Storm prey ld-20

by John Sandford

  "I think they're too scared of me."

  Barakat shook his head. "Scared now. Scared if they're locked in a jail, with more bikeists in there?"

  "Bikers…"

  "Bikers. They'll have friends in prison," Barakat said. "We won't. They will deal us. That's all I worry about now. I pray that Joe Mack is killed by the police, but I'm thinking, for both of us… maybe we could make it happen."

  "What's in it for me?"

  "I have no money," Barakat said. "I'm slave labor at the hospital, until I finish. Then there are possibilities. But one thing we know. We know that the Macks have a million dollars of medical-quality drugs. If you would help, if we could find Joe Mack… I could get him to tell us where they are. I know they are not yet moved."

  Cappy thought again. Then, "How'd you do that? Get him to talk?"

  Barakat spread his hands: "I'm a doctor. I have scalpels."

  "I gotta think about it some more," Cappy said.

  "But you're not saying 'no."'

  "Well, you got some good points," Cappy said. "I hadn't thought about… you know, they could sell me out for doing the woman. I mean, hell, except for the guy they kicked at the hospital, I'm the only one who's killed anyone."

  They both pondered it for a minute, then Barakat said, "This is a very interesting name that you have. 'Caprice.' In English it means an unpredictable action, does it not?"

  "I don't know," Cappy said. "I don't know if it's a real word in English."

  "Yes, it is. I remember it, because it's also a word in French-a kind of musical composition."

  "You can speak French?"

  "Yes. And Arabic."

  "Huh." Cappy was impressed. 'All I know is, my old man told me I was named after an "eighty-two Chevy."

  Barakat smiled at the idea-naming your son for a car-then glanced at his watch. "If we're going to go, we have to go now."

  "Better go," Cappy said. "Tell the truth, I'd like to catch that bitch somewhere. She almost ran my ass over. Just couldn't believe it; cut me off, then almost ran me over."

  Barakat laughed: "LA car talk," he said.

  He was quite taken with Caprice, and slapped the boy on the back as they went out.

  Inside the hospital, Barakat led him to the closet, showed him how to wear the orderly's uniform, clipped the ID on his chest. "If anybody asks, you work in sanitation, and your boss, whose name is Rob Jansen, gave you a map and told you to spend the morning learning the hospital. Stay out of the basement. Jansen's office is there."

  Easy enough to do.

  Cappy ghosted down the hallways, patients, doctors and nurses, visitors, coming and going, all the time: people lying on gurneys, in wheelchairs, shuffling down the halls, sometimes towing bags of saline mounted on wheeled racks; people staring out of hospital rooms, watching television; beeps and boops from equipment, chimes from elevators, more laughter than you'd think.

  He got a quick sandwich in the cafeteria, actually helped move a patient from one floor to the other, on a cart. Pushed a guy in a wheelchair to an elevator, took him to the cafeteria, the guy breathing oxygen from a bottle on the back of the chair, who said, when they arrived, "Thanks, son."

  He thought at first that the other orderlies would look him over, but nobody paid any attention to him; after a while, he began to get the feeling that he was effectively invisible. He asked about, and located, the special operating room for the twins. Barakat had told him about the overhead observation room, and he found that, looked it over. Thought: Can't take her here.

  There'd be too many people around…

  Started on an idea.

  If he could wait in a doorway, on a hall where she'd pass by, he could shoot her, slam the door, block the door somehow, and run for it. The place was such a tangle of hallways that if he worked out an escape route in advance, he'd probably make it out…

  But that meant watching her for a while, so he'd know where she went. And watching her meant that a lot of other people would see his face around.

  Maybe he could simply wait for the twins' operation, and watch her. When she got ready to leave the hospital room, he could run down the stairs, shoot her when she came out-thirty feet or so-step back into the stairwell.

  If he'd stashed a piece of two-by-four in the stairwell ahead of time, he could wedge it between the door and the bottom step, and that would block the door as effectively as a padlock.

  He could then run up or down the stairs, mix with the other uniforms, and disappear into the crazy maze of hallways.

  Be out of the place in four or five minutes.

  Maybe.

