He leaned close to Barakat-so close that Barakat frowned, and pulled away, his face turned so Shaheen could see his eyes. Shaheen said quietly, "Tell me you know nothing about this robbery at the hospital."
And he saw, in a flash, the truth in the other man's face…
Shaheen sagged and turned away and said, "Oh, no."
"I didn't. I didn't," Barakat insisted. "I use the cocaine, but I had nothing-"
Shaheen cut him off with a wave of his hand. "I've known you every day of my life," he said. "When you lie, I see it in your face. What have you done? Why have you done this?"
Barakat leaned back against the car door and said, "If you tell anybody, Addie, I'll kill you. I'll kill you like a dog." SHAHEEN DROPPED HIM off at his house: "You have nine hours before your shift begins."
"I'm okay."
"You're not okay. You're a drug addict. You need treatment," Shaheen said.
"Forget it. I'll take care of it myself," Barakat said.
"Allee…"
"I'm okay," Barakat said, and he went into the house. IN THE EARLY MORNING, he took only a small hit as he got ready for work: just enough to cool him down. Hair of the dog, as the Americans said. The small hit was enough to get his brain moving again, and he thought: Joe Mack, Lyle Mack, Weather Karkinnen.
Two separate problems, the Macks on one side, Karkinnen on the other.
If Joe Mack were to die, the threat would be mostly gone-even if Karkinnen identified him, the cops could get no further. Not unless Lyle Mack did something really stupid, like keep the drugs in his basement.
An additional thought: the Macks had a killer. So that was one more person who knew. How many were there, on the Mack side of the equation? Hard to tell. Did the killer even know about him? Barakat worked through it: the Macks didn't necessarily have to tell him, but the Macks were not the most reliable, he thought. He should have seen it before, but he'd been blinded by the idea of a mountain of cocaine.
Then there was Karkinnen. She'd had a good long look at him, could put him in the wrong part of the hospital at the wrong time.
One more hit before he left for work, and just a twist in a little Saran Wrap for lunch. He put the rest of the cocaine in a shoe in his closet.
The Macks. The Macks were a problem. Karkinnen was a problem only as long as the Macks were around. If Joe Mack were to die, though… or both of them, for that matter…
The idea pleased him; but he still wondered if the Macks, despite their denials, despite their slow-moving minds, had worked through the same equation.
5
WEATHER WALKED QUIETLY down the stairs, sensed a presence, stepped sideways and looked into the kitchen. In the reflected light from a hallway sconce, she could see Virgil Flowers sitting on his sleeping bag in the arch between the dining room and the kitchen. From there, he could see both the front door and the back. A shotgun was lying on the floor behind him.
"Did you get any sleep?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he said. He yawned.
She suspected that he was lying; that he'd spent the night prowling the first floor with his gun. "I'm going to make some coffee, and there's a coffee cake in the freezer. I could stick it in the oven. Ready in twenty minutes?"
"Great, thanks. I need to brush my teeth. Don't open the curtains in the kitchen."
"I don't think-"
"Don't open the curtains," he said. He said it with the same hard tone that Lucas sometimes used; not something she often saw in Virgil, though she knew it must be there.
She nodded. "Okay."
Virgil asked, "Would there be enough coffee cake for another guy?"
"There's enough for six," she said.
"Jenkins has been wandering around outside. I might give him a call."
"Ah, you guys…"
Guys with guns, taking care of her. She hadn't flashed on the sniper killing again, but it was back there, somewhere, like Grendel, waiting to crawl out of its cave. LUCAS CAME DOWN the stairs a moment later, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, looking sleepy. He was carrying a shoulder holster with a..45. Virgil, just off his cell phone, said, "Jenkins thought he'd stop by."
Lucas nodded, taking Jenkins's behavior for granted. He dropped the.45 on the kitchen counter, and a minute later, Jenkins knocked on the side door. Virgil let him into the mudroom, a big man, cold, blowing steam. He said, "Four below," and, clapping his gloved hands, said, cheerfully, "Looks like everybody's up and at 'em, huh?"
"Ah, Christ," Lucas said. Early mornings disagreed with him, unless he was coming from the dark side.
Weather got the coffee going and Lucas got the oven preheating, and Virgil went off to the guest bedroom with his Dopp kit while Jenkins shed his coat and rubber overshoes, and put two 9mm Glocks on the end of the kitchen table.
With the coffee going, Weather went to the phone and punched in a number, identified herself and asked, "Are we on schedule? Thanks." She hung up and said to Lucas: "We're on schedule. Sara's stable. Don't know if she'll stay that way, but we're going to do it."
They ate the coffee cake, and argued about politics and medical care. The morning felt almost like an early fishing trip, a bunch of people sitting around eating unhealthy food.
Then Weather looked at her watch and said, "Better go."
Lucas and Weather took Lucas's SUV, on the theory that if somebody was still shooting for Weather, they might not know where she lived, or what other vehicles she had access to. Jenkins led the way in his personal Crown Vic, followed by Lucas in his SUV, with Virgil trailing behind in his 4Runner. Instead of going to the hospital parking ramp, they went to the front entrance. Jenkins parked, put a BCA placard in the front window, and held the door for Weather as she went in, with Lucas a step behind her.
"So I'm good," she said, when they were in the lobby. "See you guys this afternoon?"
"I think I'll hang out for a while, see who comes by," Jenkins said. Virgil came in.
Lucas said, "Maybe I'll get a bite in the cafeteria."
"I'll come with you," Virgil said.
Weather looked at them: "You're going to stay here all day, aren't you?"
Jenkins shrugged: "Maybe."
Virgil said, "Not me. I'm going back to your place and crash."
"I don't think it's necessary-" Weather began.
Lucas cut her off: "You do the surgery, we'll do the body-guarding." THEN THERE was the deal with the chickens. But not just any chickens.
Arnold Shoemaker, the farmer, was either blessed with, or cursed by, exotic fowl. He wasn't quite certain which.
He didn't buy them, he accumulated them. Somebody would come by, hearing that Arnold would take them, and they'd drop them off-unwanted family pets, stray birds, leftovers from farms that were going down. Cuckoo Marans, Golden Penciled Ham-burgs, Leghorns, Buttercups, Red Caps, Blue-Peckered Logans, assorted bantams and guinea hens, he had them all.
He ate the few eggs they produced, when he found them fresh, but never ate the chickens. They ran in and out of the old barn in the winter, and he'd feed them table scraps and ground corn, and leave them on their own to peck up gravel out by the road and bugs in the barn.
The fact was, they made him happy to look at. It was nothing short of remarkable, he thought, how so few people realized how good-looking a chicken could be. Better-looking than parrots, by a long way. No contest.
Arnold was up before dawn, into town, had breakfast at the diner, where the waitress called him "hon" and knew to bring the Heinz 57 sauce for his scrambled eggs and home fries cooked in sausage grease; the combo gave him gas, but the taste was unparalleled, and Arnold lived alone, except for the chickens and his yellow Lab, so the gas wasn't a critical problem, though the dog sometimes got watery eyes.
The sun was just over the horizon when Arnold topped the hill on the way home, and came down to Minnie Creek and saw the coyotes break out from under the bridge and into the trees. He went on by, but he could see them at the edge of the woods, watching the truck with their silver eyes.