Winter Prey

by John Sandford

  "So maybe..."

  "There ought to be some reason he torched the place. I mean, besides being nuts," Crane said. "If he'd just killed them and walked, it might of been a day or two before anybody found them. He'd have time to set up an alibi.

  This way he tipped his hand right away."

  "So find the paper," Lucas said.

  "We'll look," Crane said. "Hell, it's nice to have something specific to look for."

  Carr came in while they were talking. He'd mellowed since morning, a small satisfied smile on his face. "They're gone, the reporters. Most of them, anyway," he said. "Poof."

  "Probably found a better murder," Lucas said.

  "I talked to Helen, back at the office," Carr said. "What's this about Jim Harper?"

  "Rusty and Dusty found a kid at the junior high who says Jim Harper posed for sex photos with an adult male," Lucas said. "That'd be a long-term felony and might be worth killing somebody for. The picture came out of a pulp-paper magazine or newspaper. Some kids got hold of it and it may have been passed around the school. Lisa LaCourt had it last. She took it home on 'fbursday and showed it to this kid who talked to me."

  "Who is it? The kid at the school?"

  "John Mueller. His father's a taxidermist," Lucas said.

  Carr nodded. "Sure, I know him. 'I"hat's an okay family.

  Damn, these things could be tied."

  Lucas shrugged. "It's a possibility. The Harper kid's parents , are they around?"

  "One of them is, the old man, Russ. The wife left years ago, went out to California. She was back for the funeral, though."

  "What does Harper do?" Lucas asked.

  "Runs an Amoco station out at Knuckle Lake."

  "Okay, I'll head out there."

  "Whoa, whoa." Carr shook his head. "Better not go alone. Are you gonna be up late?"

  'Sure.

  "Harper's open till midnight. He'd never talk to us if he didn't have to: never to a cop. Why don't I pick up a search warrant for Jim Harper's stuff out at his house, and we'll get a couple deputies and go out there late? I got church."

  "All right," Lucas said. "Harper's an asshole?"

  "He is," Carr said, nodding. And he said, "Lord, if these two cases are tied together and we could nail them down in a day or two...

  that'd make me a very happy man."

  "Will Father Bergen be at your service tonight?" Lucas asked.

  "Probably not. He's pretty shook up. You heard him this morning."

  "Yeah." Lucas crossed his arms, watching Carr. "The Mueller kid said the adult in the photo was a big guy. And probably blond or fair.

  The kid didn't remember the guy as being hairy, which means he probably didn't have much."

  "Like Father Phil," Carr said, flushing. "Well, it wasn't Phil.

  There are a thousand chunky blonds in this county.

  I'm one."

  "I talked to the firemen. Westrom thinks Bergen did it. He says so.

  And he looks like someone who'd talk about it."

  "Dick's the gossip-central for the whole town," Carr said. Then, his voice dropping almost to a whisper, "God damn him."

  "Have you ever heard anything about Bergen being involved in sexual escapades?"

  Carr stepped back. "No. Absolutely not. Why?"

  "Just bullshit, probably. There are rumors around that he's messed with both women and men."

  "A homosexual?" Carr was flabbergasted. "That's ridiculous.

  Where'n the heck are you getting this stuff?"

  "Just asking around. Anyway, we've gotta talk to him again," Lucas said.

  "After your service? Then we can hit Harper."

  Carr looked worried. "All right. I'll see you at the church at nine o'clock. Are we still meeting with the other guys at five?"

  "Yeah. But I don't think there's much, except for Rusty and Dusty coming up with the photo thing."

  "You're not going to tear Phil up, are you?" Carr asked.

  "There's something out of sync, here," Lucas said, avoiding a direct answer. "He's not telling us something, maybe.

  I gotta think about it."

  CHAPTER 6

  The yellow-haired girl sat on a broken-legged couch, smoking an unfiltered Camel, working on her math problems; old man Schiller would be on her ass if she didn't finish all ten of them. She hated Schiller.

  He had a way of embarrassing her.

  The couch cushions were stained with Coke and coffee spills, the cushions pulled out of shape by shrunken upholstery. The yellow-haired girl's brother had seen the couch sitting on the street late one rainy night, waiting for the annual spring trash pickup, and had hauled it away himself. Almost good as new, except for the cushions.

  She exhaled, playing with the smoke with her mouth and nose, Snorted it.

  Trying to think. Across the room, the letter-woman, what's-her-name, the blonde, was turning letters on "Wheel of Fortune."

  She turned two t's and the audience applauded.

  A train is traveling west at twenty-five miles an hour.

  Another train is traveling east atfony-five...

  Bullshit.

  The yellow-haired girl looked back at the television. The letter-woman wore a silky white dress with a deep neckline, some kind of an overlap on the material, with padding at the shoulders. She looked good in the dress; but she had the complexion and the body for it.

