Winter Prey (27 page)

Lucas picked up a stack of magazines, shuffled through them. Half were about sex or fetishism. Two were different white supremacist sheets, one was a computer hacker’s publication, and another involved underground radio. They all looked about the same, neatly printed in black-and-white on the cheapest grade of newsprint, with amateurish layout and canned graphics. “Which issue was this stuff in?”

“I don’t know offhand. What I do is, I go down to the bookstores and get these adult novels. I take stuff out of them, type it up in columns—sometimes I rewrite them a little—and I put in the pictures people send me. I’ve got a post office box.”

“You’ve got a subscription list?” Lucas asked.

“No. This goes through adult stores,” McLain said. He looked up at Lucas. “Let me see that copy again.”

Lucas handed it to him and he glanced at the bottom of the page, then said, “Just a minute.”

“What about this Nazi shit?” Domeier asked, looking through it. “Does that go through the bookstores?”

McLain had wheeled himself to a bookcase next to the bed, and was going through a stack of
Playboys,
glancing at the party jokes on the backs of the centerfolds. “No, that’s all commissioned stuff. The Nazi magazines, the phreak and hacker stuff, the surplus military, that’s all commission. I just do the sex and fetish.”

He scanned the backside of a blonde with blow-dried pubic hair, then checked the cover. “Here . . . I crib jokes from
Playboy
when a column doesn’t fill up. This is the August issue, and here’s some of the jokes on the bottom of your page. So you’re looking for something printed in the last six months, which would be maybe the top fifty or sixty magazines.”

Domeier found the picture ten minutes later, halfway through a magazine called
Very Good Boys:
“Here it is.”

Lucas took it, glanced at the caption and the little-head joke. They were right.

The photo at the top of the page had a nude man, turned half-sideways to display an erection. In the background, a boy sprawled across an unmade bed, smirking at the camera. His hair fell forward across his forehead, and his chest and legs were thin. He looked very young, younger than he must have been. His head was turned enough that an earring was visible at his earlobe. He held a cigarette in his left hand. His left wrist lay on his hip, the hand drooping slightly. He was missing a finger.

The photo was not good, but the boy was recognizable. The man in the foreground was not. He was visible from hips to knees and was slightly out of focus: the camera had concentrated on the boy, made a sexual prop out of the man.

“You said the kid’s dead?” Domeier asked, looking over Lucas’ shoulder.

“Yeah.”

“There ain’t much there, man,” Domeier said.

“No.”

There wasn’t: the bed had no head or footboard, nor were there any other furnishings visible except what appeared to be a bland beige or tan carpet and a pair of gym shoes off to the left. Since the picture was black-and-white, none of the colors were apparent.

Lucas looked at McLain. “Where’s the original?”

McLain shrugged, wheeled his chair back a few inches. “I shredded it and threw it. If I kept this shit around, I’d be buried in paper.”

“Then how come you keep this?” Lucas asked, pointing at the stack of paper in the closet.

“That’s references . . . for people who want to know what I do,” McLain said.

Lucas turned his head to Domeier and said, “If we slapped this asshole around a little bit, maybe threw him in the bathtub, you think people’d get pissed off?”

Domeier looked at McLain, then at Lucas. “Who’re they gonna believe, two cops or a fartbag like this? You wanna throw him?”

“Wait just a fuckin’ minute,” McLain complained. “I’m giving you what you asked for.”

“I want the goddamn original,” Lucas snapped.

McLain rolled back another foot. “Man, I don’t fuckin’ have it.”

Lucas tracked him, leaning over him, face close. “And I don’t fuckin’ believe it.”

McLain moved back another foot and said, “Wait. You come out in the kitchen.”

They trailed him back down the hall, through the living room into the kitchen. McLain wheeled his chair up to a plastic garbage bag next to the back door, pulled the tie off, and started pulling out paper.

