A Long December

by Donald Harstad

  “That lying little shit,” I said. “Does Hester know?”

  “Volont just called her. She’s in the room next to us here in the motel. Want to meet us for breakfast?”

  “Give me ten,” I said. “Maybe fifteen. Where you want to eat?”

  “How about your jail kitchen?” he said. Local restaurants, especially during a major investigation, were a bad idea. Way too many ears.

  “How about here instead,” I offered. “The media won’t be outside.”

  I heard him ask Volont something. “Sure. Okay if we bring Gwen?”

  “Sure. Absolutely. And Hawse, too, if he wants.”

  George chuckled. “He left last night, went back to Cedar Rapids. He didn’t like the accommodations.”

  “That’s too bad… it’s a long drive, especially late at night.”

  “Not for him,” said George. “He took a helicopter.”

  As I replaced the phone on its cradle, Sue said, “Did I just hear you invite some people over here in ten or fifteen minutes!?”

  “More like twenty, I think,” I said. “I’ll just run to the bakery and get some rolls, and put on some coffee…”

  She’d have none of that. While I dressed, walked one block, and spent ten minutes investing in pastry, Sue managed to dress, put on some makeup, start scrambling eggs, and make two quarts of orange juice. When I got back home, she was all set.

  Two minutes later, Hester and three hungry FBI agents came through the back door.

  Volont sat back in his chair and put his hands on the dining room table. “Sue,” he said, “that was a truly great breakfast.”

  Sue smiled. “Anytime.” Well, I knew better, but the feds sure didn’t.

  Hester, George, and I helped clear the table, and then Sue discreetly went back upstairs, ostensibly to give us some privacy. I figured she’d be collapsed on the bed and out like a light in five.

  I called the office and told Sally we were all at my place. Then, over coffee, we tried to sort things out.

  “The immunity request tells me she’s got some complicity in what’s going on here,” said Hester. “Either that or her attorney is just being very cautious.”

  “And she thinks” said Volont, “or at least wants us to, that she’s got something of value to trade for it.” He sipped his coffee. “That’s what I got from the request for protection, at least. Or, maybe just dramatic games. But if she really thinks she’s got something we want, we gotta figure out just what that might be. Then we see if it’s worth it.”

  “Think she knows who’s behind the thing?” I asked.

  “We should be so lucky. In my experience,” said Volont, “they always want to ‘trade up,’ so to speak. You got to be real careful.”

  “How long has she known Rudy Cueva, or whoever he really is?” asked Gwen.

  “About six months,” said Hester. She glanced at me. “Isn’t that what she said?”

  “Yeah. The way she put it, they started living together pretty close to the day they met,” I said.

  “Ah,” said Volont, “love at first sight.”

  “Sounds like,” said Hester.

  “She said he wasn’t into dope,” I said. “I guess she should have said ‘not anymore.’ But she was really firm about that, the no-dope stuff. She offered to let us search her apartment. She had to know it was pretty clean to take that chance.”

  “Not to worry,” said Volont. “We don’t trade lip for dope information on this case. We need warm bodies, we need the source of the ricin, we need to know who wasted her boyfriend, or the deal’s off.”

  “If we can pop her as a material witness before a deal is cut, can we…” I said, thinking aloud.

  “Well, now,” said Volont, “let’s think about that. Because she’s implied she’s more than a material witness. She implies that she could be an accessory. That’s a long way from probable cause, even with the totality of the circumstances. I talked with Harriet this morning about this. We can still hold her under your ‘material witness’ ATL, assuming we can find her, but as soon as serious negotiations start between the attorneys, we shouldn’t question her. Even with a Miranda warning. Her attorney will have to be involved all the way at that point, as soon as an agreement on the immunity is tentatively reached. Glad you said something.”

  I was glad I had, too. I went into the kitchen and called the office, and asked Sally if there had been any response to the ATL. Nothing.

  “Is that all?” She sounded a little harried.

  “Busy?”

