He came through with last night’s promise. In a way. ‘‘It’s to a fellow who calls himself Adam A. Freeman, with an address that’s a P.O. Box in Harmony, MN.’’ George looked smug. ‘‘Obviously not his real name.’’
‘‘Obviously,’’ said Hester. ‘‘So who is he?’’
‘‘Just a bit harder,’’ said George. He grinned. ‘‘But I have friends. All you have to do is dial up that e-mail address, and my friends can tell you where the call is routed in about two seconds.’’
We were pleased for George too.
‘‘So?’’ asked Hester.
‘‘Gregory Francis Borcherding, RR, Preston, MN.’’ He grinned and pulled out a little slip of paper. ‘‘I’ve got an SSN, a DOB, the whole nine yards…’’
‘‘I think,’’ said Hester, ‘‘that that’s pronounced ‘bork her ding.’ Just in case you two ever meet.’’
‘‘Not ‘borsher ding’?’’ asked George.
‘‘Nope.’’
He made a note on the slip of paper.
‘‘So,’’ said Hester, ‘‘what’s he do, and what’s he got to do with all this?’’
George didn’t know. That was all right with us, because the FBI hardly ever ‘‘knows’’ anybody until they’re ‘‘introduced’’ by the locals. Hester and I both knew a really sharp deputy in Preston. We placed a call.
‘‘Whoever he is,’’ said George as we waited, ‘‘he had to know Rumsford was going into the house.’’ He thought for a second. ‘‘Did any of the networks have a live feed going when it happened?’’
‘‘No,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We sort of took them by surprise. Remember?’’
‘‘And we had the phone line locked up,’’ I said. ‘‘By the phone company, no less.’’
‘‘You know,’’ said Hester, ‘‘as much as they use the Net, I’ll bet they have a dedicated line for that.’’
‘‘I don’t suppose we could call the lab agents?’’ I asked facetiously.
That got a dirty look from both Hester and George. It looked like that could develop into a sore point.
The intercom buzzed. It was for me, Jack Kline, a deputy sheriff for Fillmore County, MN.
‘‘Hey, Houseman, how the hell you been?’’
‘‘Shitty, thanks.’’
‘‘Yeah, I hear all about you guys down there. Busy.’’
‘‘Too busy. Hey, you know a dude up there name of Gregory Francis Borcherding?’’
‘‘Oh, that asshole… yeah, what, he bothering you people down there?’’
‘‘Kind of. What’s he do for a living?’’
‘‘Damned if I know. He runs a little right-wing rag for a hobby, though. Real idiot.’’
I talked with Kline for a few more seconds. After I hung up, I looked at George and Hester. We’d been on the speaker phone.
‘‘Wasn’t he the one Nancy Mitchell pointed out to us up at the farm?’’ asked George.
‘‘And he was at Kellerman’s funeral too,’’ I said.
‘‘Didn’t he have a laptop up at the farm?’’
‘‘Sure did,’’ I said. ‘‘I can almost see it.’’
‘‘So, with a cell phone and a modem…’’
‘‘That’s right, George. He could communicate directly over the computer, without us knowing there was anybody on the telephone.’’ I shook my head. ‘‘Technology triumphs again.’’
‘‘Only if Stritch has a dedicated line,’’ said Hester.
We put in the call that would tell us.
‘‘But why,’’ I asked, ‘‘would Herman do what Borcherding told him to do? Especially when it came to killing a man. And why would he say something stupid, like ‘he’s got a bomb,’ for Christ’s sake?’’
‘‘Well,’’ said George, with unusual enthusiasm. ‘‘Well. If he’s got a dedicated line to a modem, I say we just go up and pick up Borcherding’s ass and ask him!’’
‘‘It might be easier than that,’’ said Hester, staring out the window. ‘‘I think that’s him out there with the press right now.’’
Sure enough. He was at the far end of the parking lot, in a little cluster of, maybe, six reporters who were having coffee and doughnuts. Damn. It was Friday, and we were going to be moving Herman, Bill, and Nola to the courthouse for their preliminary hearings. Normally we wouldn’t have had to do that, but they had seen a magistrate on the day they were brought in, and he’d arranged for a District Court judge to review his bail amounts. The hearing was set for 1000.
