LYLE MACK, hurrying, not thinking, dug his clean phone out of the pocket of his old army uniform in a back closet and called Caprice Garner. "I can do that, but it'll cost you another five grand," Cappy said, when Lyle Mack explained the situation. Cappy was out test-driving his new van.

"Five grand. That's fine. But I'm gonna have to owe it to you. We've got all that stuff we took out of the pharmacy, that's worth way more than five grand. But you'll have to be patient."

"Hey, I'll wait," Cappy said. "For a while, anyway."

"Deal," Lyle Mack said. He put the clean phone in his pocket and called his lawyer on the house phone. They talked for two minutes, and then the lawyer said, "I don't want to hear any more right now. Wait till the thing has settled down, then come see me."

That didn't help. He started to pace: he felt caged, like an animal. Joe Mack might have finished them off.

JOE MACK sat in the van and talked with MacBride: "Look, I don't want to hurt you, and I won't. But the cops are ... framing me. I took off. I freaked out and grabbed you, which I know I shouldn't have done, but now I'm in trouble for that."

"I won't testify against you, if you let me go," MacBride said.

Joe Mack wasn't the sharpest knife in the dishwasher, but he knew she was lying the moment the words were out of her mouth, and he almost laughed. "You'd turn me in the minute you got loose," he said. "I know that, you know that ... when my buddy gets here, we're heading for Canada. There's good jobs up there, and they don't care who you are. Just be a little bit patient, and then you can tell the cops whatever you want."

He told her about working in the bar, and how the cops were trying to frame him for holding up the hospital. "We did not do that," he told her. "We did not. not. We got a good business, why'd we want to go around breaking into a hospital? But we're in an unpopular group, you know? The Seed? Have you heard of us?" We got a good business, why'd we want to go around breaking into a hospital? But we're in an unpopular group, you know? The Seed? Have you heard of us?"

She shook her head.

"Well, we're really called the Bad Seed of America, Inc. We're a motorcycle club that got started in Milwaukee and Green Bay back, you know, a long time ago. My dad was a member . . ."

He told her about riding with the Seed, and she told him about getting laid off by the West Metro Credit Union. "I've got a job interview tomorrow at Macy's, in the credit department . . ." She had two daughters, she said, and was separated from her husband, but hoping to get back together after they worked out some issues. She was a sincere-sounding, dark-haired woman, and Joe Mack liked her well enough, though she was not really his style, too thin and small-breasted, with the beginnings of a satchel a.s.s.

"I was just going to pick up Stacy when ... you know. They're going to wonder what happened to me ..."

CAPPY GARNER parked in the green ramp and took the elevator down, walked through the underground plaza, found the blue ramp, and went up to the top level, pulled on a watch cap, turned up his collar, walked across the open top level, his hands thrust in the pockets of his new navy pea jacket. Joe Mack saw him coming and said to MacBride, "Here's my buddy. Now you stay down and everything will be okay. He can be a bada.s.s, so you don't want to see his face."

"I'll stay down," she promised.

Joe Mack got out of the van and Cappy came up and asked, "She inside there?"

"Yeah, but I made her stay down, so she couldn't see your face."

Cappy looked around the deck. "Don't see any cameras."

"No, but they'll figure out who done it anyway. She'll tell them."

"No, she won't," Cappy said. "Lyle says we get rid of her."

Joe Mack was taken aback. "What?" "What?"

"Get rid of her. Doesn't n.o.body but her know you grabbed her, so if we get rid of her, you're in the clear."

"Well, Jesus, we can't just... I mean, she's a nice lady."

"Little s.h.i.t's gotta fall in everybody's life," Cappy said. He grabbed the van's side door to pull it back.

"Come on, Cappy," Joe Mack said. "Don't . . ."

"Already got a contract," he said. He pulled the door back. MacBride was lying on her stomach, and she looked at him, startled, and then asked, "Who are you?"

"I'm Cappy," Cappy said. He crawled into the van and pulled the door most of the way shut. Joe Mack, outside, shouted, "G.o.dd.a.m.nit, Cappy ... "

Cappy crawled over to her and she tried to crawl away, seized with desperation, and Cappy grabbed her left arm and yanked her halfway over on her back, but she struggled to get back on her stomach. He hit her once, hard, in the back of the head, and her face bounced off the floor, and the next time, when he yanked her over, she turned, and he lurched over her hips, one knee on each side. He tried to reach for her throat, but she cut at him with her nails, and he hit her again, on the side of the head, dazing her, and then got his thumbs under her chin.

