Dearly Departed

by David Housewright

“Not exactly,” Lonnie answered.

  “We kept that part from Michael,” Ingrid added.

  “What part?”

  Ingrid’s chest rose and fell again. “Michael was talking about how she wanted to become an important part of the community,” Ingrid explained. “But the way she said it, it reminded me of King. She didn’t want to become a part so much as she wanted to own a part, to run a part. And it annoyed me. I realize now that I was just being petty. I see myself as a big fish in a small pond, and I didn’t want any other big fish coming around.

  “So one night we were talking and I mentioned that The Harbor would make a good investment, the kind of community investment she was looking for. I told her the Ojibwa were negotiating in secret with the Board of County. Commissioners to buy the civic center across the highway and turn it into a casino. I told her I would buy The Harbor in a heartbeat myself, only I didn’t have the money. So she bought it.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I asked.

  “The Ojibwa are not going to build a new casino,” Lonnie told me. “The tribe has no intentions of expanding its gaming operations.”

  “Why then—”

  “The tribe is starting a company to build recreational boats,” Lonnie explained. “The civic center would make an ideal factory for it.”

  “And you knew that?” I asked Ingrid.

  “Lonnie told me,” she said.

  “But why keep it a secret?” I wanted to know.

  “Because the company will be in direct competition to King Boats, Koehn’s bread-and-butter company,” Lonnie said. “The tribe wanted to secure the civic center location before King had a chance to use his political ties to squash the deal. And the county commissioners wanted to keep it a secret because they knew if King did scuttle the deal, they’d be stuck with the civic center for all time.”

  In his own obfuscated way, Chief Stonetree had told me all this the night before—but I was being too obfuscated myself to see it.

  “The entire county is up in arms thinking you’re building a casino,” I reminded Lonnie.

  “Think how happy the people will be when they discover that we’re not,” he said, smiling. “When people discover that we’re actually bringing honest manufacturing jobs to the region, I expect we’ll become quite popular.”

  “With everyone except King Koehn,” I suggested.

  “I doubt he’ll appreciate the competition,” Lonnie agreed.

  “That’s why you’ve been content to allow all this casino nonsense to go on,” I figured out loud. “To keep King in the dark as long as possible.”

  Lonnie nodded.

  “Shrewd,” I told him.

  “That’s what they’d call it if a white company made it happen. I’m real curious to hear what adjective they’ll apply to us.”

  So was I.

  “Then Charlie Otterness was telling the truth,” I said. “He didn’t pass insider information.”

  “No,” Ingrid agreed. She added, “I feel really, really guilty about that. But everyone will know he told the truth when the Board of County Commissioners meets in formal session and the Ojibwa make their bid.”

  “And Michael?”

  “If she works at it, I bet she could make The Harbor go,” Ingrid predicted. “With a boat factory across the way, she’ll have a good lunch crowd if nothing else. Probably a good happy hour, too.”

  “But she won’t have the business a casino would bring in,” I noted.

  “I won’t, either,” Ingrid said in her defense.

  I leaned back in my seat and watched the back of Ingrid’s head as she guided the Sebring into Saginau. Suddenly I didn’t like her as much as I had before. Or Lonnie. Or the chief. Suddenly I didn’t like anybody because of what they had done to Alison.

  They had stolen her dream.

  At least that’s how I saw it.

  “Drop me at the county court building,” I instructed Ingrid. And she did.

  We were all surprised when we pulled into the parking lot. It was filled with deputies donning Kevlar vests and checking weapons.

  Ingrid and Lonnie were curious but not enough to ask questions. They drove off, leaving me standing next to my car. I was curious and not shy about it.

  “What’s going on?” I asked no one in particular. Gary Loushine heard me and answered as Sheriff Bobby Orman stood behind him and listened to every word.

  “We searched Chip Thilgen’s house,” the deputy told me. “We found financial records that indicate that Thilgen wrote five checks to James Johannson for five hundred dollars each and a sixth for twenty-five hundred. Each of the five-hundred-dollar checks were written the same day as a reported farm break-in or animal liberation that Thilgen had been accused of but not charged with. The sixth check—the twenty-five-hundred-dollar check—was written the day before Michael Bettich was shot.”

