"I'm sorry, Lamar," said Cletus, still too loud, and not quite sincerely. "It was out of line. I didn't mean that."
Well, there it was, though. He'd thought it, and he'd said it, and that was that. Lamar looked at me and said, "You deal with him. I'm gonna step outside for a minute."
Thanks, boss. Thanks a lot.
"Why don't you have a seat at the kitchen table, Cletus," I said. "You quiet down, and I'll tell you some of what's going on."
He turned and looked at me, his face a bit redder than it had been when he first arrived. He said nothing, just walked over to the table, and sat. Then, "What's this country coming to when a man's ordered around in his own house?" He said it almost softly, like he was talking to himself. Almost, but not really. The softness made it deniable, though, if he were to be called on it.
"Just get a handle on it, Cletus," I said. "Things happen for a reason."
"It's my house. What'd you do if I just said to get off my property? Huh? It's MY property."
"Well, Cletus," I said, sitting across the table from him, "first I'd tell you that we have the right to investigate the crime without interference." I kept my voice soft and low, forcing him to listen.
"Bullshit." This was a little louder again. "What were you doing here in the first place?"
"And," I said, "if you persisted, I'd charge you with Interference with Official Acts."
"On my own property?" His voice was rising. "That's pure bullshit!"
Time to change tactics. "Look, Cletus," I said. "Suppose you invited some guys over for a poker game, you lost, got pissed off, and shot all of 'em. You actually think that the courts would allow you to say, 'It's my property, you can't come here'? I don't think so."
He didn't answer.
"So, if you want to calm down, I'll tell you as much as I can about what's going on."
Cletus looked me right in the eye. "Okay. Let's hear it." Very calm. Very matter-of-fact. It crossed my mind that Cletus had been raising hell for effect. Why? I had no idea. Sometimes people were just like that. Bluster, then calm.
Just as I was starting, Lamar came back in, fixed Cletus with a cold stare, and then moved over to the lab people. He didn't say anything, but Cletus was a little cowed for a few seconds.
I told Cletus Borglan just about everything I knew, with some important exceptions. I left out all reference to Fred. I just said we'd been informed that there'd been a burglary. I didn't describe how the victims had been shot. While I was telling him the details, he got up, went to the sink, and began making a pot of coffee. Being cool. He stood with his hips resting against the kitchen counter as he listened. When the coffee was done, he poured himself a cup, opened the refrigerator to get some milk, sat down, and took a long sip. He just looked at me, and smiled.
"My hired man is up here all the time. How come he didn't find no burglary? Care to explain that?"
"Don't know him, Cletus. Maybe that's something you should ask him about." I was unhappy about not being offered coffee. "You got an alarm system or anything?"
"Didn't think I'd need one. What with all you on the county payroll."
Because of Cletus and his attitude, the agent in charge of the lab crew decided that they better stay at the house until everything was done, rather than try to get past Cletus in the morning. The rest of us stayed right along with them.
That was all right. I was there when the bodies were removed, and saw a complete nonreaction from Cletus Borglan. In the dark, with the stark lights, the black hearses, the frost and snow, and all the officers and agents present, it was quite a scene. As I said to Lamar, it was too bad we didn't get a picture. It would have looked great on the Office Christmas Card next year.
I ended up back in the office, sitting alone at my desk about 0445, typing my preliminary report. It helps to do that. Organizes your thoughts. Sure. Well, in this case, there was damned little to organize. Fred let ' em off. They didn't come back. Who but Fred even knew they were there? Nobody.
Before I left the office, I left a note: ANYBODY WITH 43 ON FRED GROTHLER, A.K.A. GOOBER, LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE. 10-43 is cop talk for information.
I got home at 0547. It was amazingly cold. Minus forty-four degrees in still air. That's about thirty degrees colder than the temperature in your home freezer. The air was so still the smoke from the chimneys was just standing in straight lines. All the moisture had been frozen and precipitated out of the atmosphere, and the little frozen crystals were all over everything. I stuck my head in the door, and called out to my wife, softly, "Sue?" No answer. She was upstairs, sleeping. She was going to have to miss this.
I couldn't resist. I went to the sink, filled a large plastic cup with hot water, and rushed back outside. I heaved the contents of the glass up into the air… It dissipated in a puff, and was gone. Nothing came back down. I love to do that. I made four more trips, all with the same result. Just cold enough. It made my day. I was almost tempted to wake Sue… almost. She's pretty tolerant, but there are limits…
6
Art and Lamar had decided to have a meeting of the investigative crew before the lab unit left for Des Moines. Swell. I hadn't even gotten to bed when they called. According to Lamar, both he and Art thought I'd better attend. Right. I'm sure Art did.
I'd just finished explaining to Sue that I'd been up all night, that we had a murder, and that she'd missed the experiment with the water in the air.
"Well, now you can get some sleep," she said, pulling her sweater over her head, and continuing to dress for school.
"Don't think so. That was the office, and they want me to be back in about an hour or so."
She stopped fastening her earrings, and turned to face me. "I don't want to sound mean, but you're getting too old to stay up twenty-four hours a day."
"Eh?" I cupped my ear.
"I said…" She stopped. "It's not funny."
As I came through the office door, I smelled fresh pastries. Great. I'm on a fairly strict low-fat diet. I stomped my feet to shake off the snow. I had on the same lace-up boots as yesterday, but was dressed in blue jeans, sweatshirt, and my own parka. Fortified with long johns, of course. It had warmed up, but was still minus fifteen or so. And, I admit it, I wanted to be in plain clothes just to prove to Art that I wasn't a "uniform." Ego. Always seems to be there when you don't need it.
Everybody was in the jail kitchen, seated around a long, industrial-sized folding table that had been in the kitchen since the 1950s. The initials of many prisoners were scratched into its top, along with a reasonably good checkerboard on one of the corners. Sort of a department heirloom. I grabbed a doughnut and some coffee, and sat down.
Lamar told us that the phones had been ringing like crazy since about midnight, with the media getting all worked up. So far, they hadn't put in a physical appearance, but he was pretty sure they'd be here by ten or so. Lamar hated media people, primarily because he was self-conscious. He also hated them because they seemed incapable of getting a story straight. He tended to leave terse, handwritten statements for the duty dispatcher to read to whoever called. He handed us all copies of his most recent effort.
THE BODIES OF TWO MALE SUBJECTS WERE DISCOVERED ON THE CLETUS BORGLAN FARM YESTERDAY. BOTH WERE FROZEN, THE CASE BEING TREATED AS A MURDER.
Great. I started to laugh, and drew a heavy stare from the boss.
"Jesus, Lamar," I finally got out. "You want to reword this?"
"What?" Gruffly, at best.
"Well, maybe you could put in something about the cause of death being undetermined at this time?" I grinned. "Otherwise, it sounds like they were killed by Jack Frost."