A Long December

by Donald Harstad

  The lieutenant, apparently, had decided that, since this-was a federal matter, his TAC team would act in support, but not take any overt action until the federal agents in charge were at the scene and could assess things for themselves.

  “Policy,” said Marty. “I can’t change it.”

  “Right.” Crap. I really didn’t need this.

  “What I can do, though, is deploy my people on both sides of the lane. We can give you supporting fire toward the silo and in the main yard right up to the edge of the barn.”

  “Right.” I didn’t say anything more for about two breaths. “I guess that’s what we get, then.”

  “We can give you covering fire if you can make a break for it,” he said.

  “We’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Does that yard light up there work, do you know?”

  “It did the last time we were here in the dark,” I said. “Two, three days back.”

  “Then we’ll take it out. We’ve got night-vision goggles. No problem.”

  “Don’t do that! Jesus, we’re gonna have little enough light here anyway. You take that out, we’ll be blind.”

  “But then they can see my people as soon as they break cover.”

  It was hard not to tell him how little that bothered me. “Just don’t do it, okay? If that light has to go, it’s on our request only, understand?”

  This time, he was the one who paused. “Okay. You bet. Look, man, this wasn’t my idea. If I had my way, we’d be up there right now. But they tell me it ain’t an active shooter situation.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know. They sure as hell were pretty active a little while ago.” I thought I’d try to lighten it up a bit. “Do we have anybody on scene that can promote you to captain?”

  “Let me ask around,” he said, after a pause. “I like that.”

  “Okay. Gotta go. Call as soon as you have a change of orders, okay?”

  “You bet. Be careful up there.”

  “Hey!”

  “Yeah? “I caught him just before he terminated the call.

  “I don’t know if anybody told you or not, but there’s only one uniform here in the barn. Female sheriff’s officer. The rest of us are in street clothes. Just like the bad guys.”

  “No, nobody told me that. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure,” I said.

  “Okay. You be careful up there, now.”

  I was getting a little tired of people telling me to be careful.

  Not five seconds after I broke the connection, there was a really weird sound that came floating down from the area of the shed. It was a human voice, no doubt about that, and it sounded kind of like…well, a rebel yell with lyrics covers it pretty well. I certainly didn’t understand the words, if that’s what they were, but it sounded as if it were meant to be intimidating.

  At that moment, for some strange reason, it occurred to me that I’d very likely killed two men. I thought about that. I didn’t feel any remorse. None at all. I didn’t feel different. I didn’t feel happy, either. It was weird. I’d never killed anybody before, and I’d always thought it would affect me strongly. Whatever the effect it was having, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t stop me from shooting the next guy who lobbed a grenade at me.

  There was a loud thud against the barn, and then another. Having learned my lesson with the first grenade, I hunkered down and yelled “Get down!” just as the two explosions went off, not more than a second apart.

  I caught a lot more dust this time as the blast wave whipped through the gaps in the boards and cleaned off the top of the foundation stones.

  Like I say, I’d learned my lesson. I got my head up as high as I had to in order see out my little peephole, stuck my rifle through the boards, and looked for a target. Nothing. Nothing in sight, no movement, nothing. And it was getting really dark there in the shadow of the hillside.

  I fired three shots in the general direction of the shed, just to discourage whoever was thinking about throwing some more at us. Sally, who apparently thought, “If Houseman has a reason to fire, so do I,” blasted one twelve-gauge round from her position a split second after I stopped. Silence.

  “How damned many of those things you think they got?” asked Sally.

  “I dunno,” I said. “A bunch, I guess. You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  I turned to Hester. “How about you?”

  She nodded and gave a wave of her hand.

  I looked up through the stair opening and toward the hayloft. “Why don’t you give George a try,” I said to Sally. As she began to talk, I squinted out my peephole again.

  The light had gone, and if I were going to be able to see anybody, they’d have to be wearing white.