  “Like a cat burying poo-poo,” she said. “We’ve got the media clogging up the parking lot, Lamar is really pissed, and we have two prisoners who have to go to court this morning. Go away, Houseman.”

  As I got back into the dining room, Hester was saying, “Just who is this attorney, anyway?”

  “Not sure yet,” said Gwen, stirring her coffee. “We’re checking.”

  The way she said that was just so cool. It just reeked of staff scurrying about while she stirred that coffee.

  “I wasn’t expecting an attorney from Madison,” said Hester. “Our only connection so far was the wedding in the Twin Cities.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Gwen, “I scanned in those photos last night, e-mailed them to some people. They’re working on those, too, now. Multiagency. Recognition software gets better every day.”

  “You know,” said Volont, “we sort of owe that Gonzales, the one they call Orejas. We’d be a few days behind the curve if he hadn’t gotten sick and croaked.”

  “That’s true,” said Gwen. “Hawse said as much last night.”

  “Speaking of,” Volont asked her, “Did God’s other son say if he’d be back today?”

  She grinned. “He said he would. After he talked with some people.”

  “We’re talking about Agent Hawse, I presume? “asked Hester.

  “My favorite super agent,” said Volont. “Yeah. That’s who.”

  “Is he going to be a problem for anybody? “asked Hester. “We should know that now, before it gets important.”

  Volont shook his head. “Nope. He won’t be here that long. He’ll just drop in long enough to encourage us, and then he’ll hightail it back to D.C., to report in person to the really important people. The boy is just hell-bent to be an assistant director. Like they say in Texas, ‘He’s all hat and no cattle.’ Just one of life’s little irritants.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Just as long as he frees up the resources.”

  “Oh, he’ll do that,” promised Volont. “Really. He’s very good about that.” He stood. “Time to go to work.”

  When we got to the sheriff’s department, the first thing I did was call Ben at the plant. He was up to his armpits in health inspections, but he took the call.

  “We need to know who loaded trucks with Gonzales over the last few days he worked,” I said.

  He sighed. “Okay. You coming down here today?”

  “I hope to, but I’ll probably need the information sooner than that.”

  “The information you can have in five minutes,” he said. “But my boss Mr. Goldstein wants to talk with you. If you aren’t too busy.”

  “Tell him I’ll be there if I possibly can,” I said. “He must be having fits.”

  “Yes,” said Ben.

  There was something about the tone of his voice that prompted me to say, “Hey, don’t let him start digging on his own, now. We don’t need that.”

  “You’re psychic?”

  “Not by a long shot. But Mr. Goldstein isn’t exactly the kind to sit on his hands,” I said. “But he’s gotta rely on us.”

  Ben had been right. We were just getting everybody settled at desks in the main reception area when Sally buzzed us. She had the information on the loading crew. It had been just about five minutes. There were eight male subjects, not counting the late Gonzales. We started running the names and Social Security numbers the secretary gave us, and came up with two bona fide people and six complete unk
nowns. Not the normal sort of unknown we normally got, which just meant that they had no police records. These six were just not anywhere to be found in any records, except at the plant. Two of them had the same Social Security number, but all were different from the Cueva and Gonzales matched set. That may not have meant much, as Gwen Thurgood was of the opinion that average forgers tended to print them in a recognizable sequence.

  “To do more than one of each number is very sloppy. Lots of them are sloppy, though. But we might have a connection.”

  Swell.

  Just to make my morning complete, lowa DCI Special Agent Art Meyerman came striding through the open door. He sat down on the edge of the first desk, normally used by our secretary, and announced, “Well, this is real bullshit.”

  “What is?” I asked.

  “All this media stuff. They follow you guys around like flies,” he said.

  “It’s because we’re sweet, Art,” said George. “Didn’t get to talk to you last night. How’ve you been?”

  “Fine,” snapped Art. “If you ask me, this whole thing is a wild-goose chase, just like that anthrax thing in the mail.”

  “About a half dozen people died there,” said George. “And we’ll be lucky if we don’t have a dozen dead here before we’re done.”

