Winter Prey

by John Sandford

  Nothing on the Schoeneckers?"

  "No. Can't find Harper either," Lacey said. "They dropped off the earth."

  "Or they're out in the goddamn snow somewhere, with coyotes chewing on them," Climpt said.

  "Dammit." Lucas bit his thumbnail, thinking, then shook his head, looked at Carr. "Shelly, I really think we gotta get Westrom in here.

  We gotta figure out what happened."

  Carr nodded. "Then let's do it. You want to go get him?"

  "You should," Lucas said. "One way or another, we're gonna break this thing. Since you're an elected sheriff..

  "Right." Carr took a set of keys out of his pocket, opened his bottom desk drawer, and pulled out a patrol-style gun belt with a revolver.

  He stood up and strapped it on.

  "Haven't seen this thing in months. Let's go get him."

  Carr, Climpt, and Lucas went after Westrom while Lacey and Weather waited at Carr's office. "We'll bring him in the front so we don't have to go by dispatch," Carr told Lacey as they left. "We want to keep this quiet. We'll call you before we start back so you can open the door for us."

  "Okay. What about his wife?"' Lacey asked.

  Carr looked at Lucas. "We oughta ask her to come along," Lucas said.

  "I mean, if Westrom's in this with Helper, then his wife's probably involved at some level. If she tipped Helper off, we'd be screwed."

  "What if she doesn't want to come?" Carr asked.

  Lucas shrugged. "Then we bust her. You can always apologize later."

  Westrom was wearing blue flannel pajamas when he came to the door. He first peeked out, saw Carr, frowned, opened the inner door and pushed open the storm door.

  "Shelly? What's going on? Nothing's happened to Tommy ?"

  "No, nothing happened to Tommy," Carr said. He stepped forward, into the house, and Lucas and Climpt pressed in behind them. "We need to talk to you, Dick," Carr said.

  "You better get dressed."

  If Westrom was guilty of anything, Lucas decided, he deserved an Academy Award for acting. He was getting angry. "Why dressed?

  Shelly, what the hell is going on?"

  Westrom's wife, a small woman with pink plastic curlers in her hair, stepped into the room, wearing a robe.

  "Shelly?"

  "You better get dressed, too, Janice. We need you to come down to the courthouse. We'll talk about it there."

  "Well, what's it about?" Westrom asked.

  "About the LaCourt killings," Carr said. "We've got more questions."

  While the Westroms were dressing, Carr asked, "What do you think?"

  "They don't know what's happening," Lucas said.

  "Who's Tommy?"

  "That's their boy," said Climpt. "He goes to college down in Eau Claire."

  The Westroms; thought they wanted a lawyer. And they didn't want Weather in the room. "What's she here for?"

  "She's another witness," Carr said, glancing at Weather.

  "About a lawyer..

  "And we'll get you a lawyer if you really want one. But honestly, if you haven't done anything, you won't need one, and it'll be a big expense," Carr said. "You know me, Dick.

  I won't bust you just for show."

  "We didn't do anything," Westrorn protested. His wife, in jeans and a yellow sweatshirt, kept looking between Carr and her husband.

  -Al T "What happened the night of the fire?" Lucas asked.

  "You were cooking and Duane was there, and he was looking out the window..

  "We've told you a hundred times," Westrorn insisted.

  Honest to God, that's what happened."

  Lucas stared at him for a moment, then said, "Did you actually see Father Phil's Jeep? I mean..

  "Yeah, I saw it." could you have identified it from where you were standing if Helper hadn't been there? Could you have said, 'That's Father Bergen's Jeep'?"

  Westrorn stared down at the floor for a moment, thinking , then said, "Well, no. I mean, I saw the lights as it went by-and Father Phil admitted it was him."

  "Like regular truck lights?" Lucas asked.

  "Yeah.

  "Bergen was pulling a trailer," Lucas said suddenly.

  Westrorn frowned. "I didn't see any trailer lights," he said.

  Weather had been looking at Lucas and she picked up on him. "If you don't mind me asking, Dick, what were you doing before you were cooking? Just hanging out?"

  Lucas glanced up at her and nodded, cracked a small smile. Westrom said, "Well, kinda. I came on, took a nap, then Duane called and I went down..

  "How long were you sleeping?"' Lucas asked intently.

  "An hour maybe," Westrom. said. He looked around at them. "What?"

  "Do you usually take a nap when you go on duty at the fire station?"

  "Well, yeah."

  "How often? What percentage of times?"

  "Well, it's just my routine. I get out there around five, take a nap for an hour or so. Nothing to do. Duane's not much company. Maybe we watch a little TV."

  "Duane's got a snowmobile?" _7

  "Arctic Cat," said Westrom.

  Lucas nodded, glanced at Carr. "That's it. It took timing, but that's it."

  Carr leaned across his desk. "Dick, Janice, I hate to inconvenience you, but we'd like you to stay here overnight-for your own protection.

