Winter Prey

CHAPTER 17

The priest said, "I'm okay, Joe. Seriously."

He stood in the hall between the kitchen and the bedroom. He was grateful for the call and at the same time resented it: he should be doing the ministering.

"I had a decent day," he said, his head bobbing. "You know all the talk about me and the LaCourts-I was afraid to say anything that might make it worse. It was driving me crazy. But I found a way to handle it."

His tongue felt like sandpaper, from sucking on lemon drops. He'd gone through two dozen large sacks the last time he went off booze. He was now working his way through the first of what might be several more.

Joe was talking about one day at a time, and Bergen only half listened. When he'd gone off booze the year before, he hadn't really wanted to quit. He'd simply had to. He was losing his parish and he was dying. So he'd gone sober, he'd stopped dying, he'd gotten the parish back. That hadn't cured the problems for which bourbon was medication: the loneliness, the isolation, the troubles pressed upon him, for which he had no real answers. The drift in the faith.

This time he'd sat down to write an excuse for himself, a pitiful plea for understanding. Instead, he'd written the strongest lines of his life. From the reaction he'd gotten at the Mass that morning, he'd gotten through. He'd touched the parishioners and they'd touched him. He felt the isolation crumble; saw the possibility of an end to his loneliness.

He might, he thought, be cured. Dangerous thought. He'd suck the lemon drops anyway. Better safe…

"… I won't be going out. I swear. Joe, things have changed. I've got something to do. Okay… And thanks."

The priest dropped the receiver back on the hook, sighed, and returned to his work chair. He wrote on a Zeos 386 computer, hammering down the words.

There's a devil among us. And somebody here in this church may know who it is. (He would look around at this point, touching the eyes of each and every person in the church, exploiting the silence, allowing the stress to build.) The murders of the LaCourt family must spring from deep in a man's tortured character, deep in a man's dirty heart. Ask yourself: Do I know this man? Do I suspect who he might be? Deep in my heart do I believe?

He worked for an hour, read through what he had. Excellent. He picked up the papers, carried them to his bedroom, and faced the full-length dressing mirror.

"There's a devil among us…" he began. No. He stopped. His voice should be slower, deeper, reflective of grief. He dropped it a half-octave, put some gravel into it: "There's a devil among us…"

Should he show some confusion, some bewilderment? Or would that be read as weakness?

"… deep in a man's dirty heart," he said slowly, watching himself in the glass. He wagged his head, as though astonished that these things could take place here, in Ojibway County, and then, yet more slowly, but his voice rising urgently into something like anger: "Do I know this man? Do I suspect who he might be?"

He would rally the community, Philip Bergen would. And in turn the community would save him. He looked at the paper, relishing the flow of it.

But… he peered at it. Too many hearts there, too many deeps. He was repeating words, which set up a dissonance in the listener. Okay. Get rid of the last deep altogether and change the last heart to soul. "… in my soul do I believe…"

He worked in front of the mirror, watching himself through his steel-rimmed glasses, his jowls bouncing, trembling with anger and righteousness, his words booming around the small room.

Except for the sound of his own voice, the house was quiet: he could hear the Black Forest clock ticking behind him, the air ducts snapping as they expanded when the furnace came on, a scraping sound from outside-a snow shovel.

He went to the kitchen for a glass of water, caught sight of himself in a glass-fronted cabinet as he drank it. An older man now, permanent wrinkles in his forehead, hair thinning, paunch descending; a man coarsened by the work, a man whose best days were behind him. A man who would never leave Ojibway County… Ah, well.

He heard the ragged drag of a shovel again, went to the front window, parted the drapes with his fingertips, looked out. Across the street and three houses down, one of the McLaren kids was scraping at a sidewalk with a snow shovel. Small kid, eleven o'clock at night. The McLarens were a family in distress: alcohol again, McLaren himself gone most of the time. Bergen turned back to his work chair, made a few more changes on the word processing screen, then saved the sermon to both the hard disk and a backup floppy, printed a new copy for himself.

There's a devil among us. And somebody here in this church may know who it is.

Maybe he should harden it:

Somebody here in this church knows who it is.

But that might suggest more than he wanted.

The knock at the door startled him.

