Donald Harstad: A Long December

I walked over. “Jesus Christ, Hector,” I said, as I reached him, “how in the hell did you get over here?”

“My sister dropped me off,” he answered, climbing up onto the roadway. “Way over there, on the good road.”

He must have walked a quarter of a mile through a field.

“You weren’t stopped?”

“By who?”

“Cops.”

“No way, man,” he said. “I just walked over here. There ain’t no cops until you get here to the road.”

So much for our secure perimeter. I held up my hand, indicating that he should wait, and pulled out my walkie-talkie. “Three to the command post…”

“Three? “Sally answered almost instantly. I wondered how long she’d remain on duty.

“You might want to check with somebody, just to see if there’s any security on the paving. I’m talking with an individual who just walked across the field, and wasn’t even noticed.”

There was a pause, then an amused, “Ten-four, Three. I’ll relay that.”

“That’d be nice,” I answered. “Then you might think about going home.”

I shifted my attention back to Hector, as Sally acknowledged. “So, you just had to see the place?”

“No, I didn’t, man. But I got to talk to you. It’s real important.”

“Look, I’m on my way to my car. Come on. We can talk now.” The two of us headed north. “Your sister wait for you?”

“Yeah, over on the other road.”

“Okay. I’ll give you a ride. So,” I said as soon as we were out of the hearing of the media crews, “what’s up?”

“Listen, Miranda called my sister and said that somebody called her and asked for a ride from this area somewhere.”

“Who’s Miranda?”

“She’s a friend of my sister; she used to hang around sometimes with Rudy Cueva and some of his friends.”

“You never said anything about her before.”

“Hell, man, she is just a slut who my sister is trying to… make her into a better woman. She don’t know nothing.”

“Hector,” I said, “you got some learning to do about police work. Anyway… what is it she said?”

“I think some of the people who got Rudy want a ride from her. She calls my sister, she don’t know what to do because she knows there is trouble up here. So she tells them her car is broken. But she is very scared.”

“When did they call her?”

“I doan know, man. But she talked to my sister, who called me after I talked to you. I came up looking for you because your office says you’re coming back here.”

“Okay. So, just where did they want her to go?”

“This I do not know.”

That’s always the way, it seems. Never a complete item, just pieces and bits of data that have to be put together.

As we were still heading through the congestion of press, fire, ambulance, and police vehicles, I heard a familiar voice say “Houseman?”

The intrepid Judy Mercer, KNUG.

“Hi. I see you got here…”

“In plenty of time. We were first,” she said with a smile. “It just didn’t do us a lot of good, because the rest were close enough to get here before airtime. We were here, but we didn’t beat anybody where it counts. You were in that barn?”

I sighed. “Yeah. That was us.”

“Wow. You got a minute?”

I was her advantage. None of the other media had recognized me as one of the officers from the barn.

“You know, Judy, I’m really tired. Look, I’m gonna take this gentleman somewhere, and then maybe head to the office. Most likely, though, I’ll be going home.”

“Okay.”

I noticed another reporter and cameraman approaching. They were one of the national bunch, and were smart enough to key on a local reporter talking to somebody.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said. I meant it. I was feeling really tired.

“Sure. Sure thing,” said Judy.

“You might check at the Lemonade Stand back there, for a release. I think the feds might have one pretty soon.”

“Okay. Thanks,” she said, and turned away.

Hector and I continued to the north roadblock on the gravel road. Four squad cars, all state troopers, had been parked two abreast, leaving about eighteen inches of roadway open. There must have been a dozen spectator’s cars lined up on the southbound side of the road.

“One of you guys able to give us a ride to my squad? “I asked the oldest of the troopers. “It’s at the next farm to the north.”

While the northernmost trooper got his car into a position where he could open the passenger doors without having us stand in the ditch, I used my cell phone to call Sally at the Lemonade Stand.

“There’s a pretty good chance that we’re looking for a couple of suspects who are trying to catch a ride. Tell the TAC team that, and make sure the roads are patrolled really well. And tell Volont, too.”

“Got it,” she said. “You’re coming back here, then?”

“No. I’ve got an informant that I’m going to take home to Battenberg. Then I’m heading north.”

“Hey, great. You want to stop and pick me up on the way? I’ve just got myself relieved.”

As I thought about it later, I figured I’d reached sort of an information overload at that point, with both pertinent and extraneous information piling up. It wasn’t like I was tearing my hair out, but I was just a little distracted by unusual events colliding with routine stuff.

We hitched a ride with a young state trooper who was glad to have something to do.

“You the one who shot two of ‘em up at the barn?”

“That’s what they tell me,” I said as I settled into his car.

“Good job!”

“Thanks.” I turned to look over my shoulder. “You okay back there?” As I did so, I saw a set of headlights behind us.

“Ya, you betcha,” said Hector, in his best Norwegian voice. The young trooper looked a bit startled.

We drove very slowly past the spectators, and then picked up a little speed on the way north.

“We still got headlights behind us?” I asked.

“Sure do,” said the trooper. “It got lit up as we passed through the roadblock…it’s a media vehicle. This place is lousy with em.”

“Okay.” I glanced back and saw that Hector was trying to become inconspicuous in the backseat.

About halfway to my car, once we’d cleared the congested zone, the trooper said, “Can I ask you question?”

“Sure.” Between the hiss and heat of the defroster and the slow squeaks of the windshield wipers, I was almost asleep.

“How do you prepare for a thing like that? In the barn, I mean.”

“Well…well, you pack lots of good food,” I said.

It got quiet again for a few seconds. I was just starting to think about getting back down tomorrow and having to help with the blown-up ambulance, when he spoke again.

“There were four of you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Two women officers?”

“Two of ‘em,” I replied. “That’s right.”

“Boy,” he said as we reached the Heinman mailbox, “I would have been nervous with two women. I mean, that’s half your force, in a fight like that.”

I pointed toward the dimly lit house. “This is it. Just let us out at the mailbox, so you don’t have to try to turn around in that barnyard.”

“Sure.”

“You check with me again, about the women,” I said. “In about ten years. If you’re as good as they are by then.” We stopped next to my car. “But you’re gonna have to work really hard,” I said as I opened my door. “Thanks for the ride, and you might tell your sergeant that I-388’s car is here, too. They better pick it up. She’s gonna be in the hospital for a while. She kept working for a long time after she was hit.”

By then, I was out of his car, and bent down to speak before I closed the door. “You be careful.” I nearly said “sonny,” but I stopped myself. Not out of consideration for him, but to avoid appearing to be a hundred years old. “And you might want to stop that media vehicle that was behind us. It’d be awfully easy for one of these terrorists to snag one of those and just drive away from the scene.”