Known Dead_ A Novel - Donald Harstad [42]
‘‘I wouldn’t think Jake would.’’
She smiled. ‘‘He’s snitchin’ for Johnny Marks. I know that. Like, duh, you know?’’
‘‘Sure.’’ And maybe he knew where Johnny was.
Jake pulled in. ‘‘But he’s got somethin’ to tell you, Mr. Houseman. I think it’s straight.’’
Jake never got out of the car. He kept the engine running, obviously nervous, and probably not too sure if it would start again. It was difficult to hear him.
‘‘Hi, Mr. Houseman,’’ he said, not quite looking at me, and with a very grim face.
‘‘Jake. How you doin’?’’
‘‘Good, I guess. Mr. Houseman,’’ he rushed. ‘‘Look, there’s one thing you gotta know. It’s all political, Mr. Houseman. All political.’’
Great. ‘‘Just about everything could be said to be political, Jake. But you mean Howie and the officer being killed?’’
‘‘Yeah.’’
‘‘You think it was the CIA too?’’
‘‘I ain’t saying it was. I ain’t saying it wasn’t. I’m just saying that there’s some powerful people, who know all there is.’’ He looked at me. ‘‘You know who they are.’’
‘‘I don’t think I do. Do you?’’ I asked.
‘‘That’s all I gotta say,’’ he said. ‘‘I ain’t takin’ no fuckin’ chances, and you ain’t never heard me say that.’’ With that, he started to roll the car backward, and Beth scrambled around to the other side to get in.
‘‘Jake . . . get a message to Johnny for me. Tell him to call me.’’
‘‘Goodbye, Mr. Houseman!’’
‘‘Goodbye, Beth.’’
And they were gone, literally in a cloud of dust.
Well, I hadn’t had much to do that afternoon anyway. But I thought that the whole thing was interesting. She was probably as much a victim as the rest of them that day. I sighed, and got back into my car. ‘‘Political.’’ In a way, I supposed he was right. Somehow, somebody had got in somebody’s way. She’d been checking me out the whole time, just so he could deliver his paranoid little message. And, I said to myself, she’d done it for the man who was watching her for Johnny Marks. If Marks was that interested, maybe we really had overlooked something.
When I got back to the office, I entered ‘‘CIA cleared, along with SEALS,’’ in my case notes.
On July 10th, Hester was back, and she and I interviewed a lady from La Crosse who said she had seen somebody in the park that day. She’d called, and driven all the way, very nervous, and flushed. She was about fifty, plump, and exceptionally nice. We were very polite when we learned that she had been in an area of the park almost six miles from the shootings.
On July 11th, we reexamined the crime-scene photos. We’d had some of them blown up. Nothing. We’d had several others transferred to CD, and tried all sorts of things with our computers, like increasing the red intensity, decreasing the blues, eliminating the greens . . . I even went to black and white. The problem was, unless we had something we were looking for, something definite, there was no point.
On the 12th, DEA finally sent out Nichols, who talked to us and to Dahl, and to Johansen for a bit. He was really helpful. He seemed to agree with my movement theory, and seemed impressed with that. He said they had nothing that would explain the shooting of Turd. That they’d get on it as soon as they could. Nichols was really helpful. Well, as much as he could be without having anything new to tell us. He said he didn’t know where Marks was either.
Dahl was really angry by now, at nobody in particular. Like so many undercover narcs, he was a little high-strung. And he had energy to burn. He wanted to redo all the interviews Hester and I had just redone, for example. He’d already pored over every narcotics file he could get his hands on, trying to establish various connections into our area, and then had followed them all up. He’d also been working in his undercover mode up around Freiberg and the park area, and had made the acquaintance of Beth Harper and her new boyfriend, Jake.
‘‘She’s just another doper cunt,’’ he said. Then: ‘‘Uh, sorry, Hester.’’
‘‘That’s fine,’’ said Hester. ‘‘She’s not my little sister.’’
‘‘Really, though,’’ he said. ‘‘She’s not stupid, but