Winter Prey (35 page)

The doctor, bent over the photo, muttered, “All the time. If you need some, maybe I can get you a rate.” After a minute he straightened and said, “Burns.”

“What?”

He flipped the photo across his desk to Lucas. “Your man’s been burned. Those are skin grafts.”

CHAPTER
23

Lucas tried to get Carr or Lacey from the airport; the dispatcher said they were out of touch. He called Weather at home, got a busy signal. The pilot was leaning against the back of a chair, impatiently waiting to go. Lucas waited two minutes, tried again: busy.

“We gotta go, man,” the pilot said. Lucas looked out the lounge windows. He could see airplanes circling ten miles out. “It looks pretty clear.”

“Man, that storm is coming like a fuckin’ train. We’re gonna get snowed on as it is.”

“Once more . . .” Weather’s line was still busy. He punched in the dispatcher’s number again: “I’m on my way back. Got something. And if the chopper crashes, a guy named Domeier has the negative. He’s with the Milwaukee sex unit.”

“If the chopper crashes . . .” the pilot snorted as they walked out of the lounge.

“Got the heater fixed?” Lucas asked.

They lifted out of Milwaukee at seven o’clock, six degrees above zero, clear skies, Domeier standing at the gate with
Zeke until the chopper was off the ground. Zeke waved.

“Glad you called,” the pilot said. He grinned but he didn’t look happy. “I was getting nervous about waiting until ten. The storm’s already through the Twin Cities. The weather service says they’re getting three to four inches of snow an hour, and it’s supposedly headed right up our way.”

“You’re not out of Grant, though,” Lucas said.

“Nope, Park Falls. But we’re both gonna get it.”

The ground lights were sharp as diamonds in the dry cold air, a long sparkling sweep north and south along the Lake Michigan waterfront, fed by the long, living snakes of the interstates. They headed northwest, past the lesser glitter of Fond du Lac and Oshkosh, individual house lights defining the blankness of Lake Winnebago. Later, they could see the distant glow from Green Bay far off to the east; to the west, there was nothing, and Lucas realized that they’d lost the stars and were now under cloud cover.

“Do any good?” the pilot asked.

“Maybe.”

“When you catch the sonofabitch, you oughta just blow him away. Do us all a favor.”

They caught the first hint of snow twenty miles from Grant. “No sweat,” said the pilot. “From here we’re on cruise control.”

They settled down five minutes later, Lucas ducking under the blades, fumbling for the key to the airport Quonset. As soon as he was inside, he could hear the chopper’s rotors pick up, and a moment later it was gone.

He rolled out of the Quonset, locked the door, and started for town. The snow was light, tiny flakes spitting into his windshield, but with authority. This wasn’t a flurry, this was the start of something.

Weather’s house was lit up, a sheriff’s Suburban in the drive. He used the remote to lift the garage door, drove in, parked.

Inside, the house was quiet. “Weather?” No answer. His stomach tightened and he walked through the front room. No sign of trouble. “Hey, Weather?”

Still no answer. He noticed that the curtain was caught in
the sliding door, walked over to it, and turned on the porch light. There were fresh tracks across the snow-covered deck. He pushed the door open.

And heard her laughing, and felt something go loose in his knees. She was all right. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Weather . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re coming.”

She came up the lake bank on skis, out of the night; fifty feet behind her, floundering, lathered with sweat, Climpt followed.

“Gene’s never been on skis before,” she said, laughing. “I’ve been embarrassing him.”

“Never fuckin’ again,” Climpt rasped as he toiled behind in her tracks. “I’m too old for this shit. My goddamn crotch feels like it’s gonna fall off. Christ, I need a cigarette.”

Weather’s smile faded. “Henry Lacey called. He said you might have something.”

“Yeah. Come on in and get your skis off,” Lucas said. He started to turn back to the house, but first stooped and kissed her on the nose.

“Now,
that’s
embarrassing,” Climpt said. “On the nose?”

Lucas shook the photo out of the manila envelope onto the kitchen counter and Weather bent over it. “Better picture,” she said. She looked at it, then up at Lucas, puzzled. “What?”

“Look at the guy’s leg. It looks like a quilt. I’m told they might be skin grafts.”

Weather peered at the photo, looked up at Lucas, stunned, looked at the photo again, then turned to Climpt. “Jesus, it’s Duane.”

“Duane?” asked Lucas. “The fireman?”

“Yeah—Duane Helper. The fireman who saw Father Phil. He was at the station . . . how’d he do that?”

Carr had spent the afternoon at a motel, but still looked desperately weary. He was unshaven, his hair uncombed,
his eyes swollen as though he’d been crying. He looked curiously at Weather and then back to Lucas. “What’d you get?”

Lacey came in just as Carr asked the question, and Lucas pushed the door shut behind him.

“Got a better picture,” Lucas said, handing it to him across the desk. “If you look really close—you couldn’t see it in the newsprint picture—you can see that his leg looks patched up. Those are skin grafts. Weather says it’s Duane Helper.”

“Duane? How could it be . . . ?”

“We’ve been talking, Gene and I, and we think the first thing we gotta do, tonight, is pick up Dick Westrom,” Lucas said. “We don’t know what he has to do with it, except that he backs up Helper’s story. We put him on the grill. If we need to, we lock him up until we find out more about Helper.”

“Why don’t we just grab him? Helper?” Carr asked.

“We’ve been thinking about a trial,” Lucas said, tipping his head toward Climpt. Climpt was rolling an unlit cigarette around his mouth. “Helper dropped the gun and knife on Bergen. A defense attorney will use that—he’ll put Bergen on trial. All we’ve got is a bad picture, and the only witness we know for sure is Jim Harper, and he’s dead. 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?”