“See, these are the pasteups for the last one. I output the stuff on a laser printer, scan the picture, paste it up and ship it. I shred the originals. See, here’s an original.” He passed Lucas several strips of shiny plastic paper. A
shredded Polaroid. “Here’s some more.”

Lucas looked at the strips of plastic, which showed the back half of a nude woman, sitting on an Oriental carpet. Then McLain passed him a few more strips, which showed the front half of her, doing oral sex on a man, who, as in the Jim Harper photos, was cut off at hips and knees. McLain dumped a torn-up pizza carton on the floor, found a few more pieces of originals.

“What about the laser printer copies?” Lucas asked.

“I get the pasteups back and I shred those, too,” Bobby said.

“Why do you shred them?”

“I don’t want garbagemen finding dirty pictures and calling Domeier,” McLain said.

“You don’t keep any?” Domeier asked.

McLain looked up from the garbage bag. “Listen, you see so much of this shit, after a while they’re like 29-cent stamps. And some of the people who contribute this stuff aren’t so nice, so I don’t wanna leave around any envelopes with addresses or that kind of stuff. I wouldn’t want to bring any shit down on them.”

“All right,” Lucas said. He tossed the strips of Polaroid back at McLain. “You’re saying you never saw the guy who took the picture of the kid.”

“That’s right. People send me letters and some of them have pictures. I’ll put in the letter and the picture if it can be reproduced. You’d be amazed at how bad most of the pictures are.”

After a few more questions, they left McLain and walked back out to Lucas’ four-by-four, taking McLain’s four copies of the magazine.

“Did we do good?” Domeier asked.

“You did good, but
I
just shot myself in the foot,” Lucas said. He turned on the dome light, opened a magazine again, and studied the picture. “The way things broke—the kid was murdered, then the LaCourts had gotten hold of the picture of him—I was sure there must be something in the picture.
Something.
But there’s not a fuckin’ thing here.”

Just a blurry picture of a man in the foreground and the kid in the background.

“Maybe you could figure out how long his dick is, go around with a ruler,” Domeier said straightfaced. “You know, hang out in the men’s rooms.”

“Not a bad idea. Why don’t you come on up?”

Lucas tore the photo page out of the magazine, threw the rest of the paper out of the truck into the parking lot, folded the page, and stuck it in his jacket pocket. “Goddammit. I thought we’d get more.”

CHAPTER
15

Just south of Green Bay, moving as fast as he could in the dark, Lucas ran into snow flurries, off-and-on squalls dropping wet, quarter-sized flakes. He paused at a McDonald’s on the edge of Green Bay, got a cheeseburger and coffee, and pushed on. West of Park Falls on County F, he slowed for what he thought was a highway accident, two cars and a pickup on the road in the middle of nowhere.

A man in an arctic parka waved him through, but he stopped, rolled down his window.

“Got a problem?”

The man’s face was a small oval surrounded by fur, only one eye visible at a time. He pointed toward a cluster of people gathered around a snowbank. “Got a deer down. She was walking down the road like she didn’t know where she was, and she kept falling down. Starvin’, I think.”

“I’m a cop, I’ve got a pistol.”

“Well, we’re gonna try to tie her down, get her into town and feed her. She’s just a young one.”

“Good luck.”

The snow grew heavier as he left Price County for Lincoln. Back in town, under the streetlights, the fat flakes turned the place into a corny advertisement for Christmas.

He found Weather and Climpt at her house, playing gin rummy in the living room.

“How’d it go?” Climpt asked. He dumped a hand without looking at it.

“We found the picture; not much in it,” Lucas said. He took out the copy he’d ripped from the magazine, passed it to Climpt. Climpt opened it, looked at it, said, “That narrows it down to white guys.”

Lucas shook his head and Weather reached for the photo, but Climpt held it away from her. “Not for ladies,” he said.

“Kiss my ass, Gene,” Weather said.

“Yes, ma’am, whatever you say,” Climpt said with a dry chuckle. But he handed the photo back to Lucas. “Are you gonna bag out here again?”

