Known Dead

Eleven

Let me tell you, you get a case like this one, where it’s going nowhere, for no good reason, and you get a little paranoid. Hester and I spent hours on the telephone, or at our office, going over everything. Every last detail. Many, many times. Then we got a little further afield. Like they say, eliminate everything you can, and what you have left is likely to be what happened. Right.

The rumors, both within the law enforcement community and in the community in general, began to fly. One of the best was that Howie, a.k.a. Turd, had been hunting for mushrooms, and accidentally got shot by an officer. Howie’s estranged mother heard that one, and promptly took it to an attorney. He, just as promptly, began a wrongful-death suit against the county. Normally, since he wouldn’t have access to any investigatory information at that stage, we would have simply picked up the phone and, as a courtesy, let him know what had happened. At which point, he would probably not have filed the suit. Unfortunately for him, he went public instantly, called a press conference, and generally became a pain in the ass. We didn’t call. We felt it would be better if he found out later that he didn’t have a case. Especially since Howie’s estranged mother didn’t have a dime, and he had to be doing the work on speculation, as it were. Also called a contingency fee. It did tell me a bit about Howie, though. How many people have ‘‘estranged’’ mothers?

With rumor and speculation floating about all over the place, nobody was immune.

Hester and I even began to wonder whether or not there had been a DEA surveillance going, and there had been a horrible mistake and people got shot and they were covering it up. That sort of thing happened years ago, and there was no reason to think it couldn’t happen again. Then again, there was no evidence to indicate they’d ever try to cover something like that up. We checked everything, and talked to everybody who might have known. No evidence to support it. No evidence to deny it either. That’s the problem with conspiracy theories. Can’t prove, can’t disprove. But it shows you how far we were reaching.

Theories were great. What we needed were facts, and we didn’t have any. In a case like this one, when you run up against a wall, you drop back and start all over from the beginning. If you’ve done it correctly in the first place, you should be able to retrace your steps, see where you went wrong, and move on in the right direction. Sure. Both Hester and I spent long hours going over the physical evidence, the scene diagrams, the interviews. There were a lot of people I wish we’d been able to pin it on, but none of the evidence put them in the right place at the right time. Actually, it never put them anywhere near the right place at even close to the right time.

I hate excuses as much as the next cop, but we did have a problem we weren’t able to do anything about, and it didn’t originate with us.

Ever since the narcotics people had started in on the case big time, we hadn’t known exactly what to do, or where to do it. Let me explain. Hester and I and the General Criminal investigation didn’t know who the undercover cops were who were working the case for DEA and DNE. Johnny Marks, for all we knew, could be an undercover Fed. That was the first narcotics-related problem.

The second was who they were looking at. We didn’t know that either. The ‘‘connections’’ they were saying existed in Nation County were, in my opinion, tenuous at best. But the last thing Hester and I wanted was to stick our noses in and maybe screw up the DEA’s case.

George of the Bureau wasn’t any help either. There was a lot he hadn’t been told. Well, at least he assumed there was a lot. As he told me during a telephone conversation: ‘‘There’d better be a lot they’re not telling me. If there isn’t, they don’t have shit.’’

So who was to know?

We talked with both Lamar and Al about it. Both said to do what the federal narcs had requested. That wasn’t much of a help, as they had pretty much said to go on about our business. We’d tried that, but were getting spooked by lack of information. They knew full well they were hindering us, of course. But telling us to go ahead and do our thing was just the conventional thing to do.

Anyway, what it did was pretty well shut Hester and me down for a good week. We had to restrict ourselves to reexamination of the physical evidence and rereading initial interviews. I don’t know if it cost us much or not. But it sure as hell frustrated both of us.

Then, on Thursday, I got assigned a child-neglect case from one of the smaller towns in our county. Fewer than a hundred people, in fact. With three of them involved; one a victim, one sort of a victim, and one a perpetrator, I was dealing with a crime that involved a little over 3 percent of the population. It gives you an interesting perspective when you look at it that way. It helps rationalize the prying attitude of the rest of the community as well. I mean, in Los Angeles, if you had a crime that involved 3 percent of the population at the same time, the uproar would be incredible. Just a matter of scale.

In this case, a man who earned minimum wage, Hank Boedeker, insisted that his wife, Kerri, work as well. She’d hired out to clean chickens for a farm woman who sold them two days a week in Maitland. She worked four to five hours a day. Her husband, with considerable mathematical precision, told her that because of the payments on their satellite receiver they couldn’t afford a babysitter for their eight-month-old daughter. Consequently, she would leave the kid in the trailer when she and her husband were both gone. After about two weeks of that, we got a call.

When I got there, Kerri was just home. She looked to be about twenty or so, very thin, with long, straggly brown hair. It was about a hundred degrees in the trailer, but it would have been whether or not she was there. No air conditioning. The kid had a hell of a heat rash, the place smelled like a combination gym/nursery, and the kid was totally quiet. That bothered me. I called for Human Services, opened what windows I could, rearranged the two fans to get real ventilation, and waited with the mom. She was terrified, afraid for her daughter and afraid her husband would beat her when he came home and found that the cops had been there. It seemed he’d been in an especially bad mood lately, since his friend had been killed, and his dope source had dried up. No shit?

Was Turd his friend? Sure was. Who was his local dealer? She didn’t want to say. Wasn’t sure. Didn’t really remember. Between the heat, the guilt, and me, she was just about a goner. I didn’t press too hard. The kid came first.

I found out where Hank worked: Russell amp; Company, a small-time pork processor, family-owned. His job was cleaning up the floors after they were done eviscerating the pigs. After Human Services arrived at the mobile home, I went to Russell amp; Co. to talk with Dad.

If the trailer had smelled bad, this place was olfactory hell. Just as hot, much more humid, as he cleaned the floors with high-pressure water, and the smell of guts was so thick you almost had to use a swimming motion to breathe. I asked him to come outside. I explained to him that the money he spent on the satellite dish would likely have been better put toward a window air conditioner; that he could not have his child unattended; and that if I heard he’d ever struck his wife, I’d be on him like stink on his job. His only real question was regarding who had ratted him off. I left him with the thought that whoever it was would probably be able to tell me if he ever hit his wife.

I got back to the office, and before I could call Hester and discuss an approach, I had a request from Human Services for a complete report on the incident. Great. It would take them three weeks to do theirs, and it likely wouldn’t be any more thorough than mine. But they wanted mine now. Probably to copy.

