A Long December ch-5

by Donald Harstad

  Sally gave me a quizzical look.

  “Tell him there’s a guy just outside, and he’s off to our left somewhere. Real close… maybe ten yards.”

  She spoke softly into the walkie-talkie as I moved left toward the south wall of the basement.

  “He’s over here somewhere,” I said as I passed Sally. I wished I’d gotten a better look, because it would have been nice to give George some sort of color to key on.

  “He can’t see anybody,” she said to me, meaning George couldn’t make the guy from his position up in the loft. That figured. The guy was so close that George was probably going to have to lean out over the edge to see him.

  “Okay…” I continued to the south wall. There were two small, quarter-framed windows at that end, probably only a foot or two above the outside ground level. There was very dirty glass in most of the frames, so it would be nearly impossible to see clearly into the gloomy basement from the outside. There were, however, two empty frames, both in the left-hand window. He’d have to go there if he was going to try to look in.

  Either that, or go all the way to the back of the building, on the east side, where there was a walk-in door. The old door didn’t fit well, and I could see daylight around all four edges of the rickety thing. Maybe there. Maybe. But if it was me, I’d kind of like to get a glimpse of what was inside before I came through the door. I put my rifle to my shoulder and pointed it in the general direction of the left-hand window, trying to keep the edges of the door in my peripheral vision in case I was guessing wrong.

  “You keep looking toward the shed,” I said to Sally. “I’ll take this one.”

  “Okay.”

  There was a noise from Hester. It was like she was trying to talk with a mouthful of Novocain. I glanced at her, and she was pointing her handgun at the door.

  “Got it,” she managed to get out.

  I just said, “Right.” There wasn’t time to tell her how impressed I was.

  I slowly approached the window, half expecting to see a grenade or bomb or something come flying through. Instead, when I was about five feet away from it, the empty frames were suddenly filled by a New York Yankees baseball cap and a very wide-open mouth, which screamed something about “-die!!!!” Just like that, it was gone. I didn’t even have a chance to squeeze the trigger.

  He had to have been on all fours and to the right of the frame, just to get his head that low and at that angle. Almost instinctively, I fired four rounds through the old wallboards, at what I hoped was the right level to blow him to hell.

  Mistake. The overpressure from the muzzle blast of that AR-15 in the confined area of the barn brought down a shower of dust and bits of stuff from the rafters and between the floorboards above my head. The concussion made my ears ring. The only plus was a series of high-pitched screams from outside the barn, which seemed to get weaker and weaker, and then stopped altogether.

  I looked back at Sally, who was brushing the debris from her hair even as she was talking on the walkie-talkie, and giving me a dirty look. Over at Hester, who had put up her shoulder to hold the compress in place while she too tried to brush the dust from her hair and keep her handgun pointed at the old door.

  I was sure I’d killed whoever it was. It was a funny, sad kind of feeling.

  “George,” said Sally, loudly, “says he can see him now.”

  I looked quizzically at her.

  “He says the guy is running. Back to the shed. It looks like you might have hit him.” She held the walkie-talkie closer to her ear. “In the hand, maybe…”

  Damn. The funny, sad feeling left instantly, replaced by regret that I hadn’t killed him. I thought that was really interesting. So much for the humanitarian deputy.

  Sally continued to listen. She smiled. “He says it was the dumb one, and that you made him lose his hat out in the yard.”

  There was an upside yet. At least he’d left the immediate vicinity of the barn.

  “Ask him,” I said, “if he can see any others out there moving around.”

  “You don’t have to shout,” said Sally.

  I hadn’t realized that I was. The effect of the noise of the rifle, of course.

  “Luuggg!” said Hester.

  I stepped toward her, pointing my rifle at the door.

  “Nunh,” she said, and actually sounded happy. “Lugg.” She was looking at me and holding out her hand. “I gawdd id!”

