Secret Prey

quarters of a mile of trail, but all focused on the swamp, and pathways into it and out of it. McDonald’s stand was uphill and not far to the left of one of the big lenses of thin ice.
    Suppose , Lucas thought, McDonald had lifted the Contender from the gun cabinet in the early morning just before the group left the cabin. That would explain why it was missing. And the Contender, long for a pistol, was still short enough that he could have concealed it under a hunting parka. Then, in the dark, he walks back down the track to the hillside above Kresge’s stand, waits for the shooting to begin, fires a shot killing Kresge, walks back to his stand, and pitches the Contender into the swamp. Climbs the tree . . . shazam. He’s up in his tree stand just like the others, and never fired his gun . . .
    ‘‘Let’s go,’’ he said to Wiener, as he climbed down.
    ‘‘You figure anything out?’’ Wiener asked.
    ‘‘Maybe,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘What time did you get here the day Kresge was shot?’’
    ‘‘About ten o’clock, after I heard . . . I was supposed to come in around noon with my trailer and we’d haul any deer carcasses into the registration station and then over to the meat locker. They figured to be out of there about noon, one way or the other,’’ the old man said. ‘‘The sheriff asked me about the guy the telephone man saw—the one walking along the edge of the woods—but I just wasn’t around. Sorry.’’
    The hunter in the woods. Lucas had almost forgotten. Of course, it could have been anybody, another hunter just crossing the property to get back to his car. ‘‘Damn it,’’ he said aloud. Another hunter didn’t feel right; Lucas was a believer in coincidences, except when they explained too much. And if the man in the hunting coat was the killer, and if the telephone man had been right about his size, then McDonald wasn’t the killer.
    ‘‘Beg pardon?’’
    ‘‘If somebody was walking in the woods like the telephone guy said, where’d he be going?’’
    ‘‘Sounds like he was heading back to the cabin.’’
    ‘‘That’d be a problem,’’ Lucas said.
    KRAUSE WASWORKINGONTHE KITCHEN TABLEWHEN he got back, a battered leather briefcase next to his foot. Mrs. Wiener was washing dishes, and the odor that came from the cabin’s oven was so wonderful that Lucas almost fainted with the impact.
    ‘‘What’s cooking?’’
    ‘‘Cinnamon rolls—they should be just about ready,’’ she said, turning from the sink. She was a chubby, pink-faced woman with kinky white hair. She took a dish towel from the stove handle, dried her hands, and opened the oven. ‘‘Perfect,’’ she said.
    Krause had gotten up from the table to look. ‘‘I get the first one,’’ he said.
    ‘‘They’ve got to cool,’’ she said firmly. ‘‘And I’ve got some frosting. You all go sit down.’’
    Krause retreated to the table and his papers. ‘‘Anything good?’’ he asked Lucas.
    Lucas said, ‘‘You know what a Contender is? Long pistol, single-shot, breaks open like a shotgun?’’
    ‘‘I’ve seen ’em,’’ Krause said.
    ‘‘You didn’t show one on the inventory of guns taken out of the house.’’
    ‘‘There wasn’t one,’’ Krause said. ‘‘There were three rifles and two shotguns.’’
    ‘‘You got a diver on your staff?’’ Lucas asked.
    ‘‘Sure. You think you know where the gun is?’’
    ‘‘Maybe. It’d be nice if it were right downhill from McDonald’s stand. There’s a big patch of water there . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if he pitched it in there.’’
    ‘‘I don’t know about diving in swamps,’’ Krause said doubtfully. ‘‘It might mess up the scuba gear. I can check.’’
    ‘‘He’ll need a metal detector,’’ Lucas said. Mrs. Wiener said, ‘‘There’s a gun just like that in the drawer in the gun cabinet.’’
    Lucas looked at Krause and Krause closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and said, ‘‘Shit.’’ Then at Mrs. Wiener, ‘‘Excuse the language,’’ and then at Lucas: ‘‘I told Ralph to take the guns out of the cabinet. I didn’t check.’’
    Wiener said, ‘‘Well, let’s go look,’’ and Mrs. Wiener said, ‘‘I saw it while I was cleaning. I dusted the cabinet ’cause they left it open, and that’s one place I usually can’t dust.’’
    The gun cabinet was built into an internal wall, behind a set of shallow shelves. A key fit into a small lock that was out of sight