Storm Prey

witness. All she can do is identify a guy we already know is guilty of murder.”
    Lucas said, “That’s true. It’s a hard way to get there, though.”
    “Does that mean that everybody’s going home?” Weather asked.
    Lucas shook his head. “Not until we get Joe. He’s so goddamn deranged, he might still be looking for you. We’ll get somebody to Photoshop our pictures of him and paper the hospital with him. But his brother says he’s on the way to Mexico. Maybe he is.”
    Letty had an unpaid, part-time job as an intern at Channel Three, fixed by an old friend of Lucas’s. She said, “If nobody minds, I’m going to call in the murder. We can still get it on the six.”
    Lucas said, “Just the murder. None of this—what we’re talking about here.”
    She left to make the call, and they sat staring at their coffee for a while, then Lucas sighed and said, “The kids never bothered me so much when I was younger. Back then, it was just another routine tragedy. I remember working the disappearance of a couple little girls, back in the eighties. I was still in uniform, they put me in plainclothes, temporarily, to ask questions. Most exciting thing I’d done. But it’s really started to bother me the last few years.”
    “Well, it’s how you got Letty,” Del said.
    They all looked after the girl; could hear her talking on the family-room phone. Lucas said, “She’s got the scars. She was hurt worse than any of us know.”
    Virgil said, “I’m getting pretty tired of guarding Weather’s body. If you don’t mind, I’m going to lounge around the hospital a little bit. Chat with people.”
    “You might piss off Marcy,” Del said. “She gets a little territorial.”
    “She can live with it,” Virgil said. “I’ve talked to their guys, and they haven’t gotten a thing. Maybe, you know, something would pop up.”
    “How are the babies?” Lucas asked Weather.
    “Better. We could go back in tomorrow.”
    “They won’t get at her when she’s operating, or when she’s with that crowd,” Virgil said. “She can buzz me when she’s done. Otherwise, I’m just sitting in the cafeteria, eating Jell-O.”
    “All right,” Lucas said. “Chat with people. Try not to piss off Marcy’s guys.”
    “What are we gonna do?” Del asked.
    Lucas told them about Marcy’s plan to go after Lyle Mack, when Joe Mack was caught. “We’re gonna pick him up, take him downtown, sweat him ... let him hire a lawyer, whatever. He could give us the insider at the hospital, or tell Joe to. We’ve got everything on Joe, nothing on Lyle, so maybe Lyle’ll save himself.”
    Del said, “The other thing we could do is, start figuring out who Joe Mack’s friends are, and busting their chops. Somebody’s hiding him.”
    “Unless he’s in Mexico,” Weather said.
    “Marcy’s got the feds looking for him,” Lucas said. “Both the Canada crossings and the Mexican ones. We can’t do that—all we can do is look around here.”

    LYLE MACK TURNED the bar over to Honey Bee at nine o’clock and headed home. Felt odd to be leaving so early. He watched his rearview mirror, wondering if the cops were following him, or had bugged him somehow. Saw lots of cars, but had no idea if anybody had followed him.
    He lived in a shabby but quiet neighborhood a mile from the bar, a three-bedroom rambler with a dry basement and a two-car garage off the alley in back. He put the car in the garage, went inside the house, walked around turning on lights.
    Turned on the TV
    “Goddamnit.” He was scared. He went into the kitchen and turned the lights off, then went back and tried to watch a late-night sports channel. Gave it half an hour, then went to bed. He lay there, unable to sleep. Lay there for eight hours, looking at the clock every fifteen minutes. Knew he must have slept part of the time... was asleep when the alarm went off at five o’clock.
    He got out of bed, drunk with exhaustion. Using his clean phone, he called Cappy. “Where are you?”
    “Wal-Mart parking lot.”
    “Let’s do it.”
    “Call me when you’re set,” Cappy said.
    He got dressed in the dark, and when he got his coat and gloves on, he looked out through the crack between the front-room curtains, up and down the street. He saw no vehicles that didn’t look like they belonged. He doubted that they were watching him, but...
    “Oh, Jesus,” he said. He was scared. He went anyway. Out the back door down the sidewalk to the garage, into the garage,