Storm Prey

be better if Joe Mack died.”
    “I think you’re right. He is a dumb guy who’ll get caught sooner or later,” Cappy said.
    “I will try to find out where he is, and will call you. Perhaps you could deal with him.”
    “If I can,” Cappy said.
    “And I will deal with Karkinnen. I will think of something.”
     
     
    THEY WERE STILL rather pleased with their friendship, and Barakat helped Cappy keep his balance as he stumped out to his van, where Barakat gave the younger man a quick Lebanese hug with a backslap. “I will call you. I will pack the drugs from the hospital, I will send them to you wherever you’re at. You can make the connection, and sell them. I trust you for my share.”
    Cappy was embarrassed about the hug and the trust, but smiled and said, “Keep on truckin’, dude.”
    As his van rolled into the night, Barakat turned back to his house and began to think about talking to the cops about Shaheen’s funeral, and talking to the hospital about compassionate leave.
    Cappy’s taillights winked at the corner, and he thought, That might be the end of Cappy.
    Now, he had to spend some time thinking about himself.
    But first, he could use another twist. He had to think clearly.

21
    LATE, DARK, SNOWING. Lucas kept the speed down, watching the nav screen, and Jenkins said from the backseat, “It should be right around here.”
    “Hope the guy hasn’t left for work.”
    “He doesn’t have to be there for three hours, so ... might be out getting a drink,” Shrake said from the passenger seat.
    “Night like this?”
    “Night like this tends to make me drink,” Shrake said. “It’s snowing so goddamn hard you can’t see your own feet.”
    The car spoke up: “You have reached your destination. ”
    The house was a dark tuck-under that Lucas thought might be red in daylight, when it wasn’t snowing. He pulled into the driveway and said, “Wait,” and hopped out, with a flashlight from the storage bin under the armrest. He walked up to the house and shined it on the house number: 1530. He walked back and said, “The car’s right, this is it.” He killed the engine, and they climbed two short sets of stairs to the front door; five inches of snow on the ground, Lucas thought, and coming down at two inches an hour.
    There were lights in the front window, above the garage, but nothing on the left side of the house. Lucas rang the doorbell, and knocked, and somebody came to the front window and looked out at the porch, and a minute later, a man with a short, neat Afro looked out and asked, “What?”
    “Are you Dave Johnston?”
    “Yeah? What happened?”
    Lucas held up his ID. “We need to talk to you about your employees. We’re with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The people at your office said you’d be the guy to talk to.”
    The guy looked at them for a few more seconds, then unlatched the door and pushed it open. “Come in ... who is it?”
    Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins all stepped into an entry hall, and the guy’s wife, a heavyset woman with skeptical eyes, came and looked at them, her arms crossed nervously under her breasts.
    “A guy named Cappy—that’s all we know,” Lucas said.
    “What’d he do?”
    “We need to talk to him about several murders, and attempted murders. If you’ve seen the stories on television about the attack at the hospital this afternoon—”
    “That was Cappy? Ho, shit,” Johnston said. “I knew he was one crazy cracker.”
    “So—you know his last name, anything about him?”
    “Caprice M. Garner,” Johnston said. “He came in from California, rides a big expensive BMW That’s about it. He doesn’t talk much to anybody. Comes in, does the job, goes away.”
    Shrake said, “Garner. G-A-R-N-E-R.”
    Johnston bobbed his head: “Yup. Caprice, like the car.”
    Shrake said, “I’ll be in the truck,” and left.
    “Hard worker?” Lucas asked.
    “Does the job. Doesn’t bitch about it, doesn’t seem happy about it. Just does it.”
    “What else?” Lucas asked. “You know where he lives? We’re really kind of hurting here. The guy doesn’t leave much of a trail.”
    “I think, but I’m not sure, that I heard that he had a room somewhere, in a house,” Johnston said. “Not like an apartment, but just in a house.”
    “You don’t know where?”
    “Got no idea. I don’t know who’d know, either—he doesn’t hang with anybody at work.”
    “You got a phone number for him?”
    “You could check with the office,