A Long December

CHAPTER 05

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 09:45

I’d gotten to bed well past midnight, but rolled out of bed at 06:30, just missing myself on TV. Sue was apologetic, figuring that since I hadn’t left her a note, I didn’t want to be gotten up. She said it was “nice,” but that I’d only been on the tube for about five seconds.

I saw her off to school at seven-thirty, which was pretty unusual since my normal shift started at noon, and I rarely awoke before ten. Being up, I’d figured on calling the office, seeing what was going on, and getting there by eight or so.

When I called, Lamar took the phone, said he was worried about my accumulating overtime, and ordered me not to be in before eleven. I said something about him never getting worried when I was tired, only when he thought I was getting rich. He thought that was funny.

I called Hester on her cell phone. She was already at the office, talking to the lab guys, who had finished late and stayed the night in Maitland to avoid a four-hour drive back to Des Moines with no sleep.

“Just a sec,” said Hester. She spoke to someone up at the office, probably Sally. “You want to tell him, or can I? Cool.” They must have said that she could. “Guess what they found in that ravine behind the outbuildings?”

“Four more bodies,” I said. I couldn’t imagine anything worse.

“No such luck,” she said, altogether too brightly. “But the ditch is full of empty containers. Ether cans. Probably anhydrous ammonia was once in some of the buckets and plastic barrels. A whole bunch of busted open lithium batteries. Rags, other debris.” She paused, and I could hear her grinning. “And empty shell casings, 7.62mm shell casings. Made in China, found just up the ditch from the ether cans. Many, many shell casings. How about that?”

A meth lab. Or, at least, the trash heap from one. And the shell casings were pretty typical, too. Lots of meth dealers liked to be armed, and Chinese SKS rifles, copies of Soviet ones, were easy to come by. “Meth. With guns, too, and target practice.”

“You betcha.”

“Son of a bitch.” I chuckled. “Is there a functional lab there, or did we miss it?”

“No functional lab,” said Hester, “but it was once. I’ve called DNE and they’ve called DEA, and we’re going to need a professional cleanup. They’ll be up as soon as possible.”

DNE was the Iowa Department of Narcotics Enforcement, and DEA was its federal equivalent, the Drug Enforcement Administration. They had to be notified, and they’d take care of calling the Environmental Quality people. Lots of the stuff used to make methamphetamine was highly toxic, not only at the point of contact, but because of groundwater pollution as well.

“Think this is our motive?” I asked. “Drug-related?”

“It’s very possible,” she said. “Related, anyway. Want to hear my next news?”

“Go ahead… you’re on a roll.”

It turned out that the lab guys had done the case prints off the dead body late last night, and they’d been turned over to a state trooper at 07:00. He’d relayed them to the AFIS terminal at the Cedar Rapids police department.

“They’re already being run, even as we speak,” said Hester.

“Excellent.”

“Next,” she said, “the milk hauler… uh… Elmo Hazlett?”

“Yeah?”

“He was contacted, and should be back home around noon or so.”

“Excellent.”

“That makes three good things in a row, Houseman. Can you take a fourth one?”

There was no doubt in my mind. “Go for it.”

“There’s a young woman from Battenberg on her way up here to the office. Name is Linda Moynihan. She claims her live-in is missing, and she thinks he’s our victim.” Hester paused, and I could hear paper rustling in the background. “She’s accompanied by… the EMT that was at the scene yesterday… nope, the paramedic… a Terri Biederman.”

“Okay.” That was curious.

“She said that she and this Terri were old high school friends.” “How soon they going to be there?”

“Pretty soon. They were leaving about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Did she give his name? Her boyfriend?”

“Well, of course, Houseman.” Hester sounded really pleased. “Jesus Ramon Cueva. Aka Rudy.”

I was in the office in ten minutes. When Lamar saw me, he glanced at his watch and said, “Right on time.” He does sarcasm really well.

“Hell, Lamar, I’m only an hour early. I’ll just let my tires go another thousand miles before we change ‘em.” I think he liked that idea.

The black-haired, blue-eyed Linda Moynihan looked very small seated at the other side of my desk, and she seemed worried to the point of distraction. She was wearing blue jeans and a faded pink quilted jacket, and looked as if she’d been up all night.

