Part 23 (1/2)

Lucas shook his head, circling to his right. ”No point. I'm gonna hit you in the f.u.c.kin' head.”

”Good luck.” The biker came in again, quick but inept, three fast roundhouse swings. Lucas stepped back once, twice, took the third shot on his left shoulder, then hooked a fast right to the man's nose, felt the septum snap under the impact. The man dropped, one hand to his face, rolled onto his stomach, got shakily back to his feet, blood running out from under his hands. Lucas touched his own forehead.

”You broke my nose,” the man said, looking at the blood on his fingers.

”What'd you expect?” Lucas asked, probing his scalp with his fingertips. ”You cut my head open.”

”Not on purpose. You broke my f.u.c.kin' nose on purpose,” he complained. Beneteau ran into the junkyard, looked at them. The man said, ”I give up.”

BENETEAU STOOD IN the parking lot and said quietly, ”Earl says Joe is down at the house.” Earl was the man who'd fought Lucas. ”He's scared to death Bob'll find out he told us.”

”Okay,” Lucas said. He held a first-aid pad against his scalp. He'd already soaked one of them through, and was on his second.

”We're gonna head down there,” Beneteau said. ”Do you want to come? Or do you want to go into town and get that cut fixed up?”

”I'm coming,” Lucas said. ”How about the search warrants?”

”We got them, both for this place and Joe's and Bob's. That's a fine amount of speed back there, if that's what it is,” Beneteau said.

”That's what it is,” Lucas said. ”There's probably six or eight ounces there on the floor.”

”Biggest drug bust we've ever had,” Beneteau said with satisfaction. He looked at the porch, where Bob Hillerod and Earl sat on a bench, in handcuffs. They'd cut the customer loose; Beneteau was satisfied that he'd been there for cycle parts. ”I'm kind of surprised Earl was involved with it.”

”It'd be hard to prove that he was,” Lucas said. ”I didn't see him with the stuff. He says he was back there getting an alternator when everybody started running. He said one of the guys who went into the woods panicked, and threw the bag toward the toilet as they ran out the back. He might be telling the truth.”

Beneteau looked at the woods and laughed a little. ”We got those guys pinned in the marsh over there. Can't see them, but I give them about fifteen minutes after the bugs come out tonight. If they last that long-they were wearing short-sleeved s.h.i.+rts.”

”So let's get Joe,” Lucas said.

BENETEAU TURNED THE junkyard over to a half-dozen arriving deputies, including his crime-scene specialists. They took the same two sheriff's cars and the panel truck to Hillerod's house.

Joe Hillerod lived ten miles from the junkyard, in a rambling place built of three or four old lake cabins shoved together into one big tar-paper shack. A dozen cords of firewood were dumped in the overgrown back, in a tepee-shaped pile. Three cars were parked in the front.

”I love this backwoods s.h.i.+t,” Lucas said to Beneteau as they closed on the house. ”In the city, we'd call in the Emergency Response Unit . . .”

”That's a Minnesota liberal's euphemism for SWAT team,” Connell said to Beneteau, who nodded and showed his teeth.

”. . . and we'd stage up, and everybody'd get a job, and we'd put on vests and radios, and we'd sneak down to the area, and clear it,” Lucas continued. ”Then we'd sneak up to the house and the entry team'd go in . . . Up here, it's jump in the f.u.c.kin' cars, arrive in a cloud of hayseed, and arrest everybody in sight. f.u.c.kin' wonderful.”

”The biggest difference is, we arrive in a cloud of hayseed. Down in the Cities, you arrive in a cloud of bulls.h.i.+t,” Beneteau said. ”You ready?”

THEY HIT HILLEROD'S house just before noon. A yellow dog with a red collar was sitting on the blacktop in front of the place, and got up and walked off the road into a cattail ditch when he saw the traffic coming.

A young man with a large belly and a Civil War beard sat on the porch steps, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette, looking as though he'd just got up. A Harley was parked next to the porch, and a scarred white helmet lay on the gra.s.s beside it like a fibergla.s.s Easter egg produced by a condor.

When they slowed, he stood, and when they stopped, he ran in through the door. ”That's trouble,” Beneteau yelled.

”Go,” Connell said, and she jumped out and headed for the door.

Lucas said, ”Wait, wait,” but she kept going, and he was two steps behind her.

Connell went through the screen door like a corner-back through a wide receiver, in time to see the fat man running up a flight of stairs in the back of the house. Connell ran that way, Lucas yelling, ”Wait a minute.”

In a back room, a naked couple was crawling off a fold-out couch. Connell pointed the pistol at the man and yelled, ”Freeze,” and Lucas went by her and took the stairs. As he went, he heard Connell say to someone else, ”Take 'em, I'm going up.”

The fat man was in the bathroom, door locked, working the toilet. Lucas kicked the door in, and the fat man looked at him and went straight out a window, through the gla.s.s, onto the roof beyond. He heard cops yelling outside and ran on down the hall, Connell now a step behind him.

The door at the end of the hall was closed and Lucas kicked it just below the lock, and it exploded inward. Behind it, another couple were crawling around in their underpants, looking for clothes. The man had something in his hand and Lucas yelled, ”Police, drop it,” and tracked his body with the front sight of the pistol. The man, looking up, dazed with sleep, dropped a gun. The woman sat back on the bed and pulled a bedspread over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Beneteau and two deputies came up behind them, pistols drawn. ”Got 'em?” He looked past Lucas. ”That's Joe.”

”What the f.u.c.k are you doing, George?” Joe asked.

Beneteau didn't answer. Instead, he looked at the woman and said, ”Ellie Rae, does Tom know about this?”

”No,” she said, hanging her head.

”Aw, G.o.d,” Beneteau said, shaking his head. ”Let's get everybody downstairs.”

A DEPUTY WAS waiting for them on the stairs. ”Did you look in the dining room, Sheriff?”

”No, what'd we get?”

”C'mon, take a look,” the deputy said. He led the way back through a small kitchen, then through a side arch to the dining room. Two hundred semiautomatic rifles were stacked against the walls. A hundred and fifty handguns, glistening with WD-40, were slotted into cardboard boxes on the floor.

Lucas whistled. ”The gun-store burglaries. Out in the 'burbs around the cities.”

”This is good stuff,” Beneteau said, squatting to look at the long guns. ”This is gun-store stuff all the way.” Springfield M-1s, Ruger Mini-14s and Mini-30s, three odd-looking Navy Arms, a bunch of Marlins, a couple of elegant Brownings, an exotic Heckler and Koch SR9.

Beneteau picked up the H&K and looked at it. ”This is a fifteen-hundred-dollar gun, I bet,” he said, aiming it out the window at a Folger's coffee can in the side yard.

”What's the story on the woman up there?” Connell asked.

”Ellie Rae? She and her husband run the best diner in town. Rather, she runs it and he cooks. Great cook, but when he gets depressed, he drinks. If they break up, he'll get steady drunk, and she'll quit, and that'll be the end of the diner.”

”Oh,” Connell said. She looked at him to see if he was joking.

”Hey, that's a big deal,” Beneteau said defensively. ”There are only two of them, and the other one's a grease pit.”

Joe Hillerod looked a lot like his brother, with the same blunt, tough German features. ”I got fifteen hundred bucks in my wallet, cash, and I want witnesses to that. I don't want the money going away,” he said sullenly.

Ellie Rae said, ”I'm a witness.”

”You shut up, Ellie Rae,” Beneteau said. ”What the h.e.l.l are you doing here, anyway?”

”I love him,” she said. ”I can't help myself.”