A Long December. Donald Harstad
kind of stuff?”
“Hopefully. We didn’t meet any when we were coming in from the north.” I shrugged. “There are at least four or five different gravel roads they could turn onto before they even got to the paving and into Battenberg,” I said. The ambulance had come from Battenberg.
“At least,” said Terri. “Anybody wake up the Battenberg cop to have him look?” She said it in a disparaging tone that let me know she had a very low opinion of the Battenberg police force.
“I believe he was up,” I said, not knowing but not willing to concede the point. “There’s no information that he’s got anybody coming into town since we asked.” But now I was wondering if he was awake. Crap. “You recognize any of the cars you met? “I asked, back on track and glad to change the subject.
“There was Hank Granger,” she said. “Probably on his way home from his route. That’s the only one I recognized.”
Hank Granger was a rural mail carrier. With flashing yellow caution lights, and U.S. MAIL on the roof of his car, he tended to stand out. Good. He’d be very familiar with the cars he normally encountered on his route. A possible witness already. Things were looking up.
I went back to my car and contacted Sally on the radio.
“Three, go,” came the reassuring voice.
“Yeah, Comm, uh, ten-twenty-one the Henry Granger residence in Battenberg, will you, and see if he’s available for an officer to talk with him in an hour or so?”
“Ten-four, Three.”
“Before you phone him, Comm, any traffic from Forty?” Forty was the Battenberg PD car’s call sign.
“Negative, Three. I contacted the duty officer at his residence via ten-twenty-one, and he advised he’d contact us with any information.”
So she’d phoned him at his house. Good enough. Battenberg was only six miles away from the Heinman farm. Easy reach with my car radio. “Ten-four, Comm. I’ll go direct with him.” He should be in the car, easily, by now.
I called six times, on two frequencies. No response. The Battenberg police department was a two-man operation, consisting of a chief and one officer. At least, they had been until the World Trade Center attack. It just happened that one of them was in the Air Force Reserve, and he’d been called to active service. That left Norm Vincent, the chief, to work most of the shifts. He’d scrounged up a part-timer who worked three evenings a week. Norm had been trying to do forty-eight hours on call, then twenty-four off. Not much opportunity presented itself for sleep, if he’d been at all busy.
“Coram, I get no signal from Forty.” I tried not to sound testy, but Sally should have established radio contact a few minutes after the phone conversation when she’d originally notified him.
By the unabashedly testy “Ten-four, stand by,” Sally agreed with me.
A few seconds later, Sally said, “He fell back asleep, Three. He’ll be out right away.” She sounded disgusted, probably as much with herself as with him.
“Okay, Comm,” I said, intentionally dropping the 10 code. It’s more informal, and friendlier. That’s all I had to say for her to interpret something like, “Let’s start looking a little sharper up there.” “While we’re at it, do you have an ETA for DCI mobile lab?”
“They’re en route,” said Sally. “My last contact was that they were going to be to you within forty-five minutes, and that was… nineteen minutes ago.”
The “nineteen minutes” pleased me. It was her way of telling me that she was still pretty damned efficient, thank you very much. It also meant that they must have been at a scene fairly close to us.
“Ten-four, Comm. And the ME?” We wanted the medical examiner to be at the scene before it got really dark, because we didn’t really have the good auxiliary lighting equipment we’d need to give him the best look at the scene. If night beat him, we’d have to call out a truck from the Battenberg volunteer fire department, with its auxiliary lighting equipment. That’d make for quite a crowd and only increase the chances that we’d obliterate some evidence.
“ME is Dr. Zimmer, and he’s been en route from the clinic here in Maitland since seventeen-oh-one.” She was sounding more at ease as the conversation progressed, but I knew that she was still kicking herself over the Battenberg PD call.
“Ten-four, Comm.” I would have said something like “thanks” except we’d both have thought I was being condescending.
I walked back to the body in the road, and to the gathered ambulance crew. They had walkie-talkies, too, and I was sure they’d heard about the Battenberg officer sleeping. They had.
“Fell back asleep, huh? “asked Terri.
“Yep.”
She just shook her head.
“So, then,” I continued. “You didn’t recognize any other cars on your way up?”
“Nope. So, who’s this?” she asked, indicating Hester.
“Hester Gorse. I’m an agent with the DO.” Hester stuck out her hand.
“Oh,” said Terri, extending her hand and shaking Hester’s. “A state investigator. We’ve never met. I’m Terri Biederman. Recently of Milwaukee, but born here. Paramedic.”
I walked over to Lamar. “You hear my radio traffic about Battenberg?”
“Yep. That dumb sonofabitch.” He said it as one word. Calmly, though. “I told him he ought to loosen up on his damned budget and hire some of our reserves.”
“I’ll get with him as soon as I can,” I said. “He still may be able to help.”
“It ain’t like he has before,” said Lamar. “But go ahead. We gotta work with him.”
I had a bit higher opinion of Norm Vincent than Lamar did, but I just let it ride. We all had to work together.
As it happened, both the DCI lab team and Dr. Henry Zimmer arrived at the same time. Both had been equally lost, as it turned out, and had actually met when the lab team flagged Henry down to ask directions. Henry got quite a kick out of that one.
Once there, though, it turned out to be like old home week. Henry and I were longtime friends. Hester and Henry had worked together off and on for years, and were glad to see each other. Like all our rural medical examiners, Henry was a general practitioner, and had a large private practice. Apparently he was the doctor for the Heinman boys, and they exchanged waves. He was also my doctor, and greeted me with “Still got the cookies in your camera bag?”
I got him some.
Hester introduced her lab crew to us, a youngish sort named Bob Ulrich and an older man named Dave Franks. Introductions over, she looked down the road toward the body of the still-unidentified victim.
“Well, let’s get started.”
We’ve found that, over the years, it’s best if the investigators don’t get too involved with the initial stuff the lab crew does. We want them to find things for themselves and not be distracted by us as we focus on some particular items of evidence. We proceeded together but separately, so to speak. That is, until it came time to move Gary’s car back from the human debris field. At that point, we formed a little crowd.
Gary was told to back up very slowly and to stop when Bob signaled him. He did, and had backed up not more than fifteen feet when he was told to stop.
“Now, better call a wrecker, Sergeant,” said Dave, the senior lab man. “We’re going to have to have those tires.”
“What?”
“We need your tires. They’ve been in our, uh, evidence. There may be small fragments and tissues adhering to them.”
“You have