Eleven Little Piggies (11 page)

‘Isn't the city going to grow around you pretty soon?'

‘Five years ago people thought so. Now it looks as if it's going to be quite a while before that happens. Long enough for me to raise my kids and get out with a nice nest egg.'

I nodded. Against all the rules in my training manual, I had begun to wish I could help her. She kept her clear blue eyes on me while she told me how I might.

‘It would help a lot if you'd find out who did this.'

‘Believe me,' I said, ‘we will use all our resources to do that and we expect to succeed.'

‘Good.' She took a deep breath. ‘When you find him, put him away someplace quick, will you? Because if I see him I'll kill him with my bare hands.'

There was nothing I could say to that. I tipped a minimal nod to Winnie, who put a small hand under Doris Kester's elbow and escorted her through the front lobby. Just as the door closed behind them I saw Winnie say something softly to Doris, who turned to wait while Winnie darted back in.

‘What?' I said.

‘We never told her about the team we sent out to the farm. They'll probably still be there.'

‘So?'

‘So how would you feel if you found somebody going through your house again—'

‘They're not in her house.'

‘You know what I mean. She might think we tricked her and quit talking to us.'

‘Well . . . officially, she's still a suspect, but . . .'

‘She's the best asset we've developed so far. I think she's been straight with us and we should be straight with her.'

I sighed. ‘OK. Tell her who's at her farm so she doesn't get surprised. No details though!'

‘Right.' She went back out and escorted Doris onto the landing and down the grand staircase. They stood inside the tall front doors, heads together, talking quietly for a few minutes before they shook hands and parted.

I was as anxious to see her out of the building, by then, as she was to be gone. A lot of talk and thumping of gear bags was coming from the direction of the back elevator, and I knew what it meant – Rosie and Clint were back.

‘W
e had to wade through deep shit to get back in that walk-in cooler,' Clint said. We were all around Ray's conference table, leaning toward them, listening. ‘Doris was gone and the foreman – what's his name? Charlie – he claimed she took all the keys with her. He said, “Sorry, Detectives, I don't think I can help you”.'

Clint's gingery freckles folded into a crafty smirk. ‘Rosie said, “That's OK, I don't need your help. I've got a search warrant and a set of picks and if that doesn't work I've got a Glock and a crowbar”.'

‘They're all so defensive out there,' Rosie said, huffing. ‘I mean, OK, they breed great horses. They sell a lot of corn. And I suppose they're used to their privacy, but really, does that mean they don't have to follow any rules but their own? I just got
sick
of it.'

‘But you did get in,' Ray said, watching the hands move on the wall clock.

‘Charlie remembered he had an extra set of keys in that dormitory over by the dairy, and he liked that better than the Glock and the crowbar. Actually I bet they have two or three sets hidden under rocks out there. They all have unpredictable schedules and none of the work can wait, animals have to be tended all the time—'

‘Rosie—'

She looked at his impatient face and said quickly, ‘Gloria sprayed a patch of the floor around that storm drain with the Luminol and it bloomed like a rose.'

‘Ah.'

‘That's what we all said. For about two seconds. Then the DNA techie started screeching, ‘That's enough! Don't spray any more till I get my swabs!' But she needn't have worried. Once we started looking we found plenty to scrape. She took smears and scrapings from the seams in the cement, the back wall, around all the bolts in the built-in table . . . pulled a couple of strands of some kind of fibers out of that drain, too, that never came off a pig. She's there now, getting ready to cook it. I can't prove it isn't all pig and calf blood yet . . .' she shared a triumphant grin with Clint, ‘. . . but I bet we're going to find some of Owen's DNA mixed in.'

‘But that's not the best news,' Clint said. ‘The little dimples in the beef hides? We dug 'em out and sure enough, they were shotgun pellets. Found two more in the edge of the shelf behind the carcasses.'

‘So now if the size matches what Pokey took out of the body, we have a homicide scene,' Rosie said. ‘And better times will be along soon.'

‘Not soon enough,' I said. ‘You see the morning paper? The chief's going to lose his new tan when he sees all the protests.'

