“Yeah?”
There was about a one second pause, then, “Hello, my name is General Norman Schwartzkopf, and I'm calling you on behalf of … ”
I hung up. Iowa was predicted to be a close contest in the upcoming presidential elections, and we were getting a lot of automated phone calls. I turned over, thinking I could get another thirty minutes of sleep. I lay there thinking about that extra sleep for thirteen minutes.
I rolled out at 08:15, and drank my first cup of coffee in relative peace. Always a good way to begin a day. I'd just missed Sue. Education did not wait for Columbus and his day. I called the office as I poured my second cup.
“Houseman? We thought you'd be up here by now.” Sally.
“Mmm? Who's 'we'?”
“Hester and me.” She giggled. “Really, we thought you older folks needed less rest.”
“Thanks, brat. So, anything happening?”
“I'd better let Hester take that one,” she said, and I found myself on hold. We'd installed hold music about a year earlier. The only good, reliable station we got was a country & western FM outfit that played music all day long. Unfortunately, they had an amateur portion during their broadcast day that began at 08:00 and lasted until 10:45.
“Carl?” Hester's voice interrupted some unfortunate young man's rendition of “Sixteen Tons.” It was sort of too bad, because I'd never really heard somebody so close to being a tenor sing it before.
“What's up?”
“You can forget our interview this morning.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Ms. Hunley was called away on urgent business.”
“You're kidding?” Damn.
“Nope. Her 'awnt,' ” she said in a pretty good imitation of a downstairs maid, “with whom she resides, was suddenly taken ill.”
“I'll bet. And she of the iridescent hair went, too?”
“Oh, yeah. Tatiana had to go with. It's a two-or three-hour drive, you know.” She sounded a little aggravated. “At least, that's what Attorney Junkel said when I called. He said they left really early this morning.”
“Right.” Well, shit. “Gone to Lake Geneva, then?”
“You bet. Located on the other side of America's Dairy Land.”
Eastern Wisconsin put them out of our reach, at least for a while. “Well,” I said, trying to make the best of it, “we can always let you beat up Toby.”
She laughed at that.
It occurred to me that, while she might be out of our reach, Jessica Hunley was now within the grasp of one Investigator Harry Ullman, Conception County's best. A silver lining, maybe.
I'd pretty much decided to spend Columbus Day playing catch-up with the case, anyway. That originally had meant interviewing Jessica Hunley and Tatiana Ostransky, the five remaining residents of the Mansion, and then sorting through all the garbage I'd dumped into the evidence room last night. Since Jessica and Tatiana were gone, I thought I might as well go straight to the garbage, to see just what we had, and then get to the five sometime in the early afternoon. Very early if the garbage search didn't pan out.
The phone rang again. “Hello?”
The familiar pause, and then “My name is Senator Tom Harkin, and … ”
Click.
I always stayed on just long enough to hear who the recording was. It was becoming a big thing at the post office, kidding each other about what important recording had called. It had kind of a baseball trading-card aspect. “Hey, I got two Colin Powells, but no Jimmy Carters.” “Really? I got a Jimmy and a call from Tipper. Beat that!”
I got to the office at 09:09, where I met Borman, who was standing at the counter and talking with Sally in Dispatch.
“Ready to get going?” I asked him.
“Not really.” He was acting kind of funny, not looking right at me, and obviously pretending to fiddle with some papers on a clipboard.
“There a problem?” I really hated to ask.
He didn't say a word. Sally broke the awkward little silence with “He's been suspended for a day.”
Well, damn. It had to be the warning shots from last night. “With or without pay?” was the first thing I asked. It was important, but not for the money. Without, and he only had one more screwup and Lamar would fire him. With, and he'd be able to erase it with good performance over the next three months.
“With.” He was honest-to-God petulant. Twenty-five years old, and pouting.
“Well, that's good,” I said. “Why don't you just go home, and come back in tomorrow like you had a day off?” He'd gotten off pretty easy, I thought, because warning shots were prohibited by department policy.
“He wants to ask you something first,” said Sally.
I looked at her. Her tone of voice told me she was at least half on his side, for some reason.
“Well, go ahead,” I said, remembering in the nick of time not to say “Shoot.”
“You had to tell Lamar, I suppose,” he said. “Didn't you?”
Honest. That's what he said.
“You shouldn't even have to ask that,” I replied. “Of course I did. I was present, I was senior officer, and it was my responsibility and duty to do so. You know that.”
Silence for a few seconds. Then he asked what I considered the second dumb question in a row. “I don't suppose you could have waited for me to tell him first, then, could you?”
It wasn't only a dumb question, there was resentment creeping into his voice. If I hadn't liked him I just would have told him to grow up. Instead, he got a bit more than he bargained for.
I looked at my watch. “Okay. Sit down.” He looked blank. “I said to sit down.”
He did.
“Deadly force is justified only to protect your life or that of another, right?”
“Sure.” He couldn't really say anything else. That was the fact of the matter.
“And only if there's no other way to accomplish that protection. Right again, no?”
“Yeah,” he said, “sure. Of course.”
