They talked about some other possibilities and then the other doc said, "You got a kinda froggy accent. Are they talking to you, too?"

"What? Froggy?"

"French accent," the doc said. "There's a cop asking around for French accents, and now one of the docs is asking around. Because of that guy who got killed, you know, in the pharmacy."

Barakat suppressed a shrug and said, "I have not heard. Anyway, my accent is already Lebanese, not French. The f.u.c.king French, they are the most responsible for destroying my country."

"Didn't know that," the doc said. He looked back at the patient. "G.o.dd.a.m.n women get the weirdest diseases up there. You know? We oughta have a wazoo guy working full-time."

"You've seen the other one? Rosemary something?"

"Nope. What's that about?"

"Either a bad sprain or a broken navicular. She was in yoga cla.s.s, doing some pose, and she fell and put her hand down. She's in imaging, should be back anytime. Barry has her chart ..."

CAPPY WAS WAITING in the parking garage. "We have trouble," Barakat said. He popped his car door and threw the briefcase in the back.

Cappy looked sleepy. "What kind?"

"A cop is looking for somebody with a French accent. Also, this woman doctor is now going around the hospital, telling everyone. They will come to me."

"So what?"

Barakat looked at him. "So ... it's a problem."

"Don't tell them the truth, dude. No problem. Tell them you don't know what the f.u.c.k they're talking about."

Barakat thought, She'll recognize me. She'll recognize me. "You're right. I'm being a woman." "You're right. I'm being a woman."

"Don't ask for an attorney. Get p.i.s.sed off. You're a big-shot doctor, right? No cops can talk to you like that."

"My friend, you are smarter than you look," Barakat said.

"When I move to Paris, or LA, you should come along. We will be partners in crime."

They took Barakat's car, a three-year-old Subaru, for the four-wheel drive, and Cappy asked, "So, did you bring some tools?"

"A scalpel, duct tape, and I took a hammer from the maintenance shop. I was careful. I took an old one; they have several."

"Have you thought about how we do it?"

"Yes, we go in. You shoot him in the knee, and we fall on him."

"Fall on him?"

"Jump on him. Attack him. Immobilize him with the duct tape. Then I set to work. I cut his pants here ..." He touched his groin. "I tell him, the first thing I do is, I take off one ball. Then I take off the p.e.n.i.s, and then the other ball. I tell him, I take one ball before we ask him anything, to show him that I will do it ..."

"That's cold," Cappy said cheerfully.

"With any luck, we don't need the second ball."

"What if Honey Bee's there?" Cappy asked.

Barakat did the shrug again: "We don't need her, yes? We don't need her."

[image]

THEY DROVE SOUTH on I-35, and thirty minutes later, cut east and south, through thinning suburbs, away from the lights. Cappy read off the turns as they came to them, and finally they left the highway for snow-covered tarmac road, down the valley and around the curve, and saw Honey Bee's place, white-on-white, with the snow in the fields, under the blue glow of her yard light.

Hardly a light in the house: a yellow glimmer from the kitchen, which looked like an alarm light, or a candle.

"n.o.body home," Cappy said. "Ain't that a bite in the a.s.s?" He was annoyed: all dressed up and nowhere to go.

"Maybe he ran," Barakat said.

"He was talking about going to Green Bay. Somewhere in Green Bay," Cappy said, remembering the vague conversation after the attack on the doctor chick. "He even said where--but I don't remember that part."

"This is a misfortune," Barakat said. Then, "There's more than one way to ... I don't know the word ... flay? Flay a cat?"

"Skin a cat," Cappy said. "What you got in mind?"

Barakat said, "Well, there are two two brothers...." brothers...."

They went and knocked on Honey Bee's door, but there was no answer, and in the last dying light of day, they turned the car around and headed back to town.

