Storm Prey (31 page)

So LUCAS SAT on the hospital couch, with troops of cops still moving through, and thought, Boxes.

A crappy job, no skills, after midnight. Boxes.

He thought, UPS. FedEx. Post office.

He took out his phone and called Sandy, a part-time researcher for the BCA. She was off, at her apartment, listening to what sounded like a Branford Marsalis disc, and she said she could have the relevant numbers in ten minutes.

Lucas put his phone back in his pocket.

What about the doc?

20

CAPPY LAY ON THE FLOOR in front of the television, tuned it to Channel Three, for the news, put his foot up on a couch pillow. He'd done what Barakat told him, and most of the bleeding had stopped. He hit the cocaine, once, but that seemed to make his mind focus on his toe: the pain grew worse. He stopped with the cocaine, tried to focus on the television: the cops were all over the hospital. A thrill here--he'd done this. He'd caused this chaos. People were paying attention. He was still lying, watching, there when Barakat got home.

"How bad?" Barakat asked.

"Not so bad, really. Mostly my little toe. But that's wrecked. I can't put any weight on it," Cappy said.

"Let me get some things," Barakat said. He went into his bedroom, did a twist, and another, and went back to Cappy with a brown leather bag that looked like a small briefcase. He popped it open, put it on the floor next to Cappy's foot, dragged a reading lamp over, and started unwrapping the foot. "Did you take the oxycodone?"

"Two of them," Cappy said. He told Barakat about running down the stairwell, and then getting shot. "I don't think the slug could have missed my head by more than an inch. I mean, it was like my foot being hit with a sledgehammer, but I almost thought I could
feel
the slug go by. Right in front of my eyes. Two inches back, and I'd be dead."

"Uh-huh." Barakat finished unwrapping the foot and said, "Okay. It's messy, but not so bad. I'm going to have to ... uh ..."

"What?"

"I'm going to have to give you a shot before I can work on it," Barakat said. "An anesthetic. It'll hurt too much, otherwise."

"Whatever you gotta do," Cappy said.

"Need a little hit first," Barakat said. He did another line of coke, came back.

Barakat had three single-use syringes in the kit. He took one out, unwrapped it, then said, "This is going to bite a little ..." He slipped the needle in, and Cappy said, "Huh," and Barakat said, "There'll be three little sticks, here." He stuck him the three times, feeding the anesthetic around the base of Cappy's little toe.

When he was done, he put the empty syringe on a coffee table, stood up, and said, "I'm going to have to wash your feet. I need to get some alcohol."

He was back in a minute with the alcohol and some paper towels, and began washing the wounded flesh. "Can you feel that?" Barakat asked.

"Not too much," Cappy said. "Feels lots better."

"It'll hurt again later," Barakat said. He took out a forceps that looked like a big pair of tweezers, and began probing at the wound. The wound was still oozing, and after a minute, he said, "Hmm," and then, "You got lucky."

"Yeah?"

"Your small toe is mostly gone, but your fourth toe was only damaged by debris from the shoes. The bones and joints look like they're okay. I can clean it up and bandage it. The little toe ... I have some work to do. You will have trouble with balance at first, because your little toe helps with that, but after you get used to it, you won't even notice that it's missing."

"It's mostly missing now, you said?" He tried to do a sit-up to look, but Barakat pushed him back.

"Lie still. Yes. I just have to clean it up, and bandage it. If you follow my prescriptions, it'll be okay."

Cappy lay on the floor and closed his eyes, and Barakat went to work, cutting off wounded muscle and skin, nipping off a piece of shattered toe bone, leaving a neat but tiny stump just above the joint closest to the foot. When he was done with that, he carefully wrapped it with gauze soaked in an antiseptic gel, covered that with more gauze, wrapped the fourth toe separately, and then wrapped the corner of Cappy's foot with medical tape.

"I'm done. Just lie there for a while," he said. "I'll clean up. You don't want to stand up in a hurry."

"I've got to stand up pretty soon, though," Cappy said. "They'll get a fix on me sooner or later. I need to get my ass out of here. Down to Florida, I'm thinking."

"Why not back to California?"

"I've never seen Florida."

