The Big Thaw

20

We sat Blitek in a chair in the reception area, while we tried to find a room without bystanders where we could interview him. "Cletus and his attorney are in the interview room," said Lamar. He indicated Blitek, sitting bedraggled in the corner. "Shit," he said, "he looks like somethin' the cat dragged in."

He did. At the hospital, they had pretty well undressed him, looking at what turned out to be minor injuries, and prodding and probing to make certain there was no internal damage. Typically for those under emotional duress, and on the downside of a suicide high to boot, he had then replaced his clothing in a rather haphazard manner, not tucking in his long john top, or buttoning his plaid shirt. His fly was unzipped. His boots were untied, with the laces dragging on the floor. He was sitting in a small wooden chair, with his head in his hands, and his elbows on his knees; his disheveled gray and brown hair sticking straight out between his fingers. The only bright element in the picture was the touch of silver provided by the handcuffs.

We decided the best place for him was the kitchen. Available coffee, rest room, and no phones. We kicked everybody else out, including the troopers and Maitland officers who were regaling a small crowd of late arrivers with lurid descriptions of the monster sniper. They looked a bit silly as we brought Blitek in and shooed them out.

We sat him down, and I went out a different door on my way to get note tablets and pens for the interview. As I did, I had to excuse my passage though the interview room containing Cletus Borglan and Attorney Gunston.

Cletus looked kind of bad, and Gunston was being all protective. "Did you manage to get whoever it was? Is this area secure now?"

"Oh, yeah," I said. Just passing through. I was on my way back with the tablets before it occurred to me. I excused my way through the interview room again, and hit the kitchen with a plan.

"I think," I said, "we'd be better off doing this interview in your office, Lamar." Way back on the other side of the building.

As he started to protest, I motioned him over by the sink. "I just came through the interview room," I said, in a low voice. "Cletus and his attorney are in there, and they don't know who the shooter was."

I could almost see the cartoon lightbulb come on over Lamar's head. To arrive at his office, we would have to transit the interview room occupied by Cletus and company.

"Let's take him back to my office," said Lamar, in a loud, clear voice.

We paraded past Cletus and Gunston. Lamar, Volont, Blitek, and me. Slowly, of course, so that Blitek wouldn't trip on his shoelaces. Blitek's head was down, and in his state, I don't think he even noticed who we were passing by. None of us said a word. Except for Lamar, who simply said, "Excuse us, please," as he led the way through.

I glanced at Cletus, who had the now familiar pre-heave glaze in his eyes.

It was much more crowded in Lamar's office, but it had been worth the trip.

Blitek, in a mumbling sort of way, told us some interesting things. Gabriel had, in fact, told him to "take out" Cletus. Blitek had been assigned what he called a "co-sniper," a fellow named Rollings. He never showed. Blitek was just sufficiently frightened of Gabriel that he undertook the "mission" alone. He thought that might have been a mistake. In retrospect, sort of.

"Well," said Lamar, kindly, "you gotta do what you gotta do."

Blitek had told Gabriel, as it turned out, everything that had been said by Cletus at the interviews. Including the fact that we knew about the phone call from the Cletus Borglan residence to the Cletus Borglan residence, so to speak.

Shit.

He also told us that Gabriel was still planning some sort of major operation for Sunday. Something to do with cash, and banks, but probably not what Cletus had described.

"You mean, 'had been planning,' don't you?" I was fairly certain by then that we had just lost Gabriel again.

It was the only time that a spark of life showed in Blitek's eyes that day. He had almost a religious fervor about him. "Gabriel says that there's no way you Zionist puppets can interfere. You can't stop him. It's a military operation, and you don't have a chance." He kind of giggled, like a kid. "There's going to be no betrayal this time!"

We decided the best way to find out was to talk to Cletus. By now, both Davies and Attorney Gunston were at the jail. Gunston said we could talk to Cletus, but that he was making arrangements for a doctor to attend his client and perhaps give him a sedative.

"No sedative," said Davies. "We wouldn't want you to say that we'd talked to him under the influence of drugs, would we."

I stood on the front porch of the jail with Volont, Davies, Art, and George. It was the best place for a fast private meeting. Nobody else seemed to want to hang around in view of the grain elevator.

