Winter Prey (31 page)

“Lots of time suicides make themselves look nice. Women put on nice sleeping gowns and make up, men shave. It’d seem odd to be a priest, know you’re killing yourself and undo your pants so you’d be found that way.”

Carr looked back toward the bedroom and said, “Phil was kind of a formal guy.”

“There’s a knife out in his car,” Lucas said to Weather. “Go have a look at it.”

While she went out to the garage, Lucas walked back to the bedroom. Bergen, he thought, looked seriously disgruntled.

“We’re checking the neighborhood now,” Carr said, coming down the hall.

“Shelly, there’s this Pentecostal thing,” Lucas said. “I don’t want to be insulting, but there are a lot of fruitcakes involved in religious controversies. You see it all the time in the Cities. You get enough fruitcakes in one place, working on each other, and one of them might turn out to be a killer. You’ve got to think about that.”

“I’ll think about it,” Carr said. “You believe Phil was murdered?”

Lucas nodded. “It’s a possibility. No signs of any kind of a struggle.”

“Phil would have fought. And I guess the thing that sticks in my mind most of all is the business about the pine. We were out playing golf one time . . .”

“I know,” Lucas said. “He kicked the ball out.”

“How’d you know?”

“You told me,” Lucas said, scratching his head. “I don’t know when, but you did.”

“Well, nobody else knew,” Carr said.

They stood looking at the body for a moment, then Weather came up and said, “That’s the knife.”

“No question?”

“Not in my mind.”

“It’s all over town that he did it,” Carr said mournfully. All three of them simultaneously turned away from the
body and started down the hall toward the living room. They were passing Bergen’s office, and Lucas glanced at the green IBM typewriter pulled out on a typing tray. A Zeos computer sat on a table to the other side, with a printer to its left.

“Wait a minute.” He looked at the computer, then at the bookcase beside it. Instructional manuals for Windows, WordPerfect, MS-DOS, the Biblica RSV Bible-commentary and reference software, a CompuServe guide, and other miscellaneous computer books were stacked on the shelves, along with the boxes that the software came in. The computer had two floppy-disk drives. The 5.25 drive was empty, but a blue disk waited in the 3.5-inch drive. Lucas leaned into the hallway and yelled for Crane: “Hey, are you guys gonna dust the computer keys?”

“Um, if you want,” Crane called back. “We haven’t found any computer stuff, though.”

“Okay. I’m going to bring it up,” he said. To Carr: “I use WordPerfect.”

With Carr and Weather looking over his shoulder, Lucas punched up the computer, typed WP to activate WordPerfect, then the F5 key to get a listing of files. He specified the B drive. The light went on over the occupied disk drive and a listing flashed onto the screen.

“Look at this,” Lucas said. He tapped a line that said:

Serl-9   ·   5,213   01-08   12:38a

“What is it?”

“He was on the computer last night—this morning—at 12:38
A
.
M
. That’s when he closed the file. I wonder why he didn’t compose his note on it? It’s a lot easier and neater than a typewriter.” He punched directional keys to select the last file and brought it up.

“It’s a sermon . . . it looks like . . . Sermon 1-9. That would have been for tomorrow morning if that’s the way he listed them.” He reopened the index of files and ran his finger down the screen. “Yeah, see? Here’s last Sunday, Ser1-2. Did you go to Mass?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s put it on Look.” He called the second file up. “Is that Sunday’s sermon?”

Carr read for a moment, then said, “Yeah, that’s it. Right to the word, as far as I can tell.”

“All right, so that’s how he does it.” Lucas tapped the
Exit
key twice to get back to the first file and began reading.

“Look at this,” he said, pointing at the screen. “He’s denying it. He’s denying he did it, at 12:38
A
.
M
.”

Carr read through the draft sermon, moving his lips, blood draining from his face. “Was he murdered? Or did this just trigger something, coming face-to-face with his own lies?”

“I’d say he was killed,” Lucas said. Weather’s hand was tight on his shoulder. “We have to go on that assumption. If we’re wrong, no harm done. If we’re right . . . our man’s still out there.”

CHAPTER
19

The Iceman lay with his head on the pillow, the yellow-haired girl sprawled restlessly beside him. They were watching the tinny miniature television run through 1940s cartoons, Hekyll and Jekyll, Mighty Mouse.

Bergen was dead. The deputies the Iceman had talked to—a half-dozen of them, including the Madison people—had swallowed the note. They
wanted
to believe that the troubles were over, the case was solved. And just that morning he’d finally gotten something definitive about the magazine photo. The thing was worthless. The reproduction was so bad that nothing could be made of it.