  10

  Virgil, Lucas, and Shrake saw Weather safely into the hospital, all the way to the women's locker room. "Do not go off by yourself," Lucas told her. "Virgil can be there in one minute. Don't get a Coke or a candy bar. Just call him."

  "I will," she said, but she said it in a way that made Lucas turn back to her.

  "Weather, if you don't, I'll be sincerely pissed off. I mean it," he said. "There's a guy in this hospital who might be trying to kill you."

  "I'll call," she promised.

  A pretty blond nurse, carrying a load of fresh scrubs, had piled up behind them, and she said to Lucas, "We'll take care of her."

  "I'd appreciate it," Lucas said. "And I want you to rat her out, if she cheats. This is serious stuff."

  The nurse nodded, paused as she passed Virgil, and said, "How're you doing?"

  Virgil said, "How're you doing yourself?"

  "I'm doing fine…"

  Weather hooked her by the arm and said, "Don't flirt with the hired help," and they went inside, the nurse turning to wiggle her fingers at Virgil, who wiggled back.

  Lucas said to Shrake, "She didn't say, 'How're you doing?' to us."

  Shrake said, "She was saying it to me, but that fuckin' Flowers jumped in front of me."

  "I'm so hot," Virgil said. He touched a thigh with a fingertip and made the steam sound: "Chhhh."

  Lucas covered his eyes in mock embarrassment, and Shrake laughed and said to Virgil, "You're so fuckin' gay."

  Lucas and Shrake drove back across town to the BCA to meet with an agent named Lannie Tote, a gang-squad guy who specialized in the Seed, and Del. They picked up Del, who was talking to Lucas's secretary, and found Tote in Frank Harris's office. Tote was a thin man, a runner, who dressed in conservative gray suits with white business shirts and dark blue neckties with American flag pins on the lapel. He had a reputation for being conservative and Christian and competent.

  Lucas told them what had happened to that point. They knew the outline, but not the details. When they were done, Harris asked, "Where are you on Joe Mack? Eighty percent?"

  "Ninety-nine percent," Lucas said. "What we need, ideally, is a guy we can really put the screws on. We need to get a biography of the Macks. We need to know who they hang with, who'd be likely to stick Joe up in the attic, even knowing what he's done."

  "Have you talked to their old man? Ike? He'd do it," Tote said.

  "Where's he at?" Lucas asked.

  "Up by Spooner. Got a place back in the woods. Works at an auto-parts store in town, does custom work on old Harleys. Does some welding."

  "A bad guy?" Del asked.

  "You know, small time," Tote said. "All the Macks are small time. Lyle is the pinnacle of Mack achievement. There was a rumor that Ike used to cook up some meth and move it through his boys, but quit when it got too hot. I'm pretty sure he buys stolen bikes, takes them apart, uses the parts on his custom jobs."

  "You got anything we could use as a lever?"

  Tote shook his head. "We don't pay too much attention to him-he doesn't run with the gang guys anymore. Too old, and what… mmm… eight, nine years back, he had to lay his bike down, up on Highway 53. Busted his legs in about twenty places, and his pelvis. He gets around, but he's pretty hobbled."

  Harris showed a thin smile: "So if he runs on you guys, you can probably catch him."

  "Not funny," Shrake s
aid.

  Lucas asked, "Who else, guys? I'd like to get a name where you've got a lever. Somebody who'll spill his guts."

  "Ansel Clark," Tote said, after a moment's hesitation. "I was going to hold him back until I had time to really debrief him."

  "What's his story?" Del asked.

  Clark, Tote said, was locked up in the state penitentiary at Stillwater. He'd gotten a five-year sentence for an armed robbery in Forest Lake, in which a bypasser had recognized him. The bypasser hadn't recognized Clark's accomplice, but Clark had given him up for a sentence reduction. "He's not a popular guy. Every time Clark gets a new TV, somebody'd shoot it full of WD40 and it'd be ruined. The prison guys turned the cell around, so the set's on the back wall, but he's already lost three of them, and he's got no money, no family or friends on the outside to get him one."

  "He needs a TV," Shrake said.

  "He's pretty desperate," Tote said. "The last time they had a lockdown, all he had in his cell was an old AARP magazine and a picture dictionary. Didn't even have anything with which to… entertain himself."

  "No stroke books," Shrake said.

