Known Dead

by Donald Harstad

  We told him about Johnny Marks. I described what we found, then Hester provided the name.

  Howler had slightly red hair, and consequently a fairly pale complexion. He is the only person I’ve ever seen who actually ‘‘went white.’’ His eyes started to roll up, his eyelids fluttered like a flag in a stiff breeze, and he buckled. I reached for him, but got tangled with the coffee table, knocking over an old quart beer bottle, and he hit the floor with a thud. Nan was around the corner like a shot.

  ‘‘What did you do to him?’’ She pushed George, and knelt beside her ‘‘man.’’ ‘‘Talk to me, speak, you shithead,’’ she wailed.

  ‘‘He just fainted,’’ I said. ‘‘He’ll be okay.’’

  ‘‘You hit him. I heard it!’’

  ‘‘No, no. I knocked into the table trying to keep him off the floor.’’

  ‘‘Sonofabitchyoudid.’’

  Howler started to come around. He looked up, right at Nan, and grinned. Then he saw me. ‘‘Noooo! Nooooo!’’

  If there had to be a reason they called him Howler, I think we found it.

  We helped him up to the couch. He was shaking a bit. He looked right at Hester and said, ‘‘Ssshit, mma’am, if there was ever a time I wanted a fufufuckin’ joint . . .’’

  We had a rather long conversation with Howler. He was sure it was the cycle gang. There was no doubt in his mind. That’s who he thought that Marks had been dealing with, although it turned out that Marks had never specifically stated the fact.

  ‘‘Had to be, man. Had to be.’’

  Convincing. We asked in about fifty ways if there had ever been any connection with anybody in cammo clothing or paramilitary types. Never. He was certain. Not even likely, as far as he could tell. And he was so damned scared, you had to believe him. He was absolutely sure he was next.

  ‘‘They’re gonna get me, man. Sure as shit. I’m dead. I’m just fuckin’ dead.’’

  ‘‘We can help you disappear for a while,’’ said George.

  Howler looked at him for a long second, and shook his head. ‘‘Yeah, right.’’ He was in kind of a bad position. No weapons. Nowhere to go. And his main man was being autopsied even as we spoke. It can be lonely at the bottom too.

  We left Howler with the option to be hidden by us, if he wanted to. I think he might have gone along with that, but Nan wouldn’t have been able to go, and Howler wanted sex a little more than safety. After all, Nan was here and now. Death was at least a lay away.

  We got back to the Nation County Sheriff’s Department just in time to be handed a message from Volont. The Stritch family was being transferred to federal custody in Cedar Rapids regarding federal kidnapping charges.

  That was not a particularly good development. The Stritch family was being effectively removed from our control and our reach. Interviews were now going to be out, unless we went to Cedar Rapids, filled out all the proper forms, and talked to them in an interview room under the control of the Feds.

  ‘‘Maybe,’’ I said, ‘‘if we explain that there really wasn’t a kidnapping . . .’’

  George was just about to make a phone call to his boss, to see if he could reach Volont, when the ubiquitous SAC rolled into the parking lot.

  ‘‘Hey,’’ said Hester, looking out the window. ‘‘It’s Volont.’’

  ‘‘Oh, right,’’ said George, still on the phone with his office. It was hard to fool George twice in the same day. I noticed he’d removed his coat and tie, and was getting downright comfortable.

  ‘‘Wonder why he’s here,’’ I said idly. George didn’t even bother to look up.

  ‘‘Probably came to shoot George for bad driving,’’ said Hester.

  ‘‘Or me for my raincoat,’’ I said.

  George, who had cradled the phone on his shoulder, now had one foot propped on the desk, and was busily jotting down notes in his leather-bound notepad, and chuckling to himself. ‘‘You guys really crack me up . . .’’

  ‘‘Comfortable, Agent Pollard?’’ asked an even, cool voice.

  Volont, as it happened, had come up because the DEA had been contacted by Harry regarding the demise of Johnny Marks. They had contacted him. He had asked where George was, and was told that he was already at the scene across the Mississippi in Wisconsin. In the territory of the Madison field office. Before their cooperation had been requested. Before he knew it was Johnny Marks, and positively related to our investigation. I thought George was surely going to be done for, but it didn’t really seem to make any difference. Volont was extremely curious about the condition of the body, and George was a veritable fountain of information on that. I thought it probably saved him.

