Donald Harstad: Known Dead

She thought about that. Finally: ‘‘That’s good. That’s okay.’’

I picked up her phone and called the office. It had a long cord, and I went around the corner while she and Hester continued to talk.

Sometimes the simplest things can get so complex. Let me just say that I was on the phone for better than five minutes, making the arrangements to get somebody to go talk to Marks without using police radio.

I went back to Beth and Hester. They were really getting along.

‘‘Beth tells me,’’ said Hester, ‘‘that she doesn’t think Marks would go along, but that a man named Howler Moeher might.’’

‘‘Reasonable.’’ I kind of knew Howler. She was right, he probably would.

‘‘Howler’s got a machine gun,’’ said Beth.

There was a pause at that. Most people wouldn’t know a machine gun from a semiauto rifle, unless it was one of the big ones on a tripod. But you always had to ask.

‘‘What do you mean by machine gun, Beth?’’

‘‘Well, you know, it’s black, and it fires real fast, and Howler says it is.’’

‘‘Right,’’ said Hester. ‘‘How big is it?’’

‘‘Oh,’’ said Beth, extending her hands about three feet apart, ‘‘like this or so, with a thing hanging down from the bottom, like.’’

‘‘Where is old Howler these days?’’ I asked.

‘‘On a farm between here and Maitland, on the highway, you know, by the old train station…’’

‘‘Yeah, I think so,’’ I said.

We had to talk to Howler.

We stayed with Beth for a few more minutes, and I checked to make sure we had a unit talking to Marks, before we left. We did. The Freiberg officer. He’d been the only one available. We headed right up to Marks’s place, both because we wanted to talk to him and because the unit already there had damn little idea what they were doing with him.

On the way, we started sorting things out better. And were faced with a pretty familiar dilemma. Do we talk with Marks on the fly, to get him while he’s still off balance? Or do we wait, and talk to him later, when we have more information, and ammunition enough to impeach his story? We figured that, since we had to protect Beth, we’d better do it now, and then hit him again later if we had to. And we’d probably have to.

Then, we had Howie with a shotgun, and nobody that we saw had been hit with a shotgun. But, according to Hester, the shotgun had been fired. She had seen no blood trails at any of the other obvious locations. Therefore, Howie had missed? Most likely. But who had he been shooting at? Bill probably. But were we sure? No. And why in the hell did Howie have a shotgun in the first place? It wasn’t like him at all.

Ah, but we knew that Marks and Howie were working together. Marks was almost guaranteed to know something worth our while, even if he hadn’t been out there today.

Johnny Marks was about twenty-five, a little over six feet, slender, tanned, black-haired, and very indignant.

‘‘I said,’’ he said to me, ‘‘I want to know just what the fuck you people are doing here.’’

‘‘I’m sure you do,’’ I replied, and continued my introduction. ‘‘As I was trying to say, my name is Houseman, and I’m a deputy sheriff here in Nation County. And this is Special

Agent Gorse of the DCI.’’

‘‘Big fuckin’ deal.’’

‘‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’’

‘‘Fuck you. I’m leavin’ town for a vacation.’’

‘‘May we come in?’’

‘‘No.’’

I reached out and grabbed the front of his Hawaiian shirt. ‘‘Then you get to come out.’’

‘‘Get your fuckin’ hands off me!’’

‘‘I’m placing you under arrest as a material witness. You will come with us.’’ I pulled, hard. He came out the door, stumbling. ‘‘Now.’’

Hester shot me that damned eyebrow again.

‘‘You heard him say he intended to leave?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ she said. ‘‘I did.’’

‘‘I want my attorney, and I want him now!’’ Typical. ‘‘You can’t arrest me!’’ Natural progression. ‘‘For what?’’

The handcuffs went on easily.

‘‘I’m going to handcuff him in front, if that’s all right with you?’’

‘‘Fine with me,’’ said Hester.

‘‘You can’t handcuff me!’’

‘‘He doesn’t look like much of a threat,’’ she said.

‘‘You can’t do this!’’

‘‘Take him in our car, Carl?’’

‘‘No. Let’s get a marked car.’’

‘‘You can’t do this!’’

I pushed him toward the Freiberg officer. That officer was aware that he’d been the choice of desperation, just to get somebody up there. He’d been very patient with both us and Marks. I’m not sure about us, but he was definitely losing patience with Marks.

‘‘You hold him for us for a little bit?’’

‘‘Sure.’’ He grinned.

‘‘I said…!’’

I stopped, Marks stopped. ‘‘You have the right to remain silent. ..’’

He actually listened. Then: ‘‘What am I charged with?’’ Civil, calm, with no sign of the excitement of a few moments before. Typical of an experienced criminal. As soon as you’re truly serious, the show stops and we get down to business.

‘‘You weren’t listening,’’ I said, reasonably and with a smile. ‘‘You’re under arrest as a material witness. You aren’t charged with anything.’’

‘‘Witness to what?’’

‘‘Oh, manufacturing of dope, for instance.’’

‘‘Hey, I don’t cook anything!’’

‘‘Marijuana. Patch.’’

‘‘Oh, well, I don’t know nothin’ about no patch, man.’’

‘‘Conspiracy to manufacture.’’

‘‘Nope. Not me.’’

‘‘Murder.’’

Stunned silence.

‘‘Conspiracy to commit murder.’’

‘‘Whaaa?’’

‘‘Murder of a police officer in conjunction with manufacturing a controlled substance.’’

‘‘WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?’’

Well, we had his complete attention now.

‘‘You’ll be taken to the Nation County Sheriff’s Department,’’ said Hester, ‘‘where we will ask you for a statement. You may call your attorney as soon as you arrive at the station.’’ She smiled sweetly at him, and it was the first time I’d ever seen her smile and not mean it. At least not mean it in a friendly way. ‘‘You really should, you know.’’

‘‘Should what?’’

‘‘Call your attorney. I sure would if I were you,’’ she said.

As the Freiberg police officer closed the back door of his patrol car, thereby preventing Marks from hearing us, Hester turned to me.

‘‘That go the way you planned?’’

I grinned. ‘‘Well, no, now that you ask.’’

‘‘Material witness?’’

‘‘Hey, he’s leaving… or was going to.’’

She sighed. ‘‘Carl, sometimes…’’

I grinned again. ‘‘What?’’

She shook her head. It was, after all, a valid arrest. ‘‘Never mind.’’

‘‘All right. Now, then, as long as he’s not going to be worth a shit to us until he talks to his attorney…’’

‘‘What?’’

‘‘Well, I was thinking we’d better pay this Howler dude a visit.’’

Since Howler had a ‘‘machine gun,’’ prudence sort of dictated that we have some assistance. Hester used her cell phone to talk to Al, avoiding all the monitors of police radio frequencies. Given what we suspected was going on with Howler, we pretty well had to assume he’d have a scanner. We had to go back down through Freiberg, and out the other end to get to Howler’s place. We stopped and got a couple of cans of pop, and by the time we got to Howler’s farm, at 1643, there were six or seven patrol cars pulled up around the place. I was impressed. A crowd of cops in our county is normally three officers. In two cars.