‘‘Where’s he at? Where can I meet with him?’’ The ‘‘we did’’ sounded ominous, and I hoped I was misunderstanding him on that.
‘‘You can find him at an abandoned farm. Two miles out of Jollietville, just off Highway 433. Address is 23224 Willow Lane. The old Harris place.’’ With that, he hung up.
Jollietville was in Wisconsin. Just across the river from us. We called the Conception County Sheriff’s Department and gave them the message. We told them to hurry, just in case.
We talked about the call. We agreed that the use of the term ‘‘little snitch’’ made it sound like it might be dope-related. But ‘‘the guy who did it’’ couldn’t be correct. There absolutely had been more than one shooter.
A callback came from Conception County within fifteen minutes. Cell phone from their chief investigator, a Harry Ullman. I’d known him for years.
‘‘Houseman?’’
‘‘Yeah. What you got, Harry?’’
‘‘We got kind of a dangling corpse on a farm. I think it’s related to your guys getting ambushed in the woods. If you hurry, you can get here before we cut him down.’’
We went in George’s car. The FBI can go across state lines with comparative ease. Well, so could we, actually, but George could do it with his siren and red grille lights working. Our insurance wouldn’t let us do that out of state. Thing was, it had to be George driving. I’ve never met a really good FBI driver yet. They think they are, but they sure can’t keep up with us in the rural areas. George wasn’t their best driver. It took fifteen minutes, and all the way even Hester was quieter than normal in the back seat. I was in front because of my size, but would have traded places with her in a heartbeat.
To take our minds off the driving, we sort of speculated as to who it might be, with the bets running on its being the man who was with Gabe when he left the Stritch farm. The one with the white tee shirt. Or it could have been one of the Stritch family friends who had been in the woods when the whole thing went down. It was going to be interesting to see.
We also talked a little about who the hell had called. Purest speculation, for sure. The upshot of the whole thing was that we had absolutely no idea.
The other topic was related; what Harry had meant when he said ‘‘cut him down.’’ I thought it meant that he was hanged, and that also raised the possibility of a suicide. People had claimed ‘‘credit’’ for suicides before, just to try to impress somebody. It was possible that remorse or despair had overcome one of the participants. Being hanged also raised the specter of a possible ‘‘legal’’ execution within a group. That’s what I thought it was going to be. All interspersed with things like ‘‘Uh, I wouldn’t pass here, George, you’re gonna want to turn right in just a few seconds anyway…’’ and ‘‘There are only two lanes of traffic on the bridge, George, you might want to shut everything down until we get across the Mississippi here, because the other cars have nowhere to go…’’
The directions got us to a farm lane, with tall grass and weeds growing down the middle. The old ruts were about a foot deep, but very narrow and close together. Even George could keep only one set of tires in a rut at a time. Long lane, with grasshoppers jumping onto the hood and windshield as we bumped and rolled toward the gray wood barn with a collapsed roof. We stopped behind an ambulance, and got out. There were three cars in front of us, one belonging to the sheriff himself. A small cluster of people were standing around the foundation of what appeared by its size to have been a house many years ago. Harry waved.
‘‘Come on over here, Houseman. You’re gonna love this one.’’
We waded through the knee-high grass, which seemed to be hosting about a million grasshoppers. It was hot, very hot, and extremely humid. We got to the group, and I looked down into the old basement. There, standing propped against what had been an interior limestone wall, was a large timber, about ten feet long, with a very large stone bracing its foot. Stuck to it was a body. Naked. Male. There was a sign dangling around the neck, with the word RAT in capital letters, and something I couldn’t make out underneath. There was what appeared to be a railroad spike protruding about three inches out of the chest of the corpse, apparently having been driven through the rib cage and into the old timber. It looked like that was all that was holding the body on the plank. The face was deep waxy purple, and either very contorted or just really well worked over. The tongue was swollen, bluish, and protruding, so I guessed he’d been strangled before being nailed up. A little closer look at the neck confirmed that. The ligature mark was even with the ear line, back to front. You could have encircled his neck at the ligature point with one hand. Easily. Probably a wide band or rope. If it had been sharp, the neck would have been severed.
‘‘Shit, Harry…’’
He grinned. ‘‘Not one of your everyday corpses, is it? You know him?’’
‘‘No,’’ I said. ‘‘I don’t.’’
I was balancing myself with one hand on some old slats, as I moved out on the six-inch-wide top of the old masonry wall, toward the body. ‘‘Mind if I walk here?’’
‘‘Just about two more steps… then there’s some stuff on the top of the wall we might want.’’
I looked where he pointed. There was a piece of material draped over the wall, where it could be seen fairly easily, secured there by placing a good-sized piece of limestone block on top of it. Looked like blue cloth, maybe denim. Small. Maybe with a pattern or something on it. The closer I looked, the more it looked like the back of a jacket with a logo.
‘‘I promise not to step on it,’’ I said.
I walked carefully closer to the corpse, steadying myself by keeping my right arm outstretched. I leaned ahead a bit, squinting, looking closely at the face. I slowly waved my left hand over the features, shooing away the flies. Vaguely familiar, it reminded me of somebody. I couldn’t get a handle on the identity, though. There were a lot of flies settling back on the face, but they moved around enough so that I could get sort of a picture. He hadn’t been here more than a few hours.
‘‘Still don’t know who it is,’’ I said.
‘‘Yes, you do,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Yes, you do.’’ She sounded kind of funny. I turned, and she had this stricken look on her face. ‘‘Look again.’’
I did. He did look familiar…
‘‘Recognize him?’’ she asked.
‘‘Almost…’’
‘‘It’s Johnny Marks,’’ she said.
We went off in a group with Harry, and told him what was up with Marks, who he was, what he did. Also told him the narcs in the area hadn’t been able to find him for a little while. We suggested he call them.
‘‘Shit,’’ I said. ‘‘I wonder who did him.’’
‘‘Didn’t you read the letters under the RAT, Carl?’’ asked Harry.
Well, no. I just hadn’t been able to see them. Couldn’t get any closer, and too far to read the print normally. But thank you for pointing that out, Harry.
‘‘Couldn’t quite make ’em out,’’ I said.
‘‘Maybe we could have the lab boys move the plank back a bit?’’
‘‘No, thanks, Harry.’’
‘‘Anyway, it says ‘The Living Dead.’ ’’ He rubbed it in. ‘‘And under that, it says ‘Killed a cop in the woods on June 19, in Nation County, Iowa.’ ’’
The Living Dead drew a blank with George and me, but not with Hester.
‘‘Cycle gang out of Ohio,’’ she said. ‘‘Meth trade.’’
‘‘Right,’’ said Harry. ‘‘Meth and grass. That denim vest has their colors on it, I think. We’ll know as soon as the lab folks get here.’’
‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘that sure explains the ‘we did him’ on the phone call.’’
Hester shook her head. ‘‘I don’t think ‘did’ does it justice.’’
George was the pale one in our group. FBI doesn’t do a lot of homicides, like they say. He just asked one question. ‘‘Do they always look so… purple?’’
I explained to him that, with the actual ligature removed, the purple face told us that the spike through the chest had been inflicted some little while post-mortem, as the lividity in the face was so pronounced. Only blood seepage looked to have occurred from the spike, which made it appear likely that the victim was dead when it was driven in. At the same time, the removal of the ligature at that point said that it had been taken off for a specific reason… otherwise, why bother.
‘‘Specific reason?’’