  ‘‘So, Deputy, what do you think?’’ asked Volont, after George had briefed him.

  ‘‘It doesn’t add up at all,’’ I said. ‘‘We all agree.’’

  ‘‘It might,’’ he said, and launched into an explanation. He incorporated the possibility that some of the people on the right wing might sell marijuana to dopers. He seemed to like the concept. He emphasized that Herman Stritch was broke and in dire need of cash. He indicated the proximity of the Stritch residence to the town where Johnny Marks lived. They could easily know each other. Maybe through one of the Stritch boys. Things were going wrong, and they decided to ambush the officers. Marks with them. Try to harvest the plants the same day, make a clean getaway. He could have been the one who fired the fatal shots, in that case. Our case could well be solved right now. At the same time, the market, a.k.a. the Living Dead, would have had their investment blown by the killing and resultant heat. Got even with Marks. They got Johnny Marks; we got the Stritch family. Tidy.

  I let him finish. ‘‘I don’t think so,’’ I said. ‘‘I kind of wish it was, but I don’t think so.’’ I quickly reiterated the basic evidence. ‘‘And,’’ I said, ‘‘there’s absolutely no indication that Marks was in the woods at all.’’

  ‘‘Ah,’’ he said, ‘‘that’s true. Didn’t have to be. But there’s every indication that he paid a very high price for angering the people he was growing the dope for. I think he might have been in the woods that day. He and the Stritch family. Working in concert.’’

  ‘‘Ahh,’’ I said, ‘‘I just don’t think so.’’

  ‘‘Reasons?’’

  ‘‘Let me work on it for a while,’’ I answered. I noticed the relieved look on George’s face.

  Volont had been telling the truth about the federal kidnapping charges. Eight State Patrol cars pulled up about two minutes after he left the back office. Troopers all over the place, shooing everybody but us out of our parking lot, and then getting us to move our cars as well. Creating a security lane for the prisoners. Pretty soon, three separate cars came zipping into the lot. Federal marshals. To transport the prisoners, separately. The two people we had working the jail were busier than they had ever been in their whole lives, for about thirty minutes. Then, with all three prisoners wearing jail clothes and bulletproof vests, and pretty well surrounded by troopers, marshals, and George, they were whisked off into the waiting cars and left under heavy trooper escort.

  They were gone, leaving some really confused attorneys in their wake. None of our local lawyers were even qualified to appear in Federal Court. Which meant that, within the next few hours, there would be another layer of three more attorneys to deal with. The Stritch family might as well have gone to the moon.

  What was more, Volont had inadvertently created a situation where the press was absolutely bound to follow the trail of the prisoners. He’d just started the machinery that would probably take Borcherding to Cedar Rapids and out of our immediate view. And now that I thought about it, Nancy would be going there as well, both to do her job and to do ours. And with the prisoners now under the control of the Linn County jail, I wouldn’t be able to slip Nancy in for an ‘‘accidental’’ interview, even if I wanted to.

  ‘‘Jesus Christ, Hester,’’ I said, ‘‘doesn’t anybody want us to solve these cases?’’
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br />   Tomorrow was Saturday, the 27th, and Bud’s funeral. It had been delayed a bit by the forensic people, but they had guaranteed Saturday. That meant that things were going to be really crowded, and things we needed to do weren’t going to get done. Interestingly enough, there didn’t appear to be anybody interested in Rumsford’s body. They were having a hard time finding relatives, I guess. For whatever reason, his funeral was going to be on the 29th. Someplace in Canada. I was surprised to find out that he was a Canadian, although I don’t know why. I wondered if that French-Canadian film crew would come back.

  Anyway, we had to get cracking on something, and soon.

  ‘‘Hester,’’ I said, ‘‘why don’t we give Colonel Gabe a jingle?’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘On his e-mail.’’

  ‘‘Can we do this?’’

  ‘‘That’s easy,’’ I said. ‘‘Making him think it’s from Herman Stritch is gonna be a little tougher.’’

  ‘‘But,’’ she said, ‘‘can we do this? I mean, isn’t this a wiretap?’’

