Storm Prey Part 40

They came up and he said, in a whisper, "Right there, across the yard. Something big hit the fence."

They could see the back window of the upstairs room, a dark rectangle in the barely visible house.

"I'm going out there," Lucas said. "Right around this house behind us, and then over to the fence. Johnny, tell your guys I'll be moving out there."

He slipped away to his left, groping in the dark, behind the neighboring house, sheltered by a hedge. Once across the yard, he forced a hole in the hedge, into Wilson's yard, next to the fence. Unlikely that he could be seen: he couldn't see the window anymore. But if Cappy was out there, with a shotgun, waiting ...

He got his guts up and started crawling down the fence line. Fifteen yards down the line, he crossed Cappy's trail. Thought nothing. Turned to look at the fence: couldn't see anything. Listened. Nothing. Crawled down the trail to the house, and the bas.e.m.e.nt window. "G.o.dd.a.m.nit." Never thought of the bas.e.m.e.nt. He got to his feet, crouching, and dashed across the yard to Harris's post, where the others were waiting.

"He's out," Lucas said. "But there's a trail. He's five minutes ahead of us."

SHRAKE VOLUNTEERED to follow the track. He was wearing a helmet and full armor, and Lucas said, "Don't forget, he had grenades. If you see him, and go after him, he could drop one on you."

"I'm not forgetting that," Shrake said. "I think about it every two seconds."

"Five-meter kill zone. Four or five seconds from the time he throws it. The time is not precise," Lucas said.

"I can handle all that," Shrake said. "The question is, will we ever see it?"

"Don't push out front--stay way back. Keep your flashlight working."

[image]

THEY MOVED out in a V-shaped line two hundred yards across, fifty yards deep, with Shrake at the bottom of the funnel with a super-bright LED flashlight and a radio. The line was mostly invisible as they moved, with the exception of Shrake. As the trail went one way or another around houses, into the next street, Shrake adjusted the vector.

St. Paul Park put all their squads on the streets, moving, light racks flas.h.i.+ng, on a perimeter, hoping to keep Cappy inside, but the snow was so heavy that he'd probably be able to cross the line. On the other hand, the flas.h.i.+ng lights might make him cautious, and slow him down.

The search, Lucas thought, as he tramped up through the snow with his shotgun, had all the characteristics of a cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k, but he couldn't think of a better alternative. He was the first man up the funnel from Shrake, twenty yards to Shrake's left, fifteen yards in front of him.

Shrake said, "He's going around the left side of the house ..." They pushed through the first line of lots, into the next street, then through the next double line, the houses back-to-back. Lights were popping on here and there, people starting to check the flas.h.i.+ng lights of the squads.

Through the second line of houses, and Shrake said, "Bearing left, bearing left."

THE THIN BLOND woman was lying on the kitchen floor, her ankles taped together, and Cappy stuck a grenade between her thighs and said, "Press hard, and don't move. Don't even think. The pin is out, and if the lever goes, it'll blow you in half. And if this f.u.c.kin' key doesn't start that f.u.c.kin' truck, I'll come back here and kill you myself."

"I won't move. I won't move, please don't do this ..."

"Shut up. You just lay there."

Cappy took the key and slunk back to the front window and looked out. Nothing to see. A flas.h.i.+ng light somewhere ... he could see the whip of the light on the snow, like far-off lightning. Had the cops gotten onto him?

Had to go. He said, one more time, "Don't move, lady. Keep your s.h.i.+t together, and don't move."

HE WENT OUT to the driveway, fumbled the keys, found them again, got the door open, fired up the truck. Backed out of the driveway, and then, through the m.u.f.fled air of the storm, heard a human sound, a shouting.

Had no idea where it was coming from. Left the lights off, backed into the street, and took off, and then the light-whips got brighter, fast, and a squad car pulled in front of him, another behind it, one blocking the street.

Cappy did a slide, cranked the wheel, backed around, went the other way. The second cop car came after him, and he fumbled a grenade out, pulled the pin, let the spoon fly, counted one-and one-and and dropped it out the window. and dropped it out the window.

The cop car was fifteen feet from the grenade when it went, Cappy another hundred feet down the street. The cop car went sideways and Cappy felt an exhilarating rush, a c.o.ke rush, and then saw a light to his left, coming through the snow, and then a man in front of him. Cappy hit the gas harder, holding down as far as he dared, without spinning, and aimed at the figure in the snow straight ahead ...

LUCAS SAW the grenade go and the cop car spin out, the truck coming straight down the street at him. He could hear Shrake shouting something, but Lucas was focused on the truck. Then Shrake fired two or three shots with his M-16, and Lucas fired his shotgun into the driver's-side winds.h.i.+eld, took four quick steps sideways to let the truck go past, bullfighter style, put the shotgun almost against the gla.s.s of the pa.s.senger-side window and pulled the trigger again.

CAPPY FELT a slug go through his thigh, the pain like being hit by a baseball bat; saw the lump out front pointing a shotgun, dropped down behind the wheel. Getting close to the end, now, Cappy: his face contorted in a rictus of a grin, teeth showing. The winds.h.i.+eld got hit, but held; then the pa.s.senger-side window blew through the truck like the end of the world, shot smas.h.i.+ng through his wheel hand, gla.s.s through his head and face. The truck went sideways. One hand almost gone, he pulled another grenade out of his pocket, pulled the pin. He was holding it when the truck hit a tree, and jolted to a sudden stop.

Somebody was screaming at him: "Out, out, out ..."

Somebody else was yelling, "Careful, careful, careful ..."

A voice close now, "Get out of there, motherf.u.c.ker. Get out of there ... Let me see your hands ..."

