A Long December

by Donald Harstad

  “Yes sir, one moment,” she said into the phone. She pressed the hold button, and said, “It’s some dude for you, who says he knows who the body is. He won’t give his name.”

  We had a fine phone installation in Dispatch, with a total of six instruments, two of which had full 911 capability and four where you could talk on any line you told the dispatcher to select for you. With twelve lines, we had lots of leeway unless things went to hell.

  “Put me on this one,” I said, picking up one of the phones at the end of the console.

  She did.

  “Houseman here.”

  “It was Rudy. Rudy Cueva,” said the muffled voice. Muffled or not, it sounded so much like Hector I almost called him by name.

  I wasn’t able to connect any Rudy Cueva to anybody I knew. “Who is that?”

  “He’s a team supervisor at the plant, man. A really smart dude.”

  “What plant?” I knew, but if Hector wanted to play a game, he had a reason.

  “The packing plant in Battenberg. That one.”

  “How do you know it’s him? “This was going to be the telling point.

  “I heard it just now, one of the workers in the kill room. He said that it was Rudy.”

  The kill room was just that, the location in the packing plant where they did the actual killing of the livestock. “How did he find out?”

  “I cannot say, man. You know that.”

  There was absolutely no doubt that it was Hector, but if he wanted to remain officially anonymous, that was his choice. “Any idea why he was killed?”

  There was a prolonged sigh on the other end of the line. “Because he knew something, and they dint want him to talk.” He was getting exasperated.

  “And what was that?”

  “I got to go, man,” and the line went dead.

  “He hung up,” I told Martha and Hester. “That didn’t happen to be a 911 line, did it?”

  Martha grinned. “It sure was. Cell phone, hit one of the two U.S. Cellular towers in Battenberg. Here.” She handed me the printout.

  PROGRAM: E9C0NPRT PROCESS id: 2599 18-DEC-01 22:45:47

  TRUNK SEIZURE: 22:45:16 RLI REQ: 22:45:19 FIRST RING: 22:45:19

  MF RCUE RER0V:22:45:16 ALI RECU: 22:45:23 CALL ANSWERED: 22:45:28

  PANI RECEIUED: 22:45:19 PILOT RTE: 22:45:19 CALL RELEASED: 22:47:02

  PH: (563) 555-8298 CS: WRLS EHCH: 515-319-563 NO DESCRIPT. PILOT: 319-9132 NAME:

  US CELLULAR (HYPOINTI LOC: 5633887343

  ADOR: 1.16 Ml SwBRTTENBERG OMNI

  CITY 00054-0-198, NATION ID: 90-88789

  ESN: 00069 MAITLAND —-WIRELESS BATTENBERG PD UERIFY UERIFY UERIFY

  DATE: 12/14/02 AAI: SON: 101

  Nice. We were still in Phase One for cell phones, which meant that at some point in the future, several towers would triangulate the call and we’d get an actual physical location. That was what they called Phase Two. Right now, we got the tower that the cell phone had accessed and the number of the phone. Good enough for government work, as they say.

  I looked in my billfold, just to make certain. The caller’s number belonged to Hector Gonzalez, my buddy.

  “Okay, Martha. Time to earn your keep. Run a OLN on a Rudy Cueva, no middle name available, so just first and last, if you can do something like that. Probably a Rudolph instead of Rudy, but do both. Probably within five years of thirty, but I’d be guessing. An address of Battenberg. See what you get.”

  Hester looked at me quizzically.

  “The informant I talked to earlier. He thinks that this Rudy Cueva’s our victim.”

  “Well, outstanding!”

  The search for an Operator’s License Number came back within two seconds. Nobody in Iowa by that name had a driver’s license, nor an automobile registered in their name. In fact, the four Cuevas who were listed were all female. We couldn’t try a Computerized Criminal History on a name without a date of birth.

  “Try a dummy one,” said Hester. “Give him a birth date sometime in 1971. It might work.”

  It had in the past, on occasion. This time, there was no such luck.

