We all looked at each other and ate just a little faster. One of the men announced that there were ‘‘Feds’’ everywhere and that they’d better be careful what they said. But they just kept on talking. I thought George would choke.
When we left, I wrote down the license plates of several of the cars in the lot. They were from northern Iowa and southern Minnesota, for the most part. Not local.
We got back to the Sheriff’s Department, and discovered that the Stritch family had demanded to be represented by ‘‘common law’’ lawyers, which request had been quite rightly refused by the judge. He’d appointed three local attorneys to represent the family, individually. The family didn’t want them. So we had three prisoners who were pissed off, three attorneys in the reception area trying to figure out how to represent clients who refused to talk to them, three cops who wanted to talk to those same clients…
As one of the attorneys said to me: ‘‘Look, Carl, if I let you talk to them and advise them as to how to answer, they’ll just sue me. If I don’t let you talk to them, they’ll sue me. And any way you cut it, they’ll try to get me censured by the court for not properly representing them in the first place. I’ll just have to get back to you on that…’’
One of the others, who had a sense of humor, said, ‘‘If I let you talk to my client, will you give him my bill?’’
We weren’t getting very far. Hester, George, and I moved to the back office to regroup.
A phone call came in. Dispatch said it was from somebody who wanted to ‘‘speak with the cop in charge of the killings in the woods.’’ I took it.
‘‘Houseman.’’
‘‘You the cop doin’ the killin’ of the cop and the little snitch in the woods?’’ It was a male voice, fairly deep, matter-of-fact. I frantically waved my free hand at Hester and George. This sounded real.
‘‘One of ’em.’’
‘‘We just want you to know, for what it’s worth, that we got the guy who did it.’’
‘‘You do?’’
‘‘No, man. We did.’’
Hester had picked up the second phone, and was listening.
‘‘Where’s he at? Where can I meet with him?’’ The ‘‘we did’’ sounded ominous, and I hoped I was misunderstanding him on that.
‘‘You can find him at an abandoned farm. Two miles out of Jollietville, just off Highway 433. Address is 23224 Willow Lane. The old Harris place.’’ With that, he hung up.
Jollietville was in Wisconsin. Just across the river from us. We called the Conception County Sheriff’s Department and gave them the message. We told them to hurry, just in case.
We talked about the call. We agreed that the use of the term ‘‘little snitch’’ made it sound like it might be dope-related. But ‘‘the guy who did it’’ couldn’t be correct. There absolutely had been more than one shooter.
A callback came from Conception County within fifteen minutes. Cell phone from their chief investigator, a Harry Ullman. I’d known him for years.
‘‘Houseman?’’
‘‘Yeah. What you got, Harry?’’
‘‘We got kind of a dangling corpse on a farm. I think it’s related to your guys getting ambushed in the woods. If you hurry, you can get here before we cut him down.’’
We went in George’s car. The FBI can go across state lines with comparative ease. Well, so could we, actually, but George could do it with his siren and red grille lights working. Our insurance wouldn’t let us do that out of state. Thing was, it had to be George driving. I’ve never met a really good FBI driver yet. They think they are, but they sure can’t keep up with us in the rural areas. George wasn’t their best driver. It took fifteen minutes, and all the way even Hester was quieter than normal in the back seat. I was in front because of my size, but would have traded places with her in a heartbeat.
To take our minds off the driving, we sort of speculated as to who it might be, with the bets running on its being the man who was with Gabe when he left the Stritch farm. The one with the white tee shirt. Or it could have been one of the Stritch family friends who had been in the woods when the whole thing went down. It was going to be interesting to see.
We also talked a little about who the hell had called. Purest speculation, for sure. The upshot of the whole thing was that we had absolutely no idea.
