Winter Prey

by John Sandford

  "Actually, we were talking about the Tuesday services and the concept of an exchange with Home Baptist. I wanted to get some ground rules straight."

  "Oh." Now Carr looked uncomfortable. "Well, we can figure that out later."

  "What's all this about?" Lucas asked.

  "Church stuff, an argument that's going around," Carr said.

  "Could somebody get killed over it?"

  Bergen was startled. "Good grief, no! You might not get invited to a party, but you wouldn't get killed."

  Carr glanced at him, frowned. The phone rang down the hallway, and the priest said, "Let me get that." A moment later he returned with a portable handset and passed it to Carr. "For you."

  Carr took it, said, "This is the sheriff," then, "Yeah." He listened for a moment, said, "Okay, okay, and I'll see you out there in a bit...

  okay." He pushed the clear button and turned to Lucas: "There was a bowl in the sink that could have been used to make frosting. No frosting in it, but it was the right kind of bowl."

  "Like I told you," said Bergen.

  "Okay," Lucas said.

  "If we're done here, I'm going back out to the LaCourt place," Carr said.

  He picked up his snowmobile suit and began pulling it over his feet.

  "I'm sorry we bothered you, Phil, but we had to ask."

  "These killings are... grotesque," the priest said, shaking his head.

  "Obscene. I'll start thinking about a funeral service, something to say to the town."

  "That'll be a while yet. We'll have to send them down to Milwaukee for autopsies," Carr said. "I'll stay in touch."

  When they were outside again, Carr asked, "Are you coming back out to LaCourts'?"

  Lucas shook his head. "Nah. There's nothing there for me. I'd suggest you button the place up. Post some deputies to keep out the curiosity-seekers and coyotes, and wait for the Madison guys."

  "I'll do that. Actually, I could do it from here, but...-politics."

  He was apologetic. "I gotta be out there a lot the next couple of days."

  Lucas nodded. "Same way in the Cities."

  "How about Phil? What do you think?"

  "I don't know," Lucas said. Far away, somebody started a chain saw.

  They both turned to look up the street toward the sound, but there was nothing visible but garage and yard lights. The sound was an abrasive underline to the conversation. "We still don't have enough time. Not really. The bowl thing hardly clears him. But who knows? Maybe a big gust of wind scoured off the roof and put that snow on LaCourt in two minutes."

  "Could be," Carr said.

  "This Baptist thing-that's no big deal?" Lucas asked.

  "It's a bigger deal than he was making it," Carr said.

  "What do you know about Pentecostals?"' "Nothing."

  "Pentecostals believe in direct contact with God. The Catholic Church has taught that only the Church is a reliable interpreter of God's word. The Church doesn't trust the idea of direct access. Too many bad things have come of it in the past. But some Catholics-more and more all the timebelieve you can have a valid experience."

  "Yeah?" Lucas had been out of touch.

  "Baptists rely on direct access. Some of the local Pentecostal Catholics, like Claudia, were talking about getting together with some of the Baptists to share the Spirit."

  "That sounds pretty serious," Lucas said. The cold was beginning to filter through the edges of the parka, and he flexed his shoulders.

  "But nobody would kill because of it. Not unless there's a nut that I don't know about," Carr said. "Phil was upset about Claudia talking to Home Baptist, but they were friends.", "How about Frank? Was he a friend of Bergen'sT' "Frank was Chippewa," said Carr. He stamped his feet, and looked back in the direction of the irritating chain saw.

  "He thought Christianity was amusing. But he and Phil were friendly enough."

  "Okay."

  "So what are you gonna do now?" Carr asked.

  "Bag out in a motel. I brought clothes for a couple of days. We can get organized tomorrow morning. You can pick some people, and I'll get them started. We'll need four or five. We'll want to talk to the LaCourts' friends, kids at school, some people out at the Res. And I'll want to talk to these fire guys."

  "Okay. See you in the morning, then," Carr said. The sheriff headed for his Suburban and muttered, mostly to himself, "Lord, what a mess."

  "Hey, Sheriff?"

  "Yeah?" Carr turned back.

  "Pentecostal. I don't mean to sound impolite, but really-isn't that something like Holy Rollers?"

  After a moment Carr, looking over his shoulder, nodded and said, "Something like that."

  "How come you know so much about them?"

  "I am one," Carr said.

  CHAPTEr 5

  The morning broke bitterly cold. The clouds had cleared and a low-angle, razor-sharp sunshine cut through the red pines that sheltered the motel. Lucas, stiff from a too-short bed and a too-fat pillow, zipped his parka, pulled on his gloves and stepped outside.

  His face was soft and warm from shaving; the air was an icy slap.

  The oldest part of Grant was built on a hill across the highway from the motel, small gray houses with backyard clotheslines awash in the snow.

  Wavering spires of gray woodsmoke curled up from two hundred tin chimneys, and the corrosive smell of burning oak bark shifted through town like a dirty tramp.