  I looked in the phone book. Now, that’s not as large a resource as you might think, because the entire Battenberg directory was only about fifty pages, and that included the government and business sections. No Rudy Cueva listed. No Cueva listed at all. The three of us checked the book for the entire county, using three books and taking sections. Took about five minutes. Nothing.

  “Damn.”

  That had been the first real break in the case. Well, I’d thought so, anyway. It still could be, but we were at a dead end for the moment. I didn’t dare call Hector back, because if he was at work, there were bound to be people around, and I was sure he’d preferred anonymity for a good reason. I figured he’d be the very best judge of whether or not it was safe for him to be chatting with a cop on his cell phone.

  We checked with Battenberg PD. No Rudy Cueva listed in their city directory, but Norm Vincent thought the name sounded familiar. We had him go into the city manager’s office and check the water bills. If you lived there, you had to be hooked up to city water, simple as that. Nothing.

  “Well,” I said, “our caller said he works for the packing plant. I sure as hell don’t want to call their night shift and start asking questions, though. If he does work there, and if he’s got family, the first thing that’s gonna happen is that somebody calls his wife and tells her that we’re checking.”

  “Couldn’t you get there first? “asked Martha. Like I said, she was new.

  “Not guaranteed, and we aren’t sure it’s him that’s dead in the first place. Just a tip.” I shrugged. “Let me call that anonymous caller back.” It had to be done. Having made such a momentous decision, I was kind of disappointed when I got a recording telling me that the owner of that mobile phone had either turned it off, left the car, or left the dialing area.

  “If it’s who I think it is,” I said, “he’s turned it off. And he’s at work in the plant, and I don’t want to go there and…” Well, what the hell. “Give me the phone book,” I said, holding out my hand. “Might as well call the owner.”

  He, naturally, was unlisted. I started with our Emergency Notification List, which was pretty much for fires and tornadoes, and started going down the chain of command for the packing plant. I finally got a very sleepy woman named Gloria Bennett. She was the head of accounting. She seemed to think I was INS or something. Finally, I got out of her that there might be somebody working there named Rudy Cueva, but she had no idea where he lived. I asked if her company records might indicate an address or a phone number. She said they might, but she wasn’t about to go to the plant at this time of night to find out. She said she’d call us in the morning.

  It’s a free country.

  Less than a minute later, Carson Hilgenberg called. He was the new county attorney. Really new, really young. About Carson’s only experience with criminal cases was to accept plea bargains for fifth-degree theft. He wanted to know if there had actually been a murder.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “First-class one at that.”

  There was a slight pause, and then, “What do you mean, ‘first-class’? Do you mean first-degree?”

  I chuckled. “Let’s call it ‘first-degree-plus,’“I said. “Victim was found in the middle of a county road, wrists bound, and his head blown off.”

  This time the silence was a little longer. “No shit?”

  “You betcha. Execution-style, as they say.”

  “Uh, well, has the state prosecutor been called?”

  “Not yet, Carson. We won’t do that until we have an arrest, or a really good suspect. No reason to. Nothing for him to do. Besides,” I added, “you have to be the one to do that.”

  “What?”

  “The AG’s office only gets involved in county cases if the county attorney requests it.”

  “Right. Well then, do you have their number?”

  I was having trouble keeping a straight
face, and hoped it didn’t affect the tone of my voice. “We’ll get it to you. For now, though, we’re going to be busy just developing a suspect.”

  “You don’t have anybody in custody? “Carson sounded worried.

  “Oh, hell, no. We don’t have the faintest fuckin’ notion who did it,” I said. It was just too hard to resist.

  There was another pause, and then, “Well, what are you going to do if you need help on a search warrant, or something, like an arrest warrant, or…”

  “If we need help, Carson, we know where you live,” I said. “We’ll just call.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’re pretty good with that sort of thing, really we are,” I said. No sense in scaring the kid to death right off the bat. “But if you want, it’s okay for us to take you along when we do the arrest. If you want.”

  “I’ll let you know, Carl,” he said, so seriously that it was almost touching.

