Storm prey

15

LUCAS DROVE SOUTH on Highway 61, crossed the Mississippi into Hastings, took Highway 55 to the law enforcement center, checked in with the sheriff's office and was escorted to forensics. A tall, narrow, dark-haired woman met him at the door and stuck out a hand: "Lucas? Nancy Knott. Come on through. What's up?"

Lucas followed her to a cubbyhole office, took the visitor's chair as she settled behind her desk. Lucas asked, "You processed the scene at the Haines-Chapman murder, right?"

"Basically, Lonny Johnson did, but I was out there for a while," she said. "Lonny's off today. I did most of the in-house processing."

"So when I read your forensics report yesterday, it said that you found hay-wait, not hay, you said straw-stuck to the back of one of the victims. You thought that he might have died in an agricultural area. I understand the bodies were found in a ditch under a little bridge, in an ag area. So my question is, so what? Was there something about the straw?"

"There wasn't any straw there," Knott said. "It was one of those seasonal creeks, grown up with dead weeds. There was a bean field up the hill, so no straw there. And the bodies were in plastic bags, and the straw was stuck to the outside of their clothing, inside the bags."

Lucas dug in his pocket and pulled several pieces of straw from his pocket. "Hay like this?"

He dropped it on her desk and she leaned over and looked at it, then took a pencil out of a cup and pushed it around. "Straw. Yeah. Like that. Exactly. See this cut? Cut like that. Same color and texture."

"Is there any way to tell if it's the same straw? Or hay? Like genetically the same?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe the FBI could. Maybe one of the big ag schools could tell you what variety of straw it is, if that would help."

"I'm not exactly following-I'm a city kid. Hay, straw…"

Hay, she said, was essentially different from straw. Hay was a dried food crop, like alfalfa or clover, heavily fed to cattle, horses, goats, sheep, and sometimes other animals. Straw was the support stalk for cereal grains, like wheat, oats, and rye, didn't have much nutritive value, but was used for animal bedding.

"And what we had on Haines's back was several pieces of straw, not hay. It looked exactly like what you've brought in, and I suspect a lab could tell you that they were both, say, oat straw, or not. Or wheat straw, or not. About the genetics, I bet they could figure it out, but I'm not sure."

"Bedding material. For what kind of animals?" Lucas asked.

"Horses. You know, horses in a barn," she said.

"Huh."

"If you want to leave this, I can check around, see if we can find a place to compare it. If you have a scene where you think they might've been killed, well, just me eyeballing it, your samples look identical to what we took off Haines," she said. "And Haines and Chapman were living in the city, too-they wouldn't have just picked it up anywhere. So… I bet you found it. Uh, where was it?"

Lucas called Jenkins from the road: "You still got her there?"

"Yes. Having a nice chat."

"Hold her there." Gabriel Maret pulled the surgical team together outside the operating theater. "One more day. The cardiologists say there could be some benefit by holding off for another twelve to twenty-four hours, but not after that. So tomorrow morning, at seven o'clock, we're going, and we have to go the whole way, regardless of what happens."

Virgil had been leaning against the wall down the hall, and when Weather broke free of the group, asked, "Back home?"

She said, "I was thinking. About these latest killings. Lucas thinks that the hospital guy has to be involved somehow. He's one guy they don't have any ideas about, except for the accent."

Virgil nodded. "So?"

"So they killed this one man last night, and another one probably this morning. Who do we know who has a French accent, who didn't show up for work today?"

Virgil's eyebrows went up. "Not a bad thought. Who'd we ask about that?"

"Let's go down to admin."

Lucas got back to the BCA office and found Jenkins and Honey Bee in a conference room finishing a pepperoni pizza. Lucas took a chair, pulled it close to her, and said, "Ms. Brown. Harriet. Honey Bee. When the bodies of Haines and Chapman were found, some pieces of straw were taken off their backs. I collected some straw from your driveway this morning. I've just been down to the Dakota County sheriff's office and we've done a comparison. We think we can prove that Haines and Chapman were killed at your farm."

Her mouth dropped open. "What?"

"We can use genetics techniques to prove the connection," Lucas said. "Very sophisticated, but they're better than fingerprints."

"I don't-"

Lucas beat her down with an angry snap: "Goddamnit, don't bullshit us. This is way out of control. Do you realize how many people are dead? Somebody's killed six people."

"Not me…"

"But you were involved, one way or another," Lucas said, leaning toward her, looming, tapping on the table with his index finger. "We've already got enough to convince a jury: you were intimate with Lyle Mack, you were friends with Joe and Ike, you were friends with the victims, Haines and Chapman, we've got the evidence of the straw, taken from your house. Have you helped us? No. You've stonewalled. You've given us exactly zip."

