Known Dead Page 4

  ‘‘Officer, can you tell us what happened up there?’’

  ‘‘Officer, were any of the victims police officers? Can you confirm that there is an officer involved?’’

  ‘‘Did this happen today, or is this a discovery of old bodies?’’

  That was original. I kind of liked that one. And then, of course: ‘‘Can you confirm the known dead? How many known dead?’’ It rankled.

  Hester, fortunately, was quite adept at this sort of thing.

  ‘‘An official statement will be issued in a short while. Thank you . . .’’

  I glanced at her as we got into my car. ‘‘Who’s going to issue a statement?’’

  ‘‘Don’t know,’’ she said, slamming her door. ‘‘Not me.’’

  On the way into Freiberg, in the blessed air conditioning of my car, Hester and I discussed just what we had. Or, more precisely, didn’t have.

  ‘‘So we agree that our people received fire from three separate locations?’’

  ‘‘At least,’’ said Hester. She leaned back in the seat and put her feet up on the dashboard, clasping her knees with her arms. ‘‘But not necessarily simultaneously.’’

  ‘‘Oh?’’

  ‘‘Nope . . . the two 7.62 mm locations could be the same shooter, and he moved.’’

  ‘‘Hmm. What’d Ken say about that?’’

  ‘‘I don’t think he got that far.’’

  ‘‘Ummmm.’’ I stopped at the stop sign, then turned off the gravel and onto a blacktop road. That scenario fit just about exactly with the faint popping I’d heard from near the barn on the hill.

  ‘‘So that leaves us with two, possibly three suspects.’’

  ‘‘Or more,’’ I said. ‘‘In firefights, not everybody always shoots.’’

  ‘‘What, are you being difficult?’’

  I grinned. ‘‘No, just thinking.’’

  We drove in silence for a few moments.

  ‘‘Can I ask you a personal question?’’

  ‘‘Sure,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Do you feel anything special. I mean, with an officer involved and dead?’’

  She thought for a second. ‘‘No, not really.’’

  ‘‘Me either,’’ I said. I looked over at her. ‘‘Should I be worried about this? I mean, I knew everybody up there, even the doper.’’

  ‘‘No, Carl. Don’t worry. You’ve had years to build up the defenses. Look on the bright side . . . they work.’’

  She had a point. Although I thought that I should have felt more.

  We went a couple of miles in silence.

  ‘‘So,’’ said Hester, ‘‘just what do we want to know from this girl we’re going to see?’’

  ‘‘Oh, the usual stuff.’’

  ‘‘No, what do we really want to know?’’

  ‘‘Well,’’ I said, passing a pickup truck, ‘‘maybe why Howie was there in the first place, for starters.’’

  ‘‘I’d rather know why he came back after he saw the officers yesterday.’’

  ‘‘WHAT!’’

  She smiled. ‘‘Thought that’d get your attention.’’

  ‘‘You’ve got to be kidding.’’

  ‘‘Nope. He even left them a note. ‘Fuck You Pig,’ or something like that.’’

  ‘‘You sure?’’

  ‘‘That’s what Dahl said. But Ken said that the doper was in cammo yesterday. He sure wasn’t today.’’

  ‘‘Cammo? Turd?’’

  ‘‘Yeah.’’

  ‘‘No,’’ I said. ‘‘No, never happen. He’d never wear something like that. Especially not to go tend a patch. Too much attention.’’

  I glanced at Hester. She was giving me the old one-raised-eyebrow look.

  ‘‘Really,’’ I said. Maybe a bit on the defensive.

  ‘‘You his dad or something?’’

  ‘‘He was a snitch for me for a while.’’

  ‘‘Do you any good?’’

  ‘‘Two defendants.’’

  ‘‘Over how long?’’

  ‘‘None of your business.’’

  ‘‘Humph,’’ she snorted. ‘‘Not much of a snitch.’’

  ‘‘Hey, we do what we can.’’

  ‘‘So,’’ she said, ‘‘you think he’s got a partner?’’

  ‘‘Probably not . . . but this girlfriend might think so.’’