According to her, the deceased was one Jesus Ramon Cueva, a thirty-one-year-old male, whom she’d last seen yesterday morning. Her description of the clothing he’d been wearing when he left the house matched the clothes on the body, with one exception. He’d been wearing a blue quilted nylon vest, with snaps up the front.

“Okay, Linda,” I said, “I can understand your concern, but is there anything specific that makes you think the victim is Ramon? Any reason you have to fear for his safety?”

She shook her head. “Not really, I guess. No. No, but Terri and I were talking, and the more she told me, and the more we talked, and the more it got to look like… “She started to cry. “Him,” she got out, after two tries. “Ramon.”

“Okay,” said Hester. “It’s okay.”

“We waited up all night, hoping that he’d come home,” said Terri. “When he didn’t, we called.”

Terri was standing a few feet behind Linda’s chair and was jerking her head toward the dispatch center.

“Hester,” I said, “could you get something started here while I talk to Terri out at Dispatch?”

While Hester took a written statement, Terri and I went into the short hallway that connected the main office with the dispatch center. It was an area not covered by security cameras, and had very little foot traffic. It was about as private a place as we could muster without slipping the lock on Lamar’s office door, and he really hated it when we did that.

“So,” I said. “What ya got?”

“Hey, look, the more I think about it, the more I’m sure it’s him. Really.”

“Why?”

“Look, just a quick rundown here. Linda’s always been head-over-heels in love with him, but Rudy was a prick. Okay? I mean, he was screwing around on her, he treated her like crap when there was company around, and he never told her anything about what he did.”

“What did he do?” I almost hesitated, because Terri was so damned opinionated I hated to open the door.

“Well, he was working at the packing plant, when he’d decide to go in,” she said. “That was his day job.”

“Humm. How’d he get the nickname Rudy?”

She looked at me, surprised. “Who knows? Just what some of his little buds call him. Is it important?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. I just like to know as much as I can. So, like, what was he into that could get him killed?”

Turned out that Terri wasn’t absolutely sure. I mean, she had thoughts, but no proof. She and Linda were pretty good friends, but they’d started to grow apart when Linda had started living with Rudy.

“He treated her like dirt when his shithead little friends were around. When they were alone, he was just fine. But he just had to turn her into his private little serving woman when they showed up. It made me sick.”

“She didn’t mind?”

Terri rolled her eyes. “Linda was in love. In the worst possible way. Her mom didn’t want her seeing him, always gave her crap about a mixed marriage. Not because Ramon was Mexican, but because he was Catholic and Linda’s Lutheran.”

“Okay. So, who are these little friends?”

“I don’t know names, I really don’t. I just know he’s into dope, Houseman. I just know it.”

“I hate to use the term ‘evidence,’ there, kid, but you wouldn’t happen to have any, would you?”

That produced a rare silence from Terri. Then she said, “No, but I know it’s true.”

I didn’t want to argue with her, especially not now, for two reasons. First, it could very well be true. I had no information either way. Second, she was so damned bull-headed that if I were to push her just a bit, she’d do something foolish, like try to obtain the evidence on her own. No way was I about to allow that.

“All I can say at this point,” I told her, “is that I need evidence.” I held up my hand to forestall any objections. “And, no, I couldn’t tell you if I did.”

She sighed, mostly from frustration, and said, “Yeah.”

“But don’t try to find out on your own. I mean it. We’ll know within a couple of days either way.”

“Oh, sure.”

“No,” I said. “We’ll know. I’m certain of that.”

“Oh, right.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “You concentrate on helping Linda deal with this. I’d like you to come with us when we have her view the body. She’ll need that, and you’ve already seen him.” I thought that was pure inspiration. If that didn’t get her mind off suspected meth involvement for a day or two, I’d be very surprised.

“You’re kidding? Aren’t you?”

“Nope. She’s going to really need a friend in there.”

“Christ,” she said. “Oh, I suppose. Shit.”

“Have you described the wound to her?”

“No.”

“Okay. Well, she’d better be a little prepared, don’t you think?” I shrugged. “I suppose I can tell her…”

“No, let me.” Terri had gotten sort of grayish in the last few seconds.

