Winter Prey

CHAPTER 22

On Sunday, Lucas and Weather slept late. For Weather, that was nine o'clock. After that, she was up, humming around the house, and at ten o'clock he gave up and got out of bed.

"There won't be much to do," she said. "Let's rent some skis and get outside."

"Let me check downtown. If nothing's happening, we could go out this afternoon."

"Good. I can go down to the Super-Valu and do some shopping. See you back here for lunch."

Carr was sitting in his office, alone. When Lucas looked in, he said, "Harper's gone."

"Goddammit," Lucas said. "When?"

"We never even saw him once," Carr said. "Every time we check, nobody home. Nobody at the gas station. No truck. I put out a bulletin."

"We should have found a way to keep him inside," Lucas said.

"Yeah. What're you going to do?"

"Read the paper on the case, hang around. Wait. See if I can figure out some other button to push. Nothing on the Schoeneckers?"

"I'd bet they're dead," Carr said. His voice was flat, as though he didn't care.

Climpt came by just before noon. "Not a damn thing going on," he said. "I was back out at the Schoeneckers', nothing there."

"Why'd he kill the priest?" Lucas asked half to himself.

"Don't know," Climpt said.

"There are about three or four knots in this thing," Lucas said. "If we could just unravel one of them, if we could find the Schoeneckers, or break Harper, figure out why Bergen was killed. If we could figure out that time problem when the LaCourts were killed."

"Or the picture," Climpt said. "You got that copy?"

"Yeah." Lucas dug his wallet out of his pants pocket, unfolded the picture, passed it to Climpt, who peered at it.

"Beats the shit out of me," he said after a minute. "There's nothing here."

Lucas took it back, looked at it, shook his head. The adult male in the picture might be anyone.

That afternoon Lucas and Weather rented cross-country skis and ran a ten-kilometer loop through the national forest. At the end of it, Weather, breathing hard, said, "You're in shape."

"You can get in shape if you don't have anything to do," he said.

On Monday, Weather got up before first light. A morning person, she said cheerfully, as Lucas tried to sleep. All surgeons are. "Then if you've got two or three surgeries in a day, the hospital can fit them on one nursing shift. One surgical tech, one anesthesiologist, one circulating nurse. Keeps the costs down."

"Yeah, surgeons are famous for that," Lucas mumbled. "Go the fuck away."

"You didn't say that last night," she said. But Lucas pulled the bed covers over his head. She bent over him, pulled the blanket down, kissed him on the temple, and pulled the cover back up and walked out, humming.

Five minutes later she was back. She whispered, "You awake?"

"Yes."

"Rusty's here to take me down to the hospital," she said. "I checked the TV weather. There's another storm coming up from the southwest and we could get hit. They say it should start late tonight or early tomorrow. I'm outa here."

Lucas made it down to the courthouse at nine o'clock, yawning, face braced by the cold. The sky overhead was sunny, but a finger of slate-colored cloud hung off to the southwest, like smoke from a distant volcano. Dan Jones, the newspaper editor, was just climbing out of his Bronco as Lucas got out of his truck and they walked up to the sheriff's department together.

"So Bergen's not the guy?" he asked.

"I don't think so. We should hear something from Milwaukee today."

"If he's not the guy, how long before you get him?" Jones asked.

"Something'll break," Lucas said. The words sounded hollow. "Something'll give. I'd be surprised if it was a week."

"Will the FBI help?"

"Sure. We can always use extra resources," Lucas said.

"I meant really… off the record."

Lucas looked at him and said, "If a reporter screws me one time, I never talk to him again."

"I wouldn't screw you," Jones said.

Lucas looked him in the eyes for a moment, then nodded. "All right. The goddamn FBI couldn't find a Coke can in a six-pack of Budweiser. They're not bad guys-well, some of them are-but most of them are basically bureaucrats, scared to death they'll fuck up and get a bad personnel report. So they don't do anything. They're frozen. I suggested some computer stuff they could do and they jumped at it. High-tech, nothing to foul up, don't have to go outdoors."

"What'll break it? What are you looking at?"

"Still off the record?" Lucas asked.

"Sure."

"I can't figure out why Bergen was killed. He was involved right from the first day, so there must be something about him. He was seen leaving the LaCourts', admitted it, but they couldn't have been alive when he left. Or if they were, something's seriously out of whack. We've gone back to the firemen who saw him, and they're both solid, and there's no reason to think that they're lying. Something's screwed up and we don't know what. If I can figure that out…" Lucas shook his head, thinking.

"What else?"

"That picture I showed you. We think the killer was looking for it, but there's nothing in it," Lucas said. "Maybe he just hasn't seen it and doesn't know the top of his body's cut off. But that's hard to believe, 'cause it was a Polaroid."

"You need a better print than the one you're looking at," Jones said.

"The original was destroyed. So was the what-cha-callit, not the stickup…"

Jones grinned. "The pasteup?"

"Yeah, the pasteup," Lucas said. "They were shoved into a shredder and sent out to the landfill, like six months ago."

