Known Dead

Twenty-four

I was awakened by the telephone at 0718, according to my little fucking clock. On the 30th day of July, to be exact. Good little clock. Just that sometimes you like to see it, sometimes you don’t.

‘‘Helumph,’’ I said. Or something close to that.

‘‘And a very good morning to you,’’ said an unfamiliar voice.

‘‘Who is this?’’ I managed to get out.

‘‘Jacob Nieuhauser,’’ he said.

Jacob Nieuhauser. Jacob Nieuhauser. Damn, it was ringing a bell, but I just couldn’t grab on to it.

‘‘Do I know you?’’ I asked.

‘‘Not as well as you think you do,’’ he said.

The bell rang really loud. ‘‘Gabriel,’’ I said. My mind was working fast. So was my heart.

‘‘To some,’’ he said. ‘‘I prefer that my friends call me that, but you go ahead.’’

‘‘Thanks.’’ A bright thing to say.

‘‘You need to do me a favor,’’ he said. Very conversational.

‘‘What would that be?’’

‘‘Stop sending reporters out to look for me. It won’t work.’’

‘‘If I hadn’t, would we be talking now?’’

‘‘Point well taken,’’ he said. ‘‘But it gets rather expensive for the reporters.’’

‘‘Well, for one,’’ I said.

‘‘No,’’ he answered. ‘‘For two.’’

‘‘Do you have her?’’ I asked. ‘‘Have you harmed her?’’

‘‘No, to both,’’ he said. ‘‘Hostages just get you killed. First rule.’’

‘‘So?’’

‘‘But I can see her. She’s at a telephone at a Travel King just outside Fairmont, and from the frustration, I’d say she might be trying to call you.’’

I didn’t know just what to say.

‘‘You see,’’ he said, ‘‘I find it much more effective not to take a hostage in the traditional sense. I take my hostages at a distance. I don’t hold them. I simply kill them if the time comes. If it doesn’t, they live. A random harvest, almost.’’

‘‘Really?’’ Brilliance is not easy for me in the morning.

‘‘Certainly. Only the important ones have to know the potential. After all,’’ he said, ‘‘hostages don’t pay their ransom, do they? Others do it for them. Something you should remember.’’

He hung up.

I couldn’t believe it. I looked over at Sue, who was looking at me wide-eyed. ‘‘Who was that?’’

I told her what I could, which wasn’t much.

I headed downstairs to get some coffee and to try to decide what to do, and maybe even how to do it. The phone rang. The microwave said it was 0724.

‘‘Hello…’’

‘‘Jesus Christ, where the hell have you been?’’ It was Nancy.

‘‘Nancy, listen carefully…’’

‘‘Don’t you ever do that to me again, damn you, Houseman. I’m gonna get fucking killed up here.’’

‘‘Where are you?’’

‘‘Fairmont fucking Minnesota!’’

‘‘At a Travel King?’’

She stopped in her tracks. ‘‘What?’’ At least she stopped shouting.

‘‘You’re at a Travel King, aren’t you?’’

‘‘Yes… How did you know that?’’

‘‘Because the man you think is trying to kill you just called me and told me where you were.’’

‘‘Shit. I thought I lost him.’’ Her voice went up an octave, and began to shake. ‘‘You gotta help meeee, he’s gonna kill meeee…’’

‘‘No, he’s not, Nancy. That’s what he told me.’’ Maybe a white lie.

‘‘What?’’

‘‘He’s not going to kill you.’’

‘‘Oh, yeah,’’ came the tremulous reply. ‘‘I’ll just bet.’’

‘‘Give me your number.’’

‘‘It says you can’t call in on this telephone.’’

Shit. ‘‘Okay, just don’t hang up, and listen to me. I’m going to call my office on my walkie-talkie here. You listen to it, but feel free to interrupt anytime, ’cause I’ll keep the phone right at my ear, okay?’’

I took my portable out of the recharger that sat on top of the microwave, and called in.

‘‘Go ahead, Three.’’

‘‘Contact Fairmont, Minnesota, ten-thirty-three, tell them Nancy Mitchell is at the Travel King, at the pay phone, and to get officers there immediately.’’

‘‘Ten-four…’’

‘‘Do it on teletype. No radio. You got that?’’

‘‘Ten-four, Three.’’

‘‘There,’’ I said to Nancy. ‘‘Just stay put.’’

