Estes stared hard at Dina for a few seconds before a smile flashed across his face and he held out his hand. "It's a deal. So what do we tell your mom and dad?"
Dina put her small hand into his and shook it. "We don't lie, because lies are always found out."
Estes nodded. "So we tell them the truth?"
She nodded. "Just not all the truth."
"You're associating with the wrong people, Dina."
Dina switched her gaze between Estes' eyes and the hand holding hers and raised her brows.
He saw it and grinned. "Enough of that, let's get this over and done with."
Dina had been sent off so her mother could get the real story from Uncle Estes. She knew that because she'd hung around long enough to hear her mom ask exactly that question. She left them to it. Mom was going to freak out when she heard that Dina had discovered three dead bodies, but it wasn't as if Dina hadn't seen dead bodies before-the Croat raid of '32 had taken care of that. She just had to hope that her uncle didn't let slip that she and Bruno had actually seen the murderers when they discovered the police car. That would really freak her mom out. And probably result in all sorts of restrictions being placed on her wanderings.
That reminded her. Bruno had freaked out pretty badly himself when he'd caught sight of the murderers. Why? She wondered. She'd seen Bruno scared before, but never that scared. She probably couldn't just ask him. She'd have to work it into a conversation sometime, but not right now. Not while the memories were too fresh. She needed Bruno to calm down before she asked, because she couldn't risk him freaking out like that again. Mom would be sure to ask uncomfortable questions.
Marcus Acton walked up the drive to his home, his rifle, in a rifle scabbard, slung over his shoulder, a fishing rod in his left hand, and a string of fish he'd caught hanging from his right. His wife was waiting for him at the door. He held up the string of fish. "This evening we eat," he joked.
"That's better than last week." Jocelyn kissed him, carefully avoided the string of fish. "There's been a shooting out on Salt Lick Run. The radio's been full of it."
Marcus glanced vaguely in the direction of Salt Lick Run. "I didn't hear anything. What happened?"
Jocelyn shrugged. "Other than that there was a shooting, and that three people have been taken to hospital, the police haven't said much." She edged the fish away and hugged Marcus. "I'm glad you're safe."
"Me too," Marcus said as he dropped a kiss behind her ear. "I guess we'll get the full story on the evening news."
Later that evening Marcus sat down with his family to watch the news. He wasn't disappointed. The fires he'd lit had totally destroyed the cabin and the distilling shed. It'd also burned a few of the barrels stacked around the back of the shed. It was all good stuff. With that much damage the chances of the police finding anything to connect him to the camp were negligible. He was sorry to lose the site, but with the girl from Treasury learning enough to sniff around they would have had to shut down the operation sooner or later anyway.
It came as a shock that one of the cops had survived, and the news that the bodies had been found by some snoopy kid didn't go down well.
"Dina Frost deserves a medal," Jocelyn said.
"But it was Bruno who carried the policeman out," ten-year-old Bailey Acton said.
"Who's Bruno?" Marcus asked.
"He's a guy that works for Dina's mother's aerial photography business. He goes around with Dina a lot."
"How old is this young man?" Jocelyn asked.
Bailey shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe mid-twenties."
"Celeste Frost lets her daughter hang around with a man in his mid-twenties? I don't believe it."
"The retard's no risk, mom. He'd never hurt his precious Dina. The guy practically worships her."
"We do not call people 'retards' in this household, young man."
"But he's real stupid, Mom. I heard that he'd been left to chop up some firewood, and when he didn't turn up for dinner they found him still chopping wood, even as it grew dark."
"We don't go around calling people stupid either, Bailey."
"No, Mom."
Marcus let the family squabble pass over his head as he stared at the television screen. Two people had found those bodies even though he'd been sure nobody would discover them for months, if not years. How did they find them? And so quickly? Dina and her friend would have had to be close by when they dumped the bodies. That thought raised the possibility that they'd been seen. He worried about that for a while. Officer Heilmann had seen them before he was shot, but that had been from over a hundred yards away. The girl had had an inexpensive down-time telescope, but Marcus didn't think they'd seen them before he and Wilhelm shot them. It was just such a damned shame Wilhelm's shot hadn't killed the guy, then he wouldn't have any worries.
