Freedom's Sons

by H. A. Covington

  “We’ve no idea,” said Bob. “That’s what we have to find out.”

  “Where do you want to start?” asked MacPherson.

  “At the beginning, where else?” replied Bob.

  Bella Sutcliffe’s body was lying beside the indoor pool, covered with a green plastic sheet. MacPherson flicked back the sheet and Bob and Tom studied the dead face for a moment. Bella’s tongue protruded from between her teeth, a bright cyanosed blue, and her eyes were red from the petichial hemorrhaging caused by the tightening noose. “Guess she pushed one envelope too many,” commented Tom.

  “Guess so,” replied Campbell. “Did you find her purse, Mac?”

  “Found on the floor leaning against the wall, over there,” replied MacPherson. “Just the usual items except for a packet of Chinese-manufactured condoms, which is weird. What the hell is a man gonna think of a woman who carries those things around with her? Why didn’t she just hang a sign around her neck saying I’m a slut and I come prepared?”

  “It’s normal in her culture,” explained Campbell. “They’ve abolished sluts by making all women that way. I Am Womyn, Hear Me Roar and all that horse hockey. Be glad it wasn’t certain other items. Find her phone?”

  “In the purse,” replied Mac.

  “Dump it and check the whole chip, phone calls, stored, data, everything,” ordered Bob.

  “Waiting on the tech officer and his magic box now, Colonel.”

  Campbell looked up at Dr. Edward Cantone, the Anaconda Guard detachment’s medical examiner and pathologist, a regular doctor who also worked in the town’s clinic and took private patients as well. There weren’t enough homicides to give him full-time employment with the Guards. Cantone’s qualifications would not have been recognized anywhere else in the world, because he was a graduate of Portland Medical University’s medical school. PMU provided a stripped-down four-year course that actually taught doctors how to treat injuries and heal sick people, as opposed to the American system of eight years in school, two as an intern, and then specialization in some obscure part of the body to try and pay off a million-dollar student loan debt sometime before they were 45. The American Medical Association contemptuously referred to Northwest medicos as “Doc In The Box” and “paramedics with delusions of grandeur.” The fact that Northwest medical researchers had discovered the cure for most forms of cancer and were working on the rest was simply ignored as Nazi propaganda. “On the phone you said no sign of sexual assault, Eddie?” asked Campbell.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” replied Dr. Cantone, a stocky man of about 40.

  “Consensual sex recently?” asked Tom Horakova. “Her BOSS file says this lady preferred quantity to quality, and the condoms bear that out.”

  “Yeah, I heard you boys were in on this one,” said Cantone. “Can’t tell you here. Let me get her to town for a full workup and I’ll let you know, but off the bat I’d say no. No mystery on the cause of death. One look at that tongue and those eyes tells the tale.”

  “Any ideas on the ligature, Ed?” asked MacPherson.

  “Thin. Not wire like a proper assassin’s garrote. Probably something simple like nylon clothesline or even twine, something that would look innocuous if you find it in somebody’s kitchen drawer or garage workshop. When I get her on the table back at the morgue I’ll see if any fibers were left in the wound, and I may be able to tell you if it was twine or just plain rope. One thing, though.” Cantone leaned down and lifted the dead woman’s chin, with some effort. “She’s in full rigor now. The warm water and the fact that she was last seen alive at eleven makes me pretty sure she died fairly soon afterward, hence the midnight give-or-take TOD, but again, I’ll be able to tell more after the autopsy. Anyway, what I wanted to show you—see that bruise there just under the left jaw, about the side of a credit coin?” He pointed. “Not sure whether he used wooden grips on each end of the rope or some kind of knot or D-ring, but that was the actual pressure point for the noose. Not on the back of the neck. He didn’t sneak up behind her. He strangled her from the front, so he could watch her face while she died, and his face was the last thing she ever saw. Sadistic bastard.”

  “Yeah, a real hero of the red, white, and blue,” muttered Campbell in disgust. “Any chance she fought back, scratched him, got some blood or skin under her fingernails we can get DNA off of?”

