Known Dead (20 page)

We couldn’t find them.

We had a helicopter from Cedar Rapids PD come up, equipped with FLIR. I talked to the officer who operated it, a man I’d known for years.

‘‘Right now, FLIR is out of the question. That field would just look like a hot pond, with waves. Tonight, it’s possible, but without a breeze to cool the plants . . .’’

We got a corn picker running, and put four TAC guys on it, with one of our people driving. Went through the field. Not harvesting, just making a lot of noise and beating the corn down. They were the only officers above ‘‘corn level,’’ so to speak. They didn’t find anything either.

During the search of the cornfield, George came over. He was in a bit of a sweat. Seems that SAC Volont had come up. I hadn’t even seen him. He, as it turned out, had seen George walking with the rest of us toward the house. When it was over, Volont had been all over George like stink. Said it was stupid, foolish, and a bunch of other things.

‘‘Well, shit, George,’’ I said. ‘‘It worked.’’ I shook my head.

Turned out there was nobody else in the house. But Hester was right. You really gotta
know
that sort of thing.

Tired as we all were, we had to jump right in on Herman Stritch, and try to do an interview before we got him to the jail and whatever attorney he was going to have would be telling him to shut up. We did the interview in the Winnebago, just Hester, George, and me. Yeah, I know. It was a custodial interrogation, not an interview. But he was thoroughly advised of his Miranda rights, and he very deliberately waived them.

You have to understand that, after killing somebody, the guilty party has an almost uncontrollable urge to confess. Really. Not, as some attorneys would have you believe, that they
ever
had an uncontrollable urge to confess to something they
didn’t
do. But there is some mechanism at work there, if there’s guilt, that compels them to tell. All you have to do is be a listener.

‘‘Herman,’’ I said, ‘‘what the hell happened here?’’

He just shook his head.

‘‘Herman,’’ I said, ‘‘why did you shoot Bud and Lamar? They weren’t gonna hurt you.’’

He shrugged. ‘‘They were throwing me off the farm. I can’t have that.’’

‘‘No, they weren’t,’’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘‘They were just serving papers. You still had other avenues available.’’

‘‘No more.’’ It was said in a flat, final sort of tone. ‘‘Done with that.’’

‘‘With what?’’

‘‘With all the bullshit!’’

As it turned out, Herman had really lost the farm. Borrowed heavily over the years. The entire farm was in hock. The notes had come due five years before. All Herman had done was pay the interest on the notes. No principal. After all sorts of fuss, he got a five-year extension. Then he had decided, on the advice of a good friend whom he refused to identify, not to make any payments at all. There was something in the explanation about English common law, the unconstitutionality of the federal government, the right not to pay taxes or to be regulated in any way. The last part is what got him in trouble. He’d posted his property with a sign that said that no governmental agency could come on his property on pain of death. Fine and dandy, except the poor bastard actually believed it.

‘‘I’m sorry about Bud and Lamar, but I was within my rights as a free man to shoot. It was posted.’’ He gestured in the general direction of the roadway. ‘‘Right over there.’’

‘‘Doesn’t work that way, Herman,’’ said Hester. ‘‘That posting bit doesn’t mean a thing.’’

‘‘You women always think you’re so goddamned educated, so goddamned smart,’’ he said. ‘‘But you’re just women, the servants of men.’’

I thought Hester was going to kill him, but she just shook her head. I didn’t say anything, but merely looked at him over the tops of my reading glasses. Nearly a minute went by with just the sound of the breathing and the whisper of the air conditioner.

‘‘You don’t understand,’’ he said. ‘‘You don’t know about the takeover. The stealing of our soil. The Jews, the bankers. They’re all in it, you know.’’

Right.

‘‘We saw the black helicopters,’’ he said. ‘‘We saw ’em.’’

‘‘Black helicopters?’’ said Hester.

Damn. I was sure he was referring to the National Guard Huey we used for marijuana surveillance. Not black, but olive green. But we’d flown this area less than a month ago, when we’d picked up on the big patch in the park.

‘‘How long ago was that?’’ I asked.

‘‘Month or two.’’

‘‘Uh, Herman, I think that was us.’’ I explained to him that just about any helicopter, but especially an Army one, would look black at anything over two hundred yards, against the background of the sky.

Ah, but he was positive it was black. No further discussion. Not even when Hester said, ‘‘But, Herman, if it was me, I wouldn’t paint it black to hide it. I’d paint it blue and white, and put lettering like News Copter on the side. Wouldn’t you?’’

