The Covert Element (4 page)

He can be an assiduous investigator and he managed to get me
to cough up a rough sketch of my life story. He’d promised that my
secret was safe with him. To date, that was a promise he had
faithfully kept.

Anyway, Gunner knows I have some background that can be
useful to law enforcement in certain situations – like when he finds
a toasted meth house with twenty-odd murder victims lined up
outside. And he knows that I often take a different tack in my
investigational approach than the one provided in the Sheriff’s
Manual.

But he also knows we’re both pulling the rope in the same
direction and have the same goals. So for the most part, we’re able
to resolve our differing styles in the interest of catching the bad
guys.

"Okay," Gunner said. "I guess you’re in."

"Thanks."

Gunner moved closer to me. "Here’s what we’ve got.

"BCA says this was a meth factory – or at least it was gonna be
one. It may not have started producing yet. These dead guys, I
guess, were the cooks."

"So do you think was the arson to destroy the operation, or just
to cover evidence of the murders?" I asked.

"No way to know yet. BCA’ll analyze all the evidence from the
scene. Maybe that’ll give ‘em a better picture. Right now, I don’t
think they know any more than I do – any more than you can see
from here." He turned toward the burned out house and the lawn
full of corpses.

"Grim."

"No kidding," he said. "So the reason I asked you here . . . do
you have any suggestions on how to make heads or tails of this
mess? "

Gunner was looking for my gut reaction.

"It’s pretty early to be waving any red flags," I said, not wanting
to ruin Gunner’s day on a hunch.

"Agreed. But if you were going to wave one, which direction
would it be pointing?"

On a couple occasions, in my past career, I had, indeed, seen
circumstances that were not dissimilar to today’s carnage. I looked
Gunner in the eye and lowered my voice even further.

"As improbable as this may sound, I’d say this looks like the
result of a drug war."

Gunner made a face like he’d just bitten into a bad enchilada.
"Shit. I had to ask." He shook his head as he, once again, surveyed
the scene.

"Okay. Well, we’ll know more soon. In the meantime, keep this
whole thing under your hat, okay? We don’t need a bunch of press
and gawkers . . . especially when we’re short on answers."

"Right."

CHAPTER THREE

When I arrived home that afternoon I found Beth working at
her computer armoire in our dining room.

"Oh hey, Babe," she said, getting up and walking around the
black marble table to greet me.

"Hey yourself." I gave her a big hug.

"You smell a little like a campfire. What’s up?"

"I just spent the last couple hours at that house fire I
mentioned to you on the phone. Turns out it was some kind of drug
operation gone bad." I released her from my smoky grip. "Real
bad."

"Injuries?"

"Yeah. A bunch . . . . Listen, I don’t really feel like talking about
this right now. I kinda need to clear my head and get this smoke off
my body. Think I’ll grab a quick shower and a change of clothes.
Then we can talk more. Okay?"

"You got it. Go forth and cleanse thyself."

"Heh. I don’t think soap’ll do the whole job. Maybe you should
have some holy water ready when I come down."

I excused myself and headed up the central stairway to the
bathroom for my shower.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, I jogged back down the stairs feeling like
a new man. A good part of this morning’s fog of sooty kharma had
lifted. I smelled better, too.

I found Beth on the back porch swing, nursing a blue
aluminum bottle of Bud Light beer in a bottle cozy. I grabbed a
bottle for myself out of the small beer refrigerator on the porch,
popped the cap, and joined her on the swing.

"You smell delicious," Beth said.

She rested her head on my chest as I curled one arm around
her shoulders.

"I use soap," I said. A slight smile showed at the corner of my
mouth.

"Okay, you drip. I see you’re in no mood to cuddle. So you
might as well fill me in on your morning’s adventure."

Beth’s voice was cheerful. My thoughts were somber.

"Okay. If you’re up for it. But you should know . . . I’m gonna
change the mood here when I tell you this."

Beth cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. "Okay.
Ready."

"I’m afraid my morning wasn’t much of an adventure . . . more
like a visit to a cemetery. A graveyard where the bodies have
leached to the surface."

Beth grimaced.

"Gunner asked me out to that house fire I mentioned. When I
arrived, I was greeted by twenty-three young Hispanic men, shot to
death execution-style and lined up in the yard. The house had been
torched. Inside the burned-out building, according to the BCA, was
the largest meth lab anybody has ever seen in Minnesota. We’re
talking maybe fifty or a hundred times what’s normal around here –
maybe more."

I paused to let some of this picture sink in.

"Sounds like New York, or L.A.," Beth said. "Like some gang
turf war, or . . . a drug war? In Ottawa County? Not seriously?"

"That’s my best guess. ‘Course the cops have a lot of
investigating to do yet. They’ll try to identify the corpses. None of
them had any ID on his person. And they’ll analyze the lab
equipment further. It may turn out that it wasn’t a meth cookery
after all. Maybe something else."

