Storm Prey

people off.”
    “It’s a murder investigation.”
    “I know, but a lot of the people over here, especially the docs, are pretty busy, and they figure what they’re doing is pretty important. I mean, it is pretty important. So ... A couple people have made remarks to Weather, because they know she’s involved.”
    “Fuck ’em,” Lucas said. “When’ll you be back?”
    “Fifteen minutes.”
    “See you there.”
     
     
    LUCAS MENTIONED the cop-doctor tension to Marcy, who shrugged. “Not much to do about it. I’ll tell the guys to go as easy as they can, but no easier.”
    Del said, “They oughta ask why somebody would hold up the pharmacy.”
    “For money,” Marcy said.
    “But how much? I saw in the paper that they were estimating the loss at a million or so . . .”
    “Less than that,” Lucas said. “That’s if you count every last nickel on every last pill at street level . . .”
    “But say a million. Just for argument’s sake. So, wholesale, on the street, a half-million, or less. If there is somebody involved at the hospital, that’s at least four people, and probably more.”
    “Lyle Mack makes five,” Lucas said. “He’s too short to have been one of the robbers.”
    “Whoever,” Del said. “So, say five guys, because the math is easier. Say they’ve got direct retailers—they’d get half of the half-million. That means these five, if they divide it evenly, it’s fifty thousand each. How many big-time docs need fifty thousand so bad that they’d hook up with a bunch of dumb-ass bikers to rob a pharmacy?”
    Marcy said, “I see what you mean. We were working on the doctor angle because a witness thought it might be a doc. We’ll start looking further down the food chain ...” She looked back at the van, then at Lucas. “As soon as we nail down Joe Mack, we go after Lyle Mack with a flamethrower. Joe Mack, when he gets a lawyer, won’t say anything. He’s toast, no reason to. Can’t plead out on this thing. But Lyle. Lyle could talk, with the right encouragement. Or get Joe to. Put the finger on the guy in the hospital.”
    “It’s a plan,” Lucas said.
     
     
    DEL FOLLOWED Lucas home. On the way, Lucas thought about Marcy: she was a good cop, but she might have been on the street a little too long, or a little too long for her personality. The murder of Jill MacBride hadn’t affected her much—not as much as it affected Lucas, anyway. Another bad day in the life, but something she’d adjusted to. Lucas could blow off some murders easily enough, but some of them dug into his heart.
    MacBride’s murder made him furious. Why had it happened? How could it happen? How could chance stack up like that, how could they drive a crazy man to run at the precise moment a woman was getting into her van to pick up her daughter at school? It sometimes seemed to him that there was an invisible hand behind it all, and it wasn’t a beneficent hand. Evil in the world...

    WHEN LUCAS, with Del a hundred feet behind, arrived at Lucas’s house, they found Jenkins leaning against the back of his Crown Vic, in the street, red lights flashing on the front grille and above the back bumper. He had a shotgun on his hip, muzzle pointed up at the sky, like a poster for a Rambo movie, if Rambo had ever worn a parka and winter boots. Lucas stopped at the entrance to the driveway: “What’s up with the gun?”
    “Virgil’s idea. If somebody’s scouting the place, we want them to know we’re armed to the teeth,” Jenkins said. “If they make a run at her, we don’t want it here, with the kids in the house and the housekeeper and all.”
    “Probably scaring the shit out of the neighbors,” Lucas said.
    “So what?”
    “All right. Don’t freeze your ass off,” Lucas said.
    “I’ll be inside in a couple minutes,” Jenkins said. “We figure if they’re scouting the place, they probably followed us.”
    Lucas pulled into the garage, saw Del stop at the mouth of the driveway and get out, to chat with Jenkins. Making a show out of it.
     
     
    WEATHER WAS APPALLED by the murder of Jill MacBride. “Did we do something?”
    Lucas shook his head: “No—except that Marcy and I didn’t run Joe Mack down. Pure chance. And this whole thing came out of kicking that poor bastard to death in the hospital.”
    They sat for a moment, as Del stomped through the mudroom door. Then Virgil said, “Maybe we caught a break. With Joe on the run, Weather doesn’t mean much anymore, as a