  “Not that I can see. If so, the hours in the water probably washed all the traces away, but of course I’ll check carefully.”

  “Who found her exactly?” asked Campbell.

  MacPherson consulted his notes. “Martin Swart and Erin Graham, both aged seventeen, Labor Service employed here at the lodge. The Swart boy is the landscape gardener and one of several general heft-and-tote helpers around the place, and Miss Graham is a waitress in the restaurant and receptionist as needed. They both live on the premises in the staff wing.”

  “Married?” asked Campbell.

  “Not yet. No prom baby, either. They’re planning on getting married once he gets through Army basic and gets his permanent duty station, then they’re headed for university, UM or UW Pullman depending on what they want for their majors. The managers are a German immigrant couple named Thiessen, Gunther and Anna. He’s retired military. Been running the place about four years.”

  “Where are the kids?” asked Campbell.

  “In the office behind the reception desk, Colonel,” MacPherson told him. “The Thiessens are in the manager’s office.”

  “We’ll talk to the kids first.”

  Martin Swart was a stocky blond boy and Erin Graham a slim teenaged brunette. They were wearing sweatshirts over their bathing suits, and seemed partly concerned and partly excited by having found themselves in the center of something major. The detectives introduced themselves. “Waar in Suid-Afrika is jou gesin? Praat jy Engels?” Detective Botha asked the boy.

  “Ja, meneer, I speak English,” replied Martin. “I was born in Bloemfontein, but when I was eight my family made it onto Mooney’s List and we got out, so I learned here in Montana. That’s why I don’t sound like a Jaapie.”

  “You flew out with Captain Mooney?” asked MacPherson, impressed. “Over three hundred people crammed onto one sixty-year-old C-130?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the boy, and added nothing else. Mooney’s long flight was legendary throughout the Republic.

  “I thought all South Africans still spoke English,” remarked Horakova.

  “No, the ANC won’t allow us to learn it now, said Swart. “We have to learn Zulu, Xhosa, or Swazi and speak it in public at all times.”

  “Okay, you guys found the dead woman? Tell us about it,” said Campbell. “You went in for a swim about six thirty this morning?”

  “Yes, Colonel,” said Martin. “The pool doesn’t open until seven, but the Thiessens don’t mind if we get in a few lengths before that. Besides, most of the guests who want to swim early use the outdoor pool this time of year because of the hot springs. It’s quite lekker, but the indoor pool is…”

  “More private?” suggested Campbell.

  “Yes, sir,” replied Martin.

  “Don’t misunderstand, Colonel, Marty and I are both Christians and we’re not doing anything we shouldn’t,” said the girl, blushing. “It’s just that we’re both competition grade swimmers. It’s how we met, at Hemingway High in Boise. We have separate rooms, you know.”

  “None of our business, ma’am,” replied Campbell. “We just need to know about your finding Miss Sutcliffe. She just checked in last night, but did you see her alive at any time before this morning?”

  “I checked her in along with all the other foreigners, yes sir,” said Erin.

  “What was your impression of them coming in?” asked Tom Horakova.

  “They were all excited about some hook they’d found out at the Lost Creek archaeology site,” she said. “Their conversation I heard was all about that.”

  “How about Bella Sutcliffe?” asked Campbell.

  “She seemed�
�kind of hyper,” said the girl carefully. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, really, but some of her comments were, well, off-color. Bawdy, I suppose you’d call them. Rabelaisian, if you want to get classical about it.”

  “Yes, I remember,” replied Campbell with a sad chuckle. “Rabelaisian. I get the impression she would have liked that.”

  “Well, ladies aren’t supposed to be Rabelaisian. Not here, anyway,” said the girl primly.

  “Did you see her at all after check-in?” asked Tom.

  “No, sir,” she said. “I got off at nine and went to the employees’ lounge out back, and I read until ten and then I went to bed.”

  “Read what?” asked MacPherson curiously.

  “Well, a Jean Plaidy novel,” she said, slightly embarrassed.

  “You’re a seventeen-year-old girl, you’re supposed to be a romantic,” Campbell reassured her with a chuckle. “And you never saw Miss Sutcliffe again after you got off duty? Alive, I mean?”

