right now. At the same time, the market, a.k.a. the Living Dead, would have had their investment blown by the killing and resultant heat. Got even with Marks. They got Johnny Marks; we got the Stritch family. Tidy.
I let him finish. ‘‘I don’t think so,’’ I said. ‘‘I kind of wish it was, but I don’t think so.’’ I quickly reiterated the basic evidence. ‘‘And,’’ I said, ‘‘there’s absolutely no indication that Marks was in the woods at all.’’
‘‘Ah,’’ he said, ‘‘that’s true. Didn’t have to be. But there’s every indication that he paid a very high price for angering the people he was growing the dope for. I think he might have been in the woods that day. He and the Stritch family. Working in concert.’’
‘‘Ahh,’’ I said, ‘‘I just don’t think so.’’
‘‘Reasons?’’
‘‘Let me work on it for a while,’’ I answered. I noticed the relieved look on George’s face.
Volont had been telling the truth about the federal kidnapping charges. Eight State Patrol cars pulled up about two minutes after he left the back office. Troopers all over the place, shooing everybody but us out of our parking lot, and then getting us to move our cars as well. Creating a security lane for the prisoners. Pretty soon, three separate cars came zipping into the lot. Federal marshals. To transport the prisoners, separately. The two people we had working the jail were busier than they had ever been in their whole lives, for about thirty minutes. Then, with all three prisoners wearing jail clothes and bulletproof vests, and pretty well surrounded by troopers, marshals, and George, they were whisked off into the waiting cars and left under heavy trooper escort.
They were gone, leaving some really confused attorneys in their wake. None of our local lawyers were even qualified to appear in Federal Court. Which meant that, within the next few hours, there would be another layer of three more attorneys to deal with. The Stritch family might as well have gone to the moon.
What was more, Volont had inadvertently created a situation where the press was absolutely bound to follow the trail of the prisoners. He’d just started the machinery that would probably take Borcherding to Cedar Rapids and out of our immediate view. And now that I thought about it, Nancy would be going there as well, both to do her job and to do ours. And with the prisoners now under the control of the Linn County jail, I wouldn’t be able to slip Nancy in for an ‘‘accidental’’ interview, even if I wanted to.
‘‘Jesus Christ, Hester,’’ I said, ‘‘doesn’t anybody want us to solve these cases?’’
Tomorrow was Saturday, the 27th, and Bud’s funeral. It had been delayed a bit by the forensic people, but they had guaranteed Saturday. That meant that things were going to be really crowded, and things we needed to do weren’t going to get done. Interestingly enough, there didn’t appear to be anybody interested in Rumsford’s body. They were having a hard time finding relatives, I guess. For whatever reason, his funeral was going to be on the 29th. Someplace in Canada. I was surprised to find out that he was a Canadian, although I don’t know why. I wondered if that French-Canadian film crew would come back.
Anyway, we had to get cracking on something, and soon.
‘‘Hester,’’ I said, ‘‘why don’t we give Colonel Gabe a jingle?’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘On his e-mail.’’
‘‘Can we do this?’’
‘‘That’s easy,’’ I said. ‘‘Making him think it’s from Herman Stritch is gonna be a little tougher.’’
‘‘But,’’ she said, ‘‘can we do this? I mean, isn’t this a wiretap?’’
We both looked at George. ‘‘Well, in the strictest sense, or any other, for that matter, I think the court would appreciate it if we got an order to do this…’’
‘‘You think we can get one?’’ It had to be federal. Iowa didn’t have any enabling wiretap legislation.
‘‘If I fax an application to my partner, we can get it pretty fast. But Volont will know about it.’’
‘‘Right away?’’ I asked.
‘‘Oh, probably not,’’ said George, ‘‘but the U.S. Attorney will, and he’ll get around to mentioning it sooner or later.’’
‘‘And that’s a normal way of obtaining a wiretap order?’’ asked Hester. ‘‘You don’t have to go through your boss?’’
