Dead Run (11 page)

"Uh .. . I'm not sure I understand."

"Oh, yeah, sorry. Well, maybe you knew, maybe you didn't, but Grace, Annie, and Sharon were all supposed to be in Green Bay at four. So four comes and goes and by five, we still hadn't heard from them and we couldn't raise them on their cells. That's when Chicken Little here starts proclaiming the end of the world, because they should be somewhere near Green Bay by now, in which case their cells would work. I tried to calm him down-give them another hour, I told him, but you know how he gets. So I called the Green Bay detectives they're supposed to be meeting, and it's the same story there. Hadn't called, hadn't shown, hadn't checked in to their hotel, couldn't be reached on their cells. I tried very politely to convey my concern to those no-neck cheeseheads, but the bastard hung up on me, and now it's way past six, and even I'm starting to get a little worried. They always call. Theypromised to call. It's just not something they'd blow off unless something was wrong."

Magozzi felt a little tickle of apprehension, then reminded himself whom they were talking about. "Come on, Harley. This is Grace and Annie. Even if anyone were stupid enough to try to give those two trouble, it's the perps you should be worrying about. Plus, they've got Sharon with them. Those three together could probably take down a small country if they had to. . . ."

Harley was shaking his shaggy head. "Okay, this is the problem with homicide cops. Somebody mentions trouble, you automatically think bad guys. Roadrunner's been talking car wrecks."

Magozzi actually felt his brain screech to a halt, and pictured little nerve impulses putting on their back-up lights and heading in a different direction. Harley was right about the way his mind worked, but it wasn't just because he was a cop. The notion of extraordinary Grace being vulnerable to something as ordinary as a car wreck had never occurred to him. "Shit," he mumbled, starting to rise from his chair. "I'll call Wisconsin Highway Patrol, have them check the accident reports. . . ."

"Don't bother. Already did that, and the prick at WHP didn't have a very cooperative spirit, if you know what I mean, so we plugged into the statewides and looked for ourselves. Nothing. At least nothing that's been reported yet. We've got a tag alarm on the website if anything comes in, so we're covered there."

Magozzi eased back down in his chair, took a careful look at Harley, and felt that trickle of apprehension swell and roll in his belly.

Gino ambled across the room and stood over them, his hands in his pockets. "What are you two whispering about? You sound like a couple old ladies."

Magozzi glanced at Harley, then slid his eyes over to where Road-runner was pacing again. "Roadrunner's a little worked up."

Gino shrugged. "Of course he's worked up. The ladies are missing. He told me."

"Not missing. Just late."

"You gotta be kidding. Those three? Ten minutes over, they're late. This long? They're missing."

IT WAS AFTER SIX when Halloran dialed Grace MacBride's cell number again and got the same canned voice telling him to leave a message. He'd already left three and decided a fourth would probably cross the line between urgent and rude-not a prudent thing to do when you were begging a favor.

He'd been telling himself that the urgency he felt was purely professional. He'd convinced himself that they needed Grace's facial-recognition software to help ID the bodies from the lime quarry. And if he was going to drive the morgue shots down to Green Bay tonight, he wanted to get on the road before dark. But there was another little voice inside that kept asking if maybe the urgency didn't have something to do with Sharon Mueller and the possibility of seeing her. Halloran dearly hated those little voices.

Bonar strolled in just as he was hanging up the phone. "Just take a look at this," he said, holding his arms out and turning sideways.

"What am I looking at?"

"Please. Surely you can see that I'm becoming emaciated. Wasting away before your eyes."

"Really? Then congratulations. You're pregnant."

Bonar dropped his chin to look down at his stomach. "That's bloat from malnutrition. Plus, they're going to be out of the special at the diner if we don't get over there."

"What's the special?"

"Chicken-fried steak in milk gravy."

Halloran sighed and pushed away from his desk. "God, I love that stuff."

"Who doesn't?" Bonar picked up the phone and pushed a number he'd memorized about a million years ago. "Cheryl? This is Bonar. Put a couple of those specials on the back burner and guard them with your life, okay?" He hung up the phone and frowned. "Don't you think it's kind of funny that a woman that old is named Cheryl? Her name ought to be Emma or Violet or something."