"What you think best, but it's snowing like crazy out there," Barakat said, slapping him on the knee. He picked up the operating debris, got a plastic garbage bag from under the sink, and dumped it inside. He'd throw it in a public trash can somewhere, he thought.

He went to the bedroom for another hit.

WHEN HE CAME BACK, he gave Cappy a bottle of penicillin pills and told him to take the rest of the oxycodone. "If you drive all the way to Florida, your foot will hurt bad the whole way. Better if you got out of here, one day, maybe to Kentucky or somewhere, where there won't be all the cops looking for you, and then find a motel to stay in for a couple days. Watch TV and keep the foot up high."

They talked about the foot, and then about the chase at the hospital, and Cappy said, "I don't know if I dinged either of them, but I don't think so. I tricked them at the end, though ..."

"Do you think they might know your name?" Barakat asked.

"I don't know what they know. They might know my name. The woman in the operating room ... it sounded like she said, 'Cap,' like my name."

"Hmm. If they don't know your name, it would be best if you could stay overnight, leave in the morning, after this snow goes through. The highways will be impossible tonight. You don't need to get in an accident now."

"But I need to get back and load up my stuff," Cappy said. "I need to get my bike in the van."

"Do you need me to help?"

"Naw. I've got a ramp, I'll ride right up it. I don't have anything else heavy," Cappy said. And, "What are you going to do?"

Barakat said, "I am going to ask the hospital to give me time to fly home to Lebanon to see Shaheen's parents and talk to them about what a fine fellow their son was. I don't think they can say 'no,' so I will be out of sight. I will stay one hour there, and then go to Paris, maybe for a month. You should see Paris someday ..."

"Don't think I'll see Paris," Cappy said.

"When I come back, I will think some more about this Karkinnen woman, and what she has done to us. If not for her, we would be done here."

"Good luck on that," Cappy said. "She reminds me of this dude out in California. He was the foreman at this company I worked for, and he used to give me shit all the time. I was going to kill him, but when I was ready to, he was always off somewhere. I couldn't find him. When I could find him, I wasn't ready. Just luck. Maybe this bitch is one of those."

"This is not a good thought," Barakat said.

AT NINE O'CLOCK, Cappy couldn't stand lying on his back anymore, managed to get to his feet without help. He couldn't walk on the front of his damaged foot, but could stump along on the heel. "Not as bad as I thought," he said.

Barakat was heavily stoned, flying: "You still have residual effect from the local anesthetic. It will get worse, believe what I say."

"That's great," Cappy said.

"One thing more," Barakat said. "We have not talked about Joe Mack. Joe Mack is the other threat. I believe that sometime he will call me again. If I find out where he is, it would perhaps be better if Joe Mack died."

"I think you're right. He is a dumb guy who'll get caught sooner or later," Cappy said.

"I will try to find out where he is, and will call you. Perhaps you could deal with him."

"If I can," Cappy said.

"And I will deal with Karkinnen. I will think of something."

THEY WERE STILL rather pleased with their friendship, and Barakat helped Cappy keep his balance as he stumped out to his van, where Barakat gave the younger man a quick Lebanese hug with a backslap. "I will call you. I will pack the drugs from the hospital, I will send them to you wherever you're at. You can make the connection, and sell them. I trust you for my share."

Cappy was embarrassed about the hug and the trust, but smiled and said, "Keep on truckin', dude."

As his van rolled into the night, Barakat turned back to his house and began to think about talking to the cops about Shaheen's funeral, and talking to the hospital about compassionate leave.

Cappy's taillights winked at the corner, and he thought, That might be the end of Cappy.

Now, he had to spend some time thinking about himself.

But first, he could use another twist. He had to think clearly.

21

LATE, DARK, SNOWING. Lucas kept the speed down, watching the nav screen, and Jenkins said from the backseat, "It should be right around here."

"Hope the guy hasn't left for work."

"He doesn't have to be there for three hours, so ... might be out getting a drink," Shrake said from the passenger seat.

"Night like this?"

"Night like this tends to make me drink," Shrake said. "It's snowing so goddamn hard you can't see your own feet."