"So, how do we proceed?" George kept glancing at the elevator in the distance. "Well, he's seen Blitek. He's got to be aware that everything he's said has already been given to Gabriel." Volont looked around. "I'd say he's just about ripe, if we can protect him."

"We can't," said Art. He'd been a deputy in Nation County long enough to know what our resources were. Now that he was a state officer, he knew what they had available. He was right.

"We can," said Volont.

He was right. They probably could. For me, it was just a question of whether or not we could convince Cletus of that. I had absolutely no problem with giving him up, in exchange for getting Gabriel. We'd intended that all along.

"I'm not authorized to make deals," said Art.

"I am," said Davies.

"Not without the permission of the local prosecutor," said Art. Knowing full well that, as yet, there really wasn't one.

"We'll talk about that one again, after you've passed the Bar." Davies kept his voice light, but there was no mistaking the fact that Art was being shut down. He turned, and looked at me. "I think you and I should do the interview, since you've established something of a rapport with Mr. Borglan."

"Yeah," I chuckled. "I make him puke."

"And that a representative of the FBI should also be present, to make the 'protection' offer." He smiled, brightly. "A gesture of good faith…"

Volont, Davies, and I were in the "interrogation kitchen," as Davies referred to it, and Lamar was bringing Cletus out of his cell. Attorney Gunston was waiting to talk to Cletus before we did, in the secure room.

"Now, let me see," said Davies. "Paper… pencil… briefcase… vomit bag…"

"Give me a break," I said. "It was probably something he ate."

Volont said, "We don't ask directly about Sunday?"

Davies and I agreed. "How about the banks? How direct for details?" I wanted to have the interview parameters really clear on this one.

"Whatever you need on that," Volont said. "Don't forget that Attorney Gunston was at the Borglan farm before he knew Cletus was being charged. I don't like the possible connection here to the rest of that group."

"Right," said Davies. "We should have Cletus pretty nervous right now. Let's try to keep the edge on him as long as we can."

I leaned back in my chair. "What about Florida, and the call? More detail?"

"I do that one," said Davies. "Remember," he cautioned, "we have him on a solid aiding and abetting of a double murder. We don't want to forget that."

"By the way," said Volont, "you do know his real name is Jacob Henry Nieuhauser?"

"Nieuhauser?" asked Davies.

"Gabriel… his full name is Jacob Henry Nieuhauser."

Davies wrote it down.

Cletus and Gunston entered the kitchen, guided by Lamar, who backed out, locking the door behind him. Our defendant and his attorney sat down at the long, old table. As far from the three of us as they could get.

We got off to a really good start, what with Blitek having been Exhibit A and all. Until Gunston said, "You have no direct evidence that Mr. Blitek was shooting at my client, here. He could well have been attempting to facilitate my client's escape, instead."

Weak. Stupid, really. Last try.

"He just told us his assignment was to kill Cletus, here." Davies grinned across the kitchen table. "That would be your client. Make no mistake." He looked at his yellow tablet. "If your client can tell us some things about Jacob Henry Nieuhauser," he said, slowly, "we may have an offer we can put on the table."

"We'll entertain an offer," said Gunston. "Even though my client has done nothing wrong. But, if as you say, he was the target this morning, then you must guarantee him protection."

"We may make an offer, depending on what your client is willing to share with us," said Volont. "As for protection, we think he's safe in this building for now. If we move him at some date, you must understand that you will only be informed after the fact."

Gunston, still aggressively defending, looked at Volont. "And just who might you be?"

I love it when this happens. Especially with somebody like Volont, who can place a 600 lb. badge on the table.

"Special Agent in Charge Volont, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Counterintelligence Unit." I don't know, it just sounded so good. Gunston looked startled. Cletus looked like somebody had reached into his chest and grabbed his heart.

Gunston, who deserved much credit, managed to say, "I didn't know the FBI had jurisdiction in this kind of case."

"It's not the murder that particularly concerns him," said Davies, also obviously pleased to have Volont at the table. "It's what you might call collateral matters. Very large collateral matters."

Cletus didn't vomit. I was relieved. His face began to redden, though, as he looked at each of us in turn. His gaze kept moving back to Volont, and he finally said, "What do you want from me?"

"We should confer…" was about all Gunston got out.

"No!" Cletus was scared silly, and getting pissed off that his attorney seemed to be dragging his feet at his salvation. "Just promise me protection. That son of a bitch is a professional killer!"

