Winter Prey

by John Sandford

  "Phil Bergen's dead?"' Weather asked when Lucas hung up the phone.

  "Yeah. Might be suicide-there's a note. And he confesses to killing the LaCourts."

  "Oh, no." She wrapped her arms around herself.

  "Lucas... I'm getting scared now. Really scared."

  He put an arm around her shoulder. "I keep telling you..

  "But I'm not getting out," she said.

  "You could go down to my place in the Cities."

  "I'm staying. But this guy..." She shook her head. Then she frowned. "That means... I don't see how..

  "What?"

  "He would have been the guy who tried to shoot me last night. And the guy who was chasing me the first night."

  "You were still at the LaCourts' when Shelly and I left, and we went into town to interview Bergen. Couldn't have been him," Lucas said.

  "Maybe the guy wasn't chasing me-but after last night, I was sure that he was. I was sure, because it was so strange."

  "Get dressed," Lucas said. "Let's go look at it."

  7 Seven o'clock in the morning, utterly dark, but Grant was awake, starting the day, people scurrying along the downtown sidewalks in front of a damp, cold wind. One city police car, two sheriff's cars, and the Madison techs' sedan were waiting at the rectory. Lucas nodded at the deputy on the door. Weather followed him inside. Carr was sitting on a couch, his face waxy. A lab tech from Madison was in the kitchen with a collection of glasses and bottles, dusting them. Carr wearily stood up when Lucas and Weather came in.

  "Where is he?" Lucas asked.

  "In here," Carr said, leading them down the hall.

  now Bergen was lying faceup, his head propped on a pillow, his eyes open, but filmed-over with death. His hands were crossed on his stomach. He wore a sweater and black trousers , undone at the waist.

  One shoe had come off and lay on the floor beside the couch; that foot dangled off the couch.

  His black sock had a hole at the little toe, and the little toe stuck through it. The other foot was on the couch.

  "Who found him?" Lucas asked.

  ..2 "One of the parishioners, when he didn't show up for early Mass," Carr said. "The front door was unlocked and '14 a light was still on, but nobody answered the doorbell. They looked in the garage windows and they could see his car.

  Finally one of the guys went inside and found him here.

  They knew he was dead-you could look at him and see it-so they called us."

  "You or the town police?"

  "We do the dispatching for both. And the Grant guys only patrol from seven in the morning until the bars close.

  We cover the overnight."

  "So you got here and it was like this."

  "Yeah, except Johnny-he's the deputy who respondedhe picked up the note, then he handed it to one other guy, and then I picked it up. I was the last one to handle it, but we might of messed it up," Carr confessed.

  "Where is it?" q "Out on the dining room table," Carr said. "But there's more than that.

  C'mon."

  "I'll want to look at him," Weather said, bending over the body.

  Lucas took a last look at Bergen, nodded to Weather, then followed Carr through the living room and kitchen to the mudroom, then out to the garage. The back gate of the Grand Cherokee was up. A pistol lay on the floor of the truck, along with a peculiar machete-like knife. The knife looked homemade, with wooden handles, taped, and a squared-off tip. Lucas bent over it, could see a dark encrustation that might be blood.

  "That's a corn-knife," Carr said. "You don't see them much anymore."

  "Was it just laying here like this?"

  "Yeah. It's mentioned in the note. So's the gun. My God, who would've thought..."

  "Let me see the note," Lucas said.

  The note was typed on the parish's letterhead stationery.

  "I assume he has an IBM typewriter," Lucas said.

  "Yes. In his office."

  "Okay..." Lucas read down through the note.

  I have killed and I have lied. When I did it, I thought I did it for God, but I see now it was the Devil's hand.

  For what I've done, I will be punished, but I know the punishment will end and that I will see you all again, in heaven, cleansed of sin.

  For now, my friends, forgive me if you can, as the Father will.

  He'd signed it with a ballpoint: Rev. Philip Bergen.

  And under that: Shelly-I'm sorry; I'm weak when I'm desperate: but you've known that since I kicked the ball out from under that pine.

  You'll find the implements in the back of my truck.

  "Is that his signature?"

  "Yes. I knew it as soon as I looked at it. And there's the business about the pine."

  Crane, the crime tech, stepped into the room, heard Lucas' question and Carr's answer, and said, "We're sending the note down to Madison.

  There might be a problem with it."

  "What?" asked Lucas.

  "When Sheriff Carr said you thought it could be a homicide , we got very careful. If you look at the note, at the M, llmn@ M_ signature.

  .." He took a small magnifying glass from his breast pocket and handed it to Lucas. you can see what looks like little pen indentations, without ink, at a couple of places around the signature itself."

  "So what?" Lucas bent over the note. The indentations were vague, but he could see them.

