Donald Harstad: Known Dead

‘‘Hello, Carl.’’

‘‘Hi, Al.’’

‘‘Bad business.’’ Al was always brief like that. He’s been a cop for twenty-some years, all of it with the state. He’s a very good investigator, but it was our misfortune that he got promoted once too often. He was now an administrator. I would much rather have had him actively investigating on this one. He’d known Bill.

‘‘Yeah.’’ I looked him right in the eye. ‘‘You think we have a drug war here?’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’ He hesitated just a moment, and then did exactly the right thing. ‘‘I’ll get a meeting set, DNE, us, you, DEA, and FBI. We’ll find out.’’

‘‘FBI?’’ I asked. ‘‘They in on this?’’

‘‘Yeah, an offer of assistance.’’

‘‘Cool.’’ FBI has incredible lab and scene analysis people. I suspected they were really in because of the DEA involvement, although when an offer is made like that, you take it without asking. All of which was a convoluted way of arriving at my next point. ‘‘Al, I’m not cleared on all the dope stuff anymore. I’m general criminal investigations.’’

‘‘You still the intelligence officer?’’

‘‘Yep.’’

‘‘That’ll do.’’

Murders take precedence over dope cases. Especially cases where a cop is killed. At least in theory. But dope cops just hate to give up any information that’s really valuable. Goes against everything they think. Reasons range from fear of jeopardizing informants to having another agency get in ahead of them and get the credit.

I looked at Dahl. ‘‘You be there?’’

‘‘Sure.’’

‘‘You and Kellerman were working this one together?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

‘‘I see.’’

That meant he was carrying quite a load himself.

‘‘Just for the record,’’ he said, ‘‘I had no idea anything like this… I mean, I woulda been here for this if…’’

There was a long silence. Then Hester said, ‘‘You’ll want to take a look at Bill? We’re going to have to move him soon.’’

I hesitated for a second. ‘‘Okay.’’

We walked downhill on the path.

‘‘Doc’s already seen him?’’ I needed to know if I could touch the body.

‘‘Yeah,’’ said Hester. ‘‘He’s been done. Johansen found him right about here,’’ she said, pointing at a depressed area of grass and weeds. There seemed to be quite a lot of blood. ‘‘He said that there was still shooting going on, so he dragged him up here to cover.’’ There was a lane of down grass with a thin trail of blood, leading up to the little mound and the log where I’d first seen the two of them. A yellow emergency blanket now covered the remains of Kellerman. He’d been reduced to the lump underneath the blanket. With the little torn blue compress packets like flowers.

‘‘There’s not much blood on the track up to this point,’’ she said. ‘‘Doc says he thinks that he was probably either dead or nearly so when Johansen got to him.’’

Dr. Peters was about twenty yards away, still with Johansen and Lamar. I really wanted him to be there when I looked at Bill, but didn’t want to wait. I put on another glove.

‘‘Well, let’s get on with it.’’ I knelt down and pulled the blanket aside.

Bill was a mess. He was the whitest corpse I’d seen in a long time. Must have completely bled out. From the front, there really wasn’t much remarkable, just some dents in his vest, with little holes in the center. His cammo shirt had some holes in it too. Looked like they’d been made by a pencil or something. Nothing that looked lethal. The ME had apparently undone the Velcro straps that held the vest in place. I lifted it, gingerly. There was a wad of gauze wedged between his vest and his chest. Obviously a futile effort on the part of Ken to stop the bleeding. It was so pathetic, so sad, it hit me pretty hard. I just stayed hunched over the body, not looking up, not doing anything, until it passed. I took a deep breath and continued my examination. There were five ragged holes in his chest, starting just at the top of the sternum and traveling down and to his left. The last one had made a long, gaping rent in his side about an inch in from the entrance. They weren’t in a line, but rather in a bunch that traveled together. I looked for a few moments. Full auto. Rifle, not a pistol-caliber submachine gun. And what I’d assumed to be the last round was probably the first, as the recoil of the rifle lifted its muzzle as it fired. Damned fast rate of fire, I thought, to group this close. Or awfully close to the target. The holes were ragged because the ‘‘bulletproof’’ vest had stripped parts of the metal jackets off the rounds and flattened them just a bit, on their way through. So when they came out of the back face of the front of the vest, they weren’t quite round anymore. I dropped the vest back down on his chest, and pulled the blanket back over him. It snagged on the weeds, and I tore it.

I looked up at Hester.

‘‘M-16?’’

‘‘Likely,’’ said Hester. ‘‘We’ve got a lot of 5.56 brass around here.’’

I sighed. ‘‘Well, they tell you that these vests are only designed for pistol ammo.’’ I thought for a second. ‘‘What was Johansen carrying?’’

‘‘AR-15. Both officers were.’’

I stood up. ‘‘We have the rifles now? I mean, all we need is for some defense attorney to say Kellerman shot him himself by accident, or that Bill was shot by Ken…’’ I shook my head. Since I knew he’d just about shot me, that was a lot closer to reality than anybody else knew. ‘‘I hope we can find some bullets to match up with the weapons.’’

‘‘I think there are some fragments trapped in the rear panel of his vest,’’ said Hester.

‘‘I hope so.’’ I took off my gloves, and stuffed them in my pocket. I looked up the hill, and was stunned to see two people with a still camera panning the scene. One male, one female.

‘‘Uh, who the fuck are those people?’’

Everybody followed my gaze, and were equally dumbfounded.

‘‘Media,’’ said Hester. ‘‘Honest to God…’’

I looked around, and the young deputy and trooper assigned to the security detail for the scene were standing facing the crime scene, rather than looking outward. They were still the only ones at the scene wearing dark glasses. Of course.

‘‘Suppose maybe Elwood and Jake there could run ’em off?’’ I asked.

‘‘HEY!’’ yelled Al, waving uphill and getting the attention of the gawking troopers. ‘‘Get those people secured right NOW!!!’’

It took them a second, but then they started uphill at a run. The media people tried to outrun them to the top of the hill, but were caught well before the crest. After a few moments, the whole group started down toward the crime scene.

‘‘Jesus Christ,’’ said Al, ‘‘they’re bringing them back to us!’’

By this time Lamar had joined us. ‘‘I’ll talk to them,’’ he said, and stomped uphill, gesturing to the troopers to keep them away from the scene.

I looked at Al and Hester. ‘‘We better go with him,’’ I said. We all knew that Lamar was really bad with the media, and not much better with junior state troopers. We also all knew that processing this scene was probably going to take well into tomorrow, and that the media weren’t done out here by a long shot. We’d better get ground rules they would all have to follow.

‘‘Just me,’’ said Al. ‘‘You two are going to be working the case, and there’s no point in letting them get to you, or even know who you are.’’ He watched Lamar trudge up the hill. ‘‘I’ll let Lamar talk to ’em for a couple of minutes first.’’ He grinned. ‘‘Makes my job that much easier.’’