Code 61

TWENTY-EIGHT

Tuesday, October 10, 2000

17:40

“Brilliant,” said Kevin. “Just brilliant, Huck. Do you really have a death wish?”

That got me involved, from a slightly different angle.

“You got someplace safe to go?” I asked Huck.

She shrugged. “Oh, I think. But I'll probably just stay here. I don't think Dan's coming back.

” I raised both eyebrows, as meaningfully as I could.“You sure?”

“I'll let you know. But thanks, anyway. For asking.”

“Your call.”

She just nodded.

Here we were, about to begin mining a mother lode of information, and we were looking at the clock, wondering when we could head for Lake Geneva to interview Jessica Hunley. Hester and I talked quickly, and then I went to the phone in the hall, and called the office and had Borman head up. I told them to send Sally, too, since she was a reserve. Both of them knew the witnesses we were interviewing, and both could do a credible job of follow-up.

When I got off the phone, Hester used her cell phone to call her boss, and get another agent assigned and started up to meet with us. It was going to aggravate him no end, because they were short, but she'd get one, even if it meant overtime.

We were going to be getting a late start, but talking to Jessica Hunley was too important to let go for another day or two.

We continued the interviews, to keep the information flowing. I began to suspect that, although they'd cover for Dan, his absence was loosening the bond.

At one point, Melissa asked a probing question that I fielded as well as I could.

“Why don't you go talk to Jessica?” she asked. She looked pleased with herself for asking, and that tripped a warning switch.

“Jessica,” I said, “is out of our jurisdiction right now.” Technically true. I said it in a brush-off tone. It made it more believable.

“Oh. Oh, yeah. She is, isn't she?”

“Yep. Now, like I was saying… ”

I made a mental note that our replacements couldn't know where we were going. Just so they couldn't spill the beans.

Borman and Sally arrived fairly shortly after I'd called. I briefed them on what we'd accomplished. Sally was a little freaked.

“No shit? He killed her slow, so he could drink her blood, and live her death? Jesus, Dark Shadows, all over.”

Sally liked soap operas, too.

“Yep. That's what he did.”

“Christ,” said Borman. “That's one evil dude.”

“Yeah,” I said, “he's bad all right. So, anyway, what you are going to be doing is obtaining thorough statements, and taking notes. There's another DCI agent headed in, and whoever they send will be helping with the follow-up here, just like you are.”

“So,” said Borman, “what are you guys going to be doing while we do this?” “We have a lead we're going to follow up. Has to be done right away.” True.

“Need to know?” Completely insincere, Borman was developing a way of asking questions that assured he wasn't going to get a complete answer.

“Yeah. Need to know only.” I changed the subject. “I want you two to emphasize the possibility that Peale might return here. I don't want these people endangered in any way. It's their choice,” I explained, “but if you can convince them to be in a safer location, try to do that. Especially Huck.”

“Where?”

“If I knew that, Sally, I'd tell you.” I handed her some of my notes. “Maybe parents? Relatives, friends… just somewhere that they can rely on somebody calling if Peale shows up.”

“I'll try,” she said. “I can transmit fear,” she said, her face crinkling in a smile. “Believe me.”

We were out of the Mansion at 20:20.

“Okay,” said Hester. “It's about eight-thirty. Get me back to my motel, I'll get my car, meet you at your house at, oh, what? Nine-fifteen?”

“I'll try, but it's going to be closer to nine-thirty.

What you think, one night? Two at the most?”

“Two at the very most.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then we pick up Harry, and we're off.” We would each take our separate cars. That was a given, as our bosses could suddenly request our presence, and we'd have to leave at once. In this case, two of us wouldn't want to be pulled out of Lake Geneva just because the other had to leave. It was most likely that the one called would be Hester, and I didn't want to end up stranded a couple of hundred miles south of Nation County, killing time while she went to some unrelated murder scene. It was getting late, and the gas stations in Nation County would be closing around ten. If she needed gas, I was sort of gently reminding her where she was.

“I'll get some before I pick you up.”