  I nodded, pretending I didn’t already know this.

  “Jimmy Johannson is well known to us,” Loushine added. “He has a significant record. So we checked his fingerprints against a set of latents we lifted off the Buick, including an index finger we found on one of the shell casings. We examined them on the optical comparator. There’s no mistake.”

  “The perpetrator is James Johannson,” Sheriff Orman announced, reminding me of Jack Lord in Hawaii Five-O.

  “James Johannson,” Loushine agreed.

  They were both smiling.

  “So what do you expect from me?” I asked. “Applause?”

  twenty-seven

  Sheriff Drman was acting like Joe Professional now—perhaps he thought he had something to prove.

  “We have an hour of daylight left,” he estimated, glancing at his watch.

  “Yes, sir,” said Loushine.

  “I want everybody here. Now.”

  “They’re here,” Loushine said.

  Sheriff Orman nodded.

  “This is going to get ugly,” I muttered to myself.

  I was impressed by how grim and unsure the deputies appeared as they awaited their instructions—so unlike my former colleagues in the St. Paul Homicide Unit. This was not something they wanted to do, and not wanting to do it put them at risk. Loushine moved among them, grinning, even cracking a joke or two. He managed to illicit a few chuckles, a few smiles that faded fast. But the overall mood didn’t change, and I could see that he was as concerned as I was.

  I didn’t know any of these men, these strangers. I didn’t know if they were properly trained for this kind of action. I didn’t know how they would react. I knew only that they were scared. And that was reason enough for me to adjourn to the beer joint down the street. Besides, it wasn’t my job. I was a civilian. I shouldn’t have even been invited to the party. But then the sheriff asked, “You coming, Taylor?” in a voice loud enough to be heard by all of his deputies.

  The men stopped checking their weapons, stopped donning their body armor, and waited for my reply. And suddenly I felt responsible for them, for all of them, as if my refusal to join the posse would make them more afraid than they were, and that extra load of fear would be too much for them to carry.

  Loushine whispered something to the sheriff, and Orman replied, “No, it’ll be all right.”

  “You’re the boss,” Loushine said and joined the others who waited for my answer.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” I said, smiling just as big and brightly as I could.

  And we tell our children not to succumb to peer pressure.

  Thirty minutes later I sat on the hood of the sheriff’s cruiser about a mile from the Johannson homestead while he deployed his men. I could hear the low rumble of his voice but not what he was saying. By my estimate, we had thirty minutes of daylight left.

  “I’ll tell you what we used to do,” I announced. “When we could, we would take our suspects at dawn. Hit ’em hard and fast when they were still too groggy from sleep to put up a fight. It was standard procedure.”

  No one was listening.

  “I was out ther
e yesterday,” I recalled. “Johannson’s father and his young nephew were in the house. Have you considered them?”

  No one was listening.

  “Hey, I know! We have the barn. We have the costumes. Let’s put on a show.”

  “Quiet down, Taylor,” Loushine warned.

  “Deputy, this is small-town amateur night,” I countered.

  He looked at me like he knew I was right but said nothing. A moment later, the sheriff joined us. His deputies had scattered, some in cars, to encircle the house down the road. He looked at his watch. “The teams will be in position in ten minutes. Then we move.”

  “Move? What do you mean, move?” I knew what he meant, I just wanted to hear him say it.

  “We’re going to knock on the front door.”

  “Sheriff, the man has an UZI semiautomatic carbine. He can fire twenty-five rounds before you can say, ‘Bless me father for I have sinned.’”

  “You’re not frightened, are you, Taylor?” Loushine interrupted.

  I studied him for a moment. He was busy checking the load in his service revolver. It wasn’t necessary. I had seen him check it twice before. But it gave his hands something to do, and it was an excuse not to look me in the eye.

  “I’ll be standing right behind you, Deputy,” I told him.