I went up to Maitland General Hospital, where the baby was being examined by my good friend Dr. Henry Zimmer.

Doc Z was his usual self, hearty and cheerful. The kid turned out to be in fairly good shape, a little dehydrated, hell of a diaper rash, but nothing that was life-threatening.

‘‘We’ll keep her for observation for a day or two,’’ said Henry. ‘‘I’d like to keep her longer, but the insurance people won’t let us.’’

‘‘Yep.’’

‘‘You want my report to copy, don’t you?’’

I grinned. ‘‘Well, to include, more like.’’

‘‘Anybody getting charged with this?’’

‘‘Have to be both Mom and Dad, but, yeah, they are.’’

‘‘Can I look forward to court again?’’ he asked.

‘‘No. They’ll plead to a serious misdemeanor. No problem.’’

‘‘Good,’’ said Henry. ‘‘I hate court.’’ He paused. ‘‘You might want the baby’s hair tested for marijuana residue.’’

Grounds for child abuse, if they found it. Smoking dope in the kid’s presence was a hazard. The problem was, it had been declared obligatory to remove the child. No room to negotiate. I hated that. Plus, Human Services would now know that the couple used dope, and the couple’s usefulness as informants or as buyers would be compromised.

What the hell. Maybe Human Services would listen to reason.

‘‘Sure, Henry. Might as well send in a sample.’’

Kerri was at the hospital, but Human Services was all over her. I decided to talk to her again, later.

By the time I got back to the office, Thursday was about shot. I put off the report until Saturday, and thought about our murders. I mean, here I was getting just a little bit excited over the fact that a child neglecter had been a buddy of Turd’s and his dope dealer had gotten really scarce. A lead? Maybe, but probably not. If it was, we’d have to be careful. If it was, we might have independent information in our pocket. I called Hester, but she was out. I thought about the ‘‘lead,’’ and drank coffee. I should have written the report.

Saturday, I started off with my report for Human Services. Took less than an hour to type it up, even including Henry’s summary. While I was doing it, I figured that I could take a cheap shot at Hank and Kerri with the test on the baby’s hair. The county attorney would, if it was positive, have two abuse charges, and surely would sort of lump them together. The neglect charge was the one with the clout. I felt I could use the hair clippings test for THC to push old Hank into telling me who his dealer was.

It was Saturday, so Hester was off. Unwritten rule; don’t contact on a day off unless you really need help.

I got in the car and told dispatch I was doing a follow-up on the neglect case. I was at the little trailer in about twenty minutes.

I explained to them about the hair test. Turned out that Human Services had told Kerri about it yesterday but she’d been afraid to tell Hank. Hmm. Since she’d been told that marijuana smoking in the presence of the kid was what would show up, and was now afraid to tell her husband…

After Hank whined, ‘‘Jeez, man, this scares the shit out of me to do this,’’ about five times, he told me his dealer was one Howler. Well. Imagine that. He also told me something else.

‘‘You know who killed Turd and the cop, don’t you?’’

‘‘Not yet, but we will.’’

‘‘Hey, I know. I really do, man.’’ He actually looked around, inside the damn trailer, before he hoarsely whispered, ‘‘It was Navy SEALS, man. They got him.’’

There are leads, and then there are leads. We needed to talk in private, so we left the trailer and stood outside in the long grass by a small metal garden shed. I was half afraid he’d ask me to step inside it.

‘‘They been working that area for a while, man.’’ He was very quiet, and hard to understand. ‘‘Howler told me. He said it was Army-Navy SEALS. You know, the ones in the cammo stuff, with their faces painted, they can kill anybody before they know they’re dead?’’

‘‘Howler told you that?’’ I asked.

‘‘Yeah, man, he seen ’em. Twice.’’

‘‘If Howler saw ’em, how could they be so sneaky?’’

‘‘He did, man, he really did. He seen ’em in the woods.’’ He looked around again. He was really nervous. Outrageous as it was, he believed it. ‘‘He knows all about that shit.’’

‘‘Where is Howler these days?’’

‘‘I don’t know, man, but if he’s hidin’, you’ll never find him. They got him scared, man, they really do.’’

Hey. An Army-Navy SEAL would scare just about anybody.

I started looking for Howler. First person I contacted was Beth Harper, Turd’s surviving girlfriend. She told me that Howler had moved in with Nan, the girl Hester and I had seen at Beth’s place. I next called the Freiberg police, and they told me the same thing. Hardly seemed to be hiding. I got to Nan’s place about half an hour later. Howler answered the door. Artfully concealed.

His first question was ‘‘How’d you find me?’’

We talked for almost an hour. It turned out that he actually had seen three men, in cammo clothing, on the road near the area where the marijuana patch had been. Armed with rifles, he said, that appeared to be M-16s. M-16s used 5.56 mm ammo, one of the types found at the scene. Hats, boots, and web gear. That’s what he said.

‘‘Any idea who they might have been?’’ I didn’t want to hit him with the SEAL stuff, as it might give up my source.

‘‘Navy SEALS. Had to be.’’

‘‘Why’s that?’’

‘‘They were in a blue jeep, man. You know. Blue. Navy.’’

‘‘Navy jeeps,’’ I said, ‘‘are gray.’’

He paused a few seconds. ‘‘You sure about that?’’

‘‘Yep.’’

‘‘You think they were Air Force, then?’’

We concentrated on the date. He wasn’t certain, but he thought it was on the 17th of June. Two days prior to the shootings.

‘‘What were you doing up there anyway?’’ My reserve question.

After a couple of minutes hemming and hawing, it developed that he’d dropped Turd off to tend the patch. Of such stuff are co-conspirators made.

‘‘For Johnny Marks?’’

Well, yes, as a matter of fact, but don’t tell Johnny. And, anyway, he wasn’t sure I’d be able to find Marks as quickly as I’d been able to ‘‘find’’ him.

I asked if he’d told Johnny about the cammo troops. Yes. And Turd? Yes.

‘‘That’s why he had the shotgun,’’ he said. ‘‘But I don’t think he really believed me. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone up there.’’

Aha.

‘‘Did you ever think they were cops? When you saw them.’’

Actually, no, he hadn’t. Howler apparently was one to go with his first impressions.

‘‘What,’’ I asked, ‘‘did you think a SEAL team was doing in a state park in Iowa?’’

Training. That’s what he said. Along with ‘‘Hey, who knows what the Feds are doin’.’’

