The Big Thaw

13

Lamar and I sat in his office. We could hear the Maitland town clock strike twice. The bell was exceptionally clear in the still, icy air. It was a very lonely sound.

"You got any confirmation at all that those dead kids claimed they were cops?"

"Workin' on it, boss."

"You really think the FBI people did the Colsons?" he asked.

"No."

"Me, neither. Too bad, though, in a way." He grinned. "I mean, we caught 'em. Just too bad they didn't do it."

I drew a deep breath, and let it out very slowly. "Yeah. Ain't gonna hurt to let 'em think we suspect 'em, though. We might find out what they were actually doing around there."

"They were pullin' surveillance on my buddy Cletus," said Lamar. "That's what they were doin'."

I held up my right hand, measuring less than an inch between my thumb and forefinger. "Cletus is this important…" I spread my hands at arm's length. More than six feet apart. "You gotta be at least this big before you get FBI surveillance. At least."

We were silent again for a few moments.

"So," said Lamar, slowly, "what the fuck were they doin' there?"

I shrugged. "Not a clue."

"But you do think they were there?"

"Oh, yeah. If not actually on the property, they were close enough to see… I'd stake my life on the fact that they were the ones watching me when I felt so spooked." I crumpled my decaf pop can. "The real question is whether or not they were lookin' in the place the night the brothers were killed."

"Witnesses…" muttered Lamar.

"Professional witnesses," I said. "If we're lucky, they got photos."

"Of what?"

"Won't know until they think they have to tell us what they had going. Your bit about the senator should get that machinery going real fast." I stood. "Gotta hand it to ya, boss. That senator bit was perfect."

"Thanks," he said, pleased. "Look, let's let Art do the details tomorrow. You come in a little late. Say nine or so."

"Okay." That gave me seven hours, give or take, from now. I let my feet slide off the edge of his desk, and stood up with a continuation of the motion. A low-intensity pain shot through my back muscles, catching me off guard. Must have been something I'd done in the last few hours. Probably when Agent Brandenburg had kicked me, and I'd gone flying backward. Great. I was going to be really stiff and sore tomorrow. "See you in the morning."

"This is getting to really bother me," said Lamar, as I headed for the door. "You think Cletus knows what's going on here?"

"Beats the shit out of me," I said. "How you gonna handle the patrol in that area? Two-man cars?"

"We ain't got enough people." He looked at me. "This ain't the only thing we got going."

"You don't want to use the reserve in this sort of thing, Lamar."

He sighed. "Yeah. But I don't want to send nobody down there alone, either."

Sue awoke as I slipped into bed. "What happened?" she mumbled. "You all right?"

"Fine," I said. "John went in the ditch. Took us a while to get his car out."

"Oh. Just so you're all right…" And she drifted back off to sleep. I wish I'd been able to do that. I lay there, wide awake, for a good hour, thinking about the events of the evening. I tried to turn on my side, once, and my back muscles advised me not to try that again. So I lay there, staring at the shadows on our ceiling. Thinking.

Nation County is about 750 square miles, about half of it hilly. A dozen small towns, and about 2,000 farms. Connected by 1,300 miles of roadway, 75 percent of it gravel. So, what were the odds of us meeting up with the FBI Snowmobile Detail so close to the Borglan place? Right. Not conclusive, but a very damned strong factor.

Not to mention the near certainty that the killer at the Borglan farm had fled via snowmobile, in the middle of the night; blasting right through the Grossmans' barnyard, and off to… Where? Unknown, but south, that was for sure. For how far? I smiled to myself. Until the snow ran out… But that was a very loud snowmobile, at least according to the hired man and his family. I grinned sleepily to myself. Not FBI issue.

But, then, there was the timing. The snowmobile, on the first night John had seen it, had been heading in the direction of Grossman's. North. When I'd seen it tonight, it was heading south. But when John and I had seen it, it was earlier than it had been when John had seen it the previous night. What did that mean? Nothing. The voice of my ninth-grade algebra teacher came to me: "If a train leaves Smallville, traveling west at sixty miles per hour, and another train leaves an hour later, traveling at…" Ugh. If there was a solution to my problem there, it'd have to wait… I was just too tired.

More work. And hopefully, a little more luck, before somebody else got killed. The bullet casing found by Jack and company, that weirdo Russian caliber, had to figure in somewhere, too.

I started to turn over. Whoa! My back hurt a lot more, and was going to be more than stiff in the morning. Great. I moved gingerly, and tried to stretch the muscles slightly. Bad idea.

I know I slept, though, because the telephone woke me up.