  Sheriff Orman slapped a gun into my hand. A Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special, Model No. 64: three-inch barrel, thirty and a half ounces fully loaded, serrated-ramp front sight, square-notch rear sight, square butt, satin finish, six shots—as efficient a close-encounter killing machine as you’ll ever find and a stunning improvement over the Walther PPK in my pocket. Yet I looked at it like I had never seen one before in my life.

  The minutes dragged on, giving me plenty of time to think, plenty of time to contemplate what I was expected to do with the .38. I was expected to point it at a man and squeeze the trigger. Simple, right? Yeah, sure. That’s why I have nightmares, because it’s so simple.

  It is not as easy to kill a man as TV and the movies would suggest. Living with it later is even harder. You don’t brush it off and go out for Chinese like the actors in the cop shows: “Hi, honey, I killed a couple of guys today; what’s for supper?” I know. I’ve killed men. Four of them. I’ve replayed my encounters with them a hundred times in my head, carefully editing each tape until any alternative action was clearly impossible. I memorized their rap sheets until I convinced myself that their deaths were an almost preordained consequence of their lives and my involvement a kind of destiny. Yeah, I know it’s self-deluding bullshit. But a man has to sleep.

  Now I was being encouraged to kill again.

  And I was willing.

  I stuck the .38 in the waistband of my jeans and pretended it wasn’t there, concentrating hard on the advice George Meade had given me my first day on the job: “Don’t think too far ahead.”

  When his deputies were in position, Orman cautioned them over the radio to play it safe and ordered them not to shoot unless Jimmy Johannson tried to break through.

  “If there’s any shooting to do, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Remember, surprise is what we want. If we do this quick and clean, we won’t have anything to regret tomorrow.”

  “Please, God,” Loushine prayed.

  I wished I had said that. I believe in God as much as anyone who doesn’t make a living out of it, which is to say I believe in Him more at some times than others. It’s true we haven’t exactly been on speaking terms since my wife and daughter were killed. Still, one would hope He wouldn’t hold that against a guy. I found myself searching the quickly darkening sky for a sign that He approved of tonight’s activities. There was none. Just as well. A divine revelation right then would have been particularly disconcerting.

  “Ready, Taylor?” the sheriff asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered and squeezed into the back seat of his cruiser with another deputy. Orman and Loushine sat in front.

  Fear is the most transient of emotions. It cannot be sustained at a high pitch for more than a few minutes at a time. I was terrified as the sheriff pulled off the county blacktop onto the gravel road and drove the mile to Johannson’s place. Yet I was calm by the time his wheels hit the dirt driveway. I took in everything, seeing much more in that first instant than I had in several hours the day before. There were actually six wrecks cluttering the yard, not five—four on the left of the driveway and two on the right. The wreck closest to the house on the right was a rusted out pickup, the hood open to heaven like all the others. About ten yards in front of Johannson’s door was a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Her statue was perched on a large rock and surrounded by smaller rocks and brightly colored flowers. About twenty yards to the left of the shrine were three oil drums. A siphoning apparatus was attached to the middle drum. To the left of that was the large shed.

  I was out the door and making a low run to the pickup before the sheriff’s cruiser came to a halt. When they got out, the sheriff motioned his deputy far to the left, near the shed. Then he and Loushine approached the front door. The lights above the door and the shed were burning, and the sheriff had left his headlights on. I was leaning across the pickup, the .38 trained on the front door. Yet even though I was watching it, I was unprepared to see it fly open and Jimmy Johannson dash out, squeezing off God knows how many rounds from the UZI as he ran to the oil drums. The sheriff and Loushine retreated to the cruiser. The other deputy found cover behind the shed. I stayed where I was. I didn’t fire.

  At the first sound of shooting, two cars pulled into the yard from opposite directions with lights and sirens. Johannson pinned them down, giggling between bursts as his submachine gun turned the vehicles into scrap. I wondered how many magazines he had.

