‘‘Just a sec here,’’ I said, doing my little nervous act, ‘‘want to be able to read this.’’ I smiled apologetically. You have to be careful with this sort of tactic, because if you let it go a second too long, you lose their attention, and may never get it back.
I put the glasses on. ‘‘There!’’ I looked over them at Nola. Still had her.
‘‘Okay,’’ I said, looking at the paper in my hand. ‘‘We know your son Billy was with the ambush team, as an observer. But, hey, you knew that. What we also know is all about Borcherding.’’ I paused, looking over my glasses at her again. ‘‘You also know him as ‘Bravo6’, I believe.’’ That hit home.
I looked back down at the paper for an instant. You do that to make sure you’re the one initiating the eye contact. It’s a control thing.
‘‘That brings us,’’ I said slowly, ‘‘to Colonel Gabriel.’’
Nola’s anxiety became audible at that point. Just a little gasp, but it was there.
‘‘Well,’’ said Miller loudly, to break the spell, ‘‘I think we’ve heard about enough at this point… and we seem to be getting well on toward ‘menacing’ here…’’
Perfect. ‘‘Sure,’’ I said, removing my glasses. He’d just saved me. I really wasn’t sure of where I was headed after Colonel Gabriel. ‘‘If Nola has any questions…’’
She did. Now, you have to understand, she didn’t particularly like me, but I appeared to have my shit together, as they say. She didn’t like Miller, didn’t trust him for a whole bunch of reasons, none of which were true anywhere but in her own mind. She also thought he was in my pocket, which was very, very wide of the mark. But she had some pretty solid concerns. She was a very bright woman, but once the paranoid mind-set gets going, it’s virtually impossible to turn it around. A shame, in a way.
‘‘My Bill didn’t shoot anybody. Not in the woods. Not at the house. Nobody.’’
‘‘All right,’’ I said.
‘‘I didn’t either.’’
‘‘Okay,’’ I said. I believed her, especially since she’d placed Bill Stritch first on the list.
‘‘What Herman does is his business, but he never shot anybody in the woods.’’
‘‘Okay.’’
Miller started to speak, but she held up her hand. ‘‘Just a minute. He knows Herman shot Lamar and Bud. Nobody else could have.’’ She knew them by name. Well, so much for community policing. But she was right. There was nobody else who could have.
‘‘But we never shot the newspaperman.’’
‘‘I’ll buy that, Nola,’’ I said. ‘‘Herman’s carbine didn’t pack the punch, for one thing. But after you got that message, Gabriel sure had to.’’
She was quiet.
‘‘At least, one shot. I know he fired once. But he couldn’t be on both floors at the same time. Remember how Rumsford just sort of stood there, and then the second shot came to make sure… I’ll be honest, I have some thoughts about that being Billy…’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘Or the guy who was with Gabriel,’’ I said, starting to rummage through my papers again…
‘‘Wittman,’’ she said, helpfully.
Well, thank you, God.
‘‘Nice,’’ said Miller. ‘‘Very nice. But I want to advise my client to stop talking at this point.’’
‘‘She’s not incriminating herself,’’ said Hester, ‘‘but if that’s what you want…’’
‘‘Time to stop,’’ said Miller.
‘‘I never should have said Connie’s name, you mean?’’ asked Nola.
Connie. Well, thanks to stress, we now had what might be the first name of Wittman. All right!
‘‘Thank you both,’’ I said. ‘‘I have no interest in seeing anybody railroaded. If you need to know anything, just ask us.’’ That was directed at Nola, but intended as much for Miller. He was going to need a bargain.
Just as we were finding our way out, I saw Herman Stritch being ushered into another interview room, which contained Volont and another man. Volont looked up as we went by. I couldn’t resist. I smiled and gave him a discreet wave.
Connie Wittman was our first order of business. We called the Nation County Sheriff’s Department, and got Sally, bless her. We had her start running driver’s license information in the form of a fifty-state inquiry. All we had for her was a partial name. We thought Connie might be short for Constantine. Hester, who was the only one who had even glimpsed the man, thought he’d been about five feet ten, and light. He had to be over twenty, and likely under sixty-five.
‘‘You’ve got to be kidding,’’ said Sally. ‘‘Can’t it be a little more vague?’’
‘‘Sorry, but that’s about all we have until I can get back up there and start going over some of the other stuff, and maybe talk to Melissa.’’
‘‘It’s way outside parameters,’’ she said. ‘‘State’ll get pissed.’’
‘‘Explain it’s part of our murder investigation,’’ I said.
‘‘Yeah, right. Maybe to their supervisor.’’
‘‘Do what you can. I’ll be up in a couple of hours.’’
‘‘Gonna eat, huh?’’ she asked.
‘‘Never mind,’’ I said.
We’d used Sally and my department because if we’d used Linn County, we figured Volont would have a lot better chance of knowing we were doing the checks. At least, right away. We knew he’d help where he could, but we also knew his sense of security could get in our way in a hurry.
I was so happy overall that I took Hester to a late supper. Most unlike me. We ate in a small restaurant that served excellent seafood. I had nothing breaded. The diet, you know.
I relaxed for the first time in what seemed like months.
‘‘I don’t know why,’’ I said before the entree, ‘‘but I finally feel like we’re making progress.’’
‘‘I don’t know,’’ said Hester, using her fork to push the little mushroom slices to a far corner of her salad plate. ‘‘Maybe when I can tell you why Johnny Marks was killed, and by whom.’’
We had a fine meal. About the time I was deciding whether or not my mood would justify chocolate cheesecake, Volont walked in. He was persistent, I’ll give him that. Neither Hester nor I had checked out on the radio.
He slid into our booth beside Hester. Obviously, he wanted to talk to me.
‘‘Enjoying your meal,’’ he said. He wasn’t asking. He was commenting.
‘‘Sure am,’’ I said. ‘‘You think we should have the cheesecake?’’
He looked at me for a beat. ‘‘Are you trying to screw this case up on purpose?’’
I’d had it. He was now going to thoroughly ruin my meal, as well as complicate my case. ‘‘I could ask you the same question,’’ I said pleasantly. ‘‘If I really gave a fuck what the answer would be.’’
He was the more mature one at that point. ‘‘We aren’t communicating very well, are we?’’ he asked.
‘‘No,’’ I said, conversationally, ‘‘we aren’t.’’
The waitress chose that moment to ask me if I had made up my mind about the cheesecake.
‘‘Sure,’’ I said, smiling at her. ‘‘Make it three. This gentleman’s going to be here for a bit.’’
Volont started to protest, but I cut him off. ‘‘You want peace, yellow hair, you gotta smoke the pipe.’’ I grinned. I was really making an attempt.
‘‘I’ll take some coffee too,’’ he said.
There was a short silence.
‘‘Can I put my gun away?’’ asked Hester.
Just before the dessert came, Volont said, ‘‘What is the problem? Seriously, I want to know.’’
‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘it’s this.’’ A brief interruption as the dessert was placed on the table. ‘‘You have no jurisdiction in the murders. Okay. You have an interest, though, and not just the weapons charges. Okay. You have lots of information that you obviously can’t share. That’s not okay, but I could probably live with that. But you seem to think you can actively interfere with my obtaining that information myself. That’s what I don’t appreciate. You are a narcotics man, with that as your chief area of interest. I understand that. But your primary interest isn’t the murders.’’
‘‘I see.’’ Volont sipped his coffee, and took a bite of the cheesecake. ‘‘Not bad,’’ he said. ‘‘What you don’t see,