The phone couldn't have rung more than four times, or the answering machine would have kicked in. I fumbled with the receiver for a second. My voice didn't quite come out, so I cleared my throat, and tried again. "Yeah, Houseman here…"

"Hey, I get you up?"

Phil, from Oelwein PD. I looked at the clock; 0836. "Yeah, you did… or, you will have, when I'm awake."

"You old folks sure sleep a lot." He laughed heartily. "Hey, I just thought you'd want to know, I found the old fart that the Colson brothers told that they were undercover cops."

That perked me up. "No kidding?" I started to scoot up on my right elbow, and the pain in my back almost took my breath away.

"Yep. Last September or so, I believe. He was going out the back door, into the alley, to put some trash in the Dumpster, and hit one of 'em with the door."

"Really?" I had frozen halfway over onto my side. My back felt like somebody had taken out half the length of the muscles, and sewn them back together. "Tight" does not begin to describe it.

He laughed again. "Yeah, no shit, they were just getting ready to try to pry the door. He asked 'em what the hell they were doing, and one of 'em says, 'Be quiet, we gotta get in here, there's going to be some kids try to break in and we want to catch 'em.' Really!"

"Guts." The pain in my back was subsiding. Wonderful. If I stayed like this for four more days, I'd be fine.

"Oh, yeah. Told him they were undercover state officers."

"Didn't he ask for any ID?" I asked, gingerly moving into a more or less upright position by carefully swinging my legs off the bed, and letting their weight help lift me.

"Yeah, and you know what they said? The one with the little beard says, 'If you was undercover, would you carry one?' Just cool as hell."

I chuckled, myself. "Sharp," I said.

Phil laughed again, hugely enjoying himself. "It gets better! He wouldn't let 'em in, you know, so they got all pissed off, and left saying they would come back with their boss in a few minutes, and he'd better be there when they got back! You know what he did? The poor bastard apologized, and he fuckin' waited almost an hour for 'em to come back!"

"Must have been real, real convincing." I was sitting now, and the pain wasn't all that bad.

"Oh, yeah."

"Do you know if Goober was one of 'em?" I asked, hoping he wasn't.

"Who?"

"Fred, their cousin…"

"Oh! Him! No, not him. The two he described were the brothers. Just the two of 'em."

"Good." I just about had my thoughts collected. "You turn up anything more on Fred, while I got you on the line?"

"Just what I got from my old reports. Remember… oh, a couple of years ago, more'n that, maybe? He was a juvie, and was breaking into taverns, and hitting the pin-ball machines?"

"Oh, yeah…" I'd heard something to that effect, but since it hadn't happened in Nation County, I never saw a report.

"All three of the boys that night," said Phil. "I remember Freddie was wearin' a fatigue jacket, and he made one hell of a racket when I chased him. Pockets full of quarters. We weighed the jacket. Thirty-four pounds of quarters." He had been chuckling to himself all through the recounting. "Every time I saw him after that, I'd ask if he had any change." He broke into laughter.

"I never saw a cop who enjoyed his job more than you do…"

Breathless with laughter, he managed to get out, "Yeah, ain't it a sin, though?"

"This is a good piece of work. Really. Can you write it up and send me a copy?"

"You bet. Oh, yeah, before I forget… when we busted the three of 'em with all the quarters, your boy Fred tried to take all the blame."

"Really…"

"Oh, yeah. Stuck together like dried cow shit. Really tight."

It was time I was up, anyway. And to good news, to boot. I went downstairs very gingerly, and enjoyed a great cup of coffee while leaning gently against the counter, looking for some old ibuprophen I'd acquired after a root canal. Found it. Twelve left, of 800 mg. Cool. I didn't think I could afford to miss work today. Of all days. So, prescribing for myself, I figured, "What the hell, take it with coffee."

Standing at the coffeepot, pouring my second cup, I looked at the outdoor thermometer. Twenty-six degrees. Same as the temperature inside a refrigerator. The warming trend had arrived. It was almost thirty degrees warmer than yesterday.

The phone rang again. I assumed it was going to be the sheriffs office. "Yeah!"

"Boy, you're nasty in the morning." Lamar, calling from the scene of the snowmobile incident from last night. He was with the lab crew.

"Sorry, thought it was the S.O."

I told him about Phil's call. Then he told me something.

"Did you ever look in Borglan's refrigerator that day?" He was deadly serious.

"I don't think so… but I think I might have seen a bit inside it when Clete was making his coffee… he got the coffee can out of the refrigerator."

"That's when I saw it, too. Notice anything unusual about the contents? Think, now. Think hard."

I did my best. "Nothing unusual… no more bodies… no, boss, I can't say that I did. Just a normal inside of a refrigerator. Why?"

