Known Dead (16 page)

‘‘It’s hard to tell,’’ he said. ‘‘Could be anything. I read about a case once where a barricaded suspect’s mother’s picture just fell off the wall. He gave up immediately.’’

‘‘No shit?’’

‘‘Yeah. I read about another one where the suspect felt that he was getting all bound up, you know, with his bowels. Thought it would kill him, so he gave up.’’

‘‘Just so he could take a crap?’’

‘‘Yep,’’ he said, grinning. ‘‘Neat, isn’t it?’’

‘‘Sure is.’’

‘‘But you have to be very careful,’’ he said, his voice getting serious. ‘‘They can go right into denial and distress. If that happens, they get really violent sometimes.’’

‘‘Oh.’’

‘‘Then, sometimes, they go into a phase where they’re just doubtful and distant, and they sort of . . .’’

‘‘Dither?’’ I asked.

‘‘Sort of. But they’re vulnerable then, if you can get to them.’’

‘‘Fascinating business, isn’t it?’’ I asked. I was waking up. Probably just the coffee.

‘‘Oh, yes, it is,’’ he said, all enthused.

I noticed a little sign above his TV monitors. ‘‘Display Dominance.’’ Cute.

‘‘So,’’ asked Hester, ‘‘where are you going with this?’’

‘‘I intend to try to convince him to surrender tomorrow,’’ said Roger. ‘‘I think we have a chance here. This Herman isn’t really . . . well, quick, you know? Not dumb, but not too sharp. Certainly not a career violent criminal, that’s obvious.’’

‘‘You’ve got him to a T,’’ I said. ‘‘Although you do have to start somewhere with any career . . .’’

‘‘If he stays sober, we should have him pretty soon.’’ Roger tapped a six-inch ring binder that was filled to overflowing. ‘‘Everything we need.’’

‘‘Good,’’ I said. ‘‘Good.’’

Hester, Al, and I left the Winnebago a few seconds later. We’d gotten about ten steps when I said, ‘‘Roger’s new at this, isn’t he?’’

Well, yes, Roger was. It seemed that the state of Iowa had three trained negotiators. One was in Florida at school, one had been rather severely injured in a car wreck about two weeks ago, and Roger had just gotten out of negotiator’s school last week.

‘‘Well,’’ I said, knowing it was a foolish question, ‘‘how about the FBI? I’m sure they’ve got somebody they’d be more than happy to lend us . . .’’

They probably had. The Iowa Attorney General’s office, however, had decided that Iowa would handle it. All of it. Period. They’d mentioned something to the Feds about screwing up a couple of cases. No names. But they seemed to have burned my bridge before I ever knew I’d crossed it.

‘‘Well,’’ said Al. ‘‘We said we’d have a statement for the press before they went to bed, and here it is almost 0215.’’

The three of us squished through the mud to the press area, which consisted of an impromptu site made from storm fencing and patrol cars, where the members of the local fourth estate had gathered. Most of them were waiting, hoping somebody else would get killed. Another cop or two would be all right, but what they really wanted was to see a TAC team go in. What bothered me the most, I guess, was that another Waco would be just fine with most of this group. I picked out Nancy Mitchell and Phil Rumsford right away, sitting in their little gray car. Maybe knowing them made a difference. But I was sort of glad they were there.

All we could tell any of them was pretty much what we had told them before.

‘‘Are you going in to get them tonight?’’ That was from WUNR-TV’s roving correspondent from Des Moines. Known to one and all as ‘‘Wunner Boy.’’

‘‘Negotiations,’’ I said, ‘‘are being conducted. We have no intention of ‘going in’ and ‘getting’ anybody. We’re simply going to take our time, and convince the suspect to surrender.’’ Yeah, right.

‘‘Any evidence of a possible suicide pact?’’ asked a woman reporter with some other TV outfit.

‘‘A what?’’

‘‘A suicide pact. You know, when they . . .’’

‘‘I know what one is,’’ I said loudly, cutting her off. ‘‘What on earth makes you think there might be a suicide pact?’’

She didn’t answer, but a reporter for a newspaper shouted in my face, ‘‘Is this a headquarters for a militia group?’’

‘‘Beats me. I don’t think so, though.’’ I held up my hand. ‘‘You’ll be getting a written handout in about ten minutes.’’ I lie pretty well under pressure.

‘‘Are there any more than just one known dead?’’

There was that term again.

‘‘One officer, whom I knew for better than twenty years, is dead. That seems like enough to me. You want more?’’

With that, I turned around and headed back to the tent. Babble behind me, and Hester caught up. ‘‘Hey?’’

‘‘Yeah?’’

‘‘You need a little sleep.’’

