Storm Prey (21 page)

"Crazy is better than dead," Lucas said. "That's my rule of thumb." He sniffed himself again. "Jesus, that guy smelled bad. You know? Some people just stink."

11

TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE Barakat's shift was due to end, a kid was brought in from a back-street traffic accident. He had a couple of cuts on his forehead, probably from airbag shrapnel, and his stomach "felt really bad."

Barakat ran him through the hospital's blunt trauma protocol and learned that he'd been using a laptop in the passenger seat, and when the car hit the truck, the laptop had been jammed into the kid's gut. Barakat thought, Liver, and talked to the shell-shocked mother for a minute, then got the scans going, woke up the radiologist and cranked up a surgeon, just in case.

By the time everything was in place, he was running almost two hours overtime, for which he would not be paid. He went back to the locker room, changed clothes, and did a twist of coke to pick himself up. Hated overtime.

He did another twist, washed his face, got his shoes on, and headed out. On the way, a senior medical guy slapped him on the back and said, "Nice call. The boy's going into the OR right now."

"That's great," Barakat said. "I had a feeling that something was going on in there." A little self-aggrandizement, combined with discreet, comradely sucking up, just might get him to Paris.

Or LA, anyway.

BY THE TIME he got to the parking ramp, it was fully dark and colder than it had been in the morning. The wind was coming from the northeast, which, he'd learned from watching local weather programs, meant it might snow. He shivered against it, pulled his coat collar closer, and hurried to his car.

"Hey, bro."

Cappy was there, getting out of a white van a few spaces down from Barakat's car. Barakat stiffened: Had Cappy told Lyle Mack about their discussion that morning, and Lyle sent Cappy to resolve the problem? There was nobody else in the ramp; they were alone in the dark.

Barakat said, "You know, you're parked in a physician's space. That's a good way to get noticed."

Cappy came slouching up. "Don't worry, I'm not here to hit ya." And he grinned: "That's what you were thinking about, weren't you?"

Barakat bit back a direct answer. "What's that weak cigarette you're smoking? It smells like a sewage-plant fire."

Cappy looked at his cigarette: "Just a Camel."

"Give me that," Barakat said. He took the cigarette, dropped it on the ramp, ground it out with his foot. "Try one of these." He shook out a Gauloise. "Smuggled in from Canada," he said. The relief was surging through him like a flood tide.

He held his lighter and Cappy took a drag: "Holy shit."

"So did you see her?" Barakat asked.

"Yes, I did. I even followed her home," Cappy said. He let the harsh smoke drift out through his nostrils: better than a hit of NyQuil. "She's got three bodyguards, at least, and they've got shotguns and I suppose their pistols and all. If I'm going to do her, I'll have to figure something out."

"Listen to me, Caprice. You must be maximum careful," Barakat said. "I agree, it may be necessary, for your own satisfaction. This is what men sometimes have to do."

"She sorta punked me," Cappy said.

"This is what I am saying." Barakat paused, then said, "I need something to eat. There's a diner in St. Paul, we could talk."

Cappy said, "Sure." He took a drag on the Gauloise. "Give me another one of those, hey?"

Barakat took one for himself and gave the pack to Cappy.

THEY GOT a booth at the Snelling Diner, and after the waitress had taken their orders, Barakat held up a twist and said, "I gotta use the men's room. I'll be right back." He went in the men's room, into the toilet stall, sucked up the twist, wiped his nose, checked himself in the mirror before he went back out. Back in the booth, Cappy asked, "You got another one of those?"

Barakat said, "One more," and pushed the twist across the table. Cappy took it and went back to the men's room, and two minutes later, was back. "That's better'n Wheaties," he said.

"I don't know ..."

"Never mind. Anyway, I've been thinking about Joe and Lyle. Those rascals hired me to get rid of this doctor chick and this kidnap chick and Shooter and Mikey, who was supposed to be their friends, and you know what? I was thinking about what you said, and you're right. They'll try to do me in, when I finish with the doctor chick. If I do her, then I'd be the last link, huh? Or you would be."

Barakat ticked a finger at him: "Now you are thinking correctly. But ..."

"But?"

