Текст книги "Lucas Davenport Novels 1-5"

Автор книги: John Sandford

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Текущая страница: 102 (всего у книги 105 страниц)

CHAPTER

24

Duane Helper—the Iceman—sat at the picnic table with the two lab techs, halfheartedly playing three-handed stud poker for dimes.

“Goddamn Jerry’s had four hands in a row, Duane, ya gotta do something.” The older of the two crime-lab people dealt the cards. They had almost finished the LaCourt house, they said. They’d wrung it out. Two more days, or three, and they’d be done. When they were gone, and the possibility of more developments began to fade, and the killing stopped, interest in the case would dwindle. He had to reach the Schoeneckers, but he’d thought about it. Before they came back, they’d almost surely call to talk. Bergen dead, Harper dead.

He’d done it.

The Iceman listened and played his cards.

A truck pulled into the parking area, doors slammed. Climpt came in, stamping snow off his boots. The Minneapolis cop, Davenport, was behind him, shoulders hunched against the cold. He hadn’t shaved, and looked big-eyed, too thin.

Outside, in the early-morning light, snow swirled around the fire building. The storm had begun in earnest just before dawn, thunder booming through the forest, the snow coming in waves. Almost nothing was moving on the highway except snowplows.

“Wicked out there,” Climpt said. His face was wet with snow. He took off his gloves and wiped his eyebrows with the back of his hand. “Understand you got some coffee.”

“Help yourself,” said the Iceman. He pointed at an oversized coffee urn on a bench behind the lab people. “You out at the house?”

“Yeah. They’re giving up for the day, tying everything down, getting back to town before the snow gets too bad,” Lucas said. He looked at the techs. “Crane says to get your asses back there.”

“Want to get my ass back to Madison,” said the older of the two techs.

“Find a warm coed,” said the younger one. “One more hand.”

Davenport peeled off his parka and brushed off the snow. He nodded to the Iceman, took a cup of coffee from Climpt, and sat on the end of the picnic table bench.

“Anything new on the prints?” he asked.

“Nope. We’re pretty much cleaned up,” said the older tech. He dealt a round of three cards. “We’ve shipped in a few hundred sets, but hell, we printed Bergen after he croaked, and we can’t even find a match to him. And we know he was there.”

The younger tech chipped in: “The guy used a .44 and a corn-knife, took them with him. If it wasn’t Bergen, he wiped the handles. And it was so cold, he had to have gloves with him. He probably just put them on after he chopped the kid.”

Exactly, thought the Iceman. He sat and polished.

“Yeah. Goddammit.” Lucas looked into the coffee cup, then sipped from it.

“You heard about the autopsy on Father Bergen?” Climpt asked. He was leaning against the cupboard by the coffeepot.

“There were some problems, I guess,” the tech said. He flipped out another set of cards. “Duane’s got ace ‘n’ shit, George’s looking at shit ‘n’ shit, and I’m queen-jack. I’m in for a dime.”

“They couldn’t find any chemical traces of gelatin in his stomach. The sleeping pills he supposedly took with the booze came in gelatin capsules,” Climpt said. “We didn’t find any empty caps at the house, so he either flushed them or somebody dumped them in the booze and forced him to drink it . . . and forgot about the capsules.”

The Iceman hadn’t thought about the capsules. He’d flushed them, right here in the firehouse.

“So what does that mean?” the tech asked. “Sounds like it could go either way—either Bergen flushed them or somebody else did, but we don’t know which.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Climpt said.

The tech ran out another round of cards: “Duane picks up an eight to give him a pair with his ace, George holds with his fours, and I’m looking at a possible straight. Another dime on the jack-queen-nine.”

The second tech asked, “How about that picture? Do you any good?”

Lucas brightened. “Yeah. Maybe. Milwaukee found the guy who published the paper. He still had the page negative, and they made a better print. Should have been here today, but with this storm . . . should be here in the morning.”

The Iceman sat and listened, as he had for a week, in the center of the only warm public place within miles of the LaCourt house. The cops had dropped in from the first night, looking for a place to sit and gossip.

“Anything in it?” the younger tech asked.

“Won’t know until we see it,” Lucas said.

“If you find time to look at it,” Climpt snorted, burying his nose in his cup. His voice had a certain tone and the two crime techs and the Iceman all looked at Lucas.