  You don't have to stay in jail-we could find an empty office and put some bedding inside-but we want you safe until we can arrest him."

  Westrom looked at Lucas, at Carr, and then at his wife.

  Janice Westrom spoke up for the first time since she arrived at the courthouse. "We'll do anything you want if you think he might come looking for us," she said. She shivered.

  "Anything you want."

  When they were gone, Lucas said, "You want me to run it down?"

  "Go ahead," said Carr, leaning back in his chair. He looked almost sleepy.

  Lucas said, "Duane Helper finds out somehow that Lisa LaCourt has a picture of him with the Harper kid. He's seen the original, so he knows that his skin grafts are showing.

  But he doesn't know that the photo in the paper,is so bad that his grafts are washed out of the picture. Or maybe he does know, but he's scared to death that once a cop sees the newsprint copy, we'll find a better one.

  "Anyway, Westrom shows up for his shift at the firehouse and goes upstairs to bed. Helper climbs on his sled, goes on down to the LaCourts'. Someplace along the line, he sees Father Bergen, probably as Bergen leaves the LaCourts'.

  "He kills the LaCourts, looks for the photo, doesn't find it, sets the*place to burn-Crane tells me that he used the water heater to delay the fire-and he heads back to the firehouse. That's a three-minute trip on a snowmobile if you hurry."

  "And dammit, we should have thought about that fire delay, about a fireman knowing that kind of stuff."

  Climpt picked it up: "He gets back, parks the sled, pulls off his snowmobile suit, wakes up Westrom for dinner..

  Weather: He sees a car go by, any car, and says, 'There goes Father Bergen." Westrom sees the lights, has no reason to think it's not Father Bergen, later has it confirmed that it was..

  "And it all gives Helper what he thought would be the perfect alibi," Lucas said. "He's in the firehouse, with a witness, when the alarm goes off. With the storm, he figures the priest won't know exactly how long it took him to get from one place to another, so that covers any little time problems. And he's right. He's only messed up because Shelly sees that the snow is too deep on Frank LaCourt's body, and then Crane finds the delay mechanism on the S4.............

  .

  heater." water Climpt: "He killed Phil because Phil kept insisting that the LaCourts were alive when he left, just like they were. And if they were alive, then the firemen had to be wrong... and if we looked at the firemen.

  "We still couldn't have resolved it," Lucas said. "We needed the picture."

  "But we figured him out," Carr growled. "Now how're we gonna get the sonofabitch?"

  CHAPTER 24
>
  Duane Helper-the Iceman-sat at the picnic table with the two lab techs, halfheartedly playing three-handed stud poker for dimes.

  "Goddamn Jerry's had four hands in a row, Duane, ya gotta do something." The older of the two crime-lab people dealt the cards.

  They had almost finished the LaCourt house, they said. They'd wrung it out.

  Two more days, or three, and they'd be done. When they were gone, and the possibility of more developments began to fade, and the killing stopped, interest in the case would dwindle. He had to reach the Schoeneckers, but he'd thought about it. Before they came back, they'd almost surely call to talk. Bergen dead, Harper dead.

  He'd done it.

  The Iceman listened and played his cards.

  A truck pulled into the parking area, doors slammed.

  Climpt came in, stamping snow off his boots. The Minneapolis cop, Davenport, was behind him, shoulders hunched against the cold. He hadn't shaved, and looked big-eyed, too thin.

  Outside, in the early-morning light, snow swirled around the fire building. The storm had begun in earnest just before dawn, thunder booming through the forest, the snow coming in waves. Almost nothing was moving on the highway except snowplows.

  "Wicked out there," Climpt said. His face was wet with snow. He took off his gloves and wiped his eyebrows with the back of his hand.

  "Understand you got some coffee."

  "Help yourself," said the Iceman. He pointed at an oversized coffee urn on a bench behind the lab people. "You out at the house?"

  "Yeah. They're giving up for the day, tying everything down, getting back to town before the snow gets too bad," Lucas said. He looked at the techs. "Crane says to get your asses back there."

  "Want to get my ass back to Madison," said the older of the two techs.

  "Find a warm coed," said the younger one. "One more j!

  hand."

  AI Davenport peeled off his parka and brushed off the snow.

  He nodded to the Iceman, took a cup of coffee from Climpt, and sat on the end of the picnic table bench.

  "Anything new on the prints?" he asked.

  "Nope. We're pretty much cleaned up," said the older tech. He dealt a round of three cards. "We've shipped in a few hundred sets, but hell, we printed Bergen after he croaked, and we can't even find a match to him. And we know he was there."

  The younger tech chipped in: "The guy used a.44 and a corn-knife, took them with him. If it wasn't Bergen, he wiped the handles. And it was so cold, he had to have gloves with him. He probably just put them on after he chopped the kid."

  Exactly, thought the Iceman. He sat and polished.

