Winter Prey

the kid: “I’ll call you. I should be out real quick.”
    “There’s no bail hearing until Monday. Court’s closed,” Climpt told him.
    “You fuckers,” Harper snarled. “You’re trying to do me.” And he shouted at the kid: “You’re in charge over the weekend. But I’m gonna count every dime.”
    On the way back to town, Lucas turned over to look at Harper, cuffed in the back. “I’ll say two things to you, andyou might talk them over with your attorney. The first is, the Schoeneckers. Think about them. The next thing is, somebody is gonna get immunity to testify. But only one somebody.”
    “You can kiss my ass.”
    Harper called an attorney from the jail’s booking room. The attorney ran across the street from the bank building, spoke with Harper privately for ten minutes, then came out to discuss bail with the county attorney.
    “We’ll ask the judge to set it at a quarter million on Monday, in court,” the county attorney said. He was a mildly fat man with light-brown eyes and pale brown hair, and he wore a medium-brown suit with buffed natural loafers.
    “A quarter million? Eldon, my lord, Russ Harper runs a filling station,” said Harper’s attorney. He was a thin, weathered man with long yellow hair and weather-roughened hands. “Get real. And we figure this is important enough that we can get the judge out here tomorrow morning.”
    “I wouldn’t want to call him on a Saturday. He goes fishing on Saturdays, and gets quite a little toot on, sittin’ out there in that shack,” the county attorney said. “And Russ’s station could be worth a quarter million. Maybe.”
    “There’s no way.”
    “We’ll talk to the judge Monday,” the county attorney said.
    “I’m told that this gentleman”—Harper’s attorney nodded at Lucas—“and Gene Climpt have already beat up my client on one occasion—and this is more harassment.”
    “Russ Harper’s not the most reliable source, and we’re talking about child pornography here,” the county attorney said. But he looked at Lucas and Climpt. “And I’m prepared to guarantee that Mr. Harper will be perfectly safe in jail over the weekend. If he’s not, somebody else will be sitting in there with him.”
    “He’s safe enough,” said Lacey, who’d joined them. “Nobody’ll lay a finger on him.”
    Carr was in his office, looking perceptibly brighter.
    “Get some sleep?” Lucas asked. “You’re looking better.”
    “Three, four hours. Henry talked me into it,” he said, a ribbon of guilt and pleasure running through his voice. “I need a week. All done with Harper?”
    “He’s inside,” Lucas said.
    “Good. Wanna call Dan?”

    Dan Jones was the perfect double of the junior high principal. “We’re twin brothers,” he said. “He went into education, I went into journalism.”
    “Dan was all-state baseball, Bob was all-state football. I remember when you boys were tearing the place up,” Carr said, his face animated. And Lucas thought: He does like it, the good-old-boy political schmoozing.
    “Glory days,” said Dan. To Lucas: “Did you play?”
    “Hockey,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, typical Minnesota,” Dan said, grinning. Then he turned to Carr and asked, “Exactly what is it you want, Shelly?”
    Carr filled Jones in about Harper, and Jones took notes on a reporter’s pad. “We don’t want to mislead you,” Carr said, just slightly formal. “We’re not saying Russ killed the LaCourts—in fact, we know he didn’t. But as background, so you won’t go astray, we want you to know that we developed the information about the porno ring out of the murder investigation.”
    “So you think the two are related?”
    “It’s very possible . . . if you sort of leaned that way, you’d be okay,” Carr said.
    “To be frank—no bullshit—we want the story out to put pressure on the other members of this child-molester group, whoever they are. We need to break something open, but we don’t want you to say that,” Lucas said. “We think there’s a chance that Harper’ll try to deal. Go for immunity or reduced charges. That could be significant. But we’d like to have it reported as rumor,” Lucas said.
    Climpt was digging around on his desk, found the porno magazine from Milwaukee, said, “You can refer to this, butyou can’t say directly what’s in it,” and passed it across to the newspaper editor.
    Jones recoiled. “Jesus H. Christ on a crutch,” he said. Then he remembered, and