We quickly completed what Davies later said was the "fastest, strangest" deal and information exchange he'd ever done.

Mercifully, it was also vomit-free.

Cletus was given federal protection, and his charge of two counts of Conspiracy to Commit Murder was reduced to Obstruction of Justice, to which he would enter a plea of guilty. Quite a deal, indeed. Until you consider that, if tried in Nation County, he probably would have gotten at least as good a result.

In exchange, he gave us Gabriel on a platter. Well, as far as I was concerned.

Jacob Henry Nieuhauser, whom he had known for several years, had come to him for a place to stay while he scouted "five handy little banks" that he intended to take off. These banks apparently had been part of his original plan back in June of 1996, when events in our county had conspired to thwart him.

What banks? Cletus didn't know. But the number five had been mentioned.

He'd let Nieuhauser, a.k.a. Gabriel, use his home, while Cletus and his wife were wintering in Florida. Low-profile, no problem. He'd received the phone call, all right. From Gabriel, who had told him that he'd become aware that he was under surveillance by some cops for about a week or so, and had been preparing to "take measures to throw them off the trail" when the cops had broken into the house. He was certain they were cops, because they'd told him they were.

I thought that was pretty sad.

Cletus said that Gabriel had killed one, then tried to question the other. The second brother tried denying that they were cops, even though they'd originally said that they were. Since the young man was adamant about it, after a few minutes of questioning, he'd killed him, too. It had been "necessary." His cover was being blown.

Of course there had been no information. Neither of the poor damned Colson brothers could possibly know shit about what Gabriel wanted. Talk about terror. Especially for the second one to go. I tried to make that very clear to Cletus, but he was so worried about himself I don't think it took.

The computers were engaged in what was called "distributed computing," a network of over 100 machines, each working on a small portion of a project. But he didn't know of what kind. Where was Gabriel now? He didn't know, but he was sure that he was around. The banks were scheduled to go down soon, and he knew that Gabriel wasn't going to be put off this time around. The cause needed money.

We made Cletus disappear this way: We called for an ambulance to come to the Sheriffs Department. When they arrived, we told them that we needed a special favor. Volont and I accompanied Cletus and his attorney in the ambulance to the hospital. Volont had called for a chopper. It arrived, and we made all the right fuss to have Cletus look as if he were on his way to a major trauma center. Put him onboard in a stretcher and everything. Four FBI agents were in the chopper. Volont insisted that Gunston accompany him. Insisted by way of placing him in protective custody. No kidding. I never thought they could really do that.

As Volont said, it kept both of them out of the way for a good seventy-two hours.

He told me that the Huey took them to Waterloo, where they would be held at a National Guard facility.

We spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out how to prevent the bank robberies.

I enjoyed eating dinner in Lamar's office. Cheeseburgers delivered by Maitland PD and Judy. Being the only person in the room on a low-fat diet, to me they tasted fantastic. Somehow, I'd become convinced that, if I ate that stuff under these circumstances, it just didn't count. You know. Like when the waiter delivers the wrong thing to your table, and you get stuck with lots of gravy… I think I burned off most of the fat calories with frustration, anyway. We had real problems.

Let me just say that the bank jobs fall into two possible categories. First, there are robberies, which by definition would have to occur while there were people in the bank. Second, burglaries, which would occur when the banks were not occupied. The second was the least dangerous for all concerned, but the first was a hell of a lot more likely to get you into the safe. It would very likely be open during business hours. Open meant daylight. Closed meant night.

My point, and the one that stuck the whole operation together from our end, was just what Volont had always preached. Gabriel wasn't a "criminal" type, he was a soldier. There was a very big difference in approach.

I said as much.

"What?" asked Art, in rare humor. "Are we talking air strikes here, or what?" He was happier than hell to have the double murder solved. Knowing him, I figured he was only giving us half his attention, with the other half trying to figure out how he could claim credit for the entire case.

I think the most difficult thing to do as a cop is to predict what robbery or burglary target will be hit, how the suspect will do it, and when. I've worked on Task Forces where some of the best cops around were trying, and just couldn't get it to add up.

I shared one with the group. I told about the time that eleven counties and the state were trying to bust a group that was breaking into implement dealers at night, stealing tools, chain saws, snow blowers, lawn mowers… anything that could fit in the back of a pickup or a van. By the time the Task Force got involved, these boys had done almost thirty jobs.

