Storm Prey Part 13

THEY HAD two names, and not much more; and a.s.sured the brothers that they would hang around in the parking lot, talking to customers coming and going, so that Melicek and Howard wouldn't know where their names had come from.

Lucas stood up, took a card out of his wallet, and dropped it on the desk. "If you hear anything, it would behoove you to call me. No motorcycle big-shot bulls.h.i.t, burning the card or any of that; just a quiet call. n.o.body will know, and it might be useful to you sometime, to have a guy you can call. If you know what I mean."

SHRAKE LED the way out, Lucas a step behind; when they'd gone through the door into the front, Lyle Mack said to Joe, "We're in a lot of f.u.c.kin' trouble, Joe."

Joe Mack said, "We oughta get out of here."

"Can't," Lyle Mack said. "If it was only a robbery, we might get out of town. Murder, they'd come after us. Come after you. We gotta find that chick and shut her up."

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THERE WERE still fifteen or twenty people in the bar, but in cl.u.s.ters now, four and five together. From behind the bar, Lucas called, "Can I have your attention? Anybody here know Mikey Haines or Shooter Chapman?"

Dead silence.

"I know some of you must be their friends, if they had any friends," Lucas said. "Somebody took them out and blew their faces mostly off, with a shotgun, and I would like any opinions anybody's got about that."

More silence, then one voice, "We got no opinions."

Shrake said, "If you get home and find out you got an opinion, about who may be executing Seeds, you call the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and ask for Agent Shrake. S-h-r-a-k-e. Shrake."

"The reason you should do that is, being a tough guy is just fine, but if somebody's shooting you in the back of the head with a shotgun, from an ambush, like they did with Shooter and Mikey, tough isn't good enough," Lucas said. "So you got any ideas, it might be your own life you're saving."

THEY DID SPEND fifteen minutes in the parking lot, grabbing people as they came and went--mostly went--but got no more names.

"Can't talk to us in public," Shrake said. "Gang law."

"Talk about the cold shoulder," Lucas said. "My shoulder's frozen all the way down to my a.s.s."

"Let's go. Look up those other two guys," Shrake said. "We can come back if we need to."

Lucas looked back at the club. Lyle Mack was staring out a window at them, his head visible from the neck up, like a bust of Beethoven, or somebody.

Tony Soprano, maybe.

BACK IN THE CAR, Shrake got on his phone and got addresses for Anthony Melicek and Ron Howard, the two men named by Mack as friends of Chapman and Haines. Howard lived in Cottage Grove, a suburb to the southeast, and he was on probation, for theft. Melicek lived in the opposite direction, on the edge of downtown Minneapolis, not far from the Metrodome.

"Howard," Lucas said. He punched Howard's address into the SUV's navigation system, and they headed east. As they drove, Shrake called around until he found Howard's probation officer, a woman named Melanie. They talked for a few minutes, and Shrake rang off.

"She says Howard and his wife got caught stealing eight hundred and sixty board-feet of walnut and cherry from a wood specialty place in Shakopee. Got caught loading it onto their pickup. She says there was an argument about money he'd given them for some wood, and he told the cops he was just taking what he was owed. She said he was probably right about what he was owed, but he broke through a back door, so there it was. They both got probation. He had some arrests six or eight years back when he was running with the Seed, drugs, firearms, did some county-jail time over in Wisconsin. She says he's not a problem."

"Good. I'm not in the mood for a big deal."

"Neither am I." A minute later: "I wish Weather wasn't involved. I mean ... you know."

"Yeah, and she won't budge, either," Lucas said. "She'll be over at the hospital every day. Marcy's not getting anywhere inside the hospital. I might have to go over there with my nutcracker."

"I've done hospitals before," Shrake said. "You know what the problem is? Doctors. No offense, you know, about Weather being a doctor ..."

"S'okay."

"They're so sure they know everything. They were the smartest kids in high school, which is how they got in premed, and they were the smartest guys in premed, which is how they got in med school, and then they get this big piece of paper that says, 'Yup, you're the smartest,' and they truly believe that s.h.i.t. They will tell you everything you need to know about your job. They never answer questions--they'll tell you that you don't need to know that answer. You need to know the answer to something else."

"Hey, I live with one," Lucas said. "And she's a surgeon. They're worse than everybody but the shrinks."

"And you gotta shrink for your best friend . . ."

