Known Dead_ A Novel - Donald Harstad [105]
Volont had been telling the truth about the federal kidnapping charges. Eight State Patrol cars pulled up about two minutes after he left the back office. Troopers all over the place, shooing everybody but us out of our parking lot, and then getting us to move our cars as well. Creating a security lane for the prisoners. Pretty soon, three separate cars came zipping into the lot. Federal marshals. To transport the prisoners, separately. The two people we had working the jail were busier than they had ever been in their whole lives, for about thirty minutes. Then, with all three prisoners wearing jail clothes and bulletproof vests, and pretty well surrounded by troopers, marshals, and George, they were whisked off into the waiting cars and left under heavy trooper escort.
They were gone, leaving some really confused attorneys in their wake. None of our local lawyers were even qualified to appear in Federal Court. Which meant that, within the next few hours, there would be another layer of three more attorneys to deal with. The Stritch family might as well have gone to the moon.
What was more, Volont had inadvertently created a situation where the press was absolutely bound to follow the trail of the prisoners. He’d just started the machinery that would probably take Borcherding to Cedar Rapids and out of our immediate view. And now that I thought about it, Nancy would be going there as well, both to do her job and to do ours. And with the prisoners now under the control of the Linn County jail, I wouldn’t be able to slip Nancy in for an ‘‘accidental’’ interview, even if I wanted to.
‘‘Jesus Christ, Hester,’’ I said, ‘‘doesn’t anybody want us to solve these cases?’’
Tomorrow was Saturday, the 27th, and Bud’s funeral. It had been delayed a bit by the forensic people, but they had guaranteed Saturday. That meant that things were going to be really crowded, and things we needed to do weren’t going to get done. Interestingly enough, there didn’t appear to be anybody interested in Rumsford’s body. They were having a hard time finding relatives, I guess. For whatever reason, his funeral was going to be on the 29th. Someplace in Canada. I was surprised to find out that he was a Canadian, although I don’t know why. I wondered if that French-Canadian film crew would come back.
Anyway, we had to get cracking on something, and soon.
‘‘Hester,’’ I said, ‘‘why don’t we give Colonel Gabe a jingle?’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘On his e-mail.’’
‘‘Can we do this?’’
‘‘That’s easy,’’ I said. ‘‘Making him think it’s from Herman Stritch is gonna be a little tougher.’’
‘‘But,’’ she said, ‘‘can we do this? I mean, isn’t this a wiretap?’’
We both looked at George. ‘‘Well, in the strictest sense, or any other, for that matter, I think the court would appreciate it if we got an order to do this . . .’’
‘‘You think we can get one?’’ It had to be federal. Iowa didn’t have any enabling wiretap legislation.
‘‘If I fax an application to my partner, we can get it pretty fast. But Volont will know about it.’’
‘‘Right away?’’ I asked.
‘‘Oh, probably not,’’ said George, ‘‘but the U.S. Attorney will, and he’ll get around to mentioning it sooner or later.’’
‘‘And that’s a normal way of obtaining a wiretap order?’’ asked Hester. ‘‘You don’t have to go through your boss?’’
‘‘Pretty much,’’ said George. ‘‘He’ll read it in the monthly summary, or somewhere.’’
‘‘Go for it,’’ said Hester. ‘‘So long as it doesn’t get you fired.’’
First of all, I figured that if it took George a short time to track down the address of Borcherding, it would take somebody like this Colonel Gabe maybe just a bit longer. So we had to be accurate. Second, I thought it was likely that Billy Stritch was the one who set the computer stuff up in the first place, although we’d have to confirm that with Melissa. We might have to make the message from him. But it was going to come through to Colonel Gabe as an authentic contact from the Stritch family.
Predictably, the Sheriff’s Department didn’t have a computer, except our NCIC terminal, which was connected to a modem.