Storm Prey

Weather said. “Has Gabe been around?”
    “He’s sleeping in the OR.”
    “Tell him I’ll be in before ten. Don’t wake him, though.”
    She spent the next couple of hours getting the kids off to school, talking with the housekeeper, watching television.
    One piece of film they kept playing over and over was a freaked-out woman who’d been taken hostage by the killer, who had put a hand grenade between her thighs and pulled the pin. The reporter explained how a grenade worked, and how the woman lay on the floor for ten minutes before she got her hands free. She’d then cut the tape on her ankles, and had thrown the grenade through her kitchen window, right through the glass, and it had blown up in her side yard.
    Nobody hurt, though Weather suspected the woman might need some serious counseling.
    Virgil cleaned up, and when Jenkins showed up, took a nap. At nine o’clock, Weather was on the phone again to University of Minnesota Hospitals, a friend in administration.
    A few minutes later, she stepped into the front room: “Virgil?”
    Virgil’s eyes popped open. “Yeah?”
    “I didn’t know if I should wake you. I talked to some friends over at University Hospitals, where the Shaheen man was doing his residency. You know when we were talking about checking people to see when they were working over at MMRC? I checked Shaheen. He was working the morning that the Macks were murdered. He started at six, and it’s two hours up to Ike Mack’s house.”
    “Huh.” Virgil sat up, looking dazed. He had pillow hair, canted to the left side of his head. “That doesn’t entirely mean he couldn’t have done it. We know Mack was alive after one o’clock in the morning, when the bar closed. I mean, he could have been there, helped murder Mack, and then gone to work while Garner went up and killed Ike.”
    “Doesn’t seem likely, though,” she said. “If you’re out murdering people, wouldn’t you want to go together?”
    Virgil yawned, rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just thinking like a lawyer. If we accused somebody else, a defense lawyer could drive back and forth, starting at one A.M., get back and still have an hour to get Shaheen to work... assuming it only took one second to kill Ike,” he said. “In other words, he could convict Shaheen, and get his client off.”
    “So, think like a cop.”
    “Well, shoot. That would mean we’re not done. Still looking for an Arab, but a tall thin one with a mustache. Somebody who would know Shaheen. Who would know that Shaheen would look enough like himself to throw us off, especially ... Hmm.” His eyes flicked at her.
    “Especially if I were gone,” she said, brightly.
    “Yeah. That would pretty much be the icing on the cake. For the doc, I mean.” He looked around. “Where’s Jenkins?”
    “I got him blowing snow. I want to get down to look at the twins.”
    Virgil listened, heard the snowblower. “Okay. Soon as the driveway’s clear, we’ll head out. Full convoy again. Though, I think Garner was the designated hitter.”
     
     
    SHE LEFT THE HOUSE at nine-thirty in the convoy, headed to the hospital. Lucas said he was on the way back, and would take a nap.
    At the hospital, Virgil left Weather at the ICU, with Jenkins leaning against the door, while he headed back to the cafeteria. Two Minneapolis cops were drinking coffee, and Virgil squatted next to their table. “Who’s running things today?”
    “Nobody much—I guess Lee Hall would be the senior guy,” one of them said.
    “Know where I could find him?”
    “Let me buzz him,” the cop said. He did, told the cop that Flowers was looking for him, hung up and said, “He’ll be right down. He was up watching crime scene picking up blood.”
    Virgil took a table, and a call from Lucas. “I got a call from the ME,” Lucas said. “Between the time Garner ran, and we got him, somebody operated on his toe. You hit him in the little toe. The ME says it’s a professional job.”
    “And Shaheen was completely dead by that time.”
    “Totally.”
    “All right, we knew that,” Virgil said. “The guy we want looks like a tall, skinny Shaheen.”
    Even with that information, it took Virgil almost four hours to find him.

    “WE WERE so blessed to have this team,” Lucy Raynes said. “This whole thing has been so unbelievable.”
    “Not finished yet,” Weather said.
    “There’s so much to do, I can’t begin to cope,” Lucy Raynes said. “I’ve got a notebook just to