He didn’t buy it. But it was apparent that his sighting of the chopper had started the anxiety escalation that led to the shooting. The things you never think of.

‘‘They’re takin’ over,’’ he said. ‘‘The Jews and the UN. They’re takin’ the whole country.’’

Turns out that Herman had been shown a map. A map of the United States, with the so-called Occupation Zones carefully designated.

‘‘Herman, you can’t believe that.’’ I was really stunned.

‘‘Oh, yes. And we’re in Zone Five, us and Minnesota and Illinois and Wisconsin. The Belgian Army is going to occupy Zone Five after the takeover.’’

‘‘The Belgian Army, Herman? All ten of ’em?’’

‘‘You’ll see. The Jews slinking around here have it all arranged. You’ll see.’’

‘‘Herman,’’ I said, ‘‘what Jews?’’

‘‘They’re around,’’ he said, almost slyly. ‘‘I see ’em all the time.’’

‘‘Herman,’’ I said, ‘‘you wouldn’t recognize a Jew or a Belgian if one bit you in the ass.’’

He looked at me very coldly. ‘‘We can get you too.’’

About an hour after the two men went into the corn, Art arrived. Our chief deputy. He’d been gone on vacation since the day before Herman decided to shoot people. Fishing in Wisconsin. But he was back now, and was wasting no time. I made a mental note to find out who’d decided call him back early.

His car pulled up, and I could hear his reedy voice before I saw him.

‘‘Where’s Houseman? Find Houseman!’’

‘‘Over here, Art,’’ I hollered. ‘‘By the fence.’’ I glanced at Hester. ‘‘This oughta be good.’’

‘‘Houseman,’’ said Art as he bustled over to us. ‘‘I’m in charge now. You’re relieved here. I’ll take over.’’

‘‘Okay, Art.’’

‘‘I’m serious. I’m taking over. There’s going to be no more killing now.’’

‘‘Okay, Art,’’ I said. ‘‘You do that. I’m going with DCI to the jail, to start interrogating the prisoners.’’

‘‘The prisoners?’’ He looked around him for the first time. ‘‘What about the two suspects in the cornfield?’’

‘‘Well, I guess that’s pretty much up to you now. Everything else is pretty much over.’’

‘‘Over?’’

‘‘Yeah. Look, you go ahead and wrap it up here. They apparently aren’t in the cornfield. As investigator, I have to go do the interrogations.’’

He didn’t say a thing.

‘‘And, Art, DCI lab’s comin’ up, to do the scene. We have to protect it until they get here. And . . .’’

‘‘What’d you do, fuck up?’’ he interrupted.

Art always was good with people. I just looked at him, suddenly tired. ‘‘Yeah, I suppose I did. Why don’t you look into that while you’re at it.’’

‘‘Believe me,’’ said Art, ‘‘I will.’’

I headed toward my car, with Hester alongside.

‘‘He’s still a real asshole,’’ she said. Just a flat statement.

‘‘Yep. But I’d really worry if he changed.’’ I grinned. ‘‘Just being himself. No real problem unless you start to take him too seriously.’’

Suddenly the press was coming at us. Just as soon as Herman and family had been hustled out, apparently somebody thought there was no reason to keep the press corralled anymore. They still couldn’t get past the fence, but all our cars and facilities were now in press territory. Hester saw them first. A disorganized group, spreading out from the press corral. And four or five of ’em had seen us and were on the way.

‘‘Shit.’’ The last thing I wanted was the press.

‘‘I’ll handle them,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Just stay back.’’

That was easy.

‘‘He,’’ said Hester to the first two reporters, pointing toward Art, ‘‘is in charge of everything here. You’ll have to talk to him.’’

They were gone like magic, swarming poor Art. And I heard one of them say, ‘‘That’s two known dead now, right?’’ My stomach started to burn.

‘‘Thanks, Hester.’’

‘‘Sure thing.’’ We continued toward the cars. ‘‘Just one more thing, Houseman.’’

‘‘Okay,’’ I sighed. ‘‘What?’’

‘‘You got your raincoat this time?’’

