A Long December. Donald Harstad
as I could next morning.
I went back through Dispatch on my way to the kitchen for some coffee, and was stopped by Martha, who was waving furiously at me from behind her console with one hand as she tried to write with the other and hold the phone to her ear with her shoulder.
“Yes sir, one moment,” she said into the phone. She pressed the hold button, and said, “It’s some dude for you, who says he knows who the body is. He won’t give his name.”
We had a fine phone installation in Dispatch, with a total of six instruments, two of which had full 911 capability and four where you could talk on any line you told the dispatcher to select for you. With twelve lines, we had lots of leeway unless things went to hell.
“Put me on this one,” I said, picking up one of the phones at the end of the console.
She did.
“Houseman here.”
“It was Rudy. Rudy Cueva,” said the muffled voice. Muffled or not, it sounded so much like Hector I almost called him by name.
I wasn’t able to connect any Rudy Cueva to anybody I knew. “Who is that?”
“He’s a team supervisor at the plant, man. A really smart dude.”
“What plant?” I knew, but if Hector wanted to play a game, he had a reason.
“The packing plant in Battenberg. That one.”
“How do you know it’s him? “This was going to be the telling point.
“I heard it just now, one of the workers in the kill room. He said that it was Rudy.”
The kill room was just that, the location in the packing plant where they did the actual killing of the livestock. “How did he find out?”
“I cannot say, man. You know that.”
There was absolutely no doubt that it was Hector, but if he wanted to remain officially anonymous, that was his choice. “Any idea why he was killed?”
There was a prolonged sigh on the other end of the line. “Because he knew something, and they dint want him to talk.” He was getting exasperated.
“And what was that?”
“I got to go, man,” and the line went dead.
“He hung up,” I told Martha and Hester. “That didn’t happen to be a 911 line, did it?”
Martha grinned. “It sure was. Cell phone, hit one of the two U.S. Cellular towers in Battenberg. Here.” She handed me the printout.
PROGRAM: E9C0NPRT PROCESS id: 2599 18-DEC-01 22:45:47
TRUNK SEIZURE: 22:45:16 RLI REQ: 22:45:19 FIRST RING: 22:45:19
MF RCUE RER0V:22:45:16 ALI RECU: 22:45:23 CALL ANSWERED: 22:45:28
PANI RECEIUED: 22:45:19 PILOT RTE: 22:45:19 CALL RELEASED: 22:47:02
PH: (563) 555-8298 CS: WRLS EHCH: 515-319-563 NO DESCRIPT. PILOT: 319-9132 NAME:
US CELLULAR (HYPOINTI LOC: 5633887343
ADOR: 1.16 Ml SwBRTTENBERG OMNI
CITY 00054-0-198, NATION ID: 90-88789
ESN: 00069 MAITLAND —-WIRELESS BATTENBERG PD UERIFY UERIFY UERIFY
DATE: 12/14/02 AAI: SON: 101
Nice. We were still in Phase One for cell phones, which meant that at some point in the future, several towers would triangulate the call and we’d get an actual physical location. That was what they called Phase Two. Right now, we got the tower that the cell phone had accessed and the number of the phone. Good enough for government work, as they say.
I looked in my billfold, just to make certain. The caller’s number belonged to Hector Gonzalez, my buddy.
“Okay, Martha. Time to earn your keep. Run a OLN on a Rudy Cueva, no middle name available, so just first and last, if you can do something like that. Probably a Rudolph instead of Rudy, but do both. Probably within five years of thirty, but I’d be guessing. An address of Battenberg. See what you get.”
Hester looked at me quizzically.
“The informant I talked to earlier. He thinks that this Rudy Cueva’s our victim.”
“Well, outstanding!”
The search for an Operator’s License Number came back within two seconds. Nobody in Iowa by that name had a driver’s license, nor an automobile registered in their name. In fact, the four Cuevas who were listed were all female. We couldn’t try a Computerized Criminal History on a name without a date of birth.
“Try a dummy one,” said Hester. “Give him a birth date sometime in 1971. It might work.”
It had in the past, on occasion. This time, there was no such luck.
I looked in the phone book. Now, that’s not as large a resource as you might think, because the entire Battenberg directory was only about fifty pages, and that included the government and business sections. No Rudy Cueva listed. No Cueva listed at all. The three of us checked the book for the entire county, using three books and taking sections. Took about five minutes. Nothing.
“Damn.”
That had been the first real break in the case. Well, I’d thought so, anyway. It still could be, but we were at a dead end for the moment. I didn’t dare call Hector back, because if he was at work, there were bound to be people around, and I was sure he’d preferred anonymity for a good reason. I figured he’d be the very best judge of whether or not it was safe for him to be chatting with a cop on his cell phone.
We checked with Battenberg PD. No Rudy Cueva listed in their city directory, but Norm Vincent thought the name sounded familiar. We had him go into the city manager’s office and check the water bills. If you lived there, you had to be hooked up to city water, simple as that. Nothing.
“Well,” I said, “our caller said he works for the packing plant. I sure as hell don’t want to call their night shift and start asking questions, though. If he does work there, and if he’s got family, the first thing that’s gonna happen is that somebody calls his wife and tells her that we’re checking.”
“Couldn’t you get there first? “asked Martha. Like I said, she was new.
“Not guaranteed, and we aren’t sure it’s him that’s dead in the first place. Just a tip.” I shrugged. “Let me call that anonymous caller back.” It had to be done. Having made such a momentous decision, I was kind of disappointed when I got a recording telling me that the owner of that mobile phone had either turned it off, left the car, or left the dialing area.
“If it’s who I think it is,” I said, “he’s turned it off. And he’s at work in the plant, and I don’t want to go there and…” Well, what the hell. “Give me the phone book,” I said, holding out my hand. “Might as well call the owner.”
He, naturally, was unlisted. I started with our Emergency Notification List, which was pretty much for fires and tornadoes, and started going down the chain of command for the packing plant. I finally got a very sleepy woman named Gloria Bennett. She was the head of accounting. She seemed to think I was INS or something. Finally, I got out of her that there might be somebody working there named Rudy Cueva, but she had no idea where he lived. I asked if her company records might indicate an address or a phone number. She said they might, but she wasn’t about to go to the plant at this time of night to find out. She said she’d call us in the morning.
It’s a free country.
Less than a minute later, Carson Hilgenberg called. He was the new county attorney. Really