  We both looked at George. ‘‘Well, in the strictest sense, or any other, for that matter, I think the court would appreciate it if we got an order to do this . . .’’

  ‘‘You think we can get one?’’ It had to be federal. Iowa didn’t have any enabling wiretap legislation.

  ‘‘If I fax an application to my partner, we can get it pretty fast. But Volont will know about it.’’

  ‘‘Right away?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘Oh, probably not,’’ said George, ‘‘but the U.S. Attorney will, and he’ll get around to mentioning it sooner or later.’’

  ‘‘And that’s a normal way of obtaining a wiretap order?’’ asked Hester. ‘‘You don’t have to go through your boss?’’

  ‘‘Pretty much,’’ said George. ‘‘He’ll read it in the monthly summary, or somewhere.’’

  ‘‘Go for it,’’ said Hester. ‘‘So long as it doesn’t get you fired.’’

  First of all, I figured that if it took George a short time to track down the address of Borcherding, it would take somebody like this Colonel Gabe maybe just a bit longer. So we had to be accurate. Second, I thought it was likely that Billy Stritch was the one who set the computer stuff up in the first place, although we’d have to confirm that with Melissa. We might have to make the message from him. But it was going to come through to Colonel Gabe as an authentic contact from the Stritch family.

  Predictably, the Sheriff’s Department didn’t have a computer, except our NCIC terminal, which was connected to a modem. First item of business. Equally predictably, nobody in Maitland sold modems. Hell, nobody in Maitland even sold disks.

  George of the Bureau was very eager to please, after the Volont encounter. All three of us knew he’d have to tell Volont anything he was asked. We also knew that George was now under a bit of a cloud with his own bureau, and would have to watch his step very carefully. It was never mentioned. We just knew that George could be used only so far before he’d be required to report something. We were all trying to avoid crossing that line. After he had sent his fax to his partner, applying for a wiretap order, he drove to Dyersville and purchased a modem for us. With software and a special offer from a local server. All right. Guilt can be great.

  Then we had to find out where Stritch’s server was, in computerese.

  ‘‘Don’t we need Herman’s computer for this?’’ asked Hester.

  I smiled all over myself. ‘‘Nope. Downloaded it all last night.’’

  It was easy, once we had the modem hooked up to the PC in the back office. Hooking the modem up was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. George, frugal to the end, had gotten the least expensive modem. Internal. External modem, we could have done in fifteen seconds. Internal, thirty minutes.

  ‘‘Jesus H. Christ, George!’’ I said. ‘‘I’m gonna have to tear this whole machine apart . . .’’

  Ah, but he didn’t have to pay for a modem case, though.

  ‘‘You saved eleven dollars?’’ asked Hester. ‘‘Really?’’

  So after I got the cover back on the PC, it was easy, like I said.

  Entered the name of Herman’s server (Widetalk), our area code and telephone number, country (United States of America(1)), which set the keyboard commands. We connected using our ModoMak3564, which had hardly cost us a thing, configured the port to Com1, set the Databits to 8, Parity to None, Stop Bits to 1.

  Then, it was a simple matter of doing his network protocols: the TCP/IP settings, which were server-assigned with an IP address: Primary DNS 699.555.123.6, with no secondary, no primary or secondary WINS, using IP header compression and the default gateway on remote.

  We engaged the ‘‘call forwarding’’ mode, and were done.

  As far as the e-mail service knew, we were now, for all intents and purposes, Herman Stritch. We had his default number, which was the modem line into his residence. I wanted to use one for Cedar Rapids, because that’s where they were gonna be, and that’s where Colonel Gabe would know they were.

  We hesitated for about ten seconds. Then I called an officer I knew with the Linn County Sheriff’s Department, and asked for a number that would be used by a modem there. By a prisoner. He hesitated, so I let him talk to Hester and George.

  That taken care of, we were simply going to call the Linn County jail number, have our call forwarded to the appropriate line, and call Colonel Gabe. Just as soon as Melissa confirmed what we needed to know about who the brains was behind the Stritches’ computer system.

  Melissa called within half an hour. Damn me for a sexist. The whole thing was set up by Nola Stritch. In a computer sense, neither Herman nor Billy could find their ass with both hands.

  Two minutes later, and George’s partner called. The order had been granted.

