Winter Prey

okay, as long as John’s not in trouble,” his father said. He patted John on the head.
    “No, no. He did the right thing. He’s a smart kid,” Lucas said.

    The picture was critical. He felt it, knew it. Whistled to himself as he drove out to the LaCourt house. Progress.
    Helper was working in the fire station parking lot, rolling hose onto a reel, when Lucas passed on his way to the LaCourts’. A sheriff’s car was parked in a cleared space to one side of the LaCourts’ driveway, and a deputy waved him through. A half-dozen men were working around or simply standing around the house, which was tented with sheets of Army canvas, and looked like an olive-drab haystack. Power lines, mounted on makeshift poles, ran through gaps in the canvas. Lucas parked at the garage and hurried inside. Two sheriff’s deputies were warming themselves at the stove, along with a crime tech from Madison.
    “Seen the sheriff?” Lucas asked.
    “He’s in the house,” one of the deputies said. To the tech he said, “That’s Davenport.”
    “Been looking for you,” the tech said, walking over. “I’m the lab chief here . . . Tod Crane.” Crane looked like he might be starving. His fingers and wrists were thin, bony, and the skin on his balding head seemed to be stretched over his skull like a banjo covering. When they shook hands, an unexpected muscle showed up: he had a grip like a pair of channel-lock pliers.
    “How’s it going?” Lucas asked.
    “It’s a fuckin’ mess,” Crane said. He held up his hands, flexed them. They were bone-white and trembling with cold. “Whoever did it spread gas-oil premix all over the house. When he touched it off, Boom. We’re finding stuffblown right through some of the internal walls.”
    “Premix from the boats?”
    “Yeah, that’s what we think. Maybe some straight gas from the snowmobiles. We’ve found three six-gallon cans. The LaCourts had two boats, a pontoon and a fishing rig, and there aren’t any gas cans with them. And premix, you put it in a bottle with a wick, it’s called a Molotov cocktail.”
    “Any chance our man was hurt? Or burned?” Lucas asked.
    “No way to tell, but he’d have to be careful,” Crane said. “He spread around quite a bit of gas. We’ve got an arson guy coming up this afternoon to see if we can isolate where the fire started.”
    Lucas nodded. “I’m looking for a piece of paper,” he said. “It was a picture, apparently torn from a magazine or a newspaper. It shows a naked man and a naked boy on the bed behind him. It might be in the house.”
    “Yeah? That’s new?” Crane’s eyebrows went up.
    “Yup.”
    “Think he was trying to burn it up?” Crane asked.
    “The thought crossed my mind.”
    “I’ll tell you right now, there were a couple of filing cabinets that were dumped and doused with gas, and he shot some gas into a closet full of paper stuff, photographs, like that. He did the same thing on the chests of drawers in the parents’ bedroom, after he dumped them.”
    “So maybe . . .”
    “There ought to be some reason he torched the place. I mean, besides being nuts,” Crane said. “If he’d just killed them and walked, it might of been a day or two before anybody found them. He’d have time to set up an alibi. This way he tipped his hand right away.”
    “So find the paper,” Lucas said.
    “We’ll look,” Crane said. “Hell, it’s nice to have something specific to look for.”

    Carr came in while they were talking. He’d mellowed since morning, a small satisfied smile on his face. “They’re gone,the reporters. Most of them, anyway,” he said. “Poof.”
    “Probably found a better murder,” Lucas said.
    “I talked to Helen, back at the office,” Carr said. “What’s this about Jim Harper?”
    “Rusty and Dusty found a kid at the junior high who says Jim Harper posed for sex photos with an adult male,” Lucas said. “That’d be a long-term felony and might be worth killing somebody for. The picture came out of a pulp-paper magazine or newspaper. Some kids got hold of it and it may have been passed around the school. Lisa LaCourt had it last. She took it home on Thursday and showed it to this kid who talked to me.”
    “Who is it? The kid at the school?”
    “John Mueller. His father’s a taxidermist,” Lucas said.
    Carr nodded. “Sure, I know him. That’s an okay family. Damn, these things could be tied.”
    Lucas shrugged. “It’s a possibility. The Harper kid’s