"You, my friend, may have to kill the woman anyway. I don't know; maybe you don't think so. Women are nothing. Nothing. I don't care if she's a surgeon. That's just some ... bullshit. But still: it would not do your dignity any good to let this woman pass."

"I gotta think about it some more," Cappy said. "I kind of got a plan."

He explained, and Barakat thought the same thing that Cappy thought when he looked into the mirror: this boy is not long for the world. He didn't say that. It would be useful, though, if he took Karkinnen with him, when he went. He asked, "Have you heard any more about the Macks?"

Cappy scratched his chin, his eyes wandering away for a moment. "I talked to Lyle," he said. "I might know where Joe is. Lyle sent Shooter and Mikey out to his bartender's house. The bartender's like his girl, but I think Joe might be fuckin' her, too. Anyway, I think that's probably where he is. It's way out in the country. Nobody would ever find him out there, unless they were told about it. That's where we took Mikey and Shooter."

The waitress came with their shakes, burgers, and fries, and when she was gone again, Cappy asked, "So what do you think?"

"I think we go after Joe," Barakat said.

"If we take Joe, we might have to take Lyle. They're pretty tight."

Barakat said, "So?"

The coke was on top of both of them now, and they were stuffing the fries into their mouths, eyes bright, faces animated. "Do that, we gotta figure out where they put that dope," Cappy mumbled through the potatoes.

They snarled through the rest of the meal, and when wiping their hands and faces with paper napkins, Barakat asked, "Why didn't you take Joe when you could have? At the airport?"

Cappy raised his eyebrows, shook his head. "Hell, you know, I wasn't thinking about it. I was there to do the chick. I had a contract, you know, with the brothers: so I went and did it. I only got to thinking about it later, when you brought it up. If it wasn't for the doctor chick, and then the kidnapping, I'd let it go. Trust that they'd keep their mouths shut, and that we could ride it out. That's not going to happen, now. If they catch Joe without killing him ..."

"We better get him," Barakat said.

Cappy suggested that they would have to wait until the next day: "Honey Bee usually goes home about seven o'clock. If she's there, she adds to the problem."

"All right, but tomorrow ..." He stopped, and looked around. "We should talk about this somewhere else. My place is two minutes from here."

THEY WENT to Barakat's and Barakat brought out the cocaine again, still far enough from a shortage that he didn't worry about it. The coke helped with that attitude, steadied him with its cold clearheadedness, its chemical confidence, the sense of potency.

They started to argue.

"You go in there with a gun, you can't pussy out," Cappy told him. "The second that Joe figures out what you're doing, he'll be all over you. He's a tough guy, you know. A little stupid, but he can fight. Strong as an ox. You gotta put the gun on him and keep it there."

"No worry," Barakat said. "I'm no pussy."

"You know what does it? It's that accent, you know?" Cappy said, his eyes glowing. "It's kind of a pussy accent. What kind of accent is that, anyway?"

"There's nothing pussy about my accent," Barakat said. "I'm Lebanese, I speak French, you know, I have a French accent in English."

"You an Arab?"

"No. I am a descendant of the Phoenicians. The Arabs come from Arabia. My family, we were in Lebanon since Adam."

"Whatever the fuck all that means," Cappy said. He lit one of the Gauloises and added, "I just hope you don't pussy out."

Barakat stared at him for a second, then jumped out of his chair and stormed into the bedroom. Poured coke into his hand, pulled it through his nose in a burst that was as cold as an icicle. Snatched open the closet door, and found the gun. A minute later, he was back with the .45. "You think I'm a pussy?" he demanded.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Cappy said. He pulled his feet up on the couch. He'd always thought that he wasn't long for this life, but he didn't want to cut it any shorter than necessary.

"I'm not a pussy," Barakat said. He wiped his face and nose with his free hand. "You fuckin' American gangsters, you think you're the only people who can do this. You know nothing at all." He yanked the magazine out of the .45, tested the spring with his thumb, and slapped it back in the butt and jacked a shell into the chamber, pointed the barrel at the ceiling.

"You think--"

"Dude--"

Barakat pulled the trigger, and the gun went off with a deafening explosion, and a trickle of plaster fell from the ceiling. Stunned, they both stared at the small hole above their heads.

"Dude," Cappy said, and then he started laughing. Barakat didn't join in; he got angrier.

