Storm Prey

fencing, and miscellaneous small-time street crime, although most of the members also had jobs, and membership turnover, outside a core group, was heavy.
    “The thing is, these guys are perfect for the hospital job,” Shrake said. He had rap sheets for the two dead Seed members, Haines and Chapman. “They fit physically, the clothes are right. The Seed has gang contacts both west with the Angels and east with the Outlaws, and they’ve always moved drugs: they’ve got the retail connections. Haines and Chapman both have robbery convictions; Haines did time in Wisconsin, Chapman in California. Haines has a crim-sex no-pros because the girl backed off, but he’s in the database, one, two, three DUIs, small amounts of marijuana ... Chapman has three assaults, one conviction, juvie record of assault, had a weapons charge that was dealt ... small amounts of dope. Assholes. Completely likely to hold up a pharmacy.”
    “That no-pros is why they killed Haines. Somebody knew he was in the database, and that after we processed Peterson, we’d have him,” Lucas said. “They were afraid he’d flip.”

    LUCAS FOUND a reference to the owners of Cherries, Lyle and Joseph Mack, brothers, who’d been patched in the Seed in the early nineties; and another reference to their father, Ike Mack, who’d been a Seed member in the sixties. A surveillance photo of Lyle Mack showed him sitting on the steps of a bar, surrounded by beer bottles, taken after the autumn river-run of 2006.
    “We need to talk to this guy—he’d know all the locals,” Lucas said, pushing the photo across the desk.
    Shrake picked it up. “Short and chubby. He wasn’t at the hospital.”
    “But he’d know Chapman and Haines, and I’ll bet we get the DNA back on Haines.”
    He thumbed through the rap sheets, found sheets for both the Macks. “Huh. Criminal possession of stolen goods. Two different busts for each of them, they dealt on all of them. Maybe involved in some sports betting, small-time bookies. Joe Mack has three DUIs over ten years. Looks like they’ve run a couple bars, one up by Hayward, another in Wausau. Showed up here about eight years ago, bought Cherries. They get a few complaints every year, noise, parking problems. Have some hookers going through, but not regular. Used to have a porno night ... More like dirtbags than hard guys. But they’re merchants. They buy and sell. They seem to be close to the center of the Seed.”
    He pushed a copy of a mug shot of Joe Mack across the desk: six years old, it showed a big man with a ponytail, clean-shaven.
    They continued reading, and a half hour on, Shrake said, “There are a hundred killers out at Stillwater who we could turn loose, and they’d never in their lives commit another crime. If we replaced them with a hundred of these guys, we’d have to find new jobs. You get these guys with ten offenses, mostly ratshit stuff, they deal on it, they walk. You know they did ten times that many that never got reported or they never got caught on.”
    “Just having a good time, Saturday night,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah. Murder, rape, robbery, assault, extortion, fighting, drugs, prostitution, criminal sexual assault, domestic assault, drunk driving, you name it,” Shrake said. “Makes my teeth hurt.”
    “You’ve never had a problem with a fight,” Lucas said.
    “Pretty big difference between a fight during an arrest and an assault,” Shrake said.
    “You’re sounding self-righteous.”
    “Got me on that,” he said.
    They read for another half hour, trading sheets back and forth, putting down names, and then Lucas looked at his watch.
    “Getting to be prime time out at Cherries,” he said.
     
     
    CHERRIES LOOKED like a suburban split-level house, but larger, a frame building with a blacktopped parking lot out front and along the west side, and a loading dock with a dumpster in back. There were ten or twelve vehicles in the parking lot when they arrived, and only one was a sedan—the rest were SUVs, pickups, and Ford and Chevy commercial vans, every one with a trailer hitch. Snow was piled up on the perimeter of the lot, and Budweiser and Miller neons hung in the visible windows.
    Lucas pulled the Lexus around so the lights played off the tags of the two vehicles parked in front of the loading dock. Shrake checked the tag numbers against a list and said, “Yup. That’s them. Elvis is in the house.”
    Lucas pulled up tight in front of the two vehicles and parked. Shrake