“Yeah,” Lucas said. “But I’d like to stick her somewhere that nobody knows about.”

Weather put her hands on her hips. “That’s right, talk around me—I’m a lamp,” she said.

Climpt looked at her, sighed, said, “Goddamn feminists.” And to Lucas: “You could put her at my place.”

“Everybody in town would know about it in ten minutes,” Weather said. “They know my car, they know your schedule . . . if there were lights in your place when you’re supposed to be working, they’d be calling the cops.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m okay here as long as you guys are around,” Weather said, looking from one of them to the other.

When Climpt had gone, Weather took Lucas by the collar, kissed him, and said, “Show me the picture.”

He got his coat and handed it to her.

“Quite the display,” she said, peering at it. She shook her head. “I’ve probably got thirty patients who look more or less like that—the belly and the fat butt. How do you identify them from that?” She shook her head. “You won’t get any help from me.”

“Bums me out,” Lucas said, running a hand up through
his hair. “We’ve got to find some way to crank up the pressure. I thought there’d be something in the picture. If it didn’t ID the guy, there’d be
something.
”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” she said, poking the photograph at him. “If Jim Harper was involved in a sex ring, I can’t believe that Russ wasn’t aware of it. If blackmail ever occurred to anybody, it’d be Russ.”

Lucas took the photo back, stared through it, thinking. Then: “You’re right. We’ve gotta squeeze him. Squeeze him for public consumption. Maybe our asshole will come after him, or maybe Harper can put the finger on him.” He wandered around the living room, touching her things: the photos of her parents, a Hummel doll, thinking. “If we play these Schoeneckers off against Harper . . . Huh . . .” He carefully folded the photograph, took his billfold out of his pocket, and stuck the photo in the fold, where he’d see it every time he paid for something. “How’re you doing?”

She shrugged. “I’m tired but I can’t sleep. I guess I’m a little scared.”

“You should get out. Visit some friends in the Cities.”

She shook her head. “Nope. He’s not going to get on top of me.”

“That’s a little dumb.”

“That’s the way it is, though,” she said. “How about you. Tired?”

“Stiff from the drive,” Lucas said. He yawned and stretched.

“When I bought this place, the only big change I made was to fix up my bathroom. I’ve got a big whirlpool tub back there. Why don’t you go in and lay in some hot water? I’ll put together a snack.”

“Terrific,” he said.

The tub looked like it might be black marble, and was easily six feet long. He half-filled it, fooled with a control panel until he got the whirlpool jets working, then eased himself into it. He found he could rest his head on a back ledge and float free in the hot water. The heat smoothed him out, took him out of the truck.

The photograph had to be the key, and now he had the
photograph. Why couldn’t he see it? What was it?

The door opened and Weather walked in, wearing a robe, carrying a bottle of wine. Lucas, embarrassed, sat up, but she pulled off the robe. Naked, she tested the water with her foot. She had small, solid breasts, a smooth, supple back, and long legs.

“Hot,” she said, stepping into the far end of the tub. She might have been blushing or it might have been the hot water.

“What about the snack?” Lucas asked.

“You’re looking at it, honey,” she said.

Fourth full day of the investigation: he felt like he’d been in Ojibway County forever. Felt like he’d known Weather forever.

Lucas made it into the sheriff’s office a few minutes after eight. The day was warmer, above zero, with damp spots in the streets where ice-remover chemicals had cut through the snow. The sky was an impenetrable gray. Despite the clouds hanging overhead, Lucas felt . . . light.

Different. He could still smell Weather, although he wasn’t sure if the smell was real or just something he’d memorized and was holding on to.

There was nothing light about Carr. He’d been heavy and pink, even at the LaCourt killing. Now he was gray-faced, drawn. He looked not hungry or starving, but desiccated, as though he were dying of thirst.

“Get it?” he asked when Lucas walked in.

Lucas handed him a copy of the porno magazine, folded open to the page with Jim Harper on it. “Is this it?” Carr asked, studying the photo.

