“Carl, that number is 407-555-3344. Orlando, Florida.”
“Yee hah!” I startled her, but I just couldn’t help myself. “I’ll be damned.”
“You guys must have lots of fun back there,” said Sally. “Need anything else?”
“No, sorry about the yelling, just good news. Thanks!” I put down the phone.
“So?” said Lamar.
“So. So, the telephone company record here,” and I held up the sheet of paper, “tells me that a call was placed from Borglan’s residence here in Nation County … the murder scene … at about ten forty-seven our time … to a number in Orlando, Florida. The same number that the Borglans left with us on their residence check form. And,” I added, “with the time difference, the call would have been received in Florida at about a quarter to midnight.” I looked at Lamar. “Just when your source said it was.” I was grinning all over myself.
“Well, bingo,” said Lamar. “Just like we thought. Looks like our boy’s been holdin’ out on us. He’s gotta know who it was that he talked to …”
“‘Source’?” asked Volont.
I looked at Lamar, and he nodded. “We have a source who was with Cletus Borglan when he received the call from Iowa,” I said. Being as matter-of-fact as I could.
It was time to bring Cletus in. I said I wanted an arrest warrant.
“Let me contact Davies.” For Volont’s benefit, I added, “Iowa Attorney General’s office. He’s got this case.” I spoke toward Lamar. “You can damned well bet Cletus Borglan knows where he is. And that phone bill should be enough to charge Cletus as an accessory in a double homicide. Let’s just see how far his loyalty to these murderers extends.”
“Even so,” said Volont, “there will be arms, and people to use them, around him, too. Perhaps even the killers themselves. You may well need a TAC team, either way. It would be best to wait…”
I smiled. “Nope. I don’t think so. I just have to have a warrant for his arrest…”
You have to know who you’re dealing with. It always comes down to that. I got Davies on the phone, and did just exactly what he told me to do. I sat down, typed a complaint and affidavit against Cletus Borglan, affirming in part that he “received a confirmatory call regarding the double murder, from the murderer, at the murder scene, while at his residence in Florida. This is confirmed both by confidential testimonial evidence sworn to the court, and a telephone company record of that call, placed on the night of…” The “testimonial” part was Lamar’s sister-in-law’s account. He called her, and told her to write it out, get herself to the Orlando PD, swear to it, and have them fax it to us. We teletyped them to the same effect, and referred to it as an FBI case. Volont made a telephone call to FBI, Orlando. Reluctantly, I think. But it was for them to assist in whatever way they could.
“You’re going to have to move very, very fast, here,” he said. “Not just on this Borglan. But very fast on the suspects afterward, as well… They’ll know just about as soon as Borglan’s been arrested.”
“We’ll move fast,” I said, “but we’re going to have to find out just who the suspects are, and that’s going to depend on Borglan.”
The fax copy of Lamar’s sister’s statement was in our possession before I got my complaint and affidavit typed out. She was also remaining at Orlando PD until further notice, just in case the judge wanted to have telephone contact with her. The FBI, as it transpired, had given her a ride. Volont was a heavy dude, no doubt about it.
George went with me to the judge.
By 1626, I was slipping and crunching in my car down Cletus Borglan’s lane. George was with me, more as encouragement than anything else. I had outlined my plan of attack, and Volont had dragged his heels. Lamar said I could pull it off.
Volont had said, “You’re asking for big trouble.”
Lamar had said, “Smaller than Waco.” Not fair, really. But effective. I got to go.
I parked my car at the edge of the little rise in Borglan’s yard, where we’d descended to the shed to retrieve the bodies, a good hundred feet from Borglan’s front door. I felt that ought to be enough. Ought to be.
I got out of the car. “Come on, George.” There were two cars and two pickup trucks parked in Borglan’s yard, all at the other end of the house, near the fancy garage.