We had drawn in the locations of each hit on an area map. Tried to find a center of gravity for the dots. One of the cops had an MBA, and did an analysis of the center of distribution that would have earned a promotion in the real world. We tried to determine which direction they would go by date of occurrence. We tried to determine how they would possibly scout a potential target. We did sort of a market analysis on items that were best stolen in particular seasons. We tried to find where they lived by correlating locations of burglaries. We skewed the maps by driving time instead of distance from possible origins. Then…

We got information from a snitch as to who they were. We followed them, and on the third night, busted them in a dealership. So much for pure "intelligence." Oh, yes. The kicker.

"We asked them how they determined what target to hit," I said. "Turns out that they'd buy a case of beer, put it in the van with the five of them, and start to drive aimlessly around. When the beer ran out, they'd just go to whatever implement dealer was closest, and bust in. No plan. Really skewed our maps on a couple of occasions when the driver had got lost, once in the fog." I chuckled. "We never thought to correlate the radius with driving conditions on a particular night."

"The point being?" asked Art, who had also been on that Task Force.

"Well," I said, "those were criminals we were dealing with. Nobody knows criminals better than a bunch of senior cops. And we couldn't predict what they were going to do next." I looked at him. "And here we are, trying to second-guess a professional soldier. Like, what are the odds?"

He glared.

"Unless we have a professional soldier in our midst," I said, "this is going to be very interesting." I was hoping that Volont would call in somebody from the U.S. Army, as an adviser. I hoped that one for a long time.

As usual, the real problem was that we didn't have enough information. Things like "five banks simultaneously" are worthless. We needed to know just who was working with him. How competent they were. How many associates did he have? Hell, just which "five banks" would be nice! And the really big question: Why hit five mediocre banks and get little, when you could go to a metro area, hit one for the same effort, and get a lot? I secretly suspected that our lack of officers had something to do with it. George put it pretty well when he said, "Carl, nothing personal, but with two to three of you on a shift, a bank robber could be fifty miles away before you could block very many roads."

"Frankly," said Volont, "they could be a long way before you could block this parking lot."

Art resented that, bless him. His face got kind of reddish, and he got a familiar, sour look on his face. I noticed that he didn't have a rejoinder.

Anyway, don't misunderstand. I love doing the map thing, drawing radii, plotting routes, assigning units, all that good stuff. Wonderful board game. Delightful. But in this case, with the information we had, it was pointless. It was like doing a map exercise on a blank piece of paper.

Volont had resources at his disposal that, given a day or two, could accomplish virtually anything. Really. Somebody would come up with a miniscenario, mark a map, and Volont would start saying things like "We could put a team here and here… a surveillance team here and here…" Wow. Really. Resources like that just trip my trigger. He talked about "helicopter landing zones," with the solid assurance of a man who utilized them all the time. But it was futile, having the resources and nowhere to use them. Like standing in front of a game machine that took only nickels, with a ten-pound bag that contained only quarters clutched in your little hand.

We stuck with it, though. We had nothing else to go on, or so I thought.

The intercom buzzed, and I answered. Judy, with a phone call for Volont. He took it out in the reception area. He was back in less than a minute.

"If you gentlemen will excuse me for a short while, I have some other business to attend to."

We did.

Just like so many other times, that little interruption broke the train of the meeting, and everybody just about simultaneously decided to take a break.

I took George aside out in the kitchen, when I went out to make a pot of coffee and he tagged along for the exercise. "What did you interview Nancy and Shamrock for?"

"Mostly to find out what they knew, and to tell them they couldn't use anything they had learned about a particular individual."

"George, damn it, it's our murder. We can deal with the press if we want to." The coffeepot had stopped gurgling, and was in the hiss-and-steam phase, which meant the water reservoir had emptied. The flavor was best then, before all the water had dripped through. I turned the pot off, and pulled the basket.

He shrugged. "We mostly wanted to shut down anything about Gabriel. They seemed to understand. Including the film."

"'The film'?" I stood there with the pot in one hand, and a cup in the other, and nearly poured the contents on the floor.

"Shamrock's film. I asked her to let us keep the strip of negatives that contained the photos of Gabriel. Two frames."

I chuckled. "You mentioned Gabriel?"

"Volont specifically told me to. As Nieuhauser, of course. Not Gabriel. But this Nancy is pretty sharp. She picked up on it right away."