“That’s it. That’s what the LaCourts had, anyway,” Lucas said.

Carr held it to the window for extra light. Henry Lacey ambled in, nodded to Lucas, and Carr handed him the photo. “Who is it, Henry? Who’s the fat guy?”

Lacey looked at it, then at Lucas. “I don’t see anything. Am I missing something?”

“I don’t think so,” Lucas said. Carr put his thumb to his mouth, began nibbling his cuticles, then quickly put his hand back on his desk, his movements jerky, out of sync. Strung-out. “When was the last time you had any sleep?” Lucas asked.

“Can’t remember,” Carr said vaguely. “Somebody tell me what to do.”

Lucas said, “How tight are you with the editor of the
Register
? And the radio station.”

“Same thing,” Carr said. He spun in his chair and looked out his window toward the city garage. “The answer is, pretty tight. Danny Jones is the brother to Bob Jones.”

“The junior high principal?”

“Yup. We played poker most Wednesday nights. Before this happened, anyway,” Carr said.

“If you just flat told him what you wanted in the paper, or on the radio, and explained that you needed it done to break this case, would he buy it?”

Carr, still staring out the window, thought it over, then said, “In this case—probably.”

Lucas outlined his proposal: that they go to the county attorney with the photographs they’d found of Jim Harper and get an arrest warrant for Russ Harper. They would charge Harper with promoting child pornography, drop him in jail.

“He’ll bail out in twenty minutes,” Lacey objected.

“Not if we work it right,” Lucas said. “We’ll pick him up this afternoon, question him, charge him tonight. We won’t have to take him to court until Monday. We tell the
Register
that he’s been arrested in connection with a pornography ring that we uncovered during the investigation of the LaCourt murders. We also leak the word that Harper’s dealing—that he’s trying to make an immunity deal if he turns in other members of the ring. And we tell Harper that we’ll give him immunity unless the Schoeneckers come in first. Anything about the Schoeneckers, by the way?”

“Nothing yet,” Carr said, shaking his head. “What you’re saying about Russ Harper is . . . we set him up. I mean, the
charges wouldn’t hold water.”

“We’re not setting him up. We’re using him to make something happen,” Lucas said. “And who knows? Maybe he has some ideas about the killer.”

“If he doesn’t, he’ll sue our butts. He’ll probably sue our butts anyway,” Carr said.

“A good attorney would get him in court and stick those pictures of Jim right up his ass,” Lucas said. Lucas leaned across the deck. “I’ll tell you, Shelly, there’s a possibility that the LaCourt murders and the Mueller kid and Jim Harper have nothing to do with this sex ring. Possible, but I don’t believe it. There’s a connection. We just haven’t found it. And Weather said last night she can’t believe a guy like Harper didn’t have some idea of what his kid was up to.”

“We’ve got to do it, Shelly,” Lacey said somberly. “We’ve got nothing else going for us. Not a frigging thing.”

“Let’s do it then,” Carr said. He looked up at Lucas, exhaustion in his eyes. “And you and me, we’ve got to go talk to Phil Bergen again.”

Bergen was waiting for them. Like Carr, he’d changed. But Bergen looked rested, clear-faced. Sober.

“I know what you’re here for,” he said when he let them in to the rectory. “Bob Dell called me. I didn’t know he was homosexual until he called.”

“You’ve never . . .” Lucas began.

“Never.” Bergen turned to Carr. “Shelly, I never would have believed that’d you’d think . . .”

“He didn’t believe it,” Lucas said. “I brought it up. I looked at a plat map of the lake road, saw Dell’s house, made some inquiries, and maybe jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

“You did.”

Lucas shrugged. “I was trying to figure out why you might claim that you were at the LaCourts’ when you weren’t, and why you couldn’t tell us.” They were standing in the entry, coats, gloves, and hats still on. Bergen faced them on his feet, didn’t invite them to sit.