  Four

  FREIBERG IS A TOWN of some seven or eight hundred souls, sandwiched between hundred-foot bluffs and the Mississippi River. It just fits. Five streets, two of which are the main highway as it enters from the west and leaves to the north. The one that comes down the bluff eventually becomes Main Street as it heads toward the river. A double line of red- and orange-brick two-story buildings, two blocks long . . . commercial businesses with apartments above. None built after 1903, according to the date and logo on most of the buildings. The only remodeling of the apartments after the 1930s had been all cosmetic. Most of it had occurred in the late 1960s and consisted of dry wall and dropped ceilings. All of which was now over thirty years old, and hadn’t been treated too well the last ten years.

  Beth Harper, a.k.a. Slick, the one true love of the late Howie Phelps, lived in one of the apartments, on the north side of the street, just about the middle of the second block. Up a very long flight of stairs (thirty-four steps, I counted as we went. I just do that sort of thing). Dark stairwell, with either a burned-out bulb or a blown fuse. Either way, nobody apparently had done anything about it. We got to the top, and into a long, dim hallway cluttered with those big, bright-colored, inflated-looking plastic toys like tricycles, balls, bats, and wagons, the kind little kids have that look like they came out of a cartoon strip. Then a long line of full black garbage bags.

  Beth lived in the second apartment, with the view of the trash bins that nobody in this building seemed to use. And it was hot in the hall, without a breath of air. And a lot of stink.

  I knocked on Beth’s door for what seemed like half an hour. Then it opened a crack, and a young woman I didn’t recognize stuck her head out. Her eyes were all red, and I thought at first that she’d been doing dope. Then I realized that she’d been crying.

  ‘‘What do you want?’’

  ‘‘We’d like to talk to Beth for a minute . . .’’ I held up my badge.

  ‘‘Fuck.’’ She turned back into the apartment, leaving her hand on the doorframe. ‘‘Beth, it’s the fuckin’ pigs.’’ Matter of fact, no animosity in particular. Like so many, she’d been raised on fuckin’ pig being a label, just like postman, milkman, or clerk. (What do you want to be when you grow up? Fuckin’ pig. It could happen.) There was a muffled response, and the door opened wider.

  ‘‘Come on in.’’

  The apartment was worse than the hallway. And more crowded, as it contained the young woman who had answered the door, Beth, and one two-year-old and one three-year-old. The two kids were wearing plastic pants, but otherwise were naked. Just plastic pants. No diapers underneath. Dirty, bright-eyed, they were very near their mother. Beth sat at a Formica-topped kitchen table that had rusting chrome legs and three matching chairs with cracked vinyl seats. I could barely see the tabletop for the dirty dishes. I’d guess it was supposed to look like marble.

  ‘‘Hi, Beth.’’

  ‘‘Mr. Houseman,’’ she said, and took a long drag off a cigarette. She exhaled, blowing the smoke up into her bangs, but cooling her forehead a bit. ‘‘What did you guys do to Howie? I hear he’s dead.’’ She was doing cool well, but her hand was shaking.

  ‘‘How’d you hear that?’’ I asked.

  Beth nodded toward the other young woman. ‘‘Her mom works at the doc’s office.’’

  Enough for now. Pursue that part later.

  ‘‘That’s right. He’s dead, Beth.’’

  She almost lost it, but didn’t quite. Another drag, and she was in control.

  Beth has long, dark hair, and very large brown eyes. She looked up at me, steadily. ‘‘Why?
’’

  ‘‘He was shot, up near his patch.’’

  ‘‘Why’d you do it?’’

  ‘‘We think he shot first,’’ I said. I turned toward the other young woman. ‘‘Why don’t you take the kids out on the back porch, or someplace. Just for a few minutes.’’ She looked at Beth, who nodded in assent.

  ‘‘You go with Nan, guys . . . That’s okay, Mommy will be right here . . .’’

  Between the two of them, they got the kids onto the porch in a minute or so. Beth came back, ran a hand through her hair, and finally asked us to sit. We did, careful not to lean on the table.

  ‘‘What do you mean, he shot first? That’s easy to say, now that he’s dead.’’

  ‘‘We have reason to believe that he did. The evidence,’’ said Hester, ‘‘points to it.’’

  ‘‘Who’s she?’’

  ‘‘Agent Hester Gorse, DCI.’’

  ‘‘You here because of this, right?’’

  ‘‘That’s right,’’ said Hester.

  ‘‘She’s okay, isn’t she?’’ Beth asked me.

  ‘‘You bet.’’

  ‘‘So, what happened?’’

  ‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘he apparently was on his way to tend his patch, and he got surprised by one of our people. Shot at him. Our man shot back. Just like that.’’