"Yeah." I poured my coffee, and put the pot down. "So, you don't think you pissed them off totally, then?"

"Oh, no. They were very nice." He poured his own, adding fat-free milk and sugar substitute.

"How is that shit?" I asked.

"Awful. Milk and sugar are good, though."

"Thanks." I took a sip. "Doesn't Volont realize that he just drew Nancy's attention to Gabe?"

"I'm sure he does," said George. "I'm just not clear as to why."

He sipped his coffee, looking a bit worried. "Can I trust you with something?"

"You betcha."

He closed the door. "This is supersecret, and you never heard it. I'm deadly serious about this."

He sure appeared to be. "Fine. I'm good for it," I said.

"Okay… here you go. Don't ask how I know this, either, by the way. I can't tell you." George took a deep breath. "Okay. First, Gabriel is supposed to be leading Volont to some 'big man' in the antigovernment movements. Really big man. Gabe was Volont's snitch. At some point in the past. For sure. Volont squeezed him a few years ago, over some arms sales or something. But Volont's lost control of him. As if you hadn't figured that part out."

I just nodded. I figured this was not the time to demonstrate ignorance.

"Volont's pissed. 'Cause now old Gabe is simply getting ready to make a hit to fill his own pockets, and run away to somewhere. Not for the 'movement.' That's all phony as hell, now." George looked around, just checking, I guess. "None of this 'five banks' thing is for anything other than Gabe. All his associates don't know this, but he's just using them for his own purposes."

"And Volont knows all this?" I asked.

"And a hell of a lot more," said George. "He's got people on the inside, I'm certain."

"I'll be damned." I thought for a few seconds, wondering who that could be. "And he's probably known this for a while now, hasn't he?"

"You could say that," said George.

"I know what that Spook stuffs like, George. Are you sure Volont is right about him not doing this for the 'movement,' or anything like that? Could he have misled Volont?"

George grinned. "Wheels within wheels. Just know what I've been told," he said.

"Sounds true," I said. "You know what they say about 'doing it for the movement.' Just means you don't have to pay the help."

Fascinating. Unfortunately, it didn't change a thing as far as murder and bank burglary were concerned. Ideology aside, we still had the same problems going on.

"Thanks, George," I said. "A lot." He'd taken a large risk to tell me that. I just wished it had been something I could have used to stop the "five banks" stuff, or to have prevented the deaths of the Colson brothers. But I did file it away, and very carefully, too.

Between the office and home, a distance of six blocks, I decided to go take a peek at the Grossman place.

It was about eight miles out. Dispatch thought I was going home. If anything happened, I didn't want any sort of mix-up.

"Comm, Three, on INFO?"

"Three," the dispatcher crackled back on the INFO channel, where she could hear me, but other cars couldn't.

"Comm, I'll be in the car in the central part of the county for a while."

"Ten-four, Three, ten-six at 2044."

Just in case.

Every limestone rock quarry has two "roads" that lead to it. The main one, and the one that everybody sees is the ground level entrance the trucks use. But the second one runs to the top of the quarry, and is used by workers who want to drill and blast. They aren't used all that often, and are sometimes very difficult to find. This particular one had come to my attention during a raid on a beer party more than ten years back. It entered the quarry area from nearly a quarter of a mile back down the road, and twisted through a stand of trees on it's way to the top of the quarry hill. No snow plow would ever go here, but since nobody else had, either, it wasn't particularly slippery. Road ice usually comes from traffic on snow, compressing it, and making the ice. Snow, if you're careful, isn't all that slippery. Especially in below zero temperatures. I crept up the back slope at about five miles per hour, lights off. It took me a good five minutes, but at the top I was rewarded with a passable view of Grossman's house, and the broad valley leading to the Borglan farm.

I picked up my binoculars, and cranked down my side window. Cold, but much clearer than looking through the glass. The vibrations of the engine prevented me from resting my arm on the window edge, but I needed that heater on. I looked over the area. Lights, and two pickup trucks in the yard. Unremarkable.

I put the binoculars down, and waited about five minutes. I looked around my perch, able to see more since I was beginning to dark adapt. Trees. Rocks jutting up out of the snow along the edge of the man-made bluff, to keep trucks from slipping over the edge. I looked to be about 50 or 60 feet above the quarry floor. The more I looked about, the more it appeared that I might not have enough room to turn my car around on top of the quarry. Shit. Was I going to have to back down?

