Easy enough to do.

Cappy ghosted down the hallways, patients, doctors and nurses, visitors, coming and going, all the time: people lying on gurneys, in wheelchairs, shuffling down the halls, sometimes towing bags of saline mounted on wheeled racks; people staring out of hospital rooms, watching television; beeps and boops from equipment, chimes from elevators, more laughter than you'd think.

He got a quick sandwich in the cafeteria, actually helped move a patient from one floor to the other, on a cart. Pushed a guy in a wheelchair to an elevator, took him to the cafeteria, the guy breathing oxygen from a bottle on the back of the chair, who said, when they arrived, "Thanks, son."

He thought at first that the other orderlies would look him over, but nobody paid any attention to him; after a while, he began to get the feeling that he was effectively invisible. He asked about, and located, the special operating room for the twins. Barakat had told him about the overhead observation room, and he found that, looked it over. Thought: Can't take her here.

There'd be too many people around…

Started on an idea.

If he could wait in a doorway, on a hall where she'd pass by, he could shoot her, slam the door, block the door somehow, and run for it. The place was such a tangle of hallways that if he worked out an escape route in advance, he'd probably make it out…

But that meant watching her for a while, so he'd know where she went. And watching her meant that a lot of other people would see his face around.

Maybe he could simply wait for the twins' operation, and watch her. When she got ready to leave the hospital room, he could run down the stairs, shoot her when she came out-thirty feet or so-step back into the stairwell.

If he'd stashed a piece of two-by-four in the stairwell ahead of time, he could wedge it between the door and the bottom step, and that would block the door as effectively as a padlock.

He could then run up or down the stairs, mix with the other uniforms, and disappear into the crazy maze of hallways.

Be out of the place in four or five minutes.

Maybe.

10

VIRGIL, LUCAS, and Shrake saw Weather safely into the hospital, all the way to the women's locker room. "Do not go off by yourself," Lucas told her. "Virgil can be there in one minute. Don't get a Coke or a candy bar. Just call him."

"I will," she said, but she said it in a way that made Lucas turn back to her.

"Weather, if you don't, I'll be sincerely pissed off. I mean it," he said. "There's a guy in this hospital who might be trying to kill you."

"I'll call," she promised.

A pretty blond nurse, carrying a load of fresh scrubs, had piled up behind them, and she said to Lucas, "We'll take care of her."

"I'd appreciate it," Lucas said. "And I want you to rat her out, if she cheats. This is serious stuff."

The nurse nodded, paused as she passed Virgil, and said, "How're you doing?"

Virgil said, "How're you doing yourself?"

"I'm doing fine…"

Weather hooked her by the arm and said, "Don't flirt with the hired help," and they went inside, the nurse turning to wiggle her fingers at Virgil, who wiggled back.

Lucas said to Shrake, "She didn't say, 'How're you doing?' to us."

Shrake said, "She was saying it to me, but that fuckin' Flowers jumped in front of me."

"I'm so hot," Virgil said. He touched a thigh with a fingertip and made the steam sound: "Chhhh."

Lucas covered his eyes in mock embarrassment, and Shrake laughed and said to Virgil, "You're so fuckin' gay." LUCAS AND SHRAKE drove back across town to the BCA to meet with an agent named Lannie Tote, a gang-squad guy who specialized in the Seed, and Del. They picked up Del, who was talking to Lucas's secretary, and found Tote in Frank Harris's office. Tote was a thin man, a runner, who dressed in conservative gray suits with white business shirts and dark blue neckties with American flag pins on the lapel. He had a reputation for being conservative and Christian and competent.

Lucas told them what had happened to that point. They knew the outline, but not the details. When they were done, Harris asked, "Where are you on Joe Mack? Eighty percent?"

"Ninety-nine percent," Lucas said. "What we need, ideally, is a guy we can really put the screws on. We need to get a biography of the Macks. We need to know who they hang with, who'd be likely to stick Joe up in the attic, even knowing what he's done."

"Have you talked to their old man? Ike? He'd do it," Tote said.

"Where's he at?" Lucas asked.

"Up by Spooner. Got a place back in the woods. Works at an auto-parts store in town, does custom work on old Harleys. Does some welding."

"A bad guy?" Del asked.

"You know, small time," Tote said. "All the Macks are small time. Lyle is the pinnacle of Mack achievement. There was a rumor that Ike used to cook up some meth and move it through his boys, but quit when it got too hot. I'm pretty sure he buys stolen bikes, takes them apart, uses the parts on his custom jobs."

"You got anything we could use as a lever?"

Tote shook his head. "We don't pay too much attention to him-he doesn't run with the gang guys anymore. Too old, and what… mmm… eight, nine years back, he had to lay his bike down, up on Highway 53. Busted his legs in about twenty places, and his pelvis. He gets around, but he's pretty hobbled."

Harris showed a thin smile: "So if he runs on you guys, you can probably catch him."

"Not funny," Shrake said.

Lucas asked, "Who else, guys? I'd like to get a name where you've got a lever. Somebody who'll spill his guts."

"Ansel Clark," Tote said, after a moment's hesitation. "I was going to hold him back until I had time to really debrief him."

"What's his story?" Del asked.

Clark, Tote said, was locked up in the state penitentiary at Stillwater. He'd gotten a five-year sentence for an armed robbery in Forest Lake, in which a bypasser had recognized him. The bypasser hadn't recognized Clark's accomplice, but Clark had given him up for a sentence reduction. "He's not a popular guy. Every time Clark gets a new TV, somebody'd shoot it full of WD40 and it'd be ruined. The prison guys turned the cell around, so the set's on the back wall, but he's already lost three of them, and he's got no money, no family or friends on the outside to get him one."

"He needs a TV," Shrake said.

"He's pretty desperate," Tote said. "The last time they had a lockdown, all he had in his cell was an old AARP magazine and a picture dictionary. Didn't even have anything with which to… entertain himself."

"No stroke books," Shrake said. LUCAS WAS friendly with the head of the department of corrections, who hooked him up with an assistant warden at Stillwater.

"If anybody sees him talking to you, he'll have bigger problems than he already has," the warden said. "But come on; I'll figure out something."

Lucas and Del went together, a half-hour ride, checked in, and got with the assistant warden, whose name was Jon Orff. Orff came down to the entry hall to get them, led them back through a maze of offices.

"I had the guy who's in charge of disciplinary action pull him off the job," Orff said. "He's down in an isolation unit. Should be okay."

They rattled down through the prison, through security gates, to isolation, a bunch of human-sized metal lunch boxes. Orff had the guard pop the electronic lock and they went in. Clark, a heavy, soft-looking man with a small brown mustache, was lying on the bunk, feet crossed, staring at the ceiling. He sat up when they came in.

"Now what?" he asked. He had one uncontrolled eye that would wander toward the outside edge of his eye socket, then pop back to the center.

"We're cops," Lucas said. "We need to talk to you about some friends of yours."