Carr said, "Which leaves us the question of Bob Dell."
"We've got to talk to Bergen again. You can do it today or wait until I get back."
"We'll have to wait," Carr said. "After this morning, Phil's way beyond me."
"I'll try to get back tonight," Lucas said. "But I might not. If I don't, could you put somebody with Weather?"
"Yeah. I'll have Gene go on over," Carr said.
Weather declared John Mueller dead under suspicious circumstances and ordered the body shipped to a forensic pathologist in Milwaukee. Lucas told her he was leaving, explained, and said he would try to get back.
"That's a twelve-hour round trip," she said. "Take it easy."
"Gene'll take me into town. Could you catch a ride with Shelly?"
"Sure." They were standing next to Climpt's truck, a few feet from Climpt and Carr. When he turned to get in, she caught him and kissed him. "But hurry back."
On the way back, Climpt said, "You ever thought about having kids?"
"I've got one. A daughter," Lucas said. And then remembered Weather's story about Climpt's daughter.
Climpt nodded, said, "Lucky man. I had a daughter, but she was killed in an accident."
"Weather told me about it," Lucas said.
Climpt glanced at him and grinned. He could have made a Marlboro commercial, Lucas thought. "Everybody feels sorry for me. Sort of wears on you after a while, thirty years," Climpt said.
"Yeah."
"Anyway, what I was gonna say… I'm thinking I might kill this asshole for what he did to that LaCourt girl and now the Mueller kid. If we get him, and we get him in a place where we can do it, just sort of turn your head." His voice was mild, careful.
"I don't know," Lucas said, looking out the window.
"You don't have to do it-just don't stop me," Climpt said.
"Won't bring your daughter back, Gene."
"I know that," Climpt rasped. "Jesus Christ, Davenport."
"Sorry."
After a long silence, listening to the snow tires rumble over the rough roadway, Climpt said, "I just can't deal with people that kill kids. Can't even read about it in the newspaper or listen to it on TV. Killing a kid is the worst thing you can do. The absolute fuckin' worst."
The drive to Milwaukee was long and complicated, a web of country roads and two-lane highways into Green Bay, and then the quick trip south along the lake on I-43. Domeier had given him a sequence of exits, and he got the right off-ramp the first time. The doughnut place was halfway down a flat-roofed shopping center that appeared to be in permanent recession. Lucas parked and walked inside.
The Milwaukee cop was a squat, red-faced man wearing a long wool coat and a longshoreman's watch cap. He sat at the counter, dunking a doughnut in a cup of coffee, charming an equally squat waitress who talked with a grin past a lipstick-smeared cigarette. When Lucas walked in she snatched the cigarette from her mouth and dropped her hand below counter level. Domeier looked over his shoulder, squinted, and said, "You gotta be Davenport."
"Yeah. You're telepathic?"
"You look like you been colder'n a well-digger's ass," Domeier said. "And I hear it's been colder'n a well-digger's ass up there."
"Got that right," Lucas said. They shook hands and Lucas scanned the menu above the counter. "Gimme two vanilla, one with coconut and one with peanuts, and a large coffee black," he said, dropping onto a stool next to Domeier. The coffee shop made him feel like a metropolitan cop again.
The waitress went off to get the coffee, the cigarette back in her mouth. "It's not so cold down here?" Lucas asked Domeier, picking up the conversation.
"Oh, it's cold, six or eight below, but nothing like what you got," Domeier said.
They talked while Lucas ate the doughnuts, feeling each other out. Lucas talked about Minneapolis, pension, and bennies.
"I'd like to go somewhere warmer if I could figure out some way to transfer pension and bennies," Domeier said. "You know, someplace out in the Southwest, not too hot, not too cold. Dry. Someplace that needs a sex guy and'd give me three weeks off the first year."
"A move sets you back," Lucas said. "You don't know the town, you don't know the cops or the assholes. A place isn't the same if you haven't been on patrol."
"I'd hate to go back in uniform," Domeier said with an exaggerated shudder. "Hated that shit, giving out speeding tickets, breaking up fights."
"And you got a great job right here," the waitress said. "What would you do if you didn't have Polaroid Peter?"
"Polaroid who?" asked Lucas.
"Peter," Domeier said, dropping his face into his hands. "A guy who's trying to kill me."
The waitress cackled and Domeier said, "He's like a flasher. He drops trow in the privacy of his own home, takes a Polaroid picture of his dick. Pretty average dick, I don't know what he's bragging about. Then he drops the picture around a high school or in a mall or someplace where there are bunches of teenage girls. A girl picks it up and zam-she's flashed. We think he's probably around somewhere, watching. Gettin' off on it."
Lucas had started laughing and nearly choked on a piece of doughnut. Domeier absently whacked him on the back. "What happens when a guy picks up the picture?" Lucas asked.
"Guys don't," Domeier said morosely. "Or if they do, they don't tell anybody. We've got two dozen calls about these things, and every time the picture's been picked up by a teenage girl. They see it laying there on the sidewalk, and they just gotta look. And if we got twenty-five calls, this guy must've struck a hundred times."
"Probably five hundred if you got twenty-five calls," Lucas said.
"Driving us nuts," Domeier said, finishing his coffee.
"Big deal," Lucas said. "Actually sounds kind of amusing."
"Yeah?" Domeier looked at him. "You wanna tell that to the mayor?"
"Uh-oh," Lucas said.
"He went on television and promised we'd get the guy soon," Domeier said. "The whole sex unit's having an argument about whether we oughta shit or go blind."
Lucas started laughing again and said, "You ready?"
"Let's go," Domeier said.
Bobby McLain lived in a two-story apartment complex built of concrete blocks painted beige and brown, in a neighborhood that alternated shabby old brown-brick apartments with shabby new concrete-block apartments. The streets were bleak, snow piled over the curbs, big rusting sedans from the seventies parked next to the snowpiles. Even the trees looked dark and crabbed. Domeier rode with Lucas, and pointed out the hand-painted Chevy van under a security light on the west side of the complex. "That's Bobby's. It's painted with a roller."
"What color is that?" Lucas asked as they pulled in beside it.
"Off-grape," Domeier said. "You don't see that many off-grape vans around. Not without Dead Head stickers, anyway."
They climbed out, looked up and down the street. Nobody in sight: not a soul other than themselves. At the door, they could hear a television going inside. Lucas knocked, and the television sound died.
"Who is it?" The voice squeaked like a new adolescent's.
"Domeier. Milwaukee PD." After a moment of silence, Domeier said, "Open the fuckin' door, Bobby."
"What do you want?"
Lucas stepped to the left, noticed Domeier edging to the right, out of the direct line of the door.
"I want you to open the fuckin' door," Domeier said.
He kicked it, and the voice on the other side said, "Okay, okay, okay. Just one goddamn minute."