The other topic was related; what Harry had meant when he said ‘‘cut him down.’’ I thought it meant that he was hanged, and that also raised the possibility of a suicide. People had claimed ‘‘credit’’ for suicides before, just to try to impress somebody. It was possible that remorse or despair had overcome one of the participants. Being hanged also raised the specter of a possible ‘‘legal’’ execution within a group. That’s what I thought it was going to be. All interspersed with things like ‘‘Uh, I wouldn’t pass here, George, you’re gonna want to turn right in just a few seconds anyway…’’ and ‘‘There are only two lanes of traffic on the bridge, George, you might want to shut everything down until we get across the Mississippi here, because the other cars have nowhere to go…’’
The directions got us to a farm lane, with tall grass and weeds growing down the middle. The old ruts were about a foot deep, but very narrow and close together. Even George could keep only one set of tires in a rut at a time. Long lane, with grasshoppers jumping onto the hood and windshield as we bumped and rolled toward the gray wood barn with a collapsed roof. We stopped behind an ambulance, and got out. There were three cars in front of us, one belonging to the sheriff himself. A small cluster of people were standing around the foundation of what appeared by its size to have been a house many years ago. Harry waved.
‘‘Come on over here, Houseman. You’re gonna love this one.’’
We waded through the knee-high grass, which seemed to be hosting about a million grasshoppers. It was hot, very hot, and extremely humid. We got to the group, and I looked down into the old basement. There, standing propped against what had been an interior limestone wall, was a large timber, about ten feet long, with a very large stone bracing its foot. Stuck to it was a body. Naked. Male. There was a sign dangling around the neck, with the word RAT in capital letters, and something I couldn’t make out underneath. There was what appeared to be a railroad spike protruding about three inches out of the chest of the corpse, apparently having been driven through the rib cage and into the old timber. It looked like that was all that was holding the body on the plank. The face was deep waxy purple, and either very contorted or just really well worked over. The tongue was swollen, bluish, and protruding, so I guessed he’d been strangled before being nailed up. A little closer look at the neck confirmed that. The ligature mark was even with the ear line, back to front. You could have encircled his neck at the ligature point with one hand. Easily. Probably a wide band or rope. If it had been sharp, the neck would have been severed.
‘‘Shit, Harry…’’
He grinned. ‘‘Not one of your everyday corpses, is it? You know him?’’
‘‘No,’’ I said. ‘‘I don’t.’’
I was balancing myself with one hand on some old slats, as I moved out on the six-inch-wide top of the old masonry wall, toward the body. ‘‘Mind if I walk here?’’
‘‘Just about two more steps… then there’s some stuff on the top of the wall we might want.’’
I looked where he pointed. There was a piece of material draped over the wall, where it could be seen fairly easily, secured there by placing a good-sized piece of limestone block on top of it. Looked like blue cloth, maybe denim. Small. Maybe with a pattern or something on it. The closer I looked, the more it looked like the back of a jacket with a logo.
‘‘I promise not to step on it,’’ I said.
I walked carefully closer to the corpse, steadying myself by keeping my right arm outstretched. I leaned ahead a bit, squinting, looking closely at the face. I slowly waved my left hand over the features, shooing away the flies. Vaguely familiar, it reminded me of somebody. I co
uldn’t get a handle on the identity, though. There were a lot of flies settling back on the face, but they moved around enough so that I could get sort of a picture. He hadn’t been here more than a few hours.
‘‘Still don’t know who it is,’’ I said.
‘‘Yes, you do,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Yes, you do.’’ She sounded kind of funny. I turned, and she had this stricken look on her face. ‘‘Look again.’’
I did. He did look familiar…
‘‘Recognize him?’’ she asked.
‘‘Almost…’’
‘‘It’s Johnny Marks,’’ she said.
We went off in a group with Harry, and told him what was up with Marks, who he was, what he did. Also told him the narcs in the area hadn’t been able to find him for a little while. We suggested he call them.
‘‘Shit,’’ I said. ‘‘I wonder who did him.’’
‘‘Didn’t you read the letters under the RAT, Carl?’’ asked Harry.
Well, no. I just hadn’t been able to see them. Couldn’t get any closer, and too far to read the print normally. But thank you for pointing that out, Harry.
‘‘Couldn’t quite make ’em out,’’ I said.
‘‘Maybe we could have the lab boys move the plank back a bit?’’
‘‘No, thanks, Harry.’’
