‘‘Oh, yes.’’
‘‘So, if it’s all right with Hester here, maybe she could come with me for the interview…’’ It’s always good practice to have a woman officer present when you interview a female… In fact, sometimes it’s better to have her do the interview.
‘‘Sure,’’ said Doc.
‘‘Fine,’’ said Hester.
‘‘So,’’ I said, ‘‘let’s meet later…’’
We had to run a small press gauntlet on the way down from the scene. I tried to think of a way around the little media cluster, but there were thick woods on both sides of our path until we hit the meadow just off the road. Trapped.
‘‘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.