The front door of the house opened, and I purposely opened the back door of my car, and reached for my camera bag. I kept an eye on the figures that emerged from the house through the back window. Sure as hell, Cletus detached himself, and came stomping over toward us, making loud noises. Two others followed, but hung back just a bit. Confrontation with cops wasn’t something relatively normal people undertook lightly. Unless you were Cletus Borglan, and had yelled at cops for a long time.
I backed out of the car, and made a show of opening my camera bag. “You understand him yet, George?”
“I think it’s something like ‘What the hell are you doing?’ or something like that.”
“Cool.” I rummaged in the camera bag. I was sort of worried about it, too, as it was my wife’s camera. Sue had let me borrow it about ten years before. I just never got around to getting it back to her, and it had been acting up ever since the night of the Colson brothers discovery. I would have returned it to Sue if the department had bought me one, but people like Cletus had always objected to expenditures.
“Get off my property!” Cletus. Beautiful.
“What?” I hollered back, waiving, and watching him stomp closer. He was so determined he was causing a fine spray of whitish mud to splatter around his ankles as he came toward us. I looked back into my bag.
“GET THE HELL OFF MY PROPERTY! YOU BETTER HAVE A WARRANT!”
I looked up. Son of a bitch was fast. He was already at the back of my car.
“Hi, Cletus!” I grinned.
“EITHER SHOW ME A WARRANT, OR GET OFF MY PROPERTY!”
I checked the other two. They were a good fifty feet away, but coming on. Coming in for the fun, I thought.
By that time, Cletus had come around my car, and grabbed me by my shoulder. “YOU HEAR ME?”
I just stepped back, held out a copy of the arrest warrant, and handed it to him. As his eyes dropped to read it, I pulled my handgun out, and stuck it in his face.
“You’re under arrest for murder,” I said. “Get in the car.”
“What?” He was too startled to even be particularly loud. He just stared at the gun barrel three inches from his nose.
George had stepped in behind him, and Cletus was handcuffed in two seconds flat.
“Watch your head,” I said, as we stuffed him into the car, and shut the door.
“What the FUCK is going on here?” Cletus’s support group was about twenty feet off the rear bumper.
I kept my gun in my hand, but pointed downward. “Cletus is under arrest for murder,” I said. They both stepped forward. “Interference with this arrest permits me to use deadly force,” I said, perfectly evenly. It was hard to say it that way. I was nearly laughing. “Think twice, gentlemen.”
They were absolutely rooted to the spot. Stunned. These weren’t hard-core professionals, obviously.
I got in the car, looked over at George, grinned, shut the door, and was backing up before the two men in the drive could even move. Splash. Not intended, but funny as hell.
As we hit the end of the drive, I let out a loud “YES!” and hit the gas.
“You can’t do this,” said Cletus. He didn’t sound too convinced.
“You’re under arrest for murder, Cletus,” I said. “You might want to remember that you do have a right to remain silent…”
Cletus had made the big mistake. He was predictable. Altogether too predictable.
I looked over at George. “What’d I tell you?” He just grinned. I picked up the mike. “Comm, Three is ten-seventy-six, one ten-ninety-five.”
In other words, we were en route, and we had one prisoner in custody.
“Ten-four, Three.” She sound
ed relieved.
“Three, One?” That was Lamar. “Meet you back at the office.” He sounded pleased.
“Ten-four.” Nonchalant. You had to be.
Sixteen
Thursday, January 15, 1998, 1737
We got back to the office, and I was just getting my proud little ducks in a row to begin booking Cletus into the jail, when Lamar approached me.
“Mike can start that,” he said. He looked very grim. “You come back here with us.”
I thought it was sort of strange, but I went back with him into his office. George and Volont were there. They didn’t look too happy, either.
“Sit down,” said Lamar. “Special Agent Volont has something to tell you.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“First,” said Volont, “you have to know two things. One, I’m telling you this because events have, well, overtaken us here. Two, the two brothers were killed by a single individual, acting alone.” He looked at me, evenly.
