Known Dead (25 page)

Nancy took a deep breath, then another. ‘‘Okay, so why not? Why’s he still loose? Why not get him now?’’

‘‘The way we got the message,’’ I said, ‘‘might give us a little admissibility problem.’’ Not true, of course. At least, not in the strict sense of criminal procedures. The admissibility came from not wanting to admit what we’d done to the FBI. But Nancy sure didn’t have to know that. At least, not to help us get the information from another source.

Nancy looked at both of us in turn. ‘‘You’re kidding . . .’’

‘‘Had to be done,’’ said Hester. ‘‘No other way to get timely data.’’

‘‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’’ said Nancy, ‘‘because they got Phil. I don’t want anybody getting off here.’’

I thought it was pretty clearly implied that, if whoever shot Phil got off, Nancy’s paper would kill us. That was fair enough.

‘‘Now,’’ I said, ‘‘we have less than an hour here, so let’s get down to it . . .’’

After refreshing her memory a little, which certainly didn’t take much, we asked Nancy what Phil could have said or done that would give the impression that he had a bomb. At first she couldn’t think of anything, but then she remembered Phil’s bottled mineral water. He always drank it, when he could get it, and liked it cold. He had a habit of wrapping it in two of those beer can insulators, and just sticking the neck of the bottle through the little hole in the ‘‘bottom’’ of the upper insulator. He had obtained his insulators from an implement dealer during a photo session, so the two insulators were black, with a yellow rectangle with black printing on the side. In effect, a black cylinder about ten inches long, as big around as a beer can, with a small, white cap on one end.

‘‘He left it at my car,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘When we were going to go in together, he realized he didn’t have it. One of your reserve guys went to the car and got it for him.’’

No shit.

‘‘Borcherding was set up near the car,’’ said Nancy.

‘‘I know,’’ I said. ‘‘You pointed him out, sort of.’’

‘‘He could have seen that. When the cop brought it to him. Phil probably just stuck it in his bag. He wouldn’t have tried to hide it or anything.’’ She thought a second. ‘‘He had a cell phone modem thingy on his laptop.’’

‘‘Borcherding? Are you sure?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Yeah. I told Phil that I’d have to get one like that.’’

‘‘So Borcherding probably wasn’t really inventing the part about the ‘bomb,’ then, was he?’’

‘‘Probably not, Carl.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘Probably not.’’ She looked up. ‘‘That fucker.’’ She thought again for a few seconds. ‘‘You’re
absolutely
sure it was him?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ I said, looking her straight in the eye. ‘‘We know the message came straight from his e-mail address, and could have been sent only by somebody at the scene.’’ I hesitated for a second. ‘‘None of the networks had a live feed going.’’

‘‘No,’’ she said. ‘‘No, they never went live until after Phil was shot. I know that.’’

Hmm. Well, by that time our dispatch center would have been so busy they probably turned the TV off.

‘‘We don’t have any reason to believe he gave his laptop to anybody else,’’ said Hester. ‘‘His password had to be used to log on to the server. If he’d loaned it to somebody else, they’d have used their password, most likely. And his seems to be one of those little local companies . . .’’

‘‘He runs his own server,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘He brags about it.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘He’s one of those people who think they can get in your pants by telling you all the techno drivel they have in their entire head. Supposed to make us horny, or something.’’ She snorted. ‘‘Likely.’’

‘‘Really?’’ That surprised me.

‘‘Oh, yeah. They think it’s erotic.’’

‘‘No, no,’’ I said, grinning. ‘‘Just surprised he has his own server. What do they call it?’’ I asked.

‘‘Oh, shit,’’ she said, ‘‘I don’t remember that. God. But something like the common man net, or some such thing. Maybe free white net, or common free?’’

‘‘Thanks,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We’ll check that out.’’ She pushed her chair back, making a screeching sound on the old hardwood flooring. ‘‘In the meantime, how do you intend to go about getting your information? You can’t be too obvious or quick . . .’’

‘‘Hell, I know that.’’

‘‘I mean,’’ said Hester, ‘‘I know it’s a little soon, but I’d like to know what you intend . . .’’

We went over what we wanted, again. We expanded the list, not to give her more work, but more leeway. We were very clear that she was under no obligation to obtain all the information. Just suggestions and hints. We’d take the rest.

‘‘Right,’’ said Nancy. ‘‘Look, I just want to thank you for letting me have something to do with getting this bastard . . .’’