At noon, he’d decided he was clear. At one o’clock, he’d heard the first rumors of dissent: that Carr was telling people Bergen had been murdered. And he’d heard about Harper. About a deal . . .

Harper would sell his own mother for a nickel. When his kid was killed, Harper treated it as an inconvenience. If Harper talked, if Harper said anything, the Iceman was done. Harper
knew
who was in the photograph.

The same applied to Doug Reston, the Schoeneckers, and the rest. But those problems were not immediate. Harper was the immediate problem.

Bergen’s death made a difference, whether Carr liked it or not, whether he believed it or not. If the killings stopped, believing that Bergen was the killer would become increasingly convenient.

He sighed, and the yellow-haired girl looked at him, a worry wrinkle creasing the space between her eyes. “Penny for your thoughts,” she said.

“Is that all, just a penny?” He stroked the back of her neck. Doug Reston had a particular fondness for her. She was so pale, so youthful. With Harper, she touched off an unusual violence: Harper wanted to bruise her, force her.

“I gotta ask you something,” she said. She sat up, let the blanket drop down around her waist.

“Sure.”

“Did you kill the LaCourts?” She asked it flatly, watching him, then continued in a rush: “I don’t care if you did, I really don’t, but maybe I could help.”

“Why would you think that?” the Iceman asked calmly.

“ ’Cause of that picture of you and Jim Harper and Lisa havin’ it. I know Russ Harper thought you mighta done it, except he didn’t think you were brave enough.”

“You think I’m brave enough?”

“I know you are, ’cause I know the Iceman,” she said.

The yellow-haired girl’s brother kept rabbits. Ten hutches were lined up along the back of the mobile home, up on stands, with a canvas awning that could be dropped over the front. Fed on Purina rabbit chow and garbage, the rabbits fattened up nicely; one made a meal for the three of them.

The Iceman pulled four of them out of their hutches, stuffed them into a garbage bag, and tied them to the carry-rack. The yellow-haired girl rode her brother’s sled, a noisy wreck but operable. They powered down through the Miller tract and into the Chequamegon, the yellow-haired girl leading, the Iceman coming up behind.

The yellow-haired girl loved the freedom of the machine, the sense of speed, and pushed it, churning along the narrow trails, her breath freezing on her face mask, the motor
rumbling in their helmets. They passed two other sleds, lifted a hand. The Iceman passed her at Parson’s Corners, led her down a forest road and then into a trail used only a few times a day. In twenty minutes they’d reached the sandpit where John Mueller’s body had been found. The snow had been cut up by the sheriff’s four-by-fours and the crime scene people, but now snow was drifting into the holes they’d made. In two days even without much wind, there’d be no sign of the murder.

The Iceman pulled the sack of rabbits off the carry-rack, dropped it on the snow.

“Ready?”

“Sure.” She looked down at the bag. “Where’s the gun?”

“Here.” He patted his pocket, then stooped, ripped a hole in the garbage bag, pulled out a struggling rabbit, and dropped it on the snow. The rabbit crouched, then started to snuffle around: a tame rabbit, it didn’t try to run.

“Okay,” he said: He took the pistol out of his pocket. “When it’s this cold, you keep the pistol in your pocket as long as you can, ’cause your skin can stick to it if you don’t.” He pushed the cylinder release and flipped the cylinder out. “This is a .22 caliber revolver with a six-shot cylinder. Mind where you point it.” He slapped the cylinder back in and handed it to her.

“Where’s the safety?”

“No safety,” said the Iceman.

“My brother’s rifle has one.”

“Won’t find them on revolvers. Find them on long guns and automatics.”

She pointed the pistol at the rabbit, which had taken a couple of tentative hops away. “I don’t know what difference this makes. I kill them anyway.”

“That’s work—this is fun,” the Iceman said.

“Fun?” She looked at him oddly, as though the thought had never occurred to her.

“Sort of. You’re the most important thing that ever happened to this rabbit. You’ve got the power. All the power. You can do anything you want. You can snuff him out or not. Try to feel it.”

She pointed the pistol at the rabbit. Tried to feel it. When she killed a rabbit for dinner, she just held it up by its back legs, whacked it on the back of the head with an aluminum t-ball bat, then pulled the head off to bleed it. Their heads came off easily. A squirrel, now, you needed an ax: a squirrel had neck muscles like oak limbs.

“Just squeeze,” the Iceman coached.