  ‘‘Well, he saw you guys up there yesterday . . . God, are you telling me the truth that he shot at you guys? For sure?’’

  ‘‘Looks like it, kid. It really does.’’

  ‘‘But he saw you guys yesterday! Why didn’t you bust him then?’’

  ‘‘I don’t think our people recognized him. In fact, I know they didn’t, or they would have been here pretty quickly.’’

  ‘‘That’s right,’’ said Hester. ‘‘And they saw him at a distance, and couldn’t keep with him. Lost him.’’

  ‘‘Well,’’ said Beth. ‘‘Well, then, why did you have to go and kill him?’’

  ‘‘He shot at a cop, they returned fire.’’

  She stood up, fast. ‘‘Oh, yeah, and I’m supposed to believe that!’’

  ‘‘You’re gonna have to,’’ I said, as evenly as I could.

  ‘‘Oh, sure!’’ She stabbed her cigarette out in a dirty paper plate. ‘‘You have any proof?’’

  ‘‘A cop was killed, too.’’

  She sat back down.

  Silence. ‘‘Not by Howie?’’

  ‘‘Maybe so.’’ I looked at Hester. Howie had a shotgun. Bill seemed to have been shot by a rifle. But could it have been a really close-range shotgun wound, with just enough spread to make it look like an auto rifle? Twelve-gauge double-ought buckshot contained nine balls of approximately .30 caliber. Or 7.62 mm. That would make something smaller, like #1 shot, about 5.56 mm. Maybe. I tried to think back, but wasn’t sure I could tell from the wounds. I still didn’t think that shotgun pellets would trim through a vest like that . . . and besides, it looked like jacketing material had been peeled off, and shotgun pellets weren’t jacketed.

  ‘‘It was either Howie or somebody with him.’’

  But it wasn’t Howie. Maybe. Goddamn. It looked to me like Howie had shot at Bill and missed. Bill returned fire, Howie is gone. All right. Then, a different weapon was used to kill Bill . . . obviously fired by somebody currently unknown, but with Howie. Hester, who had no idea what I was thinking, looked back with that eyebrow raised again.

  ‘‘You think somebody was with him?’’

  ‘‘That’s what we want to talk with you about. You might know.’’

  She thought, and said nothing.

  ‘‘Look, Beth. You got any dope here?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘Don’t lie, kid. Not worth it. You got enough here for us to bust you for intent?’’

  ‘‘No. Enough for four, five joints. That’s it.’’

  ‘‘Look, before we go any further, let me advise you of your rights. Now, I know you’re not under arrest, but I just want you to know what your rights are.’’

  She nodded, and I recited the Miranda warning to her. Gave her just a few seconds to think, but with that official droning in the background, it sort of encouraged her to cooperate. I had her telling the truth, with reservations, about the dope. She might have a bit more, but it wasn’t likely. And she and I both knew that what she did have was not the point.

  I finished Miranda.

  ‘‘So,’’ I said. ‘‘Who did it?’’

  She thought for a second. ‘‘It had to be Johnny Marks.’’

  ‘‘Johnny Marks?’’ I didn’t have the faintest idea who Johnny Marks was.

  ‘‘Yes. He owned the plants, and Howie was tendin’ for him. That’s why he had to go back after yesterday, ’cause if Johnny Marks thought he’d blown the patch, he’d kill him. Howie didn’t believe that. But it’s true. He doesn’t like Howie anyway. Johnny Marks is a mean dude. Howie hates him, but he’s scared . . . he was scared.’’ She started to cry. Just a little.

  ‘‘You want a minute?’’

  ‘‘No.’’ Sniff. ‘‘No, I’m fine.’’ She looked back at us, and her face suddenly looked like she had a cramp in it. More tears.

  ‘‘Where can we find this Johnny Marks?’’

  She got control again. ‘‘Probably his place. Up the hill, out on the highway. The new apartments.’’

  Upscale. Interesting.

  ‘‘What’s he do?’’

  ‘‘Dealer.’’

  ‘‘I sort of guessed that.’’

  She giggled through her tears. ‘‘No, he’s a dealer. On the Sunshine Queen.’’

  ‘‘Oh.’’ A card dealer. The Sunshine Queen was a riverboat, and since Iowa had enabled riverboat gambling, the Sunshine Queen had adopted Freiberg as a home port. Good for the economy, but she brought four hundred new people into the area, few of which we’d had time to get to know.

