Eleven Miles to Oshkosh

by Jim Guhl

  “Relax,” said Asa. “Just stay in the right lane and keep it at the speed limit.”

  I did as he said, and after five minutes I did begin to relax. Pretty soon there were houses, stores, and power lines everywhere. A little later we came into Wauwatosa, and the highway went to three lanes. It seemed like everybody was trying to go faster than me, all zooming up in my rearview mirror.

  “Don’t worry about the cars behind you,” said Grandpa. “They’ll pass you if they want to get by. Just drive at fifty-five in the right lane.”

  A huge, brick building on our right seemed to go on for a mile. “That’s the JC Penney’s warehouse,” said Mark.

  Suddenly factories started popping up all over the place and some of them even had their own water towers. The Briggs & Stratton water tower to our right showed the same red, white, and blue emblem that was fixed to our lawnmower engine back home. The Roundy’s water tower reminded me of the labels on the cans of corn in Mom’s pantry. Then there was the biggest one of all—a giant-sized blue octopus water tower with something like two dozen legs and the crazy name, WAUWATOSA, painted on the side. We sure didn’t have anything like that in Neenah, Wisconsin.

  “Stay to the right here,” Grandpa directed.

  We went through neighborhoods where the houses seemed all bunched together with parked cars and trash cans jumbled out front. All I could think was that I wouldn’t want to live there. I sure hoped that the old Chevy Apache would keep on going.

  All of a sudden, it seemed like we were right on top of County Stadium. The words HOME OF THE BREWERS! were displayed on the huge gray walls of steel and concrete. Underneath, giant cartoonish beer barrel men swung oversized bats and chased after imaginary fly balls. I couldn’t believe it. I was driving past Hank Aaron’s old stomping grounds.

  “Exit ramp coming up,” said Grandpa a few minutes later.

  I took it. After some left and right turns, Asa pointed me to a parking spot, and I pulled into it like a master.

  Mark grinned. “Way to go, Delmar. You’re a stud.”

  I couldn’t keep from smiling as I handed the keys back to Grandpa Asa. I used to think of Milwaukee as a scary city. Now, it felt like I owned the place.

  We had an hour to kill, so Grandpa pointed us to a hamburger joint nearby. It had a bunch of booths, but they were all filled so we found three stools together at the counter and ordered burgers, fries, and bottles of pop.

  “Why do they have two clocks right next to each other?” I asked.

  Grandpa looked at the side-by-side, circular, white-faced clocks. “I guess that’s just how they do things around here. Maybe one is a backup in case the first one breaks down.”

  I kept looking around. All sorts of people sat around. White, black, Chinese even. I recognized people dressed as factory workers, businessmen, and nurses. I saw a black lady with a leopard-skin purse and hat to match. I saw a white guy in a leather vest with snake tattoos wrapped around both arms. A Middle Eastern man with a white gown and a turban leaned over the counter sipping tea. At the table right behind me, two guys jabbered about dumpsters in their blue coveralls, and I figured that they belonged to the garbage truck parked outside.

  Of all the different colors, clothing, occupations, and everything else that made each person unique, there was one thing they seemed to have in common. Smoking. I’ll bet that two-thirds of the people in that joint smoked—even the lady in the nurse uniform. It seemed like everybody was jumping for their last chance in the world to have a cigarette before Russian H-bombs started falling or something. I was almost used to it from my mom, but Mark kept on blinking his eyes, and even for me it seemed like a lot to breathe in. That combined with the grease smoke rolling off the griddle filled the whole place with a blue haze.

  Mark signaled me with his head to check out the man walking in the door. I looked over and saw the bearded guy with gray hair and even grayer skin as he stumbled through the place and plopped down on the stool next to Grandpa Asa. He talked to himself for a few minutes. Then he turned to Asa and mumbled something about a dollar.

  Grandpa turned and looked directly at him. “No.”

  The guy kept babbling and tapped him again on the shoulder.

  “I said no!” Grandpa Asa shouted it this time and the man walked over to a booth in the corner and bothered those people for a while.

  In the end, a waitress guided him out the door and the poor guy disappeared just as fast as he came in. The world seemed backward all of a sudden. There was a man who needed a hamburger and a warm place to sit more than anybody, and what did we all do? We ran him back out onto the street. I thought again about Wolf.

  We gobbled down those burgers pretty quick because of our appointment coming up. Grandpa Asa said we still had a couple blocks to walk. He moved slowly with his cane, but we got there right on time. A guard at the front directed us to sit down until Agent Culper came out. I put my hand in my pocket to check on the bullet. It was still in there.

  We watched folks come and go in the lobby of the FBI, and it surprised me when they didn’t all look like the people on Hawaii Five-O. One pink-faced guy with a potbelly looked more like an accountant than a federal agent. Right behind him a lady hobbled in high heels, and I wondered how long she would last in a shootout.

  “Mr. Marmotti and Mr. Finwick?”

  I looked behind me where a man in a navy-blue sport coat, white shirt, and striped tie looked down at us. He was thin, but tough-looking, with a chin as big as my fist and eyebrows that jutted out like a canopy. His short hair was blond. We all shook hands and introduced ourselves. Then we followed him to a small room with a table and chairs but no window.

