Storm Prey

many more Frenchies there are in the hospital. Medical people who know how to say a-ceet-ohmy-a-fin.”
    Virgil corrected him, “A-seat-a-min-o-phen.”
    “Let’s see how many there are,” Lucas said. “Christ, I don’t even want to mention this to Weather. She’s gonna go ballistic.”
    “You could chicken out—tip Marcy’s investigators, let them take the heat,” Del said.
    Lucas: “I suppose.”
    “But not really,” Del said. “It’s our find. We oughta run with it.”
    “What Del said,” Virgil said.
    Lucas nodded, then grinned at them: “Not gonna let those clown shoes from Minneapolis take it away from us, huh?” He thought for a moment, then said, “Okay. But I’m not telling Weather about Gabe. He’s a friend of ours.”
    “Somebody ought to mention it,” Virgil said.
    Lucas looked at him, and said, “Yeah. Somebody should.”
     
     
    VIRGIL WOULD START looking for people with French accents who worked in the hospital, Lucas decided, since he was there most of the day anyway. “I’ll get Shrake and Jenkins to haul Weather back home, so you can stay late,” Lucas told Virgil. “Del and I are gonna jack up a guy named Lighter.”
     
     
    LUCAS AND DEL had called Lighter’s name in to Lucas’s secretary, Carol, and asked her to run him through the NCIC. On the way back across town, she called with the bad news, and Lucas put it on the speakerphone.
    “... charged six times with assault, two possession of controlled substances, which was speed ... note in the file says he’s a steroid guy, weight lifter. Spent most of his twenties working as a bouncer over on Hennepin Avenue, got too old for that, now he’s a driver for Blackjack Limousine Service.”
    “How old?” Del asked.
    “Thirty-seven. He spent two years in Stillwater for beating up a Minneapolis cop named Lancaster after a Rolling Stones concert back in ’ninety-nine. He said he didn’t know Lancaster was a cop, thought he was trying to crack security lines around the Stones.”
    “I remember that,” Lucas said. “Don Lancaster. He had a fractured skull, or something.”
    “That’s it. Lighter’s alibi failed to hold up because Lancaster was wearing a uniform at the time.”
    “That’s a bad alibi,” Del said.
    “Yes. He’s been remanded for drug treatment a couple times, all the way back to when he was a juvie, but it looks like it didn’t take,” Carol said. “You guys be careful.”
     
     
    LIGHTER’S PLACE was a junkyard: three or four acres of buck-thorn, scrubby red cedar, and weeds, punctuated by the rusting hulks of eighties and nineties cars, rotted-out snowmobiles, trashed trail bikes, all surrounding a two-story house covered with thirties-era gray tar shingles.
    A deck, a few years old, stuck incongruously out of one side of the house, next to an anachronistic sliding-glass door. An oversized charcoal grill, made out of a metal barrel cut in half, sat on the deck, with the cooking implements still hanging on the side. A Jeep and two Oldsmobiles, though older and rusting out, sat in the driveway and appeared to be in running condition.
    “If this guy doesn’t have six pit bulls, I’ll kiss your ass,” Del said.
    “I don’t see any stakes in the yard,” Lucas said.
    “You watch,” Del said. “Six.”
    They got out and both of them touched their guns, then Lucas led the way to the front door through the crunchy snow. He knocked on the aluminum storm door, and there was a thump inside, as if somebody had fallen off a couch, and a minute later, the inner door opened a crack, and a woman put her nose in the crack. “What?”
    Lucas held up his ID: “Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We need to chat with Phil Lighter.”
    “Phil’s working,” the woman said.
    “Would you mind opening the door?” Lucas asked. “I can’t hear you.”
    She opened the door a foot or so. She was a heavy woman with a bad hairdo, played-out blond streaks over natural brown. She was wearing a sweatshirt that said If I wanted to talk, I woulda worn underwear. “Phil’s working,” she said again.
    “When do you expect him back?”
    “Pretty soon,” she said. Pause. Then, “You best not be here when he gets back.”
    “Why’s that?” Del asked.
    “Because he really doesn’t like cops, and he’s really pissed off right now,” she said. “He was supposed to drive for some rock band, and they blew him off. He called a half hour ago. He’s on his way back.” She opened the door another inch