prints, the bottles are absolutely clean. Like somebody wiped them before Bergen picked them up-or printed Bergen's fingerprints on them after he was dead. Hardly any smears or partials or handling background, just a bunch of very clear prints. Too clear, too careful. They have to be deliberate.'
'Sonofagun,' Carr said, looking from the tech to Lucas.
'Could mean nothing at all,' Crane said. 'I'd say the odds are good that he killed himself. But…'
'But…' Carr repeated.
'Are you checking the neighborhood,' Lucas asked Carr, 'to see if anybody was hanging around last night?'
'I'll get it started,' Carr said. A deputy had been standing, listening, and Carr pointed to him. He nodded and left.
Weather came in, shrugged. 'There aren't any bruises that I can see, no signs of a struggle. His pants were undone.'
'Yeah?'
'So what?' asked Carr.
'Lots of time suicides make themselves look nice. Women put on nice sleeping gowns and make up, men shave. It'd seem odd to be a priest, know you're killing yourself and undo your pants so you'd be found that way.'
Carr looked back toward the bedroom and said, 'Phil was kind of a formal guy.'
'There's a knife out in his car,' Lucas said to Weather. 'Go have a look at it.'
While she went out to the garage, Lucas walked back to the bedroom. Bergen, he thought, looked seriously disgruntled.
'We're checking the neighborhood now,' Carr said, coming down the hall.
'Shelly, there's this Pentecostal thing,' Lucas said. 'I don't want to be insulting, but there are a lot of fruitcakes involved in religious controversies. You see it all the time in the Cities. You get enough fruitcakes in one place, working on each other, and one of them might turn out to be a killer. You've got to think about that.'
'I'll think about it,' Carr said. 'You believe Phil was murdered?'
Lucas nodded. 'It's a possibility. No signs of any kind of a struggle.'
'Phil would have fought. And I guess the thing that sticks in my mind most of all is the business about the pine. We were out playing golf one time…'
'I know,' Lucas said. 'He kicked the ball out.'
'How'd you know?'
'You told me,' Lucas said, scratching his head. 'I don't know when, but you did.'
'Well, nobody else knew,' Carr said.
They stood looking at the body for a moment, then Weather came up and said, 'That's the knife.'
'No question?'
'Not in my mind.'
'It's all over town that he did it,' Carr said mournfully. All three of them simultaneously turned away from the body and started down the hall toward the living room. They were passing Bergen's office, and Lucas glanced at the green IBM typewriter pulled out on a typing tray. A Zeos computer sat on a table to the other side, with a printer to its left.
'Wait a minute.' He looked at the computer, then at the bookcase beside it. Instructional manuals for Windows, WordPerfect, MS-DOS, the Biblica RSV Bible-commentary and reference software, a CompuServe guide, and other miscellaneous computer books were stacked on the shelves, along with the boxes that the software came in. The computer had two floppy-disk drives. The 5.25 drive was empty, but a blue disk waited in the 3.5- inch drive. Lucas leaned into the hallway and yelled for Crane: 'Hey, are you guys gonna dust the computer keys?'
'Um, if you want,' Crane called back. 'We haven't found any computer stuff, though.'
'Okay. I'm going to bring it up,' he said. To Carr: 'I use WordPerfect.'
With Carr and Weather looking over his shoulder, Lucas punched up the computer, typed WP to activate WordPerfect, then the F5 key to get a listing of files. He specified the B drive. The light went on over the occupied disk drive and a listing flashed onto the screen.
'Look at this,' Lucas said. He tapped a line that said:
Serl-9 · 5,213 01-08 12:38a
'What is it?'
'He was on the computer last night-this morning-at 12:38 A.M. That's when he closed the file. I wonder why he didn't compose his note on it? It's a lot easier and neater than a typewriter.' He punched directional keys to select the last file and brought it up.
'It's a sermon… it looks like… Sermon 1-9. That would have been for tomorrow morning if that's the way he listed them.' He reopened the index of files and ran his finger down the screen. 'Yeah, see? Here's last Sunday, Ser1-2. Did you go to Mass?'
'Sure.'
'Let's put it on Look.' He called the second file up. 'Is that Sunday's sermon?'
Carr read for a moment, then said, 'Yeah, that's it. Right to the word, as far as I can tell.'
'All right, so that's how he does it.' Lucas tapped the Exit key twice to get back to the first file and began reading.
'Look at this,' he said, pointing at the screen. 'He's denying it. He's denying he did it, at 12:38 A.M.'
Carr read through the draft sermon, moving his lips, blood draining from his face. 'Was he murdered? Or did this just trigger something, coming face-to-face with his own lies?'
'I'd say he was killed,' Lucas said. Weather's hand was tight on his shoulder. 'We have to go on that assumption. If we're wrong, no harm done. If we're right… our man's still out there.'
CHAPTER 19
The Iceman lay with his head on the pillow, the yellow-haired girl sprawled restlessly beside him. They were watching the tinny miniature television run through 1940s cartoons, Hekyll and Jekyll, Mighty Mouse.
Bergen was dead. The deputies the Iceman had talked to-a half-dozen of them, including the Madison people-had swallowed the note. They wanted to believe that the troubles were over, the case was solved. And just that morning he'd finally gotten something definitive about the magazine photo. The thing was worthless. The reproduction was so bad that nothing could be made of it.
At noon, he'd decided he was clear. At one o'clock, he'd heard the first rumors of dissent: that Carr was telling people Bergen had been murdered. And he'd heard about Harper. About a deal…
Harper would sell his own mother for a nickel. When his kid was killed, Harper treated it as an inconvenience. If Harper talked, if Harper said anything, the Iceman was done. Harper knew who was in the photograph.
The same applied to Doug Reston, the Schoeneckers, and the rest. But those problems were not immediate. Harper was the immediate problem.
Bergen's death made a difference, whether Carr liked it or not, whether he believed it or not. If the killings stopped, believing that Bergen was the killer would become increasingly convenient.
He sighed, and the yellow-haired girl looked at him, a worry wrinkle creasing the space between her eyes. 'Penny for your thoughts,' she said.
'Is that all, just a penny?' He stroked the back of her neck. Doug Reston had a particular fondness for her. She was so pale, so youthful. With Harper, she touched off an unusual violence: Harper wanted to bruise her, force her.
'I gotta ask you something,' she said. She sat up, let the blanket drop down around her waist.
'Sure.'
'Did you kill the LaCourts?' She asked it flatly, watching him, then continued in a rush: 'I don't care if you did, I really don't, but maybe I could help.'
'Why would you think that?' the Iceman asked calmly.
