The tall man said, "Shelly, I hit every place on the road. Nobody saw anything connected, but we've got three people missing yet. I'm trying to track them down now."
"Thanks, Gene," Carr said, and the tall man headed toward the door. To Lucas, he said, "My lead investigator."
Lucas nodded, and looked at Weather. "I don't suppose there was any reason to do body temps."
The doctor shook her head, took another sip of coffee. Lucas noticed that she wore no rings. "Not on the two women. The fire and the water and the ice and snow would mess everything up. Frank was pretty bundled up, though, and I did take a temp on him. Sixty-four degrees. He hadn't been dead that long."
"Huh," said Carr, glancing at Lucas.
The doctor caught it and looked from Lucas to Carr and asked, "Is that critical?"
"You might want to write it down somewhere," Carr said.
"There's a question about how long they were dead before the fire started," Lucas said.
Weather was looking at him oddly. "Maddog, right?"
"What?"
"You were the guy who killed the Maddog after he sliced up all those women. And you were in that fight with those Indian guys."
Lucas nodded. "Yeah." The Crows coming out of that house in the dark,.45s in their hands… Why'd she have to bring that up?
"I had a friend who did that New York cop, the woman who was shot in the chest? I can't remember her name, but at the time she was pretty famous."
"Lily Rothenburg." Damn. Sloan on the steps of Hennepin General, white-faced, saying, "Got your shit together?… Lily's been shot." Sweet Lily.
"Oh, yes," Weather said, nodding. "I knew it was a flower name. She's back in New York?"
"Yeah. She's a captain now. Your friend was a redheaded surgeon? I remember."
"Yup. That's her. And she was there when the big shoot-out happened. She says it was the most exciting night of her career. She was doing two ops at the same time, going back and forth between rooms."
"My God, and now it's here," Carr said, appalled. He looked at Lucas. "Listen, I spent five years on the patrol before I got elected up here, and that was twenty years ago. Most of my boys are off the patrol or local police forces. We really don't know nothin' about multiple murder. What I'm askin' is, are you gonna help us out?"
"What do you want me to do?" Lucas asked, shaking away the memories.
"Run the investigation. I'll give you everything I can. Eight or ten guys, help with the county attorney, whatever."
"What authority would I have?"
Carr dipped one hand in his coat pocket and at the same time said, "Do you swear to uphold the laws of the state of Wisconsin and so forth and so on, so help you God?"
"Sure." Lucas nodded.
Carr tossed him a star. "You're a deputy," he said. "We can work out the small stuff later."
Lucas looked at the badge in the palm of his hand.
"Try not to shoot anybody," Weather said.
CHAPTER 3
The Iceman's hands were freezing. He fumbled the can opener twice, then put the soup can aside and turned on the hot water in the kitchen sink. As he let the water run over his fingers, his mind drifted…
He hadn't found the photograph. The girl didn't know where it was, and she'd told the truth: he'd nearly cut her head off before she'd died, cut away her nose and her ears. She said her mother had taken it, and finally, he believed her. But by that time Claudia was dead. Too late to ask where she'd put it.
So he'd killed the girl, chopping her with the corn-knife, and burned the house. The police didn't know there was a photo, and the photo itself was on flimsy newsprint. With the fire, with all the water, it'd be a miracle if it had survived.
Still. He hadn't seen it destroyed. The photo, if it were found, would kill him.
Now he stood with his fingers under the hot water. They slowly shaded from white to pink, losing the putty-like consistency they'd had from the brutal cold. For just a moment he closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the sense of things undone. And time was trickling away. A voice at the back of his head said, Run now. Time is trickling away.
But he had never run away. Not when his parents had beaten him. Not when kids had singled him out at school. Instead, he had learned to strike first, but slyly, disguising his aggression: even then, cold as ice. Extortion was his style: I didn't take it, he gave it to me. We were just playing, he fell down, he's just a crybaby, I didn't mean anything.
In tenth grade he'd learned an important lesson. There were other students as willing to use violence as he was, and violence in tenth grade involved larger bodies, stronger muscles: people got hurt. Noses were broken, shoulders were dislocated in the weekly afternoon fights. Most importantly, you couldn't hide the violence. No way to deny you were in a fight if somebody got hurt.
And somebody got hurt. Darrell Wynan was his name. Tough kid. Picked out the Iceman for one of those reasons known only to people who pick fights: in fact, he had seen it coming. Carried a rock in his pocket, a smooth sandstone pebble the size of a golf ball, for the day the fight came.
Wynan caught him next to the football field, three or four of his remora fish running along behind, carrying their books, delight on their faces. A fight, a fight…
The fight lasted five seconds. Wynan came at him in the stance of an experienced barehanded fighter, elbows in. The Iceman threw the rock at Wynan's forehead. Since his hand was only a foot away when he let go, there was almost no way to miss.
Wynan went down with a depressive fracture of the skull. He almost died.
And the Iceman to the cops: I was scared, he was coming with his whole gang, that's all he does is beat up kids, I just picked up the rock and threw it.
His mother had picked him up at the police station (his father was gone by then, never to be seen again). In the car, his mother started in on him: Wait till I get you home, she said. Just wait.
And the Iceman, in the car, lifted a finger to her face and said, You ever fuckin' touch me again I'll wait until you're asleep and I'll get a hammer and I'll beat your head in. You ever touch me again, you better never go to sleep.
She believed him. A good thing, too. She was still alive.
He turned off the hot water, dried his hands on a dish towel. Need to think. So much to do. He forgot about the soup, went and sat in his television chair, stared at the blank screen.
He had never seen the photograph as it had been reproduced, although he'd seen the original Polaroid. He had been stupid to let the boy keep it. And when the boy had sent it away…
"We're gonna be famous," the kid said.
"What?" They were smoking cigarettes in the trailer's back bedroom, the boy relaxing against a stack of pillows; the Iceman had both feet on the floor, his elbows on his knees.
The boy rolled over, looked under the bed, came up with what looked like a newspaper. He flipped it at the Iceman. There were dozens of pictures, boys and men.
"What'd you do?" the Iceman asked; but in his heart he knew, and the anger swelled in his chest.
"Sent in the picture. You know, the one with you and me on the couch."
"You fuck."
The Iceman lurched at him; the boy giggled, barely struggling, not understanding. The Iceman was on his chest, straddling him, got his thumbs on the boy's throat… and then Jim Harper knew. His eyes rolled up and his mouth opened and the Iceman…
Did what? Remembered backing away, looking at the body. Christ. He'd killed him.
The Iceman jumped to his feet, reliving it and the search for a place to dump the body. He thought about throwing it in a swamp. He thought about shooting him with a shotgun, leaving the gun, so it might look like a hunting accident. But Jim didn't hunt. And his father would know, and his father was nuts. Then he remembered the kid talking about something he'd read about in some magazine, about people using towel racks, the rush you got, better than cocaine…