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 bumping 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 shit 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, bullshit," 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."

"You know what? A perfect solar eclipse is a zillion to one. But I've seen one."

"I don't believe it."

"Hey, I was there."

"Not the eclipse. I don't believe that Joe didn't snatch her. When will you get here?"

"Fifteen minutes-leaving here in two." MARCY'S NEWS gave them more to talk about, but in the end, they couldn't figure out what it meant. She arrived in her husband's truck, came in, looked at the box on the table and said, "I'll bet you didn't save a single-"

"Ah, but we did," Shrake said. "In fact, we saved two."

"I'm watching my weight," she said.

"I've been watching it, too," Jenkins said. "I gotta tell you, it's looking pretty good."

"Spoken like a true connoisseur," Shrake said, and they bumped knuckles.

Marcy said, "Mental note: don't hire Jenkins and Shrake when Davenport finally fires them."

Lucas said, "Yeah-yeah. Let's knock off the bullshit and get over to Mack's. Take the buns with you."

"Yeah, take your buns with you," Shrake said.

Marcy gave him a delicate finger and asked Lucas, "Tell me what you think about the DNA."

"I have no idea," he confessed. "Maybe more people are involved than we thought. Maybe, well, we know there was one guy at the hospital… maybe when we get him… I don't know, Marcy. Did the DNA rule out Lyle Mack, too?"

"Unless they're adopted brothers, with different parents. They don't look too much alike-I guess we could ask."

"They don't look much alike, but they both sort of look like Ike," Lucas said. "They weren't adopted." THE RIDE to Mack's took twenty minutes: Marcy left her truck in Lucas's driveway and rode with him, the better to eat the sticky buns-both of them-and drink her coffee. "Is Weather working on the twins?"

"Not sure. They're better, but they might get a little better if they go another few hours, or another day. It's a mess. If they don't move soon, one of them's going to die."

"Man-sometimes it's better being a cop."

"Yeah. Like when we were talking to MacBride's kid," Lucas said.

"Jesus, Lucas: you still got that depressive thing going, huh?"

"You don't?"

"Not like you. For me, MacBride getting murdered was seriously annoying. That's different," she said. "You gotta handle the rage, big guy." THEY'D PLANNED to take Mack at his house, but the place was locked up, and when they looked in the garage windows, the garage was empty. While they were looking, a car pulled into the driveway next door, and Marcy hustled over and talked to the driver, an old guy, and then hustled back. "Neighbor's been up since six, and didn't see or hear anybody over here. He says Mack usually goes to work around ten."

"Jeez, I hope he didn't skip," Shrake said.

Lucas shook his head: "Ah, he's probably just out early. Like us. Let's check the bar." AND MACK'S CAR was parked next to the dumpster behind Cherries. They got out, and Shrake and Jenkins walked around to the front, while Lucas and Marcy went to the back door. The door was locked, and they banged on it, with no response. Lucas looked around, couldn't see a camera. Banged on the door again.

Shrake came around the corner and said, "It's all locked up, up front, but the neon's turned on. The 'Open' sign."

"You bang on the door?"

"Yeah, but it's locked."

A cop car pulled into the lot, and a uniformed officer got out, looking at them, talking on a radio. Marcy said, "Poop," and walked over to him, her badge out. They talked for a minute, then Marcy waved them over.

"We're going to get his push bar right up by a front window," she said. "Shrake, you're the tallest, see if you can look in."

The cop pulled up to the bar, and Shrake stood on his push bar, using a hand to block reflections. After a moment, he said, "Well, I can see… yeah."

He hopped down.

"What?" Marcy asked.

"I can see a leg on the floor on the other side of the pool table."

"A leg. Like he's hiding?"

"Like he's dead," Shrake said. THE CITY COP wasn't sure of the technical entry procedure, so Jenkins took a long switchblade out of his pants pocket, punched a hole in the front-door glass, and flipped the interior lock. Lucas led the way in, Marcy a step behind.

Lucas called, "Mack?" but then they walked out of the main bar area and saw the body on the floor next to the pool table. A wooden chair sat over Mack's neck and chest, with a wooden crossbar at his neck, so that somebody sitting on the chair could keep Mack from sitting up or twisting away. His hands and feet were taped. He had a hole in his forehead, with burn marks around it, and a puddle of blood under the head and the legs. The front panel of the pants had been cut away, and Mack's groin was a mass of jellied blood.