Storm Prey

turned it on, and said, “This is probably it: it says it’s got seventy-five minutes of talk-time left.”
    “Need the numbers, right now,” Lucas said. “Incoming and outgoing calls.”
    “Got it.”
    Marcy came in: “Lucas: what do you think?”
    “We’re back to square one. We don’t know what’s happening. MacBride is killed by somebody we don’t know, Mack is tortured to death. Joe didn’t do this, so ... there’s gotta be somebody else. Probably a couple or three of them.”
    “Another gang?”
    “Don’t know. We’ve got a mystery guy at the hospital. We don’t know about him.”
    She said, “I wonder if the Macks had anything to do with it—the robbery, and all of it.”
    “Sure they did,” Lucas said. “If they didn’t, then why that?” He nodded toward the front room. “They cut on him until they got what they wanted, and then they stopped and killed him. If they were just doing it for pure pleasure, they could have gone on for a while. And then there’s Haines and Chapman, and we know they were good friends with the Macks ... and I still believe that Joe had something to do with MacBride. Maybe this is about the drugs. Maybe somebody figured out the Macks had the drugs, and came after them. You know what? I bet the drugs are still around.”
     
     
    LUCAS NEVER liked the writing of reports, but did it; in this case, he could unload most of it on the Mendota Heights cop, and he did that, too. Weather called at eleven o’clock and said, “We’re still on hold, but the kids are getting stronger. May go another day.”
    “It’s gonna snow tomorrow,” Lucas said.
    “We’re planning to operate inside the hospital, not on the parking ramp.”
    “Ah. That’s so clever.” He told her about Lyle Mack, and she said, “Worse and worse. All because some guy got mad and kicked poor old Don Peterson.”
     
     
    LUCAS TOLD MARCY, “I’m going to call Ike—notify him, and see if we can pry anything out of him. Maybe this’ll loosen him up.”
    The place was getting crowded, with Grace, the Mendota Heights chief, two more local cops, crime-scene and ME investigators. Lucas called the Washburn County sheriff, Stephaniak, told him what had happened, and asked, “Where’d you say he worked? I need to notify him.”
    “Better you than me,” Stephaniak said. “I’ve done that a few too many times.”
    He looked the number up in the local directory, read it off, and Lucas dialed.
    A man answered, a little tired: “Larry’s.”
    Lucas said, “I’m a police officer from Minnesota. I’m trying to reach Ike Mack on a family issue. Can I speak to him?”
    After a few seconds of silence, the man on the other end said, “Ike didn’t show up today. Don’t know where he is.”
    “Does that happen a lot?”
    “No, it doesn’t. He’s pretty reliable, when he’s not drinking, and he’s not drinking. Unless he started last night,” the man said. “I’ve been calling him on his cell, and there’s no answer. What’d he do?”
    “Nothing—this is a family emergency. Do you have a home phone number for him?” Lucas asked.
    “He doesn’t have a home phone, only the cell phone. He usually has it with him.”
    Lucas got the number, dialed it, got no answer. He called Stephaniak again and said, “Ike didn’t show up this morning. What happened here was pretty bad. Is there any way you could send somebody over to his house, take a look?”
    “You think somebody might have come up here?”
    “His son was tortured,” Lucas said. “Like they were interrogating him. They may be looking for those drugs from the hospital. Maybe they stashed them at Ike’s, out in the woods or something ... Anyway, if you could take a look.”
    “Ten minutes,” Stephaniak said. “I got a guy patrolling over that way.”
     
     
    LUCAS ASKED the techs if anything was coming off the body, and one of them said, “It’s gonna sound weird, but I wonder if one of them was sniffing cocaine while they were cutting on him. There’s this little sprinkling of powder on his legs. Doesn’t look like dirt, or plaster ... it’s not ground in, it’s just sitting there.”
    Lucas had to look closely to see it, a fine-grained, beige sprinkle.
    “Doesn’t look like coke.”
    “I agree. I’ve taken samples.”
    Lucas said, “You know my wife’s a surgeon?”
    “Yeah, plastic surgeon, right?” The tech was with the BCA, and they’d worked together on a number of cases.
    “Yup. And she brings