  The sun was down now. The only light was man-made, all of it concentrated on the drums and the front of the house. I heard several handguns and a single shotgun blasting away from outside the circle of light as Kreel County’s finest returned fire. But I couldn’t see anybody except the deputy at the shed.

  I crawled from the front of the pickup to the back. The sheriff was crouching behind his cruiser. He was in a bad spot and couldn’t get a shot at the man behind the drums without exposing himself to return fire. Loushine had a better line, but he, too, was exposed, on the ground behind a maple tree.

  I returned to the front of the truck. Johannson was in a good position. The way the drums were arranged, he was protected from the front and the sides. To take him, I would have to maneuver behind. But there was no cover until I reached the shrine. Dammit, I knew this was going to be a mistake.

  I caught the eye of the deputy at the shed and rotated my finger vigorously in the air, motioning for covering fire. He stared at me for a moment, probably wondering what kitchen appliance I had become. But he caught on quickly and raised his hand for me to wait. He reloaded his revolver and nodded.

  I dashed away from the wreck, holding the .38 low. Several guns fired at once. I couldn’t see the deputies, but they could see me. I circled around the shrine, brought up the .38, and squeezed off two rounds.

  Something punched me in the left shoulder so unexpectedly that I actually looked around to see what it could have been. Suddenly, a voice sang out loudly, “I’m hit!” I recognized it immediately. It was mine.

  I crept back behind the junker. Nausea climbed into my throat, and trembling in my legs forced me to sit on the ground. My right hand went to my shoulder, and I realized for the first time that I was no longer holding the .38. Where the hell was it? I searched the ground as best I could in the darkness but didn’t find it. Wasn’t that the damnedest thing?

  I felt warm; sweat beaded up on my forehead. Yet my teeth were chattering. I took my hand from the shoulder. It was wet and sticky. That’s when I fully realized I had been shot. I’d been shot before, so you’d think it wouldn’t have taken me all that long to catch on. But it did. Go figure.

  I took my handkerchief and pressed it against the wound with the idea of stopping the bleeding, but I cou
ld tell by the warm dribble down my side that I was doing a poor job of it. Then the shoulder began to hurt. The pain actually cleared my head, and my trembling eased, and I didn’t feel so much like vomiting. I wondered how bad my wound was and tried to stand, as if that would make it all better. I couldn’t make it and I felt red hot tears of rage in my eyes. What a piss-poor turn of events this was!

  The shooting had continued unabated, but I didn’t notice until a dark figure sidled up to me behind the truck. My first guess was wrong. It wasn’t God. It was Johnny Johannson.

  “Hi,” I said, like I had come across him unexpectedly while out on a stroll.

  “This won’t do. I’m going to stop it.”

  “Stop what?” I asked him, confused.

  He reached next to the bumper and picked up the .38. So that’s where it was. He stood and walked slowly toward the drums. I used the truck to pull myself up and watched him. At about twenty feet he leveled the .38. At ten he squeezed the trigger three times. The bullets pounded Jimmy Johannson in the back. He threw up his arms, dropping the UZI; he spun off the drums and fell. The sheriff and Loushine closed in quickly, followed by a half dozen deputies. They circled Jimmy, all of them pointing their weapons at him except Loushine. He eased the .38 out of Johnny’s hand and moved him away. By the time I staggered to the circle, the sheriff was cradling Jimmy’s head and yelling at him.

  “Why did you shoot Michael Bettich?”

  “My … lawyer,” Jimmy sputtered, calling for his constitutional rights even at this late date.

  “Your lawyer can’t help you now. Who were you working for? Tell me!”

  “My lawyer,” he said.

  And then his lights went out.

  I sat on the back seat of the sheriff’s cruiser while Loushine removed my jacket and shirt. He was gentle but too slow, prolonging the agony.

  “I’ve been hurt worse,” I told him.

  “I doubt it,” he said.

  “No, really,” I insisted. “I was shot in the leg once.”

  I would have told him more, but he wasn’t listening. Instead, Loushine was picking around the edge of the wound as I worked to keep from fainting. It was high on the shoulder, higher than I had first thought.