I decided to give it a while longer. If I crunched the car up backing down that access road, I wanted to have something to show for it.

My radio crackled to life. "Comm, Nation County Cars, radio check…"

Every hour, on the hour, after 9 P.M., they checked. The patrol units gave their current location as a response. On the OPS channel, where all ears could hear them. When she called my number, I responded with a simple "Three, ten-four…" on Info. The other cars couldn't hear me, but they would know I was still out.

I looked at the house again. Nothing. Now, that was weird. I mean, it wasn't that big a house, and with two pickups in the yard, that meant that they had company. It was likely that they would all be on the ground floor, with the possible exception of little Carrie. But there was no movement, and most of the lights were on in the kitchen, which I could see pretty clearly.

I put the binoculars down again, and sat. What were they doing? Watching TV as a group? I rolled up my window. If I didn't, I was going to start to shiver, and shivering makes it impossible to use binoculars.

I unrolled the window after a few minutes, and thought I heard a popping sound. I switched off the ignition, and in the silence, could hear a roaring that seemed to be coming from near the farm.

Suddenly, two farm tractors emerged from Grossman's backyard, and began heading up the valley toward Borglan's. Neither had their headlights on, and both seemed to be pulling something. In the dark it was very hard to tell, but it looked like they each had a large, flat object behind them. About the size of a barn door, but it looked like they had stuff piled on top. Like hay bales.

I was surprised. No doubt. I was even more surprised about a minute later, when they both turned as a group, lined up side by side, and began to slowly traverse the valley about a quarter mile above the house. As I watched, they went about 100 yards, turned, and went back. What the hell?

They did the whole routine again. And again. And I became aware that they were slowly working their way back to the Grossmans', combing the field as they went. It took quite a while, but when they finally got back to Grossman's yard, they both turned around and went right back up to where they'd started the back and forth trips. Were they looking for something?

Then, they turned again, and this time made about fifty trips up and down the valley. Not moving over ten miles per hour.

Then it occurred to me that the sons of bitches were obliterating all the snowmobile tracks between Grossman's and Borglan's. That had to be it. And that meant that we had missed something really important in those tracks. Damn.

It took them about an hour and a half. Then, they returned to Grossman's, packed up their sleds, and left. Just like that. Two minutes after they had gone, everything looked absolutely normal.

I finally got turned around, and got back down to the road. I turned south, to avoid Grossman's place.

I saw headlights in front of me, approaching. They were about half a mile off. Crap. I was about to be discovered by a neighbor. Although theoretically unmarked, my car was pretty easily recognizable as a cop car without decals or top lights.

Nothing for it but to get moving, and pretend I was just passing by. Whoever I met would just assume I'd been traveling all along. I hoped.

We met when I was about half a mile south of Grossman's drive. Red pickup, towing a snowmobile trailer with two snowmobiles on it. BHK 234. Minnesota. Red pickup.

I waited until it was out of sight in the rearview mirror, then spun around and followed it north. I had to know.

It turned into Grossman's drive. Damn. I hastily tore off my glove, and reached inside my vest for a pen. Guiding the car with my knee under the steering wheel, I hastily scribbled the plate on the back of my hand. Damn. A late arrival?

A few minutes later, I called dispatch. "Comm, Three, I'll be ten-forty-two. Mileage 31566." That meant I was done with my shift, and the mileage was to make sure I wasn't using the car to vacation in Florida. Department rules. I'd give the mileage again when I went to work. Of course, having written it on my log, I could easily fake it. But, then, most county rules were like that.

As soon as I got to the house, I phoned Dispatch, and ran that plate. "Yeah, it's Houseman. Could you give me a twenty-eight and twenty-nine on Minnesota Passenger Boy Henry King two three four, run the twenty-seven, get a twenty-nine and Triple I on that." The registration came back to Timothy Frederick Olson, twenty-two, of Brainerd, Minnesota. No wants. No warrants. The criminal history would come back a little later.

"Would you just leave all of it in my box? I'll pick it up in the morning."

"Got it. Sleep tight."

"Thanks." Well, that had likely accomplished very little. They used to tell me that you couldn't ever have too much information. Maybe so. But you sure could have too much to process in the allotted time.