  In her palm was the nail fragment that had been lodged in her cheek. She’d apparently managed to push it back out somehow, despite what had to be some considerable pain. She appeared exceptionally pleased with herself.

  She held the piece of iron up to show Sally.

  “Hey,” said Sally into the walkie-talkie. “Hester got the fragment out of her cheek… yeah. Okay, ten-four, I’ll tell ‘em.” She pointed a finger upward, toward the general area where George was in the loft. “He says, ‘Good, now put gauze in your cheek,’ and that he can’t see anybody out there anywhere moving at all.”

  “Okay.”

  Sally looked me squarely in the eye. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “Don’t feel bad. Neither can I, and I know a lot more about this case than you do.”

  “So, we got a plan?”

  I shrugged. “Wait for help. Best I can do.”

  Back to square one. Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes that can be a very good thing.

  CHAPTER 02

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2001 16:07

  I watched the blue and white ambulance coming toward us, lights flashing, the siren silent now that they had us in sight. I hoped they wouldn’t be too irritated, seeing as how their patient was so obviously dead. It was just that we called them automatically, because we weren’t about to take the chance that an amateur diagnosis was absolutely correct. There was nothing worse, from a lawsuit standpoint, than to take the word of a bystander that somebody was dead and decide not to dispatch an ambulance. I mean, we probably should call a mortician for those who we know to be dead, but if there’s any doubt, we use the ambulances. The morticians are really nice people, but their save rate isn’t too high.

  The ambulance rolled to a stop, and the driver stuck his head out the side window. “What have you got for us, Carl?”

  It was Red Schmitt, volunteer driver and emergency medical technician, who managed his uncle’s clothing store in the real world. I’d known him for years.

  “Hey, Red! What we got is one dead, and I mean really dead, dude lying in the roadway up around the curve. There’s a bunch of tracks in the gravel right in front of you, so you gotta stop here.”

  “You bet,” he said, setting his emergency brake and opening his door. He left the engine running. Years of experience with the rigs had taught him that. “What, a tractor roll over?”

  “Nope. Not that easy. You guys just follow us on up, now.” Hester and I started walking back up around the curve with the three members of the ambulance crew walking along behind. I felt like we were leading a little parade.

  “Why are you way over there? “asked Hester.

  “Lookin’ for his other shoe in the ditch on this side. I was checking the other side on the way down.”

  I heard Red talking again, and turned around. “What you need, Red?”

  “It’s not one of the Heinman boys, is it? “He sounded really concerned.

  “No. No, it’s not.” I turned back and we led them up to a good spot about ten yards short of the body, over on the left side of the roadway. “You can take a look at him, if you have to. Just close enough so you can see he’s deceased.”

  One of the crew was Terri Biederman. She was in her thirties and had been an EMT with this crew several years ago. I hadn’t seen her since about 1995, though, when she’d left for Milwaukee. I saw from the patches on her jump suit that she’d made paramedic. Cool.

  “Mr. Houseman,” she said. “Still here, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah. How you been?”
>
  “Pissy, mostly.” As always, direct and to the point.

  “Glad I asked.” We’d always liked her.

  The third member of the ambulance crew was Meg Hastings, about forty, and a clerk at the Coast-to-Coast store in her real life.

  “I’ve been fine,” she said, brightly. “No complaints at all.”

  Terri stuck out her tongue.

  It wasn’t advisable that we have the ambulance personnel actually examine the body, and they did not. If they’d left a footprint or observed something closely enough to form an opinion, they’d have to testify in court. They were volunteers, and it wasn’t fair to have them waste time from their real jobs just sitting in court because some defense attorney wanted to try to trip one of them up. They did observe the body at a few feet, however, and all agreed that, whoever it was, he was most assuredly dead.

  They decided to stick around for the medical examiner, who was on his way to the scene. He might want them to move the body fairly soon, and they were more than willing to help. Besides, EMTs always liked to watch the ME at work. In the meantime, they stood off to one side, watched us, and listened to the Heinman boys tell about what they’d seen. We could have stopped that, but the Heinman boys would be telling the same story in the coffee shop within hours anyway.