He tuned back to the TV when the Grantville police chief appeared. He snorted in disbelief when Press Richards claimed that they were pursuing several lines of inquiry and that arrests, although not imminent, were expected soon. That was all so unlikely.
"What's so funny?" Jocelyn asked.
Marcus gestured at the TV screen. "Press Richards. How often have you heard the police claiming they expected to make arrests soon?"
"Too often." Jocelyn turned his head. "Promise me you won't go out that way until they catch whoever it was."
He leaned closer and kissed her. "I promise." It would be an easy promise to keep. With the site compromised there was no reason for him to go out that way. Besides, he'd be spending his spare time looking for somewhere new to set up.
Wednesday, March 5
Marcus was threading a pipe when his boss tapped him on the shoulder. Linda Jane pointed to two policemen at the door of the workshop. "The police would like a word with you."
He blanked out for a moment. Could they have found something that connected him to the deaths on Salt Lick Run? But it was only for a moment. He glanced down at the half-complete job he'd been working on. "I hope this won't take long," he called out to the policemen.
"Just a few minutes of your time, Herr Acton," Heinrich Steinfeldt said.
That didn't sound like they had anything. He grabbed a rag and wiped his hands on it. "You want to talk out in the sun?"
"Sure," Blake Haggerty said.
Once outside Marcus led them to a sheltered spot in the sun. "So, how can I help you?"
Blake flipped open his notebook. "We understand you were out on the RingLakes yesterday?"
"That's right. I usually go out fishing on Sunday if I can get away. Caught half a dozen fish yesterday."
"How far did you go?" Heinrich asked.
"Go? On the water?" Heinrich nodded. "There's this nice little nook on the south side of the Gray's Run peninsula-the fish seem to love it there." It was also a long way away from the campsite. He mentally complimented himself for his superior thinking and planning. By having a stash of gas there the boat rental's records would show he hadn't consumed enough to even put him close to where the still had been.
"Did you see anything suspicious?" Blake asked.
"I was fishing," he said. "When a guy's fishing the only thing he worries about is what might be happening on the end of his hook."
"True!" Blake muttered sheepishly. "So you didn't see anything?"
"I saw a cloud of smoke a bit after midday. I think it might have been the fire they showed on TV last night."
"Maybe," Heinrich said. "Just a couple more questions. Our information is that even though you were fishing, you had a large caliber hunting rifle with you yesterday?"
"You bet I had a rifle with me yesterday. I had a bad experience a few years ago when I got treed by a wild hog." Marcus shuddered dramatically. "There ain't no way I'm going out without something that can deal with a pig. That bastard hung around all day and most of the night. Never again." The story was even the truth, as too many people would be happy to tell them. It'd taken a while to live down that little experience.
"Didn't you have
a handgun?" Blake asked.
"Sure, but a little.380 ain't much good against a three hundred pound boar. It just pissed him off."
"What kind of rifle do you own?" Heinrich asked.
"You name it, I've got it," Marcus joked. "But if you mean what did I take out with me yesterday, that was a civilian version of the M-14." He shrugged. "It's a bit too much gun, but I'm a lefty, and bolt-actions and levers can be a real pain."
"A couple of years ago you installed a valve on a wellhead out on Salt Lick Run?" Heinrich asked.
Marcus nodded. "Sure. The Hart brothers wanted to tap a local wellhead rather than haul gas in for the still they had at their little primer manufactory. They had all the proper permits for it, so I installed a tap."
"This was a pipeline?" Heinrich asked.
"Nope, just a tap so they could fill their own bottles. They weren't using enough gas to justify the cost of a pipeline."
