Storm Prey

running Brown and we’re not coming up with much. She’s thirty-nine years old, blue eyes, a hundred twenty, five-six, lives down in Dakota County. Got a couple speeding tickets in three years. Lenert, I’ve got nothing.”
    Lucas passed the word to Marcy. “Good. Let’s go straight in.”
    They went straight in, parking in empty spaces on either side of the front door, and found the door open. A woman behind the bar called, “We’re not open yet,” and Marcy said, “We’re police. We’re here to talk to Joe Mack.”
    “Uh . . .” The woman’s eyes flicked toward the door to the back. Another man, who had been working on one of the game machines, stopped working to watch. Lucas asked, “Who are you?”
    He said, “Uh, Dan Lenert ... Mid-State Vending and Games.”
    “Okay.” Lucas turned back to the bartender. “We were here last night, we know the way.”
    Shrake asked, “Are you Harriet Brown?”
    “Honey Bee Brown,” she said. “I had my name changed. How’d you know that?”
    “Ran the plates on your car,” Shrake said. “You’re the bartender.”
    “Uh-huh. What’s going on?”
    Lucas was already behind the bar, headed for the door, Marcy a step behind him. “We’re investigating the Haines-Chapman murders.”
    “What?”
    No question that she was shocked. Lucas stopped and asked, “Did you know them well?”
    “Well, sure, but the last time I talked to them ... Christ, it was only a couple nights ago. They said they were going to Green Bay. They had a friend over there who had a job for them.”
    “Who was that?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. But they’re dead?”
    “Yes. I’m sorry.”
    “God, the brothers are gonna be freaked,” she said.
    “They know,” Lucas said. “We told them last night.”
    “They know? They didn’t even tell me?”
    Lucas said, again, “I’m sorry.”
    Brown turned on her heel and pushed through the swinging door into the back, and Lucas looked at Shrake and Marcy, shrugged, and followed her.
    The back of the bar was cold, with the loading dock door open. A beer distributor’s truck was parked in the garage-door opening, and a heavyset man in a Budweiser shirt was moving kegs and cases in and out of the storage area on a dolly. They turned the corner, to the small office.
    The door was closed, but through the window they saw Joe Mack sitting inside, facing a skinhead on the other side of a desk. They were both looking up at Honey Bee Brown, who was screaming at Joe Mack. They could hear the screams, but couldn’t make out the words. Lucas said to Marcy, “That’s him behind the desk,” and he saw Mack look up, see them, and say to the skinhead, though he couldn’t hear the word, “Cops.”
    The skinhead turned to look at him—a prematurely bald twenty-five or so, Lucas thought, a white kid with ghetto eyes and work muscles, rather than gym muscles. His flat blue eyes looked at Lucas without fear or sympathy, and he shook his head and tapped some papers on the desk. Honey Bee started shouting again, but the skinhead said something that shut her up. She turned and stormed past them, tears running down her cheeks, saying, as she passed, “What a bunch of fuckin’ fuckers.”
    Marcy watched her go: “Must have one of those fuck-words-a-day calendars,” she said.
    Lucas knocked on the office door, and Joe Mack stood up and opened it.
    “We need to talk to you,” Lucas said. “Now.”
    “Just finishing up,” Joe Mack said. “I sold my van.”
    Lucas recognized the titling papers, and nodded. The skinhead asked Joe Mack, “We all done?”
    “Take it all down to the DMV, and it’s yours. Gotta get insurance right away, though. I’m calling my insurance company today and canceling mine.”
    “Do that, but I think my other insurance covers me for thirty days,” the skinhead said.
    “Don’t fuck it up. Throw some extra boxes if you got to,” Joe Mack said.
    The skinhead stood up and squeezed past Lucas. “Pardon me,” he said. His voice was toneless, nothing implied at all. He walked past the Budweiser guy, hopped off the ramp, jingling the keys Joe Mack had given him.
     
     
    “SO WHAT’S UP?” Joe Mack asked.
    The ramp was cold, so Lucas, Marcy, and Shrake squeezed into the small office and closed the door. Marcy took the visitor’s chair, while Lucas stood against the wall and Shrake against the door.
    Marcy identified herself, and then said, “You know these guys.” She waved at Lucas and Shrake. “So,