"Let's go," he said. He pushed the gun into the front of his pants.

"Gonna shoot your nuts off," Cappy said. But he stood up.

Barakat frowned--an "Oh, yeah" frown. He took the gun back out, checked the safety. "This is, they say, cocked and locked. Let's go."

"Where are we going?" Cappy asked.

"You a pussy?"

"I'm smoking this fuckin' cigarette, ain't I?"

They took Cappy's van, with Barakat behind the wheel. He'd taken a small baggie of coke, and he snorted another pile off the back of his hand and passed the baggie to Cappy. "Pussy," he said, and he laughed, and turned north, and reached out, clicked the radio on, pushed the first tuning button and got a rock station. Cappy sat almost silently, except for the sniffing, and watched the streetlights go by. Two blocks before they would have gotten to the 1-94 entrance ramp, Barakat turned east, down the dark streets, toward St. Paul's downtown.

Snow was filtering through the trees, and the streets were empty. Four blocks, five, around a couple of blocks, past a closed market and a couple of open bars, town houses, apartments, back through the residential area. They crossed Lexington, still going west, when they saw the man walking alone down the sidewalk. He was wearing a parka, and carrying some kind of bag.

"Pussy," Barakat said. He stopped the van, pulled the pistol from his pants, undid the safety, got out of the van, shouted, "Hey, mister. Hey, mister."

The man stopped, looked at him, slipping and sliding across the street; tall thin white man on ice.

"What's up?" Black man with a briefcase. For some reason, the briefcase irritated Barakat. An unwarranted assumption of status.

He pointed the gun at the man's chest and said, "This," and pulled the trigger. There was a bang, and a lightning flash, and the gun jumped in his hand, and the man went down. Barakat ran back to the van and they were off.

Cappy was laughing hysterically. "You crazy fuck, you crazy fuck, you shot that motherfucker ..."

"Am I a pussy? Am I a pussy? Tell me ..."

They jogged out onto Snelling Avenue and idled back toward Barakat's place. A block or so away, Cappy said, "That was cool, but you know what? I could use another bite to eat. I don't know. Let's go someplace else, get another sandwich."

"I would like a doughnut," Barakat said.

"You're right. Let's get a doughnut. We could go to Cub. They got good doughnuts."

"Maybe two doughnuts," Barakat said.

VIRGIL FLOWERS had the sense that things were out of control, that they didn't know what was going on. He could see the same worry reflected in Lucas. Virgil had taken three pillows off the living room couch so he could sleep in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, where he could intercept any traffic coming into the house, from any direction. Weather thought that was ridiculous, and made Lucas help Virgil carry the couch to the same place, so he'd have an easier night.

Easier, but still not easy. He woke with the unfamiliar sounds in the house, and he woke when he heard a car turn into the driveway at four in the morning. He looked at his watch, in the dark--paper delivery. He rolled off the couch and peeked out the window, recognized the car, and then the paper hit the porch with a solid thunk, and the car was backing away. He sat for another two minutes, watching. Nothing moved, and he went back to sleep.

At six, he woke again when he heard movement: Weather was up and about. Virgil went quietly back to the guest bathroom, washed his face and brushed his teeth, then out to the front porch to get the papers.

Lucas and Weather came down together, quietly, not to wake the kids, and found him reading at the kitchen table. At the same moment, another car pulled into the driveway, and Virgil checked: "Shrake," he said. He could see light snow coming down, in Shrake's headlights. Still dark as pitch. "It's snowing."

"That's great," Lucas said. "I love getting up in the middle of the night when it's snowing."

Shrake came in: "Good morning, everybody."

"Shut up," Davenport said.

Virgil: "I'm gonna shave and take a shower."

"Anything in the papers?" Lucas asked.

"Some poor bastard got shot off Snelling. He was walking home from his job. Somebody shot him in the chest. Paper says there was no robbery ... says he was an interior decorator guy, working late on some remodeling plans. St. Paul says it looks like a random shooting."

"Poor guy," Weather said. "Why would anybody do that?"

"Gangs," Lucas said. He yawned, stretched, and said, "Doesn't have anything to do with us, anyway."

"And that's a good thing," Shrake said. "Are we talking coffee?"