  “Okay,” I relented a little bit. “It’s not really necessary for you to be there; we’ll try to videotape it. Anyway, as soon as the reports get done, we’ll forward copies to your office. Interesting reading so far, and I get a feeling that it’ll get better as we go.”

  “Thank you.” He sounded absolutely grateful.

  He wasn’t such a bad kid, really. Just not much of an attorney. “Just remember, Carson, don’t do any press stuff until you double-check with us to get the most up-to-date information. DCI will probably brief you tomorrow sometime. Okay?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m glad they’re involved.”

  He meant that. It was almost a guarantee that the State Attorney General’s Office would be available for the case, thereby relieving Carson of any practical responsibility other than making the obligatory phone call.

  On that note, I went home, leaving instructions for Dispatch to call me if they got any more calls from anybody regarding our case. Anybody but the media, that is. I was very specific about that.

  16 :12

  THE BARN WALL ABSORBED MOST OF THE FORCE OF THE EXPLOSION, but I could still feel the slap of the pressure wave. I wasn’t aware of any fragments making it through the old wood siding, but the overpressure kicked loose a huge amount of dust and straw and hay debris. It was instant blindness.

  “Holy shit!” said Sally.

  “Stay down!” After a few seconds, I popped up and down at my peephole, trying to see if the figure was still behind the tangled fence without getting my head blown off in the process. That didn’t work. Not really enough time to comprehend anything before I was down again. “Hester, you okay?”

  There was a loud, mumbled “Yeah!” that would have been funny another time.

  I took a chance and kept my head up for a longer look. Nothing… nothing. Then, so quickly that it made me jump, four or five figures rose in unison and began blazing away at the barn. It was quite a volume of fire, and we all hunkered down as wood chips and pieces of metal-jacketed rounds went whizzing through the boards. More fragments, more dust—almost enough to make me choke.

  This time, though, I was back at my firing port as soon as the noise of the firing stopped. I was scared as hell, but I didn’t want to give ‘em a chance to advance toward us.

  I saw them. I truly did, and for the first time I got a good look. There were four of them, all standing or kneeling and putting fresh magazines into their rifles. Now, as far as I was concerned, they were fair game.

  I cranked off a full magazine as fast as I could pull the trigger. Probably just because I was firing, I heard Sally’s shotgun blast twice, and I thought I heard other shots as well. My twenty-eight rounds went out, and at least two found their mark, because the two men in the middle twisted and tumbled and went down like sacks of meal. The other two disappeared, but not in the uncoordinated fashion of the middle two. I thought I’d missed both of those two for sure.

  I replaced my magazine by feel, not looking down, not taking my eyes away from my field of view.

  “Damn,” said Sally. “You get anything?”

  Her voice was strangely loud but faint at the same time. It took me a second, but then I realized the noise had screwed up my hearing.

  “One or two, I’m pretty sure.” As the dust and debris began to settle, I was sure I could see a booted foot tangled in the fence line. It wasn’t moving. “One for certain. You?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, with a tremor in her voice.

  Then Sally’s radio went nuts.

  “What the fuck’s going on up there, Three?.’“ Lamar’s voice was easy to recognize on the radio.

  “Tell him it was a…” and then I held my hand out for the mike. “One, Three?”

  “Three, go ahead!”

  I paused for a second or two, to make sure my voice was calm and pitched low. The last thing I wanted to do was to generate more excitement among our people down on the road. “Okay, One, that was a grenade, and then four or five guys with AKs, and then me. I think we got one of’em.”

  “How about you people?”

  I turned and saw that Hester had moved into the stanchions closer to the limestone wall. She looked at me and nodded.

  “I think we’re good. Hold your traffic, and I’ll check with George.”

  Poor George, I believe he thought we’d forgotten about him. I reached him on the now-clear walkie-to-walkie frequency.

  “You okay up there, George?”

  It took a couple of seconds, and then he said, “Fine. Are you all right?

  “We’re doin’ good. I think that was a grenade there. Did you see it?”