The car spoke up:
"You have reached your destination.
"

The house was a dark tuck-under that Lucas thought might be red in daylight, when it wasn't snowing. He pulled into the driveway and said, "Wait," and hopped out, with a flashlight from the storage bin under the armrest. He walked up to the house and shined it on the house number: 1530. He walked back and said, "The car's right, this is it." He killed the engine, and they climbed two short sets of stairs to the front door; five inches of snow on the ground, Lucas thought, and coming down at two inches an hour.

There were lights in the front window, above the garage, but nothing on the left side of the house. Lucas rang the doorbell, and knocked, and somebody came to the front window and looked out at the porch, and a minute later, a man with a short, neat Afro looked out and asked, "What?"

"Are you Dave Johnston?"

"Yeah? What happened?"

Lucas held up his ID. "We need to talk to you about your employees. We're with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The people at your office said you'd be the guy to talk to."

The guy looked at them for a few more seconds, then unlatched the door and pushed it open. "Come in ... who is it?"

Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins all stepped into an entry hall, and the guy's wife, a heavyset woman with skeptical eyes, came and looked at them, her arms crossed nervously under her breasts.

"A guy named Cappy--that's all we know," Lucas said.

"What'd he do?"

"We need to talk to him about several murders, and attempted murders. If you've seen the stories on television about the attack at the hospital this afternoon--"

"That was Cappy? Ho, shit," Johnston said. "I knew he was one crazy cracker."

"So--you know his last name, anything about him?"

"Caprice M. Garner," Johnston said. "He came in from California, rides a big expensive BMW That's about it. He doesn't talk much to anybody. Comes in, does the job, goes away."

Shrake said, "Garner. G-A-R-N-E-R."

Johnston bobbed his head: "Yup. Caprice, like the car."

Shrake said, "I'll be in the truck," and left.

"Hard worker?" Lucas asked.

"Does the job. Doesn't bitch about it, doesn't seem happy about it. Just does it."

"What else?" Lucas asked. "You know where he lives? We're really kind of hurting here. The guy doesn't leave much of a trail."

"I think, but I'm not sure, that I heard that he had a room somewhere, in a house," Johnston said. "Not like an apartment, but just in a house."

"You don't know where?"

"Got no idea. I don't know who'd know, either--he doesn't hang with anybody at work."

"You got a phone number for him?"

"You could check with the office, but I bet they don't. When he first took the job, he was living in a motel. No phone, and, you know, a motel address. He moved later, when he started getting paid, and I told him a couple times that he ought to update his file, but I don't think he did."

"And he's got no particular friends."

"Not that I know of," Johnston said.

They kicked it around for another minute, getting nowhere, then Shrake came back in and said, "The duty officer hooked up with California. They've got a current driver's license file for a Caprice M. Garner. They've also got a note in the file that his whereabouts should be reported to Bakersfield PD intelligence."

"Wonder what that's about?" Lucas asked.

"Don't know. Duty officer is getting the ID photo. We'll have it in ten minutes."

"Hey," Johnston said, "that reminds me. I do know one more thing about Cappy. He's got a credit card."

Jenkins said, "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I saw him buying gas once, with a card. You reminded me when you said that thing about the ID, because the girl at the counter asked for an ID."

"You know what kind of card?" Lucas asked.

"Well, it was at a SuperAmerica, and he hadn't been here long, and I don't think they've got SuperAmericas in California, so ... I guess it was a Visa. And it oughta have a billing address."

"That's good," Lucas said. "Can you give me one more thing? Anything?"

Johnston scratched his chin, then asked, "Can I make a call? I know a guy who might know more than me."

"He won't call Cappy, will he?"

"Not if I tell him not to--he's not one of Cappy's good friends, but he works around him a lot."

"Go ahead."

Johnston made the call, talked to a guy named Roger Denton, described the situation, and then said, "You don't, huh. Well, that's better than nothing. Anything else you can think of? ... Call me back if you do."

He hung up and said, "He thinks Cappy's got a place somewhere, St. Paul Park, Cottage Grove area. But he wouldn't swear to it."

They thanked Johnston, Lucas gave him a card with his cell-phone number on it, told him to keep his mouth shut, and headed back to the truck. Lucas gave the keys to Shrake and said, "If you break it, you buy it."