  Lucas was friendly with the head of the department of corrections, who hooked him up with an assistant warden at Stillwater.

  "If anybody sees him talking to you, he'll have bigger problems than he already has," the warden said. "But come on; I'll figure out something."

  Lucas and Del went together, a half-hour ride, checked in, and got with the assistant warden, whose name was Jon Orff. Orff came down to the entry hall to get them, led them back through a maze of offices.

  "I had the guy who's in charge of disciplinary action pull him off the job," Orff said. "He's down in an isolation unit. Should be okay."

  They rattled down through the prison, through security gates, to isolation, a bunch of human-sized metal lunch boxes. Orff had the guard pop the electronic lock and they went in. Clark, a heavy, soft-looking man with a small brown mustache, was lying on the bunk, feet crossed, staring at the ceiling. He sat up when they came in.

  "Now what?" he asked. He had one uncontrolled eye that would wander toward the outside edge of his eye socket, then pop back to the center.

  "We're cops," Lucas said. "We need to talk to you about some friends of yours."

  "Ah, man, they're gonna break my arms out there," he said.

  "That's why we were careful about putting you in here. And you'll stay for a couple days," Orff said.

  "What do I get?" Clark asked. His eye wandered off.

  "I'll leave two hundred fifty dollars with Jon, earmarked for a TV," Lucas said.

  Clark brightened, but then tried to frown. "That's it?"

  "That's it," Lucas said. "We're not asking you to talk about anybody in here. We want to know about the Mack brothers."

  "I'm gonna have to have something more," Clark said.

  "There is no more," Del said. "We're buying this TV out of our own pockets. The courts aren't involved, the prosecutors, nobody. We can't do a thing for you, except the TV"

  "How about some lunch money, some-"

  "Nothing," Lucas said. He looked at his watch. "If you pick out a cheap TV, you can have the rest of the two-fifty. Start talking, or we start walking. We don't have time to screw around."

  Clark scratched his mustache, arched his eyebrows, and said, "Be a hardass. Okay. I don't know what I can tell you…"

  "How well do you know the Macks?"

  "Pretty good. We used to hang together, years ago. When they were just getting started with Cherries. I'd still go by a couple nights a week, when I was in the Cities."

  "Joe Mack is on the run, on a kidnap-murder," Del said. "Who'd put him up? Who'd hide him?"

  "You know about his dad over in Wisconsin…"

  "Yeah, Ike. We're headed that way."

  "You know… murder-kidnap doesn't sound like Joe. Was he high on something?"

  "Not as far as we know. He did it cold-strangled a woman. Mother of two little daughters."

  "Jeez. That really doesn't sound like Joe. You sure you got the right guy?"

  "Yes. He flipped out," Lucas said. "Look, you haven't earned a TV set yet."

  "A guy named Phil Lighter, who lives west of here, somewhere," Clark said. "West of Stillwater. He drives for a limo service over in Minneapolis."

  "How are they connected?" Del asked.

  "Old friends. Go back to school. This one time, some school-kids found a dead wolf with his tail cut off, and they called the game wardens, and somebody said Phil had been driving round with a bushy tail on his car, and they went looking for him," Clark said. His eye wandered off, he blinked, and it popped back. "The story was, Phil went down and hid out with Joe for the rest of the winter and spring. By the summer, when he went back home, the wardens, you know, they'd given it up. They didn't have any real proof, and the case was so long gone, they'd just moved on, I guess."

  "So he owes Joe," Orff said.

  "Well, that was a long time ago. But, you know what I mean. They're that kind of buddies. I mean them crick dicks, they get pretty harsh if you go killing a wolf."

  "Who else?" Del asked.

  "I only know one more where he might hide, this guy named James…"

  When they walked out of the prison, leaving behind an envelope with $250, Del said, "This James guy sounds like a figment of somebody's imagination. But I'd like to talk to Lighter."

  "Yeah." Lucas looked at his cell phone: call from Virgil, a half hour past. Lucas punched the redial and Virgil came up.

  "You oughta come over here," Virgil said. "I got somebody I want you to hear."

  "Weather's okay?"

  "Yeah, she's doing something right now. Some kid was messing around with a nail gun, and nailed his face."