We had that in common anyway.

On Sunday, the 7th, with all the state and federal cops off, I had nobody to talk with about the investigation. I wanted to talk to Johnny Marks again, but I wanted to have his probation officer with me when I did. He was off, of course, and wasn’t answering his home phone. I really had nothing else to do, so I went back to the scene of the crime. I told Lamar where I was going to be.

There was a light rain, and everything in the woods was shiny in a gray sort of way. It was very hot, very humid, of course, and I had to wear my infamous rubberized raincoat just to protect my recorder, walkie-talkie, gun, notepad, and to keep my reading glasses dry. Trouble was, I was so hot under that damned thing, it was probably as wet inside as outside the rain gear. I had two cans of bug spray with me and sprayed under the coat frequently. Didn’t help the moisture, but I didn’t get eaten by mosquitoes.

I got to the area where the killings had taken place and hunkered down under a big tree, where I could see most of the area. I just looked around, trying to place myself in the position of both officers, just before they saw Turd. The vegetation was a little different, having grown a bit, and the grass was no longer matted down in places. I could see the problem they would have had in acquiring the little doper in the first place. I looked toward where the shooters had been. They could have come to their positions at any time, and if they had been quiet, they would have remained undetected until they stood up. That made me wonder. I got up, and took a long walk over to where they had been lying in wait. Sure enough. They couldn’t have seen the cops get in position either. The more I looked, the more it struck me that neither group would have been able to see Turd very long before he was nearly on them. That meant either that the shooters were lying in wait for a very long time or that they had been creeping through the woods and gone to ground as soon as they saw Turd coming up the path. I went to where I was pretty sure the first shooter had been, near the path, and squatted down. From that position, he wouldn’t have seen Turd until he was nearly stepped on by him. I stood up. Yep. If I had been the shooter, and I was going to wait for Turd, I would have gone to the point the cops had picked out. Best place there was. The more I thought about it, the more it became apparent to me that the shooters were probably in transit toward where our people were, when they saw Turd. That they probably never knew our two officers were even there. Or-and the thought made my blood run cold-they’d been sneaking up on our men and Turd had blown their trap. Jesus. That was it! By God, I was sure of it.

I went back to where our guys had set their surveillance point. I looked around, to see where the best view of them could have been had. If they’d been careful, nowhere I could see from. And they would have been careful, knowing they’d been seen the previous day. So…

Well, if you couldn’t see ’em where they’d been set up, you’d have to pick them up somewhere on their ingress route. Follow the logical track. Intercept them where you thought they’d be. Sounded good, but if I was stalking our guys, that would be a little chancy. If you lose sight for a time…

There’s a thing they use in antisubmarine warfare called a datum. If a ship is torpedoed, and can report that fact, that’s what they call a ‘‘flaming datum.’’ The most recent possible information. Whatever you’re going to use to attack the sub heads toward that ‘‘flaming datum,’’ and the longer it takes for it to get there, the wider the possible area where the sub can be. They figure the maximum speed of the sub, assume it has fled, and draw a circle with that radius around the datum point. Now, the same sort of thing would be at work here, I thought, except there would be a direction of travel to go with the datum. If the shooters had acquired our guys at a particular point, seen what direction they were heading, estimated their progress…

Then they would have gone to that point, and that was where they had been seen by Turd. Or very close to it. They were in transit when they were discovered. Going toward where they thought our guys would be… and they would have probably assumed they were going to the patch…

I went over to where the shooter had been, and looked back, figuring that the second shooter, being on my left, would have come from the same place. Between my left, or 270 degrees, and my rear, or 180 degrees, was where I’d come from, because I was ahead of the man at 270. Given that, I turned around, reestimated the degrees, cut it in half, and looked up.

I was just about looking straight at the point where we’d found the MREs.

I really wanted to call Hester. But she was on days off, and she needed a break as much as I did. Aside from my excitement, there was no real reason to bother her until the next day. But until I saw her again, I thought I was going to explode. I didn’t want to tell Lamar right away, because I wanted to be absolutely sure.

Hester was back up at 0930 on Monday, the 8th. I really wanted to run out into the parking lot to meet her. Instead, I walked. She was lugging about fifty pounds of paper, the summaries of all the interviews all the state agents had conducted since the shooting. We were going to go over them together.

‘‘Give you a hand?’’

She looked at me sort of suspiciously. ‘‘Sure.’’

I took one of the two shopping bags she’d stuffed the reports in. ‘‘Hey, these really are heavy!’’

‘‘Isn’t that why you offered…?’’

‘‘Yeah, but, listen to this. I’ve got some news. I went back to the scene and when I was there…’’

‘‘Hey!’’ she said. ‘‘Slow down. You sound like a ten-year-old.’’

I absently held the door for her, and she just as absently walked through it.

‘‘Yeah, but this is so cool.’’

We lugged the paper through the reception area and sat down in the investigator’s office.

‘‘Now,’’ she said, dusting off her hands, ‘‘tell me.’’

She got it right away. The datum bit, the whole thing.

‘‘You mean, they were trying to get to our guys before our guys got to the patch?’’

‘‘Right!’’

‘‘So what about Turd?’’

‘‘What about him?’’

‘‘Well, where does he fit in?’’

‘‘He doesn’t! That’s just it. They didn’t have any idea Turd was anywhere around. They couldn’t have, because they’d left the perch and come down to go after our people before Turd even got there.’’

‘‘You mean, to protect the patch?’’

‘‘Right.’’

‘‘From our guys?’’

‘‘Right!’’

She thought for a second. ‘‘Well, I think you’ve got the movements right. But we’ve got a little problem with the motives.’’

‘‘How so?’’

‘‘Well,’’ she said, her brow furrowed, ‘‘if they’re protecting the patch, they’d have to have ownership, right?’’

‘‘Probably.’’ I was hesitating, because I was afraid I knew where she was going.

‘‘So, if they own the patch, or at least guard it, they’ve gotta know about Turd, because he’s the gardener.’’ She looked up. ‘‘Right?’’

Uh-oh. ‘‘Right,’’ I said.

‘‘So why did they kill Turd? Why not just grab him or something, to keep him quiet? Hell, why not just tell him to stay home?’’

Well, I sure as hell didn’t have an answer. ‘‘But you agree with the movements?’’

‘‘Oh, yeah. No doubt you’re right about that.’’

‘‘Well, then,’’ I said, ‘‘maybe they just…’’ I hung on that one.

