Known Dead_ A Novel - Donald Harstad [100]
It was much more complex than that, though, because of the implication of the whole family in the death of Bud and the wounding of Lamar. And they were still in court making their appearances. We had to wait. What did we do?
There was almost nobody in the restaurant when we got there. Great. Just after we’d been served, several people, men and women, all in their late forties to mid-sixties, came in and were seated all around us. They seemed pretty well dressed for a Friday noon crowd. They began talking about the ‘‘damned Feds,’’ the ‘‘damned judges,’’ and the ‘‘conspiracies’’ of various sorts. Obviously, a support group from the Stritch appearances. Obviously a little biased as well. Thing was, I didn’t know any of them. I normally would have known at least one or two people in a group that size and age, if they were local.
We all looked at each other and ate just a little faster. One of the men announced that there were ‘‘Feds’’ everywhere and that they’d better be careful what they said. But they just kept on talking. I thought George would choke.
When we left, I wrote down the license plates of several of the cars in the lot. They were from northern Iowa and southern Minnesota, for the most part. Not local.
We got back to the Sheriff’s Department, and discovered that the Stritch family had demanded to be represented by ‘‘common law’’ lawyers, which request had been quite rightly refused by the judge. He’d appointed three local attorneys to represent the family, individually. The family didn’t want them. So we had three prisoners who were pissed off, three attorneys in the reception area trying to figure out how to represent clients who refused to talk to them, three cops who wanted to talk to those same clients . . .
As one of the attorneys said to me: ‘‘Look, Carl, if I let you talk to them and advise them as to how to answer, they’ll just sue me. If I don’t let you talk to them, they’ll sue me. And any way you cut it, they’ll try to get me censured by the court for not properly representing them in the first place. I’ll just have to get back to you on that . . .’’
One of the others, who had a sense of humor, said, ‘‘If I let you talk to my client, will you give him my bill?’’
We weren’t getting very far. Hester, George, and I moved to the back office to regroup.
A phone call came in. Dispatch said it was from somebody who wanted to ‘‘speak with the cop in charge of the killings in the woods.’’ I took it.
‘‘Houseman.’’
‘‘You the cop doin’ the killin’ of the cop and the little snitch in the woods?’’ It was a male voice, fairly deep, matter-of-fact. I frantically waved my free hand at Hester and George. This sounded real.
‘‘One of ’em.’’
‘‘We just want you to know, for what it’s worth, that we got the guy who did it.’’
‘‘You do?’’
‘‘No, man. We did.’’
Hester had picked up the second phone, and was listening.
‘‘Where’s he at? Where can I meet with him?’’ The ‘‘we did’’ sounded ominous, and I hoped I was misunderstanding him on that.
‘‘You can find him at an abandoned farm. Two miles out of Jollietville, just off Highway 433. Address is 23224 Willow Lane. The old Harris place.’’ With that, he hung up.
Jollietville was in Wisconsin. Just across the river from us. We called the Conception County Sheriff’s Department and gave them the message. We told them to hurry, just in case.
We talked about the call. We agreed that the use of the term ‘‘little snitch’’ made it sound like it might be dope-related. But ‘‘the guy who did it’’ couldn’t be correct. There absolutely had been more than one shooter.
A callback came from Conception County within fifteen minutes. Cell phone from their chief investigator, a Harry Ullman. I’d known him for years.
‘‘Houseman?’’
‘‘Yeah. What you got, Harry?’’
‘‘We got kind of a dangling corpse on a farm. I think it’s related to your guys getting ambushed in the woods. If you hurry, you can get here before we cut him down.’’
We went in George’s car. The