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“See you in the morning,” she said and closed the door. He waited until he heard the lock snap, then went back down the walk to the truck, still feeling the fleeting pressure of her lips on his.
“She okay?” Climpt asked.
“Yeah. Gimme the flashlight. In the glove compartment.” Climpt grunted, dug around in the glove compartment, handed him the flash, and Lucas said, “I’ll be right back.”
The snow around the house was unbroken as far back as he could see. A low railed deck stuck out of the back, in front of a long sliding-glass door. A bird feeder showed hundreds of bird tracks and the comings and goings of a squirrel, but nothing larger. As he waded ponderously through the snow, returning to the truck, another pod of snowmobiles roared by on the lake, and Lucas thought about the sled used in the LaCourt attack.
Climpt was standing next to the truck, smoking an unfiltered Camel. When he saw Lucas coming, he dropped the cigarette on the driveway, stepped on it, and climbed back into the passenger seat.
“Find anything?” he asked as Lucas got in.
“No.”
“We could get somebody down here, keep an eye on her.”
“I’m go
Lucas backed out of the drive and they rode in silence for a few minutes. Then Climpt, slouching against the passenger-side door, drawled, “That Weather’s a fine-looking woman, uh-huh. Got a good ass on her.” He was half-gri
“I don’t believe she would, Gene,” Lucas said, looking straight out through the windshield.
Climpt, still smiling in the dark, said, “You don’t think so, huh? That’s a damn shame. I think she could probably show a fellow a pretty good time. And it’s not like puttin’ a little on me would leave her with any less of it, if you know what I mean.”
“Stick a sock in it, Gene,” Lucas said.
Climpt broke into a laugh that was half a cough, and after a minute, Lucas laughed with him. Climpt said, “Looking at you when you went up to her door, I’d say you’re about half-caught, my friend. If you don’t want to get all-caught, you better be careful. If you want to be careful.”
Carr was gray-faced, exhausted. Old.
“I’ve got to get back out there, on the search line,” he said when Climpt and Lucas walked into his office. Lacey was with him and four other deputies. “It’s a mess. We got people who want to help who just aren’t equipped for it. Not in this cold. They’ll be dying out there, looking for the kid.”
“The kid’s dead if he’s not inside,” Climpt said bluntly.
“And if he’s inside somewhere, looking for him outside won’t help.”
“We thought of that, but you can’t really quit, not when there’s a chance,” Carr said. “Where’s this photograph Henry’s been telling me about?”
Lucas took it out of his pocket and flipped it on Carr’s desk. Carr looked at it for a moment and said, “Mother of God.” To one of the deputies, he said, “Is Tony still down the hall?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Carr picked up the phone, poked in four numbers. They all heard a ringing far down the hall, then Carr said, “Tony? Come on down to my office, will you?”
When he’d hung up, Lucas said, “I had di
“I’ll send somebody over,” Carr suggested.
Lucas shook his head. “I’ll cover it tonight. Tomorrow I’ll try to push her into a safer place, maybe out of town, until this thing is settled. I just hope it doesn’t start any talk in the town.”
The sheriff shrugged. “It probably will, but so what? The truth’ll get out and it’ll be okay.”
“There’s another problem,” Lucas said. “Everything we do seems to be all over town in a few minutes. You need to put the lid on, tight. If John Mueller’s missing, and if he’s missing because he talked to me, it’s possible that our killer heard about it from a teacher or another kid. But it’s also possible that it came out of the department here. Christ, everything that we’ve done . . .”
Carr nodded, pointed a finger at Lacey. “Henry, write up a memo. Anyone who talks out of place, to anyone, about this case, is go
Lacey nodded and opened his mouth to say something when a short dark-haired man stuck his head in the office and said, “Sheriff?”
Carr glanced up at him, nodded and said, “I need to talk to Tony for a minute. Could we get everybody out of here except Lucas and Henry? And Gene, you stay . . . Thanks.”
When the others had gone, Carr said, “Shut the door.” To Lucas: “Tony’s my political guy.” When the dark-haired man had closed the door, Carr handed him the Polaroid and said, “Take a look at this picture.”
Tony took it, studied it, turned it, said “Huh,” and nibbled on a thumbnail. Finally he looked up and said, “Sheriff?”
“You know that woman?”
“There’re half-dozen people it could be,” he said. “But something about her jaw . . .”
“Say the name.”
“Judy Schoenecker.”
“Damn,” the sheriff said. “That’s what I thought soon as I saw it. Gene?”
Gene took the photo, looked at it, shook his head. “Could be, but I don’t know her that well.”
“Let’s check it out,” Carr said. “Lucas, what’re you going to do? It’d be best if you stayed away from the Mueller search, at least for a while.”
Lucas looked at his watch. “I’m going back to Weather’s. I’m about to drop dead anyway.” He reached across the desk and tapped the photograph. “Why don’t you call this a tentative identification and see if you can get a search warrant?”
“Boy, I’d hate to . . .” the sheriff started. Then: “Screw it. I’ll get one as soon as the judge wakes up tomorrow.”
“Have somebody call me,” Lucas said.
“All right. And Lucas: You couldn’t help it about the kid, John Mueller,” Carr said. “I mean, if he’s gone.”
“You really couldn’t,” Lacey agreed.
“I appreciate your saying it,” Lucas said bleakly. “But you’re both full of shit.”
CHAPTER
10
Sleep had always been difficult. The slights and insults of the day would keep him awake for hours, plotting revenge; and there were few days without slights and insults.
And night was the time that he worried. There was power in the Iceman—movement, focus, clarity—but at night, when he thought things over, the things he’d done during the day didn’t always seem wise.
Lying awake in his restless bed, the Iceman heard the three vehicles arrive, one after another, bouncing off the roadway into the snow-packed parking lot. He listened for a moment, heard a car door slam. A clock radio sat on the bedstand: the luminous red numbers said it was two o’clock in the morning.
Who was out in the pit of night?
The Iceman got out of bed, turned on a bedside lamp, pulled on his jeans, and started downstairs. The floor was cold, and he stooped, picked up the docks he’d dropped on the floor, slipped them on, and went down the stairs.
A set of headlights still played across his side window, and he could hear—or feel—an engine turning over, as if people were talking in the lot. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the headlights and engine sounds died and a moment later someone began pounding on the door.