"Almost intolerable," Lucas said. "G.o.dd.a.m.n Weather, if I didn't love her, I'd choke the s.h.i.t out of her about twice a day."

"To say nothing of your goofy daughter," Shrake said. "No offense again, but she really does scare me. Sometimes, she acts like a forty-five-year-old narc."

Lucas laughed and said, "The sad thing is, I've never been happier."

"Well, that's nice," Shrake said. "I mean, that really is. That makes one."

"One what?"

"Happy cop."

HOWARD LIVED in a rambler-style single-story house halfway down a hillside, brown fibergla.s.s siding with a two-car garage on one end; bright light was shining through the three windows in the garage door. A pickup and an old Camry were parked in the driveway.

Lucas looked at the dashboard clock: ten-forty-five. Not too late. Shrake had taken the pistol out of his pocket and put it back in its holster, and now took it back out and stuck it in the pocket. "Better safe," he said.

Lucas rang the doorbell, and a moment later a woman came to the door and peeked out behind a chain. "Who is it?"

"We're with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension ... state police," Lucas said. "We're talking to people who knew Mike Haines and Shooter Chapman."

"Oh . . . jeez. Just a minute." She pushed the door closed and the chain rattled, and she said, "Ron's in the shop. We thought somebody might come by."

"You're Mrs. Howard?"

"Yes. Donna." She was using the female nicey-nice voice, submissive, scared by cops. She looked pleasant enough, a round woman with brown hair and dark eyes and a prominent mole by the corner of her mouth. Lucas smiled at her and stepped inside, carefully shuffled his feet on the mat inside the door and she said, "Oh, don't worry about that. He's this way . . ."

He followed her through the small kitchen, past a dining table and through a garage door. The garage had been converted into a woodshop, with a table saw, band saw, drill press, and lathe fixed to the floor, and a long workbench with wood-cutting tools along the far wall. Howard was working over the lathe, wearing goggles and earm.u.f.fs; his back was turned to them. The air smelled of fresh-cut wood, and a stack of wooden bowls sat along one wall of the shop.

Donna Howard flipped a switch on the wall, a quick on-and-off, and a light flickered and Howard backed away from the machine and turned around, saw them, hit a kill switch. He pulled off the goggles and headset as the machine wound down; he was holding a nasty-looking chisel. He saw them check it out and hastily put it aside. "Police?"

THEY SAT in the Howards' small living room. Howard started right out with an explanation of the burglary they'd been convicted of. "I hadn't been in trouble for years, since I was a kid. But I gave those a.s.sholes twelve hundred dollars for the wood I needed, and they kept putting me off. If I don't produce, I don't eat. They wouldn't give me the money back, either, said they'd already ordered the stuff and the supplier was having problems and all of that. Bulls.h.i.t. So I made the mistake. Two mistakes--I took Donna with me."

"The judge knew all that, so he went easy," Donna Howard said.

"Did you ever get your money back?" Shrake asked.

"Yeah ... but the lawyer cost us two thousand, and we were lucky to get off that easy. Tell you what, soon as it was settled, I put the word out on the Internet. Won't be many guys going out there for their turnin' wood, I can tell you."

Lucas said, "I understand you guys were talking to Shooter and Mike last week."

"Yeah. A friend called and told us about them being dead. He was down at the bar when you were there," Donna Howard said. "I've never known anybody who was murdered."

"How well did you know them?"

Howard shook his head. "I've known them since we were all kids, running around in the woods in Wisconsin. They never grew up. I rode with the Seed for a while, but you know, it gets to be a lot of bulls.h.i.t. People ha.s.sling you, cops coming around. Some of the guys were enormous a.s.sholes. Ridin' was fun, you know, impressing the squares and then ... you wonder why the h.e.l.l you're drunk all the time and living out of a s.h.i.tty apartment. So I got a straight job and met Donna, and we eventually started the business. But we still go up to Cherries three or four times a year, talk with the older guys. That's about it."

"So you wouldn't know what they were up to." Lucas let a little skepticism show in his voice.

"No, we really don't." They sat silently for a moment, then Howard said, "They were always trying to hustle something up. Usually, it was like buying stuff from drug guys up in Minneapolis. Stolen stuff, computers and cameras and stuff. About a million iPods. They'd sell them to high school kids for ten bucks each."

"They'd done some time for robbery . . ."

"Yeah, but they weren't any good at it," Howard said. "Fact is, Shooter was sort of a chicken, and Mikey was just dumb."

