The Big Thaw (31 page)

He glared.

“Unless we have a professional soldier in our midst,” I said, “this is going to be very interesting.” I was hoping that Volont would call in somebody from the U.S. Army, as an adviser. I hoped that one for a long time.

As usual, the real problem was that we didn’t have enough information. Things like “five banks simultaneously” are worthless. We needed to know just who was working with him. How competent they were. How many associates did he have? Hell, just which “five banks” would be nice! And the really big question: Why hit five mediocre banks and get little, when you could go to a metro area, hit one for the same effort, and get a lot? I secretly suspected that our lack of officers had something to do with it. George put it pretty well when he said, “Carl, nothing personal, but with two to three of you on a shift, a bank robber could be fifty miles away before you could block very many roads.”

“Frankly,” said Volont, “they could be a long way before you could block this parking lot.”

Art resented that, bless him. His face got kind of reddish, and he got a familiar, sour look on his face. I noticed that he didn’t have a rejoinder.

Anyway, don’t misunderstand. I love doing the map thing, drawing radii, plotting routes, assigning units, all that good stuff. Wonderful board game. Delightful. But in this case, with the information we had, it was pointless. It was like doing a map exercise on a blank piece of paper.

Volont had resources at his disposal that, given a day or two, could accomplish virtually anything. Really. Somebody would come up with a miniscenario, mark a map, and Volont would start saying things like “We could put a team here and here … a surveillance team here and here…” Wow. Really. Resources like that just trip my trigger. He talked about “helicopter landing zones,” with the solid assurance of a man who utilized them all the time. But it was futile, having the resources and nowhere to use them. Like standing in front of a game machine that took only nickels, with a ten-pound bag that contained only quarters clutched in your little hand.

We stuck with it, though. We had nothing else to go on, or so I thought.

The intercom buzzed, and I answered. Judy, with a phone call for Volont. He took it out in the reception area. He was back in less than a minute.

“If you gentlemen will excuse me for a short while, I have some other business to attend to.”

We did.

Just like so many other times, that little interruption broke the train of the meeting, and everybody just about simultaneously decided to take a break.

I took George aside out in the kitchen, when I went out to make a pot of coffee and he tagged along for the exercise. “What did you interview Nancy and Shamrock for?”

“Mostly to find out what they knew, and to tell them they couldn’t use anything they had learned about a particular individual.”

“George, damn it, it’s our murder. We can deal with the press if we want to.” The coffeepot had stopped gurgling, and was in the hiss-and-steam phase, which meant the water reservoir had emptied. The flavor was best then, before all the water had dripped through. I turned the pot off, and pulled the basket.

He shrugged. “We mostly wanted to shut down anything about Gabriel. They seemed to understand. Including the film.”

“‘The film’?” I stood there with the pot in one hand, and a cup in the other, and nearly poured the contents on the floor.

“Shamrock’s film. I asked her to let us keep the strip of negatives that contained the photos of Gabriel. Two frames.”

I chuckled. “You mentioned Gabriel?”

“Volont specifically told me to. As Nieuhauser, of course. Not Gabriel. But this Nancy is pretty sharp. She picked up on it right away.”

“Yeah.” I poured my coffee, and put the pot down. “So, you don’t think you pissed them off totally, then?”

“Oh, no. They were very nice.” He poured his own, adding fat-free milk and sugar substitute.

“How is that shit?” I asked.

“Awful. Milk and sugar are good, though.”

“Thanks.” I took a sip. “Doesn’t Volont realize that he just drew Nancy’s attention to Gabe?”

“I’m sure he does,” said George. “I’m just not clear as to why.”

He sipped his coffee, looking a bit worried. “Can I trust you with something?”

“You betcha.”

He closed the door. “This is supersecret, and you never heard it. I’m deadly serious about this.”

He sure appeared to be. “Fine. I’m good for it,” I said.

“Okay … here you go. Don’t ask how I know this, either, by the way. I can’t tell you.” George took a deep breath. “Okay. First, Gabriel is supposed to be leading Volont to some ‘big man’ in the antigovernment movements. Really big man. Gabe was Volont’s snitch. At some point in the past. For sure. Volont squeezed him a few years ago, over some arms sales or something. But Volont’s lost control of him. As if you hadn’t figured that part out.”