“Okay, and if you can't, for some reason, I can get you to the county pumps.”

“I'd prefer real gas,” she said. “If I can get somebody to accept my state card.”

I dropped Hester off at her motel, and headed home.

Sue said, “Welcome home! And before ten, too!”

I kissed her, and broke the news.

“Lake Geneva?”

“Yeah, but you don't know that. Harry and Hester and I are going over to do interviews, and nobody can know that.”

“Okay. I guess.”

“Lamar knows, but nobody else. It's just for a day or two, at the most.”

I kept talking to her as I sat at our computer, and looked up accommodations in Lake Geneva. Several were just too pricey, especially those on the lake, itself. I checked maps and addresses, looking for something inexpensive.

“This is going on our credit card, isn't it?”

“I'm afraid so.” I looked up from the screen. “You know the county.”

“We will get reimbursed?”

“Oh, sure. Within six months.”

She sighed. “You want help packing?”

“Well, I'm trying to remember where the small overnight bag is… ” I settled on a motel that had no stars at all in its rating, in Fontana. I checked my map. On Lake Geneva, the western end. Maybe three to four miles from the town of Lake Geneva, itself. Good enough. It not only had no rating stars, it had no internet capability, either. I had to make a long distance call, and just give my card info over the phone. The clerk was pretty disinterested. With a room rate of thirty-four dollars a night, I suppose interest was a bit too much to ask.

I went upstairs, and Sue had my bag out, and already laid out underwear, socks, and sweatpants for me to lounge in.

“Hester sees you in these, I'll sleep better for knowing she fled laughing,” she said. But it did bother her a bit.

“There's no reason to worry.”

“I know that. But I just… well, it's a little uncomfortable. You know?”

I squeezed her shoulders. “Yeah, but don't let it be. Strictly professional.” She looked up, and I kissed her. “Besides,” I said, “Harry's rooming with me.”

“Now I'm really worried,” she said. “Go get your shaving gear, while I pick out a couple of shirts.”

I made a quick call to Lamar, and told him that we were leaving.

“Okay, Carl. I already called the office. Nobody will call you, on the phone or the radio. You're officially on a stakeout in a confidential location.”

“Thanks.”

“Don't even check out with Dispatch on the radio, and just keep track of your mileage and meals.”

“Okay, Pop. I'll call you when I get back, if not before, if we find out anything. Sue's got the phone number of my motel, and the Walworth County Sheriff's Department in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, will know where we are all the time. Got a pencil handy?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, their ORI is WI0650000, in case you want to teletype them for any reason.” ORI is an abbreviation for Origin, and is the teletype address of any particular law enforcement agency. The numbers are usually carried over into the call sign of the particular department, and in this case, the radio call number of their sheriff would probably be 65-1. All their county cars would begin with sixty-five.

“Okay, they're sixty-five with the zeroes. Okay. Good. Let me know right away… about anything I should know about.”

“Don't worry, Lamar. How's your sister taking things?”

“Just like I thought she would,” he said, disgustedly. “Now she wants to sue the funeral home.”

Fifteen minutes and a flurry of packing later, Hester knocked on the back door.

“Hester, nice to see you,” said Sue. “Come on in.”

“Sorry to have to borrow your husband for a day or two,” said Hester, “but I'm afraid it's necessary.”

“Just watch what he eats,” said Sue. “Or, as long as you can stand it, anyway. I don't envy you going with both Carl and Harry together.”

“It's scary, isn't it?” said Hester. “I'll submit a written report on Carl's diet.”

“You be careful, too,” said Sue. “All of you, be careful.”

I hugged her. “Be back before you know it,” I said.

Hester's car was running in the driveway. As she got in, she said, “Harry's waiting for us just across the river.”

“Okay,” I answered. “When we get where we're headed, I have reservations for me and Harry at a motel in Fontana.”

“Fine. I'm in a place called the Geneva Inn. In Lake Geneva, on the other side of the lake.”

“Okay!” I hoped she had a nice place.

