A Long December

by Donald Harstad

  “We know he’s not from L.A., and that he used forged a Social Security number and birth certificate,” said Hester. “We have anything confirmed that he is actually from Colombia?”

  I leafed through my notes. “Nope. Well, Hector said Cueva was Colombian. Nothing confirmed, though.”

  “Okay…”

  We both assumed Hector was probably right, and I felt that he’d given us good information. But we hadn’t been able to confirm it.

  Another thing you have to be able to do is be absolutely certain you don’t leave anything out. Bad leads, for example, have to stay in the report, and you handle them until you’re satisfied that they’re bad. You always say what criteria you used to discount information. Otherwise, the defense gets hold of it and tries to make it sound as if you ignored the real evidence just to focus on their client. This can lead to some pretty interesting conversations between investigators.

  “Okay, we believe anything she’s told us?” I asked, meaning Linda Moynihan.

  “Sure,” said Hester. “Just the indirect, though. Emotional state.” I knew she was referring to Linda’s reaction at the autopsy, and later.

  “So…really grief stricken…maybe even surprised?” I was referring to Rudy Cueva’s death in general. Hester picked that up right away.

  We both thought about that for a moment. “Not surprised,” said Hester. “Not necessarily. Maybe just really unhappy.”

  “So the reaction could have been…well, probably was more like ‘Holy shit! They said they were gonna do it, and they did.’ You think?”

  “That’s fair,” said Hester, going through her own notes and looking for something else. “Might even be a case of’I told you so, Rudy.’ Maybe that…”

  “Gotta find her,” I said, and went back to the keyboard. “Really quick.”

  “That goes in your part of the report,” she said. “I’m still on the scene.”

  “Okay. Be sure to tell me when you figure out who the white guy is standing there when Cueva gets shot.” I was only half kidding, because we really needed to figure out who in the hell that man was.

  “Sure. When you tell me who Rudy really was.”

  “And then the ricin…”

  “Oh, no. The ricin’s yours. All yours. I’ll go the connections route, summary, thing.” She was already typing on her laptop again.

  “Good enough.”

  George stuck his head in once, bringing us coffee that Sally had made. “She says this is her best stuff,” he said.

  I was impressed. Sally had a small bag of specially ground coffee she’d picked up in Dubuque. Nobody had gotten to do anything but smell it brewing, except Sally herself.

  “I, uh, made a couple of calls, based on what you told me. ATF’s going to helicopter an agent up from Des Moines.”

  “ATF?” said Hester.

  “The shell casings,” said George. “We think there may be another connection. We’re having all of them dusted, by the way. Thumbprints…”

  When you load a magazine with shells, you tend to press down pretty firmly on the shell casings as they go in, especially the last few. It was a possibility.

  “The DCI lab hadn’t gotten to that?” I was kind of surprised.

  “Probably not,” said Hester. “The legislature had us get rid of overtime for the lab personnel for this year. I’d think the technicians would be concentrating on the homicide evidence from the scene itself.”

  “We picked the casings up from your lab. They’re being flown back to our labs in Washington.” said George. Then he added defensively, “Well, we had a plane going that way anyway.”

  “Some got resources, some don’t,” I said, trying to lighten things up a tad. “We could have offered our facilities, but the high school chemistry lab closes at three forty-five.”

  “Speaking of labs, George,” said Hester, “you wouldn’t happen to have a couple of large hazardous material containment packages, would you? I need two tubes, concentric, the smaller one being able to hold this can, plus a couple of hazmat or biohazard stickers.”

  “In my car,” he said, “I’ve got evidence tubes. No biohazard stickers, though.”

  “I’ve got some of those,” I said absently. There was a silence. I looked up. “What?”

  “What on earth are you doing with those? “asked Hester.

  “Oh, Sally snagged a bunch of’em from the hospital. She stuck the things all over my lunch containers and my sauce bottles. She had a couple of rolls left… they’re in that drawer over there.”

  “Figures,” said Hester. “I don’t suppose you’d have any address labels for the FBI labs?”

  “Check with Dispatch,” I said with a straight face.

  George let us get back to our reports.

  16:56

  IT WAS LAMAR ON THE RADIO AGAIN. Apparently he’d been calling, but in all the commotion we hadn’t heard him.

  Sally cranked up the walkie-talkie volume and reassured him that we were still alive and as well as could be expected. However, as she so succinctly put it, “We could sure use some company up here, One.”

  “We’re working on it,” said Lamar, and I could really hear the strain in his voice, even ten feet from the walkie-talkie.

  “What do we think?” asked George. “We haven’t seen any movement for a while.”

  “But we’ve sure seen grenades,” I said. “I think they’re still there, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I was thinking about that,” he said. “Could those have been a blind, to distract us while they slipped over the bluff?”

  “Possible,” I said. “Lamar says there are about fifty cops watching the perimeter, though. Maybe more by now.”

  I heard Hester’s voice, but I couldn’t make out the words. “What?”

  She stood, took a big swig from her water bottle, and then did sort of a gargle thing that ended in, “Ahh!”