I made sure she was still sitting there when the two reserve officers came through with Nola Stritch. Our guys had given Nola a bulletproof vest to wear, which looked a little silly on her. It was for someone much larger, was white, and had the long tails on it so you could tuck it into your uniform pants and not have it pull your shirt out when you moved. Kind of looked more like a bulletproof apron, as a matter of fact. I pretended to be a bit upset when Nancy introduced herself, so Nola gave a little statement to the press.

‘‘It’s pretty bad,’’ said Nola, ‘‘when you can’t even trust the press anymore.’’ She started to walk toward the door.

‘‘What do you mean?’’ asked Nancy.

‘‘You know just what I mean,’’ hissed Nola. ‘‘You’re all in the pay of the Jews and the One World Government. You know that. Don’t try to deny it, you are. You know you are.’’ With that off her chest, she turned and just about dragged the officers out the door. It always amazes me when I hear someone I think is intelligent start ranting like that. This time was no exception.

When the door closed, Nancy sighed. ‘‘Well, so much for the sympathetic approach.’’ She grinned. ‘‘I’ll see what I can do for you,’’ she said, heading for the door. ‘‘Just give me a couple of days. I’ll be in touch.’’ And she was gone.

Hester and I exchanged looks.

‘‘I hope we’ve done the right thing here.’’

‘‘Don’t worry, Carl. You worry too much. You’re beginning to sound like George.’’ Hester smiled. ‘‘Speaking of whom . . . we’d better let him know what’s happening.’’

True. Because when it came right down to it, George had access to the resources that we only wished we had.

When we got to the back room, I greeted George with ‘‘George, you little Zionist, how the hell are you?’’

He looked up. ‘‘I knew it. Now you’re gonna want a ride in my black chopper.’’ He pushed his papers back across the desk. ‘‘So how’d it go?’’

‘‘I don’t know,’’ I said, sitting down near a stack of computer paper. ‘‘All right, I guess.’’ I picked up the first sheet. ‘‘She knew him, though. Didn’t like him.’’

‘‘She’s going to keep her eyes open for us,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We’ll see.’’

‘‘Well, while you were gone, I came up with something that may be very serious.’’

What George had found was a series of messages to an address in Idaho, and returns from the same place.

‘‘This man Stritch has some very interesting connections.’’ George indicated a handwritten list he had made. ‘‘Several of these names of organizations that are mentioned here are the same ones I heard at a very sensitive briefing about three months ago.’’

The FBI, it transpired, was working three of the mentioned groups regarding illegal weapons, Ponzi scams, bank fraud, a possible series of bombings where only very small devices were used, and planning things such as bank robberies, armored car holdups, etc. None of the planned things had happened. All of which told me that the FBI had people inside more than one group.

‘‘Small bombs?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Really small,’’ said George. ‘‘Like they blow up mailboxes.’’

‘‘They getting these folks confused with teenagers?’’ I asked.

‘‘Oh, no,’’ said George. ‘‘Not at all. The little bombs are planted as proof that the mechanism works, for one thing. Very sophisticated, they tell me. But, more important,’’ he said, in a worried tone, ‘‘it proves that the strike teams they sent out actually reached their target.’’

Food for thought.

‘‘What kind of targets?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Oh, investigators’ ‘in’ boxes in Sheriff’s Departments,’’ said George, deadpan.

I admit it, I looked at my ‘‘in’’ box. Broke him up.

Actually, as he explained when he’d recovered, what they did was get either close to or into government property and set off these little devices. Not only federal but state and local property as well. They’d started off with places like isolated forest and park ranger stations, and had expanded to include police stations, office buildings, a couple of post offices, a Coast Guard installation, and others.

‘‘Were these connected to the Oklahoma City bombing?’’ I asked.

‘‘No. Not at all. Nothing like that. So far, at least,’’ he said. ‘‘I haven’t heard of anybody even being slightly injured.’’

‘‘Just for the effect?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Seemed to work in a few cases,’’ said George. ‘‘Several victims were really intimidated. But that’s not what they have in mind.’’ He shrugged. ‘‘According to my sources.’’

George’s sources, in this case, were from Washington, D.C., and were pretty damned accurate. What these people were doing was honing their skills. More than fifty incidents, in all sorts of locations. Practicing. But for what?

‘‘If anybody at the conference knew, they sure didn’t tell us,’’ said George.

Hmmm.

‘‘And Herman has been corresponding with the bombers?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘At least with their parent organizations,’’ said George, with the addition of the ‘‘federal hedge.’’ ‘‘Inasmuch as there is any true organization, of course.’’

‘‘Well, sure,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Inasmuch as . . .’’

‘‘Well, they’re pretty loose,’’ said George.

‘‘You wish,’’ she said.