  “Oh, sure. I know. But, look out there. There must be five or six stations out there now, and look at that big rig coming up the hill….”

  We all looked. I’d never seen one of the big microwave trucks the major networks used for direct broadcasts. Well, not up close. As it reached the intersection at the bottom of the department driveway, it turned left, and we could read the printing on the side.

  “CNN,” said Hester. “We better not screw up now.” She was only half kidding.

  “I never start to worry,” said Gwen, “until the crew from Monday Night Football shows up.”

  We all moved back from the window and back to our desks.

  “You got time to type up a report for me? “Art asked Gwen.

  “Pardon me?”

  Art spoke more slowly. “I said, ‘you got time to type up a report for me.’ I have to make some phone calls.”

  “Depends,” she said. “You got time to make me a cup of coffee?”

  “What?”

  I figured I’d better intervene before Art got himself shot. “You two must not have been introduced last night,” I said. “Special Agent Art Meyerman, Iowa DCI, meet Special Agent Gwen Thurgood, FBI counterintelligence/ counterterrorism unit.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Art. He turned back to me. “Well, you got another office I can use? One with a real secretary?”

  “Sure,” I said. “How about your old one? We’ll see if we can get a typist for you.” He and I walked down the narrow hall to the cramped office we’d shared years ago, when we were both on the night shift for the county.

  “Boy,” he said. “She’s pissy, isn’t she?”

  When I got back to the main office, Gwen was on the phone, and holding up one hand to get everybody’s attention.

  “Thanks, Manny,” she said, and hung up the phone. “Well.”

  We all looked at her. Well, indeed.

  “That was Manny Ortega,” she said. “Best intelligence analyst in the business. He’s done the photo images I sent last night. This man, the thin-faced one in the wedding photos? The one you say looks like the boss?”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Manny thinks this is a man named Odeh. He’s not a hundred percent certain, but he believes it is. Do you have prints on him, too?”

  “No. Not as far as I know, we don’t.” I had to ask. “How’s that spelled? I mean, it sounds Irish…”

  “It’s Mustafa Abdullah Odeh. Oscar, delta, echo, hotel,” said Gwen. “That’s okay about not having the prints. That’s what I thought, but I had to be sure. Anyway, Manny didn’t know Odeh was in the country, but he’s just about positive it’s him. Manny Ortega is really, really conservative on this sort of thing. This is the first photo he’s seen of Odeh without facial hair, but even so, I’d say we have a ‘for certain’ here. Just exactly where and when were these photos taken, do you know?”

  Always keep your handwritten notes. I checked. “Minneapolis, or the Twin Cities, anyway…about three weeks ago. No closer data than that, at least not yet.” I made a note to attach to the first one. “It was probably in conjunction with a Catholic wedding, bride and groom were Juan and Adriana Muñoz… we’ll just check with the Catholic churches in the Cities, and see if there was a wedding party by that name.” I added a big S, to remind me to stick Sally with this.

  “Right.” She made a note, too. “Why don’t you let us do that? We can do that for you, and really fast.”

  I crossed off the S, and thereby added a few months to my life. “Excellent.”

  “So, then,” continued Gwen, “without going into too much detail, Mustafa Abdullah Odeh has a U.S. education, mostly at City College in New York. He’s got connections throughout the Middle East, with all sorts of terrorist cells and organizations. He gets things started, mainly. Plans. He’s kind of like a staff officer would be in the army. Manny says that Mustafa Abdullah Odeh pledged bayat to Osama bin Laden. That’s an oath of fealty. He’s also been associated with Hammas, Hezbollah, and the PLO. Over a period of fifteen years or more. The Hezbollah connection is the most important, by the way. They’re the most capable of ‘em all. Anyway, this is a dangerous man. Not necessarily directly. If he’s involved, directly or indirectly, it means that there is a serous foreign terrorist involvement somewhere in the area.”

  Great. Just great. “Everybody but the Popular Front for the Liberation of Dubuque,” I said. I don’t know if it eased the tension much, but it helped me.