She looked at Jenkins. "I've been cooperating…"

"You've been talking to me," Jenkins said. "You've been nice, I gotta admit. But Honey Bee, you've given me exactly no useful information. Not even the simple stuff, like, who's the 'doc' guy?"

"I don't know who the doc guy is," she said. "I think he's a doper. Joe told me once that the worst doper he knew was a doctor, and I think it's the same guy. I think that's how they knew him. The guy was trying to buy dope."

"Did Joe sell dope?"

She looked away, and then said, "He might have, at one time. I don't know exactly."

"Oh, horseshit," Lucas said. "Did he sell dope?"

Long pause, then, "Yes. Not so much sell it, as trade it. You know, for stuff."

"What kind of stuff?" Jenkins asked.

"Office equipment."

"Office equipment." The two cops looked at each other.

"They used to sell a lot of office equipment on the Internet," she said. "And cameras and stuff," she said.

"In other words, hot stuff," Lucas said. "Stuff from burglaries, stolen stuff from offices."

"I guess," she said.

"Where'd they keep it?" Lucas asked. "There wasn't any at the bar, or their houses."

She started to cry, and the cops sat and watched. After a minute, she stopped, checking for effects, saw nothing but stone faces. "What?"

"Where'd they keep it?" Lucas asked again.

Another long wait, and then, "They have a storage place out in Lake Elmo."

"Do you know where it is?"

"Yes."

"Did they put the dope from the hospital robbery out there?"

"I don't know about the hospital robbery. "

They pushed her around for a while, then Lucas said to Jenkins, "I think we better check her into Ramsey County."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"Gonna hold you in jail for a while," Lucas said.

She thought about the money in her purse and said, "Oh, no. You said we were going to a hotel."

"Can't take a chance that you'd run," Lucas said. "You're in this up to your neck."

She said, "If you put me in jail, I'll get a lawyer and I won't say one more goddamn thing to you. If you need help, you can go fuck yourself. I'm trying to help, maybe I can help if you ask different questions, or maybe I can help some other way. If you put me in jail, I won't say one more goddamn word."

"I don't know if you can give us any more help," Lucas said. "You're looking at a murder one, and you're still stonewalling."

"I'll help you with Joe," she said. "Who else are you going to get to talk to him? That he'll trust? You can go fuck yourself on that one," she said.

Lucas looked at Jenkins. "What do you think?"

Before Jenkins could say anything, Honey Bee added, "I've got my truck. I've got my horses. I've got my farm. I can't run away. I'm forty-three years old and I got nothing else in my whole life."

Jenkins said, "I thought your driver's license said thirty-seven or thirty-nine. Like that."

"I might've cut a couple years off," she said.

Lucas called Marcy, told her about the straw from the driveway, about the storage unit, about Honey Bee's willingness to talk to Joe.

"He's not answering, but his phone is ringing, still in Kansas, and not moving," Marcy said. "I got a bad feeling about it. I think they ditched it. Threw it out the window."

Lucas and Jenkins drove Honey Bee out to Lake Elmo, to a self-storage place, and got the manager to open the unit. The floor was covered by wooden pallets, on which were stacked a couple of dozen TVs and computer monitors, computers, including a half-dozen Apple laptops, a gift box of Wusthof knives, paper shredders, printers, speakers and audio receivers, Blu-ray and DVD players, a dozen GPS handhelds, fish-finders and marine tracking units, six new-looking Yamaha 25-horsepower outboard motors, and one snowmobile.

No drugs. Because, Lucas thought, the drugs had been at Ike's.

They called the Washington County sheriff, told them about the unit, knotted a piece of crime-scene tape on the lock, and told the manager not to touch anything.

"Nothing for us," Lucas said, as they pulled out. To Honey Bee: "We need Joe. We need a different phone, we need the doc, we need you to give us something we can use, or I'm slamming your ass in jail."

"I don't-"

"Think of something," Lucas said. "Or else. The doc: is he a French guy? Do you know anything about that?"

She touched her lips and said, "Oh."

"Oh, what?"

"The doc guy. Joe Mack once cracked some joke about a rag-head. I think he was talking about the doc."

"The doc's an Arab?"

"Or one of those kinds of people who have, you know, turbans. I think so. But I'm not sure. That's all I can think of that might help."

"What's his last name?" Lucas asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know anything else. I heard them talking about the doc."

"That's not a hell of a lot," Jenkins said.

Virgil and Weather were put with the payroll people, who looked through a list of the French-accent workers. None had called in sick, but two of them had the day off. Virgil said, "I need to get you home, so the guys can cover you."

"You shouldn't look for them on your own," Weather said.

"So I'll take Jenkins or Shrake," Virgil said. "Gotta do it, though-this could be something."