Lucas laughed and said, “Yeah. Fuck you, Gene, you’re jealous.”

Climpt tipped his head at Lucas. “He’s seeing—I’m choosing my words carefully—he’s seeing one of our local doctors.”

“Female, I hope,” said the older of the techs.

“No doubt about that,” said Climpt. “I wouldn’t mind myself.”

“Careful, Gene,” Lucas said. He glanced at his watch. “We probably ought to get back to town.”

The tech was still dealing the round of five-card stud, flipped another ace out to the Iceman. “Whoa, two pair, aces and eights,” he said. He flipped over his own cards. “You can have it.”

When Climpt and Davenport left, the Iceman stood up and drifted toward the window, watched them as they stopped at the nose of the truck, said a few words, then got in the truck. A moment later they were gone.

“I guess we oughta get back,” the older tech said. “Goddamn, a couple more days of this shit and we’re outa here.”

“If anything can get out of here,” said the other man. He went to the window, pulled back a curtain, and looked out. “Jesus, look at it come down.”

After the techs had gone, the Iceman sat alone, thinking. Time to get out, said a voice at the back of his head. He could start packing his trunk now, be ready to go by dark. With the storm, nobody would be stopping by the firehouse. He could be in Duluth in two hours, Canada in another four. Once across the border, he could lose himself, head north and west out to Alaska.

If he could take down Weather Karkinnen . . . But there’d still be the Schoeneckers and Doug and the others. But they were thousands of miles away. Nobody might ever find them. It could still work.

And besides, he wanted Weather. He could feel her out there, a hostile eminence. She deserved to die.

Get out, said the voice.

Kill her, thought the Iceman.

CHAPTER

25

The Wisconsin state trooper had buried himself in a snowdrift across from the fire station. He wore an insulated winter camouflage suit that he’d bought for deer hunting, pac boots, and a camo face mask. He kept a pair of binoculars in a canvas bag with the radio, and a Thermos of hot chocolate in another bag. He’d been in place for two hours, reasonably warm, fairly comfortable.

He’d watched Davenport and Climpt go into the station to nail Helper down. After they’d been inside for a minute, the FBI man, the black guy, jogged up from the back, used a key to go through the access door into the truck bay. Two minutes later the FBI man slipped out and disappeared into the snow. Then Davenport and Climpt pulled out, followed by the crime techs from Madison. Since then, nothing. The trooper had expected immediate action. When it hadn’t come, sitting in the drift out of the wind, he’d felt a bit sleepy; the winter storm muffled all sound, dimmed all color, eliminated odors. He unscrewed the top of the Thermos, took a hit of chocolate, screwed the top back on. He was pushing the jug back into his carry sack when he saw movement. The door on the far truck bay, where the FBI man had gone in, was rolling up.

The trooper pulled the radio from the bag, put it to his face: “We got movement,” he said. “You hear me?” The radio was unfamiliar, provided by the FBI, all talk scrambled.

We hear you. How’s he moving?

“Hang on,” the patrolman said. He studied the open door through the binoculars. A moment later Helper bumped out through the door on his snowmobile, looked right and left, then turned toward the highway.

“He’s on the sled,” the patrolman said into the radio. “He’s moving, he’s on the trail down 77. He’s coming up toward your post . . . He’s not moving too fast . . . wait a minute, he’s moving now, he’s really taking off.”

Davenport, are you monitoring?.

“Yes, I heard.” Lucas was at the hospital, among the smells of alcohol and disinfectant and the stray whiffs of raw meat and urine. “Are you tracking him?”

We got him, and he’s moving your way. The caller was the FBI man who’d provided them with the special handsets and the radio beacons now attached to Helper’s sled and truck. He’s coming up on us. We’ll let him pass and then try to hang on.

“We’re set here. Keep us posted,” Lucas said. He looked at Weather. “He’s coming.” Lucas pulled the magazine from his .45, checked it. Climpt, who’d been sitting on an examination stool, picked up his Ithaca twelve-gauge and jacked a shell into the chamber. “He ought to be here in twenty minutes.”

“If he’s coming here,” Carr said. The sheriff had buckled on his pistol again, but left it untouched in its holster.

“I got a buck that says he is,” Lucas said. He slipped the magazine back into the .45 and slapped it tight with the heel of his hand.

