A Long December

by Donald Harstad

  George shut his file. “Carl, could we meet at the local PD, or your office, when you’re done here?”

  “You bet.” I looked at Bligh. “Why don’t you get your information from Ben here, and George and I’ll go over to the PD. Call over there when you’re done; I’ll come get you.” I was really anxious to hear more from George, and I was sure he didn’t want to talk in front of Bligh and Ben.

  George and I were in the Battenberg PD within five minutes. The chief wasn’t there, but the city clerk let us in just as she closed up.

  “Jesus, George. What’s up?”

  “We’re considering this a terrorism case, Carl.”

  “Okay. Sure. Domestic, though, I assume?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  He wasn’t. As it turned out, several known terrorist groups, including Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, were known to have recruited the services of non-Muslim terrorists to do some of their dirty work. The “recruits” were readily available through the terrorists’ established drug connections, and came equipped with at least some expertise in the required areas.

  “Most important,” said George, “these individuals aren’t tagged as extremist Muslim terrorists. Some Thais, some Laotians, some Colombians, Mexicans, and…you know, Carl. Anywhere there’s a foreign importer of illegal drugs, they have a connection. France, Afghanistan, they use those connections to recruit. Lots easier to conceal their activities that way. And,” he added, “they’re always overseen by the faithful. Well, ‘the fanatical’ would be more accurate. The radical, fundamentalist Muslims are always in control.”

  “Recruiting unemployed muscle from the cartels…”

  “Yep. That’s one source.”

  “And that’s what we have here?”

  “With your Mr. Jose Gonzales, I think it’s possible, if not downright likely,” said George. “What makes you think he’s from Colombia?”

  I told him what we’d discovered and included the fact that the main information had come from a confidential informant. I did not name Hector.

  “We did establish, based on the tip, that the address for Cueva in L.A. was false,” I said. I went on to explain the duplicate Social Security numbers. “It sure would explain some stuff…they’re recruited, but for money, I suppose?”

  “Mostly,” he said. “At least they would be, if I’m right about the connection.”

  “So, like, ‘hired’ might be a better term, though? Not to split hairs or anything…”

  “Hired,” said George, “is a good term. We prefer ‘recruited,’ though, because if we collar some of them, we don’t want to piss around with the defense demanding a paper trail for their ‘hired’ services.” He produced the first honest smile I’d seen from him that day. “I’d hate to have to produce a W-2 for one of ‘em. It’s a practical thing.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “I called my office a couple of hours ago,” he said, “right after Ben told me about this Gonzales man. Our experts assure us that there’s virtually no chance that the ricin was contacted accidentally. That say there’s no chance it’s used in meat processing. No way, not even if they used castor oil to lube the machinery. Ricin’s a by-product, and nobody anywhere near here refines castor beans.” He gave me a worried look. “Ricin was one of the major weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was trying to produce in quantity. Lots of the research was done there, and we destroyed a bunch of the stuff right after the Gulf War. That’s another reason we think it’s not a home-grown problem.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Iraq produced a lot of it. But, hell, they weren’t the only ones. Anyway, last I heard, CDC was sending two people up anyway, and they may send more now. Look, I better set you up for our briefing.”

  “You gotta be kidding,” I said. “You’re gonna have a briefing? Christ, George, we just got out of a state briefing.” George was a friend. Maybe. “Could you get me out of this one? I’m losing valuable time on my homicide case here.”

  “Not out of this one,” he said. “You’ll be doing part of it.” He looked at his watch. “The plane carrying the CDC people has already landed. Cedar Rapids. They should be driving up now. The FBI joint intelligence team has members on their way from D.C., and they should be getting to Cedar Rapids within a few hours now. Can you be ready to give them a summary of what you have in, say, four hours or so?”

  Shit. “Ah…let me call Hester. She’ll have to be there, too.”

  “Hester is DCI’s agent on the homicide? Excellent!” George and Hester had worked together before, too.

