Known Dead (11 page)

On the 9th, Hester had to be in court in Louisa County. Turd’s girlfriend Beth called me about noon, and said that she wanted to meet, urgently, and in secret. We settled on a church that was about three miles from any town, on a gravel road, at 1400 P.M. Since it wasn’t Sunday, it wasn’t likely that anyone would be there.

I got there at about 1345. Nothing. Beth arrived about ten minutes later, in a dilapidated old Chevy four-door driven by a male I didn’t recognize. He dropped her off, and pulled into a field entrance about a quarter mile down the road. She and I sat on the hood of my car, and talked.

‘‘Hi, Beth.’’

‘‘Hi, Mr. Houseman.’’

‘‘Who’s your friend?’’

‘‘Oh, that’s Jake Oberland. You know him.’’

‘‘Yeah.’’ I sure did. A worthless scumbag of a weasel. Turd’s best friend, if I remembered correctly. ‘‘What’re you doin’ with him?’’

‘‘Well, he’s sort of moved in. You know.’’ She couldn’t quite meet my gaze. ‘‘Makes me feel safer.’’

‘‘Safer?’’ I asked. ‘‘You been threatened?’’

‘‘Well, that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about.’’

I didn’t say anything.

‘‘I mean,’’ she said, ‘‘I haven’t been threatened. No. But it’s getting, you know, kind of nervous up there.’’ She looked at me now. ‘‘People talk. You know.’’

‘‘What’re they talking about, Beth?’’

We were both facing forward, with our feet on the bumper. She put her head in her hands for a few seconds. When she looked back at me, she was noticeably paler.

‘‘They say that it was the CIA.’’

I looked at her for a second, speechless. ‘‘You’ve gotta be kidding, Beth.’’

‘‘No, that’s who they say did it. Honest.’’

‘‘That’s bullshit, Beth.’’

She looked at me. ‘‘I don’t know. Do you think they’d tell you?’’

Well, she had me there.

‘‘Probably not. But it was likely somebody a lot closer than them. They’d have no reason to shoot Turd.’’

‘‘But what if,’’ she said, softly, ‘‘it wasn’t him they were after?’’

Ah. Now we were getting to the real point.

‘‘You think it was the officers they were after?’’

‘‘I didn’t say that.’’

‘‘That’s what you meant.’’

Silence.

‘‘Look, Beth,’’ I said. ‘‘I just want you to listen to me. Okay?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘Okay, this is the way it is. If the CIA wanted the cops, why do it in the woods? There’s a million ways to get them, not in the woods. And do you think the CIA would blow it and just get one? And don’t you think they’d use silencers?’’ Points for our side. ‘‘Because the surviving officer was nearly deafened by all the shooting. Really loud.’’

‘‘Well . . .’’

‘‘So don’t worry about the CIA. Or anybody like that.’’

I was wondering if she’d gotten what she wanted. I doubted it. We could have done this on the telephone.

‘‘Can Jake talk to you a second?’’ she asked.

‘‘Sure.’’

She stood, and walked ahead of my car, motioning to Jake. True to form, she wasn’t able to get his attention. That’s my Jake, I thought. I reached in and beeped the horn. Jake’s head came up, and Beth just about jumped out of her shorts.

‘‘Oh, sorry, Beth.’’ I really meant it, she looked like her heart had just about stopped.

‘‘You scared me,’’ she half giggled. She motioned to Jake. It took him almost a minute. Had trouble getting the car started. I used the time to get my two cents’ worth in.

‘‘You can do better than him, Beth.’’ She could. She was pretty bright and was a hard worker. Two things Jake wasn’t.

‘‘No, I can’t, Mr. Houseman.’’

I started to say something, but she held up her hand.

‘‘Maybe before,’’ she said. ‘‘But now? Two kids. Half the town thinks I’m a dope dealer, and the other half thinks I snitched off Howie. And the word’s out that Johnny Marks is waitin’ to get me after the heat’s off.’’ She looked up at me. ‘‘Who do you know wants to live with that?’’

‘‘I wouldn’t think Jake would.’’

She smiled. ‘‘He’s snitchin’ for Johnny Marks. I know that. Like, duh, you know?’’

‘‘Sure.’’ And maybe he knew where Johnny was.

Jake pulled in. ‘‘But he’s got somethin’ to tell you, Mr. Houseman. I think it’s straight.’’

Jake never got out of the car. He kept the engine running, obviously nervous, and probably not too sure if it would start again. It was difficult to hear him.

‘‘Hi, Mr. Houseman,’’ he said, not quite looking at me, and with a very grim face.

‘‘Jake. How you doin’?’’

‘‘Good, I guess. Mr. Houseman,’’ he rushed. ‘‘Look, there’s one thing you gotta know. It’s all political, Mr. Houseman. All political.’’

