Known Dead (7 page)

Damn.

Eight

THE NEXT DAY started at 0726, when I got a call from the office telling me that there had been a development and that I should be there within half an hour. Sue, who had been awakened by the phone, and who had been sort of listening to me, asked what time it was. I told her.

‘‘God.’’ Then: ‘‘What time did you get in last night?’’

By that time I was sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to remember where I’d left the floor. ‘‘Oh, I dunno . . . four or five, I think . . .’’

She was now sitting. ‘‘Three hours’ sleep?’’ Obviously she was more awake than I was. I could tell because she could do the math. I thought for a second, still trying to get the cobwebs out.

‘‘Yeah,’’ I said, ‘‘I guess you’re right.’’

‘‘That’s terrible,’’ she said, lying back down. ‘‘It was that state officer being killed, wasn’t it? The one I saw on TV.’’

‘‘Yep.’’ I thought for a second. ‘‘Actually, it’s bullshit.’’

‘‘What?’’

‘‘Nothing,’’ I said as I dialed the phone. ‘‘Just calling the office.’’

The phone was portable, so I carried it into the hall as it rang.

‘‘Sheriff’s Department . . .’’

‘‘Yeah, hey, it’s Carl. What’s the development you called me about?’’

‘‘I don’t know, they didn’t say. Just said to call you.’’

‘‘Is this Brenda?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

Brenda was pretty new at this. ‘‘Okay, Brenda, who told you to call me?’’

‘‘Nine.’’

Nine was the call number for Deputy Eddie Heinz, also relatively new. We all liked Eddie. He was one of the most enthusiastic people I’d ever worked with.

‘‘Where is he?’’

‘‘In his car.’’

‘‘Right, Brenda, look . . . have him call me when he gets in.’’ I yawned.

‘‘Uh, he wasn’t going to come in. He wanted you at the scene.’’

‘‘What scene?’’ Regardless, I had now talked so long it would be impossible to get back to sleep.

‘‘Up near the park area. I think he’s found something . . .’’

‘‘All right, Brenda, thanks. I’ll get up there as soon as I wake up.’’

I had a cup of coffee, and left the house at 0812. Sue had come downstairs with me, and tried to persuade me to eat something healthy. I scarfed down a banana with my vitamin pills and my blood pressure meds. Ten years ago, I thought, I would have been there by now. Closer to the truth than I wanted to dwell on.

I kissed Sue as I left. ‘‘Thanks for the breakfast.’’

I contacted Eddie via radio when I was about six miles from him, and got directions. It’s a fairly wild area up there, and I didn’t want to waste time looking for him. As I dropped down into the heavily wooded valleys, the fog was thick just below the tree line. The tops of the trees looked like islands sticking up out of the sea. Then I dropped below the ‘‘water level’’ and was in a fairly thick, very damp fog. Windshield wipers on. I still could see about fifty feet. I was almost past Eddie when I saw his car in one of the little picnic areas cleared by the state. He was outside, and motioned me in beside his car. I got out, and sloshed as much as walked through the wet grass over to where he was.

‘‘Hi, hope you don’t mind, but I thought you should see this.’’

‘‘Whaddya got?’’ Reserving judgment as to whether or not I ‘‘minded’’ until I saw why he’d called.

He led me over to an area of very deep grass at the edge of the mowed picnic area and pointed to a spot where the grass appeared bent. There were what seemed to be several cardboard boxes, some just plain cardboard-colored, and some red, white, and blue printed boxes. They all appeared to be empty. The colorful ones said ‘‘USA Made Quality Assured’’ and ‘‘Famous Quality Ammunition.’’ And then, stamped in black on the white ends, ‘‘Cal. 5.56 mm FMJ.’’ As I peered over the pile, I could make out the printing on the brown boxes. ‘‘Republic of China.’’ ‘‘7.62 mm Ball.’’

‘‘Glad you called me.’’ I straightened up. ‘‘How in the hell did you find these?’’

‘‘I pulled in here to take a leak, and I always shine my light around just a bit before I do.’’

‘‘You didn’t . . . ?’’

‘‘Oh, no, I did over there a ways.’’

‘‘Good, I’m short of rubber gloves.’’

