Storm Prey (23 page)

14

LUCAS GOT UP EARLY, with Weather, then went back to bed for a while, and finally rolled out at seven o'clock, two hours before he usually did. He got cleaned up, ate breakfast, played chase-the-tennis-ball with Sam, and then sent Sam and the housekeeper off to the grocery store. As she went, the housekeeper said, "You should take the truck today. There's a storm warning."

"Yeah? When's it supposed to get here?"

"They were saying tonight. I can't see it on the radar yet, but it's coming."

Lucas went to look at the TV. The storm was still winding up over western South Dakota. Brought up the computer in the den, checked again: heavy snow tomorrow, starting with flurries around dawn, with rapidly falling temperatures. Ten to fifteen inches of snow possible in the next forty-eight hours. The Black Hills were being pounded.

He went out and told the housekeeper, "Not until tomorrow, they're saying."

She said, "Somebody's here."

A car pulled into the driveway, and he looked and saw Jenkins getting out. He let him in the back door, and then heard Shrake arrive, and let him in, too. "Gonna storm tomorrow," Shrake said. He was holding a box of sticky buns. "What're we doing?"

"Marcy's getting an arrest warrant for Lyle Mack. We're a little thin on cause, but we think he's talking to Joe."

"Prepaid cell," Shrake said.

"That's what we think. We can get the cell phone as part of the arrest, and then ..."

"We've got real probable cause," Jenkins finished.

THEY HAD COFFEE and two sticky buns each, and talked about the fact that none of them smoked anymore, and how enjoyable it had been, and then Marcy called: "I got two pieces of news, one of which I should have had a long, long time ago, but you jerks held out on me."

"And that is?"

"With your new equipment, with a high-priority case, you can do DNA in twelve hours."

"Didn't know that," Lucas said. "You get it back?"

"Yes, we did. Guess what? Whoever strangled Jill MacBride, it wasn't Joe Mack."

"What?"

"Got some weird shit going down, big boy. Get your crew cranked up, and let's go see Lyle Mack. If Joe didn't strangle her, maybe he didn't kidnap her--and he's got no reason to run."

"Well, bullshit," Lucas said. "I don't know what happened, but Joe grabbed her. I mean, if he didn't, it'd be like a zillion to one."

"You know what? A perfect solar eclipse is a zillion to one. But I've seen one."

"I don't believe it."

"Hey, I was there."

"Not the eclipse. I don't believe that Joe didn't snatch her. When will you get here?"

"Fifteen minutes--leaving here in two."

MARCY'S NEWS gave them more to talk about, but in the end, they couldn't figure out what it meant. She arrived in her husband's truck, came in, looked at the box on the table and said, "I'll bet you didn't save a single--"

"Ah, but we did," Shrake said. "In fact, we saved two."

"I'm watching my weight," she said.

"I've been watching it, too," Jenkins said. "I gotta tell you, it's looking pretty good."

"Spoken like a true connoisseur," Shrake said, and they bumped knuckles.

Marcy said, "Mental note: don't hire Jenkins and Shrake when Davenport finally fires them."

Lucas said, "Yeah-yeah. Let's knock off the bullshit and get over to Mack's. Take the buns with you."

"Yeah, take your buns with you," Shrake said.

Marcy gave him a delicate finger and asked Lucas, "Tell me what you think about the DNA."

"I have no idea," he confessed. "Maybe more people are involved than we thought. Maybe, well, we know there was one guy at the hospital ... maybe when we get him ... I don't know, Marcy. Did the DNA rule out Lyle Mack, too?"

"Unless they're adopted brothers, with different parents. They don't look too much alike--I guess we could ask."

"They don't look much alike, but they both sort of look like Ike," Lucas said. "They weren't adopted."

THE RIDE to Mack's took twenty minutes: Marcy left her truck in Lucas's driveway and rode with him, the better to eat the sticky buns--both of them--and drink her coffee. "Is Weather working on the twins?"

"Not sure. They're better, but they might get a little better if they go another few hours, or another day. It's a mess. If they don't move soon, one of them's going to die."

"Man--sometimes it's better being a cop."

"Yeah. Like when we were talking to MacBride's kid," Lucas said.

"Jesus, Lucas: you still got that depressive thing going, huh?"

"You don't?"

"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.