I looked at Sally. “Since you're carrying a gun as a reserve, you knew that, too, didn't you?” She nodded. She damned well better have.
“This is for you, too. Sort of a refresher. The most dangerous shot you can fire is a warning shot.” I was warming to my task. “Let me tell you why. Number one: You have absolutely no business discharging your weapon if deadly force is not justified. It can't be justified, because you are making a deliberate effort not to hit the individual. You with me?”
He nodded, but was beginning to look bored.
“I'm doing this because I think you have potential, so listen up. Number two: You have no goddamned clue as to where those bullets went, do you?”
“I shot into the air,” he said.
“Exactly. Unless they defied gravity, they came down. Do you know where they came down?”
“No.”
“Damn right, you don't. In some departments, where they have more people and could afford to have you off for a while, you wouldn't get back off suspension until you produced both rounds for the sheriff's inspection. Did you know that?”
No, as a matter of fact, he hadn't.
“Number three: When the bullets stop, if they should because they hit somebody, it damned well isn't anybody who you'd be justified in shooting, is it? We had two reserves in the yard around the other side of the Mansion. What in hell would you have done if one of 'em had come down and hit Old Knockle in the head?” I waited a second. “How about an answer?”
“I don't think they went in that direction.”
“You don't think? Well, that's swell. Do you know?”
“No,” he said, “I don't know, but I know I didn't hit Knockle.”
“That's really lame,” I said. “But don't let's stop there. Number four: The suspect who got you to pop two warning shots may very well have killed Edie in the preceding twenty-four hours.” I saw he was going to say something, and held up my hand. “No, we're not sure. Just a good bet. At the sam
e damn time, the son of a bitch had just slashed you across the chest with a very sharp object, and would have severely injured you if you didn't wear your vest. Right?”
“Yes, but that's why we wear 'em.”
He was starting to piss me off. “Did it ever occur to you,” I said, very slowly and distinctly, “that he was trying to cut your throat, just like he did to Edie? That he just missed because he was in a fucking hurry?”
He got pretty pale, pretty fast. Obviously, it hadn't occurred to him at all.
“So, he was still facing you, he cut at you, and you shot in the air. Assume for a second that you had hit Old Knockle.” I let him think about that for a second. “Can you imagine me telling Lamar that you'd killed Knockle because the man who probably murdered his own niece, and tried to kill you…. ” I stopped, and let it sink in. “Now imagine this. Imagine that I'd said to myself, 'Carl, why don't you wait and see if Borman can tell Lamar on his own?' You with me?”
“Yeah.”
“And Lamar hears about this from somebody else. Before you tell him. Now, wouldn't that look like we were both trying to cover it up?”
“It might.” He looked up. “Yeah, it would. I'm sorry. You're right, Carl, you had to do it.”
I turned back to Sally. “You understand this, too?”
“Oh, yeah. You betcha.” She smiled. “Got it.”
“Okay, then.” I looked over at Borman. “Go home. Come in tomorrow fresh and ready to go.”
“You still want me with this investigation?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“Of course I do. So does Lamar.” But I made a mental reservation. The sulking, plus the arguing, followed up by the sudden agreement and phony “ … you had to do it … ” apology really pissed me off. Insincerity? Maybe. Whatever it was, he'd showed me a side of himself that I hadn't seen before. He'd also had Sally half convinced that he'd been wronged by both me and Lamar. That was a new talent he'd revealed, and one that I didn't want to see again. I still thought he should be on the case, because he knew quite a bit about the thing, and because I still had a good impression of him from before it began. Stress might be a factor, but I was going to be watching him.
My little stint as wise and fearless leader over for the morning, I collected Hester from the main office, where she was typing a report, and we went right to the evidence locker. Ugh. It did smell, but not as much as I'd feared. My nose told me that the residents at the Mansion had recently thrown out onions, garlic, and some meat.
My nose was only two thirds right. They'd thrown out onions and garlic, all right. But the third one wasn't meat. It was a bloody body bag. I stopped as soon as I saw it, and called for a little help.
Chris Barnes and the rest of the lab crew were at breakfast, just about to leave for Des Moines. He got to the office in five minutes.
We all stood looking at the bag. It was a white nylon bag, with black nylon handles, and a black zipper. A small label proclaimed it to be a “500 VSA.” A good bag, it was one of the expensive double-thick ones, with reinforcements at the ends and on the bottom. There was quite a bit of blood in it, and a darkish smear on the outside of the bag. Chris looked very closely at that, and said it looked like a wood stain, possibly from where it had been stored.
“Well,” said Chris, “this goes a long way toward explaining the lack of a blood trail.”
“Except for the spots, next to her tub, on the carpet outside her room, and at the bottom of the back stair,” I said.
“Right. Where somebody rested the body, and it was bent forward or to a side, and put pressure on the bag, and forced a bit of blood out of the zipper.” Chris shook his head. “I'd just guess that she hadn't bled out all the way when they bagged her,” he said. “Don't quote me on that, not yet. We gotta test the blood first. See if it's human, and then see if it's hers.” Using a gloved finger, he stirred a little pool of blood that had accumulated in one of the folds of the bag. “It sure as hell should have clotted by now.”