I looked around, but couldn’t quite orient myself. ‘‘How far are we from the crime scene?’’

‘‘About two hundred yards.’’

‘‘Fog’s thick.’’ And I’m still not quite awake. Didn’t say that, though.

We returned to my car, where I unpacked my camera and fumbled through the bag until I had everything I thought appropriate attached to the frame. Made a little small talk as I did.

‘‘Whaddya do, drive around all night lookin’ for a toilet?’’ Said with a grin and in a lighthearted manner. We often did. As it transpired, he hadn’t. It seems that he was bringing some coffee to the reserve officers we had watching the crime scene and keeping the curious out. He had decided to relieve himself when he arrived, but was followed by a female trooper to the scene. He was too embarrassed to head for a convenient bush with her standing there, so he made an excuse and drove down here. Well, you take ’em when you can get ’em.

I radioed the office and told them to get word to the DCI that I was going to need one of them up at the new scene as soon as possible. Then we went back, and photographed the little pile of debris very thoroughly. I used a 70-210 mm zoom lens, as well as a standard 55 mm, and took about half the shots with a flash. It was really foggy. As I maneuvered around the trash pile I saw a couple of small round cans whose labels indicated they had contained green cammo makeup. Fascinating.

When Hester got there, we spread out a bit and checked out the area. Got soaked to the knees, but it was worth it. We found a freshly dug hole, where somebody had buried a bunch of modern military rations. MREs. Stood for ‘‘Meal, Ready to Eat.’’ You could get these at about any surplus or sporting goods store. But if these had been used by our suspects, they’d been here for a while. There were twenty-four empty MRE bags.

‘‘Okay,’’ I said. Trying to be a math major. ‘‘That’s eight people, three meals a day. Or one person for eight days. Or . . .’’

‘‘Right,’’ said Hester. ‘‘I’ll go for four people for two days myself.’’

That was one combination I hadn’t thought of. Among many, I admit.

‘‘Or maybe I’d prefer two people for four days,’’ she said, grinning.

Eddie, who was known for allowing his concentration to overwhelm his sense of humor, got more to the point. ‘‘There aren’t any breakfasts here,’’ he said. We were silent for a moment, clearing the threes out, and doing twos. Pointless. There were twenty-four bags. That’s what we knew. It told us they, however many, had stayed for a while, for however long. But if they were related to the crime, and it sure looked like they could be, then they didn’t pull their people out at sunset like we did. That meant, at least as a possibility, that they had watched our people enter and leave the area. Spooky.

The sun was finally starting to burn the fog off as we finished collecting and labeling the evidence. It started getting hot, and the humidity was already unbelievable. I suggested we go back to the crime scene and walk a much wider area. And I suggested that we should proceed to the scene from where we were standing. Just like ‘‘they’’ would have.

It turned out that to get there we had to go up and over a large steep, slippery hill that was covered with damp fallen leaves, and hotter than hell. The trees were thick, and the area between them was covered with thorny brambles and thick, reedy weeds. Took us about two hours. I hate it when people take my suggestions. I was pretty well shot when we got to the top of the hill, and called a halt.

‘‘Hey,’’ I managed to get out, ‘‘let’s stop and catch our breath.’’

Hester, whose hair looked like she had just gotten out of a shower, said, ‘‘Why?’’ and promptly sat down. Eddie looked like he could keep going the rest of the week, but squatted down beside us just to be polite.

Eddie, looking energetically about him, asked, ‘‘How we gonna tell if they’re related, sir?’’

Not unlike Hester when she’s called ‘‘ma’am,’’ I get a bit put off by ‘‘sir.’’ ‘‘Oh,’’ I said, still breathing hard, ‘‘we’ll try for prints. From the shell casings.’’ I took a breath. ‘‘You have to touch ’em when you load ’em.’’ Another breath. ‘‘Then dust the boxes and the MREs.’’ I wiped my forehead, scratching myself with a bramble as I did so. ‘‘Shit. Then see if the same prints are on more than one item.’’

‘‘Oh, sure,’’ said Eddie. ‘‘Okay, then what?’’

Hester, bless her, took up the lesson. ‘‘We run every print through APHIS.’’ APHIS is a computerized fingerprint searching system. Very fast. ‘‘And we talk to whoever belongs to the prints.’’