  "Be there in half an hour," Lucas said.

  Virgil was sitting in the lounge reading a Men's Journal when Lucas and Del walked in. He dropped it on the couch and stood up and stretched and said, "Weather just called me. She's done, but she has to hang around for a while-she needs to talk to some parents about care, and stuff."

  "So what's up?" Lucas asked.

  "Come on back," Lucas said. "I got to chatting with this woman, this nurse, who was in the pharmacy when the old guy got kicked to death."

  "Baker," Lucas remembered.

  "Yeah. Dorothy." Virgil led them down a couple of corridors, to a small office full of nurses looking at clipboards and files. He spotted Baker, who was staring at a computer screen, and called, "Dorothy…"

  Baker saw him, smiled, walked across the room, and Virgil held the door so she could step into the hallway. Virgil said, "Let's go down to the lounge in Imaging."

  They found a waiting area for people lined up for CAT scans; nobody there, and they took chairs, and Virgil introduced them. Then Virgil said, "So I was talking with Dorothy, here, about the idea that one of these guys was a doctor. I asked her why she thought he might be a doctor."

  He nodded at Baker, who turned to Lucas and Del and said, "I didn't really remember why I thought that, until I was talking to Virgil…" She patted Virgil's arm. "… and then I remember, when we were going over everything, word for word, that one of these men asked, 'What about this?' And the other man said, 'Lortab. It's hydrocodone with acetaminophen.' The way he knew that, and the way he said, 'a-seat-a-min-o-phen,' which is this funny-looking word if you don't say it all the time, made me think he was a doctor." She hesitated, then said, "Maybe."

  "The next thing is, Dorothy told the Minneapolis cops that he had some kind of an accent. The guy who came in later, who they didn't see. So, I'm pretty good with accents…"

  She laughed, and patted his arm again. "Every one of his accents sounds exactly the same. Like Wile E. Coyote."

  "That's not what you said at the time," Virgil said.

  "But she's right," Del said.

  Baker said, "Virgil got me laughing, and then we were trying out all those accents, you know, Mexican, German, French. And I thought, you know, he did sound like a Frenc
h guy. But I couldn't swear to it."

  "And that's about it," Virgil said to Lucas. He turned to Dorothy. "You've been great. Thank you."

  "If there's anything else, just call," she said.

  When she was gone, Virgil said, "I believe her about the doctor thing. Del says, why would a doc go down for that little money? But I just believe her. She talks to doctors and nurses and administration people and orderlies all day, and if she said the guy was a doc, I believe it. Then, when she decided that the accent might have been French…"

  Lucas took a minute to get it: Gabriel Maret.

  He said, "Ah, boy. Do we know where Gabe was, when Weather arrived?"

  "He got there a couple minutes before she did," Virgil said. "He was still in street clothes. They were talking outside the OR."

  "Now I don't know what to do," Lucas said. "And I don't buy it, Virgil-he's a good man. Not only that, he's got a load of money."

  "For sure?"

  Lucas made a face, then, "Well, that's what I understand."

  "Okay. But I thought I should run it by you. You're the big guy."

  Lucas said, "Let's see how many more Frenchies there are in the hospital. Medical people who know how to say a-ceet-ohmy-a-fin."

  Virgil corrected him, "A-seat-a-min-o-phen."

  "Let's see how many there are," Lucas said. "Christ, I don't even want to mention this to Weather. She's gonna go ballistic."

  "You could chicken out-tip Marcy's investigators, let them take the heat," Del said.

  Lucas: "I suppose."

  "But not really," Del said. "It's our find. We oughta run with it."

  "What Del said," Virgil said.

  Lucas nodded, then grinned at them: "Not gonna let those clown shoes from Minneapolis take it away from us, huh?" He thought for a moment, then said, "Okay. But I'm not telling Weather about Gabe. He's a friend of ours."

  "Somebody ought to mention it," Virgil said.

  Lucas looked at him, and said, "Yeah. Somebody should."

  Virgil would start looking for people with French accents who worked in the hospital, Lucas decided, since he was there most of the day anyway. "I'll get Shrake and Jenkins to haul Weather back home, so you can stay late," Lucas told Virgil. "Del and I are gonna jack up a guy named Lighter."