And she did feel it. A tingle in her stomach; a small smile started at the corner of her mouth. She’d never had any power, not that she understood. She’d always been traded off and used, pushed and twisted. The rabbit took another tentative hop and the gun popped, almost without her willing it. The rabbit jumped once, then lay in the snow, its feet running.

“Again,” said the Iceman.

But she stood and watched for a minute. Rabbits had always been like carrots or cabbages. She’d never really thought about them dying. This one was
hurting.

The power was on her now, possibilities blossoming in her head. She wasn’t just a piece of junk; she had a gun. Her jaw tightened. She put the barrel next to the rabbit’s head and pulled the trigger.

“Excellent,” said the Iceman. “Feel it?”

“Get another one,” she said.

CHAPTER
20

Harper sat on the jail bunk, scowling, shaking his head, his yellow teeth bared. His attorney, wearing a salt-and-pepper tweed suit that might have been made during the Roosevelt Administration, sat next to him, fidgeting.

“That ain’t good enough,” Harper said.

“Let me explain something to you, Russ,” Carr said. Carr’s double chin had collapsed into wattles, and the circles under his eyes were so black that he looked like he’d lost a bar fight. “Eldon Schaeffer has to get
elected
county attorney. If he cuts a deal with you, and it turns out you’re a member of some sex ring, and that you know who the killer is but you didn’t tell us, and Eldon gives you immunity and you walk out of here a free man . . . Well, Eldon ain’t gonna win the next election. He’s gonna be out of a job. So he isn’t going to cut that deal. He’s gonna want some jail time.”

“Then he can stick it in his ass,” Harper said. He nodded at his attorney. “If Dick here is right, I’ll be out of here in an hour.”

“You’ll risk going to trial for multiple murder to save a couple years in jail? You could do two or three years standing on your head,” Lucas said. He was leaning on the cell wall, looking down at Harper. “And I swear to
Christ, if we tie you to the killer, if we even find a thread of evidence putting you two together, we’ll slap your ass in jail so fast your head’ll spin. For accessory to murder. You’ll die in prison.”

“If you’re trying to cut me this kind of a deal, that means you ain’t got shit on anybody,” Harper said. His eyes flicked toward his attorney, then to Carr. “Take a fuckin’ hike, Shelly.”

As they filed out of the cell, Carr looked at Lucas and said, “Slap his ass in jail so fast his head’ll spin? Some threat. I’m gonna send it in to
Reader’s Digest.
”

“I’ll sue,” Lucas said, and Carr showed a bit of a smile. While they were waiting for the elevator, Harper’s attorney came out and joined them. As they were waiting, Carr looked at the attorney and asked, “Why’d you have to go and do this, Dick? Why’d you call the judge? You coulda waited until Monday and everything would have been fine.”

“Russ has the right . . .” The attorney’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. A large Adam’s apple, big hands, rough, porous skin, and the suit: he looked like a black-and-white photograph from the Depression.

The elevator doors opened and they stepped inside, faced the front. “Don’t give me any ‘rights,’ Dick, I know all that,” Carr said as they started down. “But we’ve got five dead and Russ knows who did it. Or he has some ideas. He’s the only thing we’ve got. If he takes off, and we get more dead . . .”

“He’s got a
right,
” the attorney said. But he didn’t sound happy.

Carr looked at Lucas. “Phil’s body must be on the way to Milwaukee.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry about that, Shelly—I really am,” Lucas said.

Tears started running down Harper’s attorney’s face, and he suddenly snuffled and wiped his coat sleeve across his eyes. “God, I can’t believe Father Phil’s dead,” he said. “He was a good priest. He was the best.”

“Yeah, he was,” Carr said, patting the attorney on the shoulder.

Lacey was walking through the halls, hands in his pockets, peering in through open doors. When he saw Carr, he said, “There you are. Two FBI men just arrived. A couple more may be coming from Washington—a serial-killer team.”

“Oh, boy.” Carr hitched up his pants. “Where are they?”

“Down in your office.”

Carr looked at Lucas. “Maybe they’ll do some good.”

“And maybe I’ll get elected homecoming queen,” Lucas said as they started down the hall.

Lacey looked at him. “Did you know your new girlfriend
was
the homecoming queen?”

“
What?
” There was no longer any point in being obtuse about his relationship with Weather.

“That’s right,” Lacey said enthusiastically. “Around homecoming time, people still talk about the dress she wore on the float. It was like one of those real warm days and she had this silver dress. Oh, boy. They called her . . .” He suddenly snapped his mouth shut and flushed.

“Called her what?”