  "Sometimes, when somebody wants to forge a note, he'll take a real signature, like from a check, lay it on top of the paper where he wants the new signature. Then he'll write -4 over the real signature with something pointed, like a ballpoint pen, pushing down hard. That'll make an impression on the paper below it. Then he writes over the impression.

  It's hard to pick out if the forger's careful. The new signature will have all the little idiosyncrasies of an original."

  "You think this is a fake?"

  "Could be," Crane said. "And there are a couple of other things.

  Our fingerprint guy is gonna do the Super-Glue trick on the whiskey bottle and pill bottles, but he can see some prints sitting right on the glass.

  And except for the prints, the bottles are absolutely clean. Like somebody wiped them before Bergen picked them up--or printed Bergen's fingerprints on them after he was dead. Hardly any smears or partials or handling background, just a bunch of very clear prints. Too clear, too careful. They have to be deliberate."

  "Sonofagun," Carr said, looking from the tech to Lucas.

  "Could mean nothing at all," Crane said. "I'd say the odds are good that he killed himself. But..

  "But..." Carr repeated.

  "Are you checking the neighborhood," Lucas asked Carr, "to see if anybody was hanging around last night?"

  "I'll get it started," Carr said. A deputy had been standing , listening, and Carr pointed to him. He nodded and left.

  Weather came in, shrugged. "There aren't any bruises that I can see, no signs of a struggle. His pants were un one.

  "Yeah?"

  "So what?" asked Carr.

  "Lots of time suicides make themselves look nice. Women put on nice sleeping gowns and make up, men shave. It'd seem odd to be a priest, know you're killing yourself and undo your pants so you'd be found that way."

  Carr looked back toward the bedroom and said, "Phil was kind of a formal guy."

  "There's a knife out in his car," Lucas said to Weather.

  "Go have a look at it."

  While she went out to the garage, Lucas walked back to the bedroom.

  Bergen, he thought, looked seriously disgruntled.

  "We're checking the neighborhood now," Carr said, coming down the hall.

  "Shelly, there's this Pentecostal thing," Lucas said. "I don't want to be insulting, but there are a lot of -fruitcakes involved in religious controversies. You see it all the time in the Cities. You get enough fruitcakes in one place, working on each other, and one of them might turn out to be a killer.

  You've got to think about that."

  "I'll think about
it," Carr said. "You believe Phil was murdered?"

  Lucas nodded. "It's a possibility. No signs of any kind of a struggle."

  "Phil would have fought. And I guess the thing that sticks in my mind most of all is the business about the pine. We were out playing golf one time..."

  "I know," Lucas said. "He kicked the ball out."

  "How'd you know?"

  "You told me," Lucas said, scratching his head. "I don't know when, but you did."

  "Well, nobody else knew," Carr said.

  They stood looking at the body for a moment, then Weather came up and said, "That's the knife."

  "No question?"

  "Not in my mind."

  "It's all over town that he did it," Carr said mournfully. All three of them simultaneously turned away from the body and started down the hall toward the living room.

  They were passing Bergen's office, and Lucas glanced at the green IBM typewriter pulled out on a typing tray. A Zeos computer sat on a table to the other side, with a printer to its left.

  "Wait a minute." He looked at the computer, then at the bookcase beside it. Instructional manuals for Windows , WordPerfect, MS-DOS, the Biblica RSV Biblecommentary and reference software, a CompuServe guide, and other miscellaneous computer books were stacked on the shelves, along with the boxes that the software came in.

  The computer had two floppy-disk drives. The 5.25 drive was empty, but a blue disk waited in the 3.5-inch drive.

  Lucas leaned into the hallway and yelled for Crane: "Hey, are you guys gonna dust the computer keys?"

  "Um, if you want," Crane called back. "We haven't found any computer stuff, though."

  "Okay. I'm going to bring it up," he said. To Carr: "I use WordPerfect."

  With Carr and Weather looking over his shoulder, Lucas punched up the computer, typed WP to activate WordPerfect, then the F5 key to get a listing of files. He specified the B drive. The light went on over the occupied disk drive and a listing flashed onto the screen.

  "Look at this," Lucas said. He tapped a line that said: Serl-9

  5-,213

  01-08 12:38a "What is it?"

  "He was on the computer last night-this morning-at 12:38 A.m. That's when he closed the file. I wonder why he didn't compose his note on it? It's a lot easier and neater than a typewriter." He punched directional keys to select the last file and brought it up.

  "It, s a sermon... it looks like... Sermon 1-9. That would have been for tomorrow morning if that's the way T3 he listed them." He reopened the index of files and ran his finger down the screen. "Yeah, see?

  Here's last Sunday, z ET: Serl-2. Did you go to Mass?"

  I'sure."

  "Let's put it on Look." He called the second file up.

  "Is that Sunday's sermon?"

  Carr read for a moment, then said, "Yeah, that's it. Right to the word, as far as I can tell."