Voice right there. Door was jerked open, and Cappy let go of the spoon. Cop was right there and Cappy grinned at him through b.l.o.o.d.y teeth and said, "Suck on this," but he wasn't sure he could be understood; he closed his eyes and counted, "Two-three ..."

THE ST. PAUL PARK cop had a shotgun almost pointing in the window and Lucas, running up, screaming, "Careful," looked in the window and saw the quick flick and grabbed the cop by his collar and yanked him back from the truck and dragged him down by the front wheel and then the grenade went.

And everything stopped.

Nothing but the sound of snow, for ten seconds, fifteen, like the film had gotten stuck in the projector.

And started again, jerking unevenly to full speed. Shrake ran up and shouted, "You guys okay? You guys okay?"

Lucas stood up, and the cop stood up, and the cop turned white-faced to Lucas and said, "Boy, I almost f.u.c.ked that up."

The grenade had gone off in Cappy's lap.

He was long gone.

ONE SECOND LATER, another grenade went off, most of a block away, and a woman began screaming.

23.

WEATHER SLEPT LATE, for her, until six o'clock--three too many daiquiris--and as she slowly surfaced, thought first of the Raynes twins, and then, quickly, of the fact that she was alone in bed. She rolled over and patted Lucas's side, saw that it hadn't been slept in.

She sat up, scratched and stretched, the worry pulling at the back of her brain--Virgil would have woken her if anything disastrous had happened, right? She threw the covers off, made a quick stop in the bathroom, got a robe and headed downstairs, still tasting the mixture of Bacardi rum and Crest toothpaste on the back of her tongue.

Virgil was curled on the couch, watching Channel Three's good-morning show. He sat up when she walked into the living room. "Where's Lucas?" she asked.

"Down in St. Paul Park. He's fine, but there was a big shoot-out with our skinhead. Caprice M. Garner. He's dead, he blew himself up with a grenade."

"No!" She stared at the television, as though the talking heads would refute what Virgil had just said; instead, the television told her about the joys of growing winter tomatoes in your bas.e.m.e.nt, using equipment available in an ordinary hardware store. "Has he been on? Lucas?"

"Hovering in the background. Marcy's been up front."

"Good for her," Weather said. "Ambitious witch."

SHE RAN back up the stairs, cleaned up, got into jeans and a sweater, got her cell phone, and punched up Lucas's number. He came up and she said, "When are you coming home?"

"I'm just fine," he said.

"I knew that--Virgil saw you on TV. So it's done."

"There's a question about the doc. I would like to talk to the guy you saw in the elevator," Lucas said.

"Maybe I was off base--"

"You think so? The dead doc, Shaheen, was about an inch taller than you. You think you would have missed that, and thought he was taller?"

"Well. No."

"Then we've--"

"Let me make a phone call," she said. "So--when'll you be home?"

"There was a mess last night. I fired one of the shots, we're working through the reconstruction for everybody's reports. It'll be a while, yet."

"How do you feel? You okay?"

"You know. Coming down. Garner was hurt, but he would have made it--he pulled the pin himself."

[image]

WEATHER CALLED the MMRC and was told by the duty nurse that the Raynes kids were okay: Sara still struggling a bit, but coming on. Ellen was fine. "The parents are still here. They've been sleeping off and on."

"I'll be there in a bit," Weather said. "Has Gabe been around?"

"He's sleeping in the OR."

"Tell him I'll be in before ten. Don't wake him, though."

She spent the next couple of hours getting the kids off to school, talking with the housekeeper, watching television.

One piece of film they kept playing over and over was a freaked-out woman who'd been taken hostage by the killer, who had put a hand grenade between her thighs and pulled the pin. The reporter explained how a grenade worked, and how the woman lay on the floor for ten minutes before she got her hands free. She'd then cut the tape on her ankles, and had thrown the grenade through her kitchen window, right through the gla.s.s, and it had blown up in her side yard.

n.o.body hurt, though Weather suspected the woman might need some serious counseling.

Virgil cleaned up, and when Jenkins showed up, took a nap. At nine o'clock, Weather was on the phone again to University of Minnesota Hospitals, a friend in administration.

A few minutes later, she stepped into the front room: "Virgil?"

Virgil's eyes popped open. "Yeah?"

"I didn't know if I should wake you. I talked to some friends over at University Hospitals, where the Shaheen man was doing his residency. You know when we were talking about checking people to see when they were working over at MMRC? I checked Shaheen. He was working the morning that the Macks were murdered. He started at six, and it's two hours up to Ike Mack's house."

"Huh." Virgil sat up, looking dazed. He had pillow hair, canted to the left side of his head. "That doesn't entirely mean he couldn't have done it. We know Mack was alive after one o'clock in the morning, when the bar closed. I mean, he could have been there, helped murder Mack, and then gone to work while Garner went up and killed Ike."

"Doesn't seem likely, though," she said. "If you're out murdering people, wouldn't you want to go together?"

Virgil yawned, rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm just thinking like a lawyer. If we accused somebody else, a defense lawyer could drive back and forth, starting at one A.M., get back and still have an hour to get Shaheen to work... a.s.suming it only took one second to kill Ike," he said. "In other words, he could convict Shaheen, and get his client off."

"So, think like a cop."

"Well, shoot. That would mean we're not done. Still looking for an Arab, but a tall thin one with a mustache. Somebody who would know Shaheen. Who would know that Shaheen would look enough like himself to throw us off, especially ... Hmm." His eyes flicked at her.

"Especially if I were gone," she said, brightly.

"Yeah. That would pretty much be the icing on the cake. For the doc, I mean." He looked around. "Where's Jenkins?"

"I got him blowing snow. I want to get down to look at the twins."

Virgil listened, heard the s...o...b..ower. "Okay. Soon as the driveway's clear, we'll head out. Full convoy again. Though, I think Garner was the designated hitter."