"What about the offset negative?"

"The what?" Lucas asked.

Carr was unhappy: "… I don't want you leaving. Too much is going on," he said. He hunched over his desk, head down. A man confused, perhaps desperate. Mourning.

"It's the only thing I've got," Lucas said. "What am I supposed to do, go interview more school kids?"

"Then fly," Carr said. "You can be there in an hour and a half."

"Man, I hate planes," Lucas said. He could feel his stomach muscles contract at the thought of flying.

"How about a helicopter?" Lacey asked.

"A helicopter? I can deal with a helicopter," Lucas said, nodding.

"We can have one at the airport in twenty minutes," Lacey said.

"Get it," said Lucas, stepping toward the door.

"I want you back here tonight, whatever happens," Carr called after him. "We got a storm coming in."

Climpt had been standing in the doorway, smoking. "Take care of Weather," Lucas said.

Domeier, the Milwaukee cop, had the day off. Lucas left a message, and the Milwaukee watch commander said somebody would try to reach him.

The Grant Airport was a single Quonset-hut hangar at the west end of a short blacktopped runway. The hangar had a windsock on the roof, an office, and plane-sized double doors. The manager told him to pull his truck inside, where four small planes huddled together, smelling of engine oil and gasoline.

"Hoser'll be here in five minutes. I just talked to him on the radio," the manager said. The manager was named Bill, an older man with a thick shock of steel-gray hair and blue eyes so pale they were almost white. "He'll put down right outside the window there."

"He's a pretty good pilot?" Lucas could handle helicopters because they didn't need runways. You could get down in a helicopter.

"Oh, yeah. Learned to fly in Vietnam, been flying ever since." The manager sucked his false teeth, his hands in his overall pockets, staring out the window. "You want some coffee?"

"A cup'd be good," Lucas said.

"Help yourself, over by the microwave."

A Pyrex pot of acidic-looking coffee sat on a hot plate next to some paper cups. Lucas poured a cup, took a sip, thought nasty, and the manager said, "If you get back late, the place'll be locked up. I'll give you a key for the doors so you can get your truck out. Here he comes."

The chopper was white, with a rakish HOSER AIR scrawled on the side, and kicked up a hurricane of snow as it put down on the pad. Lucas got the door key from the manager, and then, ducking, scurried under the chopper blades and the pilot popped the door open. The pilot wore an olive-drab helmet, black glasses, and a brush-cut mustache. He shouted over the beat of the blades, "You got pac boots?"

"Back in the truck."

"Better go get 'em. The heater ain't working quite right."

They took off three minutes later, Lucas pulling on the pac boots. "What's wrong with the heater?" he shouted.

"Don't know yet," the pilot shouted back. "The whole goddamn chopper's a piece of shit."

"Glad to hear it."

The pilot smiled, his teeth improbably white and even. "Little pilot joke," he said.

A half hour after takeoff, the pilot got a radio call, answered, and then said, "You'll have a guy waiting for you. Domeier?"

"Yeah, good."

They put down at a general aviation airport at the north end of the city. The pilot would wait until ten o'clock, he said. "Got that storm coming in. Ten o'clock shouldn't be a problem, but if you were as late as midnight, I might not get out at all."

"I'll call," Lucas promised, pulling off the pac boots and slipping on his shoes.

"I'll be around. Call the pilots' lounge. There's a guy waving at us, and I think he means you."

Domeier was waiting at the gate, hands in his pockets, chewing gum.

"Didn't expect to see you," Lucas said. "I was told you were off."

"Overtime," Domeier said. "I got a daughter down at Northwestern, exploring her potentialities, so I need the fuckin' work. What're we doing?"

"Talking to Bobby McLain again," Lucas said. "About a thing called an offset negative."

McLain was at home, with a woman in a red party dress. The woman sat on a couch, eating popcorn from a microwave bag. She had dark hair and matched her hair color with too much eye liner.

"… suppose he could have it," McLain said. "He'll kill me if I send you out there, though."

"Bobby, you know what we're dealing with," Lucas said. "You know what could happen."

"Jeez…"

"What could happen?" asked the woman on the couch.

"Some people have been killed. If Bobby doesn't help us out, you could say he's an accomplice," Domeier said. He shrugged, and looked sorry about it.

The woman's mouth hung open for a minute, then she looked at Bobby. "Jesus Christ, you're dragging your feet about Zeke? The guy would trade you in for a fifty-watt light bulb."

"Zeke?" said Lucas.

"Yeah. He's a teacher out at the vo-tech," the woman said. She tried a winning smile, unsuccessfully. "He does all our printing."

"At the vo-tech?"

"Sure. He's a teacher there. He's got all this great equipment. And if we're not using it, it just sits there all night, doing nothing."

"Who buys the paper?" Domeier asked.

McLain's eyes shifted. "Mmm, that's part of his price."

"Part of the price? You mean the vo-tech is buying your printing paper?"

McLain shrugged. "The price is right."

