I’d tried to explain that little philosophy to my colleagues. Success meant a puzzled look. Usual reaction was boredom. And that was okay, too. After all, entropy increases ever so slowly when you’re bored. A worthwhile goal in itself.
Which brought me back to the unlabeled photos and the chaos on the table. Better get this done before Sue comes home. She just might have plans for the dining room table. Like, supper.
I had just finished up the mess when the phone started to ring. First, my mother. Just checking on how I was doing. Then my mother-in-law, with the same basic question. Then our daughter, who worked in a bank in Cedar Rapids.
“Well, hi, Dad!”
“Hey, Jane! How you doing?”
“I’m fine. Just called to check the state of your head—outside only, please. I’m not ready for what goes on inside.”
“Just fine. I get to go back to work tomorrow night.”
“Congratulations.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“How things goin’ with the crime of the century?”
“Oh, slow would describe it pretty well. Very well, in fact. If we ever solve it, it’ll be the arrest of the next century.”
“That good, huh?”
“You know us. Slow.”
“Speaking of Theo, Dad, is he the one who’s got the case this time?”
She knew all about Theo. Living at home all those years, the mutterings and rumblings I made so often hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“Sort of.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. I don’t want to be too hard on you.”
“I appreciate that.”
“And I’ll stop telling my friends that you’re involved. I don’t want to embarrass myself.”
“If anything happens, I’ll put out a release identifying myself as Jane Houseman’s father.”
She laughed. “God, if you do that, just make sure you do something right.”
I had no sooner hung up the phone than Dan Smith called.
“Carl, you know what you asked me to do the other night?”
“What?”
“You know, about the dark houses?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I’ve got a list.”
I thought for a minute. Probably not of any significance, not now that we had a number of names from Helen, but I had asked him to do it, and he had done it for me.
“Great! Listen, why don’t you drop up after 18:30 or so? We’ll go over it then.”
Sue came home, we had supper, and she was a little upset because Dan was coming over. Wanted to spend my last night on sick leave together, alone. Me too.
Dan came to the back door right at 18:30, with his list. He’d done a remarkable job. He listed over a hundred houses that he said were normally dark, or that had one dim light at most; all of them had been pretty brightly lit on Sunday night. They all were on Monday and Tuesday, too. With a couple of exceptions.
“Power company’s making bucks on this one, Carl.”
“Ah-ha! A motive!”
He grinned.
I told him my head was bothering me, and he finally took the hint. I tossed the list on top of my computer and went out to enjoy the evening with Sue.
16
Saturday, April 27
00:11 hours
I was lying in bed with Sue, listening to the soft breathing of her sleep, when the fire siren summoning our local volunteer fire department went off. It’s less than a block from our house, and it rattles the shingles. Sue woke, and we both looked out the upstairs windows, to see if it was close. We couldn’t see anything.
About five minutes later, the sirens on the trucks could be heard going up the hill out of town to the west.
“Good,” said Sue. She always worried about her parents’ house, which was about two blocks away. “I wonder where it is?” She got back into bed, and I kissed her good night. I wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while, and she knew that.
“Going downstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t go to the office, and don’t do any office work, okay? Take some time for yourself.”
“I promise.”
“Sure.”
I went downstairs and waited a few minutes to call the office and find out where the fire was. Let the initial burst of radio traffic die down.
“Sheriff’s Department.”
It was Sally.
“Hi, it’s three. You busy?”
“Not now, not for a few minutes.”
“Good. Where’s the fire?”
“You’re gonna love this. It’s Francis McGuire’s place. House is gone.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“I knew you’d like it.”
“Whoa, we’d better get somebody to Herkaman’s.”
“Already been done, Mike’s there now. It’s all right.”
Great, just great. I, of course, began to jump to conclusions and had to slow myself down. The house was vacant now, and it could have been something like a short, or the furnace, or a chimney fire, or almost anything. Didn’t have to be an arson. Not at all.
The hell.
But we’d have to wait for the deputy state fire marshal to investigate it. And he’d have to be briefed regarding the whole case. If it turned out to be arson. If.
Another felony, probably, in a case already too crowded. Far too crowded.
Entropy increases.
I called the office back.
“We have somebody going to the scene?”
“Fire chief requested one about five minutes ago, and I’m sending Eddie. Mike wants to stay at Herkaman’s for a while yet.”
“Where’s Eddie at?”
“He was about nine or ten miles south of town when I called him.”
“Look, if he’s not through town yet, have him stop at my place for a second, would you?”
“Sure.”
I could hear her talking on the radio and heard Eddie say that he would.
“Tell him I’ll meet him in the alley.”
I knew he’d be in a real hurry, but he’d only been a cop for about a year, and it would have been much better if we could get an experienced man out there.