  "All right, so that's how he does it." Lucas tapped the E x i t key twice to get back to the first file and began reading.

  "Look at this," he said, pointing at the screen. "He's denying it.

  He's denying he did it, at 12:38 A.M."

  Carr read through the draft sermon, moving his lips, blood draining from his face. "Was he murdered? Or did this just trigger something, coming face-to-face with his own lies?"

  "I'd say he was killed," Lucas said. Weather's hand was tight on his shoulder. "We have to go on that assumption.

  If we're wrong, no harm done. If we're right... our man's still out there."

  CHAPTER 19

  The Iceman lay with his head on the pillow, the yellowhaired girl sprawled restlessly beside him. They were watching the tinny miniature television run through 1940s cartoons, Hekyll and Jekyll, Mighty Mouse.

  Bergen was dead. The deputies the Iceman had talked to-a half-dozen of them, including the Madison people-had swallowed the note. They wanted to believe that the troubles were over, the case was solved. And just that morning he'd finally gotten something definitive about the magazine photo.

  The thing was worthless. The reproduction was so bad that nothing could be made of it.

  At noon, he'd decided he was clear. At one o'clock, he'd heard the first rumors of dissent: that Carr was telling people Bergen had been murdered.

  And he'd heard about Harper. About a deal...

  Harper would sell his own mother for a nickel. When his kid was killed, Harper treated it as an inconvenience.

  If Harper talked, if Harper said anything, the Iceman was done.

  Harper knew who was in the photograph.

  The same applied to Doug Reston, the Schoeneckers, and the rest. But those problems were not immediate. Harper was the immediate problem.

  Bergen's death made a difference, whether Carr liked it or not, whether he believed it or not. If the killings stopped, I believing that Bergen was the killer would become increasingly convenient.

  He sighed, and the yellow-haired girl looked at him, a worry wrinkle creasing the space between her eyes. "Penny for your thoughts," she said.

  "Is that all, just a penny?" He stroked the back of her neck. Doug Reston had a particular fondness for her. She was so pale, so youthful. With Harper, she touched off an unusual violence: Harper wanted to bruise her, force her.

  "I gotta ask you something," she said. She sat up, let the blanket drop down around her waist.

  " Sure."

  ,'Did you kill the LaCourts?" She asked it flatly, watching him, then continued in a rush: "I don't care if you did, I really don't, but maybe I could help."

  "Why would you think that?"' the Iceman asked calmly.

  'Cause of that picture of you and Jim Harper and Lisa havin' it. I know Russ Harper thought you mighta done it, except he didn't think you were brave enough."

  "You think I'm brave enough?"

  "I know you are, 'cause I know the Iceman," she said.

  The yellow-haired girl's brother kept rabbits. Ten hutches were lined up along the back of the mobile home, up on stands, with a canvas awning that could be dropped over the....... front. Fed on Purina rabbit chow and garbage, the rabbits fattened up nicely; one made a meal for the three of them.

  The Iceman pulled four of them out of their hutches, stuffed them into a garbage bag, and tied them to the carry-rack. The yellow-haired girl rode her brother's sled, a noisy wreck but operable. They powered down through the Miller tract and into the Chequarnegon, the yellow-haired girl leading, the Iceman coming up behind.

  The yellow-haired girl loved the freedom of the machine, the sense of speed, and pushed it, churning along the narrow trails, her breath freezing on her face mask, the motor rumbling in their helmets. They passed two other sleds, lifted a hand. The Iceman passed her at Parson's Corners, led her down a forest road and then into a trail used only a few times a day. In twenty minutes they'd reached the sandpit where John Mueller's body had been found. the snow had been cut up by the sheriff's four-by-fours and the crime scene people, but now snow was drifting into the holes they'd made. In two days even without much wind, there'd be no sign of the murder.

  The Iceman pulled the sack of rabbits off the carry-rack, dropped it on the snow.

  "Ready?"

  "Sure." She looked down at the bag. "Where's the gun?"

  "Here." He patted his pocket, then stooped, ripped a hole in the garbage bag, pulled out a struggling rabbit, and dropped it on the snow. The rabbit crouched, then started to snuffle around: a tame rabbit, it didn't try to run.

  "Okay," he said. He took the pistol out of his pocket.

  "When it's this cold, you keep the pistol in your pocket as long as you can, 'cause your skin can stick to it if you don't." He pushed the cylinder release and flipped the cylinder out. "This is a.22 caliber revolver with a six-shot cylinder. Mind where you point it." He slapped the cylinder back in and handed it to her.

  "Where's the safety?"

  "No safety," said the Iceman.

  "My brother's rifle has one."

  "Won't find them on revolvers. Find them on
long guns and automatics."

  She pointed the pistol at the rabbit, which had taken a couple of tentative hops away. "I don't know what difference this makes. I kill them anyway."