AT BARAKAT'S PLACE, they got into the cocaine, clicked around the television, ate a pizza, and had a long, intricate, dope-fueled discussion about their childhoods. "I don't really think you should kill your old man, because it's not the right thing to do," Cappy announced at one point. "That's why I stay away from Rochester. 'Cause if I saw that c.o.c.ksucker, I'd shoot him down like a yellow dog."

"My father, he has money, but does he give it to me? No. It's mine by rights," Barakat said. "He got it from his father, who got it from his father. But with my father, it stops. He tells me everything. He tells me to do this, and I must do this. He tells me to do that, to be a doctor, and here I am, a doctor. Do I want to be a doctor? No, I do not. Not much. Huh? Every day, I have my finger in somebody's r.e.c.t.u.m. Is this a way to go through life? I am living in Paris, and I see other sons, whose fathers are not so greedy, and they are living very, very well. And the women. The most beautiful women in the world, and do I get them? No, I do not, because my father is so greedy, so small."

"Where does he live?"

"West Palm Beach, in Florida."

"Tell you what, when we get done with this, we go to Rochester, you kill my old man, and then we go to Florida, and I kill your old man," Cappy said. "My old man owns a recreational equipment business, and I'll f.u.c.kin' inherit. And you'll f.u.c.kin' inherit. We'll both be f.u.c.kin' rich."

"My friend," Barakat said, pausing for a twist, "we have a deal. Huh. I kill your c.o.c.ksucker father and you kill my c.o.c.ksucker father and we go to Paris."

Cappy took a hit and a thought occurred to him: "You don't like being a doctor. That's scary, you know, having a doctor working on you who doesn't like it."

"Well, I don't like it much, but ..." Snort. "I am really a very good doctor, huh? I know what I'm doing. But I don't like it. I have seen one a.s.shole too many."

At two o'clock in the morning, they watched the last drunk roll out of Cherries, pause in the parking lot to light a cigarette and zip a parka against the cold, and then drive away; two minutes later, a bartender came out, walked around to the side, got in his car, and disappeared.

"Let's go," Cappy said. They got out of the van and walked across the back parking area, where Lyle Mack's car was parked next to the dumpster, the last car at the bar. They climbed the back stoop to the door, then stepped sideways into a shadow of the loading-dock door.

Ten minutes, and a light went out; and another. "He's coming," Cappy muttered.

"Finally. My hands are freezing."

They both unconsciously shuffled their feet. A minute later, Lyle Mack came out the back door, turned to pull it shut. Cappy jumped across the s.p.a.ce between the loading dock and door, hit Mack in the back, slammed him through the door and into the bar.

Barakat was a step behind, with his .45. Cappy was on Mack's back, Mack facedown on the floor, trying to do a push-up. Barakat slammed the door closed, and in the dark, pressed the muzzle of the .45 against Mack's head and said, "Stop, or I kill you."

Mack went limp. Cappy said, "Lyle, we need to talk."

LYLE PLEADED and moaned and argued, but they taped him up with duct tape, awkward in their heavy winter gloves, and then Lyle asked the question, "Why?"

"The thing is, man, this whole deal has gotten too complicated, and sooner or later somebody is going to talk, and then you're going to sell us out," Cappy said. "So we decided we had to move."

"Man, I can't sell you out," Lyle Mack said. "If I sell you out, I go to jail for thirty years."

"Yes, yes. Now. We need answers to two questions," Barakat said. "Where is the dope? And, where is your brother?"

"Well, f.u.c.k you," Lyle Mack said, nearly choking on the words. "You're gonna kill me anyway."

"But maybe not," Barakat said. "You don't want to hurt Joe, because he is your brother. But if Joe disappears, then who can touch us? Then, we believe you. You won't sell us out, because there is no reason. You take revenge on us, you send yourself to prison. We will kill your brother, and then the woman doctor cannot reach us, and maybe you plan revenge, or maybe you choke on his death, but you don't sell us out."

"About the dope," Cappy said. "We're not going to see any of that. That's gone, isn't it?"

