‘‘Are there any more than just one known dead?’’
There was that term again.
‘‘One officer, whom I knew for better than twenty years, is dead. That seems like enough to me. You want more?’’
With that, I turned around and headed back to the tent. Babble behind me, and Hester caught up. ‘‘Hey?’’
‘‘Yeah?’’
‘‘You need a little sleep.’’
I slowed down. ‘‘Yeah.’’
‘‘Actually, you need a lot of sleep. Why don’t you go home, or catch a nap in the tent.’’
‘‘Or just sleep in my car…’’
‘‘Sure,’’ she said. ‘‘But just get some sleep before you talk to the press again.’’
I stopped completely, and began to let myself run down. ‘‘It was that term, the known dead bit. It always strikes me that they really mean, do they know them, like are they important or meaningful, you know? And it reminds me of the body count shit from years ago. Keeping score. You know? I mean, I know I’m misunderstanding it. It’s just a thing, that’s all.’’ I yawned. ‘‘Just pisses me off. They just yip, yip, yip about known dead, and that’s…’’ I just trailed off.
‘‘That’s show biz,’’ she said. ‘‘You better hurry, I don’t want to have to carry you to your car.’’
I grinned in the near-darkness. We were just about at my car when we heard the sound of yelling, faint but unmistakable, from the direction of the Stritch farm. It sounded like both male and female voices.
‘‘What the hell,’’ said Hester.
We both turned and started toward the voices when we heard three loud cracks of rifle fire, then more yelling, louder. We started to run toward the perimeter line.
Fifteen
We’d killed the electricity to the Stritch house and outbuildings, so there was no yard light. When there were interior lights in the Stritch house, they were courtesy of an emergency generator Herman, like many farmers, had installed. I couldn’t see any lights in the house now, though, as Hester and I jogged to the forward perimeter. Herman must have been saving gas. The front of the house was fairly well lit by the portable lights we had running off a Fire Department generator. The problem was, the light was all from one direction, and the shadows were consequently very pronounced. It was black as pitch directly behind it, but there was no way we could get light back there. Just to make things worse, the humidity was so intense there seemed to be a fog hanging in the lighted area near the house. It was hard to make out details, which could become very important if you were trying to make out the subtle color and shape differences between, say, a bunch of scrap and a sniper. Nothing was moving. All the cops were behind cover, and with all the light from our side, we were all in deep shadow. It was very quiet, except for the muted sound from the generator back with the fire apparatus.
I found Eddie Heinz just to the left of the lane, behind about four cords of kindling. Hester and I knelt down with him.
‘‘What’s happening?’’
‘‘Don’t know. There was a bunch of yelling, then I swear I heard a screen door slam. Right before three rounds were fired. It’s been quiet since.’’
I peered toward the house. There were no interior lights at all, and our portables weren’t capable of penetrating very far into the gloom of the house. Silence. Millions of frogs and crickets, who had all stopped making their favorite noises when the rounds were fired, started up again. There were enough of them that it made it difficult to pick up the softer noises.
We were there for about a minute when a trooper came from the tent area, saying that the negotiator had called the house but they wouldn’t tell him anything.
Great.
The trooper also said that the negotiator had established that Herman Stritch had somehow made it back to the house.
Obviously, that didn’t surprise me too much. It would have been fairly easy for him to break down some of the old vertical siding and slip out. It bothered me, though, because he’d managed to traverse the area to the house unseen. And, like I said, it also meant that in court they might be able to say that he wasn’t the one in the shed when the shots were fired at Lamar and Bud. Damn. It also meant that he was there to lead the family and friends in their activities.
Just then, Eddie said he had movement to our left, in the shadow cast by the barn. I strained to see, but couldn’t make anything out. Then a small, reedy voice said, ‘‘Mommy, I’m all wet.’’
With that, a thin, bedraggled young woman stood up, with a child in her arms.
‘‘Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot!’’
‘‘Don’t shoot,’’ yelled Hester.
‘‘Keep coming,’’ I said, in a fairly loud voice, but not shouting. ‘‘We won’t shoot. Just keep coming.’’
She did. I noticed she kept looking over her shoulder toward the house, but that she tended to keep in the shadow as much as possible. In a couple of seconds, she had come to the woven wire fence, and was being helped over by Eddie, Hester, and me. She seemed to be in her early twenties, wearing a sleeveless cotton plaid shirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes.
The first thing she said to me was ‘‘Hello, Mr. Houseman.’’
Damned if I didn’t recognize her. Melissa Werth, or Melissa Stritch now. She’d done about half her growing up three houses from me, at her grandmother’s, after her parents had been killed in a car wreck. I didn’t really know her, but we were well enough acquainted to exchange some words when we met in the grocery store. Damn. Just hadn’t connected her. Maybe I really was getting too old for this shit.
‘‘What happened, Melissa? Are you all right?’’
‘‘We’re fine. Do you know that that old son of a bitch shot at us? ’’
We were bundling both of them off toward the tent, and out of sight of the main buildings. ‘‘Who, Melissa? Who shot at you?’’
‘‘That crazy goddamned Herman!’’
‘‘Herman?’’ I asked.
‘‘Damned right he did!’’
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Because I wanted to leave. Because him and his whole goddamned family want to die instead of surrender, and that was supposed to include me and Susie!’’ We were near the tent now, and I could see her very clearly. She was a pretty girl, with long brown hair. She looked up at me, outraged and breathless. ‘‘Can you believe that shit?’’
‘‘Yeah, I’m afraid I can,’’ I said. We started in the tent.
‘‘Mark,’’ said Hester to a trooper, ‘‘get me a couple of women EMTs in here, will you?’’
Hester thinks of everything.
With Melissa and her child certified by the EMTs, we had a nice chat. It turned out that Herman, his wife, Nola, and his son William (the one I’d spoken with, and Melissa’s husband) were in the house. Melissa told us that they were all in agreement that Herman had done nothing wrong and was simply defending his property against intrusion when he had shot both officers. We were the ones, according to them, who were acting illegally, and were the ones who would have to back off. Melissa had been the one to bring up the possibility that we might not agree.
‘‘All I said, Mr. Houseman, was that maybe we’d better just think about this a little.’’
‘‘Sure.’’
‘‘And I said, ‘What if they start shooting?’ And they said, ‘Then we shoot back.’ And I said, ‘But what if we get shot?’ That’s when they said that we could all die for our cause.’’
‘‘That must have been pretty scary,’’ said Hester.