He stopped in midsentence, turned, looked at the door, and muttered to himself, "Bless me." And then smiled at himself. Bless me? He was getting old. Must be Shelly Carr, coming to talk. Or Joe, making a check?

Stepping to the window, he parted the drapes again and looked out sideways at the porch. A man on the porch, a big man. Davenport, his interrogator, was a big man. With Lucas' face in his mind, Bergen went to the door, opened it, could see almost nothing through the frosted-over storm-door glass, pushed open the storm door and peered out.

"Yes?"

The Iceman's face was wrapped in a red-plaid scarf, the top of his head covered by a ski mask rolled up and worn like a watch cap. From the street, his face would be a furry unrecognizable cube, muffled and hatted, like everybody else. When he passed the time and temperature sign on the bank, it had been four below zero.

He was high from the attack on Weather, and angry. He'd missed again. Things didn't work like he thought they would. They just did not. He needed to plan better. He didn't foresee the possibility that the deputy would keep the truck rolling. Somehow, in his mind, the first shotgun blasts derailed the truck. But why would he think that? Too much TV?

Now the cops would focus on Weather. Who did she know that was involved in the case? He had to give them an answer, something that would hold them for a while.

And thinking about it, he became excited. This plan would work. This one would…

He stood on the rectory stoop, his left hand wrapped around the stock of the.44. Bergen was home, all right. The lights were on, and he'd seen a shadow on the drapes from where he'd been watching down the street. Facing the house, he reached up with his gloved right hand and pulled the ski mask down across his face. Then he knocked and half-turned to look back across the street, where some crazy kid was piling snow in a heap in his front yard. The kid paid no attention to him. He turned back to the house and gripped the storm-door handle with his right hand.

Bergen came to the door, pushed the storm door open two or three inches, leaned his head toward it. "Yes?"

The.44 was already coming up in the Iceman's left hand. With his right he jerked the door open, surged forward, the gun out, pointed at Bergen's forehead.

The priest reeled back, one hand up, as though to ward off the bullet.

"Get back," the Iceman snarled. "Get back, get back."

He thrust the oversized pistol at the priest, who was backing through his living room. "What?" he said. "What?"

The Iceman jerked the storm door shut, then backed against the inner door until he heard the latch snap.

"Sit down on the couch. Sit down."

"What?" Bergen's eyes were large, his face white. He made a broom-whisking motion with his hand, like he'd sweep the Iceman away. "Get out of here. Get out."

"Shut up or I'll blow your fuckin' brains out," the Iceman snapped.

"What?" Bergen seemed stuck on the word, uncomprehending. He dropped onto the couch, head tilted back, mouth open.

"I want the truth about the LaCourts," the Iceman rasped. "They were my friends."

Bergen stared at him, trying to penetrate the ski mask. He knew the voice, the bulk, but not well. Who was this? "I had nothing to do with it. I don't know myself what happened," Bergen said. "Are you going to kill me?"

"Maybe," the Iceman said. "Quite possibly. But that depends on what you have to say." He dipped into his parka pocket and took out a brown bag. "If you killed them."

"I tell you…"

"You're an alky, I know all about it," the Iceman said. He'd worked on this part of his speech. The priest must have confidence in him. "You were drinking again yesterday. You said so in Mass. And I asked myself, how do you get the truth out of a boozer?"

He stuck the brown paper bag in the armpit of the hand that held the gun, fumbled at the top of the bag with his gloved right hand, and pulled free a bottle of Jim Beam. "You give him some booze, that's how. A lot of booze. Then we'll get the truth out of him."

"I'm not drinking," Bergen said.

"Then I'll know, won't I?" the Iceman asked. "And if I know… I'll drop the hammer on you, priest. This is a.44 Magnum, and they'd find your brains in the next block." He'd moved around to the end of the couch, glanced down at the water glass on the end table. Excellent.

"Lean back on the couch," he ordered.

The priest settled back.

"If you try to get up, I'll kill you."

"Listen, Claudia LaCourt was one of my dearest friends."

"Shut up." The Iceman set the bottle on the table, turned the loosened top with his glove hand, took the top off and dropped it on the table. With his gun hand, he reached up, hooked his scarf with his thumb, pulled it down under his chin, then pushed his ski mask up until it was just over his upper lip.