  “No, sir,” said the girl.

  “I did,” said Martin. “I was helping out Mr. Thiessen behind the bar until ten and then I went to bed as well.”

  “We’re told she left around eleven, so you didn’t see her go?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Who was tending bar when you left?” asked Tom.

  “Gunther, that’s Mr. Thiessen,” he told them. “He and Anna, that’s Mrs. Thiessen, take turns behind the bar on alternate nights.”

  “How was Miss Sutcliffe behaving when you were there?” asked Bob.

  “Uh, generally she was kind of boisterous, not drunk, really, just kind of loud and brassy. Like you’d expect an American woman to act.”

  “Indeed,” said Tom. “Was she talking to anyone in particular?”

  “Mostly the other foreigners,” said young Swart. “About archaeology and stuff. She also sat at one of the tables and talked with Doctor Wingard for a long while, about the same kind of stuff, carbon dating and stone tools and such, at least so far as I could hear.”

  “Who else was in the bar besides the foreign scientists?” asked Tom. “Just other guests here, or any local people?”

  “Just residents, so far as I recall,” said the boy. “This is a state guest house for people traveling on official business. Our lounge is just a little pub more for convenience than anything else, so the guests don’t have to drive into town for a drink and a little company and a little music, not exactly a jumping joint. Sometimes local people come out here when they’re invited by our residents, but there’s a lot better pubs and caffs in Anaconda if they want to have a good time. No locals came in last night that I can remember.”

  “Meaning they were all Party or government people,” said Tom with a significant glance at Bob. “All from out of town, though?”

  “Yes sir,” said Martin. “Let’s see: there was the Jorgensons, husband and wife, who both work for the Education Ministry. They’re some kind of accountants. There was Mr. Belizaire from the Ministry of Culture, and Mr. Fetterman and a couple of guys from the NBA, who are out here shooting background film for some program about early settlers in Montana, and some others. Mr. Thiessen would know who they are.”

  “Did Bella socialize with any of them?” asked Bob.

  “She sat and talked with Mr. Speidel from Northwest Power and Light for a while,” said Swart. “She was kind of flirty with him, but then she was like that with all the male patrons. I got the impression she just likes being around men. Liked, I should say. She didn’t talk much with any of the women.”

  “Maybe we’re looking for a jealous wife or girl friend?” suggested Botha.

  “With a garrote in her purse?” asked Campbell. “I hope not. Wait a minute, you mentioned a Mr. Speidel? Dave Speidel, the Tesla power engineer?” He turned to Horakova. “Jason and I met him yesterday out at Lost Creek. He was talking to Bella Sutcliffe. He mentioned he actually works out of CdA, so he must stay here when he’s in Anaconda.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Swart. “He goes all up and down the eastern part of the country checking on remote reception towers out on farms and ranches and such, doing any adjustments or minor repairs that need doing. He always stays here when he’s in the area.”

  “Okay, thanks, guys,” said Campbell. “We may want to talk to you again, but I think that about covers it.” He turned to MacPherson. “Where’s the manager’s office?”

  Gunther Thiessen turned out to be a slim man in his late fifties with an erect bearing and a handsome Teutonic face, simply but crisply dressed in sharp-creased trousers and windbreaker, with well-clipped gray hair. His wife Anna was a small woman of about the same age who managed to look energetic simply sitting down, and who immediately leaped up, poured four cups of latté coffee from a large pot and offered the police a large tray of cookies and strudel.

  The office was paneled in oak and had its own fireplace. Campbell was struck by the wall over the mantelpiece, which was covered with Herr Thiessen’s military memorabilia. He stepped over to look at the photographs and trophies, some clearly of Thiessen in his younger days, some of several young men in more modern NDF garb whom Campbell took to be Thiessen’s sons, as well as a blonde girl with a small boy in her lap. The next thing that caught his eye was Thiessen’s mounted plaque of decorations, including not one but two Iron Crosses, one from the Battle of Portland and one from the Seven Weeks’ War. He nodded, impressed. Then he saw a shield with a coat of arms on the wall next to it, displaying an Iron Cross in the top left quarter, the letters “PG” in the lower left, a stylized bridge in the lower right, and in the top right the letters “SA” in Germanic Fraktur lettering. He whistled. “Herr Thiessen,” he said, “Do I understand this correctly? You were one of the Stormtroopers in Baumgarten’s original Panzer Grenadiers at the Battle of Portland? One of the first men over the barricades on the I-5 bridge?”