I got in, buckled up, checked everything to make sure it was either working or turned off, and backed out of the garage. I could see Sue, waving, from the back door. I honked my horn, and waved back.

We three took our separate cars on Highway 18 to Madison, then I 90 SE to Janesville, where we stopped for a bite to eat. It was 23:40. We only had about another hour to go.

We pulled in to a McDonald's, which seemed to be the only place open, although they were mopping the floors as we entered. We got the stuff to go, and ate in my car, Harry in front with me, and Hester in back. As Hester said, “It's not so noticeable if we spill in yours.”

We'd all been thinking as we drove, and we used this chance to plan a bit.

“What do you hear about your missing girl, Harry?” asked Hester.

“Haven't really heard shit,” he replied, munching a Big Mac. He swallowed. “It's strange. She just went into the ladies john, and disappeared. Took her car, as far as we can tell, and just left.”

“Foul play?” I asked. That was a formal designation in “Attempt To Locate” bulletins for missing persons. “Foul Play Feared.”

“Beats the crap out of me,” said Harry. “But we put in, just in case.”

By categorizing the case as a “Foul Play Feared,” it opened up the nationwide system about twelve hours earlier than a normal missing persons report, and was flagged for immediate attention.

“Not one fuckin' sign of a struggle,” said Harry. “ 'Scuse me, Hester. Just a bunch of worried friends.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “At least I ain't had nobody drive a stake in any corpses this week.”

“That,” I said, searching for my fries in the bag, “was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.”

“Me, too,” said Hester. “It was just plain spooky.”

“Mmmph,” said Harry.

“I've been thinking about our little group at the Mansion,” said Hester, holding open the other sack for me to get my two Big Macs.

“Yeah?” I lifted both burgers out in their cardboard containers, and placed them carefully on the dash. “Nonconformists, aren't they?”

“Dedicated,” said Hester, handing me my napkin.

“I kinda like most of 'em,” I said, opening the first burger box. “Boy, I'm hungry.”

“I do, too,” she said. She started rustling around in the sack, looking for the fries she'd ordered. “I'm going to tell you guys something, and you keep it to yourselves, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” I took a bite of my burger.

“You betcha, Hester,” said Harry, earnestly.

“Okay, I think this might help us figure them out. That's the only reason I'm telling you this.”

She paused so long, I'd swallowed and taken a second bite before she began again.

“When I graduated from Iowa State,” she said, “I thought I had it all. Or thought I was going to get it, anyway. I don't want to be immodest, or anything, but everybody I knew sort of assumed I was on my way to the top. My parents. My professors. My roommates. Even me. You know?” She paused again.

“Sure. I know,” I prompted. To give some idea of how little of our background information we'd ever exchanged, I hadn't known until now that Hester had gone to Iowa State.

“My plan was, I was going to be a famous chemist, was going to marry some guy who was, oh, maybe an equally famous architect or something. Live in New York. Paint landscapes in my spare time.” She took a sip of her Diet Coke. “You know the sort of thing?”

“Yep,” said Harry.

“Well,” she went on, “just two days after graduation, Dad had a stroke. I missed about a year and a half in the job market, because I stayed home with Mom, and helped take care of him. No problem. Hell, for what they'd done for me, it was hardly a drop in the bucket.”

“Sure.” I took another bite of burger.

“My sister graduated a year behind me. She didn't stay home. Hey, I told her not to. No point in both of us being there.” She took another sip. “Okay, and then, when Dad died, then, there wasn't quite enough life insurance to even pay off the house mortgage. All borrowed against to help us in school, and to take one family trip. What was left was eaten up by the noncovered medical expenses. So much for teaching.” She produced a sad excuse for a smile. “He was a teacher. Math. I didn't tell you that.”

I took a drink from my Coke cup. “Doesn't pay too much,” I said. “Sue's been a teacher for almost twenty years now, and makes about what I do.”

“I dated a teacher once,” said Harry.

