The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [5]
“Uh, well, do you have anything about that Bohr, Bohr, Borglan place, out on W4G, down by the Church crossroads?” asked Fred.
“Cletus Borglan’s, you mean?” A perfect target. Borglan and his family wintered in Florida, usually leaving right after Christmas. And about a half mile from where Mike had come upon Fred about an hour ago. I began to feel a glimmer of hope.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Goober began to rock back and forth, just a little twitchy movement, but noticeable.
“No.” Not unless somebody had forgotten to tell me, I thought.
“Oh, boy. Oh, boy.” He sat holding on to the front edge of the seat with both hands, looking down. “I wish you had, Mr. Houseman. Oh, boy.” He sounded like he was going to cry. He began to rock a bit harder.
I figured that he was about to snitch somebody off, and that he was hoping that we had a report of the burglary already, so that he wouldn’t be telling me something that only he and the burglar would know. A hazardous practice, without a doubt.
“If you’re worried about us ‘finding it,’ Fred, we can always come up with something that’ll keep you out of that part.” I tried to be helpful.
“No, it’s not that. Thanks, though.”
“Sure.” I waited a second. “Come on, Goober. Spit it out.”
“It’s just that, well, meh, meh, me and my cousins from Oelwein … we been the ones doing those break-ins, you know?”
“Just a second, Fred. Are you saying that you’ve been directly involved with some of them?” A confession? Could I be that lucky?
“Mostly all, I suspect,” he answered, in a soft voice. The rocking increased, perceptibly.
Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you. Up to now, we hadn’t had a single clue as to who had been doing the burglaries. I took a breath, to slow myself down, and to try to appear matter-of-fact. “I’m going to have to advise you of your rights, Fred.”
“Sure, but that ain’t what it’s about. Not why I was out here … not directly, Mr. Houseman.”
I told him to hang on a second, and very quickly recited his Miranda rights to him. To be safe. “There, Fred. Now, do you understand those rights?”
“Yeah. But, Mr. Houseman, you gotta understand. Dirk and Royce, my cousins, they had me driving the car, you know?”
“While they did the burglaries, you mean?”
“I just drive ’em out to the place, you know, and they get out and sneak in, and then I go away for a while, and I come back and pick ’em up.”
“You pick ’em up? They go in on foot?”
“Yeah.”
He looked up beseechingly. “Am I gonna get charged with manslaughter, or something, if they’re dead?”
I must have given him my dumb look.
“If they’re dead, are you gonna send me away? I just gotta know.”
Fred leaned forward, terribly earnest. “You gotta understand, Mr. Houseman. That’s what I been trying to tell you. I dropped ’em off Sunday night. Two nights ago. On the other side of the hill back of the place. I saw ’em go over the hill, to go into the place.” He stared at me with wide eyes. “They never came back out.”
Three
Tuesday, January 13, 1998, 0018
Fred kept talking. “I came back two hours later, like I was supposed to, and they wasn’t there. I came back again after an hour, and they wasn’t there. I honked the horn, even if I wasn’t supposed to do that. I waited right there. I wasn’t supposed to do that, neither. I waited fifteen minutes or so. Nobody. I drove all the way to Vickerton, and came back. Nothin’. Nobody there. Then it got light, and I had to go.” He was speaking in a rush. “This morning, I got scared