Winter Prey

said. “We were lucky to find the Mueller kid. He could’ve laid out there until spring. Hell, if the killer had driven him two minutes back into the woods, we might not ever have found him.”
    “Are you watching Harper?”
    “That’s impossible. Where’re you gonna watch him from? We’ll check on him every couple of hours, though.”
    Weather shivered. “The man scares me. He’s one of those people who just does what he wants and doesn’t care who gets hurt. Sociopath. I don’t think he even notices if somebody gets hurt.”
    They sat quietly for a moment, then Lucas smiled, remembering, and glanced at her. She was looking into the fire, her face serious. “We’ve been having a pretty good time in bed, haven’t we?” he asked.
    “Well, I hope so,” she said, laughing. She patted his leg. “We fit pretty well.”
    “Um . . .” He pulled at his chin, looking into the fire. “There’s something . . . I’ve always wanted to do, you know . . . sexually . . . and I haven’t been able to find a woman who could do it.”
    Her smile flickered. With an edge of uncertainty, she asked, “Well . . . ?”
    “I always wanted to jump a homecoming queen wearing nothing but her white high heels and her crown. What do you think?” He pulled her closer.
    “Those rotten jerks,” she said, pushing him away. “I wasn’t going to tell you until ten years from now.”
    “Miss Teen Tits of Ojibway County,” he said.
    “You should have seen me,” she said, pleased. “The dress was cut fairly low in front, but really low in back. People said I had two cleavages.”
    “I like the image.”
    “Maybe we could work something out,” she said, snuggling closer. “I don’t know if I’ve still got the crown.”

CHAPTER

21
    Harper was released at noon. He asked a deputy at the property window how he’d get back home, since the cops had brought him in.
    “Fuckin’ hitchhike, Russ,” the cop said, and slammed the window down. Harper called his station. No answer. He finally found a kid smoking a cigarette outside a game parlor and offered him five bucks to give him a ride. The kid said ten, Harper argued, the kid tossed his cigarette in the street and told him to go fuck himself. Harper paid the ten.
    The gas station was closed and locked. Harper went inside, checked the register. There was money in the till and a note: “Russ, had to close. People are pissed at you they think your in on it.”
    “Motherfucker.” Harper crumbled the note, threw it in the corner, locked up and walked out to his truck. The tires were flat, all four of them. Cursing, he checked them, found no sign that they’d been slashed. That was something. He pulled an air hose out of the lube bay and filled the tires. Worried about his house, he drove down to it, parked, checked the front and sides. No one had been there sincehe left it. Okay. Inside, he made a fried egg and onion sandwich, and wolfed it down. The anger was growing. The cops would get them all if they didn’t hang together. He’d done his part.
    He picked up the phone, thought about it, put it down, got in his truck, drove to the station, parked and walked across the highway to the Duck Inn. There was a wall phone between the men’s and women’s restrooms, and he dropped a quarter.
    The Iceman answered.
    “This is Russ. We gotta talk.”
    “I heard you were in jail,” the Iceman said.
    “I bailed out. Where can we get together?”
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Russ. I think we better . . .”
    “Fuck what you think,” Harper snarled. His voice had gone up and he looked quickly back toward the bar and dropped his voice again. “We gotta make some contacts. If anybody talks to the cops, if anybody cracks, we’re all going down. They know about the Schoeneckers. We gotta figure out a way to find them, tell them to stay lost. I’ll call Doug.”
    “Doug’s gone. I don’t know where,” said the Iceman.
    “Ah, Jesus. Well, they don’t know about him. Maybe that’s best. But listen: the cops don’t have shit on anybody at this point. But if just one of us talks . . .”
    “Listen. Maybe . . . you know yellow-hair?” asked the Iceman. “You know who I mean?”
    “Yeah?”
    “She’s alone at her place. Why don’t you stop by around four o’clock? I can get away for a while.”
    “See you then,” Harper said and hung up. He walked back out to the bar, climbed onto a barstool. The heavyset bartender was wiping