“Your surveillance team did witness the murders,” I said. Hell, that wasn’t such bad news. Not at all.
“No.” He sighed. “No, they managed to miss that, with the same skill they demonstrated when you caught them.”
He made a little pyramid with his extended fingers.
“They were killed by a man I’ve been tracking for years. You know him as Gabriel.”
“You’re kidding me …” All I could think of to say.
“No.”
Jesus. In the first place, it had just dawned on me that Gabriel, who was a professional in every sense, and was not only capable of killing without remorse, but who was also very able as well, could very easily have been at Borglan’s residence as we were arresting Cletus.
“You might have said something a little sooner,” I said. I looked over at George. “Or did you know?”
“No.”
“That,” I said, “violates just about every ‘need to know’ guideline in the book.” It did, too. You were never supposed to expose an officer to danger in the name of confidentiality. Never.
“He isn’t there,” said Volont. Just a flat statement. “I’m just telling you this because you’ll probably find it out from Cletus.” He looked at me. “You do intend to interview him, don’t you?”
“So where the hell is he?” I thought it was an appropriate question. “Gabriel, I mean. We’ll need to find him as soon as we get a warrant for his arrest.”
Volont held up his hand. “Just a moment. The Bureau has a source fairly close to our Mr. Nieuhauser,” he said. “I receive the reports on a regular basis. Gabriel’s movements and intentions are usually known to us in near real time.” He sounded pleased. “We have to wait until Gabriel is at a location that we could discover by other means, before we can move on him. Otherwise, we reveal the informant, and place them at risk.”
“That the purpose of your surveillance team, then?”
“One of them, yes. So we can reveal them at the proper time, with their data, and show that they were the ones who tracked Gabriel. Saving the life of the informant is a high priority.” He made a tight little smile. “The irony is, now we can use you to confirm the presence of the team, now that you’ve … uhmmm … apprehended them, as it were.”
I knew Volont just well enough to think that he would tell his superiors that he’d planned for the surveillance team to get busted by us. He was adept at that sort of thing.
“Our Mr. Nieuhauser, or Gabriel, has much unfinished business in this county. He’ll undoubtedly be back, and we think fairly soon.”
Volont said that he’d known Gabriel had been in Nation County since around Christmastime. He hadn’t been precisely sure where, but he was now certain it had been the Borglan residence, at least part of the time.
No shit.
“I want that son of a bitch busted as soon as he sets foot in my county,” said Lamar. “None of this pussy-footin’ around like last time.”
“Ah.” Volont actually chuckled. “Understood. This time, we won’t let him blow up Maitland.”
“That’s right.” Lamar glared at Volont. “This time we just got two people killed … so far.”
“So,” said Volont, “please tell me more about the murders…”
I did. I even repeated some detail. Drive it home. When I got to the part about the Colson brothers very likely attempting to convince their killer that they were undercover cops, he nodded. “Really not the man to use that story on,” he said.
I explained about the 5.45 mm PSM shell casing. He nodded again. No surprise to him. Well, now that I knew who the perp was, it wasn’t a surprise to me, either. During the last incident with Gabriel, we’d found that he had been assigned to Europe a lot of the time he was in the Army.
I went through the autopsy findings, and the best guess as to the manner of the death. He spoke.
“What he likely did was to shoot the first one as soon as the undercover cop story was brought up,” he said, slowly. “The other one was probably on his knees, pleading his case by denying he was a cop. He was either shot because Gabriel had to conceal the death of the first, or because Gabriel was still convinced both were officers. From what you say, it seems he still thinks they were officers of some sort.”
I continued with the part about Davies and me interviewing the hired man, our helicopter flight over the area, and ended with the snowmobile chase.
“So, to keep the ball bouncing,” I said, “let me ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Just what is Gabriel’s ‘business’ in Nation County?”
“Money,” he said. “My sources tell me he needs financial support for his activities.”