"It was normal, all right," he said. "I remembered this last night… it was full of food."

"So…?" I asked, even as it came to me.

"You don't leave your refrigerator stocked when you're planning to be gone for three months."

"Right. You're right. Son of a bitch, you're right!"

A minor problem, though. Cletus was now back in residence. Unless we had it documented during the crime scene examination, there was no way to prove it now.

"I already checked with the lab guys," he said. "They looked in there, just a cursory inspection. No documentation of contents, although Jake thinks he remembers seeing food."

Jake was a lab tech. He'd had no reason to inventory the refrigerator, and he'd sure as hell been busy with enough other stuff that night.

"Damn. But I can understand it. I should have thought of that…"

"Ain't you supposed to be workin' today?" Gruffly.

"Can't come to work if I'm standing here talkin' on the phone." Take that, boss. It did make me wonder when he slept, though.

I figured I'd go out of uniform, as much to remove the 15 lbs. of gun belt and gear as anything else. I might not be feeling much pain, but I sure didn't want to aggravate my back. As I got dressed, I went over things in my head. Not too bad, for a short day. Somebody had been staying at Borglan's. No doubt. Again, no conclusive proof, but we were on the right track. On the upside, we did have testimonial evidence that the Colson brothers had, in fact, impersonated undercover officers on a previous occasion. Thanks to Phil. I was in good spirits when I hit the office. I think it was mostly the ibuprophen.

Art's car was in the parking lot, along with a blue Ford sedan that had FBI written all over it. George, I was willing to bet.

I walked carefully up the steps, but the medicine was beginning to kick in, and I hardly felt a twinge. Cool. Now, if I could just stay awake…

Art knew George, as did most law enforcement personnel in our area of the state. I wasn't sure how well, but he certainly knew who he was. Both of them were sitting in the main office, and both of them appeared to be waiting for me.

"Hi," I said.

"You talk to Lamar this morning?" blurted Art.

"Yep."

"About the refrigerator?"

"Yep. I think he's right. I remember that, now, too, I think." I was being oblique because I didn't know if Art had told George anything, and since Art had raised "need to know" to an almost mystical level in his own head, I didn't want to aggravate him unnecessarily.

"I don't think it proves a lot," he said. "No connection with anything."

"Don't be so sure," I said. I looked at George. "Have you told him…"

"No," said George.

I looked around to make sure we were alone, and then closed the door. Dramatic, but fun. "We arrested an FBI agent near the murder scene last night," I said.

"Oh, bullshit," said Art. "Get serious."

"It's true, they did," said George.

Art went blank-faced. He was one of those cops for whom all status resided in the kind of badge you carried. Credential envy, sort of.

"And," I said, savoring the moment, "after we got him to the office, we busted another one who was sneaking around behind the jail…"

"Correct," said George.

I thought Art was going to… well, swoon seemed pretty close. His face got noticeably redder, and he said, "You gotta be shittin' me."

We filled him in on the activities of the previous night. I did most of the talking, and even George was aghast at the thought that we had what I referred to as "the Hernandez bust" on videotape.

I did only fact. No conclusions. I wanted to see what everybody else would think. When I was done, George simply said, "I keep telling these guys that you aren't a bunch of hicks. I keep telling all of them…"

Art, who seemed to have recovered pretty quickly, just shook his head. "So, what does all this mean?" he asked George.

"Ask Carl," said George.

Art just looked at me.

"It means that our federal brothers-in-law have been watching the Borglan place, or at least that general area. Night and day. I'd guess for a while, at least. I'd suspect," I added, "that they know more about the murder of the Colsons than we do…" I paused. "But we're getting closer."

I told about my phone conversation with Phil. About the Colsons posing as undercover cops.

"That's nice," interjected Art, "but it's just a theory. That's all, and not a strong one. No evidence at the scene."

"No," I said. "The people who killed the Colsons suspected they were being watched. Long before those two poor bastards wandered in. They caught the Colsons red-handed, and the boys did what had worked before. They lied about being undercover cops." Nobody said anything.

"The problem was, they lied to some people who believed them. And who killed them because of it."

Art looked at George. "Well?"

George nodded. "Pretty close," he said.

Art and I both waited. George, who had taken a sip of coffee, looked up. "What?"

"You can't just say that and stop," said Art. "Are you confirming, or just guessing, or what?"

George put his cup down. "Confirmation will come shortly. There's another agent en route who will provide more information. I was just, well, letting you know that you were on the right track."

"Do you know who the people in the house were?" I asked. "That much…"

George thought for a few moments. "No, I can't say. I can't give you that." He looked at each of us. "I'm really sorry, guys. I can't."