He'd never strangled anybody, and thought there couldn't be too much to it, but she bucked and fought him, and his thumbs kept slipping off her windpipe; she tried to claw him again and he lost patience, hit her in the forehead, then caught her arms and pinned them with his legs, and went back into her throat, with his thumbs, and squeezed ...

She was a thin woman, with no fat to protect her neck, and he felt something pop and her eyes widened and she stopped struggling and began to shake, and then her eyes rolled away.

JOE MACK thought Cappy would shoot her or something, but after a second, heard MacBride start to scream, the scream suddenly cut off. Mack ran a few dozen yards away from the van, stopped, looked back at it, paced this way, then that, then ran back and pulled the door open. Cappy was sitting astride MacBride, strangling her. His hands were bleeding, where she'd scratched him, but she was all done with that. Her eyes had rolled up in her head, and her body had gone into a dead-shake. Cappy was riding her like a horse, a strange, stretched grin on his face, teeth showing. He held her until she was gone, then looked at Mack with his pale eyes, smiled, and said, "See, nothing to it."

"You're not going to kill me, are you?" Joe Mack asked.

"Why would I do that?"

"I thought maybe, you know, Lyle said something."

Cappy shook his head. "Nope. Didn't say nothing to me."

Joe Mack looked at MacBride's body and thought, Man, she looks really dead. Man, she looks really dead. She really She really was was dead. A few minutes ago, she'd been talking about her daughters. dead. A few minutes ago, she'd been talking about her daughters.

"We gotta go," Cappy said. "I'm parked in the Green Ramp."

"Where're we going?" Joe Mack asked, as they headed for the elevators.

"You're going over to that horse place, to start with. Hide out there for a few days."

Joe Mack said, "I don't know--Honey Bee was pretty p.i.s.sed about Mikey and Shooter."

"Yeah, but she can't talk about it, because she was in on the hospital stickup. That's murder for her, too. So you hide out there, let your hair grow a little bit, maybe put on a mustache, and we'll clean up this witness woman, and then, you know... head for the border."

"Yeah . . . yeah." Joe walked along for a minute, then said, "Excuse me. I gotta puke."

8.

LUCAS, MARCY, and the others circled through the neighborhood, on foot and by car, looking for Joe Mack, confused for a few minutes about exactly which town they were in. They finally settled on Mendota Heights and they got a couple of Mendota Heights cars out, but there were only a half-dozen cops on duty. The chief, whose name was Mark Grace, was a little p.i.s.sed about the ruckus, until Lucas explained that they'd thought it'd be a routine interview.

"We were putting some pressure on the guy. We didn't think he'd do anything that stupid," Lucas said. It sounded lame in his own ears. "We sorta f.u.c.ked up, but not really."

"Yeah, yeah," Grace said. "I guess it happens. The question is, is he holed up in somebody's house?"

"We don't know," Marcy said. "He got lost in those houses back there, and he could have gone anywhere."

"But not too far--he didn't have a coat," Lucas said.

"You look for tracks?"

"Yeah, but there are a lot of tracks. When we lost sight of him--"

"Guess we start knocking on doors," Grace said.

"Problem is, half the people in town are at work," one of the other Mendota cops said. "If he's got a gun on somebody, and n.o.body answers the door, how're we gonna know he's inside?"

Everybody looked at Lucas, who said, "You know what? We won't. So let's not do that. Could we just get a couple of your cars roaming around the streets? Put some pressure on him and let him run. He'll run sooner or later. He's not smart enough not to."

They argued about that for a while--the chief pointed out that somebody might be held hostage, and if they knocked on doors, they'd at least eliminate places where they knew he wasn't--but finally agreed that cruising was the best option, until something better came along. They were still talking about it when Lucas got a call from the BCA duty officer.

"You got a guy name of Lyle Mack calling you about his brother, who he says you're chasing."

Lucas took the call, and Lyle Mack said, "I got a call from Joe. He said you guys scared the s.h.i.t out of him and he ran away."