I went out and stood in the backyard, and Eddie came screeching around the corner and into the alley.
I opened the passenger door and stuck my head in the car.
“Look, take lots of pictures, okay? Anything that looks unusual or different. Ask the fire chief, he’ll know what to shoot. And talk to all the firemen, see what they saw. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Get out there, but take your time once you’re there. We’re looking for Satanic signs and symbols, all right?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“And you might let two know, and get him out there. If it looks like there’s anything at all.”
“Yeah.”
He was so anxious to go he was fidgeting.
“Get going.”
“Later …”
He threw gravel all over the alley, and my garage, as he left. I shook my head. He was going to make a good cop, but it was going to be a while. Too anxious. Too excited. Just like I used to be, I suppose.
I went back into the house, to find Sue in the kitchen.
“I was hungry.”
“Me too. You find anything?”
“Chicken from last night. You want some?”
I shook my head.
“Who was that?”
“Eddie. He’s on his way to the fire, and I had to talk to him first.”
“You don’t have to tell him everything, I’m sure he can handle it without you.”
“Most of the time. But the fire is at the McGuire house.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“This complicates it a lot, I’ll bet.”
“Well, maybe and maybe not.” I grinned. “Should be some sort of evidence out there. You can never have enough evidence.”
“Yumm rie um id um eeb,” she said, mun
ching on a mouthful of chicken.
“What?”
“I said, you try to get some sleep.”
“Yeah, I will. I’ll sleep most of the day tomorrow.”
“Don’t count on it.”
She went back upstairs, and I sat downstairs feeling frustrated. Not enough information to do anything, and I had already made enough of a pest of myself for one night. I turned on the tube and was disappointed, as usual. Fussed around for a few minutes in the kitchen and then went into my little office area and spotted Dan’s list. Well, why not?
The first problem with the list was that he hadn’t included any addresses. I knew where a lot of them were, but …
Got out the telephone book and went to work.
Second problem was that he’d only kept a list of the lighted places. Wonderful. Were the others dark, or did he just miss somebody? It was something to do, though.
Six of the locations were crossed out, then written in again. Probably not significant, but he should be asked.
When I was done with the addresses, I went to my computer and made up a quick database, just names and addresses and dates. Typed them all in. Boredom will make you do little things like that. Now that it was all in, I had no idea what to do with it. I called the office again.
“Hi, there.”
“You, again?”
“Yeah … is Dan working tonight?”
“He sure is.”
“Busy?”
“Is he ever?”
“Why don’t you have him come up to my place, will you?”
“Okay. Having trouble sleeping?”
“Yep.”
“Why don’t you come up here, I brought in a whole bunch of sausage and cheese.”
“Sold.”
I ran the list off, grabbed three bottles of Pepsi, and walked out to get in my personal car when Dan pulled up. Rode to the office with him.
Eddie was still at the scene of the fire, and he had called Art out to help him. Sally didn’t know what they had, but the fact that they were still there was a pretty good indication that they had something.
She and Dan and I sat in the dispatch center, eating sausage and going over the list I had just typed. Dan was really pleased with the database—no reason, but it always made him happy to see his information in print.
I asked him about the crossed-off entries, and he said that there had been lights on, that they had gone off and come back on again, between rounds.
“Why did they do that?” I asked.
Sally started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Six couples in Maitland had sex that night, dummy.”
Neither Dan nor I could think of a better explanation.
I got Sally talking about what she had heard in the community and got an earful. She just told her friends that she had been working that night, and they would start off. Mostly with questions, and when there was no information forthcoming, they would begin to speculate.
Most of her sources seemed to think that there was a crazy group near Maitland, who was killing people for the enjoyment of it. That nobody was safe. Satan was mentioned about half the time. A lot of them thought that we were scared of the Satanists and would do nothing.
Names were brought up, mostly the usual crazies that nobody trusted but that everybody had tolerated.
And the macho dudes who hung around the bars were talking of going out and getting whoever it was, since we hadn’t.
Mostly idle talk, of course. But the guys who were talking about taking matters into their own hands bothered me. They always do.
Sally gave us the names of those individuals, and we noted them. For the simple reason that if we found a local flake beaten or worse, we would have a suspect or two. Most of it was said for the purpose of scoring with local barflies, of course. But they could egg somebody on, and who knew what would happen …
The radio came to life.
“Comm, six?”
Sally swallowed her sausage. “Six, go.”
“We’re 10–24 out here, 10–76 to the SO.”
“10–4, six and two 10–24. Three fifty-six.”
I decided to wait around and talk to Eddie and Art when they got back in. I was a little disappointed—Art went directly home. Eddie, however, came to the office.
He was a mess, covered with mud splatters and soot that had fallen on him. And damp.
“Hi, Ed.”
“Oh, shit, what a mess out there.”