“He’s here on a fund-raiser?” I asked.
“Of a sort. Not the fifty dollars for a plate of chicken type, though. He apparently intends to rob several banks in the area. Simultaneously.”
Suddenly, it was one of those conversations where two threads spring up at once. While I said, “Several?” George said, “Simultaneously.” And Lamar said, “Take him out now.”
Lamar won for two reasons. He was proposing a course of action, and it just took him longer to get it out, so we all heard his last two words.
“You mean on the murder charges?” I said.
“You’re goddamn right.”
“Are they good enough?” asked George.
“You’re goddamn right they are,” said Lamar. “You know where he is, we go now!”
“Oh, I agree,” said Volont. “We only have one problem.”
We three just looked at him.
He looked at me. “Could I have some coffee, now?”
Before I could answer, he continued. “The problem is, I’m not, well, precisely sure where he is. Are you?”
It all boiled down to the fact that, after the murders, Gabriel had split. Fast and clean, to parts unknown. Which was beginning to look like why the surveillance team stayed on location. To pick him up when he came back.
“This sounds a lot like ‘The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime,’” I said. “Surely you have more than that to go on.”
Volont smiled, shrugged, and simply said, “Of course.” In that “If I tell you, I have to kill you” tone we all knew and loved.
We had to take him at his word. We sure as hell didn’t know where Gabriel was.
“Another question …?” I asked.
“Go ahead,” said Volont.
“Just when were you intending to tell us about the bank robberies?”
“I would have given you twenty-four hours notice, naturally.” He looked at Lamar. “You’d be right there.”
For publicity. Not for any participation in the bust. That’s not what he said, but it was what he meant.
“And now?” I asked.
“Now,” he said, “you’re in the loop. Right along with everybody else.”
Sure.
As I headed back to the booking room, Lamar gave me the rest of the bad news. He’
d decided to let DCI know we’d made an arrest in the Colson case. Well, that was all right, and I should have thought of it first. The unfortunate part was that Art was on his way back to Maitland. Just who I needed.
Booking Cletus had been a drawn-out process. His attorney had practically followed us in the office door. Well, actually, he’d followed us from Cletus’s farm. He’d been one of the two people who had come out of the house with Cletus. He was a largish man, Ray Gunston out of Cedar Rapids. I’d heard of him. Well known, successful, and on TV a lot. Attorney to the rich and infamous, as we said.
Anyway, after forty-five minutes, Cletus was tucked away on a $250,000.00 bond. A tidy sum, but I wasn’t at all certain he couldn’t raise it in a hurry.
We’d also made the acquaintance of his other attorney. This guy named Horace Blitek had just walked in the office, and announced he was “at law, assisting in the representation” of Cletus Borglan.
“I wasn’t aware that Mr. Borglan had any other …”
“I’m part of the defense team, Deputy. Mr. Borglan is a very important man. I received a call from his friends, and since I represent some of his corporate interests, he’ll need me if he’s compelled to raise a bond.”
Sure. I notified Cletus, and he said that Blitek was, indeed, a member of the defense team. Gunston didn’t seem too happy with the arrangement, though. I, for one, had never heard of Blitek. He hadn’t given a card. I did notice, though, that his clothes looked a little worn, especially his shoes.
We’d notified Davies immediately, and he’d driven up when his court case had adjourned for the day. The first thing we did was brief him on Gabriel.
“Holy shit.”
Well, he got that right. I’d just told him that Gabriel, whose real name was Jacob Henry Nieuhauser, was an ex-Army colonel, who had all sorts of Special Ops knowledge, and who was the man who had been so heavily involved in the case where Lamar had been shot, and one of our deputies killed. Not so damned long ago, either.
He laughed a little nervously. “You got extra security laid on for the building here?”
I explained how much good that had done us before. “Besides,” I said, “it’s not in the budget.”
The Big Thaw Page 19