“My Mom taught chemistry. Same deal.” She shrugged. “More to life than money. Except, all of a sudden, my installments on my college loan came due. I got my first job with an ag chemical company. Not doing chemistry, you understand. No, I was part of a team that went all over Iowa and Nebraska, trying to tell farmers not to put too much of our products on the soil.” She took a long swig from her Diet Coke, and started rummaging around in the sack. “Had to tell 'em that, in small doses, what we sold was just fine. In larger doses, it was poison.”

“Must have been really fun.” Harry took a rattling pull on his milkshake.

“Oh, yeah. And, it paid less than teaching, let me tell you. And I finally figured out that since I was a young woman, they wanted me on the 'Responsible Usage Team' so the farmers could look at my legs while I talked.” She half giggled. “Really. I was sort of an agricheesecake girl.”

I couldn't help grinning at the image. “With your attitude?” “I couldn't bite people, we had a script,” she said.

“Anyway, I could see I wasn't going to get out of that job until my legs went. And I liked chemistry. And the real chemists made pretty good money. Well, better, anyway. I had to keep living with Mom, because I couldn't pay off the loans, and help her with the bills, and pay rent at the same time. Mom knew I hated that job, but she kept telling me that it was the responsible thing to do, so I did it. I hated myself for it, though.”

She turned on the overhead light. “I can't find all my fries… ”

“How long did you stay?”

“Three years, Carl. I'd send resumes out all the time, but the longer you've been out of school… Anyway, the only decent offer I got was from this place in California, and the money just didn't work out. It did after the first couple of years, or it would have. But I just couldn't get away. And all that time, Mom was entertaining suspicions that I was failing. That I wasn't really trying, you know?”

“Yeah,” said Harry. “I had a wife used to feel that way about me.”

“She wondered why I didn't get married. She asked me once. I said I didn't want to. It really surprised me, that she'd ask. Like she didn't know that if I got married, I'd leave and she wouldn't be able to make ends meet. A job close to home, that paid okay, was going to be the only way out, for me, anyway. So I heard about the criminalistics lab in Des Moines. I applied, and got an interview, and it wasn't too far from our house. I got the job. Better pay, and I started to make headway on my student loans.” She pulled three or four fries from the bag. “Found some,” she said brightly.

I watched her bite the ends off the little bundle of fries. “And then?”

“What bothered me was that my sister, she'd gone ahead. Like I told her to, I admit it. She got hired as a geologist with a big oil company, met an engineer, married him, they moved to Scotland to work the North Sea Oil, she even sent me and Mom tickets so we could visit.” She shook her head slowly. “We went, all right. Mom just went ape over their house, the fact that it was in Scotland, that they were friends with important people. Hell, there was even an honest-to-God still-life painter living next door.” She'd turned toward me, and now leaned back against her door. “My sister was living my ideal damned existence. My little sister had achieved my ideal life, while I stayed home and all I had accomplished was, I had disappointed Mom.”

Ouch.

“That'd be tough,” said Harry. “Really tough.”

Hester took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I mean, you know, good for her, and all that. But, anyway, I was really depressed. I honest to God hoped for a plane crash on the way back from Scotland. I really did. I'll tell ya, guys, I would have run to just about anywhere, just to get out of that. But, there just wasn't any place to go. No Mansion, with free rent and people like me.”

It was silent for a few seconds. I took another bite of my first burger. It was starting to cool.

“So, the reason for sharing all that garbage with you,” said Hester, straightening up, “is that those girls up there, especially Huck and Melissa and poor dead Edie… life was just not cooperating with them. And they were just looking for a place to run. Hell, probably even Toby and Kevin, for that matter.”

“Yeah.” Harry had fished out an apple turnover, and was unwrapping it.

“They're really all victims. Victims of some rich woman who can afford to provide a phony hiding place for them. And this Peale bastard. Oh, yeah, Mr. Peale. Her pet vampire. But Jessica, she's acquiring them, they're just being kept like a bunch of livestock. Peale killed Edie, and with Toby's help. That's a given. But Jessica Hunley's the one who made the whole thing possible. And that really pisses me off.”

I simply said, “Okay.” It got sort of quiet again.

