Ten-four, hell, I thought, as I hit the ground.
He didn’t fire. I mean, it wasn’t like he had to or anything. He’d just stopped us with a gesture.
He disappeared into the corn at the base of the hill. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I thought there was more than one. I wasn’t about to stand up and find out.
‘‘They’re armed,’’ I gasped into my radio. ‘‘Ten-thirty-two.’’
‘‘Ten-four, Three.’’ Calm, dispassionate. What we paid her for. If only it didn’t sound quite so much like she was bored…
Two deputies and two troopers came flying around the corner of the house.
‘‘Two suspects, armed!’’ hollered Hester. ‘‘Both into the cornfield.’’
Three members of the state TAC team rounded the corner a moment later, having come from their positions in the outbuildings. Two of them immediately went into the corn. The other, along with the four uniformed officers, took up overwatch positions back from the edge of the field.
A few seconds later, I stood up cautiously and backed up a bit, and sat on the porch steps. ‘‘Just too tired to chase ’em,’’ I said to Hester.
‘‘Me too,’’ she said, standing at the foot of the steps, looking into the house. ‘‘But I’m not going to sit until I know they’re all gone.’’
I sighed. ‘‘You’re right.’’ I stood and picked up my walkie-talkie again. ‘‘Comm, Three, get a team here to help us go through the house, will you?’’ I looked at Hester again. ‘‘ ‘Acceptable,’ for Christ’s sake. You are great, there’s no doubt.’’
‘‘You’re no slouch yourself. But next time, tell me what the fuck’s going on, all right?’’
‘‘I always tell you, just as soon as I know,’’ I said. With more truth there than I’d care to admit.
The remaining TAC officer came up. ‘‘What do you think?’’
‘‘I think,’’ I said, still a little breathless and drenched in sweat, ‘‘you’d better get your guys back out of the corn… or at least slow ’em up. The one I saw looks real hazardous.’’
‘‘They both do,’’ said Hester. ‘‘I’d get a K-9 team.’’
‘‘Any idea who they are?’’ he asked. We shook our heads.
After a few seconds, I just couldn’t help myself… ‘‘You gonna say it?’’
‘‘Say what?’’
I gestured toward the cornfield where the man had disappeared. ‘‘Him…’’
She got it. ‘‘Oh, no.’’ She groaned. ‘‘No, no fuckin’ way, man. No.’’
The TAC man was talking on his portable, but was catching our conversation, and looking at us strangely.
‘‘Come on…’’
‘‘Never.’’ She was giggling. ‘‘You’re gonna have to do it yourself.’’
I looked her right in the eye. ‘‘Who was that masked man?’’
‘‘God, Houseman. You have no pride.’’
Whoever the ‘‘masked man’’ was, he and his partner were in a cornfield of some eighty acres, about twice as long as it was wide, which was bounded on one end and one side by a large, heavily wooded hill, which bumped into a string of hills. One side was bordered by a curving gravel road. At the other end of the field was the Stritch house.
We put people on the road, and at the Stritch end. We had a couple of people going onto the hill at the far end, but there was no way that we could put people in the center in a hurry.
Whoever the two were, they had to be pretty damned uncomfortable. It was well over ninety degrees, brightly sunny, and as humid as I’ve ever felt it. In an eight-foot-tall green cornfield, there isn’t a breath of air. It’s even more humid, if possible, because of the wetly green plants. I don’t think it’s actually possible to suffocate in one, but you sure feel like you’re going to. Especially if you’re lying still after exerting yourself. You can’t hear anything further away than ten feet or see anything further than five. Not a pleasant place, especially with a TAC team and a K-9 team after you.
We couldn’t find them.
We had a helicopter from Cedar Rapids PD come up, equipped with FLIR. I talked to the officer who operated it, a man I’d known for years.
‘‘Right now, FLIR is out of the question. That field would just look like a hot pond, with waves. Tonight, it’s possible, but without a breeze to cool the plants…’’
We got a corn picker running, and put four TAC guys on it, with one of our people driving. Went through the field. Not harvesting, just making a lot of noise and beating the corn down. They were the only officers above ‘‘corn level,’’ so to speak. They didn’t find anything either.
During the search of the cornfield, George came over. He was in a bit of a sweat. Seems that SAC Volont had come up. I hadn’t even seen him. He, as it turned out, had seen George walking with the rest of us toward the house. When it was over, Volont had been all over George like stink. Said it was stupid, foolish, and a bunch of other things.
‘‘Well, shit, George,’’ I said. ‘‘It worked.’’ I shook my head.
Turned out there was nobody else in the house. But Hester was right. You really gotta know that sort of thing.
Tired as we all were, we had to jump right in on Herman Stritch, and try to do an interview before we got him to the jail and whatever attorney he was going to have would be telling him to shut up. We did the interview in the Winnebago, just Hester, George, and me. Yeah, I know. It was a custodial interrogation, not an interview. But he was thoroughly advised of his Miranda rights, and he very deliberately waived them.
You have to understand that, after killing somebody, the guilty party has an almost uncontrollable urge to confess. Really. Not, as some attorneys would have you believe, that they ever had an uncontrollable urge to confess to something they didn’t do. But there is some mechanism at work there, if there’s guilt, that compels them to tell. All you have to do is be a listener.
‘‘Herman,’’ I said, ‘‘what the hell happened here?’’
He just shook his head.
‘‘Herman,’’ I said, ‘‘why did you shoot Bud and Lamar? They weren’t gonna hurt you.’’
He shrugged. ‘‘They were throwing me off the farm. I can’t have that.’’
‘‘No, they weren’t,’’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘‘They were just serving papers. You still had other avenues available.’’
‘‘No more.’’ It was said in a flat, final sort of tone. ‘‘Done with that.’’
‘‘With what?’’
‘‘With all the bullshit!’’
As it turned out, Herman had really lost the farm. Borrowed heavily over the years. The entire farm was in hock. The notes had come due five years before. All Herman had done was pay the interest on the notes. No principal. After all sorts of fuss, he got a five-year extension. Then he had decided, on the advice of a good friend whom he refused to identify, not to make any payments at all. There was something in the explanation about English common law, the unconstitutionality of the federal government, the right not to pay taxes or to be regulated in any way. The last part is what got him in trouble. He’d posted his property with a sign that said that no governmental agency could come on his property on pain of death. Fine and dandy, except the poor bastard actually believed it.
‘‘I’m sorry about Bud and Lamar, but I was within my rights as a free man to shoot. It was posted.’’ He gestured in the general direction of the roadway. ‘‘Right over there.’’
‘‘Doesn’t work that way, Herman,’’ said Hester. ‘‘That posting bit doesn’t mean a thing.’’
‘‘You women always think you’re so goddamned educated, so goddamned smart,’’ he said. ‘‘But you’re just women, the servants of men.’’
I thought Hester was going to kill him, but she just shook her head. I didn’t say anything, but merely looked at him over the tops of my reading glasses. Nearly a minute went by with just the sound of the breathing and the whisper of the air conditioner.
‘‘You don’t understand,’’ he said. ‘‘You don’t know about the takeover. The stealing of our soil. The Jews, the bankers. They’re all in it, you know.’’
Right.
