A Long December by Donald Harstad Read Free Book Online

volunteers, and it wasn’t fair to have them waste time from their real jobs just sitting in court because some defense attorney wanted to try to trip one of them up. They did observe the body at a few feet, however, and all agreed that, whoever it was, he was most assuredly dead.
    They decided to stick around for the medical examiner, who was on his way to the scene. He might want them to move the body fairly soon, and they were more than willing to help. Besides, EMTs always liked to watch the ME at work. In the meantime, they stood off to one side, watched us, and listened to the Heinman boys tell about what they’d seen. We could have stopped that, but the Heinman boys would be telling the same story in the coffee shop within hours anyway.
    I motioned the ambulance crew over.
    “Yeah, Carl?”
    “You guys meet any cars on your way up here?”
    “Sure,” said Terri.
    “Very many?”
    “Well,” said Red, trying to remember, “at least three or four, I think. Terri was in front, too, though. Maybe she remembers different.”
    “More like seven or eight.” Terri was sharp. “You mean getaway-car 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