  Lucas had grown up in Minneapolis, had learned to fish along the urban Mississippi, in the shadow of smokestacks and powerlines and six-lane bridges, with oil cans, worn-out tires and dead carp sharing space on the mud flats. When he began making serious money as an adult, he'd bought a cabin on a quiet lake in Wisconsin's North Woods.

  And started learning about small towns.

  About the odd comforts and discomforts of knowing everyone; of talking to people who had roads, lakes, and entire townships named after their families. People who made their living in the woods, guiding tourists, growing Christmas trees, netting suckers and trapping crawdads for bait.

  Not Minneapolis, but he liked it.

  He yawned and walked down to his truck, squinting against the sun, the new snow crunching underfoot. A friendly, familiar weight pulled at his left side. The parka made a waist holster impractical, so he'd hung his.45 in a shoulder rig. The pistol simply felt right. It had been a while since he'd carried one. He touched the coat's zipper tag with his left hand, pulled it down an inch, then grinned to himself.

  Rehearsing. Not that he'd need it.

  Ojibway County wasn't Minneapolis. If someone came after him in Qjibway County, he'd bring a deer rifle or a shotgun, not some bullshit.22 hideout piece. And if somebody came with a scoped.30-06, the.45 would be about as useful as a rock. Still, it felt good. He touched the zipper tag again with his left hand and mentally slipped the right hand into the coat.

  The truck had been sitting in the brutal cold overnight, but the motel provided post outlets for oil-pan heaters.

  Lucas unplugged the extension cord from both the post and the truck, tossed the cord in the back seat, cranked up the engine and let it run while he went down to the motel office for a cup of free coffee.

  "Cold," he said to the hotel owner.

  "Any colder, I'd have to bring my brass monkey inside," the man said.

  He'd been honing the line all morning. "Have a sweet roll, too, we got a deal on them."

  "Thanks."

  Cold air was still pouring from the truck's heater vents when Lucas returned to it, balancing the coffee and sweet roll. He shut the fan off and headed into town.

  There were only two real possibilities with the LaCourt killings, he thought. They were done by a stranger, a traveling killer, as part of a robbery, picked out because the house was isolated. Or they were done for a reason. The fire suggested a reason. A traveler would have hauled Frank LaCourt's body inside, locked the doors, turned off the lights, and left. He might be days away before the murders were uncovered. With the fire, he
couldn't have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes away.

  A local guy who set a fire meant either a psychotic arsonist-unlikely--or that something was being covered.

  Something that pointed at the killer. Fingerprints. Semen.

  Personal records. Or might the fire have been set to distract the investigation?

  The gun he'd found with Claudia LaCourt, unfired, suggested that the LaCourts knew something was happening, but they hadn't called 9-1-1.

  The situation may have been somewhat ambiguous... Huh.

  And the girl with the missing ear might have been interrogated.

  Another suggestion that something was going on.

  The image of the ear in the Ziploc bag popped into his mind. Carr had bent and retched because he was human, as the LaCourt girl had once been. She'd been alive at this time yesterday, chatting with her friends on the telephone, watching television, trying on clothes.

  Making plans. Now she was a charred husk.

  And to Lucas, she was an abstraction: a victim. Did that make him less than human? He half-smiled at the introspective thought; he tried to stay away from introspection. Bad for the health.

  But in truth he didn't feel much for Lisa LaCourt. He'd seen too many dead children. Babies in garbage cans, killed by their parents; toddlers beaten and maimed; thirteen-year-olds who shot each other with a zealous enthusiasm scraped right off the TV screen. Not that their elders were much better. Wives killed with fists, husbands killed with hammers , homosexuals slashed to pieces in frenzies of sexual jealousy.

  After a while it all ran together.

  On the other hand, he thought, if it were Sarah... His mouth straightened into a thin line. He couldn't put his daughter together with the images of violent death that he'd collected over the years, They simply would not fit.

  But Sarah was almost ready for school now, she'd be moving out into the bigger world.

  His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. He shook off the thought and looked out the window.

  Grant's Main Street was a three-block row of slightly shabby storefronts, elbow to elbow, like a town in the old west. The combinations that would have been strange in other places were typical for the North Woods: a Laundromatbookstore-bar , an Indian souvenir storecomputer outlet, a satellite dish-plumber. There were two bakeries, a furniture store, a scattering of insurance agents and real estate dealers , a couple of lawyers. The county courthouse was a low rambling building of field stone and steel at the end of Main.

  A cluster of sheriff's trucks sat in a parking lot in back and Lucas wheeled in beside them. A Bronco with an unfamiliar logo was parked in a visitor's slot by the door.

  A deputy coming out nodded at him, said, "Mornin'," and politely held the door. The sheriff's outer office was behind a second door, decorated with curling DARE antidrug postj , ers and the odors of aging nicotine and bad nerves. A reporter and a cameraman were slumped in green leatherette chairs scarred with cigarette burns and what looked like razor cuts. The reporter was working on her lipstick with a gold compact and a small red brush. She looked up when Lucas stepped in.