‘‘Anyway, it says ‘The Living Dead.’ ’’ He rubbed it in. ‘‘And under that, it says ‘Killed a cop in the woods on June 19, in Nation County, Iowa.’ ’’
The Living Dead drew a blank with George and me, but not with Hester.
‘‘Cycle gang out of Ohio,’’ she said. ‘‘Meth trade.’’
‘‘Right,’’ said Harry. ‘‘Meth and grass. That denim vest has their colors on it, I think. We’ll know as soon as the lab folks get here.’’
‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘that sure explains the ‘we did him’ on the phone call.’’
Hester shook her head. ‘‘I don’t think ‘did’ does it justice.’’
George was the pale one in our group. FBI doesn’t do a lot of homicides, like they say. He just asked one question. ‘‘Do they always look so… purple?’’
I explained to him that, with the actual ligature removed, the purple face told us that the spike through the chest had been inflicted some little while post-mortem, as the lividity in the face was so pronounced. Only blood seepage looked to have occurred from the spike, which made it appear likely that the victim was dead when it was driven in. At the same time, the removal of the ligature at that point said that it had been taken off for a specific reason… otherwise, why bother.
‘‘Specific reason?’’
‘‘Sure. Like a person’s belt, for instance. Don’t want it left around. They want us to find only the evidence they want us to locate.’’
‘‘Oh.’’
‘‘Just think,’’ said Hester, ‘‘maybe somebody is walking into your favorite restaurant, wearing the belt that did it…’’
We had to stop in the Conception County Sheriff’s Department to fill out written statements regarding the phone call and what was said. I gave written permission for them to have our department’s tapes, although the only part that was recorded had been the dispatcher and the caller. When he’d been transferred back to me, he’d gone off taped line… we did that on purpose, as we didn’t want anybody else to be able to listen to recordings of confidential conversations. There were drawbacks.
The three of us then went to a little coffee shop on the Wisconsin side, to talk and gather our thoughts. George and Hester had coffee, and I had coffee and a chocolate doughnut.
We agreed we had a problem. All the available evidence said that Johnny Marks hadn’t been one of the shooters in the woods. The shooters been amateur guerrillas in training, not dope dealers. At least, not as far as we knew. But we had what appeared to be a great lead, a direct connection to a meth-dealing cycle gang, and a clearly murdered man who had definitely been connected with the patch. Yet we had nothing that connected Johnny Marks to the Stritch family, let alone the mysterious Gabe and his outfit. Nothing. Marks’s only connection had been with Turd and the fact that he’d been the supervisor, if not the owner, of the patch itself.
But we had the possibility that some of the right-wing folks had at least intimated that they might be persuaded to grow dope and sell it, as a way of pissing off the Feds and of making money for the cause.
On the way back in the car, thoughts still ungathered, we finally came to a temporary conclusion.
‘‘We just have to figure out which one is the liar… Melissa Stritch or the folks who did Johnny Marks.’’ George summed it up pretty well.
‘‘Hell,’’ I said. ‘‘Why don’t we go ask Howler? He’s on our way back.’’
Nan answered the door this time. Girl was never happy, apparently. We were ushered in, and Howler came struggling out of the bedroom. He was really thin, not an ounce of fat being visible as he pulled on his tee shirt. Big tattoo on his chest. A spiderweb, complete with a spider with two red eyes, and a skull and crossbones. He looked like a poster boy for an exterminator.
‘‘You might as well fuckin’ advertise I’m here, excuse me, ma’am, who is this one?’’ References to me, Hester, and George in that order.
‘‘FBI,’’ said George, producing his credentials. Howler’s eyes widened. Always has the same effect, every time I see it done.
‘‘Should I get my lawyer?’’
‘‘ ’S okay, Howler. We just have some stuff to tell you,’’ I said.
‘‘Sure.’’ He motioned Nan to the other room. She went, but she was reluctant. She should have been, it was her house. ‘‘Whatcha got?’’
We told him about Johnny Marks. I described what we found, then Hester provided the name.