  “George is on his way down,” said Sally. “Look sharp!”

  I looked as hard as I could, for all the good it did me. About ten seconds after she spoke, there was a loud thump on the floor above us, and then George came clattering down the steps.

  Not a shot was fired. In the gloom, that didn’t surprise me.

  “Boy, it’s dark down here.” George took a deep breath. “How’s Hester?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, from her post near the rear wall.

  “Oh, there you are…. Boy, I don’t have a clue where those last two bombs came from. I couldn’t see shit up there.”

  “It’s no better down here,” I said, “but at least we can act as a unit again.”

  “Right. Is there a TAC team up yet?”

  “Well, yes and no,” I said. I thought I heard a radio squawk. “Anybody hear that?”

  CHAPTER 13

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2001 10:40

  WHILE I TRIED FOR HECTOR AND BEN, Hester was on the phone to her headquarters in Des Moines, checking for assistance. There was just too much to do for us to be able to get it done in a timely fashion.

  Hector wasn’t answering his phone. He virtually slept with the thing next to his ear. There was only one place where he’d turn it off. While Hester was still contacting her boss, I said, “I’ll be over at the library.”

  I walked the two blocks. Normally I would have driven, for the sole purpose of having the cop car immediately available if I needed it. You learn to appreciate wasted time when somebody calls for help. This time, though, I thought it might be better if I were to keep it out of sight. My car was unmarked, but in a rural area, an unmarked cop car becomes very well known very quickly, and I was pretty sure just about anybody who I didn’t want to recognize it would do so immediately. Hector, being the nervous sort, might appreciate that.

  The big electronic thermometer outside the savings and loan read twenty-two degrees. It would get worse in the next thirty days, so I tried to enjoy the twenty-two degrees as I walked toward the new library. I met two rabbis walking toward me. Both were dressed in black hats and ankle-length black coats. Quite a contrast to the blue jeans and brightly colored down vests I was accustomed to encountering.

  “Hi,” I said as we passed.

  I got looks of complete incomprehension. They were probably New York born and raised, and strangers just didn’t say hi out of the blue. I chuckled to myself as I walked. Sooner or later, they’d be greeting me back. Well, if they stayed long enough. Like Ben had told me, “You can take the rabbi out of New York, but it’s very hard to take the New York out of the rabbi.”

  I walked another fifty feet toward the library, toward the building the rabbis had left. Meier’s Deli. It hit me as soon as I saw the sign. I stood outside, and called the sheriff’s department on my cell phone.

  “Nation County Sheriff,” said Sally.

  “Hi. It’s Houseman. Can you do me a favor?”

  “What a unique request,” she said.

  “Just a fast one. We have any more reports of sick or dead people? Anybody been in the ER, or the clinic, or anything?”

  “Beats me,” she said.

  “That’s the favor. Call Henry. The unlisted cell phone number he gave us. Ask him. It’s really importan
t.”

  “On TV once,” she said, and I could hear the keyboard clicking in the background as she called up Henry’s listing in the Dispatch database, “they had something called the ‘blue men’ or something, and they were trying to get a common location, or… let me put you on hold…”

  That was what made her such a good dispatcher. She could think. Sometimes faster than the rest of us.

  A few seconds later, I was back on the line. “Houseman, you still there?”

  “Yep. Whatcha got?”

  “No cases. Zip. Nothing at all.”

  “Excellent. Thanks, kid.”

  “It was a story I read in high school,” she said. “‘The Eleven Blue Men.’”

  “Okay.”

  I went into the deli and spoke to Abe Meier, the owner.

  “Abe, where do you get your meat?”

  “Our meat? You want to know where we get our meat?”

  “The beef is what I need to know about,” I said. “Where does that come from?”

  “The plant.”

  “The plant here in town?”

  “Of course here in town. There is a problem?”

  “I dunno, Abe. How often do you buy beef from them?”