‘‘Anyhow,’’ I interjected, ‘‘what’s old Herman been saying to these people?’’

Oh, yes. Herman. George leafed through the messages. ‘‘Basically,’’ he said, looking up, ‘‘he offered to provide a training area for them, and they accepted.’’

You could have heard a jaw drop.

After a moment, I asked George if, or when, a date had been set.

‘‘I believe so,’’ he said. The last message had been on June 3rd, and stated that they would be glad to take advantage of the training area, and that two to four selected local men could also be included to participate and observe the training. Further contact would be in person.

‘‘The message was accepted for, but not by, a fellow named Gabriel.’’ He waited, but just for a moment. ‘‘That would be Gabriel, you know, for which Gabe is short,’’ he announced.

‘‘We know,’’ said Hester. ‘‘I think we’ve met.’’

‘‘Our favorite colonel,’’ I said, remembering the tall man at the edge of the cornfield. ‘‘Well, somebody better tell DEA. None of this is dope-related, and never has been.’’

‘‘Maybe now,’’ said Hester, smiling, ‘‘we can have our whole case back.’’

Right.

Nineteen

WE HAD A LITTLE PROBLEM. Since we’d gotten all our information in a somewhat irregular manner, we might have trouble telling George’s superiors about any of it. Especially when they found out what was in the computer, and they probably knew already. I mean, if I can tell, they can tell much faster. And in more depth. But if colonel Gabriel was for real, and he certainly appeared to be at the cornfield, we certainly couldn’t do this one ourselves. Well, maybe not past a certain point anyway. It was that point we were now trying to establish.

We decided to go to work on Herman, Nola, and Bill Stritch in earnest. They were the key, not only as to who did the shooting in the woods but also as to who did the shooting at the farmhouse. I was especially encouraged as it appeared to me that none of the Stritch family had shot anybody in the woods. That might enable them to talk with us without fear of being discovered as a shooter. We could always bargain away a co-conspirator charge in exchange for the name of a shooter. Just in case, though, we requested ballistic tests on all the 5.56 mm guns seized from the Stritch family. Just in case we came up with anything, like ejector marks on spent shell casings.

It was much more complex than that, though, because of the implication of the whole family in the death of Bud and the wounding of Lamar. And they were still in court making their appearances. We had to wait. What did we do?

There was almost nobody in the restaurant when we got there. Great. Just after we’d been served, several people, men and women, all in their late forties to mid-sixties, came in and were seated all around us. They seemed pretty well dressed for a Friday noon crowd. They began talking about the ‘‘damned Feds,’’ the ‘‘damned judges,’’ and the ‘‘conspiracies’’ of various sorts. Obviously, a support group from the Stritch appearances. Obviously a little biased as well. Thing was, I didn’t know any of them. I normally would have known at least one or two people in a group that size and age, if they were local.

We all looked at each other and ate just a little faster. One of the men announced that there were ‘‘Feds’’ everywhere and that they’d better be careful what they said. But they just kept on talking. I thought George would choke.

When we left, I wrote down the license plates of several of the cars in the lot. They were from northern Iowa and southern Minnesota, for the most part. Not local.

We got back to the Sheriff’s Department, and discovered that the Stritch family had demanded to be represented by ‘‘common law’’ lawyers, which request had been quite rightly refused by the judge. He’d appointed three local attorneys to represent the family, individually. The family didn’t want them. So we had three prisoners who were pissed off, three attorneys in the reception area trying to figure out how to represent clients who refused to talk to them, three cops who wanted to talk to those same clients . . .

As one of the attorneys said to me: ‘‘Look, Carl, if I let you talk to them and advise them as to how to answer, they’ll just sue me. If I don’t let you talk to them, they’ll sue me. And any way you cut it, they’ll try to get me censured by the court for not properly representing them in the first place. I’ll just have to get back to you on that . . .’’

One of the others, who had a sense of humor, said, ‘‘If I let you talk to my client, will you give him my bill?’’

We weren’t getting very far. Hester, George, and I moved to the back office to regroup.

A phone call came in. Dispatch said it was from somebody who wanted to ‘‘speak with the cop in charge of the killings in the woods.’’ I took it.

‘‘Houseman.’’

‘‘You the cop doin’ the killin’ of the cop and the little snitch in the woods?’’ It was a male voice, fairly deep, matter-of-fact. I frantically waved my free hand at Hester and George. This sounded real.

‘‘One of ’em.’’

‘‘We just want you to know, for what it’s worth, that we got the guy who did it.’’

‘‘You do?’’

‘‘No, man. We did.’’

