Storm Prey

good-sized-he uses it as a shop to work on his motorcycles. But it’s not gonna take long to go through it. What you see is what there is.”
    “What we have to worry about is that Joe is laying up in there, and he’s got a deer rifle and starts blowing holes in us,” Shrake said. “So do we sneak up on him, or go in fast?”
    “We send your two SWAT guys, with two of our SWAT guys, in through the woods.” Stephaniak tapped the woodlot. “They check the garage. It’s heated, so Joe could be in there. If he’s not, they break through the side door—our guys have a crowbar—and get lined up at the front door. From there, it’s only about thirty or forty feet over to the side door of the house. I’ll call the house, and at the same time, they rush it. They’ll be inside before Joe can get a gun ... with any luck.”
     
     
    THEY WORKED through the plan for a couple of minutes, then another, older, deputy came in. The sheriff said, “Hey, Dick. You get ’em?”
    The deputy nodded. “We’re set.”
    Stephaniak said, “Let’s rock.”
     
     
    THE FOUR SWAT guys armored up and took the BCA truck, which was unmarked and had Minnesota plates. The rest of the crew staged in the empty parking lot of a barbeque joint four miles from Mack’s place.
    Stephaniak had given radios to all five vehicles involved. Franklin called after a few minutes and told them that the roads were clear all the way out, and a few minutes later called to say that they’d left the truck and were about to make the approach to the back of the garage. “We’ve got a couple fences to cross, so we’ll be ten minutes,” he said.
    They rolled out of the parking lot a couple of minutes later. Two miles down the road, Franklin called again: “We’re at the back of the garage. No cars inside. Can’t see anybody inside. Ron’s at the door, we’re taking the door out. Okay, we’re inside. Nobody here. No loft, we can see the whole place ... Make the call.”
    Stephaniak, riding in the lead SUV, made the call as they turned into Mack’s driveway, and Lucas saw the SWAT guys rush the house, hit the door. A minute later, they were all out, on the snow, behind the trucks, and Franklin came out on the porch and waved.
    “Nobody home,” Marcy said, disappointed.
    “Goddamnit, I hope he’s not on his way to Mexico,” Lucas said.
    “Let’s look at the phones, see who’s calling him,” Marcy said.
    “Ike’s on his way out,” Stephaniak said. “My guy says he didn’t seem surprised.”
     
     
    THE HOUSE SMELLED like home-canning; like pickles and creamed corn and cigarette smoke. Like an old single guy living out in the woods. Shrake and Jenkins, with the Minneapolis cops, ran the search, moving quickly and efficiently through the house, from attic to basement. Marcy went for the phones: Mack used handsets that listed calling numbers, and she took them down in her notebook. As she wrote, she called to the other cops, “Nobody mention the phones to him. Nobody mention that we looked at them. Ignore them. We want him to use them.”
    Lucas asked, and she said, “Half-dozen calls from the Cities since the hospital. None of the numbers go to Lyle or Joe.”
    Lucas wandered through the house with his hands in his pockets, then out on the porch, to the garage. The garage had three overhead doors and was set up to handle two parking spaces and a motorcycle shop. There were pieces of three or four older Harleys around, and one complete frame, but without handlebars or wheels. Nothing of interest.
    He checked the woodshed, supposed that something might have been concealed under the three or four face-cords of hardwood, but if so, it hadn’t been concealed since the hospital robbery. Snow had been blown in from the sides and had crusted over the lower layers of wood. Not much way to fake that.
    Farther back, a cop was looking into what had been a chicken house. He walked away, shook his head at Lucas, and said, “I’m going to walk the perimeter, see if there are any tracks heading back into the woods.”
    A cinder-block incinerator sat next to the chicken house, and Lucas went that way. There were fresh ashes, signs of burned garbage—orange peels, the odor of burned coffee grounds. Lucas looked around, got a short downed tree branch, and stirred through the debris.
    Came up with a partially burned piece of black nylon fabric. Heavy, with a piece of charred strap across it. Like a nylon bag.
    The robbers, Dorothy Baker had