‘Good picture of Owen, though,' Rosie said. ‘And the story . . . all the boards and commissions he served on . . . Family's been busy all weekend, huh? Feeding reporters all these sidebars about his awards, making sure he gets his due.'

‘And the reporter did a helluva job with the outraged quotes from alarmed citizens, didn't she?' Ray looked pretty outraged himself. ‘Which is why your next date is with the information officer, Rosie. Tell her to feed a story to the media right away, about detectives returning to the farm today to gather more evidence. Nothing about DNA or the BBs, it's too soon to talk about that. And don't specify which buildings. But all the help around there knew where you were looking, right? So word's going to circulate fast at the farm.'

‘Won't it, though?' Rosie chortled. ‘Stir 'em up a little.'

‘Which is good unless it gets somebody hurt,' I said. ‘You're hoping he'll panic and make a mistake.'

‘Or she,' Ray said. ‘Don't we all keep saying, “Nobody's ruled in or out yet”?'

‘Including the parents and that younger brother,' Andy said. ‘We haven't ruled any of
them
in or out because we can't get them in here to talk to us. How much longer are we going to put up with
that
?'

‘Tell you what,' Ray said, looking nettled, ‘why don't you make Matt Kester your personal project? Ethan called me a few minutes ago and said his parents will be in first thing tomorrow. But soon as we're done here, start calling Matt and leaving messages on both his phones. Tell him if you don't get an answer in the next two hours you're going to call the sheriff of Goodhue County and ask him to send a deputy out to bring Matt Kester in as a person of interest.'

‘Good!' Andy said. ‘Happy to do that.' He began copying numbers out of LeeAnn's notes.

‘Andy,' I said, watching his lips move as he copied the numbers, ‘you walked all around that pickup the day we found Owen's body, didn't you?'

‘Sure did.'

‘Did you see any evidence that Owen walked himself into those trees? Or any sign he was dragged or carried?'

‘Damn good question,' Andy said. He finished copying, sat back and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Blair was with me for a lot of that walk – the photographer? He got plenty of pictures but I don't think you're going to learn much from them.'

‘Too few tracks?'

‘Too many. The two-track that follows the fence line is in steady use by several farm vehicles. Seven or eight sets of boot tracks lead from the road into the trees where the body was, but all so trampled by each other – nothing there we can use.'

‘Blair got pictures of all that?'

‘Yes. But there was no blood trail or anything like that. No sign of dragging. Two sets of what could be a dog or coyote, some rabbits and numerous smaller animals had run through the area as well. And an unshod horse had walked through there – maybe two, there's quite a bit of manure close by. But remember, it's one end of a pasture and they have at least a dozen horses walking free out there with winter coats – there's a feeding station up near the barn.'

‘So,' I said, ‘one way or the other we think he got there in his own pickup. But the hard part to figure out is the time, isn't it? Somebody had to shoot Owen in the walk-in cooler, if that turns out to be the place, and get him carried to the field before the hunters set up out there. Not much time.'

‘I know,' Ray said. ‘Doris says Owen got the call from his two men that they found the break in the fence line a couple of hours before sunup, more or less. She thought he was loading up with fencing materials, to take to his crew. But there was no fencing gear in the pickup, you said.'

‘That's right. Looks like he ran into his murderer before he ever got started loading up.'

‘There wasn't a whole lot of time,' I said, ‘for somebody to shoot him and get him planted by the fence before the hunters arrived.'

Ray pondered a minute, tapping a tango rhythm with his pencil eraser. ‘You know what? I'm going to set up a spreadsheet and start entering all the time estimates people give us.'

‘Color code it,' Rosie said. ‘Put the ones we can prove in red.'

‘There you go. Blue for the ones we're not sure about, then change them to red when we can verify them.'

‘And if you spot a stinking lie,' Clint said, finding a way to amuse himself as usual, ‘you can color it purple.'

‘Be serious,' Ray said, frowning. ‘We need to zero in on those crucial hours just before and after sunup Saturday – what time did you get to the range to set up, Jake?'

‘I remember groaning as we drove over there about the short night, but I'm not sure how short. Let's see – we parked in the Walmart parking lot and the shuttle car met us there . . . Oh, I remember now, the sun came up as we were crawling into that blind.'

