Eleven Days (35 page)

I gave the best description of the assailant that I could, and of the car. As I was finishing up, I realized that I still didn’t know the status of all the prisoners. I asked.

“Traer, Betty, and Rachel are all okay. Tommy Jenks is alive, but not expected to live.”

Tommy was the twenty-five-year-old prisoner.

“Kenny Mills died about half an hour ago,” said Hal. “His wife was dead on the scene.”

“Except for Traer, it was a clean sweep.”

“Yeah.”

“Three troopers are taking him to the Linn County jail,” said Lamar. “Better security. And we don’t want that son of a bitch Travis coming back here.”

“For sure,” I said. “Except I’d like another crack at him.”

“Now,” said Hal, “Art says you recognize this guy?”

I sighed. “Yeah. Sort of. I think I’m familiar with his walk, or his build. I don’t know who it is yet, but I know the son of a bitch.”

“Think you’ll be able to place him?”

I looked at Hal. “Sooner or later.” I shook my head. “I wish I’d reacted better.”

“From what Saperstein tells us about him,” said Hester, “you did well just to stay alive, let alone hit him.”

“Did I hit him?”

“We think so. There’s a large bloodstain on the wall, right where he was when you shot.”

“Good.”

“Which reminds me,” said Hal, “we’re going to have to have your gun for ballistics tests.” He held out his hand.

“You’re gonna have to wait a few minutes,” I said. “Where’s Phil Daniels?”

Phil was a Maitland PD officer, and an avid gun collector.

“Don’t know,” said Lamar, “out there somewhere.” He made a general gesture toward the exterior of the building.

I picked up the intercom and told Sally to have Phil come into the office.

I looked at Hal. “You can keep it in sight, but I’m not gonna hand it over to you until I have the replacement in my hand.”

“Sure, sure …”

The only other handgun I owned was a two-inch .38, and I just didn’t feel it was adequate for this situation. Not that I could reasonably expect to ever see Travis again. But I was a little less than logical right then.

“So what are we doing?” I asked.

“We’ve got almost a hundred troopers searching the roads in this and the adjacent counties,” said Hal.

“And almost that many deputies and police officers coming in from all over,” said Lamar.

“Any luck?”

“Not yet.”

“How bad you think he was hurt?” I asked.

“Probably pretty bad,” said Hester. “That cannon you carry probably nearly took his arm off.”

“Good.”

“We found the dent in the hall, where the bullet exited. It went through and through. What kind of ammunition do you use in that?”

“210-grain Silvertip.”

“You heard a
pop
when he shot at you and Dan?” asked Hal.

“Very clearly. Loud
pop
, like a little firecracker.”

“You think he had a silencer?”

“No.”

“He must be a pretty good shot,” mused Hal.

“Good enough,” I said.

“I’m just thinking out loud.”

Saperstein came in. “How are you?”

“Fine.”

Phil Daniels stuck his head in the office. “Somebody want me for something?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You have a .44 four-inch at home, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Can I borrow it for a while? They need this one to take to the lab.”

“You bet, I’ll get it right away. You okay?”

I nodded.

I was beginning to get a little tired of people asking me how I was. I excused myself and went to the john, remembering to hand Hal my revolver as I left the room.

I looked in the mirror and discovered the reason for all the questions. I looked like shit. There was disinfectant, that heavy orange kind, all over the right side of my head. Same side that Rothberg got. And on the right shoulder of my uniform shirt. Almost no blood, but a lot of disinfectant.

I went back to Lamar’s office and called home. Sue answered right away.

“Hi, how you doin’?”

“Fine, how are you?”

“I’m just fine,” I said, and forced a chuckle. “So many
people have asked, I decided to look and see why. I got disinfectant all over my shirt. Could you get another one out of the closet, and I’ll have somebody pick it up?”

“Sure. You’re not coming home?”

“Not just yet, darling.”

“All right.”

“Why don’t you go up to your folks’ house for a while?”

“I think I’ll do that.”

“Good, I think that’d be a good idea.”

“It’s all over the news, and the phone was ringing when I came in the door. It was Jane. I told her you were all right. I was right, wasn’t I?”

