Let me tell you… By Thursday, the 25th of July, it seemed like everybody wanted a piece of Herman. The DNE, as soon as they found out that he was involved somehow in the killing of their officer in the woods, wanted exclusive rights to interrogate him. They thought it was a narcotics-based conspiracy and just closed their minds to the possibility that it wasn’t. It didn’t help that they weren’t the state’s homicide investigators. The DCI did that, and they seemed to think that the DNE officer was more important than any Nation County deputy that had just happened to get in the way and get himself killed. Or any Nation County sheriff who happened to get himself shot, for that matter. Their reasoning was pretty good, though; the DNE officer was the central figure because he was first, and established the chain of events leading to subsequent shootings. It really wasn’t their logic, I guess. It was just the way they stated it.
The Attorney General’s office sent two of their best, along with two gofers, just to oversee the interrogations. Our county attorney was at his best, underpaid and overwhelmed. And, to top it all off, now that the hostage aspect of the business was over, the FBI was taking official notice of the whole situation. Melissa and her daughter, you see, were now being considered ‘‘hostages’’ and ‘‘possible kidnap victims.’’ The upshot was, if the individual officers hadn’t been used to cooperating and working together, the whole case would have fallen apart right there. As it was, we at least understood that we were all in this together.
The first thing we did was have an informal meeting, just the working officers, as we like to call ourselves. It happened in the kitchen of the jail, as usual, and involved Hester, George, Agent Bob Dahl, Hester’s boss Al Hummel, and our dispatcher Sally Wells, who was to coordinate communications for the investigative team. No attorneys. We didn’t need the complications. I’d invited Art, but he was ‘‘too busy.’’ Doing what, I didn’t know.
Since the crimes happened in our county, I chaired the meeting. I do that well. I stopped at the bakery, picked up a large box of pastries, made the coffee myself, and called the meeting to order.
‘‘Well?’’ I asked. ‘‘What do we want to do?’’ Like I said, I do that well.
As it turned out, what we wanted to do was this: Hester and I were to do the Rumsford murder, with our first priority being to discover just who in hell had shot him. Bob Dahl was to continue working the narcotics connections, but from a slightly different perspective, in light of what we now knew. He was to go back on the street and find out who had known about the dope patch and might have been connected to Herman et al. Al Hummel and the DCI would do the murder of Bud and the shooting of Lamar, which they would normally have done anyway. But Al was to coordinate between all four murders and try to maintain a line of evidence. We used the word ‘‘line’’ because there was no ‘‘chain’’ yet… nothing linked solidly to anything else. Just a bunch of points on a trail. George was to coordinate all the information regarding the extremists who might be involved. The FBI was really good at that, and he’d be able to trace connections none of the rest of us could. He was also assigned to the ‘‘kidnappings’’ by his home office. Sally would handle all the computer checking, including the National Crime Information Center or NCIC, the Interstate Identification Index, also known as ‘‘Triple I,’’ and basic things like driver’s license and vehicular information stored in computers around the United States. Too, she would handle all the secure teletype information between agencies and officers. And keep it all extremely confidential, with access limited to the investigative team only. Since this would entail her working odd hours, and no particular shift, it had to be cleared through Art. We’d work that out.
We would also have meetings every three days, whether we needed them or not. Mandatory. Nobody was to be allowed to lose track of the overall investigation. George, of course, would be in close contact with all three investigations.
After that was decided, it was just a matter of where to start and how to go about it.
Art vs. Sally was a potential problem, as he hated her with a passion, for refusing to do something for him years back. He would not approve her flexible time. We knew that. But he had to. We knew that too, because she was the most reliable and efficient dispatcher any of us had ever known, and we needed her. George and Al, as usual, came through.
About an hour after the meeting broke up, Hazel Murphy, our secretary, called Art on the intercom.
‘‘Art, it’s for you on line three… the Director of Public Safety, Des Moines…’’
The director talked briefly with Art about recent events, kind of like he was really in charge. Then told him that there had been a request from his field agents for use of a dispatcher in our department, flex time, for special assignments. That he’d had his staff go over the records in Des Moines and that he was assigning Sally, as she had scored highest on her database tests when she’d been certified by his department. If that was okay with Art, of course.
Piece of cake.
Art called Sally and told her. She protested, she had things to do at home… Art insisted. Sally ‘‘caved in.’’
Art, however, wasn’t quite finished. He knew I liked Sally, and that I had likely recommended her for the assignment. He also probably suspected that the director had been doing somebody a little favor. He tapped me on the shoulder when I was in the reception area, in front of Hazel.