  “I’ll double-check that,” said Gwen. “Anyway, members of the cell, the cell he works with, would probably call him something like the ‘Wise Man’ or the ‘Wise One.’ He carries plans that are forwarded to him from higher up. He also controls their finances. They need money, they come to him.”

  “Okay.” We were getting way out of my league.

  “But he normally won’t be directly involved. He’s too valuable to have him get himself killed, and way, way too valuable to have him get himself interrogated.” Gwen looked around. “I feel certain it is Odeh,” she said, quietly. “We all should be very, very careful from now on.”

  There was a momentary silence.

  “Well, all right!” said Volont. “This is more like it.” He was serious. The man thrived on this sort of thing, but I couldn’t help thinking about last time Volont was in his element. We’d gotten one of our officers killed on that one, along with several others, and all those terrorists had been homegrown. “I wouldn’t worry too much,” said Volont. “This group is probably dangerous if provoked, but just from the people we know who are involved, they aren’t a top-of-the-line terrorist cell. The only one who’s probably spent any profitable time in a training camp would be Odeh.”

  The intercom buzzed.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Hey,” said Sally, “Special Agent Hawse is out at the airport. His helicopter just left, and he’d like a ride in to the office.”

  “Get one of the marked cars, would you? “I said, without even checking with the FBI agents in the room. “He’ll look a lot less inconspicuous in one of those, and they can get him past the CNN people out there. We really should make sure he’s up to speed before the media grabs him.”

  “CNN? Holy shit,” exclaimed Sally, but not to anyone in our room, “turn on the tube, CNN’s outside…” and the connection went dead.

  That broke the tension a bit.

  Once he’d arrived, having successfully ducked the news teams outside, Hawse seemed very pleased with himself. “The art of distraction works every time. When I was a kid,” he said, taking off his coat, “my brother and I used to do a magic show. I never realized how useful it was going to be.”

  Volont looked at the ceiling.


  “So, boys and girls,” said Hawse, “what have we got this morning?”

  “You might want to sit down,” said Volont.

  “Go for it,” said Hawse, who remained standing.

  “The skinny-faced dude in those wedding photos, with the Hispanics? The ones we saw last night? Well, we’ve got him I Ded as one Mustafa Abdullah Odeh, a bin Laden associate. Money and plans man.”

  “Who did the ID?” asked Hawse.

  “Manny Ortega,” said Gwen. “He gives it a ninety-nine percent probability.”

  “I suspected something like this,” said Hawse, not missing a beat. “I was going over scenarios in my room last night. It fits.”

  That was something to see. He’d not only fielded the news with remarkable aplomb, he’d managed to make it appear just slightly out-of-date because he’d already considered it. I’d only seen that kind of thing once before, in Art Meyerman when he was just a new deputy. No matter who was turned as a suspect in any case, Art always said, “Oh, yeah, I figured it was him.” I knew he was fudging most of the time, but Lamar didn’t pick up on it. But that was how Art had gotten promoted to chief deputy, by making Lamar think he was always on top of everything. I was willing to bet my next month’s check on Hawse making assistant director before too long.

  Within ten minutes, Sally buzzed from the dispatch desk. “You guys might want to come out here, we’re on Headline News, and we’re being tied in to a terrorist act in New York…”

  By the time we got to the dispatch center, our segment was done, and we stood around for almost fifteen minutes, waiting for it to be rebroadcast. But, then, there it was. They showed footage of a deli in New York, and a hospital, and a bit of an interview. But all the time, the voice-over was giving out remarkably accurate information. They had the three delis the FBI had identified, the total number of casualties, the correct number of deaths, the current status of the hospitalized victims, and the date of the first admission to the hospital.

  What they didn’t have was the substance. Not yet. I said as much.

  “Don’t be too sure about that,” said Volont. “They’re probably doing their verifications right now.”

  Then, when we thought we were going to dodge the bullet, they showed the Nation County Sheriff’s Department, complete with a lot full of media vehicles and our unmarked patrol cars. Then, they named the plant in Battenberg and identified it as the source of the suspected contaminated meat.