I just nodded. I figured this was not the time to demonstrate ignorance.

“Volont’s pissed. ’cause now old Gabe is simply getting ready to make a hit to fill his own pockets, and run away to somewhere. Not for the ‘movement.’ That’s all phony as hell, now.” George looked around, just checking, I guess. “None of this ‘five banks’ thing is for anything other than Gabe. All his associates don’t know this, but he’s just using them for his own purposes.”

“And Volont knows all this?” I asked.

“And a hell of a lot more,” said George. “He’s got people on the inside, I’m certain.”

“I’ll be damned.” I thought for a few seconds, wondering who that could be. “And he’s probably known this for a while now, hasn’t he?”

“You could say that,” said George.

“I know what that Spook stuff’s like, George. Are you sure Volont is right about him not doing this for the ‘movement,’ or anything like that? Could he have misled Volont?”

George grinned. “Wheels within wheels. Just know what I’ve been told,” he said.

“Sounds true,” I said. “You know what they say about ‘doing it for the movement.’ Just means you don’t have to pay the help.”

Fascinating. Unfortunately, it didn’t change a thing as far as murder and bank burglary were concerned. Ideology aside, we still had the same problems going on.

“Thanks, George,” I said. “A lot.” He’d taken a large risk to tell me that. I just wished it had been something I could have used to stop the “five banks” stuff, or to have prevented the deaths of the Colson brothers. But I did file it away, and very carefully, too.

Between the office and home, a distance of six blocks, I decided to go take a peek at the Grossman place.

It was about eight miles out. Dispatch thought I was going home. If anything happened, I didn’t want any sort of mix-up.

“Comm, Three, on INFO?”

“Three,” the dispatcher crackled back on the INFO channel, where she could hear me, but other cars couldn’t.

“Comm, I’ll be in the car in the central part of the county for a while.”

“Ten-four, Three, ten-six at 2044.” Just in case.

Every limestone rock quarry has two “roads” that lead to it. The main one, and the one that everybody sees is the ground level entrance the trucks use. But the second one runs to the top of the quarry, and is used by workers who want to drill and blast. They aren’t used all that often, and are sometimes very difficult to find. This particular one had come to my attention during a raid on a beer party more than ten years back. It entered the quarry area from nearly a quarter of a mile back down the road, and twisted through a stand of trees on it’s way to the top of the quarry hill. No snow plow would ever go here, but since nobody else had, either, it wasn’t particularly slippery. Road ice usually comes from traffic on snow, compressing it, and making the ice. Snow, if you’re careful, isn’t all that slippery. Especially in below zero temperatures. I crept up the back slope at about five miles per hour, lights off. It took me a good five minutes, but at the top I was rewarded with a passable view of Grossman’s house, and the broad valley leading to the Borglan farm.

I picked up my binoculars, and cranked down my side window. Cold, but much clearer than looking through the glass. The vibrations of the engine prevented me from resting my arm on the window edge, but I needed that heater on. I looked over the area. Lights, and two pickup trucks in the yard. Unremarkable.

I put the binoculars down, and waited about five minutes. I looked around my perch, able to see more since I was beginning to dark adapt. Trees. Rocks jutting up out of the snow along the edge of the man-made bluff, to keep trucks from slipping over the edge. I looked to be about 50 or 60 feet above the quarry floor. The more I looked about, the more it appeared that I might not have enough room to turn my car around on top of the quarry. Shit. Was I going to have to back down?

I decided to give it a while longer. If I crunched the car up backing down that access road, I wanted to have something to show for it.

My radio crackled to life. “Comm, Nation County Cars, radio check…”

Every hour, on the hour, after 9 P.M., they checked. The patrol units gave their current location as a response. On the OPS channel, where all ears could hear them. When she called my number, I responded with a simple “Three, ten-four…” on Info. The other cars couldn’t hear me, but they would know I was still out.

