'Take it easy in the dark,' the Iceman said.
Harper was thrashing on the floor again, managed to roll onto his back, tried to sit up. He was bleeding from his nose. The Iceman stooped, caught the wires between his ankles, and dragged him across the room, through the front door, down the porch. The yellow-haired girl was on the Iceman's snowmobile, waved, and pulled away. Harper's head banged off the stoop, and the Iceman pulled him through the snow to Harper's own truck, picked him up with some effort, and threw him in the back. Then he went back inside, gathered up Harper's clothes, got the truck keys, and went back out.
The trip to the sandpit took seven or eight minutes. The Iceman took the right down to the pit, pulled off the road into the area beaten down by deputies' trucks when they'd found the Mueller kid. He climbed out, walked around in back, dropped the tailgate, and jerked Harper out of the back, letting him fall to the ground.
'You still alive?' he asked as Harper groaned. The temperature was below zero; in his underwear, Harper wouldn't last long. The Iceman dragged him around into the truck headlights as a snowmobile curved in from the trail. The yellow-haired girl stopped beside the truck and got down.
Harper, on his back, his face a mask of blood, spit once and then croaked, 'You kill Jim?'
'Yup. Enjoyed it,' the Iceman said. 'Fucked him first.'
'Thought you might of,' Harper said. He thrashed for a moment, then began to weep, his body heaving. The Iceman walked back to the snowmobile, pulled his snowshoes off the rack, stepped into them and clipped them over his toes.
The yellow-haired girl was standing over Harper, watching him, her hand in her pocket.
'Got your gun?' the Iceman asked.
'Yup.' She'd had it in her hand, and she pulled it out of her pocket.
'So shoot him.'
'Me?' Harper tried to roll, but just managed to get facedown. She stared in fascination at the back of his head.
'Sure. It's a rush. Here.' The Iceman stepped back from Harper, bent, grabbed his feet and rolled him in place until Harper was faceup again. Harper tried to sit up, but the Iceman stepped on his chest, pushing him flat.
'C'mon,' Harper groaned. He saw the gun in the yellow-haired girl's hand. 'C'mon-the cocksucker killed your school friends.'
'Weren't no friends of mine. And besides, you're the one who just had to fuck me in the ass and hurt me. You remember that, Russ Harper? Me hurtin' and you laughin'?' She looked at the Iceman. 'Where should I shoot him?'
'In the head's best,' the Iceman said.
She leaned forward with the gun, holding it two feet from Harper's forehead. He closed his eyes, squeezed them. When she didn't pull the trigger, he said, 'Fuck you then. Fuck you.'
She still didn't pull the trigger, and he opened his eyes. As they opened, she pulled it, and the bullet hit in the left side of the forehead. He groaned, started to thrash.
'Again,' said the Iceman. 'Do it again.'
She fired twice more, one bullet going through Harper's left eye, the other through the bridge of his nose. The second bullet killed him. She fired the third because it felt good. The gun snapped in her hand, like a gun should. She could feel the power going out.
'How's that feel?' the Iceman asked. Harper was still in the snow, his head at an odd angle; the blood running down his face looked purely black in the headlight.
'God… that was intense,' said the yellow-haired girl. She knelt to look at Harper's face, squeezed his nose, then looked up at the Iceman. 'Now what?'
'Now I carry him into the woods where they won't find him right away, and then I drive his truck out onto Welsh Lake by the fish shacks and leave it there. You pick me up.'
'If we get another one, can I…?'
'We'll see,' the Iceman said, looking down at Harper. There was very little blood. 'If you're good, maybe,' the Iceman said. And he started to giggle.
CHAPTER 22
On Sunday, Lucas and Weather slept late. For Weather, that was nine o'clock. After that, she was up, humming around the house, and at ten o'clock he gave up and got out of bed.
'There won't be much to do,' she said. 'Let's rent some skis and get outside.'
'Let me check downtown. If nothing's happening, we could go out this afternoon.'
'Good. I can go down to the Super-Valu and do some shopping. See you back here for lunch.'
Carr was sitting in his office, alone. When Lucas looked in, he said, 'Harper's gone.'
'Goddammit,' Lucas said. 'When?'
'We never even saw him once,' Carr said. 'Every time we check, nobody home. Nobody at the gas station. No truck. I put out a bulletin.'
'We should have found a way to keep him inside,' Lucas said.
'Yeah. What're you going to do?'
'Read the paper on the case, hang around. Wait. See if I can figure out some other button to push. Nothing on the Schoeneckers?'
'I'd bet they're dead,' Carr said. His voice was flat, as though he didn't care.
Climpt came by just before noon. 'Not a damn thing going on,' he said. 'I was back out at the Schoeneckers', nothing there.'
'Why'd he kill the priest?' Lucas asked half to himself.
'Don't know,' Climpt said.
'There are about three or four knots in this thing,' Lucas said. 'If we could just unravel one of them, if we could find the Schoeneckers, or break Harper, figure out why Bergen was killed. If we could figure out that time problem when the LaCourts were killed.'
'Or the picture,' Climpt said. 'You got that copy?'
'Yeah.' Lucas dug his wallet out of his pants pocket, unfolded the picture, passed it to Climpt, who peered at it.
'Beats the shit out of me,' he said after a minute. 'There's nothing here.'
Lucas took it back, looked at it, shook his head. The adult male in the picture might be anyone.
That afternoon Lucas and Weather rented cross-country skis and ran a ten-kilometer loop through the national forest. At the end of it, Weather, breathing hard, said, 'You're in shape.'
'You can get in shape if you don't have anything to do,' he said.
On Monday, Weather got up before first light. A morning person, she said cheerfully, as Lucas tried to sleep. All surgeons are. 'Then if you've got two or three surgeries in a day, the hospital can fit them on one nursing shift. One surgical tech, one anesthesiologist, one circulating nurse. Keeps the costs down.'
'Yeah, surgeons are famous for that,' Lucas mumbled. 'Go the fuck away.'
'You didn't say that last night,' she said. But Lucas pulled the bed covers over his head. She bent over him, pulled the blanket down, kissed him on the temple, and pulled the cover back up and walked out, humming.
Five minutes later she was back. She whispered, 'You awake?'
'Yes.'
'Rusty's here to take me down to the hospital,' she said. 'I checked the TV weather. There's another storm coming up from the southwest and we could get hit. They say it should start late tonight or early tomorrow. I'm outa here.'
Lucas made it down to the courthouse at nine o'clock, yawning, face braced by the cold. The sky overhead was sunny, but a finger of slate-colored cloud hung off to the southwest, like smoke from a distant volcano. Dan Jones, the newspaper editor, was just climbing out of his Bronco as Lucas got out of his truck and they walked up to the sheriff's department together.
'So Bergen's not the guy?' he asked.
