Winter Prey

legs.
    “Hot,” she said, stepping into the far end of the tub. She might have been blushing or it might have been the hot water.
    “What about the snack?” Lucas asked.
    “You’re looking at it, honey,” she said.

    Fourth full day of the investigation: he felt like he’d been in Ojibway County forever. Felt like he’d known Weather forever.
    Lucas made it into the sheriff’s office a few minutes after eight. The day was warmer, above zero, with damp spots in the streets where ice-remover chemicals had cut through the snow. The sky was an impenetrable gray. Despite the clouds hanging overhead, Lucas felt . . . light.
    Different. He could still smell Weather, although he wasn’t sure if the smell was real or just something he’d memorized and was holding on to.
    There was nothing light about Carr. He’d been heavy and pink, even at the LaCourt killing. Now he was gray-faced, drawn. He looked not hungry or starving, but desiccated, as though he were dying of thirst.
    “Get it?” he asked when Lucas walked in.
    Lucas handed him a copy of the porno magazine, folded open to the page with Jim Harper on it. “Is this it?” Carr asked, studying the photo.
    “That’s it. That’s what the LaCourts had, anyway,” Lucas said.
    Carr held it to the window for extra light. Henry Lacey ambled in, nodded to Lucas, and Carr handed him the photo. “Who is it, Henry? Who’s the fat guy?”
    Lacey looked at it, then at Lucas. “I don’t see anything. Am I missing something?”
    “I don’t think so,” Lucas said. Carr put his thumb to his mouth, began nibbling his cuticles, then quickly put his hand back on his desk, his movements jerky, out of sync. Strung-out. “When was the last time you had any sleep?” Lucas asked.
    “Can’t remember,” Carr said vaguely. “Somebody tell me what to do.”
    Lucas said, “How tight are you with the editor of the Register ? And the radio station.”
    “Same thing,” Carr said. He spun in his chair and looked out his window toward the city garage. “The answer is, pretty tight. Danny Jones is the brother to Bob Jones.”
    “The junior high principal?”
    “Yup. We played poker most Wednesday nights. Before this happened, anyway,” Carr said.
    “If you just flat told him what you wanted in the paper, or on the radio, and explained that you needed it done to break this case, would he buy it?”
    Carr, still staring out the window, thought it over, then said, “In this case—probably.”
    Lucas outlined his proposal: that they go to the county attorney with the photographs they’d found of Jim Harper and get an arrest warrant for Russ Harper. They would charge Harper with promoting child pornography, drop him in jail.
    “He’ll bail out in twenty minutes,” Lacey objected.
    “Not if we work it right,” Lucas said. “We’ll pick him up this afternoon, question him, charge him tonight. We won’t have to take him to court until Monday. We tell the Register that he’s been arrested in connection with a pornography ring that we uncovered during the investigation of the LaCourt murders. We also leak the word that Harper’s dealing—that he’s trying to make an immunity deal if he turns in other members of the ring. And we tell Harper that we’ll give him immunity unless the Schoeneckers come in first. Anything about the Schoeneckers, by the way?”
    “Nothing yet,” Carr said, shaking his head. “What you’re saying about Russ Harper is . . . we set him up. I mean, thecharges wouldn’t hold water.”
    “We’re not setting him up. We’re using him to make something happen,” Lucas said. “And who knows? Maybe he has some ideas about the killer.”
    “If he doesn’t, he’ll sue our butts. He’ll probably sue our butts anyway,” Carr said.
    “A good attorney would get him in court and stick those pictures of Jim right up his ass,” Lucas said. Lucas leaned across the deck. “I’ll tell you, Shelly, there’s a possibility that the LaCourt murders and the Mueller kid and Jim Harper have nothing to do with this sex ring. Possible, but I don’t believe it. There’s a connection. We just haven’t found it. And Weather said last night she can’t believe a guy like Harper didn’t have some idea of what his kid was up to.”
    “We’ve got to do it, Shelly,” Lacey said somberly. “We’ve got nothing else going for us. Not a frigging thing.”
    “Let’s do it then,” Carr said. He looked up at Lucas, exhaustion in his eyes.