“You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?” Weather asked.

“We’re not trying to kill him,” Lucas said levelly. “But he has to make his move.”

“I don’t see how you won’t kill him,” Weather said. “If he has a gun in his hand . . .”

“We’ll warn him. If he opts to fight, what can we do?”

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “If we had more time, I could think of something.”

“Women shouldn’t be involved in this sort of thing,” Climpt said.

“Hey, fuck you, Gene,” she said harshly.

“Take it easy,” Lucas said mildly. He put the .45 up to his face and clicked the safety on and off, on and off, on. He saw the look on her face and said, “Sorry.”

“I’m not being silly about this,” she said. “Better he dies than anyone else. This ambush just seems so . . . cold.”

“We ain’t playing patty-cake,” Climpt said.

The FBI came back: He’s passing us . . . Okay, he’s past, he looked us over pretty good. No chance that we can keep up with him, Jesus, this snow is something else, it’s like driving into a funnel . . . He must be doing forty down there in the ditch, he must be flying blind . . . we’re doing thirty . . . Manny, he’ll be coming up on you in five minutes.

A second voice, the other FBI man: Got him on the scope . . . Davenport, we’re five minutes out, he’s still coming, he’s maybe two miles back.

“Got that,” Lucas said. To Climpt, Weather, and Carr: “Get ready. I’ll talk to the twins.” He ran down the hall, pushed open the double doors at the end of the corridor. Two cops were climbing onto snowmobiles, pistols strapped around their waists, one with a shotgun in a jury-rigged scabbard hung on the side of the sled.

“You been listening?”

“Got it,” said one of the cops. Rusty and Dusty. In their helmets they were unidentifiable.

“All right. Stand off behind the lot, there. As soon as he gets off his sled, we’ll bring you in. If something happens, be ready to roll. One way or another, we take him.”

“Got it.”

The two men took off and Lucas ran back down the corridor, clumping along in his boots, zipping his jacket over the body armor. Henry Lacey trotted down the hall toward him.

“Good luck,” he called as he passed Lucas.

Carr was hanging up the phone when Lucas got back. “More stuff coming in on the sonofabitch. Lot of stuff from Duluth. He resigned there, just like he told us, but if he hadn’t, the cops were gonna get him for ripping off homes after fires. A couple of arson guys think he might have set some of the fires himself.”

“Good. The more we can pile up, the better, if there’s a trial.”

Davenport, you got it right. He’s coming, he’s past us, he’s on the hospital road, he’s on the hospital road, we’re running parallel down the highway . . . Goddamn, it’s hard to see anything out here.

“Shelly, you know where to go. Weather, get your coat on. Tighten up the straps, goddammit.” He pulled the adjustments tight on the body armor, helped her with her mountain parka. She’d be cold without her regular jacket, but it’d only be for a minute or two. “You know what we’re doing now.”

“Pace it out, take it slow, stay with you. As soon as anybody yells, get down. Stay on the ground.”

“Right. And everybody knows the panic drill if he decides to come inside.” Lucas looked at Climpt and Carr, and they nodded, and Carr gulped and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

“Nervous?” Lucas asked Weather, trying a smile.

“I’m okay.” She swallowed. “Cottonmouth,” she said.

Even on a blizzard day, there’d be twenty or thirty people in the hospital—nurses, orderlies, maintenance people. Unless Helper had freaked out, he wouldn’t try a frontal assault on the building. And he knew that Weather had a deputy as a bodyguard. His only chance was to snipe her with a rifle or to get in close with a pistol or shotgun, shoot it out with her bodyguard, like he’d tried when he ambushed Weather and Bruun. They’d set up Weather’s Jeep within a rough circle of cars, they’d given him places to hide, places they could reach with snipers on the roof. They’d show her to him, just long enough.

As soon as he flashed a gun, they’d have him.

He’s thirty seconds out.

Anybody see a weapon?

Didn’t see a thing when he went by. He didn’t show a long gun on the machine.

He’s ten seconds out. All right, he’s slowing down, he’s slowing down. He’s stopped right at the entrance to the parking lot. Davenport, you got him?

Lucas put the radio to his mouth, stared through the waiting room window out to the parking lot. He was looking into a bowl of snowflakes. “We can’t see a thing from in here, the goddamn snow.”