  The yellow-haired girl checked herself every morning in the mirror on the back of her door, lifting her small breasts with her hands, squeezing them to make a cleavage, looking at herself sideways and straight-on, at her back over her shoulders. She tried all of Rosie's her brother Mark's. Mark's t-shirts were best.

  She'd wear them downtown next summer, to Juke's, without a bra. If she lightly brushed the tips of her nipples, they'd firm up and faintly indent the tshirt material, if she arched her back.

  Very sexy.

  If the trains start two hundred miles apart, how long will...

  Doritos sacks littered the floor at her feet. A round cardboard tray, marked with scrapings of chocolate-cake frosting , sat on a spindly-legged TV-dinner table. An aluminum ashtray was piled with cigarette butts, and she'd just dropped another burning butt into the hole of a mostly empty Coke can. The butt guttered in the dampness at the bottom, and the stench of burning wet tobacco curdled the air; and beneath that, the smell of old coffee grounds, spoiled bananas, rotting hamburger.

  On the "Wheel of Fortune," the contestants had found the lettersT---n-t---n-n-. She staredatthem,movingher lips. Turn ? No, it couldn't be "turn, " you just thought that becal.-se you could see the t's and the n's.

  Huh. Could be two... ?

  The truck rattled into the driveway and her heart skipped.

  The girl hopped to her feet, peered out the window, saw him climbing down, felt her breath thicken in her chest.

  His headlights were still on and he walked around to the front of the truck, peered at a tire. Sometimes, in her young-old eyes, he looked like a dork. He weighed too much, and had that turned-in look, like he wasn't really in touch with the world. He had temper tantrums, and did things he was sorry for. Hit her. Hit Mark. Always apologized...

  At other times, when he was with her, or with Mark or Rosie or the others, when they were having a fuckin... then he was different. The yellow-haired girl had seen a penned wolf once. The wolf sat behind a chain-link fence and looked her over with its yellow eyes. The eyes said, If only I was out there...

  His eyes were like that, sometimes. She shivered: he was no dork when he looked like that. He was something else.

  And he was good to her. Brought her gifts. Nobody had ever brought her gifts-not good ones, anyway-before him. Her mom might get her a dress that she bought at the secondhand, or some jeans at K Mart. But he'd given her a Walkman and a bunch of tapes, probably twenty now. He bought her Chic jeans and a bustier and twice had brought her flowers.

  Carnations.

  And he took her to dinner. First he got a book from the
library that told about the different kinds of silverware-the narrow forks for meat, the wide forks for salad, the little knives for butter. After she knew them all, they talked about the different kinds of salads, and the entrees, and the soups and desserts. About scooping the soup spoon away from you, rather than toward you; about keeping your left hand in your lap.

  When she was ready, they did it for real. She got a dress from Rosie, off-the-shoulder, and some black flats. He took her to Duluth, to the Holiday Inn. She'd been awed by the dining room, with the view of Superior. Two kinds of wine, red and white. She'd remember it forever.

  She loved him.

  Her old man had moved away two years before, driven out by Rosie and her mom, six months before the cancer had killed her mom. All her old man had ever given her were black eyes-and once he'd hit her in the side, just below her armpit, so hard that she almost couldn't breathe for a month and thought she was going to die.

  He was worse with Rosie: he tried to fuck Rosie and everybody knew that wasn't right; and when Rosie wouldn't fuck him, he'd given her to Russ Harper for some tires.

  When he'd started looking at the yellow-haired girlstarted showing himself, started peeing with the bathroom door open when he knew she'd walk by, when he came busting in when she was in the shower-that's when Rosie and her mom had run him off.

  Not that they'd had to.

  Her old man had worn shapeless overalls, usually covered with dirt, and old-fashioned sleeveless undershirts that showed off his fat gut, hanging from his chest like a pig in a hammock. She couldn't talk to him, much less look at him. If he'd ever come into her bedroom after her, she'd kill him.

  Had told him that.

  And she would have.

  This man was different. His voice was soft, and when he touched her face he did it with his fingertips or the backs of his fingers. He never hit her. Never. He was educated. Told her about things; told her about sophisticated women and the things they had to know. About sophisticated love.

  He loved her and she loved him.

  The yellow-haired girl tiptoed into the back of the doublewide and looked into the bedroom. Rosie was facedown on the bed, asleep, a triangle of light from the hallway crossing her back. One leg thrust straight down the bed and was wrapped from knee to ankle with a heavy white bandage.

  The yellow-haired girl eased the door shut, pulling the handle until she heard the bolt click.

  He was climbing the stoop when she got to the door, a sack of groceries in his arms. There was a puddle of cold water on the floor and she stepped in it, said, "Shit," wiped her foot on a rag rug and opened the door. His heavy face was reddened with the cold.