With his glove hand, he picked up the bottle. He pointed the gun at the priest again, put the bottle to his lips, stuck his tongue into the neck of it to block the liquor, swallowed spit, took the bottle down, wiped his lips with the back of his gun hand. Bergen had to have confidence in the booze, too.

"I got you the good stuff, Father," he said, smacking his lips. He poured the water glass full almost to the top.

"Drink it down," he said. "Just slide across the couch, pick it up, and drink it down."

"I can't just drink it straight down."

"Bullshit. An alky like you could drink twice that much. Besides, you don't have much choice. If you don't drink it, I'm going to blow you up. Drink it."

Bergen edged across the couch, picked it up, looked at it, then slowly drank it; a quarter of it, then half.

"Drink the rest," the Iceman said, his voice rising. The gun waggled a foot from Bergen's head.

He drank the rest, the alcohol exploding in his stomach.

"Close your eyes," the Iceman said.

"What?"

"Close your eyes. You heard me. And keep them tight."

Bergen could feel the alcohol clawing its way into him, already spreading through his stomach into his lungs. So good, so good… But he didn't need it. He really didn't. He closed his eyes, clenched them. If he could get through this…

The Iceman picked up the bottle, poured another glass of bourbon, stepped back.

"Open your eyes. Pick up the glass."

"It'll kill me," Bergen protested feebly. He picked up the glass, looked at it.

"You don't have to drink this straight down. Just sip it. But I want it gone," he said. The gun barrel was three feet from Bergen's eyes, and unwavering. "Now-when was the last time you saw the LaCourts?"

"It was the night of the murder," Bergen said. "I was there, all right…" As he launched into the story he'd told the sheriff, the fear was still with him, but now it was joined by the certainty brought by alcohol. He was right, he was innocent, and he could convince this man. The intruder had kept his mask on: no point in doing that if he really planned to kill. So he didn't plan to kill. Bergen, pleased with himself for figuring it out, took another large swallow of bourbon when the Iceman prompted him, and another, and was surprised when the glass was suddenly empty.

"You're still sober enough to lie."

The glass was full again, and the man's voice seemed to be drifting away. Bergen sputtered, "Listen… you," and his head dropped on his shoulder and he nearly giggled. The impulse was smothered by what seemed to be a dark stain. The stain was spreading through his body, through his brain…

Took a drink, choking this time, dropped the glass, vaguely aware of the bourbon on him…

And now aware of something wrong. He'd never drunk this much alcohol this fast, but he'd come close a few times. It had never gotten on him like this; he'd never had this dark spreading stain in his mind.

Nothing was right; he could barely see; he looked up at the gunman, but his head wouldn't work right, couldn't turn. Tried to stand…

Couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, felt the coldness at his lips, sputtered, alcohol running into him, a hand on his forehead… he swallowed, swallowed, swallowed. And at the last instant understood the Iceman: who he was, what he was doing. He tried, but he couldn't move… couldn't move.

The Iceman pressed the priest's head back into the couch, emptied most of the rest of the bottle into him. When he was finished, he stepped back, looked down at his handiwork. The priest was almost gone. The Iceman took the priest's hand, wrapped it around the bottle, smeared it a bit, wrapped the other hand around it. The priest had sputtered alcohol all over himself, and that was fine.

The Iceman, moving quickly, put two prescription pill bottles on the table, the labels torn off. A single pill remained in one of the bottles to help the cops with identification. The priest, still sitting upright on the couch, his head back, mumbled something, then made a sound like a snore or a gargle. The Iceman had never been in the rectory before, but the office was just off the living room and he found it immediately. A yellow pad sat next to an IBM electric. He turned the typewriter on, inserted a sheet of paper with his gloved hand, pulled off his glove and typed the suicide note.

That done, he rolled the paper out without touching it, got the copy of the Sunday Bulletin from his pocket. Bergen signed all the bulletins.

When he got back to the living room, the priest was in deep sleep, his breathing shallow, long. He'd taken a combination of Seconal and alcohol, enough to kill a horse, along with Dramamine to keep him from vomiting it out.

The Iceman went to the window and peeked out. The kid who'd been shoveling snow had gone inside. He looked back at the priest. Bergen was slumped on the couch, his head rolled down on his chest. Still breathing. Barely.

Time to go.