12

WEATHER WAS HEADED out to the car when her cell phone rang. Gabriel Maret: "Go back to bed. Sara's got problems again. I'll be down in the cafeteria about nine o'clock, maybe you could come by."

"Are you at the hospital now?"

"All night. They're cycling. Sometimes they're fine, and then they start to deteriorate. Blood pressure is a problem. I'm going to take a nap, and we can talk about what to do at the staff meeting."

"I'll see you at nine o'clock."

LUCAS AND SHRAKE were looking at her: "They put it off?" Lucas asked.

"The kids are in trouble. We're going to meet at nine. I'll tell you what, we're getting to the point where we'll have to go no matter what. They can't be hung up like this."

Weather went to their home office to work on correspondence, Lucas went back to bed, Shrake went out to drive around the block, and Virgil turned on the TV Nothing to do but wait ...

GABRIEL MARET looked busted. He sat at the cafeteria table with a cup of coffee, talked with Mark Lang, one of the neurosurgeons, and Geoff Perkins, a cardiologist, and when Weather and Virgil came in, he waved and pointed at a chair. Virgil peeled off, taking a chair where he could see the room. Weather sat next to Maret, and he said, "Still have the gunslinger, yes?"

She sighed and nodded. "Yes."

"He looks like a cowboy," Maret said, watching Virgil. "He's watching us, I think."

"Probably. He's a little obsessive," Weather said.

"With those boots and jeans, he would do very well with French women," Maret said. "Unless he's gay?"

"No. He's definitely not gay," Weather said. "He does disgustingly well with American women. He sometimes has Lucas writhing in jealousy."

"Ah, well. He will fall, sooner or later," Maret said.

"He's already fallen several times," Weather said. "So: are we going?"

Maret shook his head: "Maybe late this afternoon--I've asked everybody to be ready. Tomorrow morning is more likely. But Geoff is saying that the kids are in a tailspin. Is that the word? Tailspin?"

"That's right, but it's not good," Weather said. She looked at Perkins. "What's happening?"

He shrugged. "The operation is putting too much pressure on Sara's heart. To take the pressure off, we slow it down and drop the blood pressure. But that gets on Ellen's heart, too, and she's not handling it well."

"So what are we doing?" Weather asked.

"We're going to try a couple more things, try to balance out the chemistry, get back to stable," he said. "This afternoon's a possibility, but tomorrow's more likely. Still not a sure thing."

"We've got to wait it out," Maret said.

"But the trouble is not going away," Perkins said. "You might have to make a decision."

Maret knew what he meant: "No. I'm not going to lose Sara. We can pull it off."

A tear started in one of his eyes, and Weather thought,
No way did this guy rob the pharmacy ...

THEY TALKED for half an hour, going over and over the possibilities and probabilities, until it began to seem pointlessly obsessive : they knew what the options were. Maret finally tossed his plastic coffee cup at a wastebasket, bounced it in, and said, "I'm going to look at the kids again."

Weather went over to Virgil and said, "To reiterate, Gabe had nothing to do with anything, except helping the kids. You're doing no good, sitting there staring at him under your eyebrows."

"What next?" Virgil asked. "Back home?"

"There's a small chance we could go this afternoon, so I have to hang around. When will you get that list of French people?"

Virgil looked at his watch. "Now, I guess. They should be open." "I'll come along," Weather said. "I'd like to look at the list."

MARCY SHOWED UP at the BCA with two cops named Franklin and Stone. Lucas and Franklin knuckle-tapped, old pals. Stone was new to detective rank, but had spent five years with the Minneapolis SWAT; he and Franklin had brought SWAT gear. Shrake and Jenkins were planning to ride together, in a BCA truck. Marcy rode with Lucas.

"We'll pick up the Washburn deputies in Shell Lake. The sheriff's coming along--Bill Stephaniak," Marcy said. "They're set to pull the warrants, but won't do it until the last minute, so word doesn't get around."

"They all set on a judge?"

"Stephaniak says the judge would sign a ham sandwich if you put it in front of him."

"Always nice to have one of those," Lucas said.

THE TRIP to Wisconsin took two and a half hours, north up I-35 to Highway 70 through Rock Creek, across the St. Croix River to Grantsburg, Wisconsin, through Siren, to Spooner, and then to Shell Lake; a convoy. The snow wasn't deep, but had taken on a cold, gray midwinter edge, stark against the near-black evergreens and barren broadleaf trees. They filled the time catching up with each other's lives; and Lucas was pleased that she seemed happy with hers.