“Look,” she said suddenly, “I'm saying that, if they'd had some more time for things to sort themselves out, none of 'em would be in this mess in the first place. Jessica just recruited at the right time.”

“Okay.”

“Don't humor me, Houseman.” She rummaged some more. “Did you take the salt?”

“Nope. I found some pepper, though.” I held up the little packet. “See?” I remember thinking that her fries had to be cold by now.

“Well there's a bunch of ketchup packs, but unless I squeeze 'em into my hand… ” She looked up from her search. “Do you see what I mean, though?”

“I think so. She found some people at an unstable time in their lives?”

“Part of it. It's not just that when all the expectations you've had for yourself don't come true, it's when everybody who is important to you had them for you… ” She stopped abruptly. “Shit happens, Houseman. But not at the same time or the same way for everybody. So, when it happens to you early on, you just watch others pass by, with no shit sticking to them at all. And you feel betrayed.”

“I can see that,” said Harry. “Shit really does happen. Boy, I know that.”

“And you sometimes do things to cover up the disappointment.” Hester sounded tired. “Things you normally wouldn't do, even a while later, but once you start it's almost impossible to stop, because you think you've found your… ”

“Place?” I tried to help.

She sighed. “No, no. Guys are so dense. No, it's much more than that. It's like, you've found your accomplishment. You have to settle for a little less, but you've found it.”

“Oh. I see.”

Hester shook her head. “Oh, Houseman, eat your hamburger.”

“I do get it, though,” I said, leaning forward so the special sauce wouldn't drip on my shirt.

She sighed. “Okay. So, anyway. We agreed that we go right to our motels, and start fresh in the morning?” She was still burrowing through the sack, looking for the rest of her cold fries.

“Mmmph.” I love Big Macs, but they're kind of hard to talk through.

“Here they are!” She fished a bunch of them out, along with a wad of napkins. They'd apparently spilled from the cardboard container, and gotten in with the pile of condiments, napkins, and salt that the employee had swept into the bag. “Okay, then, you want to start with

…?”

I swallowed, and used one of the napkins to wipe some sauce off my chin. “I think with the Walworth County Sheriff's Department would be good, don't you?”

“Mmmm.” This time she was the one with the mouthful of fries.

“Got it covered,” said Harry. “Already talked to them. We got the run of the county as long as nobody fucks… oops… screws up.”

“Okay, then,” I said, “wherever we can find Jessica. We drop in, agreed?”

“Sure.” Hester took a long pull on her Diet Coke straw. “What time?”

I thought about it. “Nine-thirty? Ten?”

She looked at her watch. “Let's go for nine-thirty. We aren't going to get squared away tonight until one or so.” She was already tidying up, folding her paper napkin, and getting ready to go. I quickly took a large bite of my second Big Mac. It was cold by now, too.

“You know how to get to Fontana?” asked Harry. “Hester should be taking fifty to Lake Geneva, but we should take sixty-seven south to Williams Bay, and then back westerly to Fontana.”

I swallowed again. “Oh, sure. No problem.”

“What I was trying to say, you two,” said Hester, suddenly, “is that gathering victims at such a hard time in their lives is more despicable than recruiting people who want to get into this vampire stuff.”

“Sure.” Harry agreed. I guessed I did, too.

About thirty minutes later, Harry and I correctly turned south on sixty-seven, and watched Hester disappear down highway fifty. I wondered if her mother knew Hester had worked dope cases.

Six minutes later we were in Fontana.

The room wasn't too bad. Two queen-size beds. Shower. Sink. Toilet. Chair. TV. Even a place to hang hangers. It was cold, and the heating mechanism was integral with the air-conditioning. I turned it on, and had instant tobacco smell. Turned it off, opened a window, and tried to set the little digital alarm clock that came with the room.

Finally, Harry said, “If you'd put your fuckin' glasses on, Houseman, so you could read the dials, we could get another half hour of sleep.”

I got it set, but then picked up the phone and left a wake-up call for 08:30.

“What you do,” said Harry, “is why I divorced my ex-wife.”

I blew him a kiss. “Good night, Harry.”