  I motioned the ambulance crew over.

  “Yeah, Carl?”

  “You guys meet any cars on your way up here?”

  “Sure,” said Terri.

  “Very many?”

  “Well,” said Red, trying to remember, “at least three or four, I think. Terri was in front, too, though. Maybe she remembers different.”

  “More like seven or eight.” Terri was sharp. “You mean getaway-car kind of stuff?”

  “Hopefully. We didn’t meet any when we were coming in from the north.” I shrugged. “There are at least four or five different gravel roads they could turn onto before they even got to the paving and into Battenberg,” I said. The ambulance had come from Battenberg.

  “At least,” said Terri. “Anybody wake up the Battenberg cop to have him look?” She said it in a disparaging tone that let me know she had a very low opinion of the Battenberg police force.

  “I believe he was up,” I said, not knowing but not willing to concede the point. “There’s no information that he’s got anybody coming into town since we asked.” But now I was wondering if he was awake. Crap. “You recognize any of the cars you met? “I asked, back on track and glad to change the subject.

  “There was Hank Granger,” she said. “Probably on his way home from his route. That’s the only one I recognized.”

  Hank Granger was a rural mail carrier. With flashing yellow caution lights, and U.S. MAIL on the roof of his car, he tended to stand out. Good. He’d be very familiar with the cars he normally encountered on his route. A possible witness already. Things were looking up.

  I went back to my car and contacted Sally on the radio.

  “Three, go,” came the reassuring voice.

  “Yeah, Comm, uh, ten-twenty-one the Henry Granger residence in Battenberg, will you, and see if he’s available for an officer to talk with him in an hour or so?”

  “Ten-four, Three.”

  “Before you phone him, Comm, any traffic from Forty?” Forty was the Battenberg PD car’s call sign.

  “Negative, Three. I contacted the duty officer at his residence via ten-twenty-one, and he advised he’d contact us with any information.”

  So she’d phoned him at his house. Good enough. Battenberg was only six miles away from the Heinman farm. Easy reach with my car radio. “Ten-four, Comm. I’ll go direct with him.” He should be in the car, easily, by now.

  I called six times, on two frequencies. No response. The Battenberg police department was a two-man operation, consisting of a chief and one officer. At least, they had been until the World Trade Center attack. It just happened that one of them was in the Air Force Reserve, and he’d been called to active service. That left Norm Vincent, the chief, to work most of the shifts. He’d scrounged up a part-timer who worked three evenings a week. Norm had been trying to do forty-eight hours on call, then twenty-four off. Not much opportunity presented itself for sleep, if he’d been at all busy.

  “Coram, I get no signal from Forty.” I tried not to sound testy, but Sally should have established radio contact a few minutes after the phone conversation when she’d originally notified him.

  By the unabashedly testy “Ten-four, stand by,” Sally agreed with me.

  A few seconds later, Sally said, “He fell back asleep, Three. He’ll be out right away.” She sounded disgusted, probably as much with herself as with him.

  “Okay, Comm,” I said, intentionally dropping the 10 code. It’s more informal, and friendlier. That’s all I had to say for her to interpret something like, “Let’s start looking a little sharper up there.” “While we’re at it, do you have an ETA for DCI mobile lab?”

  “They’re en route,” said Sally. “My last contact was that they were going to be to you within forty-five minutes, and that was… nineteen minutes ago.”

  The “nineteen minutes” pleased me. It was her way of telling me that she was still pretty damned efficient, thank you very much. It also meant that they must have been at a scene fairly close to us.

  “Ten-four, Comm. And the ME?” We wanted the medical examiner to be at the scene before it got really dark, because we didn’t really have the good auxiliary lighting equipment we’d need to give him the best look at the scene. If night beat him, we’d have to call out a truck from the Battenberg volunteer fire department, with its auxiliary lighting equipment. That’d make for quite a crowd and only increase the chances that we’d obliterate some evidence.

