Winter Prey

numbers you can find. Especially gas card numbers, but get all of them. I’m going back to the girls’ room. I can’t believe teenagers wouldn’t leave something. ”
    He began going through the room inch by inch, pulling the drawers from all the dressers, looking under them, checking bottles and boxes, paging through piles of homework papers dating back to elementary school. He felt inside shoes, lifted the mattress.
    Climpt came in and said, “I got all the numbers they had, I think. They had Sunoco and Amoco gas cards. Theyalso bought quite a bit of gas from Russ Harper, which is pretty strange when you consider his station is fifteen miles from here.”
    “Keep those slips,” Lucas said as he dropped the mattress back in place. “And check and see if there’s any garbage outside.”
    “All right.”
    A half-dozen books sat upright on top of the bureau, pressed together by malachite bookends shaped like chess knights. Lucas looked at the books, turned them, held them page-down and flipped through them. An aluminum-foil gum wrapper fell from the Holy Bible. Lucas picked it up, unfolded it, found a phone number and the name Betty written in orange ink.
    He put the book back, walked into the living room as Climpt came in from outside. “No garbage. They cleaned the place out, is what they did.”
    “Okay.” Lucas picked up the phone, dialed the number on the gum wrapper.
    The call was answered on the first ring. “This is the Ojibway Action Line. Can I help you?” The voice was female and professionally cheerful.
    “What’s the Ojibway Action Line?” Lucas asked.
    “Who is this?” The voice lost a touch of its good cheer.
    “A county sheriff’s deputy,” Lucas said.
    “You’re a deputy and don’t know what the Ojibway Action Line is?”
    “I’m new.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Lucas Davenport. Gene Climpt is here if you want to talk to him.”
    “Oh, no, that’s okay, I heard about you. Besides, it’s not a secret—we’re the crisis line for county human services. We’re right in the front of the phone book.”
    “All right. Can I speak to Betty?”
    There was a moment of silence, then the woman said, “There’s not really a Betty here, Mr. Davenport. That’s a code name for our sexual abuse counselor.”

CHAPTER

12
    Lucas parked in Weather’s driveway, climbed out of the truck, and trudged to the porch, carrying a bottle of wine. He was reaching for the bell when Weather pulled the door open.
    “Fuck dinner,” Lucas said, stepping inside. “Let’s catch a plane to Australia. Lay on the beach for a couple of weeks.”
    “I’d be embarrassed. I’m so winter-white I’m transparent,” Weather said. She took the bottle. “Come in.”
    She’d taken some trouble, he thought. A handmade rag rug stretched across the entry; that hadn’t been there the night before. A fire crackled in the Volkswagen-sized fireplace. And there was a hint of Chanel in the air. “Pretty impressive, huh? With the fire and everything?”
    “I like it,” he said simply. He didn’t smile. He’d been told that his smile sometimes frightened people.
    She seemed both embarrassed and pleased. “Leave your coat in the closet and your boots by the door. I just started cooking. Steak and shrimp. We’ll both need heart bypasses if we eat it all.”
    Lucas kicked off his boots and wandered through theliving room in his stocking feet. He hadn’t seen it in the dark, the night before, and in the morning he’d rushed out, thinking about Bergen . . . .
    “How’d the operation go?” he called to her in the kitchen.
    “Fine. I had to pin some leg bones back together. Nasty, but not too complicated. This woman went up on her roof to push the snow off, and she fell off instead. Right onto the driveway. She hobbled around for almost four days before she came in, the damn fool. She wouldn’t believe the bone was broken until we showed her the X rays.”
    “Huh.” Silver picture frames stood on a couch table, with hand-colored photos of a man and woman, still young. Sailboats figured in half the photographs. Her parents. A small ebony grand piano sat in an alcove, top propped up, sheet music for Erroll Garner’s “Dreamy” on the music stand.
    He went back into the kitchen. Weather was wearing a dress, the first he’d seen her in, simple, soft-shouldered; she had a long, slender neck with a scattering of freckles along her spine. She said, smiling, “I’m going to make stuff so good