  “Yeah. It’s just been old home week around here.” I stood. “Look, I’ve got an informant I’m looking for, and a missing female who was the live-in with Cueva, who split on us.”

  “Are these already set to be interviewed, or are you just planning to talk to them at some time?”

  I thought that was a strange sort of question. “Oh, planning, I guess. Actually, we have an ATL out on the woman, probably APIA. No response yet, as far as I know.”

  “Why don’t we go to your office? Just a suggestion, but don’t you think you should expand the APIA?”

  APIA stood for All Points, Iowa. That meant that every police teletype in Iowa got the relevant Attempt To Locate data.

  “Upper Midwest?”

  “Let’s go national,” he said. “From you, though, not from us. Just for now. It’s a security thing. How long has she been gone?”

  “Not more than twelve hours.”

  George and I rounded up Bligh from the plant and went to the Gonzales apartment, where we linked up with Hester, Carson Hilgenberg, and Dr. McWhirter. When George walked in, it was one of the very rare times I’ve ever seen Hester floored.

  “George? What on earth…?”

  Carson Hilgenberg stepped forward. He didn’t know George, but he’d apparently decided he was important. He introduced himself.

  “Glad to meet you,” said George. “I’m Special Agent Pollard, FBI.”

  “Really?” asked Hilgenberg.

  “Really,” said George.

  While George filled in Hester, Hilgenberg, and Dr. McWhirter about why he was there, I called the office on a land line and had a chat with Sally.

  “Hi. Hey, we gotta go national on the ATL for Linda Moynihan.”

  “Uh, sure…okay…but I’ll need more information. That’s a formal request, so we need a wanted/missing person’s report…just a sec…” and I heard her mutter to herself, “page 939…” She was looking at the NCIC manual. “Uh, can I do her as a missing person? For that she has to be mentally disabled, or abducted, or…”

  “No, no. Just wanted.”

  “Has a warrant been issued for her? I really need a warrant for that.”

  NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, is the overseeing authority for all police teletype messages, and they have pretty stringent rules. “Not yet. Can we just say one will be, ah, obtained in the future?”

  “Yeah…” Sally sounded reluctant. “WWBI, Warrant Will Be Issued. But I better have a warrant number within twenty-four hours, or I’m in trouble. With a bond attached. And it better include a ‘Will Extradite’ or you ain’t gonna get much of an effort out of anybody. But you gotta get a warrant…”

  “Okay. Do that. WWBI. Call her a material witness in a homicide case.”

  “Right. That was the easy part.”

  “Hey, is the media around up there or anything?”

  “Around? Well” and I could hear her voice fade slightly as she stood and walked to the window “out here in the parking lot I count three TV Broncos. Is that enough?”

  Even the press, apparently, had a problem with keeping secrets. I’d thought that only Judy Mercer from KNUG would be there.

  “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll be back in a while. Get ready for some company.”

  “What?”

  “Better break out the thirty-cup coffeepot. You’re going to have gue
sts. That’s all I can say.” I looked over at George, who was listening to my end of the conversation. “Sally,” I said, indicating the phone.

  George came over and said, “Let me talk to her.” I handed him the phone.

  “Hi, Sally! It’s George of the Bureau.” He knew his nickname, apparently. “Yes! Pretty soon, you bet. Hey, this really has got to be kept pretty quiet for right now, okay? You have any trouble with getting any of the messages you want out, or accepted, or anything, call this number…” and he pulled out a business card and read a series of numbers to her. “Tell her it’s on my authority, S.A. Pollard, and give the word ‘buoyant.’ Yes… b-u-o-y-a-n-t. Got that? Okay, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing you!”

  That done, Hester drew our attention to the unmarked spray can that I remembered seeing the first time we were in the apartment.