  “Ja,” said Thiessen. “Not so much a man, though. I vas seventeen years old, de exact same age as our young South African, Martin.”

  “The University’s Chancellor Jason Stockdale was on the I-5 as well, a few companies behind you,” said Tom.

  “I know Comrade Stockdale. I meet him most years at our reunions.”

  “How did you end up in the PGs at such a young age?” asked Bob curiously. “How did you even get into the United States? I seem to recall that by then they had virtually halted all white immigration from Europe.”

  “I came from Stuttgart to New York on a false passport stating dat I was a Jewish rabbinical student named Isidore Weiss, a National Socialist inside joke which needless to say de stupid nigger immigration agent at de airport did not understand. I made my vay Nordvest, hoping to find de NVA somehow. For years all of de youth of Germany had vatched de news with joy and fascination, knowing dat here Aryan people vere fighting again against de darkness as our ancestors did. It became a kind of hope and contest among us, to find vays to get to America legally or otherwise, to get to de Nordvest and somehow become part of it. I arrived in Seattle during de July Days, when I heard Herr General Baumgarten was raising a German-speaking regiment, and so my timing turned out to be perfect. I stayed on in de NDF after independence, through de Seven Veeks.”

  “This says you were a sergeant-major on your retirement,” commented Tom, looking at Thiessen’s framed honorable discharge. “Why not an officer, with your background? If I may ask?”

  “I am what our enemies sometimes refer to as a good German,” replied Thiessen with a chuckle. “I preferred obeying orders to giving dem. Officers have too much to vorry about.”

  “Have you found out anything about who murdered that poor woman?” asked Anna Thiessen. Somewhat to his surprise, she had no accent at all.

  “Not yet, ma’am,” he replied. “It’s early days yet, though. This is superb strudel, by the way. Cheese, not apple?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Topfenstrudel. I’m actually Austrian. Like the Führer.”

  “So how can ve help you to catch dis schvein?” asked
Thiessen.

  “We need to trace Miss Sutcliffe’s last few hours. You were tending bar in your lounge last night until closing?” asked Campbell.

  “Yes. I sent Martin off at ten. Young people need sleep.”

  “Miss Sutcliffe left the bar at around eleven?”

  “About den, yes.”

  “She didn’t leave with anyone in particular?” pressed Campbell.

  “No, I’m sure of it,” said Thiessen. “Vich rasser surprised me. One vould normally not speak so of a lady, but she seemed to be, how do de Americans put it, a panther on the hunt?”

  “A cougar on the prowl,” corrected Anna.

  “I am not a prude, Colonel,” said Thiessen. “Dese things are going to happen in any hotel. I do not meddle in my guests’ affairs, in any sense of de term, so long as dey are discreet and do not offend the other guests by public display, although I do try to keep a fatherly eye on Martin and Erin and the other young people from de Arbeitsdienst who work here, who are perhaps not fully adult enough for such things. Lest I give de wrong impression, I must say that Miss Sutcliffe vas not drunk or offensive in any way, just rather outgoing, let us say.”

  “Who was still in the bar after she left?” asked Tom Horakova.

  “Herr Doctor Wingard, de Scotsman Herr Doctor Renfrew, de American with de Italian name, Tarri-something, de English lady Doctor Haines, and Herr Speidel from de electric,” recited Thiessen.

  “All the other guests had left?” asked MacPherson.

  “Yes. De Scotsman and de English woman were vere teaching de Italian how to play proper billiards, not pool, and talking about archaeology. Really a rather staid group.”

  “I don’t imagine the lounge in a government guest house would get too boisterous,” remarked Tom.