  “ME is Dr. Zimmer, and he’s been en route from the clinic here in Maitland since seventeen-oh-one.” She was sounding more at ease as the conversation progressed, but I knew that she was still kicking herself over the Battenberg PD call.

  “Ten-four, Comm.” I would have said something like “thanks” except we’d both have thought I was being condescending.

  I walked back to the body in the road, and to the gathered ambulance crew. They had walkie-talkies, too, and I was sure they’d heard about the Battenberg officer sleeping. They had.

  “Fell back asleep, huh? “asked Terri.

  “Yep.”

  She just shook her head.

  “So, then,” I continued. “You didn’t recognize any other cars on your way up?”

  “Nope. So, who’s this?” she asked, indicating Hester.

  “Hester Gorse. I’m an agent with the DO.” Hester stuck out her hand.

  “Oh,” said Terri, extending her hand and shaking Hester’s. “A state investigator. We’ve never met. I’m Terri Biederman. Recently of Milwaukee, but born here. Paramedic.”

  I walked over to Lamar. “You hear my radio traffic about Battenberg?”

  “Yep. That dumb sonofabitch.” He said it as one word. Calmly, though. “I told him he ought to loosen up on his damned budget and hire some of our reserves.”

  “I’ll get with him as soon as I can,” I said. “He still may be able to help.”

  “It ain’t like he has before,” said Lamar. “But go ahead. We gotta work with him.”

  I had a bit higher opinion of Norm Vincent than Lamar did, but I just let it ride. We all had to work together.

  As it happened, both the DCI lab team and Dr. Henry Zimmer arrived at the same time. Both had been equally lost, as it turned out, and had actually met when the lab team flagged Henry down to ask directions. Henry got quite a kick out of that one.

  Once there, though, it turned out to be like old home week. Henry and I were longtime friends. Hester and Henry had worked together off and on for years, and were glad to see each other. Like all our rural medical examiners, Henry was a general practitioner, and had a large private practice. Apparently he was the doctor for the Heinman boys, and they exchanged waves. He was also my doctor, and greeted me w
ith “Still got the cookies in your camera bag?”

  I got him some.

  Hester introduced her lab crew to us, a youngish sort named Bob Ulrich and an older man named Dave Franks. Introductions over, she looked down the road toward the body of the still-unidentified victim.

  “Well, let’s get started.”

  We’ve found that, over the years, it’s best if the investigators don’t get too involved with the initial stuff the lab crew does. We want them to find things for themselves and not be distracted by us as we focus on some particular items of evidence. We proceeded together but separately, so to speak. That is, until it came time to move Gary’s car back from the human debris field. At that point, we formed a little crowd.

  Gary was told to back up very slowly and to stop when Bob signaled him. He did, and had backed up not more than fifteen feet when he was told to stop.

  “Now, better call a wrecker, Sergeant,” said Dave, the senior lab man. “We’re going to have to have those tires.”

  “What?”

  “We need your tires. They’ve been in our, uh, evidence. There may be small fragments and tissues adhering to them.”

  “You have to be shitting me.” Gary was astonished.

  “I assume you have to get permission,” said Dave.

  Dave was right. The tires had been in the blood and bone fragments, and some of that material was now transferred to them. The lab crew was going to take all four, as it turned out, and Gary was pretty disgusted. He’d have to get permission from high up, get the wrecker and four new tires ordered out to the scene. It was probably going to affect the maintenance budget for his entire post, and would reflect on his personal stats, as well. All just because he stopped a few feet closer to the body, in a well-intentioned effort to protect the scene.

  “Don’t let it bother you,” said Lamar. “We’ll get a receipt for the tires to you. And you ought to get ‘em back in, oh, what you think, Carl? Three-four years?”

  “Not any longer than that,” I said.