrake asked.

  "No. The first thing we need to do is nail down his location," she said. "The bar doesn't open until three o'clock, but Lucas gets the idea that he's there quite a bit of the time. We check the bar first, then go on over to his apartment in Woodbury. The cops there know we might be coming." THE SUN was climbing out of the deep well of winter, but it was still brutally cold. Old saying: As the days get longer, the cold gets stronger. Still, if Lucas pretended hard enough, he could smell the early edge of spring. Something, somewhere, was beginning to melt-probably, he thought, in Missouri. Just not here.

  The five of them went in four cars, Lucas and Shrake together, Marcy, Dickens, and Martin in separate cars, out of Minneapolis, through St. Paul, south on I-35E. They'd made the turn south when Lucas's cell phone burped: Marcy, calling from her car.

  "What's up?"

  "We got the lab report from your DNA people," she said. "We got a match on Haines. He was the guy scratched by Peterson."

  "Excellent. We're tying it up," Lucas said.

  "I'm going to use it on Mack," she said.

  The bar in daylight looked like most crappy bars look in dayl
ight: crappy. Purple paint and concrete block and dirty snow piles and neon signs; though it might be possible to believe that you were honky-tonkin' if you only saw it at night; in daylight, it was clear that you were actually arm-pittin'.

  Martin and Dickens set up first, one watching the back of the bar, the other the front. Martin called Lucas and said Joe Mack's van was parked in back, along with an SUV owned by a Harriet B. Brown and a fifteen-year-old Chevrolet owned by a guy named Lenert from Rochester.

  "I'm running Brown and we're not coming up with much. She's thirty-nine years old, blue eyes, a hundred twenty, five-six, lives down in Dakota County. Got a couple speeding tickets in three years. Lenert, I've got nothing."

  Lucas passed the word to Marcy. "Good. Let's go straight in."

  They went straight in, parking in empty spaces on either side of the front door, and found the door open. A woman behind the bar called, "We're not open yet," and Marcy said, "We're police. We're here to talk to Joe Mack."

  "Uh…" The woman's eyes flicked toward the door to the back. Another man, who had been working on one of the game machines, stopped working to watch. Lucas asked, "Who are you?"

  He said, "Uh, Dan Lenert… Mid-State Vending and Games."

  "Okay." Lucas turned back to the bartender. "We were here last night, we know the way."

  Shrake asked, "Are you Harriet Brown?"

  "Honey Bee Brown," she said. "I had my name changed. How'd you know that?"

  "Ran the plates on your car," Shrake said. "You're the bartender."

  "Uh-huh. What's going on?"

  Lucas was already behind the bar, headed for the door, Marcy a step behind him. "We're investigating the Haines-Chapman murders."

  "What?"

  No question that she was shocked. Lucas stopped and asked, "Did you know them well?"

  "Well, sure, but the last time I talked to them… Christ, it was only a couple nights ago. They said they were going to Green Bay. They had a friend over there who had a job for them."

  "Who was that?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know. But they're dead?"

  "Yes. I'm sorry."

  "God, the brothers are gonna be freaked," she said.

  "They know," Lucas said. "We told them last night."

  "They know? They didn't even tell me?"

  Lucas said, again, "I'm sorry."

  Brown turned on her heel and pushed through the swinging door into the back, and Lucas looked at Shrake and Marcy, shrugged, and followed her.

  The back of the bar was cold, with the loading dock door open. A beer distributor's truck was parked in the garage-door opening, and a heavyset man in a Budweiser shirt was moving kegs and cases in and out of the storage area on a dolly. They turned the corner, to the small office.

  The door was closed, but through the window they saw Joe Mack sitting inside, facing a skinhead on the other side of a desk. They were both looking up at Honey Bee Brown, who was screaming at Joe Mack. They could hear the screams, but couldn't make out the words. Lucas said to Marcy, "That's him behind the desk," and he saw Mack look up, see them, and say to the skinhead, though he couldn't hear the word, "Cops."

