Winter Prey ld-5

by John Sandford

  "Yup. Let's do it," Lucas said.

  The deputies arranged themselves around a half-dozen rickety square tables, drinking coffee and chewing on candy bars, looking Lucas over. Carr poked his finger at them and called out their names. Five of the six wore uniforms. The sixth, an older man, wore jeans and a heavy sweater and carried an automatic pistol just to the left of his navel in a cross-draw position.

  "… Gene Climpt, investigator," Carr said, pointing at him. Climpt nodded. His face was deeply weathered, like a chunk of lake driftwood, his eyes careful, watchful. "You met him out at the house last night."

  Lucas nodded at Climpt, then looked around the room. The best people in the department, Carr said. With two exceptions, they were all white and chunky. One was an Indian, and Climpt, the investigator, was lean as a lightning rod. "The sheriff and I worked out a few approaches last night," Lucas began. "What we're doing today is talking to people. I'll talk to the firefighters who were the first out at the house. We've also got to find the LaCourts' personal friends, their daughter's friends at school, and the people who took part in a religious group that Claudia LaCourt was a member of."

  They talked for twenty minutes, dividing up the preliminaries. Climpt took two deputies to begin tracking the LaCourts' friends, and he'd talk to the tribal people about any job-related problems LaCourt might have had at the casino. Two more deputies-Russell Hinks and Dustin Bane, Rusty and Dusty-would take the school. The last man would canvass all the houses down the lake road, asking if anyone had seen anything unusual before the fire. The night before, Climpt had been looking for immediate possibilities.

  "I'll be checking back during the day," Lucas said. "If anybody finds anything, call me. And I mean anything."

  As the deputies shuffled out, pulling on coats, Carr turned to Lucas and said, "I've got some paperwork before you leave. I want to get you legal."

  "Sure." He followed Carr into the hallway, and when they were away from the other deputies asked, "Is this Climpt guy… is he going to work with me? Or is he gonna be a problem?"

  "Why should he be?" Carr asked.

  "I'm doing a job that he might have expected to get."

  Carr shook his head. "Gene's not that way. Not at all."

  Bergen stumbled into the hallway, looked around, spotted Carr. "Shelly…" he called.

  Carr stopped, looked back. Bergen was wearing wind pants and a three-part parka, a Day-Glo orange hunter's hat, ski mitts and heavy-duty pac boots. He looked more like an out-of-shape lumberjack than a priest. "Phil, how'r you feeling?"

  "You ought to know," Bergen said harshly, stripping his mitts off and slapping them against his leg as he came down the hall. "The talk all over town is, Bergen did it. Bergen killed the LaCourts. I had about half the usual congregation at Mass this morning. I'll be lucky to have that tomorrow."

  "Phil, I don't know…" Carr started.

  "Don't BS me, Shelly," Bergen said. "The word's coming out of this office. I'm the prime suspect."

  "If the word's coming out of this office, I'll stop it-because you're not the prime suspect," Carr said. "We don't have any suspects."

  Bergen looked at Lucas. His lower lip trembled and he shook his head, turned back to Carr: "You're a little late, Shelly; and I'll tell you, I won't put up with it. I have a reputation and you and your hired gun"-he looked at Lucas again, then back to Carr-"are ruining it. That's called slander or libel."

  Carr took him by the arm, said, "C'mon down to my office, Phil." To Lucas he said, "Go down there to the end of the hall, ask for Helen Arris."

  Helen Arris was a big-haired office manager, a woman who might have been in her forties or fifties or early sixties, who chewed gum and called him dear, and who did the paperwork in five minutes. When they finished with the paper, she took his photograph with a Polaroid camera, slipped the photo into a plastic form, stuck the form into a hot press, slammed the press, waited ten seconds, then handed him a mint-new identification card.

  "Be careful out there," she said, sounding like somebody on a TV cop show.

  Lucas got a notebook from the Explorer and decided to walk down to Grant Hardware, a block back toward the highway. This would be a long day. If they were going to break the killings, they'd do it in a week. And the more they could get early, the better their chances were.

