Winter Prey

Mueller’s body had been dumped in an abandoned sandpit off a blacktopped government road in the Chequamegon National Forest, fifteen miles from his home. A half-dozen sheriff’s vehicles were jammed into the turnoff, and the snow had been beaten down by people walking into the pit.
    “Shelly’s freaked out,” Climpt said, talking past a new cigarette. “Something happened at Mass today.”
    “They found Bergen?”
    “Yeah, I guess. He was there.”
    They could see the sheriff standing alone, like a fat dark scarecrow, just inside the sandpit. “This is his worst nightmare,” Weather said.
    Climpt nodded. “All he wanted was a nice easy cruise up to retirement, taking care of people. Which he’s pretty good at.”
    They parked and started up toward a cluster of cops at the edge of the sandpit. A civilian in an orange parka stood off to the side, next to a snowmobile, talking to another deputy. Carr saw them coming and walked down the freshly trampled path to meet them.
    “How are you?” Carr asked Weather. “Get any sleep?”
    “Very little,” Weather said. “Is the kid . . .”
    “Right there. We haven’t called his folks yet.” Carr looked at Lucas. “How long will it take to catch this guy?”
    “That’s not a reasonable question,” Weather snapped.
    But Lucas looked up the rise to the cluster of cops around the body. “Three or four days,” he said after a few seconds. “He’s out of control. Unless we’re missing some big connection on this kid, there wasn’t any reason to kill him. He took a hell of a risk for no gain.”
    “Will he kill more people?” Carr asked. His voice was a compound of anger, tension, and sorrow, as though he’d worked out the answer.
    “He could.” Lucas nodded, looking straight into Carr’s dry, exhausted eyes. “Yeah, I’d say he could. You better find the Schoeneckers. If they’re involved, and they’re someplace where he could get at them . . .”
    “We got bulletins out all over the south, from Florida to Arizona. We’re interviewing their friends.”
    Weather was moving on toward the body, and Lucas trailed after her. Carr hooked his elbow. “You gotta figure a way to make something happen, Lucas.”
    “I know,” Lucas said.
    John Mueller’s body had been found by the snowmobiler in the orange parka. He’d seen two coyotes working over the spot and assumed they’d killed a deer. He’d stopped to see if it was a buck and still had antlers. He chased off the dogs, saw the boy’s coat, and called the sheriff’s department. The first deputy at the scene had shot a coyote and covered the boy with a plastic tarp.
    “Bad,” Weather said when she lifted the tarp. Around them, the talking stopped as everybody looked at them crouched over the body. “Is that him?”
    Lucas studied the child’s half-eaten face, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s him. I’m almost sure. Jesus Christ.”
    He walked away, unable to handle it. He hadn’t had that problem since his third week on patrol: cops looked at dead people, end of story.
    “You all right?” Climpt asked.
    “Got on top of me,” Lucas said.
    He was halfway back to the cars when he saw Crane, the crime-scene tech from Madison, walking up the path.
    “Anything for me?” Crane asked.
    “I doubt it. The scene’s pretty cut up and coyotes have been at the body. It’ll take an ME to figure out how he was killed.”
    “I’ve got a metal detector, I’ll check the site for shells. Listen, I got some news for you this morning. I tried to call and was told you were on the way out here. Remember that burnt-up page from the porno magazine that we sent down to Madison? The one with the picture you want?”
    “Yeah?”
    “We shipped it to all the major departments in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota, and we actually got a callback. A guy named . . .” Crane patted his pockets, pulled off a glove, dipped into one, and came up with a slender reporter’s notebook. “ . . . a guy named Curt Domeier with the Milwaukee PD. He says he might know the publisher. He says give him a call.”
    Lucas took the notebook page: something to do. He walked down to the truck, called the dispatcher, and was patched through to Milwaukee. Domeier worked with the sex unit. He wasn’t in his office, but picked up a phone on a page. Lucas introduced himself and said, “The Madison guys say you might know who put out the paper.”
    “Yeah. I haven’t seen this particular one, but he uses those