Halloran considered that while he slipped a clip in his weapon and snugged it down into his belt holster. "Never thought about it. How old do you suppose she is?"

"She's seventy-three. Criminy, Mike, you've seen her almost every day of your life since you were a kid. How can you not know how old she is?"

"Maybe because I was never rude enough to ask."

"You hardly ever have to ask a woman anything straight-out. You just have to listen close. That's your problem, you know."

Halloran grabbed his cigarettes out of the drawer and closed it just a little harder than necessary. "Who says I have a problem?"

"You've got lots of problems. Women just happen to top the list. You can't even get Grace MacBride to call you back, and she doesn't even know you well enough to dislike you yet."

Halloran ignored the dig. "I'm thinking of just driving those morgue shots over to Green Bay so they'll be waiting for her."

"Why don't you just fax them?"

"Magozzi says the program works better with the original photo, and I want the best shot we can get. I don't suppose Wausau has any news about the autopsies yet?"

"They do, and you're not going to like it. The ME called about a half hour ago. He took custody of our three bodies this afternoon and was prepping for the autopsies when the Feds charged in like the cavalry and rode off into the sunset with them."

"They took ourbodies?"

Bonar nodded. "Uh-huh."

"They can't do that."

"They can, and they did."

"Just when did you plan on telling me all this?"

Bonar shrugged. "After supper. Why ruin a good meal with something you can't do anything about anyway?"

Halloran snatched the phone and started pushing buttons. "God-damnit, Bonar, you think I'm going to sit on this? I'm going to get some answers right now. . . ."

"I already called them."

"Who?"

"Whoever you're trying to call. And I already asked all the questions you're going to ask. That's what you pay me for, remember?"

Halloran was still miffed, but he replaced the receiver. "Oh, really. Okay, then give it to me, starting with who the hell gave those Federal body snatchers carte blanche at a Wisconsin ME's office."

Bonar sighed and took a seat. "The Federal judge who signed the warrant, that's who. I'm guessing those prints we sent to Milwaukee got some attention after all."

"So what did they tell the ME?"

"Nothing. They just slapped down the warrant, said it was a Federal case now and they were taking over. He didn't know a thing about it until they came waltzing in, and neither did anybody else down there, including the director of the lab."

"What the hell would make them move so fast?"

"That's exactly what I wanted to know. So after I hung up with the ME, I gave Milwaukee a call and spent another fifteen minutes talking to every FBI buck-passer in the whole God-blessed office, learning exactly nothing except that anybody who knows anything about this is either out of the office, out of town, or just plain out. They ran me around in so many circles, I'm still dizzy."

"So much for interagency cooperation."

Bonar nodded sullenly. "They said to call Monday."

"Right. Like the weekend will make a difference. Damn, this really pisses me off. If there's a Federal crime involved, fine, they can have it, but at least they could have given us a courtesy call."

"So what do you want to do? We're kind of paralyzed here."

"We're more than that-we're out of the loop. But I'd sure as hell like to find out what's going on and get a leg up on the FBI, just so I could rub it in their faces Monday morning."

"Me, too." Bonar let his eyes drift thoughtfully to the window and the cow pasture beyond. "Of course, Sharon could probably find out for us in five minutes, if you'd just swallow your pride and give her a call. . .."

Hailoran kept his expression perfectly flat and unreadable, but Bonar's eyes had zoomed in on him in one of those spooky looks that made Hailoran feel like he was getting an x-ray.

After a few moments, Bonar was grinning smugly. "So you did try to call her."

"Well, yeah, sure, I tried her a couple times," he said, going for nonchalance. "When I couldn't get ahold of Grace, I thought maybe I could reach her through Sharon."

"You don't have to explain yourself to me."

Hailoran grabbed his phone irritably. "I wish you'd stop reading my mind. It's creepy."

"I'm no mind reader-you're just totally transparent. Who are you calling?"

"Green Bay."

Bonar's heavy brows went up. "You're going to call Sharon out of a meeting?"