Howler had slightly red hair, and consequently a fairly pale complexion. He is the only person I’ve ever seen who actually ‘‘went white.’’ His eyes started to roll up, his eyelids fluttered like a flag in a stiff breeze, and he buckled. I reached for him, but got tangled with the coffee table, knocking over an old quart beer bottle, and he hit the floor with a thud. Nan was around the corner like a shot.
‘‘What did you do to him?’’ She pushed George, and knelt beside her ‘‘man.’’ ‘‘Talk to me, speak, you shithead,’’ she wailed.
‘‘He just fainted,’’ I said. ‘‘He’ll be okay.’’
‘‘You hit him. I heard it!’’
‘‘No, no. I knocked into the table trying to keep him off the floor.’’
‘‘Sonofabitchyoudid.’’
Howler started to come around. He looked up, right at Nan, and grinned. Then he saw me. ‘‘Noooo! Nooooo!’’
If there had to be a reason they called him Howler, I think we found it.
We helped him up to the couch. He was shaking a bit. He looked right at Hester and said, ‘‘Ssshit, mma’am, if there was ever a time I wanted a fufufuckin’ joint…’’
We had a rather long conversation with Howler. He was sure it was the cycle gang. There was no doubt in his mind. That’s who he thought that Marks had been dealing with, although it turned out that Marks had never specifically stated the fact.
‘‘Had to be, man. Had to be.’’
Convincing. We asked in about fifty ways if there had ever been any connection with anybody in cammo clothing or paramilitary types. Never. He was certain. Not even likely, as far as he could tell. And he was so damned scared, you had to believe him. He was absolutely sure he was next.
‘‘They’re gonna get me, man. Sure as shit. I’m dead. I’m just fuckin’ dead.’’
‘‘We can help you disappear for a while,’’ said George.
Howler looked at him for a long second, and shook his head. ‘‘Yeah, right.’’ He was in kind of a bad position. No weapons. Nowhere to go. And his main man was being autopsied even as we spoke. It can be lonely at the bottom too.
We left Howler with the option to be hidden by us, if he wanted to. I think he might h
ave gone along with that, but Nan wouldn’t have been able to go, and Howler wanted sex a little more than safety. After all, Nan was here and now. Death was at least a lay away.
We got back to the Nation County Sheriff’s Department just in time to be handed a message from Volont. The Stritch family was being transferred to federal custody in Cedar Rapids regarding federal kidnapping charges.
That was not a particularly good development. The Stritch family was being effectively removed from our control and our reach. Interviews were now going to be out, unless we went to Cedar Rapids, filled out all the proper forms, and talked to them in an interview room under the control of the Feds.
‘‘Maybe,’’ I said, ‘‘if we explain that there really wasn’t a kidnapping…’’
George was just about to make a phone call to his boss, to see if he could reach Volont, when the ubiquitous SAC rolled into the parking lot.
‘‘Hey,’’ said Hester, looking out the window. ‘‘It’s Volont.’’
‘‘Oh, right,’’ said George, still on the phone with his office. It was hard to fool George twice in the same day. I noticed he’d removed his coat and tie, and was getting downright comfortable.
‘‘Wonder why he’s here,’’ I said idly. George didn’t even bother to look up.
‘‘Probably came to shoot George for bad driving,’’ said Hester.
‘‘Or me for my raincoat,’’ I said.
George, who had cradled the phone on his shoulder, now had one foot propped on the desk, and was busily jotting down notes in his leather-bound notepad, and chuckling to himself. ‘‘You guys really crack me up…’’
‘‘Comfortable, Agent Pollard?’’ asked an even, cool voice.
Volont, as it happened, had come up because the DEA had been contacted by Harry regarding the demise of Johnny Marks. They had contacted him. He had asked where George was, and was told that he was already at the scene across the Mississippi in Wisconsin. In the territory of the Madison field office. Before their cooperation had been requested. Before he knew it was Johnny Marks, and positively related to our investigation. I thought George was surely going to be done for, but it didn’t really seem to make any difference. Volont was extremely curious about the condition of the body, and George was a veritable fountain of information on that. I thought it probably saved him.
Known Dead ch-2 Page 25
