The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [156]
“It’s three-and-a-half miles south of Frieberg, off County Road X8G, then the second gravel to …”
I hate to be rude, but I was trying to pull on my blue jeans and still talk on the phone. Writing the directions down was out of the question.
“Just tell me after I get in the car and headed up to Frieberg. I’ll take X8G up, okay?”
“Sure,” she said. Her voice got some crisp back into it, and I knew I’d hurt her feelings by implying criticism.
“I’m trying to put on my pants,” I said, and grinned as I said it, to lighten my voice. “Only so many hands.”
“Oh … sure … just one more thing, maybe, while I have you on the phone. I don’t think this should be on the radio.”
Having at least managed to get both legs in the jeans, I sat on the end of the bed, and said, “Sure.”
“Eight called me on the phone, and said that this is a really bad one, but that it’s a confirmed suicide.”
“Oh?” I hate pulling on socks with one hand. I also hate junior officers making bald-faced statements like that. I mean, they’re probably right most of the time, but all you need in a possible murder case is for some defense attorney to get his hands on a logged statement like that one. “But doesn’t it say, right here, that the first officer on the scene determined this to be a suicide?” But the log couldn’t be changed. Only amended, sort of. “Log it that I say that it’s not a suicide until the ME’s office says so,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Really bad. That’s all he said.”
“Okay, kid. You call Lamar yet?” Lamar was our sheriff, and he liked to be kept well informed of tragic and disastrous happenings in the county. Mainly because he hated to go to breakfast at Phil’s Café and have somebody ask him about a case before he knew we had a case. Looked bad. I pushed my stocking feet into my tennis shoes.
“Yes, and he said to send you right up.”
“Well, let’s see if we can’t arrange that,” I said with a hissing sound as I bent over to tie my shoe laces, the phone pressed tightly between my shoulder and my ear.
“And he said to call him if you needed him to come, too.”
“Fine. I’ll call you on the radio….” I pressed the “off” button on the phone and turned to put it back in the charger.
“You need any help?” came Sue’s voice from the other side of the bed. “It sure looks like it from here.”
“No.”
“I’m going to try to go back to sleep …”
I stood, pulled a dark gray polo shirt over my head, and slid my clip-on holster into my belt, on my right hip. I walked over to Sue, bent down, and gave her a kiss.
“Good luck.”
“You, too,” she said, nearly asleep again already.
I grabbed my gun, my walkie-talkie, my ID case, billfold, and car keys from their drawer downstairs in the dining room, and was in my unmarked patrol car and reporting in to the Dispatch Center at 0749.
“What time did you call me, Comm?” I asked. Curious.
“0740.”
“10-4.” Nine minutes. Getting old, I thought.
I left Maitland, the County Seat, where I lived and the Sheriff’s Office was located, and headed up the state highway to the intersection with X8G. It was a really pretty morning, the leaves were turning, and the hillsides were bright yellows and reds, and the cornfields were a yellowish-tan that seemed to almost flow in the valleys and up the slopes of some of the hills. The sky was a brilliant blue, absolutely no clouds anywhere. It was about 50 degrees, and warming. I love October.
The police radio in my car was ominously quiet. Only officers can really know the spooky feeling that comes with that particular brand of silence. You know there’s something really bad, you’re going to the scene, and it’s absolutely quiet because most of the communications traffic is either on the phones, or just not happening at all because you’re the designated catalyst for the next phase, and you aren’t there yet. Sort of undercurrents, I guess. But you learn to hate silence, sometimes.
I was moving about 70 or so, no lights or siren. Not really necessary, because