  A closet-sized book-and-newspaper store sat on the corner and he stopped for a Wall Street Journal; he passed a t-shirt store, a shoe repair shop, and one of the bakeries before he crossed in midblock to the hardware store. The store had a snowblower display in the front window, along with a stack of VCRs and pumpkin-colored plastic sleds. A bell rang over the door when Lucas walked in, and the odor of hot coffee hung in the air. A man sat on a wooden stool, behind the cashier's counter, reading a People magazine and drinking coffee from a deep china cup. Lucas walked down toward the counter, aging wooden floor creaking beneath him.

  "Dick Westrom?"

  "That's me," the counterman said.

  "Lucas Davenport. I'm…"

  "The detective, yeah." Westrom stood up and leaned across the counter to shake hands. He was big, fifty pounds too heavy for his height, with blond hair fading to white and large watery cow eyes that looked away from Lucas. He tipped his head at another chair at the other end of the counter. "My girl's out getting a bite, but there's nobody around… we could talk here, if that's all right."

  "That's fine," Lucas said. He took off his jacket, walked around the counter and sat down. "I need to know exactly what happened last night, the whole sequence."

  Westrom had found Frank LaCourt's body, nearly tripping over it as he hauled hose off the truck.

  "You didn't see him right away, laying there?" Lucas asked.

  "No. Most of the light was from the fire, it was flickering, you know, and Frank had a layer of snow on him," Westrom said. He had a confidential manner of talking, out of the side of his mouth, as though he were telling secrets in a prison yard. "He was easy to see when you got right on top of him, but from a few feet away… hell, you couldn't hardly see him at all."

  "That was the first you knew there were dead people?"

  "Well, I thought there might be somebody inside, there was a smell, you know. That hit us as soon as we got there, and I think Duane said something like, 'We got a dead one.' "

  Westrom insisted that the priest had passed the fire station within seconds of the alarm.

  "Look. I got nothing against Phil Bergen," Westrom said, shooting sideways glances at Lucas. "Shelly Carr was trying to get some extra time out of me last night, so I know where he's at. But I'll tell you this: I was nukin' a couple of ham sandwiches…"

  "Yeah?" Lucas said, a neutral noise to keep Westrom rolling.

  "And Duane said, 'There goes Father Phil. Hell of a night to be out.' Duane was standing by the front window and I saw Phil going by. Just then the buzzer went off on the microwave. I mean right then, when I was looking at the taillights. I says, 'Well, he's a big-shot priest with a big-shot Grand Cherokee, so he can go where he wants, when he wants.' "

  "Sounds like you don't care for him," Lucas said. And Lucas didn't care for Westrom, the eyes always slipping and sliding.

  "Well, personally, I don't. But that's neither here nor there, and he can go about his business," Westrom said. He pursed his lips in disapproval. His eyes touched Lucas' face and then skipped away. "Anyway, I was taking the sandwiches out, they're in these cellophane packets, you know, and I was just trying to grab them by the edges and not get burned. I said 'Come and get it,' and the phone rang. Duane picked it up and he said, 'Oh, shit,' and punched in the beeper code and said, 'It's LaCourts', let's go.' I was still standing there with the sandwiches. Never got to open them. Phil hadn't gone by more'n ten seconds before. Shelly was trying to get me to say it was a minute or two or three, but it wasn't. It wasn't more'n ten seconds and it might have been five."

  "Huh." Lucas nodded.

  "Check with Duane," Westrom said. "He'll tell you."

 
; "Is Duane a friend of yours?"

  "Duane? Well, no. I like him okay. We just don't, you know… relate."

  "Do you know of anything that Father Bergen might have against the LaCourts?"

  "Nope. But he was close to Claudia," Westrom said, with a distinct spin on the word close.

  "How close?" Lucas asked, tilting his head.

  Westrom's eyes wandered around Lucas without settling. "Claudia had a reputation before she married Frank. She got around. She was a pretty thing, too, she had big…" Westrom cupped his hands at his chest and bounced them a couple of times. "And Phil… He is a man. Being a priest and all, it must be tough."

  "You think he and Claudia could have been fooling around?" Lucas asked.

  Westrom edged forward in his chair and said confidentially, "I don't know about that. We probably would have heard if she was. But it might go way back, something with Father Phil. Maybe Phil wanted to get it started again or something." Westrom's nose twitched.

