Storm Prey

Virgil, though she knew it must be there.
    She nodded. “Okay.”
    Virgil asked, “Would there be enough coffee cake for another guy?”
    “There’s enough for six,” she said.
    “Jenkins has been wandering around outside. I might give him a call.”
    “Ah, you guys . . .”
    Guys with guns, taking care of her. She hadn’t flashed on the sniper killing again, but it was back there, somewhere, like Grendel, waiting to crawl out of its cave.
     
     
    LUCAS CAME DOWN the stairs a moment later, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, looking sleepy. He was carrying a shoulder holster with a. .45. Virgil, just off his cell phone, said, “Jenkins thought he’d stop by.”
    Lucas nodded, taking Jenkins’s behavior for granted. He dropped the .45 on the kitchen counter, and a minute later, Jenkins knocked on the side door. Virgil let him into the mudroom, a big man, cold, blowing steam. He said, “Four below,” and, clapping his gloved hands, said, cheerfully, “Looks like everybody’s up and at ’em, huh?”
    “Ah, Christ,” Lucas said. Early mornings disagreed with him, unless he was coming from the dark side.
    Weather got the coffee going and Lucas got the oven preheating, and Virgil went off to the guest bedroom with his Dopp kit while Jenkins shed his coat and rubber overshoes, and put two 9mm Glocks on the end of the kitchen table.
    With the coffee going, Weather went to the phone and punched in a number, identified herself and asked, “Are we on schedule? Thanks.” She hung up and said to Lucas: “We’re on schedule. Sara’s stable. Don’t know if she’ll stay that way, but we’re going to do it.”
    They ate the coffee cake, and argued about politics and medical care. The morning felt almost like an early fishing trip, a bunch of people sitting around eating unhealthy food.
    Then Weather looked at her watch and said, “Better go.”
    Lucas and Weather took Lucas’s SUV, on the theory that if somebody was still shooting for Weather, they might not know where she lived, or what other vehicles she had access to. Jenkins led the way in his personal Crown Vic, followed by Lucas in his SUV, with Virgil trailing behind in his 4Runner. Instead of going to the hospital parking ramp, they went to the front entrance. Jenkins parked, put a BCA placard in the front window, and held the door for Weather as she went in, with Lucas a step behind her.
    “So I’m good,” she said, when they were in the lobby. “See you guys this afternoon?”
    “I think I’ll hang out for a while, see who comes by,” Jenkins said. Virgil came in.
    Lucas said, “Maybe I’ll get a bite in the cafeteria.”
    “I’ll come with you,” Virgil said.
    Weather looked at them: “You’re going to stay here all day, aren’t you?”
    Jenkins shrugged: “Maybe.”
    Virgil said, “Not me. I’m going back to your place and crash.”
    “I don’t think it’s necessary—” Weather began.
    Lucas cut her off: “You do the surgery, we’ll do the body-guarding.”

    THEN THERE was the deal with the chickens. But not just any chickens.
    Arnold Shoemaker, the farmer, was either blessed with, or cursed by, exotic fowl. He wasn’t quite certain which.
    He didn’t buy them, he accumulated them. Somebody would come by, hearing that Arnold would take them, and they’d drop them off—unwanted family pets, stray birds, leftovers from farms that were going down. Cuckoo Marans, Golden Penciled Ham-burgs, Leghorns, Buttercups, Red Caps, Blue-Peckered Logans, assorted bantams and guinea hens, he had them all.
    He ate the few eggs they produced, when he found them fresh, but never ate the chickens. They ran in and out of the old barn in the winter, and he’d feed them table scraps and ground corn, and leave them on their own to peck up gravel out by the road and bugs in the barn.
    The fact was, they made him happy to look at. It was nothing short of remarkable, he thought, how so few people realized how good-looking a chicken could be. Better-looking than parrots, by a long way. No contest.
    Arnold was up before dawn, into town, had breakfast at the diner, where the waitress called him “hon” and knew to bring the Heinz 57 sauce for his scrambled eggs and home fries cooked in sausage grease; the combo gave him gas, but the taste was unparalleled, and Arnold lived alone, except for the chickens and his yellow Lab, so the gas wasn’t a critical problem, though the dog sometimes got watery eyes.
    The sun was just over the horizon when