The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [157]
I was bothered again about Borman and the “suicide” statement, as I turned off onto X8G, and dipped down into a valley along the Mississippi. He really should have known better, even with just a couple of years under his belt.
I went by an old boat landing on my right, then between a stretch of very small weekend cabins on the right, and a silica sand mine cut into the high limestone bluff on my left.
Borman was taking a class in “Humanizing the Police,” or some such thing, taught by a counselor via a college extension plan. He was picking up on all these “empathy” techniques, and I strongly suspected that this had somehow influenced him this morning. Or, maybe, I just was reluctant to acknowledge that he was of a younger generation of cops. I chuckled to myself. Maybe, indeed. Fifty-five really isn’t that old. Well, not if you’re ninety.
About a quarter of a mile, I turned back west, or inland, onto a gravel road called Willow, slowed to fifty or so, and called in.
“Comm, Three. Just turned onto Willow Road. How ’bout those directions now?”
“10-4, Three. Take your next right turn to the north onto Beau View drive. Take the second drive after the curve that sends you back east, toward the river.”
I paused, setting the directions in my mind. It was the great big house on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi. The Mansion, as it was usually known, although the local kids called it the Dropout Dorm, because of the people who lived there.
“Comm, the ‘M’ word?” I hoped she got it, because I didn’t want anybody to know precisely where I was headed. I didn’t know if the Dispatcher, the Ambulance crew or Borman had specifically referred to the Mansion, but I wasn’t going to. If somebody with a scanner had missed the initial traffic, I wasn’t going to help them out.
“10-4, that’s the one. 911 locator should be 24354. 24354.”
I’d always been fascinated by the Mansion: it was huge, of a kind called Victorian or Queen Anne, or something. It was perched at the end of a long lane on top of the bluff, with what had to be one of the finest views of the Mississippi River that was available from privately owned land. I’d never really been in the place before, although I’d been in the yard once. It was far and away the biggest house in Nation County.
“10-4, Comm, I know the location. ETA about five.”
If it hadn’t been for the 911 address sign 24354, and a big, blue plastic refuse bin that was just visible from the road, you wouldn’t even have known there was a lane there at all. Located smack in the middle of the “Beiderbaum Timber,” a wooded area that ran along the west, or Iowa, bank of the Mississippi for about ten miles, the house sat out toward the east end of a long, wide finger of land that pointed right at the Mississippi River. Bordered by two streams, or creeks as they’re called locally, the ridge itself was about half a mile wide, with the east end about two miles from the road that ran along its west side. I’d guess that the top of the ridge was about two hundred fifty feet above the roadway, covered with trees and low bushes and foliage on the long sides, and ending in a vertical limestone bluff overlooking the river. The gravel drive that extended uphill was nearly a mile and a half long, winding from the valley floor, through a heavily wooded area that had littered the road surface with fallen leaves. I kept it at about 30 mph, just in case I met someone headed in the opposite direction. The lane didn’t seem to be quite wide enough to accommodate two-way traffic. I crested the rise, onto the top of the finger-shaped ridge, and traveled the last quarter mile on nearly level ground. The trees were just as thick up here, a mixture of brilliant yellow maples and tall, dark green pines. As I drove on to the house, I caught a glimpse