I could hear her take a deep breath. ‘‘Yeah. Yeah, I’ll, all right, yeah, I’ll stay here…’’

She talked to herself like that for about forty-five seconds. Then I heard sirens in the background.

‘‘They’re coming now,’’ she said.

‘‘Stay on the line,’’ I said, ‘‘and have one of them talk to me.’’

I picked up my walkie-talkie and called the office. I had them make immediate radio contact with Fairmont PD and get me the name of the responding officer. They did, just as he came on the phone.

‘‘Who is this?’’ he asked.

‘‘This is Deputy Houseman in Nation County, Iowa. Who is this?’’

He told me. It matched.

So by 0800 on that bright Tuesday morning, I was up, wired, worried, and getting hungry. I had coffee and started frozen fat-free waffles in the toaster, while the office contacted Hester, George, and Volont.

Just as the waffles came up out of the toaster, blackened but at least hot, the phone rang. I figured it was either Hester or Volont.

‘‘Hello.’’

‘‘You’re so predictable.’’ It was Gabriel.

‘‘I can’t be original this early,’’ I said.

‘‘I’ll bet you’re old and fat too,’’ he said.

Well, nothing hurts like the truth, but I’m hard to bait before noon. ‘‘You’ve been peeking,’’ I said.

There was a pause, for about two beats. ‘‘Let’s not waste time in banter,’’ he said.

‘‘Fine.’’

‘‘Find a way to be happy with those idiots you’ve already got.’’

‘‘Like who?’’

‘‘You know who. Wittman. Borcherding. Stritch. They’re the ones you want, really, and they will satisfy the public and the Zionists.’’

‘‘What about the rest of the people in the woods? The ones who really did the killing?’’ I thought that was a fair question, given the circumstances.

‘‘You never want to meet them,’’ he said. ‘‘Believe me.’’

‘‘I’m gonna have to, I’m afraid.’’

He sighed heavily. ‘‘No, don’t do that. Just make the evidence fit the others. You can do that. Your kind can always find a way.’’

‘‘Sorry,’’ I said. ‘‘You’ve got the wrong man for that stuff.’’

He sighed again. ‘‘I know you can’t possibly have a trace on your phone,’’ he said, ‘‘and I want you to know that when I say this conversation is getting boring, it really is.’’

‘‘Want to tell me why you sent Borcherding to snuff Stritch?’’ I asked.

‘‘That’s need to know,’’ he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

‘‘I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t that e-mail I sent you,’’ I said.

‘‘You can’t reach me by e-mail,’’ he said. He thought he was calling my bluff.

‘‘I can when I call myself Nola, and relay through Bravo6.’’

Dead silence.

‘‘Just so you know,’’ I said, ‘‘I’ve done two other things you will probably hate.’’

‘‘Oh?’’ Very cold. Brittle, almost.

‘‘If we chat again, I might tell you what they are. But you should really do a background check on us lowly folks. You might be surprised. Goodbye.’’ I was the one who hung up the phone this time. I was sweating, and my waffles were cold. And I was really going to have to think about this one. I had him off balance, but… well, really, what else could I have done? I knew I hadn’t done any ‘‘two other things.’’ But knowing that I’d done one ‘‘thing,’’ he’d be looking over his shoulder for a little while at least. The same principle he used on his hostages. I hoped it worked as well as he seemed to think it did.

I had just gotten my pathetic reheated waffles out of the microwave when the phone rang. Hester. I dumped my waffles out, and told her what had happened. She was, well, a little less than overjoyed. But she was glad to hear that Fairmont PD had Nancy. I told her I was going to eat breakfast and then mosey up to the office. I called the office, and told them that if anybody bothered me in the next forty-five minutes, I’d come up and kill them as soon as I ate my breakfast. I asked about Lamar. He’d called in at 0545. Good. He really was getting better. I put my last four waffles in, and tried again. It worked. I don’t even really like waffles.

I debated for about one second whether or not to send Sue up to her mother’s house, just to get her away from an easy locate by Gabriel. She and I left the house together.

I got to the office at 0922. By 0924 I knew that George and Volont would be there in an hour, Hester in about forty-five minutes, and Nancy in two hours. Nancy was being escorted by three Iowa state troopers from the Minnesota border on down. Nothing is perfect, but she certainly wouldn’t be an easy hit.

