WHILE.
The seventh at 1220:
THE BOYS FROM THE ZOG ARE HERE. ONE BIRD. LOOKS ALMOST WHITE FROM HERE. YOU THINK UN???????
And, of course, the one telling them to kill Rumsford.
The one about Melissa being in a tent with us kind of bothered me. I said as much.
‘‘You should feel flattered, you ‘top cop,’ ’’ said Sally.
‘‘Yeah.’’ I put the messages down. ‘‘Was this guy there, or was he watching on TV? Were there any live feeds going on, especially when Rumsford was killed?’’
‘‘No,’’ said Sally, ‘‘I don’t think so. Everybody here was watching for you all on TV all the time. They had clips on the regular news, but no special or live broadcasts.’’
‘‘Well, ‘the boys from the ZOG are here’ sounds to me like he’s on-site,’’ said Hester.
‘‘What’s ZOG?’’ asked Sally.
‘‘Zionist Occupation Government,’’ I said. ‘‘Extremeright-wing term for the U.S. government.’’
‘‘Zionist?’’
‘‘They like to say that the United States is run by Jews,’’ I said. ‘‘It seems to appeal to the bogeyman crowd.’’
Hester leaned over and put her hand on my shoulder. ‘‘They should really worry when it’s run by Norwegians.’’
‘‘What about the UN?’’
‘‘That,’’ said Hester, ‘‘is another favorite scare story. They think the UN is somehow going to take over the United States. White helicopters are UN birds, while black helicopters are ZOG birds.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘The News Channel 6 chopper up at the scene was white with light blue trim.’’
‘‘It doesn’t take much,’’ I said to Sally. ‘‘All the black choppers they see are usually U.S. Army stuff, dark green, at a distance and against the light background of the sky. They just look black.’’
‘‘Well, if you wanted to sneak around, why would you paint your chopper black?’’ asked Sally.
‘‘You got it,’’ I said.
We had one more message, one that we weren’t able to figure out.
YOU BETTER GET UP HERE.
Nothing more than that. But it was sent at 1239, after the reinforcements were in the house. ‘‘Calling for some more company?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘Maybe.’’ I looked at the sheet. ‘‘All we have to do is find out who ‘creeper@kitbag. com’ is.’’ I suspected it was pretty close to us, and a ‘‘friend of the family.’’
It was early in the morning before we got all the data. We put everything back the way it had been, and I locked the considerable stack of our paper in my own evidence locker. It was after 0100, and it was time to go home.
Friday, July 26th, I got up about 0700, and made coffee. Then I called the office and asked about Lamar. It looked like they had been able to save that leg. I was impressed. I had one slice of toast, and I was at the office at 0800 sharp. So were George, Hester, and the two lab agents. The lab guys were very nice, and thanked us for letting them store their evidence in our room. No problem. They were on their way to the Cedar Rapids airport by 0820. By 0825, George, Hester, and I had cups of coffee in the investigator’s office, and a huge stack of paper to go through.
‘‘Shouldn’t we,’’ said George, ‘‘be a little more ordered about this?’’
‘‘No,’’ I said. ‘‘I want the stuff that got Rumsford killed first
… all of it.’’
So that’s where we began.
‘‘Who’s the e-mail address to, George?’’ asked Hester.
He came through with last night’s promise. In a way. ‘‘It’s to a fellow who calls himself Adam A. Freeman, with an address that’s a P.O. Box in Harmony, MN.’’ George looked smug. ‘‘Obviously not his real name.’’
‘‘Obviously,’’ said Hester. ‘‘So who is he?’’
‘‘Just a bit harder,’’ said George. He grinned. ‘‘But I have friends. All you have to do is dial up that e-mail address, and my friends can tell you where the call is routed in about two seconds.’’
We were pleased for George too.
‘‘So?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘Gregory Francis Borcherding, RR, Preston, MN.’’ He grinned and pulled out a little slip of paper. ‘‘I’ve got an SSN, a DOB, the whole nine yards…’’
‘‘I think,’’ said Hester, ‘‘that that’s pronounced ‘bork her ding.’ Just in case you two ever meet.’’
‘‘Not ‘borsher ding’?’’ asked George.
‘‘Nope.’’
He made a note on the slip of paper.
‘‘So,’’ said Hester, ‘‘what’s he do, and what’s he got to do with all this?’’
George didn’t know. That was all right with us, because the FBI hardly ever ‘‘knows’’ anybody until they’re ‘‘introduced’’ by the locals. Hester and I both knew a really sharp deputy in Preston. We placed a call.
‘‘Whoever he is,’’ said George as we waited, ‘‘he had to know Rumsford was going into the house.’’ He thought for a second. ‘‘Did any of the networks have a live feed going when it happened?’’
‘‘No,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We sort of took them by surprise. Remember?’’
‘‘And we had the phone line locked up,’’ I said. ‘‘By the phone company, no less.’’
‘‘You know,’’ said Hester, ‘‘as much as they use the Net, I’ll bet they have a dedicated line for that.’’
‘‘I don’t suppose we could call the lab agents?’’ I asked facetiously.
That got a dirty look from both Hester and George. It looked like that could develop into a sore point.
The intercom buzzed. It was for me, Jack Kline, a deputy sheriff for Fillmore County, MN.
‘‘Hey, Houseman, how the hell you been?’’
‘‘Shitty, thanks.’’
‘‘Yeah, I hear all about you guys down there. Busy.’’
‘‘Too busy. Hey, you know a dude up there name of Gregory Francis Borcherding?’’
‘‘Oh, that asshole… yeah, what, he bothering you people down there?’’
‘‘Kind of. What’s he do for a living?’’
‘‘Damned if I know. He runs a little right-wing rag for a hobby, though. Real idiot.’’
I talked with Kline for a few more seconds. After I hung up, I looked at George and Hester. We’d been on the speaker phone.
‘‘Wasn’t he the one Nancy Mitchell pointed out to us up at the farm?’’ asked George.
‘‘And he was at Kellerman’s funeral too,’’ I said.
‘‘Didn’t he have a laptop up at the farm?’’
‘‘Sure did,’’ I said. ‘‘I can almost see it.’’
‘‘So, with a cell phone and a modem…’’
‘‘That’s right, George. He could communicate directly over the computer, without us knowing there was anybody on the telephone.’’ I shook my head. ‘‘Technology triumphs again.’’
‘‘Only if Stritch has a dedicated line,’’ said Hester.
We put in the call that would tell us.
‘‘But why,’’ I asked, ‘‘would Herman do what Borcherding told him to do? Especially when it came to killing a man. And why would he say something stupid, like ‘he’s got a bomb,’ for Christ’s sake?’’
‘‘Well,’’ said George, with unusual enthusiasm. ‘‘Well. If he’s got a dedicated line to a modem, I say we just go up and pick up Borcherding’s ass and ask him!’’
‘‘It might be easier than that,’’ said Hester, staring out the window. ‘‘I think that’s him out there with the press right now.’’
Sure enough. He was at the far end of the parking lot, in a little cluster of, maybe, six reporters who were having coffee and doughnuts. Damn. It was Friday, and we were going to be moving Herman, Bill, and Nola to the courthouse for their preliminary hearings. Normally we wouldn’t have had to do that, but they had seen a
