label said. Mr. Heater.
“Runs on a one-pound bottle, puts out 9,000 BTUs for six hours on one. I’ve even got a spare bottle in my pack.”
“What the hell,” said Sally. “I’m sticking with George tonight.”
“Me, too,” said Hester. “Carl, you can stay in the shed if you want.”
“Where,” I asked George, “do you get that stuff?”
“I shop around,” he said. “This was only a hundred bucks. Want to see what all I’ve got in my pack?”
“There’s gonna be plenty of time after we get there,” I said. “We’ve got a way to go.”
Hester produced her own duffel bag. “I don’t have a shotgun. Department’s a little short right now, and we keep ‘em in the office and draw one out when we think we’re going to need one.”
“I don’t, either,” said George.
“I’m disappointed, George,” I said. “I was sorta hoping you’d have a small cannon with wheels.”
We set off down the road, with George and me carrying most of the packs and blankets, and Hester and Sally toting the rest along with the cooler between them. When we got back up onto the roadway, Sally said, “Is that dark spot…?”
“Yep. That was where the body was,” I said.
“Boy,” said George. “This is sure a lonely spot to die.”
“Well,” I said, “Rudy really didn’t have much time to think about that.”
“Do you and Hester think you’ve got the right man?”
“If you mean Skripkin,” I said, “yeah, I think so. But I really want that Hassan or that Alvarez, or whoever he is. That sonofabitch is the trigger man.” I adjusted my load, nearly dropping the shotgun off my shoulder. “Skripkin’s only a co-conspirator. That, and a lying sonofabitch, to boot. We’d really like some solid physical evidence.”
The law says that you cannot convict an individual based solely on the testimony of a co-conspirator. It’s a very good rule, when you think about it. But it also means that you have to have something else linking the suspect to the act. Like a large amount of physical evidence, for example. I didn’t think other testimonial evidence, such as that available from Jacob Heinman, would be enough in a strongly contested case.
Along with that, Skripkin’s lying continued to haunt me. I knew he was telling mostly the truth about the murder, but there were little holes in his account that a decent defense attorney would be able to drive a truck through.
“Like what kind of evidence?” George asked, more to make conversation than out of real interest.
“I’d be happy with the murder weapon,” I said. “It’s a twelve-gauge shotgun, and we have that plastic wadding. It will have some marks, so I think we can maybe do a match. His fingerprints all over the gun would help, too.”
We rounded the curve, and Sally said, “Shit, Houseman, how much further?”
“Way down around the next curve,” I said. “It’s all downhill.”
“Way down there?”
“Yep.” I turned around and walked backwards for a few steps. “Gettin’ tired?”
She stuck out her tongue.
Another hundred yards down the road, and Sally spoke up again. “You mind tellin’ me why you didn’t just drop us off down here, and then go park the car?”
“Too many tracks. People make lots of tracks, especially when they stand around waiting for somebody. It’s best this way.”
“Be sure to tell me that on the way back up,” she said.
“Wait till you see the farmyard,” said Hester. “It gets worse.”
When we turned into the farm lane of the old Dodd place, Sally let out a groan. It was quite a distance to the abandoned barn, all uphill and over rutted, frozen tracks. A gust of ice-cold air whipped down the little valley, right into our faces. It was going to be chilly tonight.
CHAPTER 22
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2001 15:23
We paused at the end of the lane and set most of the stuff down to give ourselves a break.
“Anybody know anybody else who’s crazy enough to go on a winter picnic? “asked Sally.
“It won’t be so bad,” said George, “once we’re out of the wind.”
Sally shivered. “Yeah. But it’s a long way to that barn. I just hate it when it blows right in your face. Makes it ten times colder.”
George turned his back to her. “The zipper pocket on the upper right,” he said. “There’s a muffler in there. Go ahead and use it.”
Sally pulled out a maroon and gold muffler, complete with fringed ends. “Wow, thanks,” she said, wrapping it around her face.
Hester lifted one end of the cloth. “Hogwarts?”
“USC,” said George. “Same thing.”
Rested and wrapped, we loaded up again and started up the lane.
“Where’s the house? “asked George.
1 pointed to the top edge of the stone foundation ahead on our right. “Used to be over there. When the original owner leaves, if another farmer who lives fairly close buys the place, they don’t have much use for the residence. They only spend the money and the time to maintain the useful buildings.”
George chuckled. “I’ve got to tell my little sister that I’ve found the fixer-upper she wants.”
We piled everything in the barn. It was built on a slope, with the big doors on the main floor facing the uphill side, away from the driveway. There was a door on the second story that faced the driveway, designed for loading the hayloft, but it didn’t permit much observation unless it was wide open. The basement, which grew out of the slope at main floor level, had windows and a walk-in door, as well as a large Dutch door for animals. The basement walls that extended out from the slope were limestone, which meant that the wind wasn’t going to be blowing through the basement. Better yet, the basement door faced the driveway.
“Well, we might as well do the lower barn level,” I said.
“Looks good to me,” said George.
“Fine,” said Sally. “I’m not about lug all this stuff up into the hayloft.”
That pretty much decided it.
After we got our gear comfortably set in the barn, we decided take a look around outside to get a good idea of the whole layout of the place. We’d already been inside long enough to notice how much colder it was when we went back outside.
As the four of us stood in the middle of the barnyard, Hester and I pointed out the features we were familiar with. Facing upslope, the barn was on our immediate left. About fifty yards upslope from us, and a little more to the right, was an old shed. Another shed was across the yard, and also about fifty yards upslope. A large, concrete- block silo was on the right, about twenty-five yards from the barn, and had a small shed adjacent to its base. Between the barn and the silo was the wooden telephone pole that mounted the yard light. There was some old wooden fencing that ran on three sides of the silo and butted into the rising hillside on the right.
The foundation of the old house was behind us and to our right.
“How far up this little valley does this lane go?” asked George. From our vantage point, it made a bend to the left and went out of sight around the hillside.
“About a hundred yards,” said Hester. “It ends at the gate to a field up there.”
“And that one?” asked Sally, pointing over toward the right, behind the silo.
“That goes up along the little creek bed,” I said. “I didn’t see anything up there, and it kind of stops being a lane and starts being a cow path.”
There were faint markings on that lane, two parallel lines, that looked like they could be tire tracks.
“Were those tracks there when we were here? “I asked Hester.
“I don’t remember,” she said, “but it was pretty dark.”