Hester had picked up the second phone, and was listening.

‘‘Where’s he at? Where can I meet with him?’’ The ‘‘we did’’ sounded ominous, and I hoped I was misunderstanding him on that.

‘‘You can find him at an abandoned farm. Two miles out of Jollietville, just off Highway 433. Address is 23224 Willow Lane. The old Harris place.’’ With that, he hung up.

Jollietville was in Wisconsin. Just across the river from us. We called the Conception County Sheriff’s Department and gave them the message. We told them to hurry, just in case.

We talked about the call. We agreed that the use of the term ‘‘little snitch’’ made it sound like it might be dope-related. But ‘‘the guy who did it’’ couldn’t be correct. There absolutely had been more than one shooter.

A callback came from Conception County within fifteen minutes. Cell phone from their chief investigator, a Harry Ullman. I’d known him for years.

‘‘Houseman?’’

‘‘Yeah. What you got, Harry?’’

‘‘We got kind of a dangling corpse on a farm. I think it’s related to your guys getting ambushed in the woods. If you hurry, you can get here before we cut him down.’’

We went in George’s car. The FBI can go across state lines with comparative ease. Well, so could we, actually, but George could do it with his siren and red grille lights working. Our insurance wouldn’t let us do that out of state. Thing was, it had to be George driving. I’ve never met a really good FBI driver yet. They think they are, but they sure can’t keep up with us in the rural areas. George wasn’t their best driver. It took fifteen minutes, and all the way even Hester was quieter than normal in the back seat. I was in front because of my size, but would have traded places with her in a heartbeat.

To take our minds off the driving, we sort of speculated as to who it might be, with the bets running on its being the man who was with Gabe when he left the Stritch farm. The one with the white tee shirt. Or it could have been one of the Stritch family friends who had been in the woods when the whole thing went down. It was going to be interesting to see.

We also talked a little about who the hell had called. Purest speculation, for sure. The upshot of the whole thing was that we had absolutely no idea.

The other topic was related; what Harry had meant when he said ‘‘cut him down.’’ I thought it meant that he was hanged, and that also raised the possibility of a suicide. People had claimed ‘‘credit’’ for suicides before, just to try to impress somebody. It was possible that remorse or despair had overcome one of the participants. Being hanged also raised the specter of a possible ‘‘legal’’ execution within a group. That’s what I thought it was going to be. All interspersed with things like ‘‘Uh, I wouldn’t pass here, George, you’re gonna want to turn right in just a few seconds anyway . . .’’ and ‘‘There are only two lanes of traffic on the bridge, George, you might want to shut everything down until we get across the Mississippi here, because the other cars have nowhere to go . . .’’

The directions got us to a farm lane, with tall grass and weeds growing down the middle. The old ruts were about a foot deep, but very narrow and close together. Even George could keep only one set of tires in a rut at a time. Long lane, with grasshoppers jumping onto the hood and windshield as we bumped and rolled toward the gray wood barn with a collapsed roof. We stopped behind an ambulance, and got out. There were three cars in front of us, one belonging to the sheriff himself. A small cluster of people were standing around the foundation of what appeared by its size to have been a house many years ago. Harry waved.

‘‘Come on over here, Houseman. You’re gonna love this one.’’

We waded through the knee-high grass, which seemed to be hosting about a million grasshoppers. It was hot, very hot, and extremely humid. We got to the group, and I looked down into the old basement. There, standing propped against what had been an interior limestone wall, was a large timber, about ten feet long, with a very large stone bracing its foot. Stuck to it was a body. Naked. Male. There was a sign dangling around the neck, with the word RAT in capital letters, and something I couldn’t make out underneath. There was what appeared to be a railroad spike protruding about three inches out of the chest of the corpse, apparently having been driven through the rib cage and into the old timber. It looked like that was all that was holding the body on the plank. The face was deep waxy purple, and either very contorted or just really well worked over. The tongue was swollen, bluish, and protruding, so I guessed he’d been strangled before being nailed up. A little closer look at the neck confirmed that. The ligature mark was even with the ear line, back to front. You could have encircled his neck at the ligature point with one hand. Easily. Probably a wide band or rope. If it had been sharp, the neck would have been severed.

‘‘Shit, Harry . . .’’

He grinned. ‘‘Not one of your everyday corpses, is it? You know him?’’

‘‘No,’’ I said. ‘‘I don’t.’’

I was balancing myself with one hand on some old slats, as I moved out on the six-inch-wide top of the old masonry wall, toward the body. ‘‘Mind if I walk here?’’

