The Covert Element by John L. Betcher Read Free Book Online Page A

no one else inside."
    I surveyed the location where the fire trucks had stood the day
before, and the path the firefighters would likely have taken to enter
the house and/or extinguish the fire. I could see where the hoses
had lain in muddy ruts, and the boot prints of the fire fighters who
had been the first to arrive at the scene of yesterday’s "event." The
hose marks and boot prints mostly followed my predicted paths.
One of those paths lay directly between the location of the corpses
and the burned out foundation.
    "Suppose the guys who did this . . ."
    "Or gals," Gunner pointed out, though I knew he didn’t really
think so.
    "Or gals," I conceded, " did leave a message to the drug cookers
who worked here. But the firemen obliterated it in their first few
minutes on site. I mean . . . it was dark and the fire was bright and
they had to be in shock after seeing all the bodies. They could have
easily trampled on something important."
    I took a few steps toward the area in question.
    "So I say, let’s start looking right . . . along . . . here." I indicated
the entire length of the suspect territory as I walked along it.
    "Okay. Let’s look. But we gotta pick up the pace. I can’t be
searching for that walkie forever."
    I started to walk directly toward the pathway the firemen had
taken. Gunner stopped me in my tracks.
    "Hold up. Don’t go walkin’ all over where the bodies were
layin’."
    "Why not? You don’t think the CSI team collected all the
evidence from underneath the corpses?"
    "Hell, no. They got their evidence. That’s not it. It’s like in a
cemetery. You don’t go trampin’ on a grave site. It’s . . . it’s not
right. Bad mojo."
    "Geez, Gunner. When did you start believing in ‘mojo’? You got
a voodoo doll in the squad? You do realize that there aren’t actually
dead bodies here anymore. We’re not walking on graves. Those
corpses are long gone."
    "Yeah . . . well . . . just don’t walk there. Okay? It’s not right."
    Superstition or not, I agreed to go along with Gunner’s
directive. He and I circumnavigated the area where the bodies had
lain.
    As we re-traced the steps of the firefighters, each of us
examined the ground for any evidence the crime scene experts
might have missed. It seemed a long shot. At one point I thought I
saw something unusual. But it turned out to be a spot where some
squirrel had tried to bury a nut or something. Anyway, there were
lots of squirrel tracks when I looked more closely.
    It didn’t take us long to examine the questionable area.
    Zippo. Nada. Zilch.
    Gunner’s radio crackled back in the car. Gunner looked up at
me.
    "Okay. Look around. Take a picture. Dig some dirt or whatever.
We gotta go."
    Not having any further hot ideas, I conceded defeat and we
strode back to the cruiser.
    Gunner picked up the radio.
    "Gunderson."
    "You guys get lost in there?"
    "Naw. I guess Crime Scene musta picked it up. I’m sure I’ll get
reamed out by the boss when my gear turns up in the evidence
locker. We’ll be right out."
    Gunner hung up the radio and closed his door.
    "That’s it for today, Sherlock. Let’s git."
    I joined Gunner in the car and we headed back out the drive. It
seemed that if we were going to learn more about the perpetrators
of this god-awful abomination, it wasn’t going to be here . . . at least
not today.
    "Thanks for coming out with me, Gunner. It was above and
beyond the call and I appreciate it."
    "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."
    The Chief Deputy tried not to smile.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
    Later that same day, in Red Wing.
     
    "I’m home," I called out as our back porch screen door
slammed unceremoniously behind me. I know it’s old-fashioned to
have a spring closer on the wooden door. But it was authentic. And I
sort of liked the sound the door made when slamming shut.
    The time was about 3:00 p.m.
    "Hey, Babe." Beth greeted me with a quick hug as I entered the
kitchen. She wore her straight, sandy-blonde hair pulled