  He thought for a few seconds. “We go through one, one and a half quarters each week. If we’re having a good week. Not so good, maybe one. We sell fresh; we don’t freeze.”

  “You buy any since last Monday, maybe?

  “We buy each Wednesday. You’re asking me this for a reason?”

  “Give me one more answer, and then I’ll tell you,” I said. “What kind of truck do they use to deliver it? One of the eighteen-wheelers, or one of the smaller trucks?”

  “We get it ourselves. In my wife’s truck,” he said.

  “Your wife’s truck?” I’d seen his wife driving around on occasion. “I thought she drove a four-wheel-drive Subaru?”

  “For the taxes,” he said, “it’s a truck.”

  As I entered the library, I almost turned and left. There was a class of about thirty fourth-graders and a teacher sort of invading the place. They were all over, and Martha Taylor, my former classmate and current librarian, was helping round them up. She saw me, glanced over toward the computers, looked back, and gave a little wave. That triggered the memory that she’d been one of our high school cheerleaders, and that we’d called her “Boom Boom.” Boom Boom the librarian. I couldn’t suppress a grin.

  I recognized the back of Hector’s head at the second computer, and that’s just about all that could have persuaded me to stay.

  I waded over to the computers through the noisy herd of runny noses and tennis shoes, and tapped Hector on the shoulder.

  “Hi there,” I said.

  He just about jumped out of his skin. “Holy shit, man, doan do that!” he said, startled. “I coulda had a heart attack, man.”

  “Sorry. It’s probably all the noise in here. Got a minute?”

  “Ah, not right now I don’t…”

  “Sure you do. Let’s go to our table.”

  I let him lead. I couldn’t see anybody else in the place who might be making him so nervous, but I only looked as we traversed the place toward the table. There could have been somebody else in there I didn’t see.

  “Have a seat,” I said.

  He pulled out a chair and turned it about forty-five degrees from the table before he sat in it. Easer to bolt that way, and easier to make it look like he didn’t want to talk to me if somebody was to observe us. I really liked Hector.

  As I sat, I said, “Okay. Now I know much more than I did when we talked the last time, and so do you. Let’s compare notes.”

  “I don’t know much more,” he said.

  “Sure you do. You know Orejas is dead. Or Jose Gonzales, or whoever he wanted people to think he was.”

  “Sure. That’s common knowledge, man. Orejas, he got sick.”

  “He sure as hell did,” I said. “But I think he got sick and died because somebody made him sick.”

  Silence.

  “I think you know who did that, and why.”

  “I doan know why you would think that,” he said, but a smile was trying to break out on his face. “I just work here.”

  That was one of my old lines. “I don’t buy that any more than you did,” I said. “Let’s talk about where Rudy got his money.”

  “The plant.” The grin was trying harder.

  “Yeah, right. For three bucks an hour. Thirty-nine hours a week. That’s a hundred and…seventeen bucks a week. Tell me more.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m cooked.” The grin came out, and he looked around. “Okay, this is gonna be fast.”

  “Right.”

  “You think because he’s Colombian, he’s connected, he sells dope, and he gets rich, doan you?”

  “It had occurred to me,” I said.

  “He used to be, man. Dope-connected, okay? But no more.” His smile disappeared. “He still is connected. He is still Colombian, see? But not dope, okay? Not dope. No more dope.”

  “Okay? “That didn’t leave much.

  “If I say more they will kill me, too.”

  “Well, neither of us wants that,” I said, kind of surprised at the sudden intensity.

  “I doan want it much more than you,” he said.

  “Sure. So, Orejas was killed by the same people as Rudy, then?” I was just fishing, but sometimes that produces pretty good results.

  “You know he was.”

  Well, I pretty much did now. “Why?”

  Hector was about to crap, I swear, but he hung in there. “They used him, and Rudy did not like it. They lied and they used him.”

  “Who?”

  “Hey, you got to earn that big money sometime,” he said, and the smile tried to come back. It didn’t make it.