He’s still sitting there, can you guys on the roof see anything?

I can see him, he’s not moving.

What’s he doing?

He’s just sitting there.

“Is he coming in?” Weather asked.

“Not yet.”

Wait a minute, wait a minute, he’s moving . . . He’s moving past the lot, he’s going past the lot down the hospital road. He’s moving slow.

Where’s he going?

He’s going on past the hospital.

Lucas: “You guys on the sleds, he’s coming your way, stay out of sight.”

We’re up in the woods, don’t see him. Where is he? Still coming your way.

Don’t see him.

He’s on the road by that gas thing, that natural-gas pump thing, he’s just going by.

Wait a minute, we got him, he’s moving slow. What do we do?

“Stay right there, let the FBI guys track him,” Lucas said.

He’s passing us. Boy, you can hardly see out here.

The FBI man’s voice came in over the others: He’s stopped. He’s stopped. He’s two hundred yards behind the hospital, by that big woods.

“Janes’ woodlot,” Climpt said. “He’s gonna come through the woods, sneak in through the back door by the dumpsters.”

“That’s always locked,” Weather said.

“Maybe he’s got some way to get in.”

He’s not moving. Somebody’s got to take a look.

Carr, fifty feet away, by radio: Lucas, if he doesn’t move in the next minute or so, I think the guys on the sleds ought to cruise by. If he’s just sitting there, they can keep going, like club riders. If he’s back in the woods, we ought to know.

Lucas put the radio to his mouth. “You guys on the sleds—cruise him. Stuff your weapons inside your suits, out of sight. And be careful. Don’t stop, keep going. If you see him, just wave.”

Lucas turned to Climpt. “We better get set up by the back door. If he comes through, we should be able to see if he’s carrying.”

You guys on the roof—we might have to turn you around, he may come in the back. One of you go out back right now, keep a lookout.

Got that.

“If we spot him coming in, we could have Weather just walk across the end of the t-corridor,” Climpt said. “He’d be able to see her from the door, but he wouldn’t have time to react. If he starts running down that way . . .”

They worked it out as they ran to the back of the hospital, Weather and Carr hurrying behind. Henry Lacey, palefaced, stood by the reception desk with his .38. The nurses had been moved down to the emergency room, where they had concrete walls to huddle behind.

Rusty: We just passed his sled. He’s not here. It looks like he’s gone up in the woods. Doesn’t look like he’s wearing snowshoes, Let’s, uh . . .

There was a moment of silence, then the same voice.

We’ll cruise him again.

“What are they doing?” Lucas asked Climpt. “They’re not going back . . . ?” He put the radio to his mouth: “What’re you doing? Don’t go back!”

Just coming back now.

There was a dark, abrupt sound on the radio, a sound like a cough or a bark, and a last syllable from the deputy that might have been . . .

He’s . . .

Silence. One second, two. Lucas straining at the radio. Then an anonymous radio voice from the roof.

We got gunfire! We got gunfire from Janes’ woodlot! Holy shit, somebody’s shooting—somebody’s shooting.

CHAPTER

26

Weather was the key, the Iceman had decided after Davenport and Climpt left, but he couldn’t go running off yet. Had to wait for the cops to clear.

He opened the green Army footlocker, took out the top tray, full of cleaning equipment, ammunition, and spare magazines, and looked into the bottom.

Four pistols lay there, two revolvers, two automatics. After a moment’s thought he selected the Browning Hi Power 9mm automatic and a double-action Colt Python in .357 Magnum.

The shells were cool but silky, like good machinery can be. He loaded both pistols with hollow points, stuffed thirteen more 9mm rounds into a spare magazine for the automatic, and added a speedloader with six more rounds for the .357.

Then he watched television, the guns in his lap, like steel puppies. He sat in his chair and stared at the game shows, letting the pressure build, working it out. He couldn’t chase her down, he couldn’t get at her in the house. Wasn’t even sure she was still at the house. He’d have to go back to the hospital again.

Weather usually left the hospital at the end of the first shift. She’d stay to brief the new shift on her patients. The fire volunteers would be arriving a few minutes after five. If he were going to pull this off, he’d have to be back by then.

A two-hour window.

He looked down into his lap at the guns. If he put one in his mouth, he’d never feel a thing. All the complications would be history, the pressure.