  “We think there’s a good chance that this could be the delivery system for the ricin,” she said. “We haven’t touched it yet…but we have to wrap it securely and forward it to the FBI labs in D.C. It looks just like an ordinary spray can. But if you look at it really closely,” she said, pointing with her pen, “you’ll see that it’s not a can that’s had the label torn off. No glue marks, no residual paper patches, nothing. But, it does have a commercial serial number on the bottom.”

  “So, where’d it come from? “I thought that was a good question.

  “Not sure,” she said. “I do know, though, that major paint stores will make up spray cans to special order. You buy the paint; they put it in the can and pressurize it for you. That’s a possibility.”

  “I didn’t know they did that,” I said. “Cool.”

  “There’s also a box of synthetic vinyl exam gloves inside a shoe box in the closet over there,” said Hester. “It’s opened, but I don’t know if any are gone.”

  The things you miss if you only think it’s an unattended death. “No smoking guns?” I couldn’t resist.

  “Well, not exactly,” she said. “However, there’s also a pair of dust masks, labeled N-95 PARTICULATE RESPIRATORS, in the same shoe box. They’re just for dust, though. Tell them what you said, Doc,” she said to Dr. McWhirter.

  “I don’t think that kind of mask would be particularly effective against the ricin spray,” he said. “I’d wear something with much finer filtration if I was going to be around that. And it isn’t really adjustable enough to make a good seal.”

  “It’s labeled in English,” said Hester. “We’ve had absolutely no indication that Gonzales, or whoever he really is, had any English at all.” She shrugged. “Or that he’d understand the finer points of filtration, anyway. A mask is a mask.”

  “Right.”

  “I figure the can isn’t leaking,” said Hester, noticing that I was edging back toward the door, “because Big Ears didn’t get sick.”

  “Sure,” I said, backing up and leaning up against the doorframe. “Good point.”

  “So,” said Hester, “lacking any other information, I’d say that our man here used this spray can to spray the meat that went to New York. Most likely when he carried it into the trucks. I’d say that he used the mask and gloves to protect himself, and somehow either failed to do it right, or soon enough, and the mask was inadequate anyway. Maybe contaminated himself when he took the gloves off. He used a mask that provided some protection, but not enough. Maybe it slipped. Maybe it wasn’t tight.”

  “Inept,” I said. “Nontrained, then. Just told to use it but not how?”

  “You just earned a place on the speaker’s stand,” said George to Hester.

  “What?”

  He told her about the next meeting.

  “Swell,” said Hester. “Just swell. Not that I’m not glad to do it,” she said, “but we really need to get moving on the homicide.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry,” said George. “We’ll free you up as soon as possible. Really.”

  “Just one of those little adjustments,” I said.

  “But we do have an hour or so, I suspect,” said George. “Why don’t we make some appointments to talk to the fellow workers…you know, the ones who worked with Gonzales and this…?”

  “Cueva,” I said. Hester and I exchanged looks. “You wanna tell him?”

  “Tell me what?” asked George, falling neatly into the setup.

  “Well,” I said, “we’ve got a bit of a problem interviewing the coworkers. The majority of them are not here…well… legally.”

  That really got his attention.

  “It appears that they all left the area the night after Cueva was shot,” I said. “A couple hundred of ‘em, at least. They had to shut down the plant, so many were gone.”

  “Well, damn,” said George.

  “That’s what we said,” said Hester.

  “We’re looking.” I explained about Wisconsin, and Harry’s search over there. “No luck yet.”

  “They could have run to a major metro area,” said George. “Gone forever, in a practical sense, if they did that.”

  “We’re hoping,” said Hester, “that they drift back when the heat’s off. Next day or two.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said George. “We’re all going to need to talk with those people.”

  “We have a couple of names,” I said helpfully. “Maybe you guys could help us find them? They could lead to all sorts of good things…”

  During this exchange, both Attorney Bligh and Dr. McWhirter started to get a little fidgety.

