Storm Prey (24 page)

"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?"

"Do what?"

"Kill Lyle?"

"He was shot to death," Lucas said.

She clouded up again, but after a moment, said, "Well, at least he probably didn't feel anything. It was quick, huh?"

She was looking right at his eyes and Lucas flinched, and she looked at Jenkins, and she said, looking back to Lucas, "Oh, no." Then, "What did they do?"

LUCAS FUDGED, but she got the gist of it, and began sobbing again. They waited until she was rained out, and Jenkins brought up the coffee, still hot, and she warmed her hands around the cup.

Lucas asked, "Joe's running, in a car. Or a truck, or something--he's down I-35. You know where he would have gotten a car? We saw him selling his van, and we can't find another car registered under his name. We find a couple bikes, but they're both at his apartment ..."

"Don't know," she said. "But he's a member of the Seed. So I suppose ... he wouldn't have any trouble getting a ride, if he wanted to pay for it."

Lucas nodded: that made sense. "Okay. So we've got to get you out of here. Can you arrange for somebody to feed the horses?"

"I suppose ... for a couple days. There's a handyman in town who does that, but I have to find him."

"Give him a ring."

"You really think it's necessary? I don't have a lot of money for hiring people."

"Look, these guys, the killers--if they even suspect that you might give them away, that Lyle might have told you something... they'll kill you. To them, they've already killed a bunch of people, one more won't make any difference."

"I don't have any place to go," she said.

"Holiday Inn," Lucas said. "State'll pick it up for however long it takes to break this. We should have it in a week or so ... it's too crazy to keep going."

SHE GOT THE HANDYMAN, and he agreed to take care of the horses for thirty dollars a day. As she was packing up some clothes and personal-care stuff, Lucas asked, "Do you have a phone number for Joe?"

"No, I ... You know who did? Lyle. He had a special phone. They both did."

"We've got that. Do you have a cell?"

"Well, sure."

"Okay--we may want you to call Joe on it," Lucas said. "We may need you to vouch for our story--that Lyle was killed. I'm not sure Joe believed us."

She stopped: "Why should I believe you? This could be like that moon-landing stuff. A big pack of lies." She looked at Jenkins. "You guys aren't lying to me, are you?"

"Honey Bee, Lyle's still at the bar. We can stop and look, if you want."

Pause. Then, "I'll think about it."

"The thing is," Lucas continued, "we know that Joe didn't kill the woman in the van. The Jill MacBride lady. Somebody else did. We got DNA from Joe, and from the killer, and Joe wasn't the killer."

"Really?"

"Really."

She nodded: "That makes sense. I don't think Joe's got it in him to kill anybody."

"We might need you to tell him that. The thing is, maybe he still kidnapped Jill MacBride, I don't know. But maybe not. If not, there's no reason to run. He'd be in a little trouble for running, but that's minor, compared, you know, to murder."

"He could come back and get the bar," she said.

"He might do a little time," Lucas said.

"But I could run the bar while he was in jail--I mostly run the place anyway."

"Works for us," Jenkins said. "But first, we got to get him back."

THEY EXCHANGED cell-phone numbers, and she followed them in her truck, toward town, and halfway in, called and said, "I want to stop at the bar."

"You sure?"

"I want to look at his face," she said.

The place was overrun with cops and crime-scene people; Marcy and Shrake had gone. Lucas took her through the cops, to the body, which was still on the floor. He left her with a cop, stepped over to the crime-scene guy and asked, "Could we get a plastic bag or something, over his lower body? We got his girlfriend here to do the ID."

When the black plastic bag was in place, Lucas led her over, holding on to her arm. She looked down, nodded, pursed her lips as though she were going to spit, and turned and pulled him away from the body. Turned a bar stool around, sat down, and stared at the bar.

"You okay?" Lucas asked.

"No," she said.

"I want to get you out of here. Send you into town with one of my guys, get a statement, and get you settled at a motel."

She said, "Okay. Okay. Goddamnit, that hurts. If it's okay, I gotta go to the ladies'."

"Sure."

She wandered off toward the hallway that led to the ladies' room, and Lucas watched her until she went through the door, then moved over to Jenkins. "I want her to trust me, so I don't want to look like I'm watching her. I'm going down to the other end. But keep an eye on the ladies' can until she comes out. We don't want
her
running on us."