“You want to sit down for a minute first?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Just make sure,” I said, “that there’s no misunderstanding on her part. I know you can’t prepare her for it, but give her a really good idea.”

Having Linda identify her boyfriend’s remains became more critical about fifteen minutes later, when the AFIS officer from Cedar Rapids PD called. The officer’s name was Larry, and I’d known him for several years. He said there was absolutely no record of the fingerprints anywhere.

“Nowhere?”

“Well,” said Larry, “the Pago Pago database is down, and we haven’t got Mars on line yet…”

“Very funny.”

“But really, no record nowhere, Carl. Absolutely nothing.”

“What’s that tell us?”

“Well,” said Larry, “it probably just means he’s never been fingerprinted. Lots of people have never been printed.”

“Okay. Sure. Well, then…”

“Don’t give up. They’re recorded now. If somebody else picks him up, we’ll put a flag on it for them to contact you.”

“No good. He’s, uh, dead.”

There was a moment of silence, and then a chuckle. “You’re having a really bad day, aren’t you?”

“Aw, not really. Hey, I was on TV this morning.”

“I saw that. Didn’t realize you’d been promoted to sheriff.”

“What?”

It turned out that one of the reporters had identified me as “Sheriff” Houseman. Great. Lamar was going to love that. I said as much to Larry.

“Tell ya what,” said Larry. “We’ll continue to run this set every week or two for a few months. Just in case there’s a participating venue that’s offline right now, or somebody who’s new coming up online in the next while.”

“Thanks.” A glimmer of hope, regardless of just how faint, is still a glimmer.

“Think we’ll have a white Christmas?”

“Not unless it would cover up a crucial piece of evidence,” I said. “It’s been that kind of week.”

Since Linda’s identification of the deceased was now critical, Hester, Linda, Terri, and I went to Maitland Hospital, where the remains had been placed in their morgue/autopsy room. It was a new installation, built with regional funds, because we were located in the center of a seven-county region. We didn’t get lucky like that very often.

Dr. Steven Peters, our favorite forensic pathologist, had just arrived. I made the introductions and told him why so many of us were there. He unlocked the door to the morgue, and he and Hester went in so he could do a “preliminary examination” of the body. That had never happened before. I was curious. He reemerged about fifteen minutes later, and motioned Linda, Terri, and me in.

The room was about forty degrees, all tile and stainless steel, and very clean. Dr. Peters’s large instrument and evidence case was open, and his camera was on a counter near the remains. The body was lying on a stainless steel table with an indented drain trough that ran around its perimeter and led into a large sink near the dead man’s feet. I could tell from the silvery puddles of water that the body had just been hosed off. It was apparent, at least to me, that Dr. Peters had photographed the dead man, then washed the body so that Linda would have an easier time of it. That explained the “preliminary exam.” The body had been covered with a simple white sheet. It looked really weird, because my eyes went automatically to where you’d expect to see the large lump made by the head, and there was no lump there. Just a sharpish rise, where some fragmented feature had remained attached to the body. Spooky.

“We won’t be looking at the face,” said Dr. Peters. “Just the chest and lower down. Before you look, can you think of any identifying feature you can name?”

Linda drew herself together and said, “He’s got a mole on his stomach, just above his navel. And a tattoo that says ‘Nortino’ on his right arm.”

“‘Nortino’? North?” My Spanish is horrible.

“More like ‘Northern,’ I think.” She was beginning to shake, almost imperceptibly.

“What’s that for?” I asked. “The ‘Nortino’?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Dr. Peters moved the sheet aside. He’d placed a towel over the pubic area, and another was draped at the top of the shoulders. I saw the mole above the navel. Linda sort of squeaked, and just sat down on the floor and started to cry. Terri helped her up and sat her in a folding chair that faced away from the corpse. I looked across the body to where Dr. Peters stood. He pointed to the upper right arm. I could see – TINO tattooed on the flesh.

I looked back at Linda, who was shaking uncontrollably and making hiccuping sounds. That kind of gut-wrenching sobbing is almost impossible to fake. I hate to be cynical, but it pays to notice things like that. So. I thought the identity pretty much confirmed.