‘‘Just what?’’

‘‘Oh, hell, Hester, I don’t know… maybe they just fucked up?’’

She grinned, and so did I.

‘‘I don’t think so,’’ she said. ‘‘But we’re on the track now. We are. I can feel it.’’

I leaned back in my chair, clasping my hands behind my head. ‘‘Know what I’m afraid of?’’

‘‘Probably, but tell me…’’

‘‘The narc folks have our answer.’’

‘‘Yeah.’’ She took off her sports jacket, revealing a white sleeveless blouse and a reddish-brown holster for her 9 mm.

‘‘New holster?’’

‘‘Yeah,’’ she said, turning to the side to give a better view. ‘‘Not every man would have noticed…’’ She gave me a stern look. ‘‘Would you have noticed on a guy?’’

‘‘Sure would,’’ I said, honestly.

She grinned as she sat back down. ‘‘You’re right, you would.’’

‘‘Hand-tooled?’’ I asked.

Her eyebrows flickered up, then down. ‘‘You’ll never know, Houseman. You’ll just never know.’’

We called Johnny Marks’s probation officer. He said he’d get back to us as soon as he talked with him.

Before we got into the reports, we tried DEA and DNE, to let them know what we’d deduced, and see if they could unravel the snarl for us. Nobody with any information on the case was ‘‘available.’’ Probably wouldn’t be for three or four days. Might be able to give us a call later, but not to meet.

Hester, who was speaking to the agent on the phone, said something about vacations, and shook her head.

‘‘No luck?’’

‘‘No, and now I’m wondering what the hell’s up with them.’’

‘‘Hey,’’ I said, ‘‘when you were undercover for the narcs, did you fuck with the locals like this?’’

‘‘Oh, sure,’’ she said, almost absently. ‘‘All the time.’’ She looked up. ‘‘It’s an arrogance thing, I guess. But it’s catching. Sometimes you didn’t return a call for a couple of days, just to let them know how little they counted.’’

‘‘Oh.’’

‘‘It’s just a thing.’’

‘‘Maybe,’’ I said, ‘‘they should recruit from the ranks of the experienced investigators instead of the new folks. Maybe then they wouldn’t tend to do that.’’

‘‘You’re probably right,’’ she said.

We went back to reading interviews.

Two hours later, Marks’s PO called back. He wasn’t able to locate Marks anywhere. Did we have any ideas where he was? Well, I mean, he was obviously ducking everybody because he was scared. I told him that. Exactly who it was that was scaring him was sort of up for grabs.

‘‘It ain’t us,’’ I said. ‘‘It’s somebody he thinks is gonna do him harm.’’

He wanted to know if we had any suggestions. I told him where to find Howler.

I hung up and looked at Hester. ‘‘Well, Marks is among the ‘disappeared.’ ’’

‘‘Yeah, I got that.’’

‘‘How bad we have to talk to him, you think?’’

Not bad enough, it turned out. We had to get through the typed interviews. Not counting lunch and supper, it took us five more hours to get done with those, and we didn’t know a single useful thing more than we had when we started.

We should have looked for Johnny Marks.

On the 9th, Hester had to be in court in Louisa County. Turd’s girlfriend Beth called me about noon, and said that she wanted to meet, urgently, and in secret. We settled on a church that was about three miles from any town, on a gravel road, at 1400 P.M. Since it wasn’t Sunday, it wasn’t likely that anyone would be there.

I got there at about 1345. Nothing. Beth arrived about ten minutes later, in a dilapidated old Chevy four-door driven by a male I didn’t recognize. He dropped her off, and pulled into a field entrance about a quarter mile down the road. She and I sat on the hood of my car, and talked.

‘‘Hi, Beth.’’

‘‘Hi, Mr. Houseman.’’

‘‘Who’s your friend?’’

‘‘Oh, that’s Jake Oberland. You know him.’’

‘‘Yeah.’’ I sure did. A worthless scumbag of a weasel. Turd’s best friend, if I remembered correctly. ‘‘What’re you doin’ with him?’’

‘‘Well, he’s sort of moved in. You know.’’ She couldn’t quite meet my gaze. ‘‘Makes me feel safer.’’

‘‘Safer?’’ I asked. ‘‘You been threatened?’’

‘‘Well, that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about.’’

I didn’t say anything.

‘‘I mean,’’ she said, ‘‘I haven’t been threatened. No. But it’s getting, you know, kind of nervous up there.’’ She looked at me now. ‘‘People talk. You know.’’

‘‘What’re they talking about, Beth?’’

We were both facing forward, with our feet on the bumper. She put her head in her hands for a few seconds. When she looked back at me, she was noticeably paler.

‘‘They say that it was the CIA.’’

I looked at her for a second, speechless. ‘‘You’ve gotta be kidding, Beth.’’

‘‘No, that’s who they say did it. Honest.’’

‘‘That’s bullshit, Beth.’’

She looked at me. ‘‘I don’t know. Do you think they’d tell you?’’

Well, she had me there.

‘‘Probably not. But it was likely somebody a lot closer than them. They’d have no reason to shoot Turd.’’

‘‘But what if,’’ she said, softly, ‘‘it wasn’t him they were after?’’

Ah. Now we were getting to the real point.

‘‘You think it was the officers they were after?’’

‘‘I didn’t say that.’’

‘‘That’s what you meant.’’

Silence.

‘‘Look, Beth,’’ I said. ‘‘I just want you to listen to me. Okay?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘Okay, this is the way it is. If the CIA wanted the cops, why do it in the woods? There’s a million ways to get them, not in the woods. And do you think the CIA would blow it and just get one? And don’t you think they’d use silencers?’’ Points for our side. ‘‘Because the surviving officer was nearly deafened by all the shooting. Really loud.’’

‘‘Well…’’

‘‘So don’t worry about the CIA. Or anybody like that.’’

I was wondering if she’d gotten what she wanted. I doubted it. We could have done this on the telephone.

‘‘Can Jake talk to you a second?’’ she asked.

‘‘Sure.’’

She stood, and walked ahead of my car, motioning to Jake. True to form, she wasn’t able to get his attention. That’s my Jake, I thought. I reached in and beeped the horn. Jake’s head came up, and Beth just about jumped out of her shorts.

‘‘Oh, sorry, Beth.’’ I really meant it, she looked like her heart had just about stopped.