  The water had hit one of her broken teeth. She shuddered for a few moments, shaking it off, and then said, “No. They won’t be leaving.”

  “How so?”

  “They’re protecting something,” she said. “By stayin’ here, distracting us some way.” She made as if to take another swig, thought better of it, and said, very deliberately, “Deception.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You want to sit back down?”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re above the wall,” I said, indicating the limestone foundation. She crouched.

  “So, you think they will stay at us, not trying exceptionally hard to take us out, but to keep us here? “George didn’t sound fully convinced.

  Hester made an exasperated sound in the back of her throat and said, “Not just us!” She made a sweeping gesture. “Us!”

  I got it. “They think we were headed up there. They aren’t trying to get out. They’re trying to keep us out.”

  “Yes!” she said.

  Sally, as usual, put her finger right on it. “Why?”

  Damned good question.

  We didn’t have any sort of a good answer. We all moved back to positions where we thought we could cover the approaches to the barn fairly well, and made that our priority. The whys could wait.

  “Hey, George?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I have my walkie-talkie back?”

  He tossed it to me. “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem.” I checked the frequency setting and keyed the mike.

  “One, Three?”

  There was a momentary wait, and then, “Three, go ahead!”

  “Yeah, One, get Marty on the TAC team to call me on my phone, and you try to listen in, okay?”

  My phone rang about two minutes later.

  “Houseman,” I said.

  “Anything new we should know about?”

  “Marty, we been thinking up here, and we tend to believe that they’re keeping us out, rather than us keeping them in.”

  After about a two-second pause, Marty said, “No shit?”
/>   “Yeah.”

  “Hang on for one.”

  If we were right, it meant that the allocation of personnel out there could drastically change. Rather than concentrate on preventing the remaining shooters from leaving, they could concentrate on advancing and go at them more aggressively. I hoped.

  “Okay, Carl. Could be. We’ll check it out. Okay. Look, about the van…we got the station manager to let us look at all the footage, and we can’t see any van parked up there.” He paused, and then said, “But that really don’t mean shit, because we think it could be parked in one of the sheds.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  “We see two, ah, objects, about fifty feet west of you, along a fence. They might be people, we aren’t sure, but they didn’t move.”

  “I believe they’re dead,” I said.

  “Say again?”

  “If those are the two I shot,” I said, “they’re dead.”

  “Way to go!” Marty sounded genuinely pleased.

  “That’s the location where they toss grenades,” I told him. “You might want to keep an eye on that area.”

  “You bet! Okay. We got two choppers headed up: one from CRPD, and the other is a National Guard bird, an OH-58. Both have FLIR, so we can check the heat from the shed and see if we can maybe find that van.”

  “Great.”

  “And once they get here, we’re gonna be able to see the whole area like it was daylight, so we can keep you advised of movements. And the feds just got here. A whole bunch, and a chunk of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team is already in Cedar Rapids.”

  Things were looking up, and I said as much.

  “You got that right,” said Marty. “Okay, now, about them bein’ there to keep you out? Is that right?”

  “That’s what we think, yeah.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Nope. None. But you might ask the feds.”

  Ten minutes later, I was concentrating even harder on trying to see in the dark. My eyes were getting used to the shadow, pretty much, and I thought I could discern individual things like rocks and scrub. But try as I might, I couldn’t see that fence where the two dead men were.

  I thought about calling Sue. She wasn’t the sort to watch the news all that much, but I thought it might be a good idea to let her know I was okay. Just in case somebody called her and told her there was something up. On the other hand, if she didn’t know anything was going on, and I called, then she’d start watching for TV spots, and God only knew what kind of speculation she’d be hearing then. Well, now was the best opportunity I’d had to do it, and I thought I shouldn’t waste it.

  I dialed home.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, there.”

  “Carl, oh my God, what’s going on? Oh, I’m so glad you called. Are you all right? We’re watching the news…are the officers in the barn all right?”

  It all came out in a rush.

  “Well, yeah, I’m fine. Really good, in fact. Who’s the ‘we’ watching TV?”

  “Phyllis came over about ten minutes ago, and told me that Nation County was on CNN.”

  “Oh, okay.” Phyllis is our next-door neighbor.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m fine. Really.” Maybe, I thought, she won’t ask about the barn again.

  “Who’s in the barn? Lamar?”

  “Well, no, actually. Ah, it’s George, and Hester, and Sally, and, well, me.”

  “You!!!!”

  “Yeah, but I’m fine. Really.”

  “My God!”

  “Now look, I didn’t call to worry you. I’m really sorry about that. We’re going to be fine.” Now would be about the worst time for one of those damned grenades, I thought. All I needed was a loud bang in the background.

  “Can’t you get out?” A reasonable question.

  How to put it. “Well, we probably could. But Hester’s been hurt a little, and we think we’re much safer in here. Mostly we’re going to wait for an ambulance…”

  “Hester? Oh, Lord.”

  “Hey, don’t tell anybody anything about that. Nobody knows that except us folks, okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look, I called to tell you that everything is going to be just fine. Really.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m gonna have to go in a sec, but I just wanted you to know.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad you called,” she said.

