Storm Prey

virgin.”
    “A man-killer?”
    He looked at her: “You got lucky.”
    “Not just lucky,” she said. The two cops had gone off a way, and she told him about flicking the Audi into the biker’s lane, causing him to fumble the gun, and about going after him with the car.
    “Crazy woman,” he said, and wrapped an arm around her head, in a headlock, and gave her a noogie.
    But he was scared.

    THE NOOGIE made her laugh, at least a bit, and then Lucas went off to talk to the cops again, leaving her, and suddenly, for the first time in years, she flashed back to a winter day with a motorcycle crazy named Dick LaChaise, at Hennepin General Hospital in Minneapolis.
    LaChaise and two killer friends had come to town looking for Lucas, because Lucas had led a major crimes squad that had killed LaChaise’s wife and sister during a bank robbery. LaChaise had taken Weather hostage at the hospital. Lucas had come to negotiate in person, to talk LaChaise out of killing her.
    At least, that’s what Weather had thought, and LaChaise, too.
    But as soon as LaChaise moved the muzzle of his pistol an inch from Weather’s skull, a concealed sniper had shot him in the head. Weather went down, covered with blood, brains, and fragments of skull.
    She hadn’t been able to stay with Lucas after that; it had taken years to get back. But they had gotten back, and now here was another motorcycle hoodlum coming for her on the highway, and suddenly she was there again, in the hallway, and LaChaise’s head was exploding behind her ...
    “No.” She shook it off.
    She might flash back again, she thought, but she wasn’t having it, this time. She’d worked all through it. LaChaise was dead, and this had nothing to do with Dick LaChaise or Lucas Davenport.
    Lucas touched her on the shoulder. “You okay?”
    “Yeah. Yeah.”
    “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
    “I suddenly got scared,” she said. “Before, I was too busy to be scared.”
     
     
    CAPPY SWORE and tried to grab the gun, fumbled it, then heard the scream of an angry engine, looked back, and realized that the bitch was coming after him. He hit the accelerator, felt the rush as the front wheel lifted free, cut down a center line and was gone. He watched her lights and saw her swerve left, and she was gone up the off-ramp. He took the next one, quick right at the top, then a left, down through the dark streets, careful about the leftover snow, and the black ice at intersections. Three blocks from Central High School, four minutes after he made the attempt on Weather, he stuck the bike between a couple of parked cars, walked a crooked route down to Central, watching his trail, to where Joe Mack was waiting in his van.
    “Missed,” Cappy said, climbing into the passenger seat. “Bitch saw me and came after me with her car. Goddamn near ran me down. I lost the fuckin’ gun.”
    Mack stretched his neck, looking out of the van in all directions: “You’re clean? Nobody’s behind you?”
    “Nah, that part went fine. Dropped the bike, walked away, nobody saw my face with the scarf and all.”
    “The gun ...”
    “Gun’s clean, too. Hated to lose it, though. I needed that gun. I never fired a shot. I dunno.”
    Two minutes and they were back on I-94, headed east. Joe Mack said, “I’m thinking about going over to Eddie’s. You know? Got some guys who’ll say I’ve been around for a couple weeks, had the haircut all the time.”
    “Yeah?” Cappy wasn’t too interested. He was thinking about what had happened; the lack of respect. And he’d noticed the alcohol that Joe Mack was breathing all over him: that didn’t seem right. Your pickup guy shouldn’t be getting drunk.
    He said, “That bitch tried to run me down. I was coming beside her, running good, and all of a sudden, she like, jukes into my lane. I goddamn near ran up her tailpipe. I got only one hand on the handbar, and I freak and I drop the gun, but I get back on top of the bike and the next thing I know, she’s about six feet behind me and coming for me. What kind of bitch is that?”
    “The thing about Eddie’s is, you know, you ever been in fuckin’ Green Bay?”
    “I oughta kill the bitch for free, after that,” Cappy said.
    “What?”
    Cappy looked at him and realized that Joe was dead drunk. “Pull over,” he said. “Let me drive.”
     
     
    CAPPY DROVE back to his room, in an old house in St. Paul Park, and Joe said he was fine, took the keys and headed back to Cherries. Lyle