The Big Thaw

by Donald Harstad

“Absolutely.” Art seemed a bit mollified.

  I’d been checking the VINs I’d gotten from the snowmobiles against the list Sally had given me. Two were from Cletus Borglan. I announced that.

  “Is this, like, significant?” asked Art.

  “Beats me,” I said. “Just an error in memory, maybe.” Cletus had said that he gave Grossman one and junked the rest.

  “I prefer to go to trial with a ninety-five percent chance of winning,” said Davies, ignoring the Art and Carl show. “The five percent being the whim of the jury. I’ll be happy with seventy-five percent, and I’ve gone in with about a sixty percent chance, but I really don’t like to do that. Right now, this one would be about fifty-fifty. Maybe less. With a circumstantial case, and a local jury, I don’t think we could pull it off.”

  “What if the lab doesn’t give us anything linking Fred to the scene?” I asked. “Then what do we do?”

  “If that happens,” said Davies, “you do lots and lots of interviews, of lots and lots of people. And if we still come down with Fred being the only possibility, then …” He paused. “Then we go the grand jury route, get an indictment, and see if we can convince him to cop a plea.”

  “Nothing personal,” said Art, “but that’s not much of a plan.”

  “You are so right,” said Davies. “And that’s just the best possible scenario if the lab doesn’t link him. The very best.”

  “So,” I said, “where’s that leave us?”

  “The no-link bit, you mean?”

  “Yep.”

  “That leaves us with very little,” said Davies. “Or, to use a legal term, up Shit Creek without a paddle.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Art. “He did it, and the lab will find a link.”

  Davies looked at him. “You must have taken a confidence-building course recently.”

  “I just don’t accept defeat,” said Art, “when I know I’m right.”

  I was glad for him. He was just full of admirable traits.

  After much discussion, it was left at this: Absent any other viable suspect, it appeared that Fred was the only person who could have done the deed. Period. We took a short poll, and it was decided that we would diligently seek other suspects. And, in the meantime, we would do all we could to link Fred to the scene.

  “We don’t have much pressure today,” said Davies. “Tomorrow, there’ll be more. And each day we go without an arrest, the pressure increases. So long as you understand that.”

  “Just like always,” I said.

  The dispatch desk called, and said there were several members of the press in the outer office. Art and Davies took the job of talking to them. Lamar went out the unused back way. And I mean, unused. We never opened that door, and never shoveled the snow outside it. I last saw him slogging through two-foot snow drifts, going around behind the building. He really hates the press.

  I was tired when I got home around 8:30. Sue had laid in a supply of frozen, microwaveable food. Murder rations, so to speak. Although I couldn’t discuss details, I let her know that things were going slowly.

  “How about Madison this weekend?” she asked.

  Ooh. We’d been planning to do that since Christmas, and this weekend was the one per month I was scheduled off.

  “Not sure. Let me see how it goes tomorrow …” Damn. Another delay would put us into March. Too long. It was going to be difficult, though, getting things arranged for a weekend off. If stuff happened fast, then we would be able to go in March. If it continued at this pace, we’d be going in August if we didn’t go now.

  “I know you’re really into this case, but if we don’t go now …”

  “I know. Now or six months from now.”

  “I got lots of frozen vegetables today. Be sure to eat some.” She smiled. “You need to be healthy, either way.”

  I put the frozen vegetables into my microwaved couscous, added a can of mushrooms, sliced a low-fat sausage, and topped the whole thing with fat-free grated cheese. Eleven minutes from opening the first package to a complete, satisfying, and sort of tasty meal.

  “I don’t know how you can eat that …”

  “Oh,” I said, “thanks. I forgot the Thai sauce …”

  “God.” She shook her head. “Your stomach won’t last till spring. If you want to eat at a good restaurant in Madison, you better go soon.”

  That was about as close to a clincher as you could get. I popped the top of a can of Diet Cherry Coke, and silently drank a toast to Madison. Hitting directly on top of the Thai sauce, it produced an instant reaction, and I belched.

  “You may have to go by yourself …”

  I was just scraping off my plate, and opening the dishwasher, when the phone rang. It was Deputy John Willis, our newest officer. He was coming along nicely, and excelled at the snoopy kind of patrol work that would make him an excellent officer.

  “Hate to bother you at home …”

  “Sure you do.” I picked up a notepad and pen. “Whatta ya got?”

  “Well, you know, I got to thinking about Fred, and the Borglan place, and all that stuff. You remember last year, oh, maybe July, when we had that humongous fight in Dogpatch?”

  Dogpatch was our name for Jasonville, a very tiny town in the west of the county, population about 100, and one very busy tavern. “Yeah,” I said. “The one where we called everybody but the National Guard?”

  We’d arrested over 50 people that night, which isn’t bad for either a town of 100, or a department of 10. Most of the arrestees had been from out of town …

  “We arrested Fred and his two cousins that night. Remember?”

  I did now.

  “Yep. I did the interviews of all three of ’em.”

  “Okay …” I said.

  “I got the notes right here … Fred got into it with some grubby dudes from Dubuque, remember. And both his cousins jumped in to rescue him. And I got statements from the three of them. And all three say that they … just a sec … that they will ‘give my life’ for the other two. In each of the three statements, same thing.”