Ray said, ‘OK, sunup last Saturday – we can get that time from the weather channel, right?'

‘I got it,' Clint said, Googling busily on one of his many small screens. ‘Seven-fourteen.'

‘Good! There's our first anchor time. Now, Clint, you find that truck driver, get his times – they must keep records – and we'll have two solid times to build the rest of the story on. Times are critical, people! Pin them down in all your interviews!' He rubbed his hands together. What else?' He peered at his notes. ‘Anybody want to say anything about the interviews so far?'

Winnie said, ‘That Ethan?'

We all turned to look at her. Ray said, ‘Yeah, what?'

Besides being the newest detective, Winnie was usually polite and quiet, reacting to what other people said. But now she volunteered, ‘Ethan doesn't seem to think Doris has a right to an opinion, does he? He just talked about what
he
might decide, what he and
his parents
might want. Remember what he said about selling to the sand miners?' She read it out of her notebook, ‘“My firm's doing fine, so there's no hurry about making a decision”.'

She looked around at us. ‘Owen's death makes it easier for Ethan to be the decider, doesn't it?'

‘I've been thinking that too,' Ray said. ‘But I got off to such a bad start with him, I been trying not to show bias.'

‘Aw, go ahead and show a little,' Andy said. ‘I'll be right behind you. Almost every word he says makes me mad.'

‘Me too,' I said, ‘but that doesn't make him a murderer.'

‘No, just a pain in the ass,' Clint said. ‘But then, like Maynard said, all the Kester men have big egos.'

Ray looked up from his notes. ‘Who's Maynard?'

‘Oh, that's right – you were at the autopsy when I told that story. Maynard's my new buddy at the farm.'

‘Somebody's trusted factotum?'

‘Better. A sneaky little gofer with a big mouth.'

‘Oh, excellent. What did he blab?'

‘He says the Kester boys have fighting in their DNA. Got it from their dad, Maynard says – every time Dad comes to visit, he starts an argument. Dad and the two older boys all fight like pit bulls. No wonder, Maynard says, Doris likes having Matt around, nudge, nudge, wink wink. Maynard is a world-class winker.'

‘Matt's not a fighter?'

‘Doesn't need to be, Maynard says. Ladies and horses just putty in his hands. Maynard calls Matt “The Horse Whisperer”, and he says in his opinion “it ain't only the horses he's whispering to”. I said, “You mean he's getting it on with the students?” And Maynard said, “You bet – and I wouldn't be surprised if he's getting a little from his sister-in-law too. That lady's so hot we all keep waiting for the barn to catch fire . . .” '

‘Why are you listening to dirty gossip like that?' Winnie demanded. ‘Doris is a serious lady who deserves your respect.'

‘Wow,' Clint said, open-mouthed, ‘now who's showing bias?'

‘I'm just saying—'

‘Winnie,' I said, ‘dirty gossip is about half of what you get when you canvass a neighborhood, isn't it? And we can't stop doing that. Be realistic.'

‘Anyway,' Ray said, ‘everything I've heard indicates Doris was never out of sight of at least three or four people after four a.m. Saturday morning, when the sheriff called her out to see her horses, till almost noon when Rosie found her making bread in the kitchen. If that's true, the only way she could kill her husband or dispose of his body was with a couple of helpers. So keep your eyes peeled for any of the help that seem especially close to her, huh?'

He looked at his watch. ‘Damn, almost four-thirty already. Tomorrow, the two of you, Rosie and Winnie, go out to that farm and get a final head count. Identify exactly who was working there Saturday morning. Then take each one of them off by himself, in a room or just sitting on a stump, I don't care, but turn your recorders on. Go over the time between when the horses got out and when Rosie and Clint got there.

‘Make charts like the ones Jake made' – he held one up – ‘of where they claim to have been and who with, and doing what, every hour. Bring them back and we'll make a . . . kind of a graphic movie' – amusement and hesitation chased each other across his face, but in the end he couldn't resist – ‘kind of a cross between
Red River
and
Rashomon
.'