"Yes. Having a nice chat."
"Hold her there." GABRIEL MARET pulled the surgical team together outside the operating theater. "One more day. The cardiologists say there could be some benefit by holding off for another twelve to twenty-four hours, but not after that. So tomorrow morning, at seven o'clock, we're going, and we have to go the whole way, regardless of what happens."
Virgil had been leaning against the wall down the hall, and when Weather broke free of the group, asked, "Back home?"
She said, "I was thinking. About these latest killings. Lucas thinks that the hospital guy has to be involved somehow. He's one guy they don't have any ideas about, except for the accent."
Virgil nodded. "So?"
"So they killed this one man last night, and another one probably this morning. Who do we know who has a French accent, who didn't show up for work today?"
Virgil's eyebrows went up. "Not a bad thought. Who'd we ask about that?"
"Let's go down to admin." LUCAS GOT BACK to the BCA office and found Jenkins and Honey Bee in a conference room finishing a pepperoni pizza. Lucas took a chair, pulled it close to her, and said, "Ms. Brown. Harriet. Honey Bee. When the bodies of Haines and Chapman were found, some pieces of straw were taken off their backs. I collected some straw from your driveway this morning. I've just been down to the Dakota County sheriff's office and we've done a comparison. We think we can prove that Haines and Chapman were killed at your farm."
Her mouth dropped open. "What?"
"We can use genetics techniques to prove the connection," Lucas said. "Very sophisticated, but they're better than fingerprints."
"I don't-"
Lucas beat her down with an angry snap: "Goddamnit, don't bullshit us. This is way out of control. Do you realize how many people are dead? Somebody's killed six people."
"Not me…"
"But you were involved, one way or another," Lucas said, leaning toward her, looming, tapping on the table with his index finger. "We've already got enough to convince a jury: you were intimate with Lyle Mack, you were friends with Joe and Ike, you were friends with the victims, Haines and Chapman, we've got the evidence of the straw, taken from your house. Have you helped us? No. You've stonewalled. You've given us exactly zip."
She looked at Jenkins. "I've been cooperating…"
"You've been talking to me," Jenkins said. "You've been nice, I gotta admit. But Honey Bee, you've given me exactly no useful information. Not even the simple stuff, like, who's the 'doc' guy?"
"I don't know who the doc guy is," she said. "I think he's a doper. Joe told me once that the worst doper he knew was a doctor, and I think it's the same guy. I think that's how they knew him. The guy was trying to buy dope."
"Did Joe sell dope?"
She looked away, and then said, "He might have, at one time. I don't know exactly."
"Oh, horseshit," Lucas said. "Did he sell dope?"
Long pause, then, "Yes. Not so much sell it, as trade it. You know, for stuff."
"What kind of stuff?" Jenkins asked.
"Office equipment."
"Office equipment." The two cops looked at each other.
"They used to sell a lot of office equipment on the Internet," she said. "And cameras and stuff," she said.
"In other words, hot stuff," Lucas said. "Stuff from burglaries, stolen stuff from offices."
"I guess," she said.
"Where'd they keep it?" Lucas asked. "There wasn't any at the bar, or their houses."
She started to cry, and the cops sat and watched. After a minute, she stopped, checking for effects, saw nothing but stone faces. "What?"
"Where'd they keep it?" Lucas asked again.
Another long wait, and then, "They have a storage place out in Lake Elmo."
"Do you know where it is?"
"Yes."
"Did they put the dope from the hospital robbery out there?"
"I don't know about the hospital robbery. "
They pushed her around for a while, then Lucas said to Jenkins, "I think we better check her into Ramsey County."
"What does that mean?" she asked.
"Gonna hold you in jail for a while," Lucas said.
She thought about the money in her purse and said, "Oh, no. You said we were going to a hotel."
"Can't take a chance that you'd run," Lucas said. "You're in this up to your neck."
She said, "If you put me in jail, I'll get a lawyer and I won't say one more goddamn thing to you. If you need help, you can go fuck yourself. I'm trying to help, maybe I can help if you ask different questions, or maybe I can help some other way. If you put me in jail, I won't say one more goddamn word."
"I don't know if you can give us any more help," Lucas said. "You're looking at a murder one, and you're still stonewalling."
"I'll help you with Joe," she said. "Who else are you going to get to talk to him? That he'll trust? You can go fuck yourself on that one," she said.
Lucas looked at Jenkins. "What do you think?"
Before Jenkins could say anything, Honey Bee added, "I've got my truck. I've got my horses. I've got my farm. I can't run away. I'm forty-three years old and I got nothing else in my whole life."
Jenkins said, "I thought your driver's license said thirty-seven or thirty-nine. Like that."
"I might've cut a couple years off," she said. LUCAS CALLED MARCY, told her about the straw from the driveway, about the storage unit, about Honey Bee's willingness to talk to Joe.
"He's not answering, but his phone is ringing, still in Kansas, and not moving," Marcy said. "I got a bad feeling about it. I think they ditched it. Threw it out the window." LUCAS AND JENKINS drove Honey Bee out to Lake Elmo, to a self-storage place, and got the manager to open the unit. The floor was covered by wooden pallets, on which were stacked a couple of dozen TVs and computer monitors, computers, including a half-dozen Apple laptops, a gift box of Wusthof knives, paper shredders, printers, speakers and audio receivers, Blu-ray and DVD players, a dozen GPS handhelds, fish-finders and marine tracking units, six new-looking Yamaha 25-horsepower outboard motors, and one snowmobile.
No drugs. Because, Lucas thought, the drugs had been at Ike's.
They called the Washington County sheriff, told them about the unit, knotted a piece of crime-scene tape on the lock, and told the manager not to touch anything.
"Nothing for us," Lucas said, as they pulled out. To Honey Bee: "We need Joe. We need a different phone, we need the doc, we need you to give us something we can use, or I'm slamming your ass in jail."
"I don't-"
"Think of something," Lucas said. "Or else. The doc: is he a French guy? Do you know anything about that?"
She touched her lips and said, "Oh."
"Oh, what?"
"The doc guy. Joe Mack once cracked some joke about a rag-head. I think he was talking about the doc."
"The doc's an Arab?"
"Or one of those kinds of people who have, you know, turbans. I think so. But I'm not sure. That's all I can think of that might help."
"What's his last name?" Lucas asked.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know anything else. I heard them talking about the doc."
"That's not a hell of a lot," Jenkins said. VIRGIL AND WEATHER were put with the payroll people, who looked through a list of the French-accent workers. None had called in sick, but two of them had the day off. Virgil said, "I need to get you home, so the guys can cover you."
"You shouldn't look for them on your own," Weather said.
"So I'll take Jenkins or Shrake," Virgil said. "Gotta do it, though-this could be something."
They'd just finished when Lucas called for Virgil. Lucas told him what Honey Bee had said, and Virgil said, "If it's an Arab, that's gonna be a bigger problem. There're lots more Arabs around here than Frenchmen." JENKINS AND LUCAS played good-cop bad-cop for a while, Jenkins suggesting that Honey Bee had helped some, and she might help more, and so deserved another chance. Lucas wanted to put her in jail. Eventually, Lucas backed away, and agreed to stick her in a Holiday Inn, in downtown St. Paul.