Storm Prey Part 24

"And that's a good thing," Shrake said. "Are we talking coffee?"

12.

WEATHER WAS HEADED out to the car when her cell phone rang. Gabriel Maret: "Go back to bed. Sara's got problems again. I'll be down in the cafeteria about nine o'clock, maybe you could come by."

"Are you at the hospital now?"

"All night. They're cycling. Sometimes they're fine, and then they start to deteriorate. Blood pressure is a problem. I'm going to take a nap, and we can talk about what to do at the staff meeting."

"I'll see you at nine o'clock."

LUCAS AND SHRAKE were looking at her: "They put it off?" Lucas asked.

"The kids are in trouble. We're going to meet at nine. I'll tell you what, we're getting to the point where we'll have to go no matter what. They can't be hung up like this."

Weather went to their home office to work on correspondence, Lucas went back to bed, Shrake went out to drive around the block, and Virgil turned on the TV Nothing to do but wait ...

GABRIEL MARET looked busted. He sat at the cafeteria table with a cup of coffee, talked with Mark Lang, one of the neurosurgeons, and Geoff Perkins, a cardiologist, and when Weather and Virgil came in, he waved and pointed at a chair. Virgil peeled off, taking a chair where he could see the room. Weather sat next to Maret, and he said, "Still have the gunslinger, yes?"

She sighed and nodded. "Yes."

"He looks like a cowboy," Maret said, watching Virgil. "He's watching us, I think."

"Probably. He's a little obsessive," Weather said.

"With those boots and jeans, he would do very well with French women," Maret said. "Unless he's gay?"

"No. He's definitely not gay," Weather said. "He does disgustingly well with American women. He sometimes has Lucas writhing in jealousy."

"Ah, well. He will fall, sooner or later," Maret said.

"He's already fallen several times," Weather said. "So: are we going?"

Maret shook his head: "Maybe late this afternoon--I've asked everybody to be ready. Tomorrow morning is more likely. But Geoff is saying that the kids are in a tailspin. Is that the word? Tailspin?"

"That's right, but it's not good," Weather said. She looked at Perkins. "What's happening?"

He shrugged. "The operation is putting too much pressure on Sara's heart. To take the pressure off, we slow it down and drop the blood pressure. But that gets on Ellen's heart, too, and she's not handling it well."

"So what are we doing?" Weather asked.

"We're going to try a couple more things, try to balance out the chemistry, get back to stable," he said. "This afternoon's a possibility, but tomorrow's more likely. Still not a sure thing."

"We've got to wait it out," Maret said.

"But the trouble is not going away," Perkins said. "You might have to make a decision."

Maret knew what he meant: "No. I'm not going to lose Sara. We can pull it off."

A tear started in one of his eyes, and Weather thought, No way did this guy rob the pharmacy ... No way did this guy rob the pharmacy ...

THEY TALKED for half an hour, going over and over the possibilities and probabilities, until it began to seem pointlessly obsessive : they knew what the options were. Maret finally tossed his plastic coffee cup at a wastebasket, bounced it in, and said, "I'm going to look at the kids again."

Weather went over to Virgil and said, "To reiterate, Gabe had nothing to do with anything, except helping the kids. You're doing no good, sitting there staring at him under your eyebrows."

"What next?" Virgil asked. "Back home?"

"There's a small chance we could go this afternoon, so I have to hang around. When will you get that list of French people?"

Virgil looked at his watch. "Now, I guess. They should be open." "I'll come along," Weather said. "I'd like to look at the list." Virgil looked at his watch. "Now, I guess. They should be open." "I'll come along," Weather said. "I'd like to look at the list."

MARCY SHOWED UP at the BCA with two cops named Franklin and Stone. Lucas and Franklin knuckle-tapped, old pals. Stone was new to detective rank, but had spent five years with the Minneapolis SWAT; he and Franklin had brought SWAT gear. Shrake and Jenkins were planning to ride together, in a BCA truck. Marcy rode with Lucas.

"We'll pick up the Washburn deputies in Sh.e.l.l Lake. The sheriff's coming along--Bill Stephaniak," Marcy said. "They're set to pull the warrants, but won't do it until the last minute, so word doesn't get around."

"They all set on a judge?"

"Stephaniak says the judge would sign a ham sandwich if you put it in front of him."

"Always nice to have one of those," Lucas said.

THE TRIP to Wisconsin took two and a half hours, north up I-35 to Highway 70 through Rock Creek, across the St. Croix River to Grantsburg, Wisconsin, through Siren, to Spooner, and then to Sh.e.l.l Lake; a convoy. The snow wasn't deep, but had taken on a cold, gray midwinter edge, stark against the near-black evergreens and barren broadleaf trees. They filled the time catching up with each other's lives; and Lucas was pleased that she seemed happy with hers.

"The kid is just way more than I ever expected," she said. "I'm getting so I hate to go to work."

"How many years you got in?"

"Eighteen--I'm a long way from retirement. James says if I want to quit, I can. It's not like we need the salary."

"But what would you do? Is being a mom enough?"

"That's what I keep asking myself. Right now, it's yeah--it's enough. The question is, will it be enough in two years, when he goes to school?"

"And you don't want to get your a.s.s shot before he grows up," Lucas said. "You want to be here to see that."

"Yeah." They looked out the windshield for a while, then she said, "But you're not exactly backing off, and you've got Sam."

"Might be different for a guy," Lucas said. "Work is ... what we do. Like mom is what women do. Not to be a pig about it."

"I'll deny it if you ever tell anybody I said it," Marcy said, "but I know what you mean."

IN SIREN, Lucas said, "You can still see where the tornado came through."

An F3 tornado had ripped the town in 2001, a half-mile wide at points, with winds up to two hundred miles an hour.