And all the pleasure. He pushed the thought away. Let himself feel the anger: they’d ganged up on him. Bullied him. They were twenty-to-one, thirty-to-one.

The adrenaline started. He could feel the tension rise in his chest. He’d thought it was over. Now there was this thing. The anger made him squirm, pushed him into a fantasy: Standing in the snow, gun in each hand, shooting at enemy shadows, the muzzle flashes like rays coming from his palms.

His watch brought him back. The minute hand ticked, a tiny movement in the real world, catching his eye with the time.

Two-fourteen. He’d have to get moving. He heaved himself out of his chair, let the television ramble on in the empty room.

Weather would walk out to the parking lot. Through the swirling snow. With a bodyguard. On any other day, a rifle would be the thing. With the snow, a scope would be useless: it’d be like looking into a bedsheet.

He’d just have to get close, to make sure, this time. Nothing fancy. Just a quick hit and gone.

The ride to the hospital was wild. He could feel himself moving like a blue light, a blue force, through the vortex of the storm, the snow pounding the Lexan faceplate, the sled throbbing beneath him, bucking over bumps, twisting, alive. At times he could barely see; other times, in protected areas or where he was forced to slow down, the field of vision opened out. He passed a four-by-four, looked up at the driver. A stranger. Didn’t look at him, on his sled, ten feet away. Blind?

He pushed on, following the rats’ maze of trails that paralleled the highway, along the edge of town. Past another four-by-four. Another stranger who didn’t look at him.

A hell of a storm for so many strangers to be out on the road, not looking at snowmobiles . . .

Not looking at snowmobiles.

Why didn’t they look at him? He stopped at the entrance to the hospital parking lot, thought about it. He could see Weather’s Jeep. Several other cars close by; he could put the sled around the corner of the building, slip out into the parking lot.

Why didn’t they look at him? It wasn’t like he was invisible. If you’re riding in a truck and a sled goes tearing past, you look at it.

The Iceman turned off the approach to the hospital, cruised on past. Something to think about. Kept going, two hundred, three hundred yards. Janes’ woodlot. He’d seen Dick Janes in here all fall, cutting oak. Not for this year, but for next.

The Iceman pulled off the trail, ran the sled up a short slope, sinking deep in the snow. He clambered off, moved fifteen feet, huddled next to a pile of cut branches.

Coyotes did this. He knew that from hunting them. He’d once seen a coyote moving slow, apparently unwary, some three or four hundred yards out. He’d followed its fresh tracks through the tangle of an alder swamp, then up a slope, then back around . . . and found himself looking down at his own tracks across the swamp and a cavity in the snow where the mutt had laid down, resting, while he fought the alders. Checking the back trail.

Behind the pile of cuttings, he was comfortable enough, hunkering down in the snow. He was out of the wind, and the temperature had begun climbing with the approach of the storm.

He waited two minutes and wondered why. Then another minute. He was about to stand up, go back to the sled, when he heard motors on the trail. He squatted again, watched. Two sleds went by, slowly. Much too slowly. They weren’t getting anywhere if they were travelers, weren’t having any fun if they were joyriders. And there was nothing down this trail but fifteen or twenty miles of trees until they hit the next town, a crossroads.

Not right.

The Iceman waited, watching.

Saw them come back. Heard them first, took the .357 from his pocket.

He could see them clearly enough, peering through the branches of the trim pile, but he probably was invisible, down in the snow, above them. They stopped.

They stopped. They knew. They knew who he was, what he was doing.

The lifelong anger surged. The Iceman didn’t think. The Iceman acted, and nothing could stand against him.

The Iceman half-stood, caught the first man’s chest over the blade of the .357.

Didn’t hear the shot. Heard the music of a fine machine, felt the gun bump.

The first man toppled off his sled, the second man, black-Lexan-masked, turning. All of this in slow motion, the second man turning, the gun barrel popping up with the first shot, dropping back into the slot, the second man’s body jumped, but he wavered, not falling, a hand coming up, fingers spread, to ward off the .357 JHPs; a third shot went through his hand, knocked him backwards off the sled. And the gun kept on, shots filing out, still no noise, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth . . .

And in the soft snow, the bumping stopped and the Iceman heard the hammer falling on empty shells, three times, four, the cylinder turning.

Click, click, click, click.