  "Yeah. God damnit." Lucas looked into the coffee cup, then sipped from it.

  "You heard about the autopsy on Father Bergen?" Climpt asked. He was leaning against the cupboard by the coffeepot "There were some problems, I guess," the tech said. He flipped out another set of cards "Duane's got ace 'n' shit, George's looking at shit 'n' shit, and I'm queen-jack. I'm in for a dime."

  "They couldn't find any chemical traces of gelatin in his stomach. The sleeping pills he supposedly took with the booze came in gelatin capsules," Climpt said. "We didn't find any empty caps at the house, so he either flushed them or somebody dumped them in the booze and forced him to drink it... and forgot about the capsules."

  The Iceman hadn't thought about the capsules. He'd flushed them, right here in the firehouse.

  "So what does that mean?" the tech asked. "Sounds like it could go either way-either Bergen flushed them or some-.

  body else did, but we don't know which."

  "Yeah, that's right," Climpt said.

  The tech ran out another round of cards: "Duane picks up an eight to give him a pair with his ace, George holds with his fours, and I'm looking at a possible straight. Another dime on the jack-queen-nine."

  The second tech asked, "How about that picture? Do you any good?"

  Lucas brightened. "Yeah. Maybe. Milwaukee found the guy who published the paper. He still had the page negative, and they made a better print. Should have been here today, but with this storm...

  should be here in the morning."

  The Iceman sat and listened, as he had for a week, in the center of the only warm public place within miles of the LaCourt house. The cops had dropped in from the first night, looking for a place to sit and gossip.

  Anything in it?" the younger tech asked.

  "Won't know until we see it," Lucas said.

  "If you find time to look at it," Climpt snorted, burying his nose in his cup. His voice had a certain tone and the two crime techs and the Iceman all looked at Lucas.

  Lucas laughed and said, "Yeah. Fuck you, Gene, you're jealous."

  Climpt tipped his head at Lucas. "He's seeing-I'm choosing my words carefully-he's seeing one of our local doctors."

  "Female, I hope," said the older of the techs.

  "No doubt about that," said Climpt. "I wouldn't mind R.;t myself."

  "Careful, Gene," Lucas said. He glanced at his watch.

  "We probably ought to get back to town."

  The tech was still dealing the round of five-card stud, flipped another ace out to the Iceman. "Whoa, two pair, aces and eights," he said. He flipped over his own cards.

  "You can have it."

  When Climpt and Davenport left, the Iceman stood up and drifted toward the window, watched them as they stopped at the nose of the truck, said a few words, then got in the truck. A moment later they were gone.

  "I guess we oughta get back," the older tech said. "Goddamn , a couple more days of this shit and we're out a here."

  "If anything can get out of here," said the other man. He went to the window, pulled back a curtain, and looked out.

  "Jesus, look at it come down."

  After the techs had gone, the Iceman sat alone, thinking.

  Time to get out, said a voice at the back of his head. He could start packing his trunk now, be ready to go by dark.

  With the storm, nobody would be stopping by the firehouse.

  He could be in Duluth in two hours, Canada in another four.

  Once across the border, he could lose himself, head north and west out to Alaska.

  If he could take down Weather Karkinnen... But there'd till be the Schoeneckers and Doug and the others. But they W4.1 s were thousands of miles away. Nobody might ever find them. It could still work.

  And besides, he wanted Weather. He could feel her out there, a hostile eminence. She deserved to die.

  4, Get out, said the voice.

  Kill her, thought the Iceman.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Wisconsin state trooper had buried himself in a snowdrift across from the fire station. He wore an insulated winter camouflage suit that he'd bought for deer hunting, pac boots, and a camo face mask. He kept a pair of binoculars in a canvas bag with the radio, and a Thermos of hot chocolate in another bag. He'd been in place for two hours, reasonably warm, fairly comfortable.

  He'd watched Davenport and Climpt go into the station to nail Helper down.

  After they'd been inside for a minute , the FBI man, the black guy, jogged up from the back, used a key to go through the access door into the truck bay. Two minutes later the FBI man slipped out and disappeared into the snow. Then Davenport and Climpt pulled out, followed by the crime techs from Madison. Since then, nothing. The trooper had expected immediate action. When it hadn't come, sitting in the drift out of the wind, he'd felt a bit sleepy; the winter storm muffled all sound, dimmed all color, eliminated odors. He unscrewed the top of the Thermos, took a hit of chocolate, screwed the top back on.

  He was pushing the jug back into his carry sack when he saw movement.

  The door on the far truck bay, where the FBI man had gone in, was rolling upThe trooper pulled the radio from the bag, put it to his face: "We got movement," he said. "You hear me?"

  The radio was unfamiliar, provided by the FBI, all talk scrambled.

  We hear you. How's he moving?

 
; "Hang on," the patrolman said. He studied the open door through the binoculars. A moment later Helper bumped out through the door on his snowmobile, looked right and left, then turned toward the highway.