"I have a friend from Georgia," Marcy said. "He was up here when it happened, saw some TV stuff about how the Siren warning siren didn't go off. He says, 'There was no sy-reen in sy-reen.' "

COMING INTO SPOONER, Lucas said, "I've got to take it easy through here--the place is a speed trap. They already got me once."

Marcy got on the phone and called the Washburn sheriff. When she got off, she said, "They're walking the warrants up to the judge."

Sh.e.l.l Lake was five miles south of Spooner, and the Law Enforcement Center just off the highway. They collected Shrake, Jenkins, Franklin, and Stone in the parking lot, trailed inside, and hooked up with the sheriff, a bluff, former highway patrolman with a clipped gray mustache, pale green eyes, and a nonuniform rodeo belt buckle. "d.i.c.k'll be back in a minute with the warrants. I told the judge we'd have something coming up to him ... You folks want coffee? We've got a c.o.ke machine down the hall."

Stephaniak said that Ike Mack was working--the sheriff had sent one of his office workers down to the store to take a look. "I suggest I have one of my boys go along and serve him copies of the warrant, and ask him out to the house. We'll give ourselves about a fifteen-minute jump on him, so we can see what's what out there."

Marcy said, "Sounds good to me," and Lucas nodded.

Shrake asked, "Is Ike going to be a problem?"

"I don't think so. He's ... tired. He's turned into an old guy. I think he mostly wants to be left alone. With his stolen bike parts, of course."

"But if Joe's out there ..."

"That would be a whole 'nother problem. Though, I can't say I remember Joe as being all that violent. Not that I doubt these things you got going. But I never saw it in him."

"I can't think of another way our woman would have gotten strangled," Marcy said. "We'll know for sure tomorrow. We've got a rush DNA going."

"Well. People change. Maybe they get desperate," Stephaniak said. "Now. Look at this. I printed this out this morning, and as far as I know, it's up-to-date."

He pushed an eleven-by-fourteen photo across his desk, and the Minnesota cops cl.u.s.tered around: a satellite view of an isolated house sitting off a blacktopped road. The photo had been taken in late September, with the trees in full autumn colors.

In the center of the photo, they could see the roof of a house, surrounded by a farmyard, more dirt than gra.s.s. A woodlot bordered the west edge of the house's lot, with farm fields on the south and east, and the road on the north. Another building, probably a garage, stood on the west side of the house, with a narrow, silvery metallic roof extending out the back of it--probably a covered woodshed, or lean-to. Another, even smaller building stood on the south side of the house. An old chicken coop, or something like it, Lucas thought.

"Small place, nine acres. Two-story house, nothing much to look at. The garage there is good-sized-he uses it as a shop to work on his motorcycles. But it's not gonna take long to go through it. What you see is what there is."

"What we have to worry about is that Joe is laying up in there, and he's got a deer rifle and starts blowing holes in us," Shrake said. "So do we sneak up on him, or go in fast?"

"We send your two SWAT guys, with two of our SWAT guys, in through the woods." Stephaniak tapped the woodlot. "They check the garage. It's heated, so Joe could be in there. If he's not, they break through the side door--our guys have a crowbar--and get lined up at the front door. From there, it's only about thirty or forty feet over to the side door of the house. I'll call the house, and at the same time, they rush it. They'll be inside before Joe can get a gun ... with any luck."

THEY WORKED through the plan for a couple of minutes, then another, older, deputy came in. The sheriff said, "Hey, d.i.c.k. You get 'em?"

The deputy nodded. "We're set."

Stephaniak said, "Let's rock."

THE FOUR SWAT guys armored up and took the BCA truck, which was unmarked and had Minnesota plates. The rest of the crew staged in the empty parking lot of a barbeque joint four miles from Mack's place.

Stephaniak had given radios to all five vehicles involved. Franklin called after a few minutes and told them that the roads were clear all the way out, and a few minutes later called to say that they'd left the truck and were about to make the approach to the back of the garage. "We've got a couple fences to cross, so we'll be ten minutes," he said.

They rolled out of the parking lot a couple of minutes later. Two miles down the road, Franklin called again: "We're at the back of the garage. No cars inside. Can't see anybody inside. Ron's at the door, we're taking the door out. Okay, we're inside. n.o.body here. No loft, we can see the whole place ... Make the call."

Stephaniak, riding in the lead SUV, made the call as they turned into Mack's driveway, and Lucas saw the SWAT guys rush the house, hit the door. A minute later, they were all out, on the snow, behind the trucks, and Franklin came out on the porch and waved.

"n.o.body home," Marcy said, disappointed.

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit, I hope he's not on his way to Mexico," Lucas said.

"Let's look at the phones, see who's calling him," Marcy said.

"Ike's on his way out," Stephaniak said. "My guy says he didn't seem surprised."

THE HOUSE SMELLED like home-canning; like pickles and creamed corn and cigarette smoke. Like an old single guy living out in the woods. Shrake and Jenkins, with the Minneapolis cops, ran the search, moving quickly and efficiently through the house, from attic to bas.e.m.e.nt. Marcy went for the phones: Mack used handsets that listed calling numbers, and she took them down in her notebook. As she wrote, she called to the other cops, "n.o.body mention the phones to him. n.o.body mention that we looked at them. Ignore them. We want him to use them."

Lucas asked, and she said, "Half-dozen calls from the Cities since the hospital. None of the numbers go to Lyle or Joe."

Lucas wandered through the house with his hands in his pockets, then out on the porch, to the garage. The garage had three overhead doors and was set up to handle two parking s.p.a.ces and a motorcycle shop. There were pieces of three or four older Harleys around, and one complete frame, but without handlebars or wheels. Nothing of interest.