He thought about that for a second. ‘‘But what if there aren’t any good prints, ma’am?’’

Hester looked at him evenly. ‘‘Then we send you out to piss again.’’

I paused for a second just before we went over the crest of the hill, and looked back. I’d been wondering if we would find a trail left by the perps. We hadn’t. But, looking back, I couldn’t see where we’d just been either. I pointed this out to Hester. She thought she could see a faint area of disturbed leaves, but agreed that in twenty-four hours there’d be nothing left to mark our passage either. Not good.

We got lucky for the last time on the way down toward the patch. We discovered what was obviously a man-made barrier, sort of a long, shallow hole with three or four fallen branches piled up around it. Rifle pit.

‘‘Just like the Army,’’ said Eddie.

‘‘Yep.’’

From the area of the pit, you could see part of the track we had followed up to the scene the day before, and part of the scene itself, with some lab people just starting their day. Thick trees and brush obscured the rest of the view. But, from our standpoint, it was a link. You could also see the southern edge of the marijuana patch.

Both Hester and I took several photos from the area of the pit, and of the pit itself. We called for a couple of members of the lab team, who were finishing up the original site, to come up to where we were, to process the area around the pit.

‘‘Know what, Carl?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘What?’’

‘‘This is kind of the same general area where the media people from yesterday were coming from.’’

‘‘Shit, that’s right.’’

‘‘I wonder if they saw anybody.’’

‘‘Or anything.’’

Our first try was for Lamar, but he was out of his car at the county attorney’s office, and we didn’t want to bother him. We tried for Hester’s boss, Al, who had also talked to the media, but he was testifying at a murder trial in Linn County and wasn’t available. We finally tracked down one of the two junior state troopers who had confronted the media people. He wanted to drive right out to where we were, but we finally convinced him to go to a telephone somewhere, and we called him. Save a lot of time that way.

He had the names of both media people and their organization. ‘‘The
Des Moines Register.
’’ Nancy Mitchell. Of the Cedar Rapids bureau. Good. Philip Rumsford, freelance photojournalist. Worked for an agency out of Minneapolis–St. Paul, but lived in Dubuque, IA.

As it happened, both Mitchell and Rumsford were on their way to the park, for follow-up information. At least that’s what the answering machine at their office said. Hester and I waited, this time in her car. The air conditioning felt wonderful, but I made it perfectly clear to the people at the scene that we really had to use the car for communication purposes. We let Eddie go home, with a promise to let him know if anything useful came of his discovery. He was very pleased with having found something. We waited, trying to stay awake in the comfort of the car.

Hester moved her rearview mirror so she could see herself.

‘‘God, I look like shit.’’

I didn’t say anything for a second, thinking back over what we’d found.

‘‘I said,’’ said Hester, ‘‘ ‘God, I Look Like Shit.’ ’’

‘‘Oh, yeah,’’ I said. ‘‘Well, so do I.’’

‘‘Jesus, Houseman, you’re supposed to say that I
don’t
look like shit.’’

‘‘Oh. Okay. Sorry.’’ I grinned. ‘‘You don’t look like shit.’’

She sighed. ‘‘Sue has a hard life ahead of her.’’

Nancy Mitchell turned out to be the senior partner of the two. Between thirty-five and forty, she was fit, attractive, and although looking very harried, she did not look like shit. Philip Rumsford, who was about twenty-two, wasn’t nearly as fit, and was both photographer and second-string reporter. Harried didn’t seem to be in his repertoire, but sweat sure did. They had come in a small gray car, dusty, rusty, and with nonfunctional air-conditioning. That had been the first thing Philip mentioned, even before we had identified ourselves. ‘‘Damned air-conditioning’s out.’’ He looked a little peeved. Since Nancy was driving, I assumed it was her car.

Nancy, on the other hand, just seemed a bit surprised that we actually were seeking her out. I was becoming truly jealous over cell phones. Anyway, Lamar’s reputation for hating the press was really well known, and our request to talk with her had come as quite a surprise.

‘‘I’m Nancy Mitchell,’’ she said, extending her hand. We shook.

‘‘Carl Houseman,’’ I said, ‘‘and this is Agent Hester Gorse . . .’’