Winter Prey

by John Sandford

  The Iceman put his finger to his lips, said, "Do it," to the girl. She stepped closer to him, unzipped his parka, pulled it off his shoulders, patted it down. Harper watched for a moment, confused, then said, "Oh.

  You think..

  The Iceman waggled the shotgun at his head, and Harper shut up, but relaxed.

  "Shirt," whispered the yellow-haired girl. She unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it off. Untied his boots, pulled them free, looked inside.

  Unzipped his pants, pulled them down, pulled them off.

  "As long as you're down there," Harper joked.

  The Iceman half-smiled. The yellow-haired girl pulled down his underpants, then pulled them back up. Lifted his t-shirt, pulled it down.

  "Don't see nothing," she said.

  "Okay," the Iceman said. This had worked with the priest. People want to believe. He kept the shotgun on Harper's skull. "Now, Russ, we want to talk, but we're not sure you didn't cut a deal. We're just trying to be careful.

  We want you to sit down on that couch and Ginny's gonna put a little tape around your hands and ankles."

  "Bullshit she is." Harper was wearing nothing but his underwear and socks.

  "I got the gun and I'm scared," the Iceman said. He blurted it out-let his voice rise and break. "If anything cracks, I'll go to prison forever. You could handle prison, Russ, but I'd die there. Man, I'm scared shitless."

  You don't need no tape," Harper said. He went to the couch and sat down.

  The shotgun tracked him. "Anyway, gimme my pants."

  "We need to tape you up," the Iceman insisted. "I gotta go outside and see if anybody came with you. You coulda made a deal."

  "I didn't make no deal."

  "Then the tape ain't gonna hurt, is it?"

  Harper stared at the Iceman. The shotgun barrel never wavered. He finally shrugged. "All right, you motherfucker."

  The yellow-haired girl was there with a roll of duct tape.

  "Cross your feet," she said.

  "You're getting' kinda bossy, ya little cunt," Harper, said.

  But he crossed his feet. She taped them in a minute.

  "Now your hands," she said. Harper looked at the gun, shrugged, and crossed his hands. "Behind you."

  "God damnit."

  When he was taped, she stood up and looked at the Iceman. "Got him," she said.

  "Go check,@' the Iceman said, tipping his head toward the door. "Go a half-mile up the road, both ways."

  "What..." Harper began.

  "Shut up," said the Iceman.

  "Listen, motherfucker..."

  The Iceman stepped close to him and hit him with the stock of the shotgun. The blow caught Harper on the ear and knocked him off the couch.

  "You mother----"- Harper groaned. He struggled to get up.

  The Iceman put a foot on his head and pressed. Harper thrashed, but the Iceman rode him, giggling. The girl pulled on a snowmobile suit, boots, ran out the door and started the snowmobile. She was back in five minutes.

  "Nobody out there," she said.

  "Is the tape strong enough to hold him?" the Iceman asked. He was sitting on Harper's head, Harper cursing weakly.

  "That's all I got except for some of that paper tape," the yellow-haired girl said. Then brightened. "There's some wire that Rosie was gonna use for clothesline."

  "Get it. And some pliers."

  They wrapped the soft steel wire around Harper's wrists, and the yellow-haired girl turned it until Harper started to scream. "Fuckin' hurts, don't it," she said to him. She took three more turns, saw blood.

  "Careful," the Iceman said. "Cops look for blood." Blood is evidence.

  She nodded, and carefully wired his feet, wrapping it all the way to his knees. "That's got it," she said.

  The Iceman stood up. Harper lay still for a moment, then tried to get to his knees. When he was halfway up, the Iceman kicked him in the middle of the back, and he pitched over on his face. "Motherfucker.

  .

  "Hurts, don't it," the yellow-haired girl said, squatting FT.

  next to him so she could look in his eyes. His eyelids flickered, showing the first sign of real fear. She reached down into his underpants. "You know what I think I'll do?" she asked playfully. "I think I'll get a knife and cut your dick off. How'd you like that?"

  The Iceman, climbing into his snowmobile suit, said, "We don't have time to fuck around. You know how to et there?"

  "Meet you in ten minutes," she said, intense, excited.

