The Big Thaw

'Twenty-four hours,' said Lamar. 'Try hard, George.'

'Oh, yes,' said George. 'Count on it. But, in the meantime, can I have my two agents in there?'

Lamar grinned. 'Sure. We'll call a magistrate and recommend release on their own recognizance. But first, we do photos and prints. Standard procedure before release.''

It was unsaid, but nonetheless a major threat. No deniability with photos and prints. Just on the off chance it might have occurred to somebody to try to deny this.

13

Thursday, January 15, 1998, 0200

Lamar and I sat in his office. We could hear the Maitland town clock strike twice. The bell was exceptionally clear in the still, icy air. It was a very lonely sound.

'You got any confirmation at all that those dead kids claimed they were cops?'

'Workin' on it, boss.'

'You really think the FBI people did the Colsons?' he asked.

'No.'

'Me, neither. Too bad, though, in a way.' He grinned. 'I mean, we caught 'em. Just too bad they didn't do it.'

I drew a deep breath, and let it out very slowly. 'Yeah. Ain't gonna hurt to let 'em think we suspect 'em, though. We might find out what they were actually doing around there.'

'They were pullin' surveillance on my buddy Cletus,' said Lamar. 'That's what they were doin'.'

I held up my right hand, measuring less than an inch between my thumb and forefinger. 'Cletus is this important…' I spread my hands at arm's length. More than six feet apart. 'You gotta be at least this big before you get FBI surveillance. At least.'

We were silent again for a few moments.

'So,' said Lamar, slowly, 'what the fuck were they doin' there?'

I shrugged. 'Not a clue.'

'But you do think they were there?'

'Oh, yeah. If not actually on the property, they were close enough to see… I'd stake my life on the fact that they were the ones watching me when I felt so spooked.' I crumpled my decaf pop can. 'The real question is whether or not they were lookin' in the place the night the brothers were killed.'

'Witnesses…' muttered Lamar.

'Professional witnesses,' I said. 'If we're lucky, they got photos.'

'Of what?'

'Won't know until they think they have to tell us what they had going. Your bit about the senator should get that machinery going real fast.' I stood. 'Gotta hand it to ya, boss. That senator bit was perfect.'

'Thanks,' he said, pleased. 'Look, let's let Art do the details tomorrow. You come in a little late. Say nine or so.'

'Okay.' That gave me seven hours, give or take, from now. I let my feet slide off the edge of his desk, and stood up with a continuation of the motion. A low-intensity pain shot through my back muscles, catching me off guard. Must have been something I'd done in the last few hours. Probably when Agent Brandenburg had kicked me, and I'd gone flying backward. Great. I was going to be really stiff and sore tomorrow. 'See you in the morning.'

'This is getting to really bother me,' said Lamar, as I headed for the door. 'You think Cletus knows what's going on here?'

'Beats the shit out of me,' I said. 'How you gonna handle the patrol in that area? Two-man cars?'

'We ain't got enough people.' He looked at me. 'This ain't the only thing we got going.'

'You don't want to use the reserve in this sort of thing, Lamar.'

He sighed. 'Yeah. But I don't want to send nobody down there alone, either.'

Sue awoke as I slipped into bed. 'What happened?' she mumbled. 'You all right?'

'Fine,' I said. 'John went in the ditch. Took us a while to get his car out.'

'Oh. Just so you're all right…' And she drifted back off to sleep. I wish I'd been able to do that. I lay there, wide awake, for a good hour, thinking about the events of the evening. I tried to turn on my side, once, and my back muscles advised me not to try that again. So I lay there, staring at the shadows on our ceiling. Thinking.

Nation County is about 750 square miles, about half of it hilly. A dozen small towns, and about 2,000 farms. Connected by 1,300 miles of roadway, 75 percent of it gravel. So, what were the odds of us meeting up with the FBI Snowmobile Detail so close to the Borglan place? Right. Not conclusive, but a very damned strong factor.

Not to mention the near certainty that the killer at the Borglan farm had fled via snowmobile, in the middle of the night; blasting right through the Grossmans' barnyard, and off to… Where? Unknown, but south, that was for sure. For how far? I smiled to myself. Until the snow ran out… But that was a very loud snowmobile, at least according to the hired man and his family. I grinned sleepily to myself. Not FBI issue.

But, then, there was the timing. The snowmobile, on the first night John had seen it, had been heading in the direction of Grossman's. North. When I'd seen it tonight, it was heading south. But when John and I had seen it, it was earlier than it had been when John had seen it the previous night. What did that mean? Nothing. The voice of my ninth-grade algebra teacher came to me: 'If a train leaves Smallville, traveling west at sixty miles per hour, and another train leaves an hour later, traveling at…' Ugh. If there was a solution to my problem there, it'd have to wait… I was just too tired.

More work. And hopefully, a little more luck, before somebody else got killed. The bullet casing found by Jack and company, that weirdo Russian caliber, had to figure in somewhere, too.

I started to turn over. Whoa! My back hurt a lot more, and was going to be more than stiff in the morning. Great. I moved gingerly, and tried to stretch the muscles slightly. Bad idea.

I know I slept, though, because the telephone woke me up.

The phone couldn't have rung more than four times, or the answering machine would have kicked in. I fumbled with the receiver for a second. My voice didn't quite come out, so I cleared my throat, and tried again. 'Yeah, Houseman here…'

'Hey, I get you up?'

Phil, from Oelwein PD. I looked at the clock; 0836. 'Yeah, you did… or, you will have, when I'm awake.'

'You old folks sure sleep a lot.' He laughed heartily. 'Hey, I just thought you'd want to know, I found the old fart that the Colson brothers told that they were undercover cops.'

That perked me up. 'No kidding?' I started to scoot up on my right elbow, and the pain in my back almost took my breath away.

'Yep. Last September or so, I believe. He was going out the back door, into the alley, to put some trash in the Dumpster, and hit one of 'em with the door.'

'Really?' I had frozen halfway over onto my side. My back felt like somebody had taken out half the length of the muscles, and sewn them back together. 'Tight' does not begin to describe it.

He laughed again. 'Yeah, no shit, they were just getting ready to try to pry the door. He asked 'em what the hell they were doing, and one of 'em says, 'Be quiet, we gotta get in here, there's going to be some kids try to break in and we want to catch 'em.' Really!'

'Guts.' The pain in my back was subsiding. Wonderful. If I stayed like this for four more days, I'd be fine.

'Oh, yeah. Told him they were undercover state officers.'

'Didn't he ask for any ID?' I asked, gingerly moving into a more or less upright position by carefully swinging my legs off the bed, and letting their weight help lift me.

'Yeah, and you know what they said? The one with the little beard says, 'If you was undercover, would you carry one?' Just cool as hell.'

I chuckled, myself. 'Sharp,' I said.

Phil laughed again, hugely enjoying himself. 'It gets better! He wouldn't let 'em in, you know, so they got all