"The kid is just way more than I ever expected," she said. "I'm getting so I hate to go to work."

"How many years you got in?"

"Eighteen--I'm a long way from retirement. James says if I want to quit, I can. It's not like we need the salary."

"But what would you do? Is being a mom enough?"

"That's what I keep asking myself. Right now, it's yeah--it's enough. The question is, will it be enough in two years, when he goes to school?"

"And you don't want to get your ass shot before he grows up," Lucas said. "You want to be here to see that."

"Yeah." They looked out the windshield for a while, then she said, "But you're not exactly backing off, and you've got Sam."

"Might be different for a guy," Lucas said. "Work is ... what we do. Like mom is what women do. Not to be a pig about it."

"I'll deny it if you ever tell anybody I said it," Marcy said, "but I know what you mean."

IN SIREN, Lucas said, "You can still see where the tornado came through."

An F3 tornado had ripped the town in 2001, a half-mile wide at points, with winds up to two hundred miles an hour.

"I have a friend from Georgia," Marcy said. "He was up here when it happened, saw some TV stuff about how the Siren warning siren didn't go off. He says, 'There was no sy-reen in sy-reen.' "

COMING INTO SPOONER, Lucas said, "I've got to take it easy through here--the place is a speed trap. They already got me once."

Marcy got on the phone and called the Washburn sheriff. When she got off, she said, "They're walking the warrants up to the judge."

Shell Lake was five miles south of Spooner, and the Law Enforcement Center just off the highway. They collected Shrake, Jenkins, Franklin, and Stone in the parking lot, trailed inside, and hooked up with the sheriff, a bluff, former highway patrolman with a clipped gray mustache, pale green eyes, and a nonuniform rodeo belt buckle. "Dick'll be back in a minute with the warrants. I told the judge we'd have something coming up to him ... You folks want coffee? We've got a Coke machine down the hall."

Stephaniak said that Ike Mack was working--the sheriff had sent one of his office workers down to the store to take a look. "I suggest I have one of my boys go along and serve him copies of the warrant, and ask him out to the house. We'll give ourselves about a fifteen-minute jump on him, so we can see what's what out there."

Marcy said, "Sounds good to me," and Lucas nodded.

Shrake asked, "Is Ike going to be a problem?"

"I don't think so. He's ... tired. He's turned into an old guy. I think he mostly wants to be left alone. With his stolen bike parts, of course."

"But if Joe's out there ..."

"That would be a whole 'nother problem. Though, I can't say I remember Joe as being all that violent. Not that I doubt these things you got going. But I never saw it in him."

"I can't think of another way our woman would have gotten strangled," Marcy said. "We'll know for sure tomorrow. We've got a rush DNA going."

"Well. People change. Maybe they get desperate," Stephaniak said. "Now. Look at this. I printed this out this morning, and as far as I know, it's up-to-date."

He pushed an eleven-by-fourteen photo across his desk, and the Minnesota cops clustered around: a satellite view of an isolated house sitting off a blacktopped road. The photo had been taken in late September, with the trees in full autumn colors.

In the center of the photo, they could see the roof of a house, surrounded by a farmyard, more dirt than grass. A woodlot bordered the west edge of the house's lot, with farm fields on the south and east, and the road on the north. Another building, probably a garage, stood on the west side of the house, with a narrow, silvery metallic roof extending out the back of it--probably a covered woodshed, or lean-to. Another, even smaller building stood on the south side of the house. An old chicken coop, or something like it, Lucas thought.

"Small place, nine acres. Two-story house, nothing much to look at. The garage there is good-sized-he uses it as a shop to work on his motorcycles. But it's not gonna take long to go through it. What you see is what there is."

"What we have to worry about is that Joe is laying up in there, and he's got a deer rifle and starts blowing holes in us," Shrake said. "So do we sneak up on him, or go in fast?"