  He nodded and she nodded back. A steel door and a bulletproof glass window were set in the wall opposite the reporter. Lucas went to the window, looked at the empty desk behind it, and pushed the call button next to the window.

  "It'll just piss them off," the reporter said. She had a tapered fox-face with a tiny chin, big eyes and wide cheekbones , as though she'd been especially bred for television.

  She rubbed her lips together, then snapped the compact shut, dropped it in her purse, and gave him a reflexive smile. The cameraman was asleep, "Yeah? Where're you guys from?" Lucas asked. The reporter was very pretty, with her mobile eyes and trained expressions, like a latter-day All-American geisha girl.

  Weather could never work for television, he thought.

  Her features were too distinctive. Could be a movie star, though"Milwaukee," she said. "Are you with the Star-Tribune?

  "Nope." He shook his head, giving her nothing.

  "A copT' The reporter perked up.

  "An interested onlooker," Lucas said, grinning at her.

  Lots of reporters around?"

  "I guess so," she said, a frown flitting across her face.

  "I heard Eight talking on their radios, so they're up here somewhere, and I heard the Strib came in last night. Probably out at the lake.

  Are you one of the lab people from Madison?"

  "No," Lucas said.

  A harried middle-aged woman bustled- up behind the glass, peered through, and said, "Davenport?"

  "Yes." The reporter was wearing perfume. Something slightly fruity.

  "I'll buzz you in," the woman said.

  "FBI?"' the reporter pressed.

  "No," he said.

  The woman inside pressed her entry button and as Lucas slipped through the door, the reporter called; "Tell Sheriff Carr we're gonna put something on the air whether he talks to us or not."

  Carr had a corner office overlooking the parking lot, the county garage and a corroded bronze statue of a World War I doughboy. The beige walls were hung with a dozen photographs of Carr with other politicians, three plaques, a bachelor's degree certificate from the University of Wisconsin/River Falls, and two fish-stamp prints with the actual stamps mounted in the mats below the prints. A computer and laser printer sat on a side table, and an intricate thirty-button decorator-blue telephone occupied one corner of an expansive walnut desk.

  Carr was sitting behind the desk, looking gloomily across a tape recorder at Henry Lacey.

  "You got reporters," Lucas said, propping himself in the office door.

  "Like deer ticks," Carr said, looking up. "Morning. Come "All you can get from deer ticks is Lyme's disease," said Lacey. "Reporters can get your ass fired."

  "Should I let them shoot pictures of the house?" Carr asked Lucas.

  "They're all over me to let them in."

  "Why wouldn't you?" Lucas asked. He stepped into the office and dropped into a visitor's chair, slumped, got comfortable.

  Carr scratched his head. "I dunno... it doesn't seem right."

  "Look, it's all bullshit," Lucas said. "The outside of a burnt house doesn't mean anything to anybody, especially if they live in Milwaukee.

  Think about it."

  "Yeah." Carr was still reluctant.

  "if I were you, I'd draw up a little site map and pass it out-where the bodies were and so on," Lucas said. "That doesn't mean shit either, but they'll think you're a hell of a guy. They'll give you a break."

  "I could use a break," Carr said. He scratched his head again, working at it.

  "Did the guys from Madison get here?" Lucas asked.

  "Two hours ago," said Lacey. "They're out at the house."

  "Good." Lucas nodded. "How's it look out there?"

  "Like last night. Uglier. There was a lump of frozen blood under Frank's head about the size of a milk jug.

  They're moving the bodies out in an hour or so, but they say it could take a couple of weeks to process the house."

  "We gotta push them: there's something in there we need, or the guy wouldn't have burned the place," Lucas said irritably. Two weeks?

  Impossible. They needed information now. "Anything more new?"

  "Yeah. We got a call," Carr said. He reached across his desk and pushed a button on the tape recorder. There was a burst of music, a woman country-western singer, then a man's voice: You tell them goddamnedflatheads down at FNR to stay away from white women or they'll get what LaCourt got.

  Lucas stuck out his bottom lip, shook his head: this was bullshit.

  The music swelled, as if somebody had taken his mouth away from the phone, then a new voice said, Give'm all a six-pack of Schlitz and send them down to Chicago with the niggers.

  The music came up, then there were a couple of indistinguishable words, a barking laugh, a click and a dead line.

  "Called in on the 9-1-1 number, where we got an automatic tra
ce.

  Went out to a pay phone at the Legion Hall.

  There were maybe fifty people out there," Lacey said.

  mostly drunk."

  "That's what it sounded like, drunks," Lucas agreed. A waste of time.

  "What's the FNR? The Res?"

  "Yeah. For8t Noire," Carr said. He pronounced it For-A Nwa. "The thing is, most everybody in town'll know about the call before this afternoon.The girl on the message center talked it all over the courthouse. The guys from the tribe'll be up here. We're gonna have to tell the FBI. Possible civil rights whatchamajigger" "Aw, no," Lucas groaned, closing his eyes. "Not the feb F "Gonna have to," Carr said, shaking his head. "I'll try to keep them off, but I bet they're here by the weekend."