Storm Prey

home surgeon’s gloves, from time to time, like when she’s going to paint things. And she gave me some for my shoeshine box. The thing is, they’ve got this very fine powder in them, to get them on and off easier. It looks like this stuff. When you get to the lab, check that.”
    “The guy’s testicle looks like it was removed with something very sharp. Like a scalpel. Not like a bar knife.”
    Lucas patted the guy’s shoulder a couple of times: “And we’re looking for a doctor, somebody who could have set up the hospital robbery.”
     
     
    JENKINS CAME BACK: “We got a full list downtown on the incoming and outgoing calls. Most of them are to one number, and five of those were in the couple hours after Joe ran.”
    “That’s him,” Lucas said.
    “The last call from that number was at eleven o’clock last night,” Jenkins said. “It went through a cell tower in Emporia, Kansas. It’s right on 1-35.”
    “He’s running.”
    Marcy said, “Maybe I should call him. You guys might scare him. If he’s running, we want to engage him before he throws the phone out the window.”
    “So figure out what to say,” Lucas said. “Let’s give him a ring.”
     
     
    THEY WERE GETTING ready to make the call when Stephaniak called back on Lucas’s phone: “I don’t know all the details, but Ike was killed, apparently last night, in his house. Multiple gunshot wounds to the face. You know out back, in the yard ... over toward that old shed?”
    “Yeah. By that incinerator.”
    “Yes. My deputy says there are a bunch of ABS stacks from the septic system, but one of them is a fake. There’s a stack, and a lid set in the ground, and when you lift it out, there’s a concrete sewer tank underneath it, but it’s dry. Somebody pulled the stack up last night. There are four big waterproof plastic bins, military surplus, laying on the ground next to the tank. Empty. Probably where they stashed the drugs. There’s still a box with thirty or forty handguns in the tank, oiled up and sealed in Ziploc bags, and a lot of ammo. Looks like Ike was dealing guns on the side.”
    “Yup, that was the dope,” Lucas said. “That’s why they tortured Lyle. You got a crime-scene crew that can do DNA?”
    “We do. We’re talking to the guys in Madison. They’ll get a crew up here. I’m going out there in two minutes.”
    “Look for DNA,” Lucas said. “Anything that seems worth processing. Was Ike tortured? Interrogated?”
    “Nope. The deputy says it looks like they walked in the front door and shot him in the face.”
     
     
    MARCY CALLED JOE MACK from Lyle Mack’s office and got him on the second ring. She said, “Joe? This is Marcy Sherrill, the police officer who was talking to you when you ran. Listen to me: Lyle’s been killed. He was killed last—Listen to me, Joe. He was killed last night. Somebody— Listen to me. I’m calling on Lyle’s cell phone. That’s how we got your number.
    “Listen, whoever did it ... I’m so sorry to tell you ... whoever did it apparently went north and killed your father, too. Sheriff Stephaniak up there says whoever did the shooting took the top off a septic tank out back that was dry, and that there were a bunch of boxes where we think somebody hid the drugs. That’s what they were after.”
    She was talking fast, trying to reel him in.
    “Listen, Joe: we need to know what you know. We know you didn’t do this, and we know you didn’t kill Jill MacBride, because we got DNA from her body that says somebody else did it, not you. We need to know who you think did it. We need—Joe, okay, I’m on Lyle’s cell phone, call me back. Call me back ...”
    She looked up at Lucas: “He’s gone.”
    “He listened for a while, though,” Lucas said. “Maybe he’ll call you back.”
     
     
    JOE MACK SAT STUNNED, and Eddie, a gray-faced forty-something man with a red ponytail and acne-pocked face, said, “Maybe they’re bullshitting you, man. Maybe they were trying to keep you on the phone, so they could see where we are.”
    He looked up in the sky, as though scanning for black helicopters.
    Joe Mack said, “I don’t think she was bullshitting me, man. I don’t think so.” He began to weep, sitting in the passenger seat, both hands wrapped around the phone. Eddie didn’t know what to say, because he’d never seen Joe Mack weep. Joe stopped, after a minute, and wiped his eyes, and said, “We gotta go back there.”
    Eddie said, “Aw, Jesus, man, we’re