Code 61 - Donald Harstad [121]
“What's he saying?” asked Junkel. “Isn't plonk a term for cheap wine?”
“I dunno,” I said. “Maybe he's thirsty.” Actually, plonk, in this instance, is a usenet term, and it's the sound that a novice internet user makes when he hits the bottom of the kill ffle. To be “kill ffled” means that his correspondents have told their computers to automatically ignore anything from him. The meaning here was that Toby was, if not already dead, considering himself as good as. I felt no compunction to enlighten Junkel. Let him ask his own kids.
Toby hadn't been out the door five minutes, when Dispatch told me that Lamar was on the phone. He was calling from the church hall, where the after-funeral luncheon was winding up.
“Hi, boss.”
“Marteen told me the details,” he said slowly, evenly. “All of 'em.”
“Shit, Lamar, I really didn't want you to have to deal with that.” I was about ready to kill the funeral director, too, but didn't say so.
“I want whoever did it, Carl. I want him bad.”
A good moment, at last. “Oh, we already got him. He's charged, and on his way to MHI.” I thought for a second. I figured I better tell him. “We think the same suspect was there when she was killed, Lamar. He's shaping up as an accomplice. We only have his verbal statement to that effect, and he was wasted when he said it. He's telling the truth, but we have absolutely no hard evidence. I think we should have some pretty soon.”
After a pause, Lamar asked, “Who is it?”
“Toby Gottschalk. There's more, but it'll have to wait.”
“Fine. So long as you got him.”
“What I have to find out now is where she was killed. But we're working on that.”
TWENTY-SIX
Tuesday, October 10, 2000
12:09
Hester and I had a fast chat.
“Toby admitted to conspiracy to commit murder,” she said. “If I heard him correctly.”
“Yeah,” I answered. “I think you did. Not any evidence but his statement, yet, though.” It was not nearly enough, even if he'd been completely rational and had provided it in writing.
“True. But it opens the doors wider and wider.”
“Damn, Hester, we really gotta find out where Edie was killed. There has to be evidence all over the place, wherever it is.”
“We also have to find Peale. Any ideas?”
“I'd like to talk to Jessica Hunley about him,” I said.
“Me, too. You think Toby was on meth? Or ecstasy?”
“I'd say both of them, plus a little home grown psychosis. Too bad, he's sort of a bright guy.”
“When he talked to Peale, and from what he just told us I think we can safely assume it was by telephone, he really must have been convinced. He even thought he was stronger,” she said.
“Yeah.” It obviously hadn't occurred to Toby that, since the autopsy, Edie's internal organs weren't all in the same place, or in the same condition, that they had been when she was alive. Not to mention that the chest had already been opened, to enable her heart and lungs to be removed for examination. It was no wonder the stake had gone in so easily. He probably could have just leaned on it, and it would have penetrated into what had once been her mediastinum, and gone all the way to the spinal column.
“You know,” I said, “he mentioned something about striking the stake. We didn't find anything. I wonder what he used, and where he put it?” Evidence.
“If he was as wired then as he is now,” said Hester, “he probably used his forehead.”
I checked my “to do” box at the dispatch counter. There were three notes in it, from the dispatcher who had gotten off duty at 09:00. The first said she'd received a phone call from the DCI crime lab. The blood in the white body bag we'd found in the trash had been human, as expected, and the lab had confirmed the blood type with our pathologist, Dr. Peters. It was the same as Edie's. Type B negative. Not a lot, but one more little piece of the puzzle. We'd have to wait quite a while for DNA matching.
The second note was hand written on a teletype page. It was confirmation from the London Metropolitan Police, and indicated that there was no such person as Daniel