‘‘You scared me,’’ she half giggled. She motioned to Jake. It took him almost a minute. Had trouble getting the car started. I used the time to get my two cents’ worth in.

‘‘You can do better than him, Beth.’’ She could. She was pretty bright and was a hard worker. Two things Jake wasn’t.

‘‘No, I can’t, Mr. Houseman.’’

I started to say something, but she held up her hand.

‘‘Maybe before,’’ she said. ‘‘But now? Two kids. Half the town thinks I’m a dope dealer, and the other half thinks I snitched off Howie. And the word’s out that Johnny Marks is waitin’ to get me after the heat’s off.’’ She looked up at me. ‘‘Who do you know wants to live with that?’’

‘‘I wouldn’t think Jake would.’’

She smiled. ‘‘He’s snitchin’ for Johnny Marks. I know that. Like, duh, you know?’’

‘‘Sure.’’ And maybe he knew where Johnny was.

Jake pulled in. ‘‘But he’s got somethin’ to tell you, Mr. Houseman. I think it’s straight.’’

Jake never got out of the car. He kept the engine running, obviously nervous, and probably not too sure if it would start again. It was difficult to hear him.

‘‘Hi, Mr. Houseman,’’ he said, not quite looking at me, and with a very grim face.

‘‘Jake. How you doin’?’’

‘‘Good, I guess. Mr. Houseman,’’ he rushed. ‘‘Look, there’s one thing you gotta know. It’s all political, Mr. Houseman. All political.’’

Great. ‘‘Just about everything could be said to be political, Jake. But you mean Howie and the officer being killed?’’

‘‘Yeah.’’

‘‘You think it was the CIA too?’’

‘‘I ain’t saying it was. I ain’t saying it wasn’t. I’m just saying that there’s some powerful people, who know all there is.’’ He looked at me. ‘‘You know who they are.’’

‘‘I don’t think I do. Do you?’’ I asked.

‘‘That’s all I gotta say,’’ he said. ‘‘I ain’t takin’ no fuckin’ chances, and you ain’t never heard me say that.’’ With that, he started to roll the car backward, and Beth scrambled around to the other side to get in.

‘‘Jake… get a message to Johnny for me. Tell him to call me.’’

‘‘Goodbye, Mr. Houseman!’’

‘‘Goodbye, Beth.’’

And they were gone, literally in a cloud of dust.

Well, I hadn’t had much to do that afternoon anyway. But I thought that the whole thing was interesting. She was probably as much a victim as the rest of them that day. I sighed, and got back into my car. ‘‘Political.’’ In a way, I supposed he was right. Somehow, somebody had got in somebody’s way. She’d been checking me out the whole time, just so he could deliver his paranoid little message. And, I said to myself, she’d done it for the man who was watching her for Johnny Marks. If Marks was that interested, maybe we really had overlooked something.

When I got back to the office, I entered ‘‘CIA cleared, along with SEALS,’’ in my case notes.

On July 10th, Hester was back, and she and I interviewed a lady from La Crosse who said she had seen somebody in the park that day. She’d called, and driven all the way, very nervous, and flushed. She was about fifty, plump, and exceptionally nice. We were very polite when we learned that she had been in an area of the park almost six miles from the shootings.

On July 11th, we reexamined the crime-scene photos. We’d had some of them blown up. Nothing. We’d had several others transferred to CD, and tried all sorts of things with our computers, like increasing the red intensity, decreasing the blues, eliminating the greens… I even went to black and white. The problem was, unless we had something we were looking for, something definite, there was no point.

On the 12th, DEA finally sent out Nichols, who talked to us and to Dahl, and to Johansen for a bit. He was really helpful. He seemed to agree with my movement theory, and seemed impressed with that. He said they had nothing that would explain the shooting of Turd. That they’d get on it as soon as they could. Nichols was really helpful. Well, as much as he could be without having anything new to tell us. He said he didn’t know where Marks was either.

Dahl was really angry by now, at nobody in particular. Like so many undercover narcs, he was a little high-strung. And he had energy to burn. He wanted to redo all the interviews Hester and I had just redone, for example. He’d already pored over every narcotics file he could get his hands on, trying to establish various connections into our area, and then had followed them all up. He’d also been working in his undercover mode up around Freiberg and the park area, and had made the acquaintance of Beth Harper and her new boyfriend, Jake.

‘‘She’s just another doper cunt,’’ he said. Then: ‘‘Uh, sorry, Hester.’’

‘‘That’s fine,’’ said Hester. ‘‘She’s not my little sister.’’

‘‘Really, though,’’ he said. ‘‘She’s not stupid, but she just doesn’t want to know, so she doesn’t.’’

‘‘I can understand that,’’ I said. ‘‘Especially at this stage.’’

‘‘The scoop on the street is that it was a gang hit,’’ said Dahl. He adjusted his black Harley sweatband, which matched his black Harley tee shirt. ‘‘We’ve checked that one, haven’t we?’’ He directed that question at Nichols.

Nichols just nodded.

‘‘I mean. I don’t think there’s anybody really connected up there …’’

‘‘They’re not,’’ said the DEA rep.

‘‘It does look a lot like a hit,’’ said Hester. ‘‘An organized hit. It really does.’’ She was wearing tan slacks, a white blouse, and looked like she came from a whole different world than Dahl. Yet, five years before, she’d been in blue jeans, a cutoff denim jacket, and could have passed for his old lady. That’s what she’d worn the first time I saw her, and she could have fooled me.

‘‘That’s it,’’ said the senior DEA agent. ‘‘We can’t come up with an outfit with motive… we really can’t come up with any sort of gang that’s into it at all. Not yet. There will be once it’s harvested and bagged, but not yet. Just some high hopes, so to speak.’’

‘‘And it wasn’t that much of a patch and there’s no war on,’’ said Dahl, ‘‘but the bad guys have been wrong before. They’ve knocked off some pretty unimportant people who just happened to have given the impression they were important.’’

I nodded. I was aware of that sort of thing. ‘‘Not this Howie Phelps,’’ I said. ‘‘He couldn’t even convince himself he was important.’’ I shrugged. ‘‘Besides, if the shooters were involved with the ownership of the patch, they would have known who Howie was anyway.’’

‘‘How about this Marks?’’ asked Hester. ‘‘Boy seems to have a certain air about him.’’

‘‘Could be,’’ said Dahl. ‘‘Everybody up there thinks he’s important.’’ He thought a second. ‘‘Naw, that’s just because Marks has told ’em so. Anybody with any savvy could spot him for an idiot in a short second. Besides, he sure as hell knew Turd.’’