They'd just finished when Lucas called for Virgil. Lucas told him what Honey Bee had said, and Virgil said, "If it's an Arab, that's gonna be a bigger problem. There're lots more Arabs around here than Frenchmen."

Jenkins and Lucas played good-cop bad-cop for a while, Jenkins suggesting that Honey Bee had helped some, and she might help more, and so deserved another chance. Lucas wanted to put her in jail. Eventually, Lucas backed away, and agreed to stick her in a Holiday Inn, in downtown St. Paul.

"You go out to eat, and that's it. You sit here and watch TV If I call you on your cell, you better answer in one second," Lucas said.

"I will," she said.

Honey Bee sat in her room for a half hour, staring at her suitcase, watching the TV without seeing it. She was scared of the killer, scared of Davenport, scared of the future. She wondered if they were watching her: peeked out in the hall, saw nobody. Went back to her room, sat in the bathtub. Made a decision.

She'd make a practice run, she decided. She took the elevator down three floors, then the stairs the rest of the way, listening for doors closing above her…

On the street, head down, she walked to a sandwich place on West Seventh, a block from the X Center, sat in a booth in the back, and watched the door. Business was slow, no hockey on the schedule: a few people came through, but nobody who felt like a cop. She left by a back door, into a side street, got her guts together, crossed the streets to the X Center, took the Skyway first up and then down, to the tunnel, watched her tracks, got into the main system, moving fast now.

At the bank, she got directions to the safe-deposit area, took the elevator down, rented a safe-deposit box, showing her checks to confirm her status as a customer, and dropped seventeen thousand into it, kept a thousand as walking-around money.

Took the elevator back up, expecting to see Davenport waiting at the doors: nobody.

Walked back through the Skyways, looking for a pay phone… and found one, one of the last public phones in the world, she thought. She got quarters from a popcorn stand and dialed long distance.

Two rings, three. Then, "Hello?"

"Eddie? It's me, Honey Bee."

Silence. Then, "You with the cops?"

"Not now. They had me all day. I'm calling from a pay phone. I need to talk to Joe."

"One minute."

Joe came on and said, "Honey Bee. I was afraid to call you."

"I'm on a pay phone. Joe-everybody's dead. I saw Lyle dead. Somebody tortured him. Tortured him. They say your dad's dead, too. They say there was drugs up there, and they tortured Lyle to get them." She kept her voice down, watching people walking past her, but tears started, and she began to cry into the phone.

"We're coming back," Joe Mack said after a while.

"You know who it is?" Honey Bee asked.

"Maybe," Joe Mack said.

"Is it the doc?"

More silence, then Joe Mack said, "How'd you know about the doc?"

"They've been looking all over for a guy called the doc. One of the cops said that there might have been some kind of powder on Lyle, that came from doctor's gloves."

"Could be the doc. Could be another guy. I'm not sure. But if an Arab guy comes looking for you, or a skinhead guy, you stay the fuck away from them. You get behind your shotgun and you don't let them in the house."

"I'm not in my house; the cops hid me in a hotel."

"Good. Stay there. You got a phone?"

"Not a clean one."

"See if you can get one, call me back at this number."

"What are you going to do?"

"Find the doc and this other guy. Have a talk."

"They think the doc did it. They tortured Lyle something awful, and something they were talking about makes me think a doc did it. They cut him. I think they cut, you know, his balls… off."

"Ah, Honey Bee… Christ, his balls?"

Honey Bee started weeping into the phone, and Joe Mack said, "Listen to me. Listen to me. Do they still think I killed that lady?"

"No. They say somebody else did," she said. "They think it's the doc. I told them it might be. They were going to put me in jail unless I told them something."

"Okay. Be cool. Did you get the cash out of the circuit breaker?"

She nodded at the phone. "Yes. I put it in a safe-deposit box at US Bank. Seventeen thousand dollars. Don't go to the bar. The cops are tearing the place apart."

"Okay. Now listen. Sit tight. Cooperate, but don't tell them I'm coming back, and don't tell them about this phone. Eddie's got a lawyer pal in Wisconsin who's done a lot of work for the Seed. He's gonna sign one-third of the bar over to you, make it look like you owned it for a couple years, and he's going to make a will for Lyle that leaves half of his share to you, and half to me. So we'll be half owners, but you gotta run it, okay?"

She sniffed. "Okay."

"I'll be back late tonight or tomorrow. We're coming, Honey Bee."

Barakat took the call from Joe Mack, who asked, "Have you seen Cappy?"

"I can get in touch," Barakat said.

"Tell him that the cops are looking for him. They might know about the van, too. He either better dump it, or dump the plates."

"Where are you?"

"On my way to Mexico. I ain't coming back, Al. Everybody's dead, and I don't know what's going on. I'm just heading out."

The dummy, being clever.