‘‘Just about two more steps . . . then there’s some stuff on the top of the wall we might want.’’

I looked where he pointed. There was a piece of material draped over the wall, where it could be seen fairly easily, secured there by placing a good-sized piece of limestone block on top of it. Looked like blue cloth, maybe denim. Small. Maybe with a pattern or something on it. The closer I looked, the more it looked like the back of a jacket with a logo.

‘‘I promise not to step on it,’’ I said.

I walked carefully closer to the corpse, steadying myself by keeping my right arm outstretched. I leaned ahead a bit, squinting, looking closely at the face. I slowly waved my left hand over the features, shooing away the flies. Vaguely familiar, it reminded me of somebody. I couldn’t get a handle on the identity, though. There were a lot of flies settling back on the face, but they moved around enough so that I could get sort of a picture. He hadn’t been here more than a few hours.

‘‘Still don’t know who it is,’’ I said.

‘‘Yes, you do,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Yes, you do.’’ She sounded kind of funny. I turned, and she had this stricken look on her face. ‘‘Look again.’’

I did. He
did
look familiar . . .

‘‘Recognize him?’’ she asked.

‘‘Almost . . .’’

‘‘It’s Johnny Marks,’’ she said.

We went off in a group with Harry, and told him what was up with Marks, who he was, what he did. Also told him the narcs in the area hadn’t been able to find him for a little while. We suggested he call them.

‘‘Shit,’’ I said. ‘‘I wonder who did him.’’

‘‘Didn’t you read the letters under the RAT, Carl?’’ asked Harry.

Well, no. I just hadn’t been able to see them. Couldn’t get any closer, and too far to read the print normally. But thank you for pointing that out, Harry.

‘‘Couldn’t quite make ’em out,’’ I said.

‘‘Maybe we could have the lab boys move the plank back a bit?’’

‘‘No, thanks, Harry.’’

‘‘Anyway, it says ‘The Living Dead.’ ’’ He rubbed it in. ‘‘And under that, it says ‘Killed a cop in the woods on June 19, in Nation County, Iowa.’ ’’

The Living Dead drew a blank with George and me, but not with Hester.

‘‘Cycle gang out of Ohio,’’ she said. ‘‘Meth trade.’’

‘‘Right,’’ said Harry. ‘‘Meth and grass. That denim vest has their colors on it, I think. We’ll know as soon as the lab folks get here.’’

‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘that sure explains the ‘we did him’ on the phone call.’’

Hester shook her head. ‘‘I don’t think ‘did’ does it justice.’’

George was the pale one in our group. FBI doesn’t do a lot of homicides, like they say. He just asked one question. ‘‘Do they always look so . . . purple?’’

I explained to him that, with the actual ligature removed, the purple face told us that the spike through the chest had been inflicted some little while post-mortem, as the lividity in the face was so pronounced. Only blood seepage looked to have occurred from the spike, which made it appear likely that the victim was dead when it was driven in. At the same time, the removal of the ligature at that point said that it had been taken off for a specific reason . . . otherwise, why bother.

‘‘Specific reason?’’

‘‘Sure. Like a person’s belt, for instance. Don’t want it left around. They want us to find only the evidence they want us to locate.’’

‘‘Oh.’’

‘‘Just think,’’ said Hester, ‘‘maybe somebody is walking into your favorite restaurant, wearing the belt that did it . . .’’

We had to stop in the Conception County Sheriff’s Department to fill out written statements regarding the phone call and what was said. I gave written permission for them to have our department’s tapes, although the only part that was recorded had been the dispatcher and the caller. When he’d been transferred back to me, he’d gone off taped line . . . we did that on purpose, as we didn’t want anybody else to be able to listen to recordings of confidential conversations. There were drawbacks.

The three of us then went to a little coffee shop on the Wisconsin side, to talk and gather our thoughts. George and Hester had coffee, and I had coffee and a chocolate doughnut.

We agreed we had a problem. All the available evidence said that Johnny Marks hadn’t been one of the shooters in the woods. The shooters been amateur guerrillas in training, not dope dealers. At least, not as far as we knew. But we had what appeared to be a great lead, a direct connection to a meth-dealing cycle gang, and a clearly murdered man who had definitely been connected with the patch. Yet we had nothing that connected Johnny Marks to the Stritch family, let alone the mysterious Gabe and his outfit. Nothing. Marks’s only connection had been with Turd and the fact that he’d been the supervisor, if not the owner, of the patch itself.

But we had the possibility that some of the right-wing folks had at least intimated that they might be persuaded to grow dope and sell it, as a way of pissing off the Feds and of making money for the cause.