Eleven Days

by Donald Harstad

  “Well, without mentioning any names, a good friend in our congregation called me the day it happened. He knew of my concern over matters like this, of the incidents in Ohio that I was involved in. He has a troubled family member, you see, and we have discussed this.”

  “Okay.” I grinned again. “But, then, I guess I’d like to know how he knew about it.”

  “Relentless. Relentless.” But he was smiling. “I can’t say, because he told me in confidence. Of course.”

  “I respect that, I guess.”

  “Reverend,” asked Mike, “did he get the information from an inside source, or did he know that these were Satanists before they were killed?”

  “Oh, no! No, it was an inside source. Absolutely. No, he didn’t know about the Satanic connections with these people. I don’t think anybody did.”

  “I don’t know too much about your confidentiality restrictions,” I tried to ease him in, “but I’m going to assume that they’re as stringent as ours, at least. Fair?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Okay, what I want to know is this. Is there any way you can let us know if there are other Satanists in this area, if you were to hear about it? I mean, people are going to talk, and probably some of them to you. Is there any way you could get some information to us without compromising yourself?”

  He thought for a moment. “I think I might be able to do that.”

  “And we’ll feel free to do the same, okay?”

  “You mean, pass information to me. Of a general sort?”

  I nodded.

  “All right.”

  “Reverend, I don’t want to put you in an awkward position, but you can see the importance of this case … so the first thing I’m going to ask you is that you not let anyone know that you have ‘official’ confirmation of Satanic involvement.”

  “That’s no problem.”

  “Good. Now the second thing might be a little harder …”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’d like you to try to find out just how Francis McGuire got involved with all this sort of thing.”

  “I believe I can tell you that now. Francis came to me almost a year ago. He was a very troubled man …”

  I don’t know why intelligence officers ignore the clergy. They shouldn’t. It turned out that McGuire was in deep financial trouble. A lot of farmers were at that time, but he was in a little further than most. He and an unnamed individual had bought a considerable amount of land, and McGuire had mortgaged his three-hundred-acre farm, which he had owned outright prior to that time. He had hurt his back and was unable to work his own land, not to mention the new acquisition. So he’d had to hire the work done, and that had cost too much. Rented the new land then, and his renter hadn’t paid him promptly, so he had a hard time with the interest payments and had to borrow more to make them. Vicious circle. Very.

  “Well, that might explain some of it …”

  “I’m afraid that Francis McGuire was also homosexual.”

  Okay, so we already knew, or at least suspected that. From the correspondence from the prison. The reverend was doing so well I didn’t want to discourage him.

  “No kidding?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  He then went on to describe the anguish McGuire felt about that, and how he wanted to make sure that God would forgive him for it. Mark said he thought his church had an enlightened policy regarding that, and told McGuire that it was all right in the sight of God to be gay, just so long as he didn’t give in to the temptation to have physical relations with another man. That he had to fight it, and to resist the temptations.

  “So what was his reaction to that?”

  “He didn’t feel that he could comply.” Mark looked disturbed. “Sometimes I feel that we let these people down—that we are here to offer solace, and when they come to us, we can only give them restrictions. Sometimes I think we alienate them.” He sighed. “I know we alienated Francis.”

  “So you think that’s why he went for Satanism?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he ever say anything about Satanism to you?”

  “No. Of course not. No, I was shocked when I heard about it, but I wasn’t surprised.” He looked at me with real anguish in his eyes. “Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “I do,” said Mike.

  “Did he ever say how long he’d known he was a homosexual?”

  “No, he didn’t. But it was the reason his marriage broke up.”

  “I hate to ask this, but did he ever mention any partners?”

  “No,” in a quiet voice. “Never.”

  “As a suspect, you know.”

  “I know why you have to ask.”

  We were silent for a couple of seconds. I had been waiting to ask why he had refused permission to bury them in his cemetery, and, with what he had just said, it didn’t really make sense. But I had to ask. That was why he was here in the first place, regardless of what he thought.

  “Mark, we’ve been told that you are refusing permission to bury McGuire and the others in your church’s cemetery … would you mind telling us why?”

  “They are an abomination.”

  “But they’re innocent victims …”

  “They believed in Satan.”

  “How do you know that? They may have been murdered by a Satanist, but we can’t know that they were.”

  “When I was told, that day, the one who told me said that there was a lot of Satanic material in the house.”

  “Well,” said Mike, “there may have been, but we don’t know who it belonged to.”

  “And,” I said, “an interest doesn’t mean commitment. Take yourself—you know a lot about Satanism, but you certainly aren’t one.”

  “I feel they would defile church ground.”

  “You might want to rethink that a little …”

  “Absolutely not. I am certain in my mind and in my soul.”

  He left a few minutes later, promising to stay in touch. We decided immediately to have Mike go to the courthouse and find out what land McGuire had purchased, and with whom. And for how much.