  “Me, too. Look, don’t worry. If I thought I was in really serious shit, I wouldn’t call. You know that.”

  She didn’t. But she said she did. “Yes.”

  “Okay, well…”

  “I love you.”

  “And I love you, too. I’ll be home as soon as I can.” That, for sure, was absolutely true.

  Now, however, I had an additional problem. Prior to talking with Sue, it honestly hadn’t occurred to me that I might not be going home after this one. I pushed that thought to the back of my mind, but the new awareness was now there. Damn.

  Sally was back at her lookout. “Can you see anything, Carl?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me, either,” said George.

  After a second of unnatural silence, I glanced back at Hester. She was just taking a good swig from a water bottle. When she finished, she said, “No!”

  Well, that had been enlightening. Either there was truly nothing moving, or it was just too damned murky out there to see anything.

  “Where’s the Mr. Heater?”

  George turned. “I’ll get it, Hester. You’re right, it’s getting cold in here.” He went to his heap of luggage, turned on a pocket light, and hustled the portable heater over to Hester. “I’ll have it lit in just a second,” he said. “How are you getting along?”

  As the two of them talked, I kept peering into the gloom. Ah. Over by the left edge of the shed, just where the fence started, and where the two dead men were, I thought I caught movement.

  “Left of the shed!” I said.

  George was back at the wall in a second. There was a moment, then, “I don’t have it.”

  “Where the fence starts. Nothing moving there, but there’s a really dark spot right next to the shed…”

  “Yeah….” From the tone of his voice, I could tell George still hadn’t located the object.

  “Just wait. If it’s really something, it’ll move again.”

  We waited. When you stare at an area in the dark, if there are variations in the shadow, you’re eventually going to see something move. Whether it does or not. I was just beginning to get the feeling that my eyes had been playing tricks, when a figure suddenly stood, right where I’d seen the movement, and a very loud voice called out.

  “Fuck you! Fuck every one of you!”

  Then he was gone. Just like that.

  We in the barn looked at each other. “What the hell,” said Sally, “did he do that for?”

  “They’re trying to provoke us,” said George.

  I laughed. “Too fuckin’ late.”

  CHAPTER 15

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2001 19:30

  SEVEN-THIRTY IN THE EVENING isn’t a really good time to start a meeting. Nonetheless, there we were, once again crammed into the kitchen of the Nation County Jail. The attendees of this second meeting of the day were considerably more upscale than the first. There were people representing the FBI, DOJ, CDC, FDA, DEA, ATF, OSHA, and the NSA. Iowa had sent command level people from the DCI and DNE, as well as the EMD. I felt like I was watching CNN.

  It all hardly seemed real, the unreality enhanced by the faint strains of Christmas music coming from the adjacent dispatch center.

  FBI was represented not only by George Pollard, but also by our old acquaintance Special Agent in Charge Volont. We’d had some, well, difficult times with him in the past, but nothing horrible. Volont was a good agent, just a bit Bureau-centric, as they say. This time, he seemed genuinely happy to see us. With him were two others: Special Agent Gwen Thurgood, a counterterrorism special
ist, and one super special sort named Special Agent Milton Hawse. Hawse was younger than Volont, but obviously someone of great importance in the Bureau. All the other federal employees deferred to him. It wasn’t a respect sort of thing, so much as just really lots of rank. Well, that’s the way it looked to me.

  The Department of Justice had sent a deputy U.S. attorney from Cedar Rapids, named Harriet Glee. She’d been working out of the Cedar Rapids office long enough to be known to most of us as “Dirty Harriet.” It was a compliment, and a heartfelt one at that. She was hell on wheels, and one of the best prosecutors in the business.

  The Centers for Disease Control had sent a team of three; the Food and Drug Administration, one.

  The Drug Enforcement Agency had hustled two of our old friends up from Cedar Rapids, one of whom was Katie Martinez. I was particularly glad to see Katie, as she had worked both L.A. and San Diego for DEA, and we were going to be in dire need of a Spanish-speaker we could trust absolutely.

  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had also sent somebody I knew and respected, Agent Brian Chase. I didn’t know the two Occupational Safety and Health Administration people, but they both looked pretty intense. I like to see that in somebody who’s been sent to help on a case.

  The National Security Agency was just so far from my experience, I wasn’t even really sure what they did. They’d sent two people, though, both of whom were about as un-spy-looking as anybody I’d ever seen. All the feds treated them with great deference, though. Unlike the FBI’s Hawse, these two were treated that way from pure respect. One of the NSA men was introduced to me as Edward Peasley, an expert in biological warfare. Cool. The other was Herb, no last name, who simply said he did “some code work.”

  Present from Iowa’s Division of Criminal Investigation was Hester’s boss’s boss, Special Agent Barney England. Iowa’s Division of Narcotics Enforcement had sent Bob Dahl, who’d worked closely with us when one of his fellow agents had been killed on a dope stakeout back in 1996. Sitting next to him was a guy from Iowa’s Emergency Management Division. He was going to be a critical player, as all requests and demands for emergency management were going to have to go through him. I thought that, with the rather bizarre health hazard that was being revealed, he was going to be one busy man.