"What makes you think this guy and his pal have military training?" Ireland said.
Marlene hadn't answered that night. But the next day, she introduced Ireland to Katarain, who'd asked to speak to the sheriff when she called the night before from O'Toole's house. Leaving them now in the office to talk, she'd excused herself.
A half hour later, when Ireland emerged, he'd given her a hard look. "This puts me in a funny position, lady," he said.
"I know," she replied. "But you're a father. Put yourself in his shoes for now."
Ireland looked back into the office. "All right, you're in," he said. "But under those conditions." With that, the sheriff stomped out of the house.
Katarain emerged from the office and gave Marlene a hug. "Thank you."
"You deserve to be there," she replied. "What are the conditions?"
"The same as I asked of you," he answered. "That I be allowed to bury my daughter with her mother. After that, it doesn't matter."
The next step had been to get a search warrant. Marlene, Ireland, Zook, and Jack Swanburg, who'd flown in with the other members of the Baker Street Irregulars team, had gone to see Judge Linda Lewis.
"She's all right. A full-blood Nez Perce Indian who has no reason to like racists," Zook said. "But she's not going to be a pushover for a warrant. Folks around here, including judges, are pretty protective of their privacy and see transgressions against their neighbors as a threat to themselves, even if they don't particularly like the neighbors. There has to be a pretty good reason."
However, Zook had never seen Swanburg in action. In an empty courtroom, the little round man with the Santa Claus beard pulled out his laptop computer and soon had the judge mesmerized with his PowerPoint presentation.
First up was the photograph of the Cadillac and the pit. He pointed out the thin lava shell and gravel deposit, which combined with the conifer forest in the background "makes this a pretty good bet for northwest Idaho."
Next was the blowup of the Bucyrus steam shovel. "My associate, James Reedy, placed a call to the company," Swanburg said. "Their public relations gal was a big help. She said there's only a half dozen still in existence in the United States, one of them located at what was formerly Payette Sand and Gravel until the land was purchased by the Unified Church of the Aryan People. She doesn't think it's still in operation."
Swanburg switched to the blowup photograph of Maria Santacristina at the wheel of the car, staring out at the people in the courtroom. "I turn the floor over to Mr. Zook, Your Honor," he said quietly, and sat down.
Zook quickly went over the series of events, beginning with the disappearance of Maria Santacristina. "There's been no sign that she's alive," he said. "No calls to friends or family. No use of her credit cards or bank accounts. No one applying for work using her Social Security number. No police stops."
He went on to describe Maria's reputed affair with university president Kip Huttington and the positive pregnancy test strip found by her father, and ended with Huttington's report of his car being stolen.
"The car in the photograph is a 2003 Cadillac Eldorado," Zook said, referring to a report provided by Jesse Adare. "That's the same make, model, and year as the car Huttington says was stolen two days after Maria disappeared."
"All right," Lewis said. "I'm convinced. You get your warrant. But have you thought about how you're going to serve this, Steve? I don't expect they're going to welcome you with open arms, not unless it's firearms."
"We're going to sneak up on them when they're sleeping, Injun-style," Ireland said.
Lewis laughed but then her face got serious. "I don't want this turning into a Branch Davidian thing. That just breeds more nuts like Timothy McVeigh et al."
"I'll do my best, Linda, I mean Your Honor," Ireland corrected himself, and winked.
The judge sighed. "Why do I get the feeling that everything I say that you don't like goes in one of those big cauliflower ears and out the other?"
"Maybe 'cause there's not much in between," Ireland said. "Which reminds me, are you going to the Elks club barbecue next Sunday after church?"
"Wouldn't miss it," Lewis replied. "See you there?"
"Probably," Ireland. "Save me a burger if I'm late."
The convoy swept down the road until they reached the first guard tower, where the SWAT team waited. Those going on to the compound got out of their vehicles.
"From here we hoof it. Don't want them to hear us coming," Ireland said to Marlene, who also got out of the Hummer. He turned to one of the SWAT members. "Hey, Ryan, any problem?"
Ryan spit a wad of tobacco on the road. "Hell, no," he complained. "They were asleep. So we tied 'em up nice and tight, and let them go back to nighty-night."
"Good man." Ireland looked at his watch and then at Marlene. "All right. We're right on schedule. We've got to cover three miles before dawn, and then we'll see if plan A works. So wait until it starts to get light before expecting to hear from me. If we have to go to plan B, you get ready to skedaddle in case things go bad. Either way, I'll be talking to you."
Marlene stuck out her hand. "Good luck, Caveman."
"Who needs luck when you got looks," he replied, shaking her hand. "See ya on the flip side, and thanks for inviting me in on your little picnic. I haven't had this much fun in thirty years."
With that, Ireland's team formed up and began running down the road at a fast clip. Marlene looked at her watch and walked back toward the other vehicles.
One hour later, the Reverend Benji Hamm woke from a dream in which he heard hounds baying somewhere in the distance, feeling that something just wasn't quite right. He felt for the warm body of the fifteen-year-old girl sleeping next to him, one of the perks of being the Supreme Leader, whose duty it was to propagate the white race. She mumbled something and turned away.
Hamm sat up in bed and squinted. The gray light of dawn was just beginning to slip in through the window, but it was enough to see that a strange man was sitting in the chair at the foot of his bed.
The man, a goddamn slant-eyed gook, put a finger to his lips in the international sign to remain quiet. Any ideas he had about ignoring the warning evaporated when he felt the muzzle of a gun pressed against his temple and heard the hammer being pulled back.
"Good morning, Benji," Jojola whispered in his ear. "We're Payette County sheriff's deputies and we're here to serve you with this search warrant."
Tran held up the paperwork and placed it on the end of the bed.
"You are also under arrest for covering up a murder, which qualifies you for a felony murder charge," Jojola continued quietly. "And if my guess is correct, the young lady in bed with you is a minor, so you're probably looking at sexual assault charges, too."
"How did you get in here?" demanded Hamm, a pudgy six-footer with weak eyes who'd risen to his position mostly due to his gift for demagogic racist oratory and his absolute obedience to his absent superiors.
"That's not important," Jojola said, brushing off a good forty minutes of crawling through snow and pine needles up to the security fence, cutting a hole, and waiting for Tran to pick the lock after getting the signal from one of the SWAT team members that the security system had been deactivated. "Let's just say that your security wasn't state of the art. But for future reference, just remember that you will never be safe from me or my friend here. He wanted to cut your throat, and then serve you the warrant. But I thought we should serve you the warrant and give you a chance to cooperate first."
"You'll never get out of here," Hamm said, trying to summon his famous command of words but having a difficult time swallowing.
"Then neither will you. What's it going to be?"
Hamm considered his options. "I'll play along for now," he said. "After all, my attorneys will tear you to pieces for this intrusion."