Lacey looked at Carr and Carr shook his head. “You can’t get your foot any deeper in your mouth than it already is, Henry. You might as well tell him,” he said.

“Um—Miss Teen Tits of Ojibway County,” Lacey said feebly.

“Glad you told me—gives me an edge on her,” Lucas said.

“I hope you got an edge on the feebs,” Lacey said gloomily. “About two minutes with them, I felt like I had big clods of horseshit on my shoes and straw sticking outa my ears.”

“Dat’s da feebs,” Lucas said. “That’s what they do best.”

They talked for an hour with the two advance agents, Lansley and Tolsen. The two would have been hard to tell apart except that Lansley was the color of well-sanded birch plywood while Tolsen was polished ebony. They both wore gray suits with regimental neckties, long, dark winter
coats with leather gloves, and rubbers on their wingtips.

“ . . . think there’s some prospect that our man may be a traveler . . .”

Lucas, sitting behind Lansley, who was talking, looked past him at Carr and shook his head. No chance it was a traveler: none.

And after a while: “ . . . name of the game is cooperation, and we’ll do everything we can . . .”

Lucas broke in: “What we really need is computer support.”

Tolsen was quick and interested. “Of what nature?”

“There are only about seven thousand permanent residents in this county. We can eliminate all women, all children, anyone with dark hair. Our man is obviously psychotic and may have a history of violence. If there’s some way your computers could interface with the state driver’s license bureau, process Ojibway County drivers and crosscheck the blond-male population with the NCIC records . . .”

Lansley and Tolsen took notes, Lansley using a hand-sized microcomputer. They came up with some ideas of their own and left in a hurry.

“What the heck was all that about?” Carr asked, scratching his head.

“They’ve got something to do,” Lucas said. “It might even help if we need help three weeks from now.”

A deputy knocked, stuck his head in the door. “Harper’s out. Put up his gas station with Interstate Bond.”

“That really frosts my butt,” Carr said.

“Go home and get some sleep. Or check into a motel. You look so bad I’m seriously worried,” Lucas said.

“That’s a thought—the motel,” Carr said distractedly. “What’re you going to do?”

“Go someplace quiet and think,” Lucas said.

Weather got home a few minutes after six, came in with a deputy, and found Lucas staring into a guttering fire. “This is Marge, my bodyguard,” she said to Lucas. The deputy
waved and said, “You got it from here,” and left. Weather shed her coat and boots, came over to sit beside him. He put an arm around her shoulder. “You ought to throw another log on,” she said.

“Yeah . . . goddammit, there are fewer people in this county than there are in some buildings in Minneapolis. We oughta be able to pick him out. There can’t be that many candidates,” Lucas said.

“Still think Phil Bergen was murdered?”

“Yeah. For sure. I don’t know why he was killed, though. Did he know something? Was he supposed to distract us? What?”

“Schoeneckers’?”

“Not a goddamn thing,” Lucas said.

“Could they be dead?”

“We’ve got to start considering the possibility,” Lucas said. “We were lucky to find the Mueller kid. He could’ve laid out there until spring. Hell, if the killer had driven him two minutes back into the woods, we might not ever have found him.”

“Are you watching Harper?”

“That’s impossible. Where’re you gonna watch him from? We’ll check on him every couple of hours, though.”

Weather shivered. “The man scares me. He’s one of those people who just does what he wants and doesn’t care who gets hurt. Sociopath. I don’t think he even notices if somebody gets hurt.”

They sat quietly for a moment, then Lucas smiled, remembering, and glanced at her. She was looking into the fire, her face serious. “We’ve been having a pretty good time in bed, haven’t we?” he asked.

“Well, I hope so,” she said, laughing. She patted his leg. “We fit pretty well.”

“Um . . .” He pulled at his chin, looking into the fire. “There’s something . . . I’ve always wanted to do, you know . . . sexually . . . and I haven’t been able to find a woman who could do it.”

Her smile flickered. With an edge of uncertainty, she asked, “Well . . . ?”

“I always wanted to jump a homecoming queen wearing nothing but her white high heels and her crown. What do you think?” He pulled her closer.

“Those rotten jerks,” she said, pushing him away. “I wasn’t going to tell you until ten years from now.”

“Miss Teen Tits of Ojibway County,” he said.

“You should have seen me,” she said, pleased. “The dress was cut fairly low in front, but
really
low in back. People said I had two cleavages.”

“I like the image.”

“Maybe we could work
something
out,” she said, snuggling closer. “I don’t know if I’ve still got the crown.”