  "Hi," she said. She lifted herself on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek: she'd seen it done on television, in the old movies, and it seemed so... right. "Rosie's asleep."

  "Cold," he said, as though answering a question. He pushed the door shut and she walked away from him into the front room, hips moving under her padded housecoat.

  "Is Rosie still hurting?"

  "Yeah, she bitches all day. The doctor was back and took the drain out,.

  but it'll be another week before she takes out the stitches... stunk up the whole house when she took the drain out. Bunch of gunk ran out of her leg."

  "Nasty," he said. "How was the birthday party?"

  "Okay, 'cept Rosie was so bitchy because of her leg."

  The yellow-haired girl had turned fourteen the day before.

  She looked at the cake ring on the floor. "Mark ate most of the cake.

  His friend had some weed and we got wrecked."

  "Sounds like a good time." His cheeks were red like jolly old St. Nick's. "Get anything good? For your birthday ?"

  "The fifty bucks from you was the best," she said, taking his hand, smiling into his eyes. "Rosie gave me a Chili Peppers t-shirt and Mark gave me a tape for the Walkman."

  "Well, that sounds pretty good," he said. He dumped the groceries on the kitchen table.

  "There was a cop at school today, one I never seen before," the yellow-haired girl said.

  "Oh, yeah?" He took a six-pack of wine coolers out of the sack, but stopped and looked at her. "Guy looks like an asshole, a big guy?"

  "He was kinda good-looking but he looked like he could be mean, yeah," she said.

  "Did you talk to him?"

  "No. But he had some kids in the office," she said.

  "Lisa's friends."

  "What'd they tell 'em?" He was sharp, the questions rapping out.

  "Well, everybody was talking about it in the cafeteria.

  Nobody knew anything. But the new cop took John Mueller home with him."

  "The taxidermist's kid?" His thin eyebrows went up.

  "Yeah. John rode on the bus with Lisa."

  "Huh." He dug into the grocery sack, a thoughtful look on his face.

  "The cop was talking to the doctor," she said. "The one who takes care of Rosie."

  "What?" His head came around sharply.

  "Yeah. They were talking in the hall. I saw them."

  "Were they talking about Rosie?" He glanced down the hall at the closed door.

  "I don't know; I wasn't that close. I just saw them talking."

  "Hmm." He unscrewed the top of one of the wine bottles, handed it to the yellow-haired girl. "Where's your brother?"

  Jealousy scratched at her. He was fond of Mark and was helping him explore his development. "He's over at Ricky's, working on the car."

  "The Pinto?"

  "Yeah."

  The man laughed quietly, but there was an unpleasant undertone in the sound. Was he jealous? Of Ricky, for being with Mark? She pushed the thought away.

  I wish them the best," he said. He was focusing on her, and she walked back to the couch and sat down, sipping the wine cooler. "How have you been?"

  "Okay," she said, and wiggled. She tried to sound cool.

  ay.

  H knelt in front of her and began unbuttoning her blouse, e and she felt the thickness in her chest again, as though she were breathing water. She put down the wine cooler, helped him pull the blouse off, let him reach around her and unsnap the brassiere; he'd shown her how he could do it with one hand.

  She had solid breasts like cupcakes, and small stubby nipples.

  "Wonderful," he whispered. He stroked one of her nipples , then stood up and his hand went to his fly. "Let's try this one."

  She was aware of him watching, of his intent blue eyes following her; he pushed her hair out of her face.

  Behind him the blonde woman on "Wheel of Fortune" was turning around the last of the letters.

  Two Minute Warning, the sign said.

  When the Iceman left, he drove out to the county road, to the first stop sign, and sat there, smoking, thinking about John Mueller and Weather Karkinnen. So many troubling paths were opening. He tried to follow them in his mind, and failed: they tangled like a rats' nest.

  If the photograph turned up, and if they identified him, they'd have him on the sex charge. That's all he'd wanted to stop. When Harper called and said Frank LaCourt had the photo but didn't know who was in it, all he'd wanted was to get it back. Get it before the sheriff got it.

  Then he'd killed Claudia too quickly and hadn't gotten the photo.

  Now the photo would mean they'd look at him for the killings. More than that: when they saw the photo, they'd figure the whole thing out.

  He was in a perfect position to monitor the investigation , anyway.

  He'd know when they found the photo.

  He'd probably have a little time: until Weather saw it, anyway.

  He'd been crazy to let the kid take the picture. But there was something about seeing yourself, contemplating yourself at a distance.

  Now: had John Mueller seen? Did he have a copy or know where it came from?

  If they found the photo, they'd have a place to start.

  And if they showed it to enough people, they'd get him.

  He had to have it. Maybe it had bur
ned in the fire. Maybe not.

  Maybe the Mueller kid knew.