Sixteen

LET ME TELL YOU . . . By Thursday, the 25th of July, it seemed like everybody wanted a piece of Herman. The DNE, as soon as they found out that he was involved somehow in the killing of their officer in the woods, wanted exclusive rights to interrogate him. They thought it was a narcotics-based conspiracy and just closed their minds to the possibility that it wasn’t. It didn’t help that they weren’t the state’s homicide investigators. The DCI did that, and they seemed to think that the DNE officer was more important than any Nation County deputy that had just happened to get in the way and get himself killed. Or any Nation County sheriff who happened to get himself shot, for that matter. Their reasoning was pretty good, though; the DNE officer was the central figure because he was first, and established the chain of events leading to subsequent shootings. It really wasn’t their logic, I guess. It was just the way they stated it.

The Attorney General’s office sent two of their best, along with two gofers, just to oversee the interrogations. Our county attorney was at his best, underpaid and overwhelmed. And, to top it all off, now that the hostage aspect of the business was over, the FBI was taking official notice of the whole situation. Melissa and her daughter, you see, were now being considered ‘‘hostages’’ and ‘‘possible kidnap victims.’’ The upshot was, if the individual officers hadn’t been used to cooperating and working together, the whole case would have fallen apart right there. As it was, we at least understood that we were all in this together.

The first thing we did was have an informal meeting, just the working officers, as we like to call ourselves. It happened in the kitchen of the jail, as usual, and involved Hester, George, Agent Bob Dahl, Hester’s boss Al Hummel, and our dispatcher Sally Wells, who was to coordinate communications for the investigative team. No attorneys. We didn’t need the complications. I’d invited Art, but he was ‘‘too busy.’’ Doing what, I didn’t know.

Since the crimes happened in our county, I chaired the meeting. I do that well. I stopped at the bakery, picked up a large box of pastries, made the coffee myself, and called the meeting to order.

‘‘Well?’’ I asked. ‘‘What do we want to do?’’ Like I said, I do that well.

As it turned out, what we wanted to do was this: Hester and I were to do the Rumsford murder, with our first priority being to discover just who in hell had shot him. Bob Dahl was to continue working the narcotics connections, but from a slightly different perspective, in light of what we now knew. He was to go back on the street and find out who had known about the dope patch and might have been connected to Herman et al. Al Hummel and the DCI would do the murder of Bud and the shooting of Lamar, which they would normally have done anyway. But Al was to coordinate between all four murders and try to maintain a line of evidence. We used the word ‘‘line’’ because there was no ‘‘chain’’ yet . . . nothing linked solidly to anything else. Just a bunch of points on a trail. George was to coordinate all the information regarding the extremists who might be involved. The FBI was really good at that, and he’d be able to trace connections none of the rest of us could. He was also assigned to the ‘‘kidnappings’’ by his home office. Sally would handle all the computer checking, including the National Crime Information Center or NCIC, the Interstate Identification Index, also known as ‘‘Triple I,’’ and basic things like driver’s license and vehicular information stored in computers around the United States. Too, she would handle all the secure teletype information between agencies and officers. And keep it all extremely confidential, with access limited to the investigative team only. Since this would entail her working odd hours, and no particular shift, it had to be cleared through Art. We’d work that out.

We would also have meetings every three days, whether we needed them or not. Mandatory. Nobody was to be allowed to lose track of the overall investigation. George, of course, would be in close contact with all three investigations.

After that was decided, it was just a matter of where to start and how to go about it.

Art vs. Sally was a potential problem, as he hated her with a passion, for refusing to do something for him years back. He would not approve her flexible time. We knew that. But he had to. We knew that too, because she was the most reliable and efficient dispatcher any of us had ever known, and we needed her. George and Al, as usual, came through.

About an hour after the meeting broke up, Hazel Murphy, our secretary, called Art on the intercom.

‘‘Art, it’s for you on line three . . . the Director of Public Safety, Des Moines . . .’’

The director talked briefly with Art about recent events, kind of like he was really in charge. Then told him that there had been a request from his field agents for use of a dispatcher in our department, flex time, for special assignments. That he’d had his staff go over the records in Des Moines and that he was assigning Sally, as she had scored highest on her database tests when she’d been certified by his department. If that was okay with Art, of course.

Piece of cake.

Art called Sally and told her. She protested, she had things to do at home . . . Art insisted. Sally ‘‘caved in.’’

Art, however, wasn’t quite finished. He knew I liked Sally, and that I had likely recommended her for the assignment. He also probably suspected that the director had been doing somebody a little favor. He tapped me on the shoulder when I was in the reception area, in front of Hazel.

‘‘You put in lots of hours the last few days.’’

‘‘Well, yeah, I have,’’ I answered.

‘‘Since you were acting sheriff, you don’t get paid for the overtime.’’

