Winter Prey

You can do anything you want. You can snuff him out or not. Try to feel it.”
    She pointed the pistol at the rabbit. Tried to feel it. When she killed a rabbit for dinner, she just held it up by its back legs, whacked it on the back of the head with an aluminum t-ball bat, then pulled the head off to bleed it. Their heads came off easily. A squirrel, now, you needed an ax: a squirrel had neck muscles like oak limbs.
    “Just squeeze,” the Iceman coached.
    And she did feel it. A tingle in her stomach; a small smile started at the corner of her mouth. She’d never had any power, not that she understood. She’d always been traded off and used, pushed and twisted. The rabbit took another tentative hop and the gun popped, almost without her willing it. The rabbit jumped once, then lay in the snow, its feet running.
    “Again,” said the Iceman.
    But she stood and watched for a minute. Rabbits had always been like carrots or cabbages. She’d never really thought about them dying. This one was hurting.
    The power was on her now, possibilities blossoming in her head. She wasn’t just a piece of junk; she had a gun. Her jaw tightened. She put the barrel next to the rabbit’s head and pulled the trigger.
    “Excellent,” said the Iceman. “Feel it?”
    “Get another one,” she said.

CHAPTER

20
    Harper sat on the jail bunk, scowling, shaking his head, his yellow teeth bared. His attorney, wearing a salt-and-pepper tweed suit that might have been made during the Roosevelt Administration, sat next to him, fidgeting.
    “That ain’t good enough,” Harper said.
    “Let me explain something to you, Russ,” Carr said. Carr’s double chin had collapsed into wattles, and the circles under his eyes were so black that he looked like he’d lost a bar fight. “Eldon Schaeffer has to get elected county attorney. If he cuts a deal with you, and it turns out you’re a member of some sex ring, and that you know who the killer is but you didn’t tell us, and Eldon gives you immunity and you walk out of here a free man . . . Well, Eldon ain’t gonna win the next election. He’s gonna be out of a job. So he isn’t going to cut that deal. He’s gonna want some jail time.”
    “Then he can stick it in his ass,” Harper said. He nodded at his attorney. “If Dick here is right, I’ll be out of here in an hour.”
    “You’ll risk going to trial for multiple murder to save a couple years in jail? You could do two or three years standing on your head,” Lucas said. He was leaning on the cell wall, looking down at Harper. “And I swear toChrist, if we tie you to the killer, if we even find a thread of evidence putting you two together, we’ll slap your ass in jail so fast your head’ll spin. For accessory to murder. You’ll die in prison.”
    “If you’re trying to cut me this kind of a deal, that means you ain’t got shit on anybody,” Harper said. His eyes flicked toward his attorney, then to Carr. “Take a fuckin’ hike, Shelly.”

    As they filed out of the cell, Carr looked at Lucas and said, “Slap his ass in jail so fast his head’ll spin? Some threat. I’m gonna send it in to Reader’s Digest. ”
    “I’ll sue,” Lucas said, and Carr showed a bit of a smile. While they were waiting for the elevator, Harper’s attorney came out and joined them. As they were waiting, Carr looked at the attorney and asked, “Why’d you have to go and do this, Dick? Why’d you call the judge? You coulda waited until Monday and everything would have been fine.”
    “Russ has the right . . .” The attorney’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. A large Adam’s apple, big hands, rough, porous skin, and the suit: he looked like a black-and-white photograph from the Depression.
    The elevator doors opened and they stepped inside, faced the front. “Don’t give me any ‘rights,’ Dick, I know all that,” Carr said as they started down. “But we’ve got five dead and Russ knows who did it. Or he has some ideas. He’s the only thing we’ve got. If he takes off, and we get more dead . . .”
    “He’s got a right, ” the attorney said. But he didn’t sound happy.
    Carr looked at Lucas. “Phil’s body must be on the way to Milwaukee.”
    “Yeah. I’m sorry about that, Shelly—I really am,” Lucas said.
    Tears started running down Harper’s attorney’s face, and he suddenly snuffled and wiped his coat sleeve across his eyes. “God, I can’t believe Father Phil’s dead,” he said.