Donald Harstad: A Long December

“Do you think they saw you?” asked Hester.

“Pretty sure they didn’t. Their eyes just passed right over me.”

I felt it would be best to lead him to the end before I backed up through the events. “Then what’d you do, Jacob?”

“Well, I didn’t stand up right away, that’s for sure.” That shy smile again. “But when I did, I did it real careful, just in case they was comin’ back for somethin’, you know?” He paused. “But then I heard a car leaving down the way, and I supposed it was them. I don’t take no chances, so I just took off for the barn lickety split, and got Norris, and we called from the telephone in the barn.”

“That’s what we did,” interjected Norris. “Just that way.”

“We thought it’d be best if we brought the shotgun, too,” said Jacob, pointing toward a fencepost just behind the mailbox with a twelve-gauge leaning up against it. I’d missed it in the weeds and scrub.

“Figured we’d better,” said Norris. “You never know.” Given the afternoon’s events, it was really hard to argue with that.

Jacob smiled again. “Norris, here, he was on Guadalcanal. Jarhead.”

“Ah. Always good to have a Marine around. You two didn’t happen to recognize any of the three, did you?” It hadn’t sounded like it, but you can always hope.

“No, I didn’t… I think the dead one was a Mexican boy, but I’m not sure,” said Jacob. “One of the other two might have been, too, but he looked… different than that, but like that? I don’t know how to put it…”

I tried to help without planting anything in his head. “He was the one with the gun? The one who shot him?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of complexion?”

“Well,” said Jacob, “kind of dark, sort of dark… like a good tan would be.”

“Okay. You happen to notice his hair color?”

“If I recollect, I’d have to say very dark, too. Black, maybe? Really dark for certain.”

“What’d he have on? “I was taking notes now.

“Black pants, I think. Maybe navy blue. A dark sweater or something like it. Maybe a sweatshirt, with no sayings on it. Probably a sweater. I think maybe a real dark jacket, too. Maybe.”

“Got it.”

“And, oh… black tennis shoes.” He considered that for a second. “Maybe just black shoes. Might not have been tennis shoes, now that I think about it.”

“About how old? Best guess.”

“I can’t tell with them, the Mexicans. Not until they get really old, like me. Then it’s the wrinkles, you know? But… old enough to know better. No kid.”

“Okay.” I wrote down ADULT. “SO then, how about the other one, the white guy?”

“Well,” said Jacob, “to tell the truth, I wasn’t lookin’ at him too hard, because I was givin’ the one with the gun most of my attention.”

“Understandable,” said Hester.

“But if I had to guess, I’d say… about twenty-five or so.”

“Why do you say that, Jacob?” I asked.

“Well, because he looked like that,” said Jacob. “He wasn’t a kid. I know that. But I’ll tell you one thing. He looked as scared as I was.”

A perfectly reasonable answer, especially if you were Jacob. I didn’t think it was time to press him on just how you know when somebody’s scared. If I needed anything, I needed a physical description. The fear indicators could wait for later. I’d get ‘em, but eventually. Patience is very important in my line of work. “Can you describe him for me? What he looked like, just generally?”

“Oh, you know, pretty tall, a lot taller than the one with the gun. They were kinda like Mutt and Jeff. He had a pale complexion. Maybe blond hair, but it was tough to tell under the ball cap. Green jacket. That’s about all.”

“What did the ball cap look like? “asked Hester.

“A Forrest’s Seed Corn hat. Ed Forrest down in Battenberg hands ‘em out to anybody he thinks might buy seed. You know, yellow with the green lettering.”

Hester didn’t, but I did.

All could be local, then. “Can we go back to their ages? “asked Hester.

“Oh my,” said Jacob, with a sigh. “Everybody seems to be so much younger these days. But I’d guess none of ‘em was more ‘n thirty. If that.” He smiled at her. “I’m sorry, miss. I guess that’s the best I can do.”

“That’s okay.”

“This was a terrible thing,” said Jacob. “To do that. Him bound up that way and all. Didn’t have a chance. No chance at all.”

There was a siren in the distance. Lamar, I was just about sure. I removed my walkie-talkie from my jeans pocket.