‘‘And his old lady,’’ said Hester dryly. ‘‘I just don’t see how anybody without savvy could put together a hit like that.’’

‘‘Yup,’’ said Nichols. ‘‘That’s the problem.’’

‘‘The real problem,’’ said Hester, ‘‘is that, as far as I can tell, there’s absolutely no reason for this to have happened at all.’’

We were quiet for a moment.

‘‘A mistake?’’ asked Dahl with a wide grin. ‘‘You can’t be telling me that it was all a well-organized mistake.’’

‘‘No,’’ said Hester. ‘‘It was no mistake. If it was a mistake, Marks wouldn’t rabbit. We just don’t know the reason, that’s all.’’

‘‘We need a motive that works,’’ I said, almost absently.

‘‘We have the motive,’’ said Nichols. ‘‘Dope is the motive, and it sure works. We just gotta get the details right.’’

I took the 13th and 14th off. It was either that or beat some kid to death with the mailbox he’d just knocked over. Saw a movie. Mowed the lawn. Got to see my wife, Sue. I remembered her from my vacation. Just being with her was a help, even though we couldn’t discuss any of the specifics of the case. She knew it was driving me nuts, because I was driving her nuts. Only I wasn’t driving her nuts directly because I was hardly around. We had a nice little reunion.

On the 15th, Hester and I met with Dr. Peters, the forensic pathologist assigned to the case. We met at his office in Cedar Rapids. He’d offered to come to the Nation County Sheriff’s Department, but I told him we could do it as easily at his place. I really didn’t want to get back into routine crap at the office, and this way I could delay it by a day. Besides, he had a really nice office, especially compared with ours.

Peters was really special. Every autopsy I’d ever been at with him in attendance, he had a story with a good point for every single organ he took out of the corpse. He’d make every effort to point out to me every single detail and explain each point. And I hung on his every word. I found we were in complete agreement about what I thought was the most vital part of the relationship between the pathologist and the cop. He narrowed the parameters for us, with anything involving the body and the cause and mechanism of death. We solved the case. He would assist in every way he could, but we had to put it together. ‘‘Quincy,’’ he’d say, ‘‘doesn’t live in Cedar Rapids.’’

Peters worked out of a single-story office-laboratory that was well furnished and well staffed. He wasn’t the only pathologist who worked out of that office, but he was by far the best. You could tell from the attitude of the nurses and secretaries, and from the occasional confirmatory questions coming from the other docs. It was amazing. He’d just think about something he wanted, and there it would be, in the hands of a staff person. From tools of the trade to coffee and rolls. And the worst part was, he didn’t demand that sort of thing. They just wanted to do it for him.

Hester and I were ushered in with just a little fanfare, which pleased us both. Peters met us at the main entrance, and we followed in his wake back to a large conference room. Coffee, rolls, napkins, sugar, tea, cream… plus two ring binders containing the autopsy records of both Howie Phelps and Bill Kellerman.

‘‘How do you want to start, Carl?’’ Dr. Peters’s way of asking where the problems were.

‘‘Well,’’ I said, fighting off the urge for a second doughnut, ‘‘we have no suspects. Period. So we gotta get to know the people who did this.’’

Peters nodded. ‘‘Let’s do that, then.’’

He opened the autopsy binder for Howie Phelps. Arthur George Phelps, according to the death certificate. ‘‘Turd’’ wasn’t mentioned. The cause of death was listed as ‘‘multiple gunshot wounds, chest, abdomen, and head,’’ with the manner of death simply given as ‘‘homicide.’’ Dr. Peters’s diagrams were there, drawn onto the standard human body outlines-anterior, posterior, left, right, top-with similar views of the skull. The entrance and exit wounds were shown by small round dots in the former, and by larger oblong shaded areas in the case of the latter. Simple, so far.

‘‘Had a little problem with the paths of the bullets,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘I drew lines from the entrance to the exit wounds for each round, and they just didn’t make sense.’’ He grinned. ‘‘Until I discovered that projectile three exited above projectile two. Otherwise, there would have been more than two shooters. But there wasn’t. Three just hit the spinal column more centrally, and was deflected more to the right and up. Almost passed through the channel caused by two, and came out…’’ He looked at his notes. ‘‘… five centimeters above it.’’

‘‘Sure.’’ Hester half squinted. ‘‘Let’s see, then one shooter was above… but according to the diagram was maybe less than a foot higher?’’

‘‘Close enough,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘The ground measurements place the, oh, geographical I suppose, height of the shooter about five to six inches above the target location. If the shooter was taller, a foot could be right. We only have an angle of a few degrees.’’

‘‘How much taller?’’ I asked.

‘‘Well,’’ chuckled Dr. Peters, ‘‘that’s not an easy one. There’s just such a variety of shapes involved in the human body… but unless the shooter was deformed,’’ he continued, ‘‘I’d say he was probably four inches taller than little Mr. Phelps here.’’

‘‘Ballpark taller?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Ballpark taller,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘But fairly reliable. The ground there isn’t quite level. Let’s say about fivenine or five-ten.’’ He looked at me. ‘‘And fairly strong.’’

I looked at Dr. Peters with my eyebrows raised, over the top of my reading glasses. He was waiting for that.

‘‘Not much rise from the recoil. First round hits just below and to the right of the victim’s navel, really, and they travel upward and to the shooter’s left. But not much. Last one entered in the torso just below the victim’s right collarbone. Mean distance of about eleven inches, but a rise of about nine.’’ He paused for a second. ‘‘The principal head wound would, initially, appear to have come from above, but I feel that it, along with at least one of the others, was made while the victim’s body was folding at the waist, as it traveled backward. This would place the head slightly down in relation to the trajectories of the bullets. That explains why the round entered about the middle of the forehead, and exited at just about the external occipital protuberance… the bump near the base of the skull,’’ he added hastily.

‘‘All from the first shooter’s POV,’’ stated Hester.

‘‘Right.’’

‘‘Depending on the range…’’

‘‘Depending on the range, Carl. Twenty-seven and some-odd feet.’’

‘‘So the muzzle rose?’’

‘‘Just a few inches.’’

‘‘Full auto?’’ asked Hester, just before I did.