"Pulled off a pretty slick robbery up in the Cities," Shrake said. "We think they're the ones that knocked over that hospital pharmacy."

"Really?" Donna Howard looked surprised. "That doesn't sound like them. They were more the Sat.u.r.day-night liquor store guys."

"Didn't a guy get killed?" Ron Howard asked.

"Yeah, they kicked a guy, and it turned out he was on some blood thinner because of his heart," Shrake said. "He bled to death internally. They got him to the emergency room, but the docs couldn't stop it."

"G.o.d, that's awful." Donna Howard put her knuckles to her teeth. "I can't believe they did that."

"Could have been accidental," Lucas said. "The guy tried to sneak out a cell phone, and they kicked him a couple times. But, you know, you're robbing a place, and somebody dies because of it, it's murder."

Ron Howard grunted: "I can believe they did that. Kicked the guy. That's just another screwup. I just can't believe they thought of it--holding up a hospital. How much did they get?"

Lucas said, "n.o.body really knows. Street value, maybe anything up from half a million."

Howard laughed: "Man. Those guys were small-timers back in grade school. No way they pulled off a half-million-dollar robbery."

More questions, met with a general lack of information: the Howards, Lucas decided, really didn't know much about Chapman and Haines. When they ran out of questions, Howard asked one.

"Who told you about us? Had to be somebody at Cherries, right?"

"We talked to quite a few people, looked at some records and stuff, your name was in there," Lucas said.

Howard looked at him for a moment, then down at his knuckles, which showed a small, damp cut, the kind woodworkers got. He said, "I'll tell you what, Officer, you're bulls.h.i.tting me, right? I mean, I haven't ridden with those guys for years, but here you are, real quick. Had to be Cherries."

Lucas shrugged. "What difference does it make?"

"It p.i.s.ses me off," Howard said. "Those guys knew we'd gotten in trouble, so they sicced you on us. And they're making chumps out of you. Anybody who knew us, and knew those guys, knew we didn't have much to do with them. We're just old acquaintances. We'd talk to them, but it was all old-time stuff. Everybody knows I'm straight."

"Did you see the artist's sketch of what the pharmacy robber looked like? Should have been on the ten-o'clock news."

They both shook their heads. "Don't watch the news anymore. It's just too depressing."

"The third guy on the robbery, would have been a pal of Haines and Chapman. Big guy, lots of hair, beard."

"That's about ninety percent of the Seed, right there," Howard said.

Donna Howard asked, "It's not my place ... it wasn't the Macks, was it? The ones who gave you our name?"

"I really can't say, Mrs. Howard," Lucas said.

"Then I can't tell you what I was going to tell you," she said.

They all looked at each other, and Shrake started with, "Listen, there've been a bunch of murders, and you could get yourselves in serious s.h.i.t--"

Lucas held up a hand, shutting him off. He said to Donna Howard, "The people who gave us your name said that if we let their name out, you'd tell the rest of the Seed members and that would be the end of them."

"Oh, bulls.h.i.t," Ron Howard said. "We're not gonna get somebody killed because of this. Then we would would be in trouble. All I want to do is keep the business going, and that's hard enough." be in trouble. All I want to do is keep the business going, and that's hard enough."

"Do not pa.s.s along what I'm going to tell you," Lucas said. "Or we'll be back in your faces."

"Who was it?" Donna asked.

"We spent some time interviewing the Macks, who ... described who was talking to whom last weekend."

"I knew it," Donna said to her husband. To Lucas: "It's the Macks Macks who were closest to those two. The Macks. The word is, you steal something good around the Cities, the Macks will get rid of it for you. They're the whole ... who were closest to those two. The Macks. The word is, you steal something good around the Cities, the Macks will get rid of it for you. They're the whole ... heart . . . heart . . . of everything that goes on there. If somebody at Cherries was in it with Shooter and Mikey, it was the Macks." of everything that goes on there. If somebody at Cherries was in it with Shooter and Mikey, it was the Macks."

Ron Howard bobbed his head. "That's like it is," he said. "Shooter and Mikey practically lived at Cherries. And if somebody was stupid enough to kick a guy to death by accident, it probably was Mikey."

"And if you were looking for somebody who might dream up a deal like robbing a hospital, it'd be Lyle Mack," Donna Howard said. "He's always thought he was a big operator."

"How about Joe Mack?" Shrake asked.