“Hot shit,” he said. “Fire away.”
“It’s also kind of a missing persons case,” I told him.
“Okay. Cool. Who you lookin’ for?”
“Well, maybe as many as a couple of hundred people.”
Good old Harry never missed a beat. “Got names and physical descriptions for me there, Carl? Let me get a pencil…”
He had me there. I did, however, give him the names of the people we had identified in the wedding photos. I placed particular emphasis on Jose Gonzales, aka Orejas.
“So. Okay on Big Ears,” said Harry, before I’d had a chance to translate the nickname. “Now you wanna tell me why you need these guys?”
We explained to him what was going on. Or, more correctly, what we thought might be going on.
“Not all of’em,” I said. “But I’ll bet a bunch just might be over there. They don’t have the cash to go too far or to pay for much lodging.”
“I’ll let you know,” said Harry. “And Hester, I just want you to know I’ll only blame Carl for this one.”
“Thanks, Harry,” she said.
“Any of the ones I’m lookin’ for suspects? Or we just talking witnesses?”
“I’d tell you if I knew,” I said. “I don’t think the names we gave you did the killing, but don’t take chances. Just in case.”
“Sure.” Over the phone I could hear a tapping sound in the background. Harry had a tendency to drum on things when he was showing restraint.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Well, I hate to butt in, ya know, none of my business and all that shit, but… you think this might be dope- related?”
It always seemed to come back to that. “We don’t know,” I said. I explained about the meth lab, and the shoe linking the deceased to that location.
Harry chuckled. “Pretty fuckin’ coincidental, ain’t it? Oops…Sorry Hester.” He cleared his throat. “An amazing coincidence, I’d say.”
Hester laughed. “Either way. But remember, just ‘related.’ Not necessarily the main motive.”
“You betcha,” said Harry. “Three hundred missing persons…you want me to call you when I find the first one, or should I wait until I get the first fifty?”
“Just let us know how it’s going,” I said.
Since we were sort of at a dead end, we left Battenberg and headed back to the sheriff’s department to get a running start on the paperwork. If you don’t keep up with it, you can destroy a case that depends on a large number of precise details. Admittedly, the number of individual details now was small, but I expected it to grow rapidly. Well, I hoped it would. If it didn’t, we were in deep trouble.
CHAPTER 09
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 18:04
I got a call to return to Battenberg when we were only about five miles out of Maitland.
“Three, Comm.” It was Sally at the office.
I picked up the mike. “Go ahead.”
“Three, request you ten-twenty-five with Car Forty; not ten-thirty-three, but as soon as possible. He has a situation and requests your assistance.”
Interesting. “Ten-four. What’s the nature of the call, Comm?”
“I’ll ten-twenty-one,” she said, and a few seconds later my cell phone rang.
“Yo!”
“Houseman, it’s your lucky day.”
“Uh-oh. What’s he got?”
“Unattended death,” Sally replied.
In Iowa, the sheriff’s department is required to investigate all unattended deaths, to make sure they aren’t crimes. An unattended death is one where a person dies without being under medical supervision for the thirty-six hours preceding their demise, unless they’re prediagnosed as terminal. Then it’s thirty days. We call it the 36/30 rule. If there’s any doubt, call the sheriff. We have to go, even though ninety-nine percent of them are old-age- related. It’s reasonable, really. Just time-consuming.
“Shit. Okay, where is it? “This was going to require a complete and thorough report, too. Just when I didn’t need it.
“He gives an address of two-oh-six Jefferson, in Battenberg,” she said. “It’s a…”
“We were just there,” I said, cutting her off. “There was nobody home.”
“Well,” said Sally, “in a way, that’s probably true.”
When we got back to 206 Jefferson, we met with Chief Norm Vincent, who was standing in the driveway. He was also beginning to look rather harried.
“What we got here, Norm?”
“It’s a deader, Carl. Sounds natural to me. I told your dispatch that I’d take the call, but they said that you have to do it.”
“Yep. Thanks for the offer.” Norm knew the sheriff’s department had to do it, so it had been an easy gesture on his part, but one that was well-meant. These little things count. “So, what happened?”
“You know why so many of the Mexicans left and all? Well, one of’em was sick, I guess, and they called a social worker and told her about it, and she came to check up on him, and found him dead.”
I looked at the porch and saw Myra Gunderson talking to a young, dark-haired woman I didn’t know. “That the social worker with Mrs. Gunderson?”
“Yeah. Name’s Sarah Deitzenbach. Oh, and I called the ambulance just before you got here. Figured we’d need it.”
“You been in the house to see the body? “I asked.
“No. I wouldn’t want to mess anything up.” He wasn’t being sarcastic. If he’d ‘messed anything up,’ it could cost him a long report, as well. It was typical of him to say it looked natural without having actually observed the body, too. Sloppy, but well intentioned. It was worth a lot of effort to keep him off the stand.
“Okay. So nobody has pronounced anybody dead yet, right?”
“Not as far as I know, Carl.”
“Then I’m glad you called the ambulance and not a hearse.” With that, I headed for the porch while Hester and Norm made some small talk. Hester, being a state officer, wasn’t required at an unattended death. Lucky her.
As I approached Sarah, it occurred to me that she was my last hope of getting out of a lengthy report. If she knew that the deceased had been under any medical care, including an ER visit, I was off the hook.
“Hi, my name’s Houseman. I’m a deputy sheriff here in Nation County. You’re Sarah Deitzenbach?”
“Yes.”
“You found the deceased?”
“I did.” She sounded a little defiant.
“You okay?”
“Yes, of course. Fine.”
“Could you lead me to the body?”
“Sure. You know,” she said, once we were inside the house, “this is all so senseless. If they weren’t so afraid they’d be deported, they’d go to the hospital or the clinic.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said.
“Poor Orejas,” she said. “I guess they thought it was the flu.”
“Orejas? Sonofabitch.” I only knew of one Orejas.
“Yes. Well, that’s not his real name, really. It’s just what his friends call him.”