  "Fake it easy in the dark," the Iceman said.

  Harper was thrashing on the floor again, managed to roll onto his back, tried to sit up. He was bleeding from his nose. The Iceman stooped, caught the wires between his ankles, and dragged him across the room, through the front -haired girl was on the door, down the porch. The yellow Iceman's snowmobile, waved, and pulled away.

  Harper's head banged off the stoop, and the Iceman pulled him through the snow to Harper's own truck, picked him up with some effort, and threw him in the back, Then he went back inside, gathered up Harper's clothes, got the truck keys, and went back out.

  The trip to the sandpit took seven or eight minutes. The Iceman took the right down to the pit, pulled off the road into the area beaten down by deputies' trucks when they'd found the Mueller kid. He climbed out, walked around in back, dropped the tailgate, and jerked Harper out of the...............

  back, letting him fall to the ground.

  "You still alive?"' he asked as Harper groaned. The temperature was below zero; in his underwear, Harper wouldn't last long. The Iceman dragged him around into the truck headlights as a snowmobile curved in from the trail.

  The yellow-haired girl stopped beside the truck and got down.

  Harper, on his back, his face a mask of blood, spit once and then croaked, "You kill Jim?"

  "Yup. Enjoyed it," the Iceman said. "Fucked him first."

  "Thought you might of," Harper said. He thrashed for a moment, then began to weep, his body heaving. The Iceman walked back to the snowmobile, pulled his snowshoes off the rack, stepped into them and clipped them over his toes.

  The yellow-haired girl was standing over Harper, watching him, her hand in her pocket.

  "Got your gun?" the Iceman asked.

  "Yup." She'd had it in her hand, and she pulled it out of her pocket.

  "So shoot him."

  "MeT' Harper tried to roll, but just managed to get facedown. She stared in fascination at the back of his head.

  "Sure. It's a rush. Here." The Iceman stepped back from Harper, bent, grabbed his feet and rolled him in place until Harper was faceup again. Harper tried to sit up, but the Iceman stepped on his chest, pushing him flat.

  "C'mon," Harper groaned. He saw the gun in the yellowhaired girl's hand.

  "C'mon-the cocksucker killed your school friends."

  "Weren't no friends of mine. And besides, you're the one who just had to fuck me in the ass and hurt me. You remember that, Russ Harper?

  Me hurtin' and you laughin'?" She looked at the Iceman. "Where should I shoot him?"' "In the head's best," the Iceman said.

  She leaned forward with the gun, holding it two feet from Harper's forehead. He closed his eyes, squeezed them.

  When she didn't pull the trigger, he said, "Fuck you then.

  Fuck you."

  _DGM She still didn't pull the trigger, and he opened his eyes.

  As they opened, she pulled it, and the bullet hit in the left side of the forehead. He groaned, started to thrash.

  "Again," said the Iceman. "Do it again."

  She fired twice more, one bullet going through Harper's left eye, the other through the bridge of his nose. The second bullet killed him.

  She fired the third because it felt good. The gun snapped in her hand, like a gun should.

  She could feel the power going out.

  "How's that feel?" the Iceman asked. Harper was still in the snow, his head at an odd angle; the blood running down his face looked purely black in the headlight.r />
  "God... that was intense," said the yellow-haired girl.

  She knelt to look at Harper's face, squeezed his nose, then looked up at the Iceman. "Now what?"

  "Now I carry him into the woods where they won't find him right away, and then I drive his truck out onto Welsh Lake by the fish shacks and leave it there. You pick me up."

  "If we get another one, can I... T' "We'll see," the Iceman said, looking down at Harper.

  There was very little blood. "If you're good, maybe," the Iceman said.

  And he started to giggle.

  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."

  "God damnit," 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.

  "T'here 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 as killed. If we could figure out that time problem when the LaCourts were killed." w "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 "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 tenkilometer 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.

  n 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 Z's 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, g-4 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 out a. 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 d.

  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 out...................

  doors."

  "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', admit ted 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 EA there's no reason to think that they're lying. Something's I screwed up and we don't know what. If I can figure that A 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..

  .1y 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?"

  I t w4

  "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."