Great. ‘‘Just about everything could be said to be political, Jake. But you mean Howie and the officer being killed?’’

‘‘Yeah.’’

‘‘You think it was the CIA too?’’

‘‘I ain’t saying it was. I ain’t saying it wasn’t. I’m just saying that there’s some powerful people, who know all there is.’’ He looked at me. ‘‘You know who they are.’’

‘‘I don’t think I do. Do you?’’ I asked.

‘‘That’s all I gotta say,’’ he said. ‘‘I ain’t takin’ no fuckin’ chances, and you ain’t never heard me say that.’’ With that, he started to roll the car backward, and Beth scrambled around to the other side to get in.

‘‘Jake . . . get a message to Johnny for me. Tell him to call me.’’

‘‘Goodbye, Mr. Houseman!’’

‘‘Goodbye, Beth.’’

And they were gone, literally in a cloud of dust.

Well, I hadn’t had much to do that afternoon anyway. But I thought that the whole thing was interesting. She was probably as much a victim as the rest of them that day. I sighed, and got back into my car. ‘‘Political.’’ In a way, I supposed he was right. Somehow, somebody had got in somebody’s way. She’d been checking me out the whole time, just so he could deliver his paranoid little message. And, I said to myself, she’d done it for the man who was watching her for Johnny Marks. If Marks was that interested, maybe we really had overlooked something.

When I got back to the office, I entered ‘‘CIA cleared, along with SEALS,’’ in my case notes.

On July 10th, Hester was back, and she and I interviewed a lady from La Crosse who said she had seen somebody in the park that day. She’d called, and driven all the way, very nervous, and flushed. She was about fifty, plump, and exceptionally nice. We were very polite when we learned that she had been in an area of the park almost six miles from the shootings.

On July 11th, we reexamined the crime-scene photos. We’d had some of them blown up. Nothing. We’d had several others transferred to CD, and tried all sorts of things with our computers, like increasing the red intensity, decreasing the blues, eliminating the greens . . . I even went to black and white. The problem was, unless we had something we were looking for, something definite, there was no point.

On the 12th, DEA finally sent out Nichols, who talked to us and to Dahl, and to Johansen for a bit. He was really helpful. He seemed to agree with my movement theory, and seemed impressed with that. He said they had nothing that would explain the shooting of Turd. That they’d get on it as soon as they could. Nichols was really helpful. Well, as much as he could be without having anything new to tell us. He said he didn’t know where Marks was either.

Dahl was really angry by now, at nobody in particular. Like so many undercover narcs, he was a little high-strung. And he had energy to burn. He wanted to redo all the interviews Hester and I had just redone, for example. He’d already pored over every narcotics file he could get his hands on, trying to establish various connections into our area, and then had followed them all up. He’d also been working in his undercover mode up around Freiberg and the park area, and had made the acquaintance of Beth Harper and her new boyfriend, Jake.

‘‘She’s just another doper cunt,’’ he said. Then: ‘‘Uh, sorry, Hester.’’

‘‘That’s fine,’’ said Hester. ‘‘She’s not my little sister.’’

‘‘Really, though,’’ he said. ‘‘She’s not stupid, but she just doesn’t want to know, so she doesn’t.’’

‘‘I can understand that,’’ I said. ‘‘Especially at this stage.’’

‘‘The scoop on the street is that it was a gang hit,’’ said Dahl. He adjusted his black Harley sweatband, which matched his black Harley tee shirt. ‘‘We’ve checked that one, haven’t we?’’ He directed that question at Nichols.

Nichols just nodded.

‘‘I mean. I don’t think there’s anybody really connected up there . . .’’

‘‘They’re not,’’ said the DEA rep.

‘‘It does look a lot like a hit,’’ said Hester. ‘‘An organized hit. It really does.’’ She was wearing tan slacks, a white blouse, and looked like she came from a whole different world than Dahl. Yet, five years before, she’d been in blue jeans, a cutoff denim jacket, and could have passed for his old lady. That’s what she’d worn the first time I saw her, and she could have fooled me.

‘‘That’s it,’’ said the senior DEA agent. ‘‘We can’t come up with an outfit with motive . . . we really can’t come up with any sort of gang that’s into it at all. Not yet. There will be once it’s harvested and bagged, but not yet. Just some high hopes, so to speak.’’

‘‘And it wasn’t that much of a patch and there’s no war on,’’ said Dahl, ‘‘but the bad guys have been wrong before. They’ve knocked off some pretty unimportant people who just happened to have given the impression they were important.’’

I nodded. I was aware of that sort of thing. ‘‘Not this Howie Phelps,’’ I said. ‘‘He couldn’t even convince himself he was important.’’ I shrugged. ‘‘Besides, if the shooters were involved with the ownership of the patch, they would have known who Howie was anyway.’’

