The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [66]
“Yes. I’m sure somebody will do just that.”
“Oh, George …”
“Yes?”
“Is there, like, a limit on agents? Or can we bag as many as we want?” I just couldn’t help it.
As soon as the connection was broken, I turned to Sally.
“Where’s Lamar?”
“Over with the wrecker, getting the snowmobile.”
“Better tell him to get here just as soon as he can …” I grinned. “Nothing about FBI agents over the radio. George wants it kept quiet.” I laughed.
“Can we do this?” she asked. “I mean, they’re really FBI …”
“We can even savor it,” I said. “They’re going to be the butt of every Bureau joke for the next six months.”
We moved Brandenburg to the kitchen with Hernandez, and got them some coffee. I explained where we were coming from.
“So, like, we have valid charges on both of you. I expect the charges to be dropped. So do you. But I can’t release you without a bond being posted, until I hear further. Regulations, you know?”
They didn’t say anything.
“Now, I don’t know what the hell you were doing out there,” I said, evenly, “but I don’t like people screwing around in my county, no matter who they are. Care to explain this?”
They didn’t answer. That was all right, I didn’t expect them to.
“I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but we had a double murder in that area …” I stopped. Right there. The level of tension in the room went up an order of magnitude. “I don’t believe it,” I said, to nobody in particular.
“What?” asked Gary.
“Never mind just yet.” I went to the door between dispatch and the kitchen. “Sally! How soon can Lamar get in here?”
Lamar got to the office about ten minutes later. I ran the whole thing by him, kind of fast.
“You think I should call Art?” Art was going home every night, some seventy-five miles or better. Saved the state a few dollars in motel accommodations. He was like that.
“No,” said Lamar. “Not until we talk with George.”
We drank coffee in near total silence, thinking, until George arrived. When Sally buzzed the electric lock on the door to let him in, neither Lamar nor I got up. George came through the door, looking frazzled, harried, and very worried.
He should have.
“Ho, boy,” he said. “This is a fine mess, isn’t it?”
“It just might be,” said Lamar.
“What have you got on them?” George got out his little notebook. I explained the possible charges, and he wrote them down. “Right … right.” He snapped the book shut. “I’ll talk to them, and then to you, if that’s all right?”
“Sure,” said Lamar. “In private?”
“If possible,” said George.
“You can use the booking room…” said Lamar. I grinned. Everything in the booking room was taped.
Not three minutes after we heard the muted, angry voice of George talking to his two fellow agents, George came back to our room. He looked thoroughly angry.
“They were told,” he said, “that their supervisor is not happy.”
“And who,” I asked, “would that be?”
He sighed. “Carl, I’m not allowed to say.” He looked at us beseechingly. “You understand?”
“Maybe,” said Lamar. “We just have to know what they were doing when we found them.”
“I’m not allowed to tell you that…”
“Well,” said Lamar, “since they might be implicated in a murder or two, you might want to get permission to reconsider that.”
George stood there, openmouthed.
“Let me tell you …” I said.
I did. All about the Colson brothers. The circumstances of their death. The fact that they’d been killed in the commission of a burglary, and that it was very possible that they had stumbled upon somebody in the house. Somebody who was very efficient. Somebody who might have killed them in order to cover their presence. I went a step further. I told him the secondhand information I had about their impersonating cops once, when they were caught.
“We’re trying to confirm that,” I said. “But if they did tend to do that, they could have identified themselves as cops to somebody who thought that was a great reason to do ’em.” I waited a second. “So, it was either your guys, or somebody who thought they had been caught by your guys.”
George looked stunned.