Code 61 - Donald Harstad [85]
“Hey! Stop throwing the damned rocks!” came from the split.
I was grinning from ear to ear at that point. “Come out slowly and with your hands where we can see them!”
“Okay, okay.” With that, there was a shuffling and a grunting, and a man emerged, hands up, head down, wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans. His head was down more to avoid thrown rocks, I thought, than for any other reason.
While Hester and Tillman covered me, I approached slowly, gun back in my hand, but pointed down. “Stop right there.”
He did. I still couldn't see his face.
“Who are you?”
He looked up at me. “Bill Chester. You know me.”
Honest to God. Our intrepid vampire hunter. “What the hell are you doing up here?”
“Can I put my hands down?”
“Yeah, go ahead. So, what the hell are you doing up here?”
“Can't a man just take a walk in the woods?”
Tillman spoke up. “I told you to stop. I got a uniform on. You saw us down at that car, with a marked cop car. Why'd you rabbit on me?”
I thought that was a pretty good question.
“I'm not sure I have to tell you that.”
I was getting a little tired of Mr. Chester. “That your car?”
“No, it belongs to a friend of mine.”
“Your friend here, too?” I asked.
“No. I'm alone.”
“You drove over here just to take a walk up a bluff?”
“There's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing. I can drive and walk just about anywhere I want to. I don't see any 'No Trespassing' signs.”
“That car's got an expired registration,” I said. “You just admitted to driving it here. We're going to have to charge you, and impound the vehicle.”
“What?”
“And your fleeing obvious officers will suggest to a court that you were fully aware that the registration was expired, and were trying to avoid capture.” It was a moment.
“That would be chickenshit. I am appalled!”
I just smiled. It would at least make up for my good wash pants.
“Care to tell me why you're really here?” asked Hester sweetly. “I do have some influence with these two officers.”
“You might have him start with that,” I said, indicating the edge of a dark green backpack protruding from the ffssure.
Chester stepped back, and moved as if he was going to reach for the pack. He glanced at us, to see what the reaction would be, and found himself staring down the muzzles of three handguns.
“Freeze,” said Hester. “Don't move a muscle.”
He stopped. “I was just going to hand it to you.”
“I'll get it,” said Tillman. He moved slowly past Chester, reached down, and retrieved the backpack.
A long time ago, the Supreme Court ruled that we could make searches “incidental to arrest.” In this case, that meant that we had every right to examine the contents of the backpack before we handed it back to him. Just in case there was a “weapon contained therein,” as we say.
“Look through it,” I said to Tillman, as Hester and I lowered our guns again. I stepped closer to Chester.
“I told you to steer clear of this case,” I said, “and I meant it.”
“I haven't interfered. Not once.”
I decided not to mention my suspicion that it was him who had leaked the vampire stuff to the press. Instead, I said, “You're less than half a mile from the Mansion right now, and there's nothing else on this bluff but the scene of a possible crime.”
“He's less than a quarter mile from there, Carl,” said Tillman, who probably hunted in these woods.
“I had no idea…. ” said Chester, just as Tillman held up a small gray case with an LCD screen in its face and a keypad. It looked like a hand calculator.
“This is a GPS receiver, Carl,” said Tillman, “and it works.” Tillman was young, and