“Right.” That was from Hester. “How long till we can have the results?”
“For human, maybe today, depending on when I get to DM.” He paused when she cleared her throat. “Okay, today, then, for sure. As for the DNA match … hard to say, but as fast as we can get it done.”
“You know,” I said, “having a killer with his own body bag sure makes a case for premeditation. You just can't plan much farther ahead than that.”
We filled out the evidence sheet for the bag. It consisted of a copy of my logging, where I had entered the time I pulled the bags from the big blue box; the time I placed them in the evidence locker, the time I took them out, and the time I signed the body bag over to Chris. My signature by every entry, and his and mine on the last set. Maintaining the chain of evidence is crucial, but a pain in the butt, regardless. Like they say, the only time it's going to be important is the time you forget to do it.
We all pitched in and did the contents of the rest of the garbage bags. We found one bloody bath towel, a bloody washcloth, a bloody bottle of shampoo and one of conditioner, a bloodstained bar of soap and a hanging soap dish, a bottle of bath oil with a blood-encrusted rim, a brass rack with a curved section to enable it to be hung over the edge of an old-fashioned tub, and a bloodstained pink lady's razor. All in a white plastic sack, in a brass wastebasket. Even the wastebasket had matched, apparently.
“I'll bet they knocked the stuff into the tub when they put her in,” said Hester, her voice distant with thought. “Maybe snagged it with the bag, then grabbed for some of it before they thought, and then pitched it to make sure they hadn't left prints. Wiped some of the mess up with the towel.”
“No wipe marks on the tub,” I said.
“They could have wiped their hands on it,” said Barnes, not looking up from his itemization of the evidence. “Hard to say just how it got there.”
“They had the presence of mind to put the knife in the tub, to keep us from looking for the real weapon.” I shook my head. “Pretty cool, whoever it is.”
“Yeah,” said Hester, disgusted.
“Well,” I said, “I guess we could start with who sells 500 VSA body bags, and see if there's any chance they might have a limited sales area…. ” It was pretty weak, but we had to begin somewhere.
Another thing we found was a bunch of old e-mails that had been tossed out. They appeared to be from several people, and addressed to the following: [email protected],[email protected], [email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected], [email protected].
They were addressed to a wide variety of people and places, from bookstores to eBay, from names similar to their own, to simple ones like [email protected]. Some were long, some very brief, and they appeared to be pretty innocuous. Nonetheless, I saved them all, to read for content, and to check names and addresses.
“I wish,” I said to Hester, “that that search warrant had included computers and information thereon.”
“Well, we didn't have any evidence pointing to computer involvement then. We still don't,” she said.
“Give me a little time.”
We went through the rest of the bags, snagging about a half dozen more e-mails, and about a thousand items of generic debris that could have come from just about anywhere. We relooked, hoping for anything else. Nothing. Not one more item that even appeared to have bloodstains or marks on it. No phone bills, no notes other than common, everyday grocery receipts. Lots of political pamphlets from a bumper crop of politicians, from Bush and Gore to Nader and Buchanan. Not to mention the local and state candidates. It looked like the residents of the Mansion had been deluged just like the rest of us. The political pamphlets probably accounted for half the paper in the bags. I did notice, though, that all the political mail was addressed to “Occupant.”
“Doesn't look like anybody living at the Mansion was registered to vote,” I said.
“Huh?” That had taken He
ster by surprise.
I explained.
She went back to sifting through garbage. “The things some people consider important…. ”
“Hey! I'm a trained observer, that's all.”
“Focus, Houseman,” she muttered. “You just got to focus.”
Finishing the garbage survey didn't take as long as I'd expected. I looked over at Hester as we were both taking off our latex gloves. “Not much, was there?”
“Good Lord, Houseman. You got a body bag out of this! What more do you want?”
“Well, yeah.” What more, indeed? “Something identifying the suspect, though, would sure have been good.”
Chris and the rest of the lab team headed for the Iowa Criminalistics Laboratory in Des Moines, body bag in hand, so to speak. That left Hester and me to begin our scheduled business.
Hester phoned the Mansion while I sorted the e-mails into some coherent order. I just sorted by recipient name. There were two double entries, as I termed them, that were from a “gottadance” to a “gottadance.”
The first was from Choreographer to OnceLost. It was dated September 16, 2000, and timed at 21:56. The text was brief and to the point.
“Hi.
We should be there either next weekend, or the one following. Checking to see that you have a good supply of fresh vegetables and that wine we like.
Hope all is well. Got your August report and approved the payments.
Oh, and try to get George Hollis for the furnace. He's more reliable than Norman Brecht, and charges the same.”
No doubt who Choreographer was. Apparently “gottadance” was a wide area network, and seemed to include Jessica Hunley's terminal in Lake Geneva, as well. Judging from the content, I assumed OnceLost was Edie. Had to check, to be sure.
The other double entry was from Choreographer to Clutch. It was dated October 2, 2000, and timed at
22:40. The text read:
“Hi.
I think it did go well. Thought about it all the way back. I agree with you.
Many thanks.”
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