‘‘Absolutely,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘Then the second shooter, probably from that location just behind the first one, and to the right as you look at it, fired at least twice. Once into the lower chest, and once into the head. Hard one to find,’’ he said, smiling, ‘‘but there was just a little notch on the right side of Mr. Phelps’s head, where the skull had been blown apart by the head shot delivered by the first shooter. The second one came in at an angle, and left just about a perfect semicircular notch in the edge of the first wound.’’ He took a sip of coffee. ‘‘Judging from the size of the semicircle, it was probably a 7.62 mm round. Just too big for a 5.56, as far as I’m concerned. Even assuming an angle of some sort…’’

‘‘And just for the record,’’ asked Hester, ‘‘how do we know this?’’

Dr. Peters leaned back in his chair and reached for a doughnut. ‘‘Let me count the ways.’’ He grinned. This really was one of his favorite things.

‘‘First,’’ he said, talking around his first bite of doughnut, ‘‘we have the fact that Phelps’s shotgun was discharged, and in the general direction of the shooter. From the severed leaves that you, Hester, pointed out to me at the scene, we know it was discharged upward but below a forty-five-degree angle.’’ He reached for his coffee cup. ‘‘That tells me that our Mr. Phelps observed either one shooter or something suspicious just before he fired his shotgun. The officer who saw him, and survived, can’t remember, but thinks Phelps carried the shotgun in his right hand, roughly parallel to the ground, when he saw him. If that’s the case, and the shotgun was discharged a few seconds later, it’s reasonable to believe that Phelps probably brought the gun to his waist level before firing.’’ He sipped his coffee. ‘‘If he’d brought it to his shoulder, he probably would have discharged it at a much shallower angle.’’

Logic. Logic and medical knowledge, and physics, and ballistics, and logic again. Peters was really good at this, and I enjoyed just listening to him.

‘‘Toxicology,’’ said Dr. Peters, changing gears, ‘‘shows that our man Phelps had some THC in his system. Tests on his blood, brain tissue, urine, liver tissue, spinal fluid, and vitreous fluid indicate THC levels of about…’’ He looked at his file. ‘‘Umm, four hundred ten nanograms per milliliter of 11-nor-9-carboxy-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol.’’ He took another sip. ‘‘A buzz, more or less, from smoking a joint, but not incapacitated by any means. Perhaps slightly slower reactions and perceptions.’’ He grinned. ‘‘Slower, but happier.’’

‘‘Okay,’’ I said.

‘‘So,’’ he continued, ‘‘Phelps sees the shooter. In time to start bringing his gun up. The shooter and Phelps fire, at nearly the same time. By Johansen’s account the shotgun probably fired first. Phelps was likely startled. He certainly wasn’t sufficiently intoxicated to have it affect his aim to that degree.’’

Another bite of doughnut found its way into my mouth. Chalk it up to enthralled.

‘‘The first shooter, who is now under attack, fires a burst, which hits Howie just about dead center. The combination of the sound, the flash, and the impacts tend to have Howie Phelps thrown back by his own reflexes, assisted by the impact of the rounds.’’ He took a long swig of coffee this time. ‘‘All of which, by the way, struck the victim while he was more or less erect.’’

Aha! Cool.

‘‘And he would have remained erect…?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Not much longer than a second, if that,’’ said Dr. Peters.

‘‘Five rounds in a second,’’ I said.

‘‘Less than a second, most likely,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘About as fully automatic as you get.’’

‘‘Sure.’’

‘‘And,’’ he said, ‘‘the pattern of the projectile strikes are consistent with full auto. As was the distribution of spent cartridge cases.’’

Hester grinned.

So did Dr. Peters. ‘‘Making Hester correct in her on-scene analysis.’’

‘‘Once again,’’ said Hester.

Dr. Peters barked out a laugh. ‘‘Well, at least, not for the first time.’’

‘‘Let me interject something here,’’ I said.

‘‘Go right ahead,’’ said Dr. Peters.

I told him about my observations at the crime scene. About my theory that the shooters were hunting the cops, and not Howie. About how Howie’s presence had been a factor that was not predictable by either the shooters or the cops, and how Howie had prematurely triggered what I thought was an ambush for the officers.

Dr. Peters thought about that for a second.

‘‘I had a little experience in my Army days with that sort of thing. I think you’re absolutely right. Advancing to contact,’’ he muttered. ‘‘Quite reasonable.’’

I had been browsing the autopsy photographs as Dr. Peters was talking. ‘‘Can you tell the caliber of the rounds from the wounds or debris?’’

‘‘Ah…’’ Dr. Peters reached behind his chair and pulled out a manila envelope that measured something like a yard on a side. He pulled out a series of huge X-ray films. ‘‘Phelps. Let’s get these up to the light,’’ he said, promptly hanging them on a bank of X-ray viewing panels, and flipping the switch. Flash, blink, and we had our X-rays.

‘‘See the debris fields on this one,’’ he asked, ‘‘what we call the ‘snowstorm’ field?’’

I could. There were what appeared to be hundreds of particles scattered in rough fan shapes, widening toward the back of the body. Some were relatively large, most minute. Some were hazy, and I knew that those were very small particles of nearly vaporized bone. One large object caught my eye.

‘‘This,’’ I said, rising half out of my chair and stretching out my hand with my pen extended. ‘‘This looks like part of a jacket.. .’’

‘‘Good eye,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘You overweight people concentrate so well.’’

‘‘Hey!’’ I said. ‘‘You brought the doughnuts!’’

‘‘For your concentration,’’ he said, grinning. ‘‘Works with him every time,’’ he said to Hester.

‘‘I wish he’d had one before he lost his raincoat,’’ she said.

Dr. Peters pushed another doughnut toward me. ‘‘You might need this,’’ he said. ‘‘What that is, is part of a metal jacket from a projectile. Fortuitously, it contains the imprint of the tail of the round. A small, circular impression. It’s at the DCI lab now,’’ he added. ‘‘What was nice about it was that it wasn’t steel. Copper. Seemed to be a ‘boat tail’ round, as the diameter was slightly less than 7.62 mm. Commercial, probably a semijacketed soft point, judging from the jacket and the exit wound, which appears to have been the largest of the group. Which leads to another interesting point…’’

‘‘Mmmph?’’ I asked. Concentrating.

‘‘This isn’t the only round that struck the spinal column, as you can see. But the other one which did, here,’’ he said, pointing, ‘‘didn’t fragment the projectile at all, and left a rather neat, or at least relatively neat, exit wound, associated with tumble, but not with significant deformation.’’