  The skinhead turned to look at him-a prematurely bald twenty-five or so, Lucas thought, a white kid with ghetto eyes and work muscles, rather than gym muscles. His flat blue eyes looked at Lucas without fear or sympathy, and he shook his head and tapped some papers on the desk. Honey Bee started shouting again, but the skinhead said something that shut her up. She turned and stormed past them, tears running down her cheeks, saying, as she passed, "What a bunch of fuckin' fuckers."

  Marcy watched her go: "Must have one of those fuck-words-a-day calendars," she said.

  Lucas knocked on the office door, and Joe Mack stood up and opened it.

  "We need to talk to you," Lucas said. "Now."

  "Just finishing up," Joe Mack said. "I sold my van."

  Lucas recognized the titling papers, and nodded. The skinhead asked Joe Mack, "We all done?"

  "Take it all down to the DMV, and it's yours. Gotta get insurance right away, though. I'm calling my insurance company today and canceling mine."

  "Do that, but I think my other insurance covers me for thirty days," the skinhead said.

  "Don't fuck it up. Throw some extra boxes if you got to," Joe Mack said.

  The skinhead stood up and squeezed past Lucas. "Pardon me," he said. His voice was toneless, nothing implied at all. He walked past the Budweiser guy, hopped off the ramp, jingling the keys Joe Mack had given him. "So what's up?" Joe Mack asked.

  The ramp was cold, so Lucas, Marcy, and Shrake squeezed into the small office and closed the door. Marcy took the visitor's chair, while Lucas stood against the wall and Shrake against the door.

  Marcy identified herself, and then said, "You know these guys." She waved at Lucas and Shrake. "So, Joe. We talked to a bunch of people last night, and some lab people this morning, and a witness to the robbery at University Hospitals, and your name kept coming up. First of all, we identified Michael Haines with a DNA test as one of the men who robbed the hospital. We got a whole bunch of people to tell us that you and your brother are the people closest to Chapman and Haines, and that you and your brother are the most likely people around to move a big load of drugs out of the Cities down the Seed pipelines to the Angels on the West Coast or the Outlaws on the East Coast. And lastly, we've got a witness who saw you coming out of the parking garage at the hospitals, and who has identified you from a photo on your driver's license. We know all about the haircut and the shave, and when you got them. We thought you might have something to say about that."

  Joe Mack was staring at her with increasing fascination, and when she finished, sat with his mouth open for a few seconds, then said, "That's bullshit." But he said it with the peculiar downcast despondency that said he did do it; and that they all knew it.

  Lucas relaxed: almost done here. "Joe, this is a murder charge. But there's a lot of other stuff going on. Somebody's trying to kill the witness, but that won't happen now. We've got her totally hidden and covered-and if you're not in on that part, we can probably cut a deal with you. If you are in on that part… then, you know, you do the crime, you do the time."

  There was a knock on the door, and Shrake leaned forward, away from the door, opened it a crack and said, "We're having a private meeting here." Honey Bee Brown got her face wedged in the crack of the door and said to Joe Mack, "You asshole, Shooter and Mikey are dead. What kind of bullshit deal is that? They were our friends, but you just don't give a shit." She started to cry.

  Joe Mack said to her, "Aw, Honey, I don't know what the fuck is going on. These guys say Mike held up the hospital."

  Shrake said, "Miss Brown, Honey Bee, we need to have some privacy here, we're interviewing-"

  From behind them all, the Budweiser guy called, "Hey, Joe-you gotta sign the invoice. I'm running late."

  Joe Mack said, "Oh, for Christ's sakes," and he said to Shrake and Lucas, "This'll take one minute." Honey Bee stepped back and Joe Mack stepped around the desk to where the Budweiser guy was waiting with a slate computer, and he said to Joe Mack, "Okay, we've got sixteen…"

  And Joe Mack was gone. He stepped past Lucas, cleared Shrake, and suddenly sprinted past the Budweiser guy through the crack of daylight between the back of the truck and the edge of the garage door and off the dock.

  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.