Storm Prey

Joe. We talked to a bunch of people last night, and some lab people this morning, and a witness to the robbery at University Hospitals, and your name kept coming up. First of all, we identified Michael Haines with a DNA test as one of the men who robbed the hospital. We got a whole bunch of people to tell us that you and your brother are the people closest to Chapman and Haines, and that you and your brother are the most likely people around to move a big load of drugs out of the Cities down the Seed pipelines to the Angels on the West Coast or the Outlaws on the East Coast. And lastly, we’ve got a witness who saw you coming out of the parking garage at the hospitals, and who has identified you from a photo on your driver’s license. We know all about the haircut and the shave, and when you got them. We thought you might have something to say about that.”
    Joe Mack was staring at her with increasing fascination, and when she finished, sat with his mouth open for a few seconds, then said, “That’s bullshit.” But he said it with the peculiar downcast despondency that said he did do it; and that they all knew it.
    Lucas relaxed: almost done here. “Joe, this is a murder charge. But there’s a lot of other stuff going on. Somebody’s trying to kill the witness, but that won’t happen now. We’ve got her totally hidden and covered—and if you’re not in on that part, we can probably cut a deal with you. If you are in on that part... then, you know, you do the crime, you do the time.”
    There was a knock on the door, and Shrake leaned forward, away from the door, opened it a crack and said, “We’re having a private meeting here.” Honey Bee Brown got her face wedged in the crack of the door and said to Joe Mack, “You asshole, Shooter and Mikey are dead. What kind of bullshit deal is that? They were our friends, but you just don’t give a shit.” She started to cry.
    Joe Mack said to her, “Aw, Honey, I don’t know what the fuck is going on. These guys say Mike held up the hospital.”
    Shrake said, “Miss Brown, Honey Bee, we need to have some privacy here, we’re interviewing—”
    From behind them all, the Budweiser guy called, “Hey, Joe—you gotta sign the invoice. I’m running late.”
    Joe Mack said, “Oh, for Christ’s sakes,” and he said to Shrake and Lucas, “This’ll take one minute.” Honey Bee stepped back and Joe Mack stepped around the desk to where the Budweiser guy was waiting with a slate computer, and he said to Joe Mack, “Okay, we’ve got sixteen . . .”
    And Joe Mack was gone. He stepped past Lucas, cleared Shrake, and suddenly sprinted past the Budweiser guy through the crack of daylight between the back of the truck and the edge of the garage door and off the dock.
    The move was so unexpected that he was gone before the cops got out of the office, and then Lucas, going after him, crunched into Honey Bee and then the Budweiser guy, and Lucas and Honey Bee went down. Shrake, who was faster than Lucas anyway, was out the door, Marcy two steps behind him. Lucas scrambled to his feet and got through the door quick enough to see Joe Mack vault a fence that separated the back of the bar from a neighboring house, and disappear.
    Shrake was thirty or forty yards behind him, but running in boots and a heavy coat, and losing ground fast. Marcy was farther back. Shrake clambered over the fence and kept running, while Lucas swerved toward the street and ran past the surveillance car where Martin had just hit the ground and shouted, “Was that him?”
    “He’s running,” Lucas shouted. “Get in the car, get in the car . . .”
     
     
    As SOON AS the woman cop began to talk, Joe Mack began to panic, his heart up in his throat. They knew. They had a witness, they knew about the haircut, moving the drugs, the whole works. The minute he saw the daylight, the Budweiser guy standing there with the invoice in his hand, he bolted. He didn’t think about it, he ran.
    Joe Mack was fast. He’d been a sprinter in high school, and he wasn’t wearing heavy winter stuff—he was wearing the light jacket and gym shoes he wore in the back end of the bar, where it was on-and-off warm, with trucks coming and going.
    Now, on the run, he needed to get inside. If he didn’t, he’d freeze. He ran through a block of backyards, and then another, zigging and zagging around houses and garages and fences and parked boats and hedges, got tired, turned downhill to his left, made it across