  “First of all, I’m very sorry about the loss of your father,” said Agent Culper, looking directly at me.

  I nodded.

  “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Why are you here?”

  Grandpa Asa and I let Mark do most of the talking. He told Agent Culper what a crummy job the cops had done on my dad’s murder investigation and how nobody was getting anywhere with it. It was like the cops just expected the Highway 41 Killer to walk in the door and turn himself in or something. Mark went on to talk about our two trips to the crime scene and how we found the place with the matted-down grass by the billboard, where someone could have been waiting, and we told him about the partly smoked cigarette.

  Agent Culper took notes and nodded his head as he listened.

  Mark paused and looked at me. “Tell him your part, Delmar.”

  I started out by telling Agent Culper that Sheriff Heiselmann had something against my dad but I didn’t know what it was. Then I described the secret meeting that I saw between Sheriff Heiselmann and the Cadillac Man. I told him about how the sheriff kept looking around before taking the yellow envelope and that he put something that looked like money in his pocket.

  “I’m pretty sure he was doing something illegal,” I said.

  The agent took some more notes. While he wrote, I remembered the Winston cigarette dropped by the Cadillac Man at the Neenah lighthouse and how it was a perfect match for the cigarette butt at the crime scene. I also thought about the black plastic button with the white streak that I found under the Fine Dining billboard. Why was I still keeping secrets? I knew it was probably stupid, but I decided to keep those two tidbits tucked away and not even share them with the FBI man.

  “Show him the bullet,” said Mark.

  I pulled it out of my pocket and placed it on the table. Mark explained how we found it. Agent Culper looked at the bullet, then at me, Mark, and Grandpa Asa. He took some bifocals out of his pocket and put them on, then picked up the bullet and studied it closely while rotating it in his fingers.

  “It’s a .357 Magnum, sir,” said Mark.

  “Yes, it is. And the deformation is consistent with what we would expect to see from soft tissue penetration.”

  I got a knot in my stomach thinking about my dad and the soft tissue that the FBI man was talking about.
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  “We think we need to match it up to a gun,” said Mark.

  “That would be helpful.”

  “Maybe Sheriff Heiselmann’s gun,” I said.

  Agent Culper took off his glasses, drilled me with a scowl, and held it until I looked away. That’s when he relaxed and leaned back in his chair.

  “Gentlemen, let’s start with the caliber. It would be unusual for a sheriff to use a .357 Magnum as his service revolver. Most cops use a .38 special or Colt .45.”

  “But it’s possible, isn’t it?” asked Mark.

  “It’s possible.”

  “And if we got the gun, it could be checked out to see if it matched the bullet, right?”

  “Yes, but whoever shot Deputy Officer Finwick has probably disposed of the gun by now.”

  We all nodded.

  “Here’s the bottom line,” said Agent Culper. “You don’t have enough evidence to take action against the sheriff. The bullet is important, but we have no way of connecting it to a person. The stuff about the meeting in the park, although interesting, doesn’t lead us anywhere. And that business about the sheriff not liking your dad? Well, those kind of grudges exist in every law enforcement department in the country. My advice is to let it go. Turn the bullet over to the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department, and back off. Let the professionals handle it.”

  Several seconds passed with nothing but silence in the air. Then . . .

  “That’s bullshit!” Grandpa Asa’s face glowed bright red.

  Agent Culper flinched. He sure as heck didn’t like getting shouted down, especially by an old man who hadn’t said anything the entire meeting. He and Grandpa Asa were nose to nose with neither one blinking. It was like two of the faces on Mount Rushmore in a stare-down.

  “Typical—bureaucratic—bullshit!” Asa said.

  Culper’s eyes went black but he kept his composure. “You don’t have a case, sir. And my advice to you and the boys is to drop it and turn your evidence over to the local authorities.”

  Grandpa’s face went from red to purple. His hands formed two fists. His whole body shook. His lips quivered.

  “What if we found the gun?” I blurted.

  Agent Culper rolled his eyes. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “But, what if it did?” asked Mark.

  Agent Culper let his eyes soften and slowly tapped the table with his index finger. “If you did find the gun, then we would be having a very different conversation.”

  The temperature in the room seemed to drop by a few degrees. Grandpa Asa’s hands unclenched.

  28

  Believe it or not, I drove all the way home and we made it. During the two-hour drive Grandpa Asa did most of the talking, and we learned a few new swear words that must have come out of World War I, because even Mark hadn’t heard them before.

  All day Wednesday I racked my brains about what to do next about Sheriff Heiselmann and Dad’s murder investigation that was going nowhere.

  Let the professionals handle it?

  Those words from Agent Culper scratched at me like fingernails on a blackboard. I didn’t know what we were going to do with the bullet, but I sure as heck wasn’t going to hand it over to the local authorities. I needed some new ideas. I needed to talk things over with someone else—not Mark, not Grandpa Asa, and especially not Mom.

  The cafeteria lady dumped a huge scoop of cream-style corn on my plate. Yuck! At least the pizza burger and apple slices looked edible. I scanned the cafeteria tables until I found her. There was Opal with her girlfriends, talking and laughing. I walked over.

