Storm Prey

loading dock and through the door into the bar itself, his head bumping on the door-jamb. Cappy got a chair and said, “Roll him,” and when Barakat rolled him, Cappy put the chair across Lyle Mack’s chest, one of the crossbars over his neck, another cutting into the fat man’s gut. Cappy sat in the chair and said to Barakat, “Go ’head.”
    Lyle Mack began to weep: “Man, please, please, don’t do this, man, please ...”
     
     
    ANYONE WALKING by the bar, bareheaded and listening, might have heard the screams, but then again, they might not have; there was just enough wind to carry the sound away.

14
    LUCAS GOT UP EARLY, with Weather, then went back to bed for a while, and finally rolled out at seven o’clock, two hours before he usually did. He got cleaned up, ate breakfast, played chase-the-tennis-ball with Sam, and then sent Sam and the housekeeper off to the grocery store. As she went, the housekeeper said, “You should take the truck today. There’s a storm warning.”
    “Yeah? When’s it supposed to get here?”
    “They were saying tonight. I can’t see it on the radar yet, but it’s coming.”
    Lucas went to look at the TV. The storm was still winding up over western South Dakota. Brought up the computer in the den, checked again: heavy snow tomorrow, starting with flurries around dawn, with rapidly falling temperatures. Ten to fifteen inches of snow possible in the next forty-eight hours. The Black Hills were being pounded.
    He went out and told the housekeeper, “Not until tomorrow, they’re saying.”
    She said, “Somebody’s here.”
    A car pulled into the driveway, and he looked and saw Jenkins getting out. He let him in the back door, and then heard Shrake arrive, and let him in, too. “Gonna storm tomorrow,” Shrake said. He was holding a box of sticky buns. “What’re we doing?”
    “Marcy’s getting an arrest warrant for Lyle Mack. We’re a little thin on cause, but we think he’s talking to Joe.”
    “Prepaid cell,” Shrake said.
    “That’s what we think. We can get the cell phone as part of the arrest, and then ...”
    “We’ve got real probable cause,” Jenkins finished.
     
     
    THEY HAD COFFEE and two sticky buns each, and talked about the fact that none of them smoked anymore, and how enjoyable it had been, and then Marcy called: “I got two pieces of news, one of which I should have had a long, long time ago, but you jerks held out on me.”
    “And that is?”
    “With your new equipment, with a high-priority case, you can do DNA in twelve hours.”
    “Didn’t know that,” Lucas said. “You get it back?”
    “Yes, we did. Guess what? Whoever strangled Jill MacBride, it wasn’t Joe Mack.”
    “What?”
    “Got some weird shit going down, big boy. Get your crew cranked up, and let’s go see Lyle Mack. If Joe didn’t strangle her, maybe he didn’t kidnap her—and he’s got no reason to run.”
    “Well, bullshit,” Lucas said. “I don’t know what happened, but Joe grabbed her. I mean, if he didn’t, it’d be like a zillion to one.”
    “You know what? A perfect solar eclipse is a zillion to one. But I’ve seen one.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “Hey, I was there.”
    “Not the eclipse. I don’t believe that Joe didn’t snatch her. When will you get here?”
    “Fifteen minutes—leaving here in two.”
     
     
    MARCY’S NEWS gave them more to talk about, but in the end, they couldn’t figure out what it meant. She arrived in her husband’s truck, came in, looked at the box on the table and said, “I’ll bet you didn’t save a single—”
    “Ah, but we did,” Shrake said. “In fact, we saved two.”
    “I’m watching my weight,” she said.
    “I’ve been watching it, too,” Jenkins said. “I gotta tell you, it’s looking pretty good.”
    “Spoken like a true connoisseur,” Shrake said, and they bumped knuckles.
    Marcy said, “Mental note: don’t hire Jenkins and Shrake when Davenport finally fires them.”
    Lucas said, “Yeah-yeah. Let’s knock off the bullshit and get over to Mack’s. Take the buns with you.”
    “Yeah, take your buns with you,” Shrake said.
    Marcy gave him a delicate finger and asked Lucas, “Tell me what you think about the DNA.”
    “I have no idea,” he confessed. “Maybe more people are involved than we thought. Maybe, well, we know there was one guy at the hospital ... maybe when we get him ... I don’t know, Marcy. Did the DNA rule out Lyle Mack, too?”
    “Unless