McLain drove the grape-colored van; Lucas and Domeier followed him west through the suburbs. The vo-tech was a one-story orange-brick building surrounded by parking lots. A cluster of thirty or forty crows was settled around a heap of snow at one end of the building, like lost lumps of coal.

McLain parked and used an electric lift to get himself out the side door of the van. He was in a power chair this time, and rolled along in front of them, up a ramp, and down a long cold hallway lined with student lockers. Zeke was alone in his classroom. When McLain rolled through the door, he straightened, started a smile. When Lucas and Domeier followed McLain through the door, the smile vanished.

"Sorry," McLain said. "I hope we can maintain our business relationship."

Domeier said, "Milwaukee PD, Zeke."

"I just… I just… I needed…" Zeke waved his hand, unable to find the right word, and then said, "Money."

They were standing in his office, a cool cubicle of yellow-painted concrete block, with a plastic-laminated desk and two file cabinets. Zeke was short and balding, wore his hair long and combed it in oily strands over his bald spot. He wore a checked sport coat and his hands shook when he talked. "I just… I just… Should I get a lawyer?"

"You gotta right…" Domeier started.

Lucas broke in: "I don't care about your goddamn printing business. I just don't have time to fuck around. I want the goddamn negatives or I'll put some handcuffs on you and we'll drag you outa the school by your fuckin' hair, and then we'll get a search warrant and we'll tear this place apart and your house and any other goddamn thing we can find. You show me the fuckin' negatives and I'm gone. You and Domeier can make any kind of deal you want."

Zeke looked at Domeier, and when the Milwaukee cop rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, he said, "I keep the negatives at home."

"So let's go," Lucas said.

"How about me?" McLain asked.

"Take off," said Domeier.

Halfway to his house, Zeke, in the backseat of Domeier's Dodge, began to weep. "They're gonna fire me," he gasped. "You're gonna put me in jail. I'll get raped."

"Do you print for more than Bobby McLain or is he the only one?" Domeier asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

"He's the only one," Zeke said, his body shuddering.

"Shit. If there was more, you had some names, maybe we could work something out."

The weeping stopped and Zeke's voice cleared. "Like what?"

An aging black labrador with rheumy eyes met them at the door.

"If I went to jail, what'd happen to Dave?" Zeke asked Domeier.

The dog wagged his tail when his name was mentioned. Domeier shook his head and said, "Jesus Christ."

The dog watched as they went through a closet full of offset negatives. The negatives were filed in oversized brown envelopes, with the name of the publication scrawled in the corner. They found the right set and the right negative, and Zeke held it up to the light. "Yup, this is it. Looks pretty sharp."

They trooped back to the vo-tech. The printer was the size of a Volkswagen, but the first print was done in ten minutes. Zeke stripped it out and handed it to Domeier.

"That's as good as I can get it," he said. "It's still a halftone, so it won't be as sharp as a regular photograph."

Domeier glanced at it and handed it to Lucas, saying, "Same old shit. You wasted your time."

The print was still black-and-white, but considerably sharper. Lucas put it under a table light and peered at it. A man with an erection and a nude boy in the background. Nothing on the walls.

"The guy's leg looks weird." He took the folded newsprint version out of his pocket. The leg was so washed-out that no detail was visible. "Is this… whatever it is… is this the picture or is there something wrong with his leg?" Lucas asked.

Zeke brought a photo loupe over to the table, put it on the print, bent over it, moved it. "That's his leg, I think. It looks like it's stitched together or something, like a quilt."

"Goddamn," Lucas said. His throat tightened. "Goddamn. That's why he wants Weather. She must've fixed his leg."

"You got him?" asked Domeier.

"Got something," Lucas said. "Is there a doc around I can talk to?"

"Sure. We can stop at the medical examiner's on the way to the airport. There'll be somebody on duty."

"Can I go home now?" asked Zeke.

"Er, no," Domeier said. "Actually, we gotta go get a truck, the two of us."

"What for?"

"I'm gonna take every fuckin' envelope out of your house, and we're gonna find somebody to print them up for us. And I'm gonna want those names."

Lucas stopped on the way out of the house to call the airport, and got the pilot in the general aviation lounge. "It didn't take long. I'm on my way."

"Hurry. That storm's coming in fast, man," the pilot said. "I want to get out of here quick."

The assistant medical examiner was sitting in his office, feet on his desk, reading a National Enquirer.

He nodded at Domeier, looked without interest at Lucas and Zeke. "Breaks my heart, what the younger women have done to the British Royal Family," he said. He balled up the paper and fired it at a wastebasket. "What the fuck do you want, Domeier? More pictures of naked dead women?"

"Actually, I want you to look at my friend's photograph," Domeier said.

Lucas handed the doc the print and said, "Can you tell what's wrong with his leg?"

Zeke asked, "You don't really have pictures of naked dead women, do you?"

The doctor, bent over the photo, muttered, "All the time. If you need some, maybe I can get you a rate." After a minute he straightened and said, "Burns."

"What?"

He flipped the photo across his desk to Lucas. "Your man's been burned. Those are skin grafts."