Free Winter Prey by John Sandford Page B

with a gold compact and a small red brush. She looked up when Lucas stepped in. He nodded and she nodded back. A steel door and a bulletproof glass window were set in the wall opposite the reporter. Lucas went to the window, looked at the empty desk behind it, and pushed the call button next to the window.
    “It’ll just piss them off,” the reporter said. She had a tapered fox-face with a tiny chin, big eyes and wide cheekbones, as though she’d been especially bred for television. She rubbed her lips together, then snapped the compact shut, dropped it in her purse, and gave him a reflexive smile. The cameraman was asleep.
    “Yeah? Where’re you guys from?” Lucas asked. The reporter was very pretty, with her mobile eyes and trained expressions, like a latter-day All-American geisha girl. Weather could never work for television, he thought. Her features were too distinctive. Could be a movie star, though.
    “Milwaukee,” she said. “Are you with the Star-Tribune? ”
    “Nope.” He shook his head, giving her nothing.
    “A cop?” The reporter perked up.
    “An interested onlooker,” Lucas said, grinning at her. “Lots of reporters around?”
    “I guess so,” she said, a frown flitting across her face. “I heard Eight talking on their radios, so they’re up here somewhere, and I heard the Strib came in last night. Probably out at the lake. Are you one of the lab people from Madison?”
    “No,” Lucas said.
    A harried middle-aged woman bustled up behind the glass, peered through, and said, “Davenport?”
    “Yes.” The reporter was wearing perfume. Something slightly fruity.
    “I’ll buzz you in,” the woman said.
    “FBI?” the reporter pressed.
    “No,” he said.
    The woman inside pressed her entry button and as Lucas slipped through the door, the reporter called, “Tell Sheriff Carr we’re gonna put something on the air whether he talks to us or not.”

    Carr had a corner office overlooking the parking lot, the county garage and a corroded bronze statue of a World War I doughboy. The beige walls were hung with a dozen photographs of Carr with other politicians, three plaques, a bachelor’s degree certificate from the University of Wisconsin/River Falls, and two fish-stamp prints with the actual stamps mounted in the mats below the prints. A computer and laser printer sat on a side table, and an intricate thirty-button decorator-blue telephone occupied one corner of an expansive walnut desk. Carr was sitting behind the desk, looking gloomily across a tape recorder at Henry Lacey.
    “You got reporters,” Lucas said, propping himself in the office door.
    “Like deer ticks,” Carr said, looking up. “Morning. Come in.”
    “All you can get from deer ticks is Lyme’s disease,” said Lacey. “Reporters can get your ass fired. ”
    “Should I let them shoot pictures of the house?” Carr asked Lucas. “They’re all over me to let them in.”
    “Why wouldn’t you?” Lucas asked. He stepped into the office and dropped into a visitor’s chair, slumped, got comfortable.
    Carr scratched his head. “I dunno . . . it doesn’t seem right.”
    “Look, it’s all bullshit,” Lucas said. “The outside of a burnt house doesn’t mean anything to anybody, especially if they live in Milwaukee. Think about it.”
    “Yeah.” Carr was still reluctant.
    “If I were you, I’d draw up a little site map and pass it out—where the bodies were and so on,” Lucas said. “That doesn’t mean shit either, but they’ll think you’re a hell of a guy. They’ll give you a break.”
    “I could use a break,” Carr said. He scratched his head again, working at it.
    “Did the guys from Madison get here?” Lucas asked.
    “Two hours ago,” said Lacey. “They’re out at the house.”
    “Good.” Lucas nodded. “How’s it look out there?”
    “Like last night. Uglier. There was a lump of frozen blood under Frank’s head about the size of a milk jug. They’re moving the bodies out in an hour