‘‘You put in lots of hours the last few days.’’
‘‘Well, yeah, I have,’’ I answered.
‘‘Since you were acting sheriff, you don’t get paid for the overtime.’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘Yep. Chalk up thirty-seven hours of OT to experience. You were administrative.’’
About twelve hundred bucks went down the drain. Oh, well. It just made me more determined to keep Art busy supervising us. He was administrative, and I figured I could keep him on the job for more than thirty-seven extra hours in a week. Easy. But it hurt the pocketbook just the same.
Then, the press weren’t exactly absent. Normally, we could expect something of a respite after we got the ‘‘suspects’’ in jail. But not now. Especially after one of their own had been killed. Poor old Rumsford was being elevated to a kind of sainthood within the fourth estate. Talk about sad… they would have nominated him for a Pulitzer, if they’d been able to find anything that he’d ever done. Instead, they hovered around our jail like electronic vultures, waiting to pounce on a sound bite. One of the first things they did was go around Maitland interviewing anybody who walked slowly enough to catch. I will say this, though. They seldom got what they wanted.
One memorable sound bite was aired in what I think was desperation. They stumbled on Harvey Tinker, an elderly gentleman who nearly always wore seedy gray slacks, a white shirt, blue suspenders, and an Ivy League sort of hat. Smoked cigars one after another. I saw him on TV early on, being interviewed in front of the courthouse.
The interviewer was a young man, blond, eager, and very outgoing.
‘‘I’ve been talking with Harvey Tinker, a longtime resident of Maitland,’’ he intoned. He turned to Harvey, who had kept his cigar in his mouth. ‘‘Tell me, Mr. Tinker, what do the residents of Maitland think of all this?’’
Harvey looked squarely at him and said, ‘‘Shouldn’t shoot cops.’’
‘‘Do you mean there’s a sense of outrage here over the shooting of the local lawmen?’’
‘‘Nope. It’s just dumb to shoot a cop.’’
‘‘Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Straight from the heart.’’
The press aggravated us no end, except one French-Canadian team who did the neatest shots of the jail with the sunset turning the old limestone building orange and with a real live deer in the background. It turned out they were doing a travelogue on the Mississippi when their home office sent them inland a few miles to do us. They were attuned to nature shots. They were nice.
To top things off, the extreme right descended on Maitland like a pack of locusts. Not the armed groups. Not militias or paramilitary folks. Oh, no. We weren’t that lucky. No, we got the ‘‘political’’ people. The ones who had convinced themselves they knew what they were doing, and so offered their services to ‘‘represent’’ Herman and family. They were only egos with big appetites, but they could drive you crazy if you let ’em. Especially one named Wilford Jeschonek. We came to call him ‘‘W.J.’’ or ‘‘Rotten Willie,’’ depending on our mood. We hadn’t known him before he came to the jail and demanded to see Herman Stritch and family. Claimed he was an attorney of the common law.
I first saw him as he was arguing with Norma, the duty jailer. She was refusing to let him talk to the Stritch family until she cleared it with the clerk of court.
‘‘Who is that asshole?’’ I asked nobody in particular.
‘‘Sounds like a right-winger,’’ said Al as he passed. ‘‘Wants to bail ’em out with a homemade credit slip, or something like that.’’
‘‘Oh.’’
Old W.J. thought he’d made it impossible for us to see who he really was. Had no license plate on his car. Had no driver’s license. Had canceled his social security number. Had filed a paper with the clerk of court declaring his birth certificate, marriage certificate, U.S. citizenship, etc., invalid. Denied citizenship in anything but the Free and Sovereign Republic of Iowa, as a matter of fact.
‘‘Jeschonek, Wilford Frederick, DOB: 03/19/40, SSN 900-25-0001, 5’7’’, 180, brown and brown,’’ said Sally, five minutes later. ‘‘Nearly a hundred traffic violations, from speed to no seat belt.. . mostly no registration, no DL, stuff like that. Got it for carrying a concealed weapon in Minnesota two years ago, busted for sex with a minor in Wisconsin four years ago, two public intox. in Iowa, and one domestic abuse assault in Iowa last year.’’
‘‘Thanks.’’ She was good. ‘‘Get his wife’s name, will you? Might want to interview her sometime.’’
‘‘Martha June,’’ said Sally absently. ‘‘Lives in Oelwein.’’
‘‘Right.’’ I went back toward the investigator’s office. Speedy, too. If the wife was separated or divorced, she might have information regarding his contacts. I’d have George get with Sally. And if W.J. was connected with any particular group, Herman might be as well. And
…
And we were off and running.