have been done in the heat of anger, not in a cold-blooded style?'
'Yes.'
Art shrugged. 'Well, that still leaves us with Fred. He goes in with them, gets mad, and shoots both of 'em.' He looked around the room. 'Like they say, go for the simplest solution.'
Keep it simple. Naturally. But I hate oversimplifications like that. In the first place, people are complex. In the second place, you can get too simple, and jump before all the facts are in. I said as much.
'Oh, sure, Carl,' said Art. 'I can keep an open mind. But I'll tell you the truth… it's gonna take a lot of evidence to convince me that it wasn't either Fred or the hired man.' He shrugged. 'I sure don't think it looks like it's anybody else.'
Like I said, Art always liked the quick and dirty approach. I suspected he was right more often than not, but I was getting just a little weary of this approach. Simple is one thing, easy is another. If we went with Fred, the easy touch, we were going to cut off the rest of the possibilities. If I was right, and Fred hadn't done it, that would be a catastrophe.
'This still doesn't go down quite right with me,' I said.
'It's probably just because you know Fred,' said Art.
'Could be,' I replied, 'but I'll still reserve judgment.'
What bothered me about all this was that I felt Fred would be more than willing to talk with us, and probably would be a great help, but Priller the lawyer would not give us any slack on the questioning. He'd want immunity or some such for the burglary charges and as Fred was still the primary suspect for the murders, giving away the burglary charges now would set him free. Then Priller would advise him not to tell us anything about the murders anyway.
That left us with the scene as our only source of evidence. The lab crew had all the materials from there. But we could still go out and look at the place again, especially the tracks left by the dead men on their way to the house. It does help, and you will sometimes get an insight if you look the entire scene over again, after you have developed a scenario. Well, that's what they tell you in the Academy.
Right.
We called Cletus Borglan, and he told us two things. One, it was going to have to be soon, as he was going to be leaving for Florida the day after tomorrow. Two, he wouldn't let us on his property without four hours' prior notice, and he and his attorney would have to be present.
We checked the forecast. A big upward bump in the jet stream was moving inexorably eastward. But ever so slowly. It was supposed to be warming steadily for the next five days. Good. We wanted to see the tracks over the hill in the daylight. They were faint, we knew that. But we wanted to see if there was a way to tell how many people had gone over the fence and to the house. We'd better be sure about that before the snow started to melt again.
It took three hours to type the search warrant application, but Judge Winterman issued a warrant to search the property for the exterior tracks and patterns of tracks, from the roadway to wherever they would lead us. It was the first time I'd ever included a National Weather Service forecast in a search warrant application. I was kind of proud of that.
Art was in his slacks and sport coat. With wingtips. No overshoes that I'd seen, and just a dress coat. 'You got anything warmer?'
'Don't worry about me.'
'Well, I wasn't really worried. I just didn't want to have to examine another frozen body.'
We contacted the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and got a Fish and Game enforcement officer named Sam Younger to meet us at the office. Sam could track just about anything, and was sure a lot better at it than the rest of us.
As soon as we got the search warrant in our hands, we called Borglan, and got no answer. Tough. Out we went. Not so tough that we didn't leave orders for the dispatcher to call the Borglan residence every five minutes until she got an answer, though. Lamar, having once been shot by a farmer who didn't honor a court process, didn't want us taking any chances, either. Wisely, as he still needed a cane most of the time, Lamar also opted to stay at the office.
I drove us directly to Borglan's house. No vehicles. I called dispatch, and they said there had been no answer yet. I got out, and went to the door and knocked several times, calling out Cletus's name as well. Satisfied there was no one home, I slipped a copy of the search warrant into the sliding door. The legal requirements had been satisfied.
I thought it best if we started where the two brothers had, so we linked up with DNR officer Sam Younger near the Borglan place, and I took everybody to where the tracks began. I explained to Sam that we wanted to try to discover how many people had made the track. It was a good thing that I'd seen them the day before, because the snowplows had been by again, 'dressing' the edges of the gravel road, and the deep ditch was now completely filled with road snow. Although we were just able to make out the disturbed area on the other side of the barbed- wire fence, where the tracks led over the hill, it didn't look too promising. Well, as they say, you gotta try. We waited for Art to pull a pair of black five-buckle overshoes over his wingtips. They had N C JAIL hand painted on the sides. Ah, yes. Don't worry about Art. He'd also apparently borrowed one of the quilted, knee-length coats the prisoners wear when they go out for exercise in the winter. Mustard-colored. He cut a fine figure.
'You look like a North Korean soldier,' I said. He glared, but didn't say anything.
Crossing the ditch was especially difficult for those of us who were a bit heavier than the others. I was treated to the spectacle of Art virtually walking straight to the fence line, while I was knee-deep in snow.
'Hey, Houseman,' he said, 'how's the low-fat diet coming?'
I would have done something cute, like answer him, but I was too out of breath.
Sam, the Department of Natural Resources officer, responded for me. 'It's all the damned rice those North Koreans eat,' he said.
We grouped at the fence, and Sam Younger scrutinized what he gamely referred to as the track. 'You know,' he said, 'there really isn't a hell of a lot left, is there?'
'It might help,' I said, 'if you see it in an angled light, like early evening.'
'I'm sure,' he said. He looked over at Art. 'Is there any magic sort of thing you people do to lift tracks from under snow like this?'
'Nope.'
'Well, then,' said Sam, 'all we can do is see if the tracks diverge into three separate sets as they go… How far is the farmhouse?'
'About three-quarters of a mile, just over the hill, here,' I said.
Art propped his arm on the fence post, and took three or four photos of the very faint track leading up the hill. It was hard to see among the trees and large limestone outcroppings on the slope of the hill. He wanted photos before we crossed the fence and tracked the area up.
We crossed the barbed-wire fence, and followed the track. My over the hill comment had made it sound so simple. Actually, the hilltop was divided, and we had to go down a long reverse slope, and back up again before we reached the crest that allowed us to see the house. The track split into two distinct portions three times in that distance. Never into three, though.
Worse, on the way down to the house, it split into two discernible depressions, and they stayed that way for about a hundred yards, until we lost them in the multitude of tracks made yesterday and since. Just the way two men, walking together, would approach their target. Walking parallel, with about a fifteen-foot separation.
We stopped in Borglan's yard. There were now two cars there, and a pickup truck. Cletus Borglan opened the door just before I got there.
'What do you want?'
'We just wanted to let you know that we were done with the tracks,' I said. I watched him eye Sam. Cletus was one of those who had no time for the DNR, especially their Fish and Game officers.
'Did you think they took a deer on the way?'
'No point in being sarcastic, Cletus,' I said. 'We were just trying to learn something from their route.'
He looked at me with cold, unblinking eyes, and it was very much apparent that he didn't believe a word I was saying.
'Right,' he said. 'So, if they were burglars, how come there's nothing missing?'