  After Mike left, I took a couple of Tylenol for my headache, knowing I shouldn’t, and lay back down on the couch. I had just covered my head with a pillow, to shut out the light, and decided that I was really going to get the son of a bitch who hit me, when there was a knock on the back door. I got up and answered it. Mike.

  He had a Xerox copy of a deed. The land that McGuire had purchased included the land Phyllis Herkaman’s house was on. As well as the adjacent land. His was the only name on the deed.

  9

  Wednesday, April 24

  17:30 hours

  I woke and turned over on the couch to see my wife asleep in the chair across the room. Sue was frequently very tired when she came home from work.

  I got up quietly, and her eyes snapped open.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “I was worried when I came home and found you on the couch. I didn’t know to wake you, or what.”

  She stood, too, and I went over and gave her a hug.

  “I’m just fine. How about you?”

  “I miss you.”

  “Me too.” I squeezed her again. “But I’m home for a few nights now. Look on the bright side.”

  She just sighed, and after a moment asked me what I wanted for supper.

  “I don’t know … hamburgers?”

  She backed away a few inches. “You’re pretty easy.”

  “Norwegian genes. Every time.”

  By the time we got around to eating, we’d missed the network news, so we watched local out of Cedar Rapids. The announcer told us that there had been a Satanic multiple homicide in our county and that there were signs of Satanic rituals. They got McGuire and Sirken mixed up, but had identified the Herkaman place as belonging to McGuire. And they quoted a “confidential official source.”

&nbs
p; I glanced at Sue, who seemed a little surprised to hear of the Satanic stuff.

  “Shit.” Said with a mouthful of hamburger, it loses a little of its impact, but she got the point.

  “Really Satanic?”

  “Sort of. But they got a couple of the names mixed up.”

  “At school today, they were talking about it. You know Seth Meyers … junior high math?”

  Yes, I knew him. Emergency medical technician. Just happened to be with the ambulance at the McGuire home.

  “Well, he said that there was some cult stuff in the house.”

  He’d been briefed by Dan. Of course.

  “There was.”

  The phone rang. Sue answered it, and it was for me. Art.

  “Hello, Art, it wasn’t me.”

  “You saw it, too?”

  “Yep.”

  “This shit is starting to get out of hand.”

  “Yeah, well, it could have been anybody.”

  “I know. But you know Theo …”

  “Anybody see him giving an interview?”

  “I don’t know. When you coming back to work?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “We’ll talk then.”

  “Okay, any suspects yet?”

  “Not so far as I know, but Lamar said something about Hal and Theo doing an interview tomorrow at the office. Somebody with some sort of information.” Art being cryptic again.

  I went back to my hamburgers. Sue was clearing her TV tray. She had a school board meeting at 19:00 and was about to leave.

  “Who told, any idea?”

  “No, but the smart money is on Theo.”

  “I’ll see you when I get back. It shouldn’t be too late.”

  I lay back down on the couch. My headache was coming back, with a vengeance. Fred came to the couch and put his nose next to my hand. I scratched his ears and thought about the case.

  We were pretty disorganized at this point. I hate to blame Theo for everything, but in this instance, we were all working on the case without much coordination. We had to work around an incompetent investigator, and DCI was going to have to pull most of its people out eventually if there wasn’t a fast, solid lead. And it didn’t look like there would be one.

  I still thought there was a female survivor, the unknown caller. Especially since McGuire owned the Herkaman house, she could have thought it was his place of residence. Which would have explained a lot, except that it meant that McGuire was at the Herkaman residence when he was murdered. Then taken to his own place.

  No evidence of that. Evidence he had been taken home, but no clue as to where he’d come from.

  If he was murdered at Herkaman’s, why take him elsewhere? Especially when Phyllis Herkaman wasn’t dead yet, and wouldn’t be for five more hours? Did the perp just leave her there and take the time to move McGuire and then come back? Not too damned likely.

  Two perpetrators? Or more? Possible.

  If he was murdered at Herkaman’s place, where was his hand? Actually, where the hell was his hand, anyway? Did somebody take a souvenir? Hester had said that there was some evidence in the blender, but a hand would have held up pretty well, with all the bone. Sirken’s testicles, and possibly his tongue, were soft tissue. Also, where was Phyllis’s missing breast? Blender? Not impossible, but that would be a lot of tissue …

  The souvenir bit was appealing, in its way. It would sure explain the missing hand.

  McGuire’s body just didn’t figure. The other three obviously died where they were found. And it looked like Sirken was dead before McGuire. Okay. If so, that meant the perp was in the Herkaman house and had killed Sirken before McGuire had bought it. Then killed Keller and Herkaman. In that order. But how could he have surprised Keller, in the act of undressing, if there had already been a murder in the house, and then a second one, and the second body had been moved several miles? And where was Phyllis all this time? Standing around waiting to be killed? Tortured and then killed? Was she already tied to the pipe?

  There was another partial thought. Could Keller have come home after the other three were already in extremis? Phyllis’s car and Sirken’s car had both been there … Keller could have been away. Could have been.

  Why move McGuire? If he really was moved at all.