  “The calf-shit yellow car, the thin-faced man, and two or three others.” I said it flat, matter-of-fact, because I wanted him to think I was really confident that they were the ones. Well, hell, they were the only ones I had.

  “You should eat well this week,” he said.

  “Why? Why did they do him?”

  “Rudy?” He glanced around again. “He got pissed. About Orejas. It surprised him.”

  “Wait a second. Orejas died after Rudy was killed,” I said.

  “He was not pissed because Orejas was dead,” said Hector, sounding like a very patient teacher. “Because Orejas, he was still alive at that time. It was something else. Somethin’ they did to him. But it was before Orejas was dead, I can tell you that, because I heard about it last Saturday. That’s all I know, man,” he said. “I gotta go. Too many people could come in here.”

  Looking back, I know he wasn’t just making an excuse, but at the time it struck me as kind of lame.

  He simply stood, zipped his jacket, said, “I will listen for you,” and walked out the door. With a room full of fourth-graders, there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. I sure as hell didn’t want to go running out the door after him. Way too much attention.

  But I had more than I’d started with. Not too bad for ten minutes’ work. I stood more slowly than Rudy had, pushed our chairs back under the table, and waved at Boom Boom.

  Now, if I could just find Linda…

  I was just getting back to the PD when Hester came out, looked around, saw me, and waved for me to hurry. I got all hopeful that she’d gotten some key bit of information. No such luck.

  “We’ve got to get back to the office; the Public Health people are here and we need to go to the briefing.”

  “How soon?”

  “Noon. Let’s go.”

  I looked at my watch. Eleven thirty-four. Damn. “Any word on Linda?”

  “It’s only been an hour or so, Houseman. Patience. You find Hector?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and told her what I’d learned.

  “This just gets stranger and stranger,” she said. “Before he died, huh?”

  “That’s what he said, and that he he
ard about it last Saturday already.”

  “Couldn’t you get him to say more? “She had her car door open. “He’s got to know more.”

  “I was surrounded by munchkins,” I said across the top of my car as I opened my own door. “Tell you about that later.”

  We hit the office at about five to noon. The parking lot was jammed with vehicles, including all our officers, on duty or off. Three unmarked cop-type cars, four smaller cars with the white decals of the State of Iowa on the side, the County Health nurses’ Bronco, Doc Zimmer’s car, and three or four I didn’t recognize.

  Hester and I had to drive around the back and park in the prisoner-unloading area.

  “Jesus,” I said as we got out of our cars. “It looks like a football game or something.”

  “It’s getting worse,” she said, pointing to the street below the jail hill. “Look who’s here.”

  Judy Mercer, her cameraman, and their white and blue KNUG four-wheel-drive were backing down from the main jail parking lot.

  “Well, this time she’s not our problem,” I said. But we hustled into the jail anyway, just to be sure we weren’t caught on camera again.

  Once inside, we were crammed into the kitchen with all the drivers of those cars we’d seen, plus the county attorney, two people from the state attorney general’s office, and three DCI agents. I recognized the oldest of them: Art Meyerman, an ex-Nation County deputy, and a royal pain in the butt. I waved at him across the room. He barely acknowledged me. Crap. Art was an obstructionist martinet by temperament and choice. What the hell was he doing here?

  “I see they sent Art,” said Hester.

  “Yeah. Whoopee.” I glanced around the kitchen. “Why him?”

  “Beats me,” she said. “Last I knew he’d been transferred out of Intel. Don’t know where he went, but I thought he’d been pretty much moved out of useful.”

  I could buy that.

  Lamar gave a general introduction that lasted about fifteen seconds. More or less, a “listen up and take notes” word to the wise. He then turned it over to an assistant attorney general, whose name eluded me when the compressor for the kitchen refrigerator kicked in. He apparently concentrated on health and safety issues. He was brief, and only told us how important it was for everybody to cooperate.