"No. We hid it good. We gotta wait, guys--"

"Bulls.h.i.t, wait," Barakat said. "Now, Lyle, I think you will tell us where the drugs are, and where your brother is. How hard this will be, you decide." He emptied his pockets--the scalpel, the hammer, two vinyl gloves. He took off his winter gloves, pulled on the medical gloves. "Now, I will tell you. You do not believe what we will do to you, so before you answer the question, I will cut a ball off. Huh? One ball. You will still be able to f.u.c.k later, with one ball. But if you do not answer after the ball comes off, then I cut off your p.e.n.i.s and then the other ball. Then, I work with the hammer. Huh?"

"Oh, man, don't do that. I'll tell you," Lyle Mack said. "Joe's on his way to Mexico. Our friend Eddie picked him up this afternoon. They should be in Wichita tonight. The drugs, we hid up north ... "

Barakat held up a hand. "Maybe I believe you. But I cut off one ball anyway, huh? Just to show you." He wiggled his fingers and picked up the scalpel.

Cappy said, "Let's get him in where it's warmer," and they dragged him like a sack of potatoes across the loading dock and through the door into the bar itself, his head b.u.mping on the door-jamb. Cappy got a chair and said, "Roll him," and when Barakat rolled him, Cappy put the chair across Lyle Mack's chest, one of the crossbars over his neck, another cutting into the fat man's gut. Cappy sat in the chair and said to Barakat, "Go 'head."

Lyle Mack began to weep: "Man, please, please, don't do this, man, please ..."

ANYONE WALKING by the bar, bareheaded and listening, might have heard the screams, but then again, they might not have; there was just enough wind to carry the sound away.

14.

LUCAS GOT UP EARLY, with Weather, then went back to bed for a while, and finally rolled out at seven o'clock, two hours before he usually did. He got cleaned up, ate breakfast, played chase-the-tennis-ball with Sam, and then sent Sam and the housekeeper off to the grocery store. As she went, the housekeeper said, "You should take the truck today. There's a storm warning."

"Yeah? When's it supposed to get here?"

"They were saying tonight. I can't see it on the radar yet, but it's coming."

Lucas went to look at the TV. The storm was still winding up over western South Dakota. Brought up the computer in the den, checked again: heavy snow tomorrow, starting with flurries around dawn, with rapidly falling temperatures. Ten to fifteen inches of snow possible in the next forty-eight hours. The Black Hills were being pounded.

He went out and told the housekeeper, "Not until tomorrow, they're saying."

She said, "Somebody's here."

A car pulled into the driveway, and he looked and saw Jenkins getting out. He let him in the back door, and then heard Shrake arrive, and let him in, too. "Gonna storm tomorrow," Shrake said. He was holding a box of sticky buns. "What're we doing?"

"Marcy's getting an arrest warrant for Lyle Mack. We're a little thin on cause, but we think he's talking to Joe."

"Prepaid cell," Shrake said.

"That's what we think. We can get the cell phone as part of the arrest, and then ..."

"We've got real probable cause," Jenkins finished.

THEY HAD COFFEE and two sticky buns each, and talked about the fact that none of them smoked anymore, and how enjoyable it had been, and then Marcy called: "I got two pieces of news, one of which I should have had a long, long time ago, but you jerks held out on me."

"And that is?"

"With your new equipment, with a high-priority case, you can do DNA in twelve hours."

"Didn't know that," Lucas said. "You get it back?"

"Yes, we did. Guess what? Whoever strangled Jill MacBride, it wasn't Joe Mack."

"What?"

"Got some weird s.h.i.t going down, big boy. Get your crew cranked up, and let's go see Lyle Mack. If Joe didn't strangle her, maybe he didn't kidnap her--and he's got no reason to run."

"Well, bulls.h.i.t," Lucas said. "I don't know what happened, but Joe grabbed her. I mean, if he didn't, it'd be like a zillion to one."