Storm Prey

sitting astride MacBride, strangling her. His hands were bleeding, where she’d scratched him, but she was all done with that. Her eyes had rolled up in her head, and her body had gone into a dead-shake. Cappy was riding her like a horse, a strange, stretched grin on his face, teeth showing. He held her until she was gone, then looked at Mack with his pale eyes, smiled, and said, “See, nothing to it.”
    “You’re not going to kill me, are you?” Joe Mack asked.
    “Why would I do that?”
    “I thought maybe, you know, Lyle said something.”
    Cappy shook his head. “Nope. Didn’t say nothing to me.”
    Joe Mack looked at MacBride’s body and thought, Man, she looks really dead. She really was dead. A few minutes ago, she’d been talking about her daughters.
    “We gotta go,” Cappy said. “I’m parked in the Green Ramp.”
    “Where’re we going?” Joe Mack asked, as they headed for the elevators.
    “You’re going over to that horse place, to start with. Hide out there for a few days.”
    Joe Mack said, “I don’t know—Honey Bee was pretty pissed about Mikey and Shooter.”
    “Yeah, but she can’t talk about it, because she was in on the hospital stickup. That’s murder for her, too. So you hide out there, let your hair grow a little bit, maybe put on a mustache, and we’ll clean up this witness woman, and then, you know... head for the border.”
    “Yeah . . . yeah.” Joe walked along for a minute, then said, “Excuse me. I gotta puke.”

8
    LUCAS, MARCY, and the others circled through the neighborhood, on foot and by car, looking for Joe Mack, confused for a few minutes about exactly which town they were in. They finally settled on Mendota Heights and they got a couple of Mendota Heights cars out, but there were only a half-dozen cops on duty. The chief, whose name was Mark Grace, was a little pissed about the ruckus, until Lucas explained that they’d thought it’d be a routine interview.
    “We were putting some pressure on the guy. We didn’t think he’d do anything that stupid,” Lucas said. It sounded lame in his own ears. “We sorta fucked up, but not really.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Grace said. “I guess it happens. The question is, is he holed up in somebody’s house?”
    “We don’t know,” Marcy said. “He got lost in those houses back there, and he could have gone anywhere.”
    “But not too far—he didn’t have a coat,” Lucas said.
    “You look for tracks?”
    “Yeah, but there are a lot of tracks. When we lost sight of him—”
    “Guess we start knocking on doors,” Grace said.
    “Problem is, half the people in town are at work,” one of the other Mendota cops said. “If he’s got a gun on somebody, and nobody answers the door, how’re we gonna know he’s inside?”
    Everybody looked at Lucas, who said, “You know what? We won’t. So let’s not do that. Could we just get a couple of your cars roaming around the streets? Put some pressure on him and let him run. He’ll run sooner or later. He’s not smart enough not to.”
    They argued about that for a while—the chief pointed out that somebody might be held hostage, and if they knocked on doors, they’d at least eliminate places where they knew he wasn’t—but finally agreed that cruising was the best option, until something better came along. They were still talking about it when Lucas got a call from the BCA duty officer.
    “You got a guy name of Lyle Mack calling you about his brother, who he says you’re chasing.”
    Lucas took the call, and Lyle Mack said, “I got a call from Joe. He said you guys scared the shit out of him and he ran away.”
    “Where is he?” Lucas asked.
    “I don’t know. Someplace around here,” Lyle Mack said. “He said he ran until he couldn’t run anymore and then he went down to a shopping center where he saw a cab letting a guy out, and got a ride downtown. He said he bought a coat at Macy’s, and he’s leaving town.”
    “Don’t lie to me, man. We’re past that,” Lucas said.
    “Hey—I’m not,” Lyle Mack said. “I’m telling you what he said. He said he ran for it because you accused him of sticking up the hospital, which he didn’t, and you’re trying to frame him, and he’s heading out. He said hasta la vista, and he’s gone.”
    “How is he gone? We saw him selling his van this morning.”
    “Yeah, and he’s got a pocket full of cash from it, and Joe Mack’s got friends,” Lyle Mack said. “I told him I was gonna call you,