"Aw, man," Shrake said.

Marcy asked, "What's that?" pointing at Mack's stomach.

Jenkins bent over, then straightened up and stepped back. "I do believe that's the gentleman's testicle," he said.

The city cop, gagging, mumbled something about calling it in, and dashed for the door. They stood there, the metallic smell of blood infusing the air, and listened to him retching in the parking lot.

Then Shrake said, "You know what? When they did this, somebody was sitting in that chair, looking right down at his face." LUCAS GOT everybody moving, BCA crime scene, the ME's investigators, while Marcy called her chief. Lucas went into the back and found Jenkins in the office, with plastic gloves on his hands, going through Mack's parka. "Anything?"

"Cell phone, I think. I can feel it, but I can't find the pocket." The pocket was under a hidden zip flap, and Jenkins pulled it out, turned it on, and said, "This is probably it: it says it's got seventy-five minutes of talk-time left."

"Need the numbers, right now," Lucas said. "Incoming and outgoing calls."

"Got it."

Marcy came in: "Lucas: what do you think?"

"We're back to square one. We don't know what's happening. MacBride is killed by somebody we don't know, Mack is tortured to death. Joe didn't do this, so… there's gotta be somebody else. Probably a couple or three of them."

"Another gang?"

"Don't know. We've got a mystery guy at the hospital. We don't know about him."

She said, "I wonder if the Macks had anything to do with it-the robbery, and all of it."

"Sure they did," Lucas said. "If they didn't, then why that?" He nodded toward the front room. "They cut on him until they got what they wanted, and then they stopped and killed him. If they were just doing it for pure pleasure, they could have gone on for a while. And then there's Haines and Chapman, and we know they were good friends with the Macks… and I still believe that Joe had something to do with MacBride. Maybe this is about the drugs. Maybe somebody figured out the Macks had the drugs, and came after them. You know what? I bet the drugs are still around." LUCAS NEVER liked the writing of reports, but did it; in this case, he could unload most of it on the Mendota Heights cop, and he did that, too. Weather called at eleven o'clock and said, "We're still on hold, but the kids are getting stronger. May go another day."

"It's gonna snow tomorrow," Lucas said.

"We're planning to operate inside the hospital, not on the parking ramp."

"Ah. That's so clever." He told her about Lyle Mack, and she said, "Worse and worse. All because some guy got mad and kicked poor old Don Peterson." LUCAS TOLD MARCY, "I'm going to call Ike-notify him, and see if we can pry anything out of him. Maybe this'll loosen him up."

The place was getting crowded, with Grace, the Mendota Heights chief, two more local cops, crime-scene and ME investigators. Lucas called the Washburn County sheriff, Stephaniak, told him what had happened, and asked, "Where'd you say he worked? I need to notify him."

"Better you than me," Stephaniak said. "I've done that a few too many times."

He looked the number up in the local directory, read it off, and Lucas dialed.

A man answered, a little tired: "Larry's."

Lucas said, "I'm a police officer from Minnesota. I'm trying to reach Ike Mack on a family issue. Can I speak to him?"

After a few seconds of silence, the man on the other end said, "Ike didn't show up today. Don't know where he is."

"Does that happen a lot?"

"No, it doesn't. He's pretty reliable, when he's not drinking, and he's not drinking. Unless he started last night," the man said. "I've been calling him on his cell, and there's no answer. What'd he do?"

"Nothing-this is a family emergency. Do you have a home phone number for him?" Lucas asked.

"He doesn't have a home phone, only the cell phone. He usually has it with him."

Lucas got the number, dialed it, got no answer. He called Stephaniak again and said, "Ike didn't show up this morning. What happened here was pretty bad. Is there any way you could send somebody over to his house, take a look?"

"You think somebody might have come up here?"

"His son was tortured," Lucas said. "Like they were interrogating him. They may be looking for those drugs from the hospital. Maybe they stashed them at Ike's, out in the woods or something… Anyway, if you could take a look."

"Ten minutes," Stephaniak said. "I got a guy patrolling over that way." LUCAS ASKED the techs if anything was coming off the body, and one of them said, "It's gonna sound weird, but I wonder if one of them was sniffing cocaine while they were cutting on him. There's this little sprinkling of powder on his legs. Doesn't look like dirt, or plaster… it's not ground in, it's just sitting there."

Lucas had to look closely to see it, a fine-grained, beige sprinkle.

"Doesn't look like coke."

"I agree. I've taken samples."

Lucas said, "You know my wife's a surgeon?"

"Yeah, plastic surgeon, right?" The tech was with the BCA, and they'd worked together on a number of cases.

"Yup. And she brings home surgeon's gloves, from time to time, like when she's going to paint things. And she gave me some for my shoeshine box. The thing is, they've got this very fine powder in them, to get them on and off easier. It looks like this stuff. When you get to the lab, check that."

"The guy's testicle looks like it was removed with something very sharp. Like a scalpel. Not like a bar knife."

Lucas patted the guy's shoulder a couple of times: "And we're looking for a doctor, somebody who could have set up the hospital robbery." JENKINS CAME BACK: "We got a full list downtown on the incoming and outgoing calls. Most of them are to one number, and five of those were in the couple hours after Joe ran."

"That's him," Lucas said.

"The last call from that number was at eleven o'clock last night," Jenkins said. "It went through a cell tower in Emporia, Kansas. It's right on 1-35."

"He's running."

Marcy said, "Maybe I should call him. You guys might scare him. If he's running, we want to engage him before he throws the phone out the window."

"So figure out what to say," Lucas said. "Let's give him a ring." THEY WERE GETTING ready to make the call when Stephaniak called back on Lucas's phone: "I don't know all the details, but Ike was killed, apparently last night, in his house. Multiple gunshot wounds to the face. You know out back, in the yard… over toward that old shed?"

"Yeah. By that incinerator."

"Yes. My deputy says there are a bunch of ABS stacks from the septic system, but one of them is a fake. There's a stack, and a lid set in the ground, and when you lift it out, there's a concrete sewer tank underneath it, but it's dry. Somebody pulled the stack up last night. There are four big waterproof plastic bins, military surplus, laying on the ground next to the tank. Empty. Probably where they stashed the drugs. There's still a box with thirty or forty handguns in the tank, oiled up and sealed in Ziploc bags, and a lot of ammo. Looks like Ike was dealing guns on the side."

"Yup, that was the dope," Lucas said. "That's why they tortured Lyle. You got a crime-scene crew that can do DNA?"

"We do. We're talking to the guys in Madison. They'll get a crew up here. I'm going out there in two minutes."

"Look for DNA," Lucas said. "Anything that seems worth processing. Was Ike tortured? Interrogated?"

"Nope. The deputy says it looks like they walked in the front door and shot him in the face." MARCY CALLED JOE MACK from Lyle Mack's office and got him on the second ring. She said, "Joe? This is Marcy Sherrill, the police officer who was talking to you when you ran. Listen to me: Lyle's been killed. He was killed last-Listen to me, Joe. He was killed last night. Somebody-Listen to me. I'm calling on Lyle's cell phone. That's how we got your number.