  ‘‘My mistake, Beth,’’ I said. ‘‘What can you tell me about him?’’

  She took a deep breath. ‘‘He scares me. He’s always coming trying to make Howie mad. He hits on me in front of Howie. Grabs my tits and everything. Just to let Howie know who’s boss.’’

  ‘‘Nice man,’’ said Hester.

  Beth really looked at Hester for the first time. Liked what she saw, apparently, because I was suddenly out of the loop.

  ‘‘He’s a fuckin’ prick,’’ she spat. ‘‘Last week, he comes up while Howie’s here, he lifts up my fuckin’ shirt, for Christ’s sake. He says, ‘You got good tits. You clean up a little, you can go someplace.’ Right in front of Howie.’’

  ‘‘What did Howie do?’’ asked Hester.

  ‘‘Nothin’. I mean, what could he do?’’

  ‘‘Oh,’’ said Hester, ‘‘a couple of things.’’

  ‘‘Not Howie.’’ Beth paused. ‘‘Look, I know Howie isn’t worth a shit. Wasn’t.’’ She shook it off, and continued. ‘‘But he wasn’t bad, you know? Not bad. Not mean.’’ She chuckled sadly. ‘‘Not worth a shit, you know? But he was nice.’’

  ‘‘That counts,’’ said Hester.

  ‘‘He even knew I was sleeping with Hemmie, you know? Only a few times, and all . . . He cared, honest. But he loved me.’’ That was the final straw. She broke down in sobs.

  Nan came rushing back in, ready to fight for her friend. ‘‘What you doin’ to her?’’

  ‘‘Nothing,’’ said Beth, through heavy tears. ‘‘They didn’t do nothing.’’

  ‘‘We’ll go on the porch for a minute,’’ said Hester.

  ‘‘O-o-o-kay,’’ sobbed Beth.

  We got on the porch. It was a little hotter, but the air was a lot fresher.

  ‘‘Shit.’’

  ‘‘What?’’ I asked, trying not to step on a two-year-old who was in hot pursuit of a small kitten.

  ‘‘Oh, I hate it when that happens,’’ said Hester. ‘‘You get the tension going in her, and then she cries. All the tension is gone, you have to start from scratch when she’s don
e.’’

  I grinned. ‘‘You coldhearted devil.’’

  ‘‘Yeah. How old is she, anyway? Twenty-four, twentyfive?’’

  ‘‘Younger than that, I think,’’ I said. ‘‘More like seventeen, eighteen. We gotta meet this Johnny Marks.’’

  Hester’s eyes flashed. ‘‘We do.’’

  ‘‘So it was Howie for sure yesterday.’’

  ‘‘Sounds like it.’’

  ‘‘We have to ask her about cammo.’’

  ‘‘Yeah.’’ She looked over the porch railing. ‘‘We have to ask her whether Marks knew about yesterday. I don’t think he did, but I want to know if Howie had the opportunity to talk with him and spill it.’’

  ‘‘Was Bill shot with a rifle or a shotgun at close range?’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘How sure are you Bill was shot with a rifle?’’

  She thought for a few seconds. ‘‘Just about certain.’’

  ‘‘Same here. Then how about Howie?’’

  ‘‘Positive.’’

  ‘‘Rifle?’’

  ‘‘Yep.’’

  ‘‘Okay, me too.’’ I thought again for a few seconds about the wounds I had seen in Bill’s chest. The autopsy would do it for certain, but I didn’t think it could have been a shotgun. Holes too far apart for close range. At more than fifteen feet, they wouldn’t have enough energy to get through the front of the vest, let alone out his back. ‘‘Shit.’’

  ‘‘There a problem?’’

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ I said. ‘‘We haven’t got enough from the scene yet . . . we gotta have a meeting.’’

  ‘‘Hell,’’ said Hester. ‘‘The poor damn lab crew will be here for a year.’’

  ‘‘I know.’’ I looked over the back porch rail at the backs of several old houses. The weathered rail had chicken wire stapled to the supports, to keep the two-year-old from falling through, and an unsupported tag end of the wire was stretched across the top of the wooden stair. There were no signs of life except for the wheezing of an old air conditioner, a three-year-old who was picking her nose, and the two-year-old who was curling up in what was apparently the cat’s bed. I wished I still smoked.