Winter Prey

toward the sound, but there was nothing visible but garage and yard lights. The sound was an abrasive underline to the conversation. “We still don’t have enough time. Not really. The bowl thing hardly clears him. But who knows? Maybe a big gust of wind scoured off the roof and put that snow on LaCourt in two minutes.”
    “Could be,” Carr said.
    “This Baptist thing—that’s no big deal?” Lucas asked.
    “It’s a bigger deal than he was making it,” Carr said. “What do you know about Pentecostals?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Pentecostals believe in direct contact with God. The Catholic Church has taught that only the Church is a reliable interpreter of God’s word. The Church doesn’t trust the idea of direct access. Too many bad things have come of it in the past. But some Catholics—more and more all the time—believe you can have a valid experience.”
    “Yeah?” Lucas had been out of touch.
    “Baptists rely on direct access. Some of the local Pentecostal Catholics, like Claudia, were talking about getting together with some of the Baptists to share the Spirit.”
    “That sounds pretty serious,” Lucas said. The cold was beginning to filter through the edges of the parka, and he flexed his shoulders.
    “But nobody would kill because of it. Not unless there’s a nut that I don’t know about,” Carr said. “Phil was upset about Claudia talking to Home Baptist, but they were friends.”
    “How about Frank? Was he a friend of Bergen’s?”
    “Frank was Chippewa,” said Carr. He stamped his feet, and looked back in the direction of the irritating chain saw. “He thought Christianity was amusing. But he and Phil were friendly enough.”
    “Okay.”
    “So what are you gonna do now?” Carr asked.
    “Bag out in a motel. I brought clothes for a couple of days. We can get organized tomorrow morning. You can pick some people, and I’ll get them started. We’ll need four or five. We’ll want to talk to the LaCourts’ friends, kids at school, some people out at the Res. And I’ll want to talk to these fire guys.”
    “Okay. See you in the morning, then,” Carr said. The sheriff headed for his Suburban and muttered, mostly to himself, “Lord, what a mess.”
    “Hey, Sheriff?”
    “Yeah?” Carr turned back.
    “Pentecostal. I don’t mean to sound impolite, but really—isn’t that something like Holy Rollers?”
    After a moment Carr, looking over his shoulder, nodded and said, “Something like that.”
    “How come you know so much about them?”
    “I am one,” Carr said.

CHAPTER

5
    The morning broke bitterly cold. The clouds had cleared and a low-angle, razor-sharp sunshine cut through the red pines that sheltered the motel. Lucas, stiff from a too-short bed and a too-fat pillow, zipped his parka, pulled on his gloves and stepped outside. His face was soft and warm from shaving; the air was an icy slap.
    The oldest part of Grant was built on a hill across the highway from the motel, small gray houses with backyard clotheslines awash in the snow. Wavering spires of gray woodsmoke curled up from two hundred tin chimneys, and the corrosive smell of burning oak bark shifted through town like a dirty tramp.
    Lucas had grown up in Minneapolis, had learned to fish along the urban Mississippi, in the shadow of smokestacks and powerlines and six-lane bridges, with oil cans, worn-out tires and dead carp sharing space on the mud flats. When he began making serious money as an adult, he’d bought a cabin on a quiet lake in Wisconsin’s North Woods. And started learning about small towns.
    About the odd comforts and discomforts of knowing everyone; of talking to people who had roads, lakes, and entire townships named after their families. People whomade their living in the woods, guiding tourists, growing Christmas trees, netting suckers and trapping crawdads for bait.
    Not Minneapolis, but he liked it.
    He yawned and walked down to his truck, squinting against the sun, the new snow crunching underfoot. A friendly, familiar weight pulled at his left side. The parka made a waist holster impractical, so he’d hung his .45 in a shoulder rig. The pistol simply felt right. It had been a while since he’d carried one. He touched the coat’s zipper tag with his left hand, pulled it down an inch, then grinned to himself. Rehearsing. Not that he’d need it.
    Ojibway County wasn’t Minneapolis. If someone came after him in Ojibway County, he’d bring a deer rifle or a shotgun, not some