Sitting in the passenger seat, he called the duty officer and got phone numbers for Bakersfield, and got the duty guy working on the Visa card. The Bakersfield desk officer referred him to a detective named J.J. Ball, and said Ball would call him back. Ball did, a couple of minutes later, and Lucas identified himself and said, "You've got a note on the driver's license file of a Caprice M. Garner, who calls himself Cappy."

"Not me," Ball said. "I never heard of the guy. Let me check with a couple other guys, see if anybody knows him."

BALL CLICKED OFF, and Lucas called Virgil. "Anything?"

"Your wife is tipsy. I'm thinking about taking advantage of her."

"You wouldn't survive," Lucas said. "She's a bear when she gets loaded."

"Yeah, well. I'd take care when you get home, then," Virgil said. "Because she is getting loose."

"That's okay," Lucas said. "It'll make the corn grow."

"What?"

"That's always what you say when the Weather is fucked up."

Silence. Then, "I'll pretend I didn't hear that. See you at your place, if I can get her loaded into my truck."

LUCAS SMILED and hung up, and Shrake asked, "Where're we going?"

"Let's head back to my place. We can wait awhile, see if anything develops. If not, we'll wait until morning."

"If the guy got out of the hospital, and he's running, and hurt, he won't get far tonight," Jenkins said. "This is awful ..."

The whole world was white, and the streets were nearly empty. They found an entrance to I-35 North, took it, and plowed along the freeway at thirty miles an hour, through most of St. Paul, then west on I-94, following a snowplow.

They'd just turned back toward Lucas's place when he took a call from Bakersfield. "Al James. I work Intel with J.J. He said you're asking about a Caprice Garner."

"That's right. We think he may be involved in a number of homicides."

"That's why we want to keep an eye on him. We've had guys from the biker gangs here tell us that Garner might have killed some people," James said. "They've had some guys disappear after they had dealings with him. We don't have anything solid, except some people have definitely dropped off the radar."

Lucas filled him in on the trouble in the Twin Cities, and James said, "That'd fit with the rumors out here. I can make a couple calls, see if I can find somebody still in touch with him. Probably won't be able to get back to you until tomorrow."

"Okay. If he's running, he may be coming back your way," Lucas said. "Keep it in mind."

"I'd prefer to have you hang on to him," James said.

Lucas clicked off, told Jenkins and Shrake what James had said, and Jenkins said, "Building a file."

THEY WERE HEADING south on Cretin Avenue when the duty officer called. "I've got a mailing address for a Caprice Garner in St. Paul Park."

"That's good, that's what we've got," Lucas said.

The duty officer said, "I'm looking at the address on the Google Maps Satellite, and it's a house."

"We heard that he had a room in a house," Lucas said. "And how many Caprice Garners can there be? We gotta get some people together and take a look at it. Get the SWAT guys out of bed."

Shrake asked, "You gonna call Marcy?"

"Yeah," Lucas said. "Later."

THEY WERE six BLOCKS from Lucas's house, so they went on, found Virgil's truck in the driveway, and Virgil in the kitchen. "Weather's upstairs," he said. "She's tired, drunk, going to bed."

"We got a name and address," Lucas said.

"Terrific. I'm coming," Virgil said.

"Nope, bullshit. We need somebody here."

"I'm going," Shrake said. "I'm SWAT."

"So am I," said Jenkins. "No way I'm sitting on my ass for this one."

Virgil wanted to get some St. Paul cops to come sit, but Lucas shook his head: "I trust
you.
Also, what would happen if Weather or the kids woke up and there were a bunch of strangers in the place?"

"Goddamnit ..."

They argued off and on for another ten minutes, with Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins eating microwave pizza. Lucas snuck into the bedroom and got a set of long underwear; Weather was sound asleep and didn't stir.

He snuck back out, down to the basement, got hunting boots, slacks, a wool sweater, parka, and ski gloves. From his gun safe, a twelve-gauge semiauto Beretta shotgun, with two four-shot magazines loaded with four-O buckshot.

He changed, clumped up the stairs with the gun case in one hand and his work clothes in the other, and Shrake said, "Goin' huntin'."

Virgil said, "Goddamnit, Lucas ..."

Lucas said, "Stay, boy."