‘‘Which means?’’ asked Hester.

‘‘Well,’’ said Dr. Peters, ‘‘I believe that the others may have been standard steel-jacketed military rounds, possibly manufactured in a Warsaw Pact country, exported, and mixed locally with commercial ammunition.’’

Well, like, wow.

‘‘How did you know that?’’ I bit.

‘‘Well, mostly from the printing on the recovered ammunition boxes,’’ said Dr. Peters with a laugh. ‘‘But it is consistent with the rest of it.’’

I just love it when he does that.

‘‘Nice,’’ said Hester.

Dr. Peters nodded, smiling.

‘‘A matchup with the cardboard ammunition boxes that we found,’’ I said.

‘‘Exactly.’’

‘‘So,’’ I said, ‘‘the shooter mixed his ammunition in his magazine.’’

‘‘Specialists do that,’’ said Hester.

‘‘So do people who can’t afford a lot of ammo,’’ I answered.

We were quiet for a moment. I believe all of us were beginning to conjure up a picture of the shooter.

‘‘Shall we do Officer Kellerman?’’ asked Dr. Peters.

‘‘Sure,’’ I said.

‘‘Right. Well, here we have something a little different,’’ said Dr. Peters, opening the binder on Kellerman. ‘‘For one thing, as we already knew the day of the shooting, he’s struck by projectiles of two different calibers. Two of them 7.62 mm and three 5.56 mm.’’

‘‘You said as much that day, yes,’’ said Hester.

‘‘So,’’ said Dr. Peters, ‘‘likely two shooters.’’ He looked up from his binder. ‘‘Because of the deformation, which we’ll get to in a minute, there will remain a possibility, however remote, of a third shooter. I don’t believe so, but in court this must be considered.’’

‘‘Understood,’’ said Hester.

‘‘It appears,’’ said Dr. Peters, pushing a copy of his autopsy diagrams toward each of us, ‘‘that the rounds struck at virtually the same time, from two slightly different directions.’’

We looked at the diagrams.

‘‘On the sheets there,’’ he said, ‘‘they’re numbered one through five. Two and five are the 7.62 mm rounds. They’ve come from what I believe are the shooters of Arthur Phelps, although, since Officer Kellerman was moved during the engagement, I can’t be positive.’’ He flipped through his notes. ‘‘Right, now one, three, and four are 5.56 mm, I believe. That shooter was to the left of the other shooter, and was firing, I believe, from the position Hester labeled as ‘three’ at the scene. Placing him also to the rear of the first shooter by about fifteen yards.’’

‘‘That would be about right,’’ said Hester. ‘‘And just a bit higher up-slope.’’

‘‘Yes,’’ said Dr. Peters. ‘‘Now, these projectiles strike at a slightly different angle in the horizontal plane, but without noticeable difference in the vertical. That’s one of the main reasons I think they were fired virtually simultaneously with the 7.62 mm rounds.’’

He reached back and pulled out a second envelope of X-rays. Dr. Peters hung them in place of the Phelps pictures.

‘‘One of the main problems here,’’ said Dr. Peters, ‘‘is that Officer Kellerman was wearing a Kevlar ballistic vest. All that accomplished, with the type of rifle involved, was to deform the projectiles before they actually came into contact with his body. So,’’ he sighed, ‘‘the entry wounds weren’t the neat little round holes they were on Mr. Phelps. In fact,’’ he said, ‘‘they were already beginning to tumble, as well as being deformed. As a consequence, the path of the bullets to the point of exit was not exactly straight.’’

In looking at the X-rays, it was pretty easy to see what he was talking about. There were fragments, particles, missing rib sections, and debris paths that seemed to diverge from each other. It was really weird.

‘‘Four of the five rounds,’’ said Dr. Peters, ‘‘penetrated the front panel of the vest, transected the victim, and exited through the rear panel of the vest. Or, at least, the most massive fragments did.’’ He pointed at a white blob on the X-ray. ‘‘This little bastard,’’ he said, ‘‘was one of the 5.56 mm rounds, and it tumbled enough to strike the rear panel of the vest in a flat attitude, with the long axis of the projectile being parallel with the plane of the vest.’’ He looked up. ‘‘It slapped the rear panel, flattened the round, but it stayed inside the nylon shell.’’

He pushed a photograph of a badly deformed bullet toward us. ‘‘This is the one. I sent it to the lab. But you can see that it’s almost intact. Remarkable, if you think about it.’’

He was right. But it had also hit the back of the vest hard enough to have imprinted the weave of the Kevlar onto the bullet.

‘‘The jacket’s peeled off this one, isn’t it?’’ I asked.

‘‘Yes, but, unlike the one in Mr. Phelps, this jacket has come apart in so many pieces that they’re not distinguishable visually. A metallurgist, perhaps…’’

‘‘Oh.’’

‘‘And, unfortunately, the fragments in Officer Kellerman and in his vest are ballistically worthless. At least from an identification point of view. You could never match them to the weapon that fired them.’’

Well, I hadn’t really expected that they’d be worth much. But they were able to be used to tell the caliber, which was something.

‘‘So,’’ I said, ‘‘we have two shooters.’’

‘‘For all intents and purposes,’’ said Dr. Peters, ‘‘that’s right.’’ He looked thoughtful. ‘‘But that doesn’t mean that there were only two of them present.’’

Hester and I just looked at him.

‘‘I’ve been thinking about your ambush theory. I’m sure you’re right. It fits well.’’ He looked right at me. ‘‘As I’m sure you know, most ambushes are L-shaped, if done professionally. The X shape is ideal, of course, but seldom achieved.’’ He stopped talking.

I didn’t know if I should say anything or not, so I just kept my mouth shut. So did Hester.

‘‘But the L would require at least three participants, wouldn’t it? While the X requires a minimum of four, I suppose.’’

‘‘Yeah…’’ I said.

‘‘And if we presuppose these are true professionals, they would be certain to know this. So they would bring at least three, possibly more people.’’

‘‘Hmm,’’ said Hester.

‘‘But in the L, only one side usually fires, at least at first. Depending on the initial fire to drive the quarry toward the other leg of the L.’’

Silence again.

‘‘But if they’re not set, or at least not set in an immobile position, but are moving toward contact, they will try to keep something of the shape they wish…’’

I wasn’t about to say a word.

‘‘Let me call someone I know,’’ he said abruptly. ‘‘I think we may be on to something here.’’