Whether drugs or not, it was hard for me to imagine that the
scene I had observed this morning could possibly portend anything
but headaches and misery for the residents of Ottawa County.

"But twenty-three dead . . . . When’s the last time that sort of
mass execution happened in the U.S.?"

Beth stared into space.

"Gotta be when that crazy Hennard guy drove his pickup truck
through the front window of Luby’s Café in Texas way back in –
what was it – ’91? Long time ago, anyway."

"This morning’s atrocity looked like something out of Kosovo.
Like an ethnic cleansing. Or like the mob sending someone a
message. But we don’t have ‘the mob’ in Minnesota . . . just a few
rag tag street and motorcycle gangs that shoot each other once in a
while."

I thought for a moment. I could see Beth was trying to make
some sense of all this, too.

"I s’pose Hells Angels is the closest we’ve got to any organized
crime syndicate," I said. "But if it was a biker gang, the BCA should
find evidence of motorcycles all over the place. I didn’t see any
tracks around that house this morning. Still . . . you never know."

I was out of ideas. Maybe some solid police work would give
me new options to consider soon. In the meantime, while ruthless
killers roamed loose in or around Ottawa County, I would sleep very
lightly indeed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Three years ago, not far from Red Wing.

The tiny farming community of Bellechester, Minnesota had
fallen on hard times of late. The ag economy was trending to larger
and larger producers, who required larger and larger facilities and
resources to handle their crops and process their milk. The
Bellechester Farmers Elevator had neither the strategic plan nor the
resources to compete with the big boys of agriculture in this
changing marketplace. Farmers began bypassing the small crop
storage and processing facility, instead taking their harvest and
milk directly to the large facilities operated by ADM, Cargill, and
Central Grain.

Eventually, the small elevator operation went out of business.
Expenses exceeded income. It was not an uncommon story in the
rural economies of the U.S. Without the customer base the Elevator
had provided, many other Bellechester businesses were headed
south, too. The General Store. The Ace Hardware franchise. Even
the local Farm & Fleet store eventually picked up its bags and
moved on.

Coonie’s Bar and General Mercantile was the only business left
standing when a former Cargill executive had a brilliant idea that
would change Bellechester’s fortunes forever. Walter Marsden was
a native Minnesotan and a long time Cargill employee who was
tired of big business destroying family farms. The time had come
for a brainchild he had been nursing for quite some time.

His idea was to find a suitable location, raise the necessary
capital, and either build or refurbish a grain and dairy processing
facility strictly to support
organic
farming.

The plan was a stroke of business genius. For years, the small
time farmers of Ottawa County had been searching for a way to
increase their incomes without having to work even more hours or
to go even farther into debt to lenders.

Marsden started polling farmers around Minnesota to see if
there was enough interest to support an all-organic processing,
shipping, and marketing facility anywhere in the state. He found
what he was looking for in and around Bellechester.

His first order of business was to pitch the idea to investment
bankers and private investors. It took a fair amount of effort – and a
number of failed attempts – but eventually Marsden found the
funding he needed in an international agri-banking operation know
as AgInvest. They were impressed not only by his plan, but by his
experience in agri-business at Cargill and his devotion to the plight
of the small farmer.

They would lend him the money he needed, provided that he
kick in $250,000 of his own funds. That contribution would stretch
Marsden’s finances thin. But he made the commitment, and the
plan was underway.

Next up was the purchase and development of the facility itself.
The owners of the now defunct Bellechester Farmers Elevator were
pleased to have an offer of any sort for their property. One can
imagine that there aren’t a lot of alternative uses for a grain
elevator. So they took Marsden’s first offer, transferring the elevator
and surrounding property to Marsden’s venture group for what
both parties considered a fair amount.

Now Marsden signed contracts with neighboring farmers in
which they agreed to produce only organic crops and dairy products
as soon as they were able to qualify with the USDA to do so. That
USDA approval process would take three years for those who had
been using conventional pesticides and herbicides in their fields.
But many of the farmers had begun the switch to organic years ago.
The increased prices they would receive for the "all natural" product
more than compensated for the reduced yields and extra
transportation costs associated with organic produce.

Marsden and his contractors worked non-stop on preparations
for the new Bellechester Organic Elevator and Creamery – known to
the locals as Bellechester Organic. Marsden outfitted the old
elevator buildings with new grain handling and milling machinery.
Larger storage bins were erected. These additions and retrofits went
smoothly and quickly.

The more challenging and expensive part of the project was
building the creamery and cheese factory. Since the former
Bellechester Elevator did not have a dairy facility, these buildings,
and their associated equipment – loading docks, refrigeration, and
pasteurization areas – would need to be built from scratch.