I slowed down. ‘‘Yeah.’’

‘‘Actually, you need a lot of sleep. Why don’t you go home, or catch a nap in the tent.’’

‘‘Or just sleep in my car . . .’’

‘‘Sure,’’ she said. ‘‘But just get some sleep before you talk to the press again.’’

I stopped completely, and began to let myself run down. ‘‘It was that term, the known dead bit. It always strikes me that they really mean, do they know them, like are they important or meaningful, you know? And it reminds me of the body count shit from years ago. Keeping score. You know? I mean, I know I’m misunderstanding it. It’s just a thing, that’s all.’’ I yawned. ‘‘Just pisses me off. They just yip, yip, yip about known dead, and that’s . . .’’ I just trailed off.

‘‘That’s show biz,’’ she said. ‘‘You better hurry, I don’t want to have to carry you to your car.’’

I grinned in the near-darkness. We were just about at my car when we heard the sound of yelling, faint but unmistakable, from the direction of the Stritch farm. It sounded like both male and female voices.

‘‘What the hell,’’ said Hester.

We both turned and started toward the voices when we heard three loud cracks of rifle fire, then more yelling, louder. We started to run toward the perimeter line.

Fifteen

WE’D KILLED the electricity to the Stritch house and outbuildings, so there was no yard light. When there were interior lights in the Stritch house, they were courtesy of an emergency generator Herman, like many farmers, had installed. I couldn’t see any lights in the house now, though, as Hester and I jogged to the forward perimeter. Herman must have been saving gas. The front of the house was fairly well lit by the portable lights we had running off a Fire Department generator. The problem was, the light was all from one direction, and the shadows were consequently very pronounced. It was black as pitch directly behind it, but there was no way we could get light back there. Just to make things worse, the humidity was so intense there seemed to be a fog hanging in the lighted area near the house. It was hard to make out details, which could become very important if you were trying to make out the subtle color and shape differences between, say, a bunch of scrap and a sniper. Nothing was moving. All the cops were behind cover, and with all the light from our side, we were all in deep shadow. It was very quiet, except for the muted sound from the generator back with the fire apparatus.

I found Eddie Heinz just to the left of the lane, behind about four cords of kindling. Hester and I knelt down with him.

‘‘What’s happening?’’

‘‘Don’t know. There was a bunch of yelling, then I swear I heard a screen door slam. Right before three rounds were fired. It’s been quiet since.’’

I peered toward the house. There were no interior lights at all, and our portables weren’t capable of penetrating very far into the gloom of the house. Silence. Millions of frogs and crickets, who had all stopped making their favorite noises when the rounds were fired, started up again. There were enough of them that it made it difficult to pick up the softer noises.

We were there for about a minute when a trooper came from the tent area, saying that the negotiator had called the house but they wouldn’t tell him anything.

Great.

The trooper also said that the negotiator had established that Herman Stritch had somehow made it back to the house.

Obviously, that didn’t surprise me too much. It would have been fairly easy for him to break down some of the old vertical siding and slip out. It bothered me, though, because he’d managed to traverse the area to the house unseen. And, like I said, it also meant that in court they might be able to say that he wasn’t the one in the shed when the shots were fired at Lamar and Bud. Damn. It also meant that he was there to lead the family and friends in their activities.

Just then, Eddie said he had movement to our left, in the shadow cast by the barn. I strained to see, but couldn’t make anything out. Then a small, reedy voice said, ‘‘Mommy, I’m all wet.’’

With that, a thin, bedraggled young woman stood up, with a child in her arms.

‘‘Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot!’’

‘‘Don’t shoot,’’ yelled Hester.

‘‘Keep coming,’’ I said, in a fairly loud voice, but not shouting. ‘‘We won’t shoot. Just keep coming.’’

She did. I noticed she kept looking over her shoulder toward the house, but that she tended to keep in the shadow as much as possible. In a couple of seconds, she had come to the woven wire fence, and was being helped over by Eddie, Hester, and me. She seemed to be in her early twenties, wearing a sleeveless cotton plaid shirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes.

The first thing she said to me was ‘‘Hello, Mr. Houseman.’’

Damned if I didn’t recognize her. Melissa Werth, or Melissa Stritch now. She’d done about half her growing up three houses from me, at her grandmother’s, after her parents had been killed in a car wreck. I didn’t really know her, but we were well enough acquainted to exchange some words when we met in the grocery store. Damn. Just hadn’t connected her. Maybe I really was getting too old for this shit.

‘‘What happened, Melissa? Are you all right?’’

‘‘We’re fine.
Do you know that that old son of a bitch
shot at us?
’’

We were bundling both of them off toward the tent, and out of sight of the main buildings. ‘‘Who, Melissa? Who shot at you?’’