"I am."

"Uh, excuse me, but first you threaten to fire the woman, and now you're going to ask for a favor?"

"That's the plan."

"This should be interesting. You do know that if chicken-fried steak sits in the gravy too long, the breading gets all mushy."

Hailoran almost smiled. "I do know that."

THE LEAD DETECTIVE in Green Bay was a fast talker with a broken-glass voice that sounded more blues singer than cop. Hailoran picked up the hint of an East Coast accent. Detective Yustin was cordial enough, but a bit bent out of shape, understandably so.

"No sir, Sheriff Hailoran, haven't heard a word, can't raise them on their mobiles, and they were supposed to be here two hours ago. Four o'clock, Miss Mueller said, give or take, and it's after six. Don't get me wrong-this is a favor they're doing us, strictly gratis, so I'm not complaining, but I have four other guys here since three and I'm doing the overtime math in my head, you know? And overtime math :s like tax-audit math-it never adds up the way you want it to."

Having never been audited, the whole tax analogy was lost on Hailoran, but he understood the sentiment. "I'd be grateful if you could tell Agent Mueller to give me a call as soon as she gets there. I won't keep her long, but it's fairly urgent."

"These ladies are a hot ticket today."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you and me aren't the only people looking for them. I got a call from Minneapolis earlier."

"Huh. You get a name?"

"Yeah, sure, a tough guy, said his name was Harley Davidson, if you can believe that, and when I told him they weren't here yet, he got a little testy and proceeded to tell me how to do my job. Put out a watch for the car, call in the troops, like that. And this was when the ladies were only an hour late. Hell, if I put out calls every time somebody was an hour late, my fourteen-year-old would be on our most-wanted list, you know? The guy sounded a little too tightly wound to me. I'm thinking jealous boyfriend, if you're curious."

Halloran smiled a little. "Actually, he's the business partner of the two women Sharon Mueller is bringing along."

"You mean the two incredibly generous women who are donating their time and software to help me out?"

"The very same."

"Oops. Guess I have some apologizing to do. You mind if I ask you a question?"

"Fire away."

"Well, this software has to be worth a billion dollars, and they're giving it away? Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand philanthropy when there are that many zeros attached."

Halloran said, "From what I understand, all the partners made some serious money on their software company, but one of their games got a lot of people killed."

Detective Yustin grunted. "The Monkeewrench murders last October."

"Right."

"So this is, what? Some kind of penance?"

"Maybe. Hell, I don't know. Maybe they'd give this stuff away anyway. They're nice people, every one of them."

"Well, that's good to know. I'll pass on your message to Agent Mueller when she arrives, Sheriff."

By the time Halloran hung up with Detective Yustin, Bonar was over at the credenza, finishing a call on another line. He gave Halloran a dark look. "That was dispatch. Gretchen Vanderwhite's missing."

"The cake lady?"

"Yeah. She was hand-delivering a cake to a wedding over by Beaver Lake this morning; stopped to pick up Ernie's insulin at the pharmacy on the way, and was supposed to be back in plenty of time for Ernie's next shot. He's an hour overdue already."

"Is Ernie still driving?"

"Nah. He can't see a fly on the end of his nose anymore. Doc Hanson's on his way over there now to shoot him up. Dispatch called the bride's family. Gretchen never showed, and boy are they pissed. The bride and groom had to cut a grocery-store angel food for the pictures, and the bride cried during every damn one of them."

Gretchen Vanderwhite had started baking cakes about the same time the first McDonald's opened in Green Bay. She'd taken a fancy to the big sign that kept track of the number of burgers sold, and decided to put one up in her own yard. Everyone had gotten a chuckle out of that in the beginning, but then the numbers had started to climb and Ernie'd had to get a bigger sign. The last time Halloran drove by their farm, the sign had read more than four thousand, and as far as he knew, she'd never missed a single delivery. "We gotta move on this, Bonar," he said.

"I know." He was already punching numbers into the phone. "I'll sweet-talk Cheryl into running our dinners over here, then we'll get things moving before you have to head to Green Bay."