  It kept coming back to that. And the fact that he had been moved to his own home, and that he had been the first discovered. It just didn’t add up. And, while we’re at it, what the hell had happened to his dog, to hurt it like that, if the murder had taken place elsewhere? A dog wouldn’t attack somebody bringing his master home, would he?

  My head really hurt, and not so much from the blow.

  Just before I dropped off, I thought about how close I had been to the bastard in the field. Damn, I must have been right on top of him when I stopped to listen. Not good. Really have to sharpen up, Carl. He could have killed you. If it was the perp, he sure had demonstrated an ability to do that sort of thing.

  The phone rang. Again. I got back up and picked it up in the kitchen. It was Lamar.

  “Hi. Just checking, how you doin’?”

  “Okay, a little headache, but nothing else.”

  “Good … Anything goin’ on?”

  “Nope. Well, Theo and Hal came up with a little something about the murders. There was another girl staying with Phyllis Herkaman—was there most of the time the last few months.”

  “No shit? Who?”

  “Well, nobody seems to know. Not her name, anyway. One neighbor lady, Mrs. Bockman, thinks it might have been Rachel, or something like that. But no last name.”

  “That’s pretty good … I’ve got Theo working day and night on the interviews. He’s talked to a hell of a lot of people on this, you have to give him credit for that. I bet he’s interviewed fifty people in the last three days. He’s really bustin’ his ass on this one. He really is … I talked to Pastor Rothberg a few minutes ago.”

  Uh-oh. “Yeah, I talked to him today, too. We needed a little information.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said. Anyway, I told him about how we had to keep this stuff down, if we can. Public. Anyway, he said it was okay to have the funeral at his church. Said he’d thought it over and he’s going to do it.”

  I kind of figured he might. But what else had they talked about? And was Lamar going to be pissed off because we were working without consulting Theo? That bit about how hard Theo was working was leading to something.

  “You and Mike got any information for Theo?”

  “Not much yet. Except that McGuire owned Herkaman’s place. I think that Mike is going to get hold of Theo yet today …” Making a mental note to call Mike and get him to tell Theo.

  “Good. I want you guys to cooperate on this one. Theo is going to type up his information and give it to you guys.”

  “Good, Lamar. Good. It’s nice to see Theo getting into this one.” He’s gonna fuck it up … I know he is. And he’ll never get fifty interviews typed, and we’ll never get the information, and there won’t be any real information there, anyway.

  I looked at the clock in the microwave: 20:15. Lamar had called from home … probably. He tended to take care of the personnel stuff after he got off work.

  I called the office, and Hazel Willis answered. She was one of our more senior dispatchers, pretty competent, but not particularly interested in anything but keeping her job. Made her reliable unless she thought she could fortify her position by snitching a fellow worker off.

  “Hi, Hazel. It’s three. Who’s working tonight?” Now, I knew who was working, but this was Hazel.

  “Let me see, uh, Eddie is out now, then it’s supposed to be you? How are you?”

  “Oh, a little woozy but not too bad.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that. Let’s see, after you were supposed to come out …” I could hear the other line ring in the background. “Got another call, let me put you on hold …”

  I said “Okay” into an already dead phone. It was too bad I just couldn�
��t ask for Mike, but then it would be logged that I had called specifically to talk with him, and I didn’t want Lamar to think that I was trying to get ahold of Mike to tell him to connect up with Theo. Which is what I was trying to do, of course.

  “I’m back … Let’s see, Mike comes out at ten. But he might be out a little early, since you’re off.”

  “Okay, uh, you want to check the back office and see if he might be there now? I think he had some stuff to do for Theo before he came to work.”

  “Just a sec.”

  Mike came on the line.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hi, it’s Carl. You talk to Lamar recently?”

  “Oh, about twenty minutes ago. Rothberg agreed to have the funeral. I was going to call you.”

  “Okay. Look, it might be a good idea if you were to connect up with Theo and give him a copy of the deed.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too. Lamar ain’t altogether happy about us talking to Rothberg.”

  “Right. You know about the other female who lived with Herkaman?”

  “What other female?”

  I told him what Lamar had told me. Mike said that Theo was still out, and that he would pump him about the new woman and would see what he could come up with. Theo was pretty easy that way.

  A new lead—a third woman at Herkaman’s place. Rachel … Rachel who? Who cares … we’ll find out. But I was sure she was the caller we hadn’t been able to identify. Our survivor. Our witness. The key to the whole thing. Now all we had to do was find out who she was, and where she was, and get her to talk. No problem …

  10

  Thursday, April 25

  12:12 hours

  I woke up a little after noon and felt pretty damned good. A little sore in the shoulder, but my head seemed much better.

  After I had a cup of coffee and had taken Fred out for a little while, I called the office to see what was new. Shouldn’t have done that. Everybody was in a restrained sort of tizzy. We had had five burglaries the night before. Theo was working one now, and Mike was still up, doing the last of his reports on the first two burglaries, which he had discovered.