"We send your two SWAT guys, with two of our SWAT guys, in through the woods." Stephaniak tapped the woodlot. "They check the garage. It's heated, so Joe could be in there. If he's not, they break through the side door--our guys have a crowbar--and get lined up at the front door. From there, it's only about thirty or forty feet over to the side door of the house. I'll call the house, and at the same time, they rush it. They'll be inside before Joe can get a gun ... with any luck."

THEY WORKED through the plan for a couple of minutes, then another, older, deputy came in. The sheriff said, "Hey, Dick. You get 'em?"

The deputy nodded. "We're set."

Stephaniak said, "Let's rock."

THE FOUR SWAT guys armored up and took the BCA truck, which was unmarked and had Minnesota plates. The rest of the crew staged in the empty parking lot of a barbeque joint four miles from Mack's place.

Stephaniak had given radios to all five vehicles involved. Franklin called after a few minutes and told them that the roads were clear all the way out, and a few minutes later called to say that they'd left the truck and were about to make the approach to the back of the garage. "We've got a couple fences to cross, so we'll be ten minutes," he said.

They rolled out of the parking lot a couple of minutes later. Two miles down the road, Franklin called again: "We're at the back of the garage. No cars inside. Can't see anybody inside. Ron's at the door, we're taking the door out. Okay, we're inside. Nobody here. No loft, we can see the whole place ... Make the call."

Stephaniak, riding in the lead SUV, made the call as they turned into Mack's driveway, and Lucas saw the SWAT guys rush the house, hit the door. A minute later, they were all out, on the snow, behind the trucks, and Franklin came out on the porch and waved.

"Nobody home," Marcy said, disappointed.

"Goddamnit, I hope he's not on his way to Mexico," Lucas said.

"Let's look at the phones, see who's calling him," Marcy said.

"Ike's on his way out," Stephaniak said. "My guy says he didn't seem surprised."

THE HOUSE SMELLED like home-canning; like pickles and creamed corn and cigarette smoke. Like an old single guy living out in the woods. Shrake and Jenkins, with the Minneapolis cops, ran the search, moving quickly and efficiently through the house, from attic to basement. Marcy went for the phones: Mack used handsets that listed calling numbers, and she took them down in her notebook. As she wrote, she called to the other cops, "Nobody mention the phones to him. Nobody mention that we looked at them. Ignore them. We want him to use them."

Lucas asked, and she said, "Half-dozen calls from the Cities since the hospital. None of the numbers go to Lyle or Joe."

Lucas wandered through the house with his hands in his pockets, then out on the porch, to the garage. The garage had three overhead doors and was set up to handle two parking spaces and a motorcycle shop. There were pieces of three or four older Harleys around, and one complete frame, but without handlebars or wheels. Nothing of interest.

He checked the woodshed, supposed that something might have been concealed under the three or four face-cords of hardwood, but if so, it hadn't been concealed since the hospital robbery. Snow had been blown in from the sides and had crusted over the lower layers of wood. Not much way to fake that.

Farther back, a cop was looking into what had been a chicken house. He walked away, shook his head at Lucas, and said, "I'm going to walk the perimeter, see if there are any tracks heading back into the woods."

A cinder-block incinerator sat next to the chicken house, and Lucas went that way. There were fresh ashes, signs of burned garbage--orange peels, the odor of burned coffee grounds. Lucas looked around, got a short downed tree branch, and stirred through the debris.

Came up with a partially burned piece of black nylon fabric. Heavy, with a piece of charred strap across it. Like a nylon bag.

The robbers, Dorothy Baker had said, had come in with black bags; had dropped the bags on the floor before they'd taped up Baker and Peterson.

Lucas stirred a bit more, started finding more fragments. Stood up, walked back to the house: "Marcy, Bill ..."

Marcy and the sheriff came over, and Lucas showed them the strap. "Looks like it came off a nylon bag. The ashes are fresh."

"Dorothy Baker ..." Marcy began.

Lucas nodded, and said to Stephaniak, "The nurse who was in the pharmacy said the robbers brought big black nylon bags, or packs, to carry the drugs. There are more pieces out there in the ash. We need your crime-scene guy to go through it."

"It's suggestive," Stephaniak said. He meant,
That doesn't prove much.

"It'll worry them," Lucas said. "If it's the bags, it'll help crank the pressure. And if we find there's more than one bag, then we'll know. The shit came through here. Ike's involved. That's always a help."