When Hester arrived, I told her about the entire morning, including my comment about sending the e-mail. We agreed to tell George at some point, but not Volont.

When Volont arrived, the first thing he did was tell me that there was going to be a wiretap on my home phone. I couldn’t argue with that. With instant ability to trace. Except for cellular telephone traffic, which would take a while, if it worked at all. I said we might as well forget the trace, but Volont insisted. He said that assumptions about what an adversary will do will cause you to make silly little errors that might cost you a lot. Like I said, I was beginning to like him.

‘‘Frankly, Houseman,’’ he said, ‘‘I’m very surprised that he called you. It’s not like him.’’

‘‘Oh?’’

‘‘You must be getting close to something, even if you don’t realize it.’’

‘‘Thanks a hell of a lot,’’ I said.

‘‘No, no, really, that’s something we all do,’’ he apologized. ‘‘The important thing is to realize when you must have known it, and then you’ll know what it was.’’

Intelligence work does some of that to you. Counterintelligence, on the other hand, does a lot of that to you. I’d been told that in a school run by a real expert, and it had always stuck.

‘‘You work a lot of counterintelligence cases, don’t you,’’ I said.

‘‘Houseman, your perception stuns me.’’ He grinned. ‘‘You really did pay attention in that little school of ours, didn’t you?’’

The school had been run on a federal grant. ‘‘Sure did,’’ I said. He’d obviously looked up my file. Thorough. I wondered if he’d come across the motto of the counterintelligence agent who’d taught the class: ‘‘Sometimes you gets the Bear. Sometimes the Bear gets you.’’

Counterintelligence is the most dangerous thing you can do, because, almost by definition, you really can’t thoroughly know the mind of your target. I’d found that out very clearly with the e-mail to Gabriel. My intention had been that he contact Herman, thereby giving us a conduit we could trace. He turned around and tried to get Herman shut off forever, and just happened to use our only conduit in the process. I’d have to write to my old instructor. Sometimes the Bear, it seemed, got somebody else entirely. You had to get to know the Bear, and the one who knew him best was Volont.

Volont was still talking, mostly to George and Hester. ‘‘I think that’s typical of him,’’ he said.

‘‘What?’’ I asked. ‘‘I was thinking of something else…’’

‘‘To tell you to charge the others in the cases.’’

‘‘Oh, yeah.’’ I looked at him for a second. ‘‘You know,’’ I said, ‘‘it occurs to me that, aside from Rumsford, Gabriel hadn’t actually committed a crime in my jurisdiction. Or in Iowa, for that matter.’’

‘‘As a conspirator,’’ said George.

‘‘But as a practical matter,’’ I said, ‘‘that would be much, much easier to charge federally.’’

‘‘That’s true,’’ said George.

‘‘The point?’’ said Volont.

‘‘The point is,’’ I said, very carefully, ‘‘that the error on his part was to go to Stritch’s farm.’’ I looked at all three of them. ‘‘Until that time, there was a tenuous federal case against him at best. Right?’’

George nodded.

‘‘For the expedition into the woods,’’ said Hester.

‘‘Yep,’’ I said. ‘‘Nothing else, except a likely financial scam, but we don’t know that, do we?’’

‘‘No,’’ said George. He looked at Volont, who was sitting quietly, with his arms folded. ‘‘Do we?’’

‘‘Immaterial,’’ said Volont. He looked at me. ‘‘Keep going.’’

‘‘Wittman tells us that Gabriel came to the Stritch residence when summoned, even though they were supposedly surrounded by cops, even though it was a murder scene, just to honor a prior sort of philosophical commitment, right?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ said Volont.

‘‘Is that really true to form? For him?’’

‘‘It could be,’’ said Volont.

‘‘No, no,’’ I said. ‘‘Don’t hedge now, for Christ’s sake. Is it or isn’t it?’’

‘‘I wouldn’t have expected that,’’ said Volont. ‘‘No. I would have expected he’d send an emissary.’’

‘‘It would have been the logical thing to do, then?’’ I asked. ‘‘Send somebody else, and not go to Stritch’s place himself. Right?’’

There was general agreement.

‘‘Any idea why he’d do something so…’’ I hunted for the right word. ‘‘So… nonoperational? Not tactically correct? Not…’’

‘‘Professional,’’ said Hester.