“You’ll have to give me a minute here, Jacob,” I said, moving two steps away from him. I keyed the mike. “One, Three… that you?”

“Ten-four, Three. Where you at?”

“Slow way down before the curve; we’re blocking the road. Come in slow.” Lamar was known for his fast driving on gravels.

“Ten-four.”

I’d worked with Lamar for twenty-five years or so. He was going to hate this. Nothing appealed to him more than peace, quiet, and a placid surface to “his” county. “He’s not going to be a happy man,” I said as Hester stepped over.

“True.” Hester knew Lamar pretty well, too.

She regarded the body for a moment. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

I looked at her. “You mean dope?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Could be. It sure looks like what the media calls ‘execution-style.’”

I was rather startled when Gary, the trooper sergeant, said, “I’d say dope, too.” He’d apparently come up behind me while I was on the walkie-talkie, and I’d missed it. “Sure looks like it to me.” He said that with the complete assurance of an officer who wasn’t working dope cases.

“It’s sure as hell possible,” I said. As the investigator who had the case, I didn’t want to establish a mindset by labeling this “dope-related” unless and until I had hard evidence to back it up. I’d been racking my brain to try to come up with an instant suspect, and couldn’t. We had meth labs in the county, and we had good-quality marijuana crops, but I wasn’t currently aware of any really bad blood between local dealers. That didn’t mean much, as a violent relationship in the dope business can spring up overnight. Nonetheless, at this point there was no evidence either way.

I shrugged and said, “All I know now is that he really musta pissed somebody off. Anyhow, you want to walk around the curve there and see if there are any tracks from the suspect vehicle?”

“Sure.”

“Get photos and measurements, if there are any, and let me know, okay?”

Gary grinned. He had been a TI, one of the specially trained accident investigators for the state patrol, before he’d been promoted to sergeant. If anybody on earth knew how to interpret and photograph tire track evidence, it was Gary. “Want me to do plaster casts? I love doin’ plaster casts.”

“Better leave that to the lab team, but if you find something for them to cast, let me take a couple of photos right away, okay? Continuity in the courtroom,” said Hester.

“Okay.” I think Gary had been feeling kind of nonessential, and was anxious to get into his own area of expertise.

“And,” said Hester, “I’d really like it if you could find a shotgun just laying around, you know? Or at least an empty shell.”

Gary chuckled. “I’ll see what I can do, Hester. You don’t want much.”

As soon as Lamar arrived at the scene, I briefed him on what I knew and then trudged back up the hill to my car while Lamar talked to Hester and the Heinman boys. I grabbed the big, padded nylon camera bag out of the backseat, and opened it to make sure everything was there. Other officers sometimes borrow equipment when you’re on days off or vacation, and forget to put it back. They especially like to borrow 35mm film. A quick inventory revealed my 35mm SLR, my zoom lens, my digital camera, some ten rolls of 35mm film, and my short tripod. Mine in every sense, since the department didn’t provide a camera or the supplies. The bag also contained a bag of Girl Scout cookies, a chocolate bar, and a box of latex gloves. Since we were beginning to draw a crowd, I grabbed the half roll of plastic crime scene tape I had left, and put it in my camera bag. I closed the trunk, reached into the backseat, and hauled out my jacket. It was going to get cold in a hurry when the sun went behind the hills. I was set. As I closed the car door, it occurred to me to try to call the department on my cell phone. We’d fought for years to get them, and had finally obtained grudging permission to carry them in the cars. We had to buy them ourselves, of course, even though we had to assure the county supervisors that we wouldn’t be making personal calls. They didn’t want us distracted. But it was a small victory, in spite of that. It had gotten smaller as we realized that they were pretty useless at our worst events. The really bad wrecks tended to be at the bottom of long hills on curvy roads, for instance, and we seemed to frequently find ourselves at crime scenes inside buildings with steel frames-both kinds of locations made it very difficult to reach a tower. I looked at the LCD display panel as I dialed. The little icon that indicated the strength of the nearest tower’s signal was at the minimum. I tried anyway. Nope. I tried once more on the way back down the road. Nothing. Lamar glanced at me, and I knew he’d noticed I couldn’t get a call through. I’d hear about that sooner or later. I made a mental note to tell him that there would be more towers in our area soon.