The ramp was cold, so Lucas, Marcy, and Shrake squeezed into the small office and closed the door. Marcy took the visitor's chair, while Lucas stood against the wall and Shrake against the door.
Marcy identified herself, and then said, "You know these guys." She waved at Lucas and Shrake. "So, Joe. We talked to a bunch of people last night, and some lab people this morning, and a witness to the robbery at University Hospitals, and your name kept coming up. First of all, we identified Michael Haines with a DNA test as one of the men who robbed the hospital. We got a whole bunch of people to tell us that you and your brother are the people closest to Chapman and Haines, and that you and your brother are the most likely people around to move a big load of drugs out of the Cities down the Seed pipelines to the Angels on the West Coast or the Outlaws on the East Coast. And lastly, we've got a witness who saw you coming out of the parking garage at the hospitals, and who has identified you from a photo on your driver's license. We know all about the haircut and the shave, and when you got them. We thought you might have something to say about that."
Joe Mack was staring at her with increasing fascination, and when she finished, sat with his mouth open for a few seconds, then said, "That's bullshit." But he said it with the peculiar downcast despondency that said he did do it; and that they all knew it.
Lucas relaxed: almost done here. "Joe, this is a murder charge. But there's a lot of other stuff going on. Somebody's trying to kill the witness, but that won't happen now. We've got her totally hidden and covered-and if you're not in on that part, we can probably cut a deal with you. If you are in on that part… then, you know, you do the crime, you do the time."
There was a knock on the door, and Shrake leaned forward, away from the door, opened it a crack and said, "We're having a private meeting here." Honey Bee Brown got her face wedged in the crack of the door and said to Joe Mack, "You asshole, Shooter and Mikey are dead. What kind of bullshit deal is that? They were our friends, but you just don't give a shit." She started to cry.
Joe Mack said to her, "Aw, Honey, I don't know what the fuck is going on. These guys say Mike held up the hospital."
Shrake said, "Miss Brown, Honey Bee, we need to have some privacy here, we're interviewing-"
From behind them all, the Budweiser guy called, "Hey, Joe-you gotta sign the invoice. I'm running late."
Joe Mack said, "Oh, for Christ's sakes," and he said to Shrake and Lucas, "This'll take one minute." Honey Bee stepped back and Joe Mack stepped around the desk to where the Budweiser guy was waiting with a slate computer, and he said to Joe Mack, "Okay, we've got sixteen…"
And Joe Mack was gone. He stepped past Lucas, cleared Shrake, and suddenly sprinted past the Budweiser guy through the crack of daylight between the back of the truck and the edge of the garage door and off the dock.
The move was so unexpected that he was gone before the cops got out of the office, and then Lucas, going after him, crunched into Honey Bee and then the Budweiser guy, and Lucas and Honey Bee went down. Shrake, who was faster than Lucas anyway, was out the door, Marcy two steps behind him. Lucas scrambled to his feet and got through the door quick enough to see Joe Mack vault a fence that separated the back of the bar from a neighboring house, and disappear.
Shrake was thirty or forty yards behind him, but running in boots and a heavy coat, and losing ground fast. Marcy was farther back. Shrake clambered over the fence and kept running, while Lucas swerved toward the street and ran past the surveillance car where Martin had just hit the ground and shouted, "Was that him?"
"He's running," Lucas shouted. "Get in the car, get in the car…" As SOON AS the woman cop began to talk, Joe Mack began to panic, his heart up in his throat. They knew. They had a witness, they knew about the haircut, moving the drugs, the whole works. The minute he saw the daylight, the Budweiser guy standing there with the invoice in his hand, he bolted. He didn't think about it, he ran.
Joe Mack was fast. He'd been a sprinter in high school, and he wasn't wearing heavy winter stuff-he was wearing the light jacket and gym shoes he wore in the back end of the bar, where it was on-and-off warm, with trucks coming and going.
Now, on the run, he needed to get inside. If he didn't, he'd freeze. He ran through a block of backyards, and then another, zigging and zagging around houses and garages and fences and parked boats and hedges, got tired, turned downhill to his left, made it across a street, and another one… ran past a house, jumped a fence, collided with a birdfeeder, vaulted another fence in a right-angle turn, ran along a hedge and a garage.
And there was Jill MacBride, getting into her minivan.
Mack hit her in the back, and she screamed but he lifted her with brute strength across the driver's seat, picked up the keys she'd used to open the van's door, and shoved the keys in the ignition and slammed the door and screamed at her, "Shut up, shut up, shut up…" and backed out of the driveway. Ten seconds later, he was down the block and around the corner. In his rearview mirror, he saw a man sprint across the end of the street, running in the wrong direction.
The woman was sobbing, and she cried, "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me," and Joe Mack took a long breath and said, "I'm running from the cops. I've got a gun. Fuck with me and I'll kill you in one second." He didn't have a gun, but he was scared enough that he sounded as though he might. MacBride stayed in the foot well.
She was half upside down, her purse on the floor under Joe Mack's feet. He picked it up, dug through it, stuck her wallet in his pocket. He'd need the money The van rolled up to a red light. He ignored it-no traffic coming-and made a left turn and headed west, then a right, and another left, and he was on Highway 13 headed west again, toward the airport.
He had to think, but couldn't seem to. He couldn't go outside or he'd freeze. He saw the airport sign. THEY GOT a ticket and parked in the top of the parking structure. Joe Mack said, "Get out of there and get in the back."
MacBride clambered out of the foot well and between the two seats and into the back, and Joe Mack said, "Lay down," and then, "I'm gonna go outside and make a call so you can't hear it. If you stick your head up, or try to get out, I'll chase you down and kill your ass. If you stay here, you'll be okay. You understand what I'm telling you?"
"Yes…"
Joe Mack got out of the van and took his cell phone out of his pocket and called Lyle Mack. When Lyle answered, Joe said, "Jesus Christ, I'm in fuckin' big trouble, man."
He told Lyle what had happened: "They know everything. They know about the haircut. They got me."
"So you kidnapped a fuckin' woman, you fuckin' idiot?" Lyle was screaming at him. "They might have been bullshitting you, but now they got you for kidnapping."
"I didn't kidnap her. She's right in the van, she's right here, she's fine, I'm gonna let her go," Joe Mack said.
"Don't do a fuckin' thing," Lyle Mack said. "Stay right there and keep her with you. I'm gonna call Cappy and have him pick you up. Then I gotta call the cops."
"What for?"
"To turn you in, you dumb shit. If I don't turn you in, they'll get me, too. I'll call them and tell them you called me, but I won't tell them where you're at."
"What about me?"
"Like you said the other day-you're headed for Mexico. Or Panama. You're gone, man." 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."