Heinrich flipped his notebook closed. "Thank you for your time, Herr Acton. If you think of anything. "
"Call the police. Sure." Marcus shook hands with both officers and watched them walk off. That hadn't been so bad, and it seemed he'd covered his tracks well. A glance at his watch had him hurrying back to work. The client expected his bio-gas reticulation system to be ready for him by tomorrow, and there was still a lot of work to be done.
Dina walked into the police department and straight up to the reception desk and asked if she could see her uncle.
"Sergeant Frost is very busy," Eva Bernhardt said. "And shouldn't you be in school?"
Dina sighed. Adults had one track minds. "It's lunch break.Can you tell Uncle Estes that I need to speak to him, please? It's important."
Eva looked askance at Dina, but she did pick up the internal phone and called her uncle. "Sergeant Frost, your niece is at the desk and would like to talk to you. She says it's important." She nodded absently as she listened. "Yes, of course." She put down the phone. "Do you know where Sergeant Frost's desk is?" Dina nodded. "Very well, he's expecting you."
"Thank you," Dina said before hurrying off. She made her way to the office her Uncle Estes shared with several other officers. He was sitting down, papers spread all over his desk.
"I know you well enough to know you'd only ask to see me about something important, so take a seat and tell me."
Dina climbed onto the hard wooden chair and sat looking at her uncle. "Bruno recognized two of the men."
"Dina, I know you think a lot of Bruno, but you were both too far away from the car to see their faces."
"Bruno didn't have to see their faces close up to recognize them, Uncle Estes. He says they are his brothers," she said as if that explained everything.
Her uncle's eyes widened, and he reached for a clean sheet of paper and a pen. Do you have their names?"
"Wilhelm and Hermann." She shrugged. She knew that wasn't what her uncle really wanted, but it had been difficult enough getting that much out of Bruno.
"And their surname? Come on, surely if they are brothers, they should have the same name as Bruno."
"Bruno doesn't have a surname, Uncle Estes. At least not one he knows. He's only ever answered to Bruno."
Estes sighed. "What does he know about them? Are they older or younger than him?"
"They're older. They were really horrible to him when he was growing up. That's why seeing them scared him so much."
"How much older?"
"Bruno thinks they were about ten years older. They were always bigger than him when he was growing up." Dina really hadn't liked what she'd heard about Bruno's brothers. They sounded like a pair of real bullies. She'd never be that mean to her little brother.
"And how old is Bruno?"
Dina had to shrug again. "We don't know. Mom's best guess, based on the work history she's been able to back-track, is that he's about twenty-five."
"So we're looking for two men in their early- to mid-thirties."
"And fairly new to Grantville, because me and Bruno were out that way last year, and there was no shed in that spot."
"You were heading for that site?"
"They built their shed right on top of a really good patch of milkweed me and Bruno were going to harvest."
Suddenly the office went quiet. Dina looked around at the blank faces staring at her. "The latex you get from the milkweed is worth over a hundred dollars a gallon," she explained. "Of course you have to collect a lot of milkweed to get that much latex."
"Of course you do," Estes muttered as he got to his feet. "Well, there's not a lot we can do about your information unless you can give us a name. So for now, we'd better see about getting you back to school before you're missed. Come on, I'll give you a lift."
Dina followed her uncle, who was joined by Sergeant Fleischer. She was doing up her seatbelt when Erika Fleisher looked over her seat. "Dina, we appreciate your coming in to tell us what you've learned."
"But it's not much good because Bruno doesn't remember his family's name," Dina muttered.
"I'm afraid not," Erika agreed.
Dina stared blankly at the road ahead. There was one way to identify Bruno's brothers, and that was having him see them again. She started plotting how she could arrange that.
April 1636
Marcus cut the engine just as the boat started to ground. He hurried forward, grabbed the anchor, and jumped for shore. He grounded the anchor and then pulled the boat up onto the shore until it was firmly beached. It was the first time he'd returned to his old moonshine camp since the beginning of March when he'd killed two people. He removed his rifle from its scabbard, loaded five rounds into a magazine and clicked it into place before slinging it over his shoulder. It was time to explore.
