Winter Prey

hundred times.”
    “Probably five hundred if you got twenty-five calls,” Lucas said.
    “Driving us nuts,” Domeier said, finishing his coffee.
    “Big deal,” Lucas said. “Actually sounds kind of amusing.”
    “Yeah?” Domeier looked at him. “You wanna tell that to the mayor?”
    “Uh-oh,” Lucas said.
    “He went on television and promised we’d get the guy soon,” Domeier said. “The whole sex unit’s having an argument about whether we oughta shit or go blind.”
    Lucas started laughing again and said, “You ready?”
    “Let’s go,” Domeier said.

    Bobby McLain lived in a two-story apartment complex built of concrete blocks painted beige and brown, in a neighborhood that alternated shabby old brown-brick apartments with shabby new concrete-block apartments. The streets were bleak, snow piled over the curbs, big rusting sedans from the seventies parked next to the snowpiles. Even the trees looked dark and crabbed. Domeier rode with Lucas, and pointed out the hand-painted Chevy van under a security light on the west side of the complex. “That’s Bobby’s. It’s painted with a roller.”
    “What color is that?” Lucas asked as they pulled in beside it.
    “Off-grape,” Domeier said. “You don’t see that many off-grape vans around. Not without Dead Head stickers, anyway.”
    They climbed out, looked up and down the street. Nobody in sight: not a soul other than themselves. At the door, they could hear a television going inside. Lucas knocked, and the television sound died.
    “Who is it?” The voice squeaked like a new adolescent’s.
    “Domeier. Milwaukee PD.” After a moment of silence, Domeier said, “Open the fuckin’ door, Bobby.”
    “What do you want?”
    Lucas stepped to the left, noticed Domeier edging to the right, out of the direct line of the door.
    “I want you to open the fuckin’ door,” Domeier said.
    He kicked it, and the voice on the other side said, “Okay, okay, okay. Just one goddamn minute.”
    A few seconds later the door opened. Bobby McLain was a fat young man with thick glasses and short blond hair. He wore loose khaki trousers and a white crew-neck t-shirt that had been laundered to a dirty yellow. He sat in an aging wheelchair, hand-powered.
    “Come in and shut the door,” he said, wheeling himself backwards.
    They stepped inside, Domeier first. McLain’s apartment smelled of old pizza and cat shit. The floor was covered with a stained shag carpet that might once have been apricot-colored. The living room, where they were standing, had been converted to a computer office, with two large Macintoshes sitting on library tables, surrounded by paper and other unidentifiable machines.
    Domeier was focused on the kitchen. Lucas pushed the door shut with his foot. “Somebody just run out the back?” Domeier asked.
    “No, no,” McLain said, and he looked around toward the kitchen. “Really . . .”
    Domeier relaxed, said, “Okay,” and stepped toward the kitchen and looked in. Without looking back at McLain he said, “The guy there is named Davenport, he’s a deputy sheriff from Ojibway County, up north, and he’s investigating a multiple murder. He thinks you might be involved.”
    “Me?” McLain’s eyes had gone round, and he stared up at Lucas. “What?”
    “Some people were killed because of one of your porno magazines, Bobby,” Lucas said. A chair next to one of the Macintoshes was stacked with computer paper. Lucas picked up the paper, tossed it on the table, and turned the chair around to sit on it. His face was only a foot from McLain’s. “We only got a piece of one page. We need the rest of the magazine,” he said.
    Domeier stepped over to the crippled man and handed him a Xerox copy of the original page. At the same time he took one of the handles on the back of McLain’s wheelchair and jiggled it. McLain glanced up nervously and then went back to the Xerox copy.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “C’mon, Bobby, we’re talking heavy-duty shit here—like prison,” Domeier said. He jiggled the chair handle again. “We all know where the goddamn thing came from.”
    McLain turned the page in his hand, glanced at the blank back side, then said, “Maybe.” Domeier glanced at Lucas and then Bobby said, “I gotta know what’s in it for me.”
    Domeier leaned close and said, “To start with, I won’t dump you outa this chair on your fat physically challenged butt.”
    “And you get a lot of goodwill from the