I looked at the house again. Nothing. Now, that was weird. I mean, it wasn’t that big a house, and with two pickups in the yard, that meant that they had company. It was likely that they would all be on the ground floor, with the possible exception of little Carrie. But there was no movement, and most of the lights were on in the kitchen, which I could see pretty clearly.

I put the binoculars down again, and sat. What were they doing? Watching TV as a group? I rolled up my window. If I didn’t, I was going to start to shiver, and shivering makes it impossible to use binoculars.

I unrolled the window after a few minutes, and thought I heard a popping sound. I switched off the ignition, and in the silence, could hear a roaring that seemed to be coming from near the farm.

Suddenly, two farm tractors emerged from Grossman’s backyard, and began heading up the valley toward Borglan’s. Neither had their headlights on, and both seemed to be pulling something. In the dark it was very hard to tell, but it looked like they each had a large, flat object behind them. About the size of a barn door, but it looked like they had stuff piled on top. Like hay bales.

I was surprised. No doubt. I was even more surprised about a minute later, when they both turned as a group, lined up side by side, and began to slowly traverse the valley about a quarter mile above the house. As I watched, they went about 100 yards, turned, and went back. What the hell?

They did the whole routine again. And again. And I became aware that they were slowly working their way back to the Grossmans’, combing the field as they went. It took quite a while, but when they finally got back to Grossman’s yard, they both turned around and went right back up to where they’d started the back and forth trips. Were they looking for something?

Then, they turned again, and this time made about fifty trips up and down the valley. Not moving over ten miles per hour.

Then it occurred to me that the sons of bitches were obliterating all the snowmobile tracks between Grossman’s and Borglan’s. That had to be it. And that meant that we had missed something really important in those tracks. Damn.

It took them about an hour and a half. Then, they returned to Grossman’s, packed up their sleds, and left. Just like that. Two minutes after they had gone, everything looked absolutely normal.

I finally got turned around, and got back down to the road. I turned south, to avoid Grossman’s place.

I saw headlights in front of me, approaching. They were about half a mile off. Crap. I was about to be discovered by a neighbor. Although theoretically unmarked, my car was pretty easily recognizable as a cop car without decals or top lights.

Nothing for it but to get moving, and pretend I was just passing by. Whoever I met would just assume I’d been traveling all along. I hoped.

We met when I was about half a mile south of Grossman’s drive. Red pickup, towing a snowmobile trailer with two snowmobiles on it. BHK 234. Minnesota. Red pickup.

I waited until it was out of sight in the rearview mirror, then spun around and followed it north. I had to know.

It turned into Grossman’s drive. Damn. I hastily tore off my glove, and reached inside my vest for a pen. Guiding the car with my knee under the steering wheel, I hastily scribbled the plate on the back of my hand. Damn. A late arrival?

A few minutes later, I called dispatch. “Comm, Three, I’ll be ten-forty-two. Mileage 31566.” That meant I was done with my shift, and the mileage was to make sure I wasn’t using the car to vacation in Florida. Department rules. I’d give the mileage again when I went to work. Of course, having written it on my log, I could easily fake it. But, then, most county rules were like that.

As soon as I got to the house, I phoned Dispatch, and ran that plate. “Yeah, it’s Houseman. Could you give me a twenty-eight and twenty-nine on Minnesota Passenger Boy Henry King two three four, run the twenty-seven, get a twenty-nine and Triple I on that.” The registration came back to Timothy Frederick Olson, twenty-two, of Brainerd, Minnesota. No wants. No warrants. The criminal history would come back a little later.

“Would you just leave all of it in my box? I’ll pick it up in the morning.”

“Got it. Sleep tight.”

“Thanks.” Well, that had likely accomplished very little. They used to tell me that you couldn’t ever have too much information. Maybe so. But you sure could have too much to process in the allotted time.

I’d made it out of bed at 0702. Nearly a record. After a quick shower, I’d pulled on sweatpants and a shirt, and made a pot of fresh coffee. The Weather Channel gave me a new shot of my blue and pink worm, coiling through North America. The upward bump was edging closer and closer. Ah, warmth was on the way. Soon.