  “Exactly?” I asked. Strange.

  “Exactly the same phrase.”

  “Damn …” I jotted the phrase down. “You remember how close together they were when they wrote the statements?”

  “Well, they were in the same room …”

  “Did they communicate with each other?”

  “Well, yeah, they did …” He sounded disappointed.

  “Great!”

  “What?”

  “That’s at least as good, I think,” I said. “Chummy, even talk it over and decide they will stick together through and through kind of stuff. Remember if they were sober?”

  “I’ve got the PBT stuff here,” he said. A PBT was a preliminary breath test, designed for use on the highway as a precursor to arresting for DWI and doing a real test on an Intoxilyzer. The PBT wasn’t admissible in court, but was used a lot to give the officer a ballpark idea of the state of the subject. “All three of them were over point one oh, but not by too much.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fred’s girlfriend bailed all three of ’em out, that night.”

  “Cool. You remember anything else they might of said?”

  “No, sorry, I was kinda busy.” He was apologetic, like he should have known that they were going to end up in a murder case or something. New officers are like that. Well, the good ones are, anyway.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “No problem. This is good.” I was having a bit of trouble getting the ballpoint pen to write, and grabbed a pencil. “What was the girlfriend’s name?”

  “Just a sec,” he said, and I could hear paper being shuffled in the background. “Ah … Donna Sue Rahll.”

  “Get a DL on her, will you?”

  “Will do.”

  “Thanks. This is good.”

  I normally hated to be called at home, but I loved it when it was something I could use. I didn’t know Donna Sue Rahll, but the last name rang a very fa
int bell.

  I joined Sue in the living room.

  “Did I hear you say Rahll?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Know anybody by that name?”

  “Well, John Rahll is the man who runs the Maitland Economic Development Center.”

  “Oh, sure … tall man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any kids?” One of the many benefits to being married to a teacher.

  “Oh, a girl who graduated a while ago. Becky, maybe,” said Sue, absently, as she shuffled through some tests she’d brought home to grade.

  “Or, how about Donna?”

  “That’s right, Donna.”

  So. Tomorrow’s schedule was shaping up.

  “You know where Donna might be, these days?”

  She looked up. I usually didn’t pursue her information so far. It was an agreement we had. You don’t have to tell me about school stuff, I don’t have to tell you about cop stuff.

  “Last I knew, she was working at the Maitland Library. She had a year of school, dropped out. Came home. I think she might live with her parents.”

  “Okay. Thanks. That’s plenty.”

  “So, now I get to ask a question?”

  “Uh, maybe.” I grinned.

  “They said in school that you were flying in helicopters today, looking for another body. True?”

  “Yes, I was in a helicopter today. It was really, really cool. But, no, we aren’t looking for any more bodies.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and went back to her papers.

  Rumors can plague an investigation. Especially in a town like Maitland and a county like Nation. One of the seldom appreciated effects is that it retards the flow of information. Somebody has a truly important bit, but they hear through the grapevine that something else entirely is really important. They dismiss what they know, and begin to rely on what they hear. Consequently, they don’t tell you their information, because it doesn’t seem important. In our case, for example, the third body bit might convince someone that a snowmobile sighting they had on the night in question might not be significant. Because we weren’t looking for snowmobile sightings, after all, we were looking for a third body. So that’s where that triple homicide nonsense came from with the media.

  “We were looking at snowmobile tracks,” I said, hinting. “Not for a third body. If anybody asks …”

  “Oh,” said Sue, absently. “All right.”

  You do what you can. I went to bed. But before I did, I turned off the police scanner.

  Nine

  Wednesday, January 14, 1998, 0907

  I made an appointment with Donna Sue Rahll for 0915, at the Sheriff’s Department. I went in out of uniform, to put her at her ease. That worked about half the time, and blue jeans were a lot warmer than uniform trousers.

  Art was in Oelwein, interviewing the mother of the two victims, so I got to do the preliminary interview of Donna Sue all by myself. As it turned out, she was a bright, fairly attractive girl, who considered Freddie to be a phase of her life she’d just as soon forget. About the first sentence out of her was to the effect that she hadn’t wished to associate with Fred for the last seven or eight months.

  “So, I don’t know why I’m here,” she said. The second sentence.

  I could tell that she was hoping for a short interview, because she’d left her blue parka on. Unzipped, though, to reveal the orange lining. There was hope. “Any particular reason you broke up?” She looked me right in the eye. “I don’t see that that’s any of your business.”

  “It isn’t,” I replied. “But it may be the state’s business. There’s a lot of interest in Fred right now.”

  She sighed. “This is all confidential?”

  “Unless it has a direct bearing on facts material to the investigation. Then you may be questioned regarding things, in court.”

  “If I know something about the case, you mean.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  She stood, and said her good-bye line. “Well, since I don’t know anything ‘material,’ about any kind of case, I’ll leave, now.”

  “I think you might know more than you think,” I said. “Why don’t you sit back down for a minute.”

  She stopped, but didn’t sit. At least the parka hadn’t been zipped yet.

