Winter Prey

this—this is nasty.”
    He caught the flesh between Harper’s nostrils by his thumb and middle fingers and squeezed, his fingernails digging into the soft flesh. Harper’s mouth dropped as though he were going to scream, but Climpt’s hand came up and squeezed his throat.
    Lucas squeezed, squeezed, then said, “Who’s the woman in the picture? Who is it? ”
    Harper, his body bucking, shook his head. “Better let go of his throat for a minute, Gene,” Lucas said, and he let go of Harper’s nose. Harper groaned, thrashed, sucked air, and Lucas asked, “Who is that, asshole? Who’s the woman?”
    “Don’t know . . .”
    “Let me try,” Climpt said, and he caught Harper’s nose as Lucas had, his thick yellow fingernails squeezing . . . .
    The sound that came from Harper’s throat might have been a scream if it had been pitched lower. As it was, it was a kind of blackboard scratching squeak, and he shuddered.
    “Who is it?” Lucas asked.
    “Don’t . . .”
    Climpt looked at Lucas, who shook his head, and they both released him at the same moment. Tears were running down Harper’s face and he caught his head in his hands and dropped to his knees. Lucas squatted beside him.
    “You know some stuff,” Lucas said. “You know the woman or you know somebody who knows the woman.”
    Harper got one foot beneath him, then heaved himself up. His eyes were red, and tears still poured down his face. “Motherfuckers.”
    Climpt cuffed him on the side of the head. “You ain’t listening. You know who this is, this woman. If you don’t spit out the name . . .”
    “You’re gonna what? Beat me around?” Harper asked, defiant. “I been beat around before, so go ahead. I’ll get my fuckin’ lawyer.”
    “Yeah, you put a fuckin’ lawyer out there and I’ll pin this fuckin’ picture on the bulletin board at the goddamn Super Valu with the note that you sold Jim’s ass,” Climpt said. “They’ll find your fuckin’ skin hanging from a tree out here, and you won’t be in it.”
    “Go fuck yourself,” Harper snarled. There was blood on his upper lip, trickling down from his nose.
    Climpt pulled back his hand but Lucas blocked it. “Let it go,” he said.

    Outside, as they were loading into the trucks, Lacey said, “Where’s Harper?”
    “Probably fixin’ some dinner,” Climpt said. Then, “He’s okay, Henry, don’t get your ass in an uproar.”
    Lacey shook his head doubtfully, then said, “Can I see that Polaroid again, just for a minute?”
    Lucas handed it to him and Lacey turned on his truck’s dome light and peered at the photo.
    “Check this, right here,” Lacey said. He touched the edge of the photograph with a fingernail. Lucas took it.
    “It looks like a sleeve.”
    “Sure does,” said Lacey, holding the photo four inches from his face. “Now, this here is a Spectra Polaroid. Spectras come with a remote control, a radio thing, so it might of been that there were only the two of them. But if that’s a sleeve, and if there’s somebody else behind the camera . . .”
    “The camera angle’s downward,” Lucas said. “That’d be high for a tripod.”
    “So there must be a bunch of them,” Lacey said.
    “Yeah, probably,” Lucas said, nodding. “We already know he was with a heavy white guy and here’s a woman.”
    “Damn—if it’s a bunch of people, it’s gonna tear this county up,” Climpt said.
    “I’d say the county’s already torn up,” Lucas said.
    Climpt shook his head: “This’d be worse’n the murders, a bunch of people screwing children. Believe me, around here, this’d be worse.”

CHAPTER

9
    They headed back to town, Climpt riding with Lucas.
    “Kind of liked your style back there,” Climpt said.
    “Thanks. I’ve worked on it,” Lucas said.
    The radio burped: Carr. Need to see you guys at the courthouse.
    “Did you find the kid?” Lucas asked.
    Nothing yet, Carr said.
    Off the air, Lucas told Climpt, “I fucked up. The school principal was worried about cops talking to kids without the parents’ permission. I took the kid out to his house so I could explain to his father. Goddammit.”
    “You didn’t fuck up,” Climpt said. He fumbled a cigarette out of a crumpled pack and lit it with a paper match. “That’s not the kind of thing you can know. You’re dealing with a crazy man. And you’ve got a reputation. People around here think you’re Sherlock Holmes.”
    “I’m not. But I have dealt with psychos