‘‘Why aren’t they all waiting at the courthouse?’’ I asked.
‘‘Better photo ops as they come down the jail steps,’’ said Hester, taking a swallow of coffee and continuing to look out the window. ‘‘Our man has a camera around his neck. With,’’ she continued slowly, ‘‘a pretty long lens.’’
George, naturally, rethought his position.
‘‘Well,’’ he said hesitantly, ‘‘we might want to be a bit more circumspect here.’’
‘‘Maybe for more reasons than you’d think,’’ said Hester. ‘‘If we go out and just scarf him up right now, your bosses are gonna wonder just how on God’s green earth we knew it was him.’’
‘‘Good point,’’ said George. Quickly.
‘‘Well,’’ I said, gently mocking George, ‘‘we might just come up with a reason to suspect him of something without having to use the e-mail stuff.’’
‘‘Not likely,’’ said George.
‘‘I didn’t say it’d be quick,’’ I answered. ‘‘Anyway, I want to see whom he reports to.’’
‘‘He owns his own paper,’’ said George.
‘‘I said ‘to,’ not ‘for.’ He was relaying a message to Herman at one point. For my money that was a message from the ‘masked man’ Hester and I saw running away…’’
‘‘We could watch him forever,’’ said Hester, still not turning toward us, ‘‘and we’d never know that.’’
‘‘Not us,’’ I said. ‘‘Can you see if Nancy Mitchell’s out there?’’
‘‘She’s not,’’ said Hester. ‘‘She’d be at the courthouse anyway. She does words, not pictures.’’
‘‘Ah.’’
The phone call to the clerk’s office took only a few seconds. Then Nancy was on the line, and curious as to why we wanted to see her, to say the least. I told her to say it was in regards to Rumsford, in her capacity as a witness.
‘‘It’ll be later this afternoon, after the hearings and all that,’’ she said.
It was time for another favor. Which she knew, of course.
‘‘Look, make it in the next five minutes, and I’ll see to it that you get to talk with one of them as they go through the building.’’ She agreed, readily, but without noticeable surprise. She was getting used to the preferential treatment.
George, as usual, was a bit nervous. ‘‘I don’t know that we should be dealing with this woman…’’
‘‘Oh, George,’’ said Hester, sounding exasperated, ‘‘the FBI probably wouldn’t. Those of us without resources, however, have to punt once in a while.’’
‘‘Once in a while?’’
‘‘Frequently,’’ I said. ‘‘Very frequently.’’
As it turned out, George was sufficiently bothered by the whole business that he decided to be taken off the kicking team. While Hester and I met with Nancy in the booking office, George stayed in the back room, poring over the papers from last night.
Nancy was wearing olive slacks, a white blouse with short sleeves, and a gray vest. She looked a little warm already, and it was supposed to be in the middle nineties until Sunday.
‘‘So,’’ she said, bustling into the room, and smiling at both of us, ‘‘when do I get to see ’em?’’
‘‘One of them,’’ I said. ‘‘And not for at least an hour.’’ I indicated an old wooden office chair. ‘‘Just have a seat. They have to walk right by you.’’
She sat, and Hester and I did the same. All three of us in the same heavy old wooden chairs. We’d gotten them from the courthouse when they remodeled the courtroom. We liked to say we had a matched set of thirty-seven. We were clustered around a heavy old wooden table. Guess from where. Only two of those, one for the prosecution, one for the defense.
‘‘So what can I do for you?’’ she asked.
‘‘We’ve got a problem,’’ said Hester. ‘‘You’re going to have to be our scout for a little while, with a guy…’’
‘‘Who is probably not my type,’’ said Nancy.
‘‘Probably not,’’ said Hester. ‘‘At least, I hope not.’’
‘‘I think you know him,’’ I said. ‘‘The man who runs the right-wing paper up north?’’
‘‘Borcherding? Oh, not Borcherding! No way!’’