  “I want to ask about Fred’s two cousins, Dirk and Royce …”

  She flicked out an insincere little smile. “The Colson brothers? The ‘Weasels’?”

  “Pardon?” I said.

  “The ‘Weasels.’ That’s what we call them.”

  “Why?” I asked, leaning back in my chair. I had her.

  She sat back down. “Because they’re greasy little shit-heads who have no respect for anybody, and lie and steal and stick their noses in and think they’re just great.”

  Well. It came out in a rush, and I suspect she felt a lot better for having said it. It sure helped me.

  “Stick their noses in what?” I was already pretty sure about the “steal” part.

  “Everybody’s business.” She exhaled hard, and started to shrug out of her coat. “They just cause a lot of trouble.” She looked at me. “Why? What have they done now?”

  It took me just a second. Then the little lightbulb came on in my head. We hadn’t released the names of the victims yet. And if she’d severed relations with Fred, she might not have a way of knowing.

  “You don’t talk to Fred and his crowd much these days?”

  “I have no time for them. If I saw one of them coming toward me, I’d cross the street.”

  “Ah.” I gave her my most serious and concerned look. “Well, I’m sorry. Really. I assumed …”

  “What?”

  Had her good. “That you knew they were dead.”

  I figured I was ready for about any kind of reaction, but was surprised when she simply said, “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “It doesn’t? Why not?”

  “They ‘party hearty,’ and they drive too fast. We’ve all been telling ’em that. For years.”

  “Wasn’t a car wreck,” I said. I paused for effect, for all the good it did me. “They were murdered.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Murdered? Like, by somebody else?”

  “That’s what it looks like.” By somebody else, indeed.

  “Well,” she said, “well, shit. Huh. Whadda ya know …” She paused. “That’s something. Well, you guys know who did it?”

  “It’s beginning to look like it might be Fred.”

  “Oh, no. No, no, no way. Oh, no,” and she started to chuckle. “No, not Fred. No.”

  In about ten minutes, she explained to me just what a foolish idea it was. Fred, in her experience, was absolutely determined to avoid conflict at any cost. He would take the path of least resistance every time. She’d known Fred since high school, and he’d always been that way. The only times she’d ever seen him angry, it was at himself.

  “He’d do things like let the other kids keep their beer in his locker. Really. Just so he wouldn’t have to argue with them. He’d fidget all day, worried that the principal would find out. But he’d never say no.”

  “Because the principal was one step removed, and the kids were right there?”

  “Yeah,” Donna Sue thought for a second. “Like that. You know he was busted for DWI back in high school?”

  “Oh,” I said, “yeah … I’m the one who got him.”

  “Well, you know the only reason he drove that night is that the kid who was the designated driver had gotten it for DWI before, couldn’t afford to get busted again, and got drunk at the party anyway?”

  “Didn’t know that.”

  “Just like the beer in the locker. Knew he shouldn’t do it, but just to avoid the hassle …” She shrugged. “Like I say, he’s always been that way.”

  Judy came in with the coffee. It helped.

  “What if,” I said, “somebody asked him to do something he just couldn’t bring himself to do? Could he get violent?”

  “N
o way. If it got that bad, I swear to God, he’d just move to California or somewhere.” She sipped her coffee. “He’s just not aggressive at all.”

  “How about his two cousins? The ‘Weasels’?”

  “They’re mostly just liars. Were, I guess.” She shook her head. “They’d get him to do shit, you know? Like keep stuff for ’em that was hot.”

  “Were they violent?”

  “Not really.”

  “I mean, like, if they got caught at a burglary … do you think they’d get violent then?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “They’d just try to lie their way out of it. They could get pretty outrageous, sometimes.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. They used to laugh about one time, in Oelwein, when they were caught behind a store one night. They were thinkin’ about sneaking in through the rest room window, and the owner came out with, like, the garbage. He started to jump in their shit in a big way. So they told him they were undercover cops. Convinced him, too.” She giggled.

  Bingo. Oh, Bingo indeed. “Really?”

  “Oh, sure. They did that more than once, I think. It worked.” She shook her head. “They could convince you the sun came out at night. Look you right in the eye and lie, lie, lie. Never blink.”

  When Art got back from Oelwein, I ran my interview with Donna Sue by him.

  “And?” said Art, sort of impatiently.

  “It explains a bunch of the stuff that’s been bothering me,” I said. “Why people kept assuming the two victims were cops, for one thing. Why it just didn’t ring true. Why there had to be somebody involved we weren’t aware of.”

  “Why’s that? I must be missing something,” said Art. “I didn’t think she provided any other names?”

  “Impersonating cops,” I said. “If the wrong person was in that house, he might have killed them because they convinced whoever it was that they were cops.”

  “What you’re doing is this: You have a theory that says Fred didn’t do it. Okay? Yet all the real evidence points to the fact that he did. Then you feel that a story told by Fred’s ex-girlfriend, about two dead men who can’t contradict her, that you have no proof ever even happened … confirms your theory.” Art shook his head. “This now requires the presence and the involvement of a third party based on a supposition by you, based on a tale by another party.” He shrugged. “Can’t buy that, Carl.”