  "How many black Jeeps in Ojibway County?" Lucas asked. "There must be quite a few."

  "Bet there aren't, not in the winter. Not Grand Cherokees-those are mostly summer-people cars. I can't think of any besides Phil's." He looked at Lucas curiously: "Are you a Catholic?"

  "Why?"

  " 'Cause you sound like you're trying to find an excuse for Phil Bergen."

  Lucas' notebook cover said, "Westrom, Helper." He drew a line through Westrom, started the Explorer, headed out Highway 77 to the fire station.

  In the daytime, with sunlight and the roads freshly plowed, the half-hour trip of the night before was cut to ten minutes. From the high points of the road, he could see forever across the low-lying land, with the contrasting black pine forests cut by the silvery glint of the frozen lakes.

  The firehouse was a tan pole barn built on a concrete slab, nestled in a stand of pine just off the highway. One end of the building was dominated by three oversized garage doors for the fire trucks. The office was at the other end, with a row of small windows. Lucas parked in one of four plowed-out spaces and walked into the office, found it empty. Another door led out of the office into the back and Lucas stuck his head through.

  "Hello?"

  "Yeah?" A heavyset blond man sat at a worktable, a fishing reel disassembled in the light of a high-intensity lamp. A thin, almost transparent beard covered his acne-pitted face. His eyes were blue, careful. A small kitchen area was laid out along one wall behind him. At the other end of the room, a broken-down couch, two aging easy chairs and two wooden kitchen chairs faced a color television. Lockers lined a third wall, each locker stenciled with a man's last name. Another door led back into the truck shed. A flight of stairs went up to a half-loft.

  "I'm looking for Duane Helper," Lucas said.

  "That's me. You must be Davenport," Helper said. He had a heavy, almost Germanic voice, and stood up to shake hands. He was wearing jeans with wide red suspenders over a blue work shirt. His hand was heavy, like his body, but crusted with calluses. "A whole caravan of TV people just came out of the lake road. The sheriff let them in to take pictures of the house."

  "Yeah, he was going to do that," Lucas said.

  "I heard Phil Bergen is the main suspect." Helper said it bluntly, as a challenge.

  Lucas shook his head. "We don't have any suspects yet."

  "That's not the way I heard it," Helper said. The television was playing a game show and Helper picked up a remote control and punched it off.

  "Then what you heard is wrong," Lucas said sharply. Helper seemed to be looking for an edge. He was closed-faced, with small eyes; when he played his fingers through his beard, the fingers seemed too short for their thickness, like sausages. Lucas sat down across the round table from him and they started through the time sequence.

  "I remember seeing the car, but I didn't remember it was right when the alarm came in," Helper said. "I thought maybe I'd walked up and looked out the window, saw the car, and then we'd talked about something else and I'd gone back to the window again and that's when the alarm came in. That's not the way Dick remembers it."

  "How sure are you? Either way?"

  Helper rubbed his forehead. "Dick's probably right. We talked about it and he was sure."

  "If you went to the window twice, how much time would there have been between the two trips?" Lucas asked.

  "Well, I don't know, it would have only been a minute or two, I suppose."

  "So even if you went twice, it wasn't long."

  "No, I guess not," Helper said.

  "Did you actually see Bergen's Jeep come out of the lake road?"

  "No, but that's the impression I got. He was moving slow when he went past, even with the snow, and he was accelerating. Like he'd just turned the corner onto 77."

  "Okay." Lucas stood up, walked once around the room. Looked at the stairs.

  "What's up there?"

  "There's a bunk room right at the top. I live in the back. I'm the only professional firefighter here."

  "You're on duty twenty-four hours a day?"

  "I have time off during the day and early evenings, when we can get volunteers to pick it up," Helper said. "But yeah, I'm here most of the time."

  "Huh." Lucas took a turn around the room, thumbnail pressed against his upper teeth, thinking. The time problem was becoming difficult. He looked at Helper. "What about Father Bergen? Do you know him?"

  "Not really. I don't believe I've spoken six words to him. He drinks, though. He's been busted for drunk driving, but…" He trailed off and looked away.

  "But what?" Helper was holding something back, but he wanted Lucas to know it.