The old cabin where Herman and Wilhelm had lived was a burned-out ruin. He nodded in satisfaction at the sight before moving on to the shed where they'd had their still. The fire he'd set there had left even less behind than the cabin fire. No doubt the gas had had something to do with that.
The still and all the gear they'd been forced to leave behind in the mad dash to evacuate the site were all gone, but he'd expected that. If nothing else, the police would have removed the still just to stop other people getting it.
He gave the site one final walk-around before returning to the shore. He traded his rifle for his fishing rod and found a spot on the shore where he could cast without catching his line in the trees. The wounded cop was improving, but from what he'd heard on the grapevine, was unable to give a description of Marcus or the Kindorf brothers. The most the cops had learned from Officer Heilmann was that they were looking for three people. Good luck to them with that bit of information. The cops seemed to have hit a dead end, meaning he was home free, so he might as well see if he could catch lunch.
The events of the previous month had resulted in Dina's activities being severely curtailed. She was behind in her latex collection, so today she and Bruno were carrying over fifty pounds of plant matter between them as they emerged from the woods around Deborah. She was hungry, and no doubt so was Bruno. Dina checked her purse, and taking full account of the money she should earn from the milkweed they carried, decided to divert past the bakery. They emerged with a sticky bun each.
They found somewhere to sit. Dina dug a couple of bottles of water out of her rucksack and passed Bruno one before drinking from hers. It was a warm April afternoon, so she leaned back on a tree trunk and watched the world go by while she ate her bun.
"Wilhelm!"
Bruno's horrified whimper jerked Dina back to the present. She checked Bruno. He was pale, almost white, and he was staring at a man sitting at an outdoor table.
Dina studied the man. He looked vaguely similar to one of the men she'd seen looking at the police cruiser, but then, so had a lot of men she'd seen since then. However, this was the first one Bruno had reacted to. She pulled out the camera her Aunt Lettie had lent her. She was looking at him through the viewfinder when he looked up and stared straight at her.
Click.
The man looked from her to Bruno. Suddenly he got to his feet, dropped some money on the table and hurried off.
Dina wanted to follow him, but a glance over her shoulder told her Bruno was in no state to be left alone. Movement out of the corner of her eye turned into a waitress heading for the vacated table, no doubt to recover the money Wilhelm had left under his glass. The glass! She ran, getting to the glass just before the waitress.
"What are you planning on doing with that glass, young lady?" Dee Fisher, the co-owner of Tip's demanded.
Dina edged closer and whispered. "I need to call the police. That man might be one of the men responsible for murdering Officer Harris." She could have mentioned the dead girl and the other officer, but they were both down-timers, and even after all this time a lot of up-timers, especially those around Mrs. Fisher's age, didn't seem to see them as being equal to up-timers.
"What makes you think he might be one of the people responsible?"
"Me and Bruno saw them." Dina immediately realized what she'd said and hastily looked around to see who might have heard. No one seemed to have heard, so she edged closer. "But you mustn't tell Mom that."
That drew a grin from Dee before she glanced at the glass. "You're thinking of fingerprints?"
Dina nodded.
"Okay then, you look after the glass while I call the cops."
"Thank you, Mrs. Fisher."
Dina had a box seat to watch Georg Meisner, the senior forensics technician, first lift the fingerprints from the glass and then compare them with the prints he'd taken from Car Four.
"Well," he said to the eager ears surrounding him some time later, "it looks like we have a match."
"You're sure?" Press Richards asked.
"Pretty sure, Herr Chief Richards, I've got nine points of similarity." Georg pointed to a spot on one of the prints with a pencil. "That loop there matches the loop here. And. "
"Okay, so you're pretty sure of a match. That means we have a suspect at last." Press smiled at Dina. "Good work." Press turned his attention to the six by three inch photograph of a man looking straight at the camera. "Is that as big as you can make it?"
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