  “I saw him throw it, but I didn’t get a good look. Probably. We got two of ‘em, Carl. I can see two bodies from up here. The others went back toward the shed.”

  “Excellent,” I said. So the other shots had been George firing from the loft. “I thought I got one for sure.”

  Two dead. I hadn’t been able to recognize either of them. And they had been reloading their rifles when I shot them, or at least as far as I could tell from my position. I took a deep breath. They weren’t shooting at me at the moment I fired. Somewhere out there was an attorney licking his lips.

  “I think there’s somebody, maybe two or so, over by the silo,” said George. “They were moving over that way when the explosion went off. That’s why I couldn’t warn you; I wasn’t looking front all the time.”

  Interesting. Those two, plus the four or five at the fence line I was beginning to wonder where everybody had come from.

  “That’s fine. No problem. Hey, it’s gettin’ dark, George. Why don’t you come down here when it gets dark enough to hide you? “I was also afraid that they’d zero in on him, now that he’d revealed his position by shooting, but I thought better of saying that over the radio.

  “Okay. Good idea.”

  Chalk up a round for us.

  CHAPTER 05

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 09:45

  I’D GOTTEN TO BED WELL PAST MIDNIGHT, but rolled out of bed at 06:30, just missing myself on TV. Sue was apologetic, figuring that since I hadn’t left her a note, I didn’t want to be gotten up. She said it was “nice,” but that I’d only been on the tube for about five seconds.

  I saw her off to school at seven-thirty, which was pretty unusual since my normal shift started at noon, and I rarely awoke before ten. Being up, I’d figured on calling the office, seeing what was going on, and getting there by eight or so.

  When I called, Lamar took the phone, said he was worried about my accumulating overtime, and ordered me not to be in before eleven. I said something about him never getting worried when I was tired, only when he thought I was getting rich. He thought that was funny.

  I called Hester on her cell phone. She was already at the office, talking to the lab guys, who had finished late and stayed the night in Maitland to avoid a four-hour drive back to Des Moines with no sleep.

  “Just a sec,” said Hester. She spoke to someone up at the office, probably Sally. “You want to tell him, or can I? Cool.” They
must have said that she could. “Guess what they found in that ravine behind the outbuildings?”

  “Four more bodies,” I said. I couldn’t imagine anything worse.

  “No such luck,” she said, altogether too brightly. “But the ditch is full of empty containers. Ether cans. Probably anhydrous ammonia was once in some of the buckets and plastic barrels. A whole bunch of busted open lithium batteries. Rags, other debris.” She paused, and I could hear her grinning. “And empty shell casings, 7.62mm shell casings. Made in China, found just up the ditch from the ether cans. Many, many shell casings. How about that?”

  A meth lab. Or, at least, the trash heap from one. And the shell casings were pretty typical, too. Lots of meth dealers liked to be armed, and Chinese SKS rifles, copies of Soviet ones, were easy to come by. “Meth. With guns, too, and target practice.”

  “You betcha.”

  “Son of a bitch.” I chuckled. “Is there a functional lab there, or did we miss it?”

  “No functional lab,” said Hester, “but it was once. I’ve called DNE and they’ve called DEA, and we’re going to need a professional cleanup. They’ll be up as soon as possible.”

  DNE was the Iowa Department of Narcotics Enforcement, and DEA was its federal equivalent, the Drug Enforcement Administration. They had to be notified, and they’d take care of calling the Environmental Quality people. Lots of the stuff used to make methamphetamine was highly toxic, not only at the point of contact, but because of groundwater pollution as well.

  “Think this is our motive?” I asked. “Drug-related?”

  “It’s very possible,” she said. “Related, anyway. Want to hear my next news?”

  “Go ahead… you’re on a roll.”

  It turned out that the lab guys had done the case prints off the dead body late last night, and they’d been turned over to a state trooper at 07:00. He’d relayed them to the AFIS terminal at the Cedar Rapids police department.

  “They’re already being run, even as we speak,” said Hester.

  “Excellent.”

  “Next,” she said, “the milk hauler… uh… Elmo Hazlett?”