‘‘How about this Marks?’’ asked Hester. ‘‘Boy seems to have a certain air about him.’’

‘‘Could be,’’ said Dahl. ‘‘Everybody up there thinks he’s important.’’ He thought a second. ‘‘Naw, that’s just because Marks has told ’em so. Anybody with any savvy could spot him for an idiot in a short second. Besides, he sure as hell knew Turd.’’

‘‘And his old lady,’’ said Hester dryly. ‘‘I just don’t see how anybody without savvy could put together a hit like that.’’

‘‘Yup,’’ said Nichols. ‘‘That’s the problem.’’

‘‘The real problem,’’ said Hester, ‘‘is that, as far as I can tell, there’s absolutely no reason for this to have happened at all.’’

We were quiet for a moment.

‘‘A mistake?’’ asked Dahl with a wide grin. ‘‘You can’t be telling me that it was all a well-organized mistake.’’

‘‘No,’’ said Hester. ‘‘It was no mistake. If it was a mistake, Marks wouldn’t rabbit. We just don’t know the reason, that’s all.’’

‘‘We need a motive that works,’’ I said, almost absently.

‘‘We have the motive,’’ said Nichols. ‘‘Dope is the motive, and it sure works. We just gotta get the details right.’’

I took the 13th and 14th off. It was either that or beat some kid to death with the mailbox he’d just knocked over. Saw a movie. Mowed the lawn. Got to see my wife, Sue. I remembered her from my vacation. Just being with her was a help, even though we couldn’t discuss any of the specifics of the case. She knew it was driving me nuts, because I was driving her nuts. Only I wasn’t driving her nuts directly because I was hardly around. We had a nice little reunion.

On the 15th, Hester and I met with Dr. Peters, the forensic pathologist assigned to the case. We met at his office in Cedar Rapids. He’d offered to come to the Nation County Sheriff’s Department, but I told him we could do it as easily at his place. I really didn’t want to get back into routine crap at the office, and this way I could delay it by a day. Besides, he had a really nice office, especially compared with ours.

Peters was really special. Every autopsy I’d ever been at with him in attendance, he had a story with a good point for every single organ he took out of the corpse. He’d make every effort to point out to me every single detail and explain each point. And I hung on his every word. I found we were in complete agreement about what I thought was the most vital part of the relationship between the pathologist and the cop. He narrowed the parameters for us, with anything involving the body and the cause and mechanism of death. We solved the case. He would assist in every way he could, but we had to put it together. ‘‘Quincy,’’ he’d say, ‘‘doesn’t live in Cedar Rapids.’’

Peters worked out of a single-story office-laboratory that was well furnished and well staffed. He wasn’t the only pathologist who worked out of that office, but he was by far the best. You could tell from the attitude of the nurses and secretaries, and from the occasional confirmatory questions coming from the other docs. It was amazing. He’d just think about something he wanted, and there it would be, in the hands of a staff person. From tools of the trade to coffee and rolls. And the worst part was, he didn’t demand that sort of thing. They just wanted to do it for him.

Hester and I were ushered in with just a little fanfare, which pleased us both. Peters met us at the main entrance, and we followed in his wake back to a large conference room. Coffee, rolls, napkins, sugar, tea, cream . . . plus two ring binders containing the autopsy records of both Howie Phelps and Bill Kellerman.

‘‘How do you want to start, Carl?’’ Dr. Peters’s way of asking where the problems were.

‘‘Well,’’ I said, fighting off the urge for a second doughnut, ‘‘we have no suspects. Period. So we gotta get to know the people who did this.’’

Peters nodded. ‘‘Let’s do that, then.’’

He opened the autopsy binder for Howie Phelps. Arthur George Phelps, according to the death certificate. ‘‘Turd’’ wasn’t mentioned. The cause of death was listed as ‘‘multiple gunshot wounds, chest, abdomen, and head,’’ with the manner of death simply given as ‘‘homicide.’’ Dr. Peters’s diagrams were there, drawn onto the standard human body outlines—anterior, posterior, left, right, top—with similar views of the skull. The entrance and exit wounds were shown by small round dots in the former, and by larger oblong shaded areas in the case of the latter. Simple, so far.

‘‘Had a little problem with the paths of the bullets,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘I drew lines from the entrance to the exit wounds for each round, and they just didn’t make sense.’’ He grinned. ‘‘Until I discovered that projectile three exited above projectile two. Otherwise, there would have been more than two shooters. But there wasn’t. Three just hit the spinal column more centrally, and was deflected more to the right and up. Almost passed through the channel caused by two, and came out . . .’’ He looked at his notes. ‘‘. . . five centimeters above it.’’