Winter Prey

voice: You tell them goddamned flatheads down at FNR to stay away from white women or they’ll get what LaCourt got.
    Lucas stuck out his bottom lip, shook his head: this was bullshit.
    The music swelled, as if somebody had taken his mouth away from the phone, then a new voice said, Give’m all a six-pack of Schlitz and send them down to Chicago with the niggers.
    The music came up, then there were a couple of indistinguishable words, a barking laugh, a click and a dead line.
    “Called in on the 9-1-1 number, where we got an automatic trace. Went out to a pay phone at the Legion Hall. There were maybe fifty people out there,” Lacey said. “Mostly drunk.”
    “That’s what it sounded like, drunks,” Lucas agreed. A waste of time. “What’s the FNR? The Res?”
    “Yeah. Forêt Noire,” Carr said. He pronounced it For-A Nwa. “The thing is, most everybody in town’ll know about the call before this afternoon. The girl on the message center talked it all over the courthouse. The guys from the tribe’ll be up here. We’re gonna have to tell the FBI. Possible civil rights whatchamajigger.”
    “Aw, no,” Lucas groaned, closing his eyes. “Not the feebs.”
    “Gonna have to,” Carr said, shaking his head. “I’ll try to keep them off, but I bet they’re here by the weekend.”
    “Tell him about the windigo,” Lacey said.
    “There’s rumors around the reservation that a windigo’s been raised by the winter,” Carr said, looking even gloomier.
    “I’ve heard of them,” Lucas said. “But I don’t know . . .”
    “Cannibal spirits, roaming the snowdrifts, eating people,” Lacey said. “If you see one, bring him in for questioning.”
    He and Carr started to laugh, then Carr said, “We’re getting hysterical.” To Lucas he said, “Didn’t get any sleep. I picked out some guys to work with you, six of them, smartest ones we got. They’re down in the canteen. You ready?”
    “Yup. Let’s do it,” Lucas said.

    The deputies arranged themselves around a half-dozen rickety square tables, drinking coffee and chewing on candy bars, looking Lucas over. Carr poked his finger at them and called out their names. Five of the six wore uniforms. The sixth, an older man, wore jeans and a heavy sweater and carried an automatic pistol just to the left of his navel in a cross-draw position.
    “ . . . Gene Climpt, investigator,” Carr said, pointing at him. Climpt nodded. His face was deeply weathered, like a chunk of lake driftwood, his eyes careful, watchful. “You met him out at the house last night.”
    Lucas nodded at Climpt, then looked around the room. The best people in the department, Carr said. With two exceptions, they were all white and chunky. One was an Indian, and Climpt, the investigator, was lean as a lightning rod. “The sheriff and I worked out a few approaches last night,” Lucas began. “What we’re doing today is talking to people. I’ll talk to the firefighters who were the first out at the house. We’ve also got to find the LaCourts’ personal friends, their daughter’s friends at school, and the people who took part in a religious group that Claudia LaCourt was a member of.”
    They talked for twenty minutes, dividing up the preliminaries. Climpt took two deputies to begin tracking the LaCourts’ friends, and he’d talk to the tribal people about any job-related problems LaCourt might have had at the casino. Two more deputies—Russell Hinks and Dustin Bane, Rusty and Dusty—would take the school. The last man would canvass all the houses down the lake road, asking if anyone had seen anything unusual before the fire. The night before, Climpt had been looking for immediate possibilities.
    “I’ll be checking back during the day,” Lucas said. “If anybody finds anything, call me. And I mean anything.”
    As the deputies shuffled out, pulling on coats, Carr turned to Lucas and said, “I’ve got some paperwork before you leave. I want to get you legal.”
    “Sure.” He followed Carr into the hallway, and when they were away from the other deputies asked, “Is thisClimpt guy . . . is he going to work with me? Or is he gonna be a problem?”
    “Why should he be?” Carr asked.
    “I’m doing a job that he might have expected to get.”
    Carr shook his head. “Gene’s not that way. Not at all.”

    Bergen stumbled into the hallway, looked around, spotted Carr. “Shelly . . .” he called.
    Carr stopped, looked back. Bergen was wearing wind