“What did you do, crawl inside the fireplace?”
“No, those fire trucks were moving pretty good when they sent the tankers back for more water, you know? And I was doing traffic control at the end of the lane, and the splash from the trucks, you know?”
I grinned. “Yeah.”
“Those crazy sons of bitches don’t even slow down! And then Art had me poking around after they left, all over the place.”
“Get a little warm?”
“Warm! Shit, I melted the sole of my overshoe!”
He stuck his foot up, and sure enough, the sole of his rubber boot was melted through.
“What did you step on something that hot for?”
“Oh, Art kept saying, ‘You gotta get close if you’re gonna get good pictures.’ ”
“Yeah, well you sort of do. You forget how to use the zoom?”
“I didn’t want to fuck up the flash. I don’t know how to reset it, and somebody told me that if you like double the power, you only get half the light.”
“Yeah.”
He set his camera bag down and took out the camera. It was filthy.
“Look at this!”
“Jesus, Ed, how’d you do that?”
“I was getting in real close to the kitchen, and a piece of the wall fell out. Into the mud. Splattered me all over. Scared the shit out of me, too!”
“I’ll bet.”
“So Art had to use his camera to take the rest of the pictures. Boy, was he pissed off!”
“So what did you find?”
“Oh, it was arson, all right. The fire chief said so, said that it was pretty obvious that somebody had poured gas all over the place. Said that almost the whole house had started up at the same time. And there is a crazy-looking burn mark on the wooden floor from the kitchen to the living room—like it was branded or something. You know, like a hamburger on the grill?”
“Sure.”
“Fire chief said that was a line where gas was poured from one room to the other. And you know how you asked me to look for Satanic signs?”
I did. I sort of held my breath.
Ed reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a little plastic evidence bag. Containing a silverish medallion.
“This was stuck to a tree in the yard. A fireman found it.”
He handed me the bag. A small medallion, a circumscribed pentagram, the circle being a snake eating its own tail. Just like the one that was hanging over Phyllis Herkaman in her basement.
I looked at it for a minute, wondering where it had been made. Sally asked if she could see it, and I handed it to her, still in the bag, of course. Dan looked at it, too.
Sally looked up at me. “You look a little strange.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Must be a pretty bad thought.”
Dan, of course, said, “I know I’ve seen one of these before. I know I have.”
“Where?”
“I can’t remember.”
Now, knowing Dan, he might actually have seen one before. Then again, he might not. Or he might have seen something similar …
“You know,” said Sally, “so have I.”
“Where?”
“You know Liz Mills?”
“Sort of.” Not before yesterday afternoon and Helen Bockman’s weird tale.
“Well, about a month ago, she was down in one of the bars, and she was wearing one just like that. I noticed because it stood out against that black sweater she had on. You know what she’s like—always showing
off her chest to all the men, and she always wears something tight and tries to use jewelry to make them notice.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“Oh, sure. She thinks she’s pretty hot stuff. Lets everybody know that she’s, well, available, you know? That long, black hair.” She thought for a second. “Always showing those long legs off, too.” Afterthought.
Sally was a redhead. About five feet tall. Slender. Nothing to sneeze at, herself, but she was small all over, and sort of sensitive about it. She would be very much aware of somebody doing what she thought Liz Mills did. And would pay very close attention to what she was wearing.
“She was really showing off, Sally?”
“Makes you sick, the way she’s all over the men.”
“What does her husband think of all this?”
“Oh, he’s never with her, or hardly ever.”
“He thinks that going barhopping alone is good for her?”
“She doesn’t go alone, silly. She’s always with that little slut who works for Human Services … oh, what’s her name …”
“What does she look like?”
“Oh, small blonde, but overweight. Big butt. Mouthy.”
“Oh,” said Dan. “I know her. Uh … name begins with a ‘Z.’ ”
“Right!” said Sally. “That’s her, Hedda, I think, Hedda, Hedda …”
“Let’s look it up in the phone book,” I suggested.
Sally grabbed the book first. Not fair, it was closer to her. She found it right away. Only seven Z entries. H. Zeiss, like in the binoculars.
“Here she is.”
“She single, Sally?” I asked.
“Of course. You’d have to be crazy to marry her.”
“Why’s that?”
“She screws anybody she can.” Her face reddened. “And I mean anybody. She even hit on me once.”
“You’re kidding. How long has she lived around here?”
“About two years,” said Dan. “Lived in the apartment above Summerman’s store, then bought that house at the lower end of town. Her mom died up at the nursing home in Decorah, and she and her brother got a lot of money.”
Sally, Eddie, and I all looked at Dan.
His face very slowly turned red. “Hey, I just talk to people …”
“And where do you talk to her, Dan?” asked Sally in a syrupy voice.
Eleven Days Page 13
