Winter Prey

look at Bergen, nodded to Weather, then followed Carr through the living room and kitchen to the mudroom, then out to the garage. The back gate of the Grand Cherokee was up. A pistol lay on the floor of the truck, along with a peculiar machete-like knife. The knife looked homemade, with wooden handles, taped, and a squared-off tip. Lucas bent over it, could see a dark encrustation that might be blood.
    “That’s a corn-knife,” Carr said. “You don’t see them much anymore.”
    “Was it just laying here like this?”
    “Yeah. It’s mentioned in the note. So’s the gun. My God, who would’ve thought . . .”
    “Let me see the note,” Lucas said.

    The note was typed on the parish’s letterhead stationery.
    “I assume he has an IBM typewriter,” Lucas said.
    “Yes. In his office.”
    “Okay . . .” Lucas read down through the note.
    I have killed and I have lied. When I did it, I thought I did it for God; but I see now it was the Devil’s hand. For what I’ve done, I will be punished; but I know the punishment will end and that I will see you all again, in heaven, cleansed of sin. For now, my friends, forgive me if you can, as the Father will.
    He’d signed it with a ballpoint: Rev. Philip Bergen.
    And under that: Shelly—I’m sorry; I’m weak when I’m desperate: but you’ve known that since I kicked the ball out from under that pine. You’ll find the implements in the back of my truck.
    “Is that his signature?”
    “Yes. I knew it as soon as I looked at it. And there’s the business about the pine.”
    Crane, the crime tech, stepped into the room, heard Lucas’ question and Carr’s answer, and said, “We’re sending the note down to Madison. There might be a problem with it.”
    “What?” asked Lucas.
    “When Sheriff Carr said you thought it could be a homicide, we got very careful. If you look at the note, at the signature . . .” He took a small magnifying glass from his breast pocket and handed it to Lucas. “ . . . you can see what looks like little pen indentations, without ink, at a couple of places around the signature itself.”
    “So what?” Lucas bent over the note. The indentations were vague, but he could see them.
    “Sometimes, when somebody wants to forge a note, he’ll take a real signature, like from a check, lay it on top of the paper where he wants the new signature. Then he’ll write over the real signature with something pointed, like a ballpoint pen, pushing down hard. That’ll make an impression on the paper below it. Then he writes over the impression. It’s hard to pick out if the forger’s careful. The new signature will have all the little idiosyncrasies of an original.”
    “You think this is a fake?”
    “Could be,” Crane said. “And there are a couple of other things. Our fingerprint guy is gonna do the Super-Glue trick on the whiskey bottle and pill bottles, but he can see some prints sitting right on the glass. And except for the prints, the bottles are absolutely clean. Like somebody wiped them before Bergen picked them up—or printed Bergen’s fingerprints on them after he was dead. Hardly any smears or partials or handling background, just a bunch of very clear prints. Too clear, too careful. They have to be deliberate.”
    “Sonofagun,” Carr said, looking from the tech to Lucas.
    “Could mean nothing at all,” Crane said. “I’d say the odds are good that he killed himself. But . . .”
    “But . . .” Carr repeated.
    “Are you checking the neighborhood,” Lucas asked Carr, “to see if anybody was hanging around last night?”
    “I’ll get it started,” Carr said. A deputy had been standing, listening, and Carr pointed to him. He nodded and left.
    Weather came in, shrugged. “There aren’t any bruises that I can see, no signs of a struggle. His pants were undone.”
    “Yeah?”
    “So what?” asked Carr.
    “Lots of time suicides make themselves look nice. Women put on nice sleeping gowns and make up, men shave. It’d seem odd to be a priest, know you’re killing yourself and undo your pants so you’d be found that way.”
    Carr looked back toward the bedroom and said, “Phil was kind of a formal guy.”
    “There’s a knife out in his car,” Lucas said to Weather. “Go have a look at it.”
    While she went out to the garage, Lucas walked back to the bedroom. Bergen, he thought, looked seriously disgruntled.
    “We’re checking the neighborhood now,” Carr said, coming down the