‘‘Reasonable,’’ said George. ‘‘Not reasonable.’’

‘‘Completely out of character,’’ said Volont briskly. ‘‘Go on.. .’’

‘‘Right,’’ I said. ‘‘So… why?’’ I grinned at Volont. ‘‘To be fair, I think I’ve thought of something you haven’t,’’ I said. ‘‘I believe I know why.’’

Volont raised his eyebrows. Tough soul, there.

‘‘Nola Stritch,’’ I said.

To be fair, I had to fill Volont in on everything, and I mean everything. All that I said was either corroborated by Hester or, on safe occasions, George. When I was done, Volont sat in silence for a moment.

‘‘I’m not going to jump your asses yet,’’ he said, ‘‘because what you’ve done may just justify how you’ve gone about it.’’ He looked squarely at George. ‘‘In fact, I suppose there’s only one ass I can get on.’’

He wasn’t kidding, so we didn’t either. But Hester jumped right in.

‘‘All well and good, Houseman,’’ she said. ‘‘That’s good background. But what makes you think it’s her?’’

I shrugged. ‘‘Well, she’s not at all bad-looking,’’ I began. Hester made a face. ‘‘She’s in her, what, late forties? Very fit. Very bright. Dynamic, in a lot of ways. Great with computers. Dedicated to some cause or other. Altogether a very attractive, capable, interesting woman. Right?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ said George, bless him.

‘‘On the other hand,’’ I said, ‘‘she sees Gabriel as sort of a hero. Everything she prizes in a man.’’ I looked at Hester. ‘‘Believable?’’

‘‘For her.’’

‘‘Well, sure. And,’’ I added, ‘‘she’s married for years and years to a loser who isn’t very bright at all.’’

‘‘Plus,’’ said George, ‘‘she may well have put him in this position with her able assistance. Right?’’ He looked at Volont. ‘‘Uh, a dispatcher named Sally pointed that out.’’

‘‘I’ll have to meet her,’’ said Volont dryly.

‘‘Evidence points to it… I mean,’’ I said, ‘‘here they are, practicing for a mission on the farm of a man that Gabriel has to know is not too bright. In an area that has no real facilities. I’ll bet he stayed close to the exercise area… if not at the Stritch house, then damned close to it. What you want to bet?’’

‘‘Sally did have a good point, though,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Get rid of some of your worst mistakes by divorcing them. Or, at least, strongly considering it.’’ She shrugged. ‘‘And in walks the brave knight.. .’’

‘‘And,’’ I said, ‘‘that explains why Gabriel also acted so promptly to get rid of Herman.’’

‘‘It also explains,’’ said Volont, ‘‘why he responded to the e-mail so promptly.’’

‘‘Right!’’ I said.

‘‘And,’’ said Volont, ‘‘you told him you’d sent the messages that caused him to do this.’’

‘‘Right!’’ I said. ‘‘Threw him for a little loop.’’

‘‘What you’ve done,’’ said Volont, ‘‘is piss him off.’’ He looked at me very strangely. ‘‘That may not have been the best thing for you to do.’’

‘‘Not necessarily,’’ I said. ‘‘I mean, what’s he going to do? He won’t be taking hostages, that’s for sure. Kill a member of my family? Only get even with me. Won’t get Nola released in a million years. Kill me? Just make him feel better. Nola stays in jail.’’

Volont chuckled. ‘‘Don’t underestimate the pleasure of revenge.’’

‘‘I won’t,’’ I said. ‘‘But for the revenge to be sweet, he doesn’t want to ride off into the sunset alone. He wants his gal on his horse behind him. Don’t underestimate the power of love.’’

Volont drummed his fingers on the desktop. ‘‘All right, we’ll go with it.’’

‘‘Yes!’’ said George.

‘‘You know what?’’ I said. ‘‘The tables are turned. We have the hostage. He’s got to get her out.’’

‘‘No,’’ said Volont flatly. ‘‘He won’t try to get her out of Linn County. He can’t. He could try to kill Herman, that was another matter. But to get her out? No. Not possible.’’

I looked at him. ‘‘He wouldn’t even try that, would he?’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘it looks to me like there’s only one thing to do.’’

‘‘I’m not sure I want to know,’’ said Volont.

‘‘Sure you do.’’ My turn to grin. ‘‘Transfer her back up here.’’