Four. Well, if that was the case, our people really hadn’t had a chance. It surely wouldn’t have been hard to conceal four in the terrain up there. Eight, for that matter.
We did get a call from the narc boys. They’d heard that the people who were dealing with Johnny Marks for the harvested dope were really mad. They just weren’t sure who they were.
I was a little depressed when I got home.
Thirteen
On july 23rd, I shuffled into the office at about 0930. It was going to be a hot day, with high humidity and forecast thunderstorms. I was in my usual blue jeans and polo shirt, with a fairly good pair of tennis shoes. I’d talked to Hester the evening before, and we had decided that the interviews of the farmers in the area surrounding the crime scene should be redone. By us. Just in case one of the other officers who had done the initial interviews had missed some small thing. That can happen if you’re not fully versed on all the details of a case. What we had done, in our efforts to move things along quickly, was use officers from outside our area to do many of the interviews we considered to be less than likely to turn a suspect. They’d talked to every farmer, or nearly so, for eight miles around the scene. Sixty-one farmers, or their family members. Pretty much anybody on the farm who was available. In the early summer, most farmers are in the fields, so many of the interviewees had been wives or children. None had been productive. None probably would be. But we were desperate, and we needed something to convince ourselves that we were doing all we could.
I went back to my office, coffee cup in hand, and got out the file. I was going over the list of named interviewees, trying to come up with a schedule, when Lamar stuck his head in the door.
‘‘What’s up?’’
I told him.
‘‘Bud and I are goin’ up to serve papers on Herman Stritch, you want us to talk to him for you?’’
Stritch was on the list. His wife had been interviewed; he hadn’t. Their farm was about two miles southwest of the crime scene, nearly half a mile off the nearest county road. If I remembered correctly, the lane was a mess. Lots of big, big holes. Full of water if somebody spit within half a mile.
‘‘Sure. If you want.’’
‘‘Might as well.’’ He grinned. ‘‘You just wash your car?’’
‘‘Last couple of weeks.’’ We had to pay for that out of our own pockets too.
‘‘You could always walk in.’’
‘‘You both going up?’’ Stritch was a little to the right of Hitler, had his land posted saying he would shoot uninvited officers on sight. He was in debt over his head, and didn’t believe in any form of government except himself. We usually didn’t have any real problem with him, or those like him. All you had to do, generally, was be polite and reasonable. Most of the time. But a second officer never hurt.
‘‘Yeah.’’ He grinned. ‘‘You never know.’’
‘‘True.’’ I glanced at the file. ‘‘His wife was interviewed; he wasn’t… was out in the field.’’
‘‘Okay.’’
‘‘This might piss him off.’’ What I meant was that Stritch would probably give Lamar a lot of crap about being pulled away from his work, just for a ten-minute interview. If it lasted that long.
‘‘Well, if it does, it does,’’ said Lamar.
‘‘You need anything, just holler. Hey. Look on the bright side.’’ I smiled. ‘‘Talking about a dead cop and a dead doper will probably cheer him up.’’
Lamar shook his head, and left.
About forty-five minutes later, I was on the phone with Hester. I had just told her that I was going to do the first six or seven interviews while she testified in another case, and that we could plan on joint interviews for the rest of them. She agreed.
The intercom buzzed.
‘‘Just a second, Hester…’’ I put her on hold and pressed the Comm line. ‘‘Three.’’
‘‘Three.’’ It was Sally, working a rare day shift. ‘‘Lamar says not to count on an interview. The man they wanted to talk to saw them coming and is hiding in a little shed.’’
‘‘No shit?’’
‘‘Yeah, so Lamar says that Bud’ll just go to the shed, and if he won’t come out, he’ll read the paper to him and leave it. But he thinks the interview is probably out.’’
I grinned. ‘‘Yeah, I’d say so. Look, tell him it’s fine with me, and Hester and I will do it later. No big deal.’’
‘‘Okay.’’
I got back on the line with Hester for about ten seconds, when the buzzer went again.
‘‘Three…’’
‘‘Three, Lamar says you might want to head up that way.’’
‘‘What’s happening?’’
‘‘I don’t know. He just said that you might want to come up.’’
‘‘Right.’’
One thing about Lamar: when he said ‘‘you might,’’ he meant ‘‘you better.’’ He was never one to ask for help, but when he did, it was pretty urgent. I hung up on Hester, and got in my car. As I was leaving the lot, I was thinking that we were going to have a messy one, and that my incipient ulcer was going to have a field day. Probably going to be a long drawn-out argument, followed by a wrestling match with a screaming family all over our backs. Not to mention a lengthy report, just to cover our collective asses. Great. And me with a murder investigation to conduct. I turned onto the main highway, and couldn’t help smiling at myself. It wasn’t like I was having a lot of luck sleuthing out killers. Might as well get in a fight over some stupid paper service. I let the speed build up to around 80. Very little traffic around 1030 hours.
‘‘Three, Comm, ten-thirty-three!’’
‘‘Go ahead.’’ Ten-thirty-three is, of course, the code for an emergency.
‘‘Just received a 911 call from the Stritch farm, female subject. One needs help fast. Situation isn’t clear, but we have shots fired.’’
‘‘Ten-four,’’ I said, accelerating and trying to reach my red-lights switch with the mike in my hand.
‘‘Female is still on the line.’’
Red lights were on. ‘‘Ten-four, Comm, contact One via radio.’’ I wanted to know what Lamar thought. If he wasn’t too busy trying to duck to talk.
‘‘Ten-four. One, Comm? One, Comm?’’
As she continued, I put the mike down for a second and turned on the siren. As I did, I overtook a pickup and had to pass. Less than gracefully done, the swerve caused the mike to go onto the floor. I had to lean down into the leg well to pick it up, hit the shoulder, swerved again to regain control, and was just starting to breathe when Sally came back on the radio.
‘‘Three, no contact with One.’’
Not good. I took a deep breath. ‘‘Okay, Comm, get ten-seventy-eight lined up.’’ Ten-seventy-eight is the code for assistance. ‘‘As much seventy-eight as possible, and let me know how close they are…’’
‘‘Ten-four, Three.’’
‘‘And keep trying One, and keep the female on the phone.’’
‘‘Ten-four.’’
Passing though 110 mph on one of the few straight stretches of the county highway, I was trying to figure out what to do if things had really gone to hell in a basket. You have to understand that there is always that nagging little voice that tells you you’re being silly, that this really isn’t going to be as bad as you think. That little voice is constantly arguing with a much louder voice that is telling you it has gone to hell, and that you’re going to be in a firefight as soon as you arrive. It pays to listen to the louder of the two.
The loud one was telling me that I was not in uniform, that if there was backup coming from a considerable distance they wouldn’t have the faintest idea who I was, and that I was about to get shot by mistake.