  ‘‘Okay,’’ I sighed. ‘‘Way to go George.’’

  ‘‘Just what did you say in that application?’’ asked Hester.

  ‘‘Well, nothing that wasn’t true,’’ said George.

  ‘‘Great piece of jurisprudence,’’ said Hester.

  Thus armed, we sallied forth.

  By now it was 1750, and the Stritch family should have been in Cedar Rapids for about an hour. Booked in, and all settled for supper. Good.

  In looking for an address for Colonel Gabe, it had become immediately apparent that he was using other people’s e-mail addresses, and seldom the same one for more than an hour. Fascinating. We also noticed that Herman Stritch nearly always contacted Colonel Gabe via our man Borcherding. Mr. Free Press himself.

  We decided to be cagey. At George’s suggestion.

  ‘‘I’m not comfortable with being Herman right at first. This has got to be something that Nola is going to do on the sly.’’

  Hard to argue with that. The scenario we came up with was this: Nola would be meeting with her newly appointed attorney for Federal Court. He or she would have a laptop. Nola would place a message on the laptop, hoping the attorney would just send his accumulated messages when he got to his office. Nola is alone with the laptop for a few minutes and sends a hurried message. Most of the scenario came from Hester.

  ‘‘Wow,’’ said George, ‘‘I can’t believe that. You came up with that in about two minutes.’’

  ‘‘It’s from some movie I saw,’’ said Hester. ‘‘It worked for them . . .’’

  ‘‘We need a sender’s address,’’ I said. ‘‘Just for the first message . . .’’

  We sent a message to George’s brother-in-law in Marion, IA. Right next to Cedar Rapids. He sent the message for us.

  Our first message went like this:

  FROM: KLINEB@LAWNET.COM

  TO: BRAVO6@xii.COMONCOMON.COM

  SUBJECT:

  DATE: FRIDAY, JULY 26, 1996 6:11 PM

  WE’RE IN JAIL IN CEDAR RAPIDS. I HAVE AN ATTORNEY WHO HAS A LAPTOP. I HOPE HE SENDS THIS TODAY. HE DOES NOT KNOW I AM DOING THIS.

  HAVE GABE CONTACT ME AT THE SAME OLD ADDRESS. T
HEY MISSED SOMETHING IN THE SEARCH. NOLA

  The only thing I wasn’t sure of was whether or not the attorney would have an automatic spelling corrector. George said that he most assuredly would. Even better, since then we didn’t have to fake a hurried message.

  The ‘‘they missed something’’ was mine. What we intended to do was have Nola get access to a computer and call her own back at the farm. You see, when you do a warranted search at a residence, like the FBI lab people had participated in at the Stritch farm, you always have to give the owner a receipt for everything seized. So Nola would have a receipt for the computers that were taken. There had been one older one. Great. That’s the one they’d ‘‘left,’’ as nonfunctional. We could probably sneak the one we were using up to the farm yet that night, as there were still forensic people at the scene.

  After that, all we had to do was wait.

  ‘‘We’re going to have to go up there after dark, to put this in place,’’ I said. ‘‘But all we gotta remember is to change the phone number to Herman’s, and we’re set.’’

  ‘‘Right,’’ said Hester. ‘‘You think we have time for supper?’’

  I looked at my watch: 1826. ‘‘Sure,’’ I said. ‘‘Let me just check our mail . . .’’

  We had a response.

  It worked. The server thought we were Herman.

  The message from Bravo 6, our man Borcherding, was:

  WILL LET HIM KNOW. ARE YOU ALL OK? WHAT DID THEY MISS? WHY ARE YOU IN CEDAR RAPIDS? HAS ANYBODY TALKED? DINGER

  ‘‘Dinger?’’ Hester grinned. ‘‘Dinger . . .’’

  ‘‘Short for Borcherding,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Don’t ruin the moment, Houseman,’’ she said. ‘‘I want to enjoy the romance.’’

  ‘‘He bit,’’ I said a few seconds later. ‘‘He did, didn’t he? He bit, and so did the server, by God.’’

  ‘‘You got it,’’ said George.

  ‘‘You want to come along when we plant this thing?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘Hadn’t better,’’ he said. ‘‘Can’t tell what you don’t know.’’