"What about the snack?" Lucas asked.
"You're looking at it, honey," she said.
Fourth full day of the investigation: he felt like he'd been in Ojibway County forever. Felt like he'd known Weather forever.
Lucas made it into the sheriff's office a few minutes after eight. The day was warmer, above zero, with damp spots in the streets where ice-remover chemicals had cut through the snow. The sky was an impenetrable gray. Despite the clouds hanging overhead, Lucas felt… light.
Different. He could still smell Weather, although he wasn't sure if the smell was real or just something he'd memorized and was holding on to.
There was nothing light about Carr. He'd been heavy and pink, even at the LaCourt killing. Now he was gray-faced, drawn. He looked not hungry or starving, but desiccated, as though he were dying of thirst.
"Get it?" he asked when Lucas walked in.
Lucas handed him a copy of the porno magazine, folded open to the page with Jim Harper on it. "Is this it?" Carr asked, studying the photo.
"That's it. That's what the LaCourts had, anyway," Lucas said.
Carr held it to the window for extra light. Henry Lacey ambled in, nodded to Lucas, and Carr handed him the photo. "Who is it, Henry? Who's the fat guy?"
Lacey looked at it, then at Lucas. "I don't see anything. Am I missing something?"
"I don't think so," Lucas said. Carr put his thumb to his mouth, began nibbling his cuticles, then quickly put his hand back on his desk, his movements jerky, out of sync. Strung-out. "When was the last time you had any sleep?" Lucas asked.
"Can't remember," Carr said vaguely. "Somebody tell me what to do."
Lucas said, "How tight are you with the editor of the Register? And the radio station."
"Same thing," Carr said. He spun in his chair and looked out his window toward the city garage. "The answer is, pretty tight. Danny Jones is the brother to Bob Jones."
"The junior high principal?"
"Yup. We played poker most Wednesday nights. Before this happened, anyway," Carr said.
"If you just flat told him what you wanted in the paper, or on the radio, and explained that you needed it done to break this case, would he buy it?"
Carr, still staring out the window, thought it over, then said, "In this case-probably."
Lucas outlined his proposaclass="underline" that they go to the county attorney with the photographs they'd found of Jim Harper and get an arrest warrant for Russ Harper. They would charge Harper with promoting child pornography, drop him in jail.
"He'll bail out in twenty minutes," Lacey objected.
"Not if we work it right," Lucas said. "We'll pick him up this afternoon, question him, charge him tonight. We won't have to take him to court until Monday. We tell the Register that he's been arrested in connection with a pornography ring that we uncovered during the investigation of the LaCourt murders. We also leak the word that Harper's dealing-that he's trying to make an immunity deal if he turns in other members of the ring. And we tell Harper that we'll give him immunity unless the Schoeneckers come in first. Anything about the Schoeneckers, by the way?"
"Nothing yet," Carr said, shaking his head. "What you're saying about Russ Harper is… we set him up. I mean, the charges wouldn't hold water."
"We're not setting him up. We're using him to make something happen," Lucas said. "And who knows? Maybe he has some ideas about the killer."
"If he doesn't, he'll sue our butts. He'll probably sue our butts anyway," Carr said.
"A good attorney would get him in court and stick those pictures of Jim right up his ass," Lucas said. Lucas leaned across the deck. "I'll tell you, Shelly, there's a possibility that the LaCourt murders and the Mueller kid and Jim Harper have nothing to do with this sex ring. Possible, but I don't believe it. There's a connection. We just haven't found it. And Weather said last night she can't believe a guy like Harper didn't have some idea of what his kid was up to."
"We've got to do it, Shelly," Lacey said somberly. "We've got nothing else going for us. Not a frigging thing."
"Let's do it then," Carr said. He looked up at Lucas, exhaustion in his eyes. "And you and me, we've got to go talk to Phil Bergen again."
Bergen was waiting for them. Like Carr, he'd changed. But Bergen looked rested, clear-faced. Sober.
"I know what you're here for," he said when he let them in to the rectory. "Bob Dell called me. I didn't know he was homosexual until he called."
"You've never…" Lucas began.
"Never." Bergen turned to Carr. "Shelly, I never would have believed that'd you'd think…"
"He didn't believe it," Lucas said. "I brought it up. I looked at a plat map of the lake road, saw Dell's house, made some inquiries, and maybe jumped to the wrong conclusion."
"You did."
Lucas shrugged. "I was trying to figure out why you might claim that you were at the LaCourts' when you weren't, and why you couldn't tell us." They were standing in the entry, coats, gloves, and hats still on. Bergen faced them on his feet, didn't invite them to sit.
"I was at the LaCourts'. I was there," Bergen said.
Lucas looked him over, then nodded. "Then we've still got a problem," he said. "The time."
"Forget the time," Bergen said. "I swear: I was there and they were alive. I believe the killer came just as I left-maybe even was there before I left, and waited until I'd gone-and killed them and spread the gas around, but accidently set it off too soon. If the firemen are wrong by a few minutes, then the times work out and you're barking up the wrong tree. And you've managed to severely… damage me in the process."
Carr looked at Lucas. Lucas looked at Bergen for a long beat, nodded, and said, "Maybe."
Bergen looked from Lucas to Carr, waiting, and Carr finally said, "Let's go." To Bergen: "Phil, I'm sorry about this. You know I am."
Bergen nodded, tight-mouthed, unforgiving.
Outside, Carr asked, "Do you believe him now?"
"I believe he's not gay."
"That's a start." They walked to the car in silence, then Carr said wearily, "And thanks for taking the rap on Bob Dell. Maybe when this is over, Phil and I can patch things up."
"I'm going to get Gene and take Harper. Why don't you catch a nap for a couple of hours?"
"Can't. My wife'd be cleaning," Carr said. "That's pretty noisy. I can't sleep worth a damn when she's working."
Lucas called Climpt on the radio, got him headed back toward the courthouse. While Carr returned to his office, Lucas found Henry Lacey talking to a deputy.
"I need to talk to you for a minute," he said.
Lacey nodded, said, "Check you later, Carl." And to Lucas, "What's going on?"
"There're rumors that Shelly's having an affair with a lady at the church. I think I met her the other night."
"So…?" Lacey was defensive.
"Is she married or what?"
"Widowed," Lacey said reluctantly.
"You think you could get Shelly over to her house? On the sly? Get him a nap, get her to stroke him a little? The guy's on the edge of something bad."
Lacey showed the shadow of a smile and nodded. "I'll do it. I should have thought of it."
Lucas, Climpt, and the young deputy Dusty, who'd first talked to John Mueller at the school, took Harper out of his gas station at 4:30, just before full dark.
Lucas and Climpt ate a long lunch, reviewed the newest information coming out of the Madison laboratory crew at the LaCourt house, stalled around until the county judge left the courthouse, then picked up Dusty and headed out to Knuckle Lake. When they pulled into the station in Climpt's Suburban, they could see Harper through the gas station window, counting change into a cash register. He came out snarling.