“Goddamn Jerry’s had four hands in a row, Duane, ya gotta do something.” The older of the two crime-lab people dealt the cards. They had almost finished the LaCourt house, they said. They’d wrung it out. Two more days, or three, and they’d be done. When they were gone, and the possibility of more developments began to fade, and the killing stopped, interest in the case would dwindle. He had to reach the Schoeneckers, but he’d thought about it. Before they came back, they’d almost surely call to talk. Bergen dead, Harper dead.
He’d done it.
The Iceman listened and played his cards.
A truck pulled into the parking area, doors slammed. Climpt came in, stamping snow off his boots. The Minneapolis cop, Davenport, was behind him, shoulders hunched against the cold. He hadn’t shaved, and looked big-eyed, too thin.
Outside, in the early-morning light, snow swirled around the fire building. The storm had begun in earnest just before dawn, thunder booming through the forest, the snow coming in waves. Almost nothing was moving on the highway except snowplows.
“Wicked out there,” Climpt said. His face was wet with snow. He took off his gloves and wiped his eyebrows with the back of his hand. “Understand you got some coffee.”
“Help yourself,” said the Iceman. He pointed at an oversized coffee urn on a bench behind the lab people. “You out at the house?”
“Yeah. They’re giving up for the day, tying everything down, getting back to town before the snow gets too bad,” Lucas said. He looked at the techs. “Crane says to get your asses back there.”
“Want to get my ass back to Madison,” said the older of the two techs.
“Find a warm coed,” said the younger one. “One more hand.”
Davenport peeled off his parka and brushed off the snow. He nodded to the Iceman, took a cup of coffee from Climpt, and sat on the end of the picnic table bench.
“Anything new on the prints?” he asked.
“Nope. We’re pretty much cleaned up,” said the older tech. He dealt a round of three cards. “We’ve shipped in a few hundred sets, but hell, we printed Bergen after he croaked, and we can’t even find a match to him. And we know he was there.”
The younger tech chipped in: “The guy used a .44 and a corn-knife, took them with him. If it wasn’t Bergen, he wiped the handles. And it was so cold, he had to have gloves with him. He probably just put them on after he chopped the kid.”
Exactly, thought the Iceman. He sat and polished.
“Yeah. Goddammit.” Lucas looked into the coffee cup, then sipped from it.
“You heard about the autopsy on Father Bergen?” Climpt asked. He was leaning against the cupboard by the coffeepot.
“There were some problems, I guess,” the tech said. He flipped out another set of cards. “Duane’s got ace ‘n’ shit, George’s looking at shit ‘n’ shit, and I’m queen-jack. I’m in for a dime.”
“They couldn’t find any chemical traces of gelatin in his stomach. The sleeping pills he supposedly took with the booze came in gelatin capsules,” Climpt said. “We didn’t find any empty caps at the house, so he either flushed them or somebody dumped them in the booze and forced him to drink it . . . and forgot about the capsules.”
The Iceman hadn’t thought about the capsules. He’d flushed them, right here in the firehouse.
“So what does that mean?” the tech asked. “Sounds like it could go either way—either Bergen flushed them or somebody else did, but we don’t know which.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Climpt said.
The tech ran out another round of cards: “Duane picks up an eight to give him a pair with his ace, George holds with his fours, and I’m looking at a possible straight. Another dime on the jack-queen-nine.”
The second tech asked, “How about that picture? Do you any good?”
Lucas brightened. “Yeah. Maybe. Milwaukee found the guy who published the paper. He still had the page negative, and they made a better print. Should have been here today, but with this storm . . . should be here in the morning.”
The Iceman sat and listened, as he had for a week, in the center of the only warm public place within miles of the LaCourt house. The cops had dropped in from the first night, looking for a place to sit and gossip.
“Anything in it?” the younger tech asked.
“Won’t know until we see it,” Lucas said.
“If you find time to look at it,” Climpt snorted, burying his nose in his cup. His voice had a certain tone and the two crime techs and the Iceman all looked at Lucas.
Lucas laughed and said, “Yeah. Fuck you, Gene, you’re jealous.”
Climpt tipped his head at Lucas. “He’s seeing—I’m choosing my words carefully—he’s seeing one of our local doctors.”
“Female, I hope,” said the older of the techs.
“No doubt about that,” said Climpt. “I wouldn’t mind myself.”
“Careful, Gene,” Lucas said. He glanced at his watch. “We probably ought to get back to town.”
The tech was still dealing the round of five-card stud, flipped another ace out to the Iceman. “Whoa, two pair, aces and eights,” he said. He flipped over his own cards. “You can have it.”
When Climpt and Davenport left, the Iceman stood up and drifted toward the window, watched them as they stopped at the nose of the truck, said a few words, then got in the truck. A moment later they were gone.
“I guess we oughta get back,” the older tech said. “Goddamn, a couple more days of this shit and we’re outa here.”
“If anything can get out of here,” said the other man. He went to the window, pulled back a curtain, and looked out. “Jesus, look at it come down.”
After the techs had gone, the Iceman sat alone, thinking. Time to get out, said a voice at the back of his head. He could start packing his trunk now, be ready to go by dark. With the storm, nobody would be stopping by the firehouse. He could be in Duluth in two hours, Canada in another four. Once across the border, he could lose himself, head north and west out to Alaska.
If he could take down Weather Karkinnen . . . But there’d still be the Schoeneckers and Doug and the others. But they were thousands of miles away. Nobody might ever find them. It could still work.
And besides, he wanted Weather. He could feel her out there, a hostile eminence. She deserved to die.
Get out, said the voice.
Kill her, thought the Iceman.
CHAPTER
The Wisconsin state trooper had buried himself in a snowdrift across from the fire station. He wore an insulated winter camouflage suit that he’d bought for deer hunting, pac boots, and a camo face mask. He kept a pair of binoculars in a canvas bag with the radio, and a Thermos of hot chocolate in another bag. He’d been in place for two hours, reasonably warm, fairly comfortable.
He’d watched Davenport and Climpt go into the station to nail Helper down. After they’d been inside for a minute, the FBI man, the black guy, jogged up from the back, used a key to go through the access door into the truck bay. Two minutes later the FBI man slipped out and disappeared into the snow. Then Davenport and Climpt pulled out, followed by the crime techs from Madison. Since then, nothing. The trooper had expected immediate action. When it hadn’t come, sitting in the drift out of the wind, he’d felt a bit sleepy; the winter storm muffled all sound, dimmed all color, eliminated odors. He unscrewed the top of the Thermos, took a hit of chocolate, screwed the top back on. He was pushing the jug back into his carry sack when he saw movement. The door on the far truck bay, where the FBI man had gone in, was rolling up.
The trooper pulled the radio from the bag, put it to his face: “We got movement,” he said. “You hear me?” The radio was unfamiliar, provided by the FBI, all talk scrambled.