“You bet.”

“I also stopped and saw your mother while I was at the hospital. I told her you were okay, too.”

“Thank you.”

“When are you coming home?”

“Later. That’s all I know.”

I dialed dispatch. “Hey, Sally, could you tell Phil to stop by my residence and pick up a uniform shirt?”

“Sure.”

“Carl,” said Hal, “let’s go over what he was wearing again.”

“To the best of my recollection, it was a dark sweat suit with a hood. Dark blue, I think, maybe black. That’s all I know.”

“And he didn’t return fire when you and Mike were shooting at the car?”

“No. Why?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“There wasn’t much of a blood trail,” said Hester. “Blood on the wall, and possible tissue, where you shot him. A couple of drops on the kitchen floor, and a few drops on the asphalt on the back lot. I don’t think any of it was yours—you don’t appear to have bled much—but it might be.”

“So,” I said.

“Well, that happens sometimes, especially if the clothing is absorbing the blood. But, well, in a few minutes, why don’t you and I walk it through?”

“Sure.”

“Something I think you should know, though,” said Hester.

“What’s that?”

“We found a hand.”

“I hit him in the hand?”

“No, Carl.” She smiled. “It was somebody else’s hand, from a few days ago.”

“I’m not with you,” I said. I wasn’t.

“We think it’s McGuire’s missing hand.”

“Wow.” The only thing I could think to say.

“It was back in the cellblock, under the library table. Whoever he is, he must have dropped it.”

I looked at her. “Why’d he bring it?”

She shrugged. “We don’t know.”

Phil came back, with my shirt and a duplicate of my revolver. I loaded the gun, went into the john, and replaced my shirt. I soaped most of the disinfectant off my face and neck and combed what was left of my hair down over the scratch on the side of my head. I looked almost presentable when I came out, and felt one hell of a lot better.

I looked at my watch and nearly fell over. It was 03:43. I must have slept for almost two hours out at the dispatch center.

I went back into Lamar’s office and signed a receipt for Hal, for my gun. Put a copy in my pocket.

“Well, Hester, you ready for a walk?”

She was, so we went back into the cells, and she had me stand in the same spot I had been in when I fired the shot. She stood where Travis had been.

We reenacted the whole thing. Hester is five feet eight inches tall, and Travis was about five ten. Close enough,
for our purposes. She spun to her right and almost fell through the door. Just like he must have. We did it three times.

While she was figuring out the patterns, she told me that they felt that Travis must have fired about sixteen to eighteen rounds. When he’d killed Elizabeth Mills, he’d shot her four times.

She wasn’t sure how he’d gotten in. There were no marks of forced entry anywhere on the exterior of the building. She did know that he’d surprised the two reserves and had probably taken them out first. Then Jane, at dispatch. Then he’d simply worked his way through the cell areas, apparently recognizing and sparing Rachel and Betty. He’d then gone through the men’s area, killing everybody he met, most likely because he didn’t know which one was Traer. Or Kenny Mills.

They’d interviewed Traer, and he felt that Travis was aware that he’d missed his main target, and thought he’d come for him again. Traer remembered hearing a siren, which was probably mine, in the distance, and he said that the shooting had stopped abruptly. Good old Oswald Traer was apparently having a real fit, because he’d also told Hal that he’d gotten Todd Glutzman, aka Nathane, to burn the McGuire house. To cleanse it, he said. Said that he figured that the killer was going to go for Glutzman for doing that. Dumb, but Traer was scared nearly to death. Good.

Hester figured that Travis had hidden in the dispatcher’s broom closet and had come in behind Dan and me when we were in the men’s cell area. His timing was just a little off, she thought, because he’d probably intended shooting us from the rear.

She was probably right. I hadn’t even thought about the little broom closet. I wondered if Dan had, and had deferred his own judgment because I was senior to him. God, I hoped not. It would be so much easier if we had both made the mistake.

Hester and I walked slowly out into the kitchen and then onto the back porch.

“Now, think, Carl. Did you see him here?”

“No.”

“Okay, now look, here’s a small smear, like he brushed the side of the door frame with his sleeve as he went out. See?”

