Storm Prey

burger.
    “I’m okay,” Barakat mumbled through the last of the beef.
    “So you got more money from your father?”
    “Mmm. Not yet. Next week. You get catsup?”
    “In the bag,” Shaheen said.
    Barakat found the three little packets and squirted them on the fries, started stuffing the fries in his face.
    Shaheen thought about it. A few days past, he’d loaned Barakat money for food, though he suspected it would go for dope. And there’d been no sign of food in the house. Now he said that his father’s check wasn’t due for a week.
    He had a big bag full of cocaine, and had apparently spent most of the evening snorting it. Not an eight-ball, but a big bag full of it. So where did he get what felt like a full pound of cocaine?
    Shaheen thought about it, and the idea came upon him like some dark miasmic fog rising out of a swamp. He tried to push it away, but it wouldn’t go.
    He leaned close to Barakat—so close that Barakat frowned, and pulled away, his face turned so Shaheen could see his eyes. Shaheen said quietly, “Tell me you know nothing about this robbery at the hospital.”
    And he saw, in a flash, the truth in the other man’s face ...
    Shaheen sagged and turned away and said, “Oh, no.”
    “I didn’t. I didn’t,” Barakat insisted. “I use the cocaine, but I had nothing—”
    Shaheen cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I’ve known you every day of my life,” he said. “When you lie, I see it in your face. What have you done? Why have you done this?”
    Barakat leaned back against the car door and said, “If you tell anybody, Addie, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you like a dog.”
     
     
    SHAHEEN DROPPED HIM off at his house: “You have nine hours before your shift begins.”
    “I’m okay.”
    “You’re not okay. You’re a drug addict. You need treatment,” Shaheen said.
    “Forget it. I’ll take care of it myself,” Barakat said.
    “Allee ...”
    “I’m okay,” Barakat said, and he went into the house.
     
     
    IN THE EARLY MORNING, he took only a small hit as he got ready for work: just enough to cool him down. Hair of the dog, as the Americans said. The small hit was enough to get his brain moving again, and he thought: Joe Mack, Lyle Mack, Weather Karkinnen.
    Two separate problems, the Macks on one side, Karkinnen on the other.
    If Joe Mack were to die, the threat would be mostly gone—even if Karkinnen identified him, the cops could get no further. Not unless Lyle Mack did something really stupid, like keep the drugs in his basement.
    An additional thought: the Macks had a killer. So that was one more person who knew. How many were there, on the Mack side of the equation? Hard to tell. Did the killer even know about him? Barakat worked through it: the Macks didn’t necessarily have to tell him, but the Macks were not the most reliable, he thought. He should have seen it before, but he’d been blinded by the idea of a mountain of cocaine.
    Then there was Karkinnen. She’d had a good long look at him, could put him in the wrong part of the hospital at the wrong time.
    One more hit before he left for work, and just a twist in a little Saran Wrap for lunch. He put the rest of the cocaine in a shoe in his closet.
    The Macks. The Macks were a problem. Karkinnen was a problem only as long as the Macks were around. If Joe Mack were to die, though ... or both of them, for that matter ...
    The idea pleased him; but he still wondered if the Macks, despite their denials, despite their slow-moving minds, had worked through the same equation.

5
    WEATHER WALKED QUIETLY down the stairs, sensed a presence, stepped sideways and looked into the kitchen. In the reflected light from a hallway sconce, she could see Virgil Flowers sitting on his sleeping bag in the arch between the dining room and the kitchen. From there, he could see both the front door and the back. A shotgun was lying on the floor behind him.
    “Did you get any sleep?” she asked.
    “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. He yawned.
    She suspected that he was lying; that he’d spent the night prowling the first floor with his gun. “I’m going to make some coffee, and there’s a coffee cake in the freezer. I could stick it in the oven. Ready in twenty minutes?”
    “Great, thanks. I need to brush my teeth. Don’t open the curtains in the kitchen.”
    “I don’t think—”
    “Don’t open the curtains,” he said. He said it with the same hard tone that Lucas sometimes used; not something she often saw in