‘‘Pretty much,’’ said George. ‘‘He’ll read it in the monthly summary, or somewhere.’’
‘‘Go for it,’’ said Hester. ‘‘So long as it doesn’t get you fired.’’
First of all, I figured that if it took George a short time to track down the address of Borcherding, it would take somebody like this Colonel Gabe maybe just a bit longer. So we had to be accurate. Second, I thought it was likely that Billy Stritch was the one who set the computer stuff up in the first place, although we’d have to confirm that with Melissa. We might have to make the message from him. But it was going to come through to Colonel Gabe as an authentic contact from the Stritch family.
Predictably, the Sheriff’s Department didn’t have a computer, except our NCIC terminal, which was connected to a modem. First item of business. Equally predictably, nobody in Maitland sold modems. Hell, nobody in Maitland even sold disks.
George of the Bureau was very eager to please, after the Volont encounter. All three of us knew he’d have to tell Volont anything he was asked. We also knew that George was now under a bit of a cloud with his own bureau, and would have to watch his step very carefully. It was never mentioned. We just knew that George could be used only so far before he’d be required to report something. We were all trying to avoid crossing that line. After he had sent his fax to his partner, applying for a wiretap order, he drove to Dyersville and purchased a modem for us. With software and a special offer from a local server. All right. Guilt can be great.
Then we had to find out where Stritch’s server was, in computerese.
‘‘Don’t we need Herman’s computer for this?’’ asked Hester.
I smiled all over myself. ‘‘Nope. Downloaded it all last night.’’
It was easy, once we had the modem hooked up to the PC in the back office. Hooking the modem up was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. George, frugal to the end, had gotten the least expensive modem. Internal. External modem, we could have done in fifteen seconds. Internal, thirty minutes.
‘‘Jesus H. Christ, George!’’ I said. ‘‘I’m gonna have to tear this whole machine apart…’’
Ah, but he didn’t have to pay for a modem case, though.
‘‘You saved eleven dollars?’’ asked Hester. ‘‘Really?’’
So after I got the cover back on the PC, it was easy, like I said.
Entered the name of Herman’s server (Widetalk), our area code and telephone number, country (United States of America(1)), which set the keyboard commands. We connected using our ModoMak3564, which had hardly cost us a thing, configured the port to Com1, set the Databits to 8, Parity to None, Stop Bits to 1.
Then, it was a simple matter of doing his network protocols: the TCP/IP settings, which were server-assigned with an IP address: Primary DNS 699.555.123.6, with no secondary, no primary or secondary WINS, using IP header compression and the default gateway on remote.
We engaged the ‘‘call forwarding’’ mode, and were done.
As far as the e-mail service knew, we were now, for all intents and purposes, Herman Stritch. We had his default number, which was the modem line into his residence. I wanted to use one for Cedar Rapids, because that’s where they were gonna be, and that’s where Colonel Gabe would know they were.
We hesitated for about ten seconds. Then I called an officer I knew with the Linn County Sheriff’s Department, and asked for a number that would be used by a modem there. By a prisoner. He hesitated, so I let him talk to Hester and George.
That taken care of, we were simply going to call the Linn County jail number, have our call forwarded to the appropriate line, and call Colonel Gabe. Just as soon as Melissa confirmed what we needed to know about who the brains was behind the Stritches’ computer system.
Melissa called within half an hour. Damn me for a sexist. The whole thing was set up by Nola Stritch. In a computer sense, neither Herman nor Billy could find their ass with both hands.
Two minutes later, and George’s partner called. The order had been granted.
‘‘Okay,’’ I sighed. ‘‘Way to go George.’’
‘‘Just what did you say in that application?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘Well, nothing that wasn’t true,’’ said George.
‘‘Great piece of jurisprudence,’’ said Hester.
Thus armed, we sallied forth.
By now it was 1750, and the Stritch family should have been in Cedar Rapids for about an hour. Booked in,