‘‘That crazy goddamned Herman!’’

‘‘Herman?’’ I asked.

‘‘Damned right he did!’’

‘‘Why?’’

‘‘Because I wanted to leave. Because him and his whole goddamned family want to die instead of surrender, and that was supposed to include me and Susie!’’ We were near the tent now, and I could see her very clearly. She was a pretty girl, with long brown hair. She looked up at me, outraged and breathless. ‘‘Can you believe that shit?’’

‘‘Yeah, I’m afraid I can,’’ I said. We started in the tent.

‘‘Mark,’’ said Hester to a trooper, ‘‘get me a couple of women EMTs in here, will you?’’

Hester thinks of everything.

With Melissa and her child certified by the EMTs, we had a nice chat. It turned out that Herman, his wife, Nola, and his son William (the one I’d spoken with, and Melissa’s husband) were in the house. Melissa told us that they were all in agreement that Herman had done nothing wrong and was simply defending his property against intrusion when he had shot both officers. We were the ones, according to them, who were acting illegally, and were the ones who would have to back off. Melissa had been the one to bring up the possibility that we might not agree.

‘‘All I said, Mr. Houseman, was that maybe we’d better just think about this a little.’’

‘‘Sure.’’

‘‘And I said, ‘What if they start shooting?’ And they said, ‘Then we shoot back.’ And I said, ‘But what if we get shot?’ That’s when they said that we could all die for our cause.’’

‘‘That must have been pretty scary,’’ said Hester.

Melissa nodded. ‘‘Oh, yeah. Really.’’

‘‘So what did you do?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Well,’’ said Melissa, getting huffy again, ‘‘I just said bullshit, and nobody’s gonna kill my baby or me over this. Even if it is murder you’re wanted for.’’

‘‘They admit it’s murder?’’ I asked, surprised.

‘‘Well, sure they do, Mr. Houseman.’’

‘‘That kind of surprises me, Melissa. I thought they said they were acting in defense of their property.’’

‘‘Well, on that one, I think so. But not the other one.’’

‘‘Other one?’’

‘‘You know, the ones up in the park in June.’’

‘‘What?’’

‘‘The ones in the park, Mr. Houseman. The officer and the dope dealer. The ones you came to arrest them for today.’’ Melissa looked at me as if I were senile.

‘‘They did those?’’ I leaned forward and put my hand on her forearm. ‘‘Herman killed those men in the park?’’

‘‘Not Herman, but he knew about it. But, but . . .’’ Her lip started to quiver. ‘‘But Bill was there, and he saw it, and he never shot but once, and he never hit anybody,’’ and the flood began. I think she began to realize right about then that we hadn’t known about that at all.

While Melissa cried, I went outside and thought about a cigarette.

Al Hummel approached the tent. ‘‘What’s up, Carl?’’

‘‘You’re not gonna believe this one, Al.’’

After a long interview with Melissa, what we had was this:

On June 18th, the day of the shooting in the park, Melissa Stritch’s husband, Bill, was taking part in a militia exercise in the park area with several other individuals. Herman, while part of the leadership of this particular militia, wasn’t with them. Herman had, however, assisted in the planning for the exercise. The group had been in the park for at least a day prior to the shootings. Bill had called Melissa that morning, saying that they’d had to call off the maneuvers, but didn’t say why. He was calling from Herman’s place, and had spent the afternoon there. He had cautioned her to say nothing to the police. When he arrived home that evening, he seemed very subdued and worried. And, she’d noticed immediately, he’d had none of his militia gear with him. She’d asked, and he said not to worry about it.

Melissa had learned long before that day that when politics and/or militia business was involved, she was wise not to pry. It had taken Bill three days to tell her that the men he was with had killed the little dope dealer and the cop. Bill denied killing anybody, and refused to name anyone else who was with him that day.

The DCI agents had showed up the day after the shootings to do the interview with Herman, but had talked only with his wife, Nola. Herman and Bill had apparently been in the barn with assault rifles trained on the DCI men the whole time. It appeared that the DCI had talked to Melissa the same day, but without the snipers.

When Lamar and Bud showed up on July 23rd, Herman had automatically assumed they had solved the murder and were coming to arrest both himself and Bill. Bill seemed to have a calming effect on Herman, but Bill wasn’t there when our officers arrived. Melissa knew virtually nothing about the actual shooting of Lamar and Bud, but she had heard the argument between Herman and Bill in the house shortly before she left, the gist of which was that Herman believed the Original Notice was a ruse. Bill had said that Herman was nuts, and that if they were coming to arrest Herman, there would have been more than two. She also said that it was just ‘‘known’’ within the family at the house that Herman had done the shooting.

