Winter Prey

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. Goddammit.” 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. Heflipped 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 somebody 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 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 outa 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 still be the Schoeneckers and Doug and the others. But they 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.
    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