  “Ah, we’re sort of out of our purview here,” said Bligh. “Our concern is the toxic substance and its effects. Ah, if you think this is a criminal matter…”

  “You’re in this for the duration,” said George. “We might be wrong. Unlikely though that is. But we need your work to establish a basis in fact for our case, sort of the antithesis, so to speak. Or the thesis, and we do the antithesis. Whatever. We need you to prove that an accident either did or did not occur. This is going to be a really multijurisdictional effort, in all respects.”

  Neither Bligh nor McWhirter looked particularly pleased at that.

  When we all got back to the sheriff’s department, Hester and I ducked in the back door to avoid the media people who were sitting in the main parking lot with their engines running. I really thought that somebody should have at least had the courtesy to ask them in to the booking room, where there were a couple of seats and it was warmer, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything because the first person I met was Lamar, who greeted me with, “Where’d all those damned reporters come from?”

  “Beats me,” I said. “George Pollard is right behind us, and he wants to talk to you. When he does, you’ll know why Hester and I have to get our reports up to date in the next couple of hours. We gotta get busy,” I said, passing him and heading down the hall.

  “You got us in trouble again? “he called after us.

  “You betcha!” I called over my shoulder.

  About an hour later, when Hester and I were about done typing and sorting things out, Lamar came into my office. He even knocked before he opened the door. That was rare.

  “You think this is really this big?”

  “You spoke to George, right?” I asked, looking up from my stack of case photos.

  “I sure did. What do you think about this? Is he right?”

  “I think so,” I said. “It sure takes care of some very loose ends.”

  “How about you, Hester? “he asked.

  “There’s a good chance they’re on to something,” she said. “The connection to the delis in New York just about clinches it.”

  “Damn,” said Lamar, and sat down in on my desk. He picked up a few photos, but wasn’t really looking at them. “As soon as the media got wind of the CDC people showing up here,” he said, “they started pissin’ and moanin’ about ‘access.’ God, I hate it when they do that.”

  “Wait until after the briefing,” said Hester. “I think the feds will have a spokesperson assigned. They’ll handle that.�
�

  “I hope so,” said Lamar. “I’m always afraid I’m gonna say somethin’ and accidentally give somethin’ away. It’s worse ‘n court.”

  “This is so far out of our hands,” I said, “I think we can just concentrate on making sure we know who killed Cueva.”

  “Easy for you to say,” he said. “I been on the phone with Abe Goldstein.” He glanced at Hester. “He’s the guy who owns the plant. The media have been calling him at his office, and at home, all day. He claims he’s the victim of anti-Semitism. Hell, he’s right. But I don’t know what to tell the poor bastard. He says he’s about to be ruined, that he and his family have spent their whole lives making good on his father’s reputation for top products. Now he says the ‘authorities’ say his food kills his friends and relatives in New York. What the hell can I do?”

  “It’s not his fault,” said Hester. “Not that that’ll mean a damned thing.”

  “He wants to know if we can help him make sure it won’t happen again.”

  “We’ll do our very best,” she said. “You could tell him that the plant being shut down right now is the best thing that could have happened to him. With the health people going over everything, we can make sure he’s off to a clean start when production starts again.”

  “Maybe,” said Lamar. “Oh, and while I’m at it, I had to send an officer back to court with another application for a search warrant.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Mr. County Attorney Hilgenberg walked off the premises after the first search and left his file folder in the apartment. He didn’t discover it was missing until after he got back here.”

  One of the things about search warrants is, you have the right to be there as long as it takes you to do the search. But you can’t go back ten minutes later, not without another, separate search warrant.

  “That man,” said Hester, “is going to drive me crazy. I hope nobody got into the apartment and read his file.”

  “He doesn’t think so,” said Lamar. “But, like I say, the media gets things that way.”

  Hester and I got on with what we were doing. One thing you have to be constantly aware of when writing a good police report is that you need to differentiate between what you know and what you suspect. Cueva’s origin was a good example.