Winter Prey

quickly pulled his feet off, then crossed his legs.
    “You’re gonna ruin my desk and I’ll take it out of your paycheck,” Carr grumbled.
    “Sorry,” Lacey said.
    “Now what the heck was all that about? Down there with George?” Carr asked Lucas as he settled into his swivel chair.
    “There’s a rumor around—just a rumor—that Phil Bergen’s gay. That why I asked him last night if he’d ever had any homosexual contacts.”
    “That’s the worst kind of bull,” Carr blurted. “Where’d you hear that gay stuff?”
    “Look: I keep trying to figure why he says he was at the LaCourts’ when the LaCourts were dead,” Lucas said. “Why he won’t back off of it. And I got to thinking, what if he was somewhere else down the road, but can’t say so?”
    “Dammit,” Carr said. He spun and looked out his window through the half-open venetian blinds. “You got a dirty mind, Davenport.”
    “Are you thinking about anybody in particular?” Lacey asked. Lucas repeated the three names. Lacey stared at him for a moment, then cleared his throat, edged forward in his chair, and looked at the sheriff. “Um, Shelly, listen. My wife knows Bob Dell. I once said something about he’s a good-looking guy, just kidding her, and she said, ‘Bob’s not the sort that goes for women, I kinda think.’ That’s what she said.”
    “She was saying he’s gay?” Carr asked, turning, pulling his head back, staring owlishly at his deputy.
    “Well, not exactly,” Lacey said. “Just that he wasn’t the type who was interested in women.”
    “This is awful,” Carr said, looking back to Lucas.
    “It would explain a hell of a lot,” Lucas said. “If people down there know that this Bob Dell is gay . . . maybe Bergen was down there, got caught in a lie, and then couldn’t back off of it. Look at his drinking. If he’s innocent, where’s all the pressure coming from?”
    “From this office for one thing,” Carr said. He climbed out of his chair, took a meandering walk around the office, a knuckle pressed to his teeth. “We’ve got to check on Dell,” he said finally.
    “See if you can get his birthdate. Query the NCIC and Milwaukee, if that’s where he’s from,” Lucas said. “And think about it: if this is Bergen’s problem, then he’s in the clear on the murder.”
    “Yeah.” Carr spun and stared through his window, which looked out at a snowpile, a drifted-in fence and the backs of several houses on the next street. “But he wouldn’t be clear on the gay thing. And that’d kill him.”
    They all thought about it for a minute, then Carr said, “Gene Climpt will meet you out at the Mill restaurant at noon.” He passed Lucas a warrant.
    Lucas glanced at it and stuck it in his coat pocket. “Nothing at all on John Mueller?”
    Carr shook his head: “Nothing. We’re looking for a body now.”

    Lucas spent the morning at the LaCourts’. An electric heater tried to keep the garage warm, but without insulation, and with the coming and going of the lab crew, couldn’t keep up. Everybody inside wore their parkas, open, or sweaters; it was barely warm enough to dispense with gloves. A long makeshift table had been built out of two-by-fours and particle board, and was stacked with paper, electronic equipment, and a computer with a printer.
    The crew had found a badly deformed slug in the kitchen wall. Judging from the base and the weight, allowing for some loss of jacketing material, the techs thought it was probably a .44 Magnum. Definitely not a .357. The gun Lucas found the night of the killings had not been fired.
    “The girl was alive when her ear was cut off, and also some other parts of her face apparently were cut away while she was alive,” a tech said, reading from a fax. “The autopsy’s done, but there are a lot of tests still outstanding.”
    The tech began droning through a list of other findings. Lucas listened, but every few seconds his mind would drift from the job to Weather. He’d always been attracted to smart women, but few of his affairs had gone anywhere. He had a daughter with a woman he’d never loved, though he’d liked her a lot. She was a reporter, and they’d been held together by a common addiction to pressure and movement. He’d loved another woman, or might have, who was consumed by her career as a cop. Weather fit the mold of the cop. She was serious, and tough, but seemed to have an intact sense of humor.
    Can’t fuck this up with Weather, he