  “Hi, Opal.”

  “Hi, Del.” She glanced at her girlfriends. They were staring at me like an insect that had just crawled a little too close to their lunches. Opal ignored them and smiled at me. “Do you want to join us?”

  “No,” I said. “But when you’re done, I’d like to ask you something. I’ll be over there.”

  She shot me a confused look. “Okay.”

  Ten minutes later, I had devoured my pizza burger and apple slices and because I was still hungry, even gazed down at my cream-style corn. With enough salt, pepper, and butter almost anything could be transformed. I took a scoop and swallowed it. Half a minute later I had gulped down the whole pile.

  “What’s up, Del?” Opal sat down, looking like a sunset in her yellow blouse and her orange headband.

  “I want your opinion on something.”

  “What’s that?” she smiled.

  “I’m trying to figure out who murdered my dad.” Opal’s smile washed away, replaced by a very serious expression. She leaned in closer, eager to listen.

  “I think Sheriff Heiselmann is hiding the truth,” I said.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because I’m pretty sure he’s involved in the crime.”

  “What?” Opal’s eyes got big.

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Yes.”

  “For starters, the sheriff hated my dad. And since the shooting, the department hasn’t done anything to solve the case. My grandpa thinks the investigators are incompetent.”

  “What?”

  “And after the murder I saw the sheriff talking to a suspicious-looking guy near the lighthouse. They both looked nervous, but then the guy gave him something. Maybe money.”

  “Go on.”

  “Mark and I found some other clues. We found where we think the shooter was hiding. We found a partially smoked cigarette there.”

  “Sorry, Del, but where are you going with this?”

  “We found one of the bullets that killed my dad.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you can point the finger at the sheriff, does it?”

  “Not really. At least that’s what the FBI agent said.”

  “You talked to the FBI?!”

  “Yesterday, in Milwaukee.”

  “You’re really serious about this.”

  “The FBI agent said we should drop it and turn the bullet over to the cops.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “I can’t. I know in my gut that there’s something bad going on with the sheriff.”

  For a minute or two, both of us just sat there in silence. Opal was thinking. Her eyes burned into the tile floor and a wrinkle zigzagged across her forehead that I had not seen before. Suddenly, she looked up with a clear and determined expression on her face. “If you feel that strongly, you should confront him face-to-face.”

  “Who?”

  “The sheriff.”

  “How would I do that?”

  “I’m not sure. Talk to him somehow. Say something that smacks him right between the eyes. Then you watch for his response and hope that it tells you whether he’s involved or not.”

  I didn’t sleep very well that night. My brain whirled like a pinwheel in a tornado.

  Something that smacks him right between the eyes?

  Opal’s words kept repeating and asking me for an answer. And that wasn’t the only part of the puzzle. The other was figuring out how to get face-to-face with Sheriff Heiselmann in the first place.

  I muddled through the day and managed to get most of my homework done during sixth period in the Science Resource Center. After school I looked for Mark and found him hanging out by the football field with his back to the goalpost, chucking pieces of gravel onto the end zone grass.

  “What’s up, Delmar?”

  “Nothing.” I picked up my own handful of gravel and sat down with my back against the goalpost too, but facing the opposite direction.

  “I’m still pissed off at that FBI agent,” said Mark.

  “Oh—he wasn’t so bad. He just told us the truth. We don’t have enough against Heiselmann.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to talk to him,” I said.

  Mark quit chucking stones and spun around like I had just announced that I had been elected pope.

 
“Delmar?”

  “What?”

  “That’s brilliant. Have you got the guts for it?”

  “Yeah—I think I’ve got the guts. Now I just have to figure out what to say.”

  “I’ll tell you exactly what to say.”

  29

  During sixth hour the following Monday I met again with Rhonda Glass on our To Kill a Mockingbird report. Our grade on the outline had been an A+, a rarity from Mrs. Borger. I was waiting in the Science Resource Center talking to Steve about the warrior robots that we had seen in Popular Science magazine. Rhonda smiled at me as she walked through the door. Steve saw her coming, yanked his books to his chest, and shot out of there. From the door he glanced back and made a stupid face like blowing a kiss. I almost gave him the middle finger but decided to ignore him instead.

  “I’m excited about the report,” said Rhonda.

  I shrugged. “Reports are just a lot of work if you ask me.”

  “I have a new idea.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know how most of the book reports have been pretty much the same with a synopsis followed by an explanation?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s pretty boring, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, most of the oral reports are practically putting people to sleep,” I said.

  “Right! Here’s my idea to liven it up. Instead of just talking, you and I can mix in some dialogue and act out certain scenes from the book. I can be Scout and other female characters and you can be Atticus and other male characters. Then after each scene we don’t just tell the class what it means, we get them involved in the discussion. Maybe we can even bring in a student or two from the class at the end to help us act out the final scene.” Rhonda flashed her biggest ever smile. “What do you think? Should we try it?”

  Holy smokes! I bit my lip and pondered the dilemma. I knew it was good. I also knew that Mrs. Borger would absolutely love it. But acting in front of the class? I just didn’t have it in me.