‘‘What?’’

‘‘Yep. Chalk up thirty-seven hours of OT to experience. You were administrative.’’

About twelve hundred bucks went down the drain. Oh, well. It just made me more determined to keep Art busy supervising us. He was administrative, and I figured I could keep him on the job for more than thirty-seven extra hours in a week. Easy. But it hurt the pocketbook just the same.

Then, the press weren’t exactly absent. Normally, we could expect something of a respite after we got the ‘‘suspects’’ in jail. But not now. Especially after one of their own had been killed. Poor old Rumsford was being elevated to a kind of sainthood within the fourth estate. Talk about sad . . . they would have nominated him for a Pulitzer, if they’d been able to find anything that he’d ever done. Instead, they hovered around our jail like electronic vultures, waiting to pounce on a sound bite. One of the first things they did was go around Maitland interviewing anybody who walked slowly enough to catch. I will say this, though. They seldom got what they wanted.

One memorable sound bite was aired in what I think was desperation. They stumbled on Harvey Tinker, an elderly gentleman who nearly always wore seedy gray slacks, a white shirt, blue suspenders, and an Ivy League sort of hat. Smoked cigars one after another. I saw him on TV early on, being interviewed in front of the courthouse.

The interviewer was a young man, blond, eager, and very outgoing.

‘‘I’ve been talking with Harvey Tinker, a longtime resident of Maitland,’’ he intoned. He turned to Harvey, who had kept his cigar in his mouth. ‘‘Tell me, Mr. Tinker, what do the residents of Maitland think of all this?’’

Harvey looked squarely at him and said, ‘‘Shouldn’t shoot cops.’’

‘‘Do you mean there’s a sense of outrage here over the shooting of the local lawmen?’’

‘‘Nope. It’s just dumb to shoot a cop.’’

‘‘Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Straight from the heart.’’

The press aggravated us no end, except one French-Canadian team who did the neatest shots of the jail with the sunset turning the old limestone building orange and with a real live deer in the background. It turned out they were doing a travelogue on the Mississippi when their home office sent them inland a few miles to do us. They were attuned to nature shots. They were nice.

To top things off, the extreme right descended on Maitland like a pack of locusts. Not the armed groups. Not militias or paramilitary folks. Oh, no. We weren’t that lucky. No, we got the ‘‘political’’ people. The ones who had convinced themselves they knew what they were doing, and so offered their services to ‘‘represent’’ Herman and family. They were only egos with big appetites, but they could drive you crazy if you let ’em. Especially one named Wilford Jeschonek. We came to call him ‘‘W.J.’’ or ‘‘Rotten Willie,’’ depending on our mood. We hadn’t known him before he came to the jail and demanded to see Herman Stritch and family. Claimed he was an attorney of the common law.

I first saw him as he was arguing with Norma, the duty jailer. She was refusing to let him talk to the Stritch family until she cleared it with the clerk of court.

‘‘Who is that asshole?’’ I asked nobody in particular.

‘‘Sounds like a right-winger,’’ said Al as he passed. ‘‘Wants to bail ’em out with a homemade credit slip, or something like that.’’

‘‘Oh.’’

Old W.J. thought he’d made it impossible for us to see who he really was. Had no license plate on his car. Had no driver’s license. Had canceled his social security number. Had filed a paper with the clerk of court declaring his birth certificate, marriage certificate, U.S. citizenship, etc., invalid. Denied citizenship in anything but the Free and Sovereign Republic of Iowa, as a matter of fact.

‘‘Jeschonek, Wilford Frederick, DOB: 03/19/40, SSN 900-25-0001, 5’7’’, 180, brown and brown,’’ said Sally, five minutes later. ‘‘Nearly a hundred traffic violations, from speed to no seat belt . . . mostly no registration, no DL, stuff like that. Got it for carrying a concealed weapon in Minnesota two years ago, busted for sex with a minor in Wisconsin four years ago, two public intox. in Iowa, and one domestic abuse assault in Iowa last year.’’

‘‘Thanks.’’ She was good. ‘‘Get his wife’s name, will you? Might want to interview her sometime.’’

‘‘Martha June,’’ said Sally absently. ‘‘Lives in Oelwein.’’

‘‘Right.’’ I went back toward the investigator’s office. Speedy, too. If the wife was separated or divorced, she might have information regarding his contacts. I’d have George get with Sally. And if W.J. was connected with any particular group, Herman might be as well. And . . .

And we were off and running.