"Where is he?" Lucas asked.

"I don't know. Someplace around here," Lyle Mack said. "He said he ran until he couldn't run anymore and then he went down to a shopping center where he saw a cab letting a guy out, and got a ride downtown. He said he bought a coat at Macy's, and he's leaving town."

"Don't lie to me, man. We're past that," Lucas said.

"Hey--I'm not," Lyle Mack said. "I'm telling you what he said. He said he ran for it because you accused him of sticking up the hospital, which he didn't, and you're trying to frame him, and he's heading out. He said hasta la vista, hasta la vista, and he's gone." and he's gone."

"How is he gone? We saw him selling his van this morning."

"Yeah, and he's got a pocket full of cash from it, and Joe Mack's got friends," Lyle Mack said. "I told him I was gonna call you, because there was no point of both of us getting in the s.h.i.t. He said 'go ahead."'

"Where are you?" Lucas said. "We're coming to see you."

"I'm on my way to the bar. I'll be there in five minutes."

Lucas got off the phone and told the chief that it'd be good to keep a car or two roaming around, but that he believed Joe Mack was gone.

SHRAKE AND THE BACKUP COPS went to Joe Mack's address, while Marcy and Lucas waited at the bar for Lyle Mack. While they waited, they pushed on Honey Bee.

"When you came back there, you said to Joe Mack, 'They were our friends,' or something like that," Lucas said to her. "It sounds like you thought Joe had something to do with them being dead."

Honey Bee had had a little time to think about it, and she said, "No, I don't think Joe ... Listen, they were friends of mine. They were friends of Joe and Lyle. They came here every night, and when they had the money, they were good tippers. Good guys. I couldn't believe those a.s.sholes didn't tell me they were dead. Like they were n.o.bodies. Like they didn't care, it was like a bigger deal to pay the Budweiser guy."

"So why'd he run?" Marcy asked.

"I don't know--I don't know what you guys said to him. You must've scared him," she said. "Joe's a good guy, but he's not smart. Lyle's always taken care of him. I think you must've said something that panicked him."

"We told him we thought he helped rob the hospital," Lucas said.

Honey Bee flipped her hands in the air. "Well, that would have done it. Listen, the one thing Joe knows for sure is that cops frame people. He says he was framed twice, already."

She'd thought about it, but she overdramatized her answers, giving them the odor of lies. Lucas smelled it, and so did Marcy.

Lucas said, "As far as we know, there were no women involved in the robbery at the hospital. If you know something about that, and you're lying to us, you could go to jail as an accessory after the fact to a triple murder. That's thirty years, Honey Bee, and I'm not fooling around. This is a bad thing."

"I'm not lying," she said, with her best earnest, honest face. But she was.

Quick test: Lucas asked, "When did Joe get the haircut and shave?"

She hadn't seen it coming, and she said, "Uh . . ." and she looked from one of them to the other, and finally went with the truth. "Couple days ago, I guess. Listen, I don't know why. He does that every once in a while."

LYLE MACK came steaming through the door, looked at the three of them and said, "What happened? What happened? What'd you say to Joe? He's so scared he's peeing his pants. For Christ's sakes, Joe's a little r.e.t.a.r.ded. What'd you tell him?"

Mack was scared. They all sat in the front of the bar, in the stink of the weenie machine, arguing about what Joe Mack was up to, and Lyle Mack insisted that his brother had nothing to do with any holdup. He rapped his knuckles on the table. "He doesn't do that s.h.i.t. We got a good business here. And Joe Mack is not a violent guy. He doesn't like violence."

"Hey, we got his records," Marcy said.

"They don't tell the whole story."

"Oh, horses.h.i.t," Marcy said. "And we understand you're a branch of eBay."

"Hey. That's a lie. Anybody tell you that, send them to me. I'll set them straight."

"So where's he going?" Lucas asked. "Joe?"

Lyle Mack shook his head: "I don't know. LA, maybe. Mexico? He's a good mechanic, I suppose he could head up to Alaska or Canada."

"Has he got a pa.s.sport?"

"Yup. He does. But he doesn't carry it. And if you've got cops over at his apartment, then he's not going to get it. But you know LA--if he wants to go to Mexico, he can. You can buy real pa.s.sports on the street corner for a thousand bucks."