I looked at my notes again, then at Hester and Al. ‘‘We need to know anything else?’’

‘‘Just the family in there?’’ asked Al.

‘‘Two other men,’’ said Melissa. ‘‘Friends of Herman.’’

‘‘Know ’em?’’ I asked.

‘‘Not really.’’

‘‘Do they have guns too?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Oh, sure. Everybody in that place has at least one.’’ She yawned and shuddered at the same time.

‘‘It’s late, and I’m sure Melissa’s tired, aren’t you?’’ said Hester.

Melissa nodded.

‘‘Well,’’ said Hester, ‘‘I’m sure we can have a second interview tomorrow, with a stenographer present. After Melissa’s rested and fed, and we can see how little Susie is coming along.’’

I looked at Melissa. ‘‘Thanks, kid. We appreciate this.’’

‘‘Sure,’’ she said with a faint smile. ‘‘Just one thing . . . I’m not a snitch, Mr. Houseman. I’m really not. I’m just so tired of the bullshit.’’

‘‘I know,’’ I said. ‘‘I’m getting a little tired of it myself.’’

Melissa left with Diane Blakeslee, good old 884. Blakeslee would stay with her all night at a motel in Maitland, and deliver her to the Sheriff’s Department the next morning. Best we could do for protective custody. It was 0521. I went to a camper one of our reserve officers had brought to the scene, and thought for about five seconds before I fell asleep.

They didn’t wake me until 1120 on the 24th.

After a trip to a Porta Potti, two cups of coffee, and a moment spent thinking about a cigarette, I was ready to go. There were no new developments, so we scheduled my interview by the DCI agents assigned to yesterday’s murder and shooting. I was, at least, a witness. I figured it would be a good opportunity to bring Hester up to speed on exactly what had happened, and asked if she could sit in. As it appeared now that the murders in the park were related to the current situation, everybody agreed. My interview lasted just over two hours. Once we established that I hadn’t been intoxicated, using mind-altering drugs, or intentionally irritating Stritch, things went rapidly. We had to count the rounds in my rifle magazines to verify how many rounds I’d fired. I always carried twenty-eight in the thirty-round magazines, to save tension on the magazine springs. I had to explain that twice, as one of the agents didn’t understand how long those magazines stayed in my trunk. They also checked my handgun, and ruled that it hadn’t been fired for some time. I think the spider living in the barrel may have had some influence. They were really lawsuit-conscious. I don’t blame them a bit. It was sort of hard not to rush to the precise points I really wanted to cover, but I forced myself to stick with the pace. But when we got to Bill Stritch’s actions, the interest was heightened all around.

After the interview, I assembled both investigative teams, including my friend George of the Bureau, who pretty well knew everybody there, and had come up that morning to help us with his expertise. Well, that’s what he said. We all knew he was scoping things out for his superiors, but we let it pass. We didn’t know if we might need the FBI in a hurry, and it never hurt to have them up to speed. George Pollard had a new partner, Mike Twill. He went to look over the situation while we talked. There was also the incidental matter of a federal warrant being issued for Herman Stritch, for resisting the serving of a federal process . . . our guys’ Original Notice had been from the Federal Land Bank. Herman was engaged in some fraudulent practices, it appeared, with the Land Bank the victim. Fine by me. The federal charge was peanuts compared to what we had against Herman, but it was nice to have one in your pocket if you needed it. A federal charge, not a peanut.

We discussed the two investigations, and came to one very obvious conclusion: if we were to ever find out the names of the people involved in the park killings, we were going to have to accomplish two things. One, take both Herman and Bill alive and relatively intact. Two, do so in a way that would gain their cooperation.

Yeah, right.

‘‘I’m not saying this is going to be easy,’’ said Hester.

‘‘Well,’’ said George, ‘‘that’s good, Hester.’’

After a pause, I said, ‘‘It shouldn’t be too hard to get at least one of them alive and well. Probably both. Right?’’

‘‘Sure,’’ said Hester.

‘‘But cooperative doesn’t exactly leap out at me.’’

Al cleared his throat. ‘‘To do that, you gotta give ’em just a bit of what they want.’’

‘‘Yeah, but what Herman seems to want,’’ said George, ‘‘is being held blameless for shooting officers, for not paying contracted debts, and to be placed in charge of an independent state.’’

‘‘Like I said,’’ said Hester.

It’s hard to argue with the truth.

‘‘Look,’’ she said, ‘‘we just have to talk to him some more. We’ll get a hint of something that’ll work.’’

‘‘She’s right,’’ said Al.

‘‘How long do we wait?’’ I asked.

‘‘For what?’’ asked Al. ‘‘The hint?’’