I saw. Not much blood. Damn.

We went outside. There were five or six squad cars parked back there now, and a couple of officers I didn’t know standing around. Security.

“Just where was his car?”

I indicated an area occupied by two police vehicles.

“Whose cars are these?” asked Hester.

One of the cops I didn’t know said, “One’s mine.”

“Would you move it, please?”

He looked at her, decided she might have some authority, and agreed. He took it out onto the lawn. Rude. Lamar was proud of that lawn.

“Yeah, right about here, Hester.”

We went over the asphalt between the kitchen door and where his car had been parked. There were three drops of blood, inside chalk circles, on his approximate path.

“These are the only ones we found,” said Hester. “Where were you when you shot at the car?”

“Well,” I said, “I started about here, shot probably four times, I think, yeah it must have been four, because then I moved to here and shot again, and then it clicked empty.”

I was standing right on the chalk marks.

“Might be yours,” she said.

“Yeah. Shit.”

“And where was Mike?”

“He pulled up right over there, got out of the car, and fired at it as it went down the hill. I ran toward it but gave
up real quick. We both reloaded, then he took off in pursuit, and I went back to the jail.”

“The back door?”

“Uh, no, I sort of couldn’t. Honest, Hester, I just couldn’t go back in there right then. I had a smoke and then went around to the front.”

“I can understand that.”

“Good, I’m having a hard time myself.”

Hester stood, looking around. There were two buildings behind the jail. One is an old barn that was converted into a two-story, three-stall garage; the other is a small garage slightly down the hill. Hester started toward the big one.

“Where you going?”

“Oh, just checking something out.”

I went with her.

“You were only about two seconds behind him, weren’t you, Carl?”

“Oh, maybe three or four, maybe a bit more. I waited at least a second in the hall, then took another second to clear the kitchen area, I think. Then outside. He might have had four to five seconds on me at that time.”

“So you didn’t see him get in the car?”

“No.”

“But somebody was in it, weren’t they? It left.”

“Oh, yeah, there was a driver.”

“I wonder,” she said. “I wonder … could there have been two of them?”

“What, you think he’s in here?”

“No, but he might have missed his ride. Hidden behind or in the buildings, then left on foot.” We were at the big garage. “Is this always locked?”

“Never has been, as far as I know,” I said, pulling my gun out. Oh, God, I thought. Don’t let him be in here.

“Hey, you over there!” I shouted to the two strange cops. “Come here a minute.”

They started over, saw my gun out, and Hester reaching for hers, and drew their own.

“One of you stay here with us,” said Hester. “The other one go get some more people.”

“He in there?”

“We don’t know,” she said, never looking at them.

“Just move it,” I said.

One of them went flying into the jail and returned in a couple of seconds with about half a dozen officers, including Hal and Lamar.

We went through the building extremely thoroughly. Nothing. Good.

A search of Maitland was organized immediately. At least, that’s what the official report stated later. Actually, it was thrown together in quite a hurry, and it was far from organized.

We had about ten squads running around the streets, checking out every Chevy, Buick, and Oldsmobile manufactured since the late fifties. Dispatch was going nuts running the registration checks. Station wagons, convertibles, four-door sedans, two-door hardtops, you name it. In every conceivable color. I remember hearing one that was on a car I knew was up on blocks, and had been for nearly a year.

One team of officers, about thirty or so, was going door-to-door, fanning out from the jail. Waking everybody up and having them check their cars. Pissing everybody off, unless they scared them to death.

About half the State Patrol TAC team from the Mason City office was there, with the rest coming, and we had them change into their tactical uniforms. If we found him,
they were going in to get him. We didn’t want to lose anybody else.

The rest of us, and there must have been fifteen or so, divided up into three teams, and went to the residences we thought he might be familiar with, and their neighbors. We searched just about every house and garage in Maitland.

Lamar, Art, Hal, Hester, and I went to the Rothbergs’.

The parsonage was located next door to the church. It was a very large frame house, built in the 1890s. Full basement, full attic. Lamar, Art, and I lived in similar homes. We were going to be on familiar territory.