Storm Prey

the vein again.
    Six minutes later she was out, removed the ligatures on seven and fourteen, and she and the other neurosurgeon, Sandy, watched the splice for ten seconds, fifteen, and then Sandy said, “Just like shooting free throws.”
    Weather said, “You should explain surgery to my husband.”
    Maret: “What does this mean, free throws?”
    “Means we’re good,” Sandy said. “Get your ass back in here. We’re coming to the stretch.”
    “Sometimes, I wish I understood English,” Maret said. To Weather: “Thirty-two minutes.”
    “Best I could do,” she said, a little stiff.
    He said, “If you’d told me an hour, I would have asked for forty-five minutes. Thirty-two, I hardly believe.”
    That made it all better.
     
     
    WEATHER WAS SITTING in the observation theater when Virgil and Lucas squeezed in, and Lucas reached down and tapped her on the shoulder and gave her the thumb. She followed them out into the hall.
    “Have you seen a skinhead orderly around?” Lucas asked.
    She shook her head. “Not close by. I haven’t really noticed one. You mean a guy with a shaved head?”
    “Not shaved, just a super-butch. Virgil’s seen him around.”
    “You think?”
    “We think. Gotta call Marcy, let her know, see if we can break out the guy’s name. It bothers me that Virgil may have seen him here. So I’m sticking close. I’m going to get Jenkins and Shrake over here ...”
    “We’ll be done this afternoon,” Weather said. “We’re moving fast now.”

18
    CAPPY SAID, “I don’t see any other way to get her. Has to be inside the hospital, but the cowboy guy is all over her.”
    A car door slammed close by—the driveway?—and Barakat went to the window, peeked, turned and said, urgently, “They look like police. Man and a woman. Get in the bedroom, and keep quiet.”
    There were two open twists that’d held cocaine, sitting on the coffee table, and as Cappy disappeared into the back, Barakat snatched them up, looked frantically around the room for other problems, and stuffed the twists in his pants pocket.
    Could they smell him? Cappy? He lit a Gauloise, blew some of the acrid smoke around the room, took another quick drag, blew it out, settled in at a desk, turned on the desk lamp, brought up his laptop, threw a couple of medical papers on the floor.
    And the doorbell rang.
    He took his time, checking the living room once more, and went to the door.
    Man and a woman. They held up IDs, and the woman said, “Marilyn Crowe, Minneapolis police. This is Doug Jansen. Are you Dr. Barakat?”
    “I am,” he said, holding the storm door open. It was snowing behind the two cops. “What happened?”
    “Do you know a Dr. Adnan Shaheen?”
    “Yes, of course, very well. We were at school together ...” Thinking: If they found a note, if Adnan had a journal, if they found a letter to my father . . . we should have looked, we should have looked, stupid stupid stupid ...
    “I’m sorry to tell you this, Dr. Barakat, but Dr. Shaheen was killed last night.”
    Barakat had seen this interview coming, had even talked about it with Cappy. He didn’t react immediately. He simply froze. Then, “What? Addie ... ?”
    The cops waited for him to say something more, and the silence stretched, and then Barakat pushed the storm door fully open and said, “You better come in. Addie’s dead? How did this happen? Are you sure, Adnan Shaheen? He has a Lebanese passport? He is a resident at University Hospitals?”
    He let himself ramble, now putting himself in a place of shock and sadness, and said, “This ... wasn’t drugs?”
    “He was hit on the head with a heavy object,” Crowe said. “I’m sorry.”
    “Why did you think it might be drugs?” Jansen asked.
    Barakat rubbed his forehead and turned away, wandered to his desk and sat down at the laptop. “He ... I think ... oh, no.”
    “Street drugs?” Jansen asked.
    “I talked to him,” Barakat said. “He sometimes used cocaine. I don’t know where he got it, I don’t know how he learned to get it. He said there was a man who was working his way through medical school by selling cocaine, but I don’t know this man ... but that’s when he started, you know. Medical school was very hard for Addie, very hard. He had to study very hard. All the time, the cocaine made him ... he thought it helped to concentrate.”
    “You never reported this to anyone?”
    “He was my friend,” Barakat said. “I tried to help him. He struggled for