  "Sheriff Carr's on the county fire board," Helper said.

  "Yeah? So what?" Lucas made his response a little short, a little tough.

  "He's thick with Bergen. I know you're from the outside, but if I talk, and if it gets back to Shelly, he could hurt me." Helper let the statement lie there, waiting.

  Lucas thought it over. Helper might be trying to build an alliance or drive a wedge between himself and Carr. But for what? Most likely he was worried for exactly the reason he claimed: his job. Lucas shook his head. "It won't get back to him if it doesn't need to. Even if it needs to, I can keep the source to myself. If it seems reasonable."

  Helper looked at him for a moment, judging him, then looked out the window toward the road. "Well. First off, about that drunk driving. Shelly fixed it. Fixed it a couple of times and maybe more."

  He glanced at Lucas. There was more to come, Lucas thought. Helper mentioned the ticket-fixing as a test. "What else?" he pressed.

  Helper let it go. "There're rumors that Father Bergen's… that if you're a careful dad, you wouldn't want your boy singing in his choir, so to speak."

  "He's gay?" Gay would be interesting. Small-town gays felt all kinds of pressure, especially if they were in the closet. And a priest…

  "That's what I've heard," Helper said. He added, carefully, "It's just gossip. I never gave it much thought. In fact, I don't think it's true. But I don't know. With this kind of thing, these killings, I figured you'd probably want to hear everything."

  "Sure." Lucas made a note.

  They talked for another five minutes, then three patrol deputies stomped in from duty at the LaCourt house. They were cold and went straight to the coffee. Helper got up to start another pot.

  "Anything happening down at the house?" Lucas asked.

  "Not much. Guys from Madison are crawling around the place," said one of the deputies. His face was red as a raw steak.

  "Is the sheriff down there?"

  "He went back to the office, he was gonna talk to some of the TV people."

  "All right."

  Lucas looked back at Helper, fussing with the coffee. Small-town fireman. He heard things, sitting around with twenty or thirty different firemen every week, nothing much to do.

  "Thanks," he said. He nodded at Helper and headed for the door, the phone ringing as he went out. The wind bit at him again, a
nd he hunched against it, hurried around the truck. He was fumbling for his keys when Helper stuck his head out the door and called after him: "It's a deputy looking for you."

  Lucas went back inside and picked up the phone. "Yeah?"

  "This is Rusty, at the school. You better get your ass up here."

  Grant Junior High was a red-brick rectangle with blue-spruce accents spotted around the lawn. A man in a snowmobile suit worked on the flat roof, pushing snow off. The harsh scraping sounds carried forever on the cold air. Lucas parked in front, zipped his parka, pulled on his ski gloves. Down the street, the bank time-and-temperature sign said – 21. The sun was rolling across the southern sky, as pale as an old silver dime.

  Bob Jones was waiting outside the principal's office when Lucas walked in. Jones was a round-faced man, balding, with rosy cheeks, a short black villain's mustache and professional-principal's placating smile. He wore a blue suit with a stiff-collared white shirt, and his necktie was patriotically striped with red, white, and blue diagonals.

  "Glad to see you," he said as they shook hands. "I've heard about you. Heck of a record. Come on, I'll take you down to the conference room. The boy's name is John Mueller." The school had wide halls painted an institutional beige, with tan lockers spotted between cork bulletin boards. The air smelled of sweat socks, paper, and pencil-sharpener shavings.

  Halfway down the hall, Jones said, "I'd like you to talk to John's father about this. When you're done with him. I don't think there's a legal problem, but if you could talk to him…"

  "Sure," Lucas said.

  Rusty and Dusty were sitting at the conference table drinking coffee, Rusty with his feet on the table. They were both large, beefy, square-faced, white-toothed, with elaborately casual hairdos, Rusty a Chippewa, Dusty with the transparent pallor of a pure Swede. Rusty hastily pulled his feet off the table when Lucas and Jones walked in, leaving a ring of dirty water on the tabletop.

  "Where's the kid?" Lucas asked.

  "Back in his math class," said Dusty.

  "I'll get him," Jones volunteered. He promptly disappeared down the hall, his heels echoing off the terrazzo.