The Big Thaw

'Huh?'

'You. What do you think about this?'

'I'm just wondering,' said Cletus, 'why the Iowa AG is involved in this.'

'It's what you pay us to do,' said Davies. 'You have no ideas, huh?'

'Why would you want to know what I think?'

Frankly, I was sort of asking myself the same question.

'Thought you could help us with what you thought they might be after.' Davies paused. 'And if you had any thoughts on who could have been here when they arrived.'

'Beats me,' said Cletus.

'You own any snowmobiles?' asked Davies.

'Nope. Not anymore, gave one to Harvey Grossman. Junked the rest.'

'You just gave it to him? Just like that?'

'No use for the things anymore. He needs them to do chores.'

We headed toward the door. 'If you find anything unusual that we missed,' I said, following routine, 'let us know, would you?'

'You people sure do try,' said Cletus. Once again, there was a sarcastic ring to his voice that bothered me. Like he was trying for innuendo, and missing his target. He was sure missing if I was his target, anyway.

We opened the door.

'My attorney said to cooperate, but not to say anything.' Cletus shrugged. 'I guess you'll have to earn your keep without me doin' your work for you.' He paused a second, but couldn't resist. 'But, like I said before, there was nobody home.'

'You have any thoughts, check with your attorney, and then give us a call,' said Davies.

'What about the black helicopter?'

I looked at the speaker, the forty-year-old I didn't recognize. 'What?'

'We saw it,' he said, with an air of accusation and defiance. 'Who was flying it?'

'I don't know his name,' I said, 'but I was in it. I waved. Did you see me?'

Silence.

'Thanks again,' said Davies, and we trudged across the yard to my car.

As soon as we got in the car, Davies started to laugh. ''We saw it,'' he mimicked. He looked at me. 'Houseman, you smart ass. You actually waved?'

'Yeah. They were outside, right under us, looking up. Just a reaction, I guess.'

'How high were you?'

'Oh, thousand feet, more or less.'

'An Army-green Huey?'

I nodded.

'Black Helicopter. Great observers,' he said. 'Must have shaken the whole house. Hey, while we're out here, show me where they went over the fence.' He sighed.

'Yeah. We better go to Grossman's and check the damned VINs on those snowmobiles.'

On the way, I showed him the entry tracks. It was pretty dark by then, and I had my headlights on. I shined a flashlight out the window, showing him the path. All he did was make that little humming sound. With my window rolled down, I found myself thinking about how alert I was, again. Nothing like bitterly cold air to wake you up.

We went directly to Grossman's, and I cashed in my marker with a request to look at the VIN numbers on the snowmobiles. It took about five minutes, but I found them all, and wrote them down. I thanked him.

Davies gazed out the window on the way back. 'You know, without anything linking him to the inside of that house, Fred could walk.' He leaned back in his seat. 'All we got him on is conspiracy to commit a burglary. That works. He said he took 'em there for the purpose of burgling. They sure were where he said they'd be. Packaged. Nicely packaged.'

'What… you think he delivered them?'

He snorted. 'No, probably not. But it's a possibility, isn't it? Somebody says, 'Hey, I wanna kill your cousins…' and Fred sets the boys up.'

I thought about it for a second. 'Too many possibilities, not enough leads,' I said. 'We could be chasing our tails forever…'

We drove about another mile.

'You get the feeling,' I said, 'that there's something missing?'

He snorted. 'Like evidence?'

'Not so much evidence… more like information.'

We got back to the Sheriffs Department fully intending to have supper with Art. Instead, we found a bit of a flap. Fred had bonded out on the burglary charges.

8

Tuesday, January 13, 1998, 1750

Art was pissed off, and Lamar was simply frustrated. Fred's bond had been set at $13,000.00, a so-called 'scheduled' bond, that was used when a magistrate wasn't immediately available to set one. Lawyer Priller found one, though, and he convinced him to agree on a 10 percent posting. Fred had left us for the princely sum of $1,300.00.

'Don't worry about it,' said Davies. 'I'm just glad you didn't do something dumb, like charge him with murder.'

As it turned out, that's exactly what Art had wanted to do, and had been dissuaded by Lamar, who had maintained that there was insufficient evidence to smack him with a murder charge.

'Let's put it this way,' said Davies. 'You lay a murder charge on him, I've got forty-five days to make the entire case, unless he waives his right to a speedy trial.' He shook his head. 'You know about backlogs at the lab. No guarantee everything will be done in forty-five days. I have other trials scheduled, in the next forty-five days. You charge him now, he demands speedy trial, he walks, free. Period.'

He looked at Art. 'What's the hurry? He ain't goin' nowhere.' He grinned. 'I assume, at least, that you told him not to leave town?'

'Absolutely.' Art seemed a bit mollified.

I'd been checking the VINs I'd gotten from the snowmobiles against the list Sally had given me. Two were from Cletus Borglan. I announced that.

'Is this, like, significant?' asked Art.

'Beats me,' I said. 'Just an error in memory, maybe.' Cletus had said that he gave Grossman one and junked the rest.

'I prefer to go to trial with a ninety-five percent chance of winning,' said Davies, ignoring the Art and Carl show. 'The five percent being the whim of the jury. I'll be happy with seventy-five percent, and I've gone in with about a sixty percent chance, but I really don't like to do that. Right now, this one would be about fifty-fifty. Maybe less. With a circumstantial case, and a local jury, I don't think we could pull it off.'

'What if the lab doesn't give us anything linking Fred to the scene?' I asked. 'Then what do we do?'

'If that happens,' said Davies, 'you do lots and lots of interviews, of lots and lots of people. And if we still come down with Fred being the only possibility, then…' He paused. 'Then we go the grand jury route, get an indictment, and see if we can convince him to cop a plea.'

'Nothing personal,' said Art, 'but that's not much of a plan.'

'You are so right,' said Davies. 'And that's just the best possible scenario if the lab doesn't link him. The very best.'

'So,' I said, 'where's that leave us?'

'The no-link bit, you mean?'

'Yep.'