Winter Prey

mean the vo-tech is buying your printing paper?”
    McLain shrugged. “The price is right.”

    McLain drove the grape-colored van; Lucas and Domeier followed him west through the suburbs. The vo-tech was a one-story orange-brick building surrounded by parking lots. A cluster of thirty or forty crows was settled around a heap of snow at one end of the building, like lost lumps of coal.
    McLain parked and used an electric lift to get himself out the side door of the van. He was in a power chair this time, and rolled along in front of them, up a ramp, and down a long cold hallway lined with student lockers. Zeke was alone in his classroom. When McLain rolled through the door, he straightened, started a smile. When Lucas and Domeier followed McLain through the door, the smile vanished.
    “Sorry,” McLain said. “I hope we can maintain our business relationship.”
    Domeier said, “Milwaukee PD, Zeke.”

    “I just . . . I just . . . I needed . . .” Zeke waved his hand, unable to find the right word, and then said, “Money.”
    They were standing in his office, a cool cubicle of yellow-painted concrete block, with a plastic-laminated desk and two file cabinets. Zeke was short and balding, wore his hair long and combed it in oily strands over his bald spot. He wore a checked sport coat and his hands shook when he talked. “I just . . . I just . . . Should I get a lawyer?”
    “You gotta right . . .” Domeier started.
    Lucas broke in: “I don’t care about your goddamn printing business. I just don’t have time to fuck around. I want the goddamn negatives or I’ll put some handcuffs on you and we’ll drag you outa the school by your fuckin’ hair, and then we’ll get a search warrant and we’ll tear this place apart and your house and any other goddamn thing we can find. You show me the fuckin’ negatives and I’m gone. You and Domeier can make any kind of deal you want.”
    Zeke looked at Domeier, and when the Milwaukee coprolled his eyes up to the ceiling, he said, “I keep the negatives at home.”
    “So let’s go,” Lucas said.
    “How about me?” McLain asked.
    “Take off,” said Domeier.
    Halfway to his house, Zeke, in the backseat of Domeier’s Dodge, began to weep. “They’re gonna fire me,” he gasped. “You’re gonna put me in jail. I’ll get raped.”
    “Do you print for more than Bobby McLain or is he the only one?” Domeier asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror.
    “He’s the only one,” Zeke said, his body shuddering.
    “Shit. If there was more, you had some names, maybe we could work something out.”
    The weeping stopped and Zeke’s voice cleared. “Like what?”

    An aging black labrador with rheumy eyes met them at the door.
    “If I went to jail, what’d happen to Dave?” Zeke asked Domeier.
    The dog wagged his tail when his name was mentioned. Domeier shook his head and said, “Jesus Christ.”
    The dog watched as they went through a closet full of offset negatives. The negatives were filed in oversized brown envelopes, with the name of the publication scrawled in the corner. They found the right set and the right negative, and Zeke held it up to the light. “Yup, this is it. Looks pretty sharp.”
    They trooped back to the vo-tech. The printer was the size of a Volkswagen, but the first print was done in ten minutes. Zeke stripped it out and handed it to Domeier.
    “That’s as good as I can get it,” he said. “It’s still a halftone, so it won’t be as sharp as a regular photograph.”
    Domeier glanced at it and handed it to Lucas, saying, “Same old shit. You wasted your time.”
    The print was still black-and-white, but considerably sharper. Lucas put it under a table light and peered at it.A man with an erection and a nude boy in the background. Nothing on the walls.
    “The guy’s leg looks weird.” He took the folded newsprint version out of his pocket. The leg was so washed-out that no detail was visible. “Is this . . . whatever it is . . . is this the picture or is there something wrong with his leg?” Lucas asked.
    Zeke brought a photo loupe over to the table, put it on the print, bent over it, moved it. “That’s his leg, I think. It looks like it’s stitched together or something, like a quilt.”
    “Goddamn,” Lucas said. His throat tightened. “Goddamn. That’s why he wants Weather. She must’ve fixed his leg.”
    “You got him?” asked Domeier.
    “Got something,” Lucas said. “Is there