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Chapter One
Talking Horse (cont) |
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"Now here's the same scene about twenty minutes
later," Vito said, regretfully putting aside the nude shot and picking up a new one. "This
was taken by a different satellite, coming from a different direction. It doesn't have
quite the capability of the first, so we didn't get it down to three meters, but you can
see that this is not the girl in the first shot."
This one was
in color and while Vito's criticism of the camera's capabilities was accurate, Mulheisen
could see that this naked body was not a female at all. This was a dead man with longish
hair, lying on his back at nearly the opposite end of the hot springs pool, a flaccid
penis clearly visible. He could tell the man was dead, or infer it at least, because of
dark spotlike smudges on the chest which seemed connected to a pinkish cloudiness as of
blood around the body, and the disposition of the body: this was not a living person
trying to keep afloat. This was a guy who had been shot at least four times. The head lay
back and submerged, with the mouth open. The face wasn't very visible.
Mulheisen looked at
it for a long time, then said, "This is as close as you can get it?"
Vito
shrugged. "Maybe one of our guys could get it a little better."
"That'd
be good," Mulheisen said. "The face isn't identifiable at this angle, but the
disposition of the bullet wounds could be matched to the body we have. If this is who I
think it is, and if we can establish that these shots were taken twenty minutes apart, as
it indicates ...."
Vito shook
his head. "I don't think so, Mul. I mean, I can get you -- maybe -- a better shot of
this guy, but if you're thinking you can use this as evidence or something, forget it.
These pix don't exist. In fact, if my boss knew that you were looking at them, not only
would my job be history, I might become part of the history of Leavenworth."
Mulheisen
looked at his old high school buddy wistfully. They had shared a bench in chemistry lab
and their hall lockers had been across from each other. They had smoked cigarettes
together in the loft above the stage, when both were on stage crew. He wasn't real sure
where Vito worked now, but he had an idea. It was either a federal agency or it was under
exclusive contract to that agency and, either way, it meant that Vito wasn't supposed to
show around pictures that were taken by satellites, at least not without some higher
authority. Mulheisen now asked if that authority could be obtained.
"Possibly," Vito said. "It depends on the satellite involved. Some of
these, maybe this one --," he pointed to the picture of the dead man, "are just
geographical survey satellites, mapping. But others have more, ah, special
missions. If a need, a greatly pressing need to know could be established ... The problem
is, even for the public domain type pictures, somebody asks `How did you find out about
this?' So first, we have to agree that these pix don't exist -- yet -- and I didn't show
them to you. Okay? Okay. Then I have to go to the boss and say something like, `I was
talking to a buddy of mine the other day, a cop, and he was asking me about satellites and
I admitted that yeah, there are a lot of satellites and at any given time there might be a
chance that one is flying right over where you are standing and if it is mapping or
whatever its function, yeah, you could probably retrieve that data somewhere and maybe,
just maybe, you might be able to see what was happening at that moment.' So then my boss
would probably ask me why I was blabbing this crap all over town, and then I might
convince him that it was essentially harmless and besides, it might be of value to the
police and we should always cooperate with the police, et cetera, et cetera. But whether
he'd go along with that, I don't know. I kind of doubt it." He picked up his coffee
and sipped it, but he made a face when he realized it was cold, and he set it down. He
signalled the bartender and asked for a cognac.
Mulheisen
nodded. "Well, at least I can look now and if it turns out that it would be useful
evidence we can worry about that later. But Vito, I would never tell anyone how I got hold
of this."
"Or even
that you got hold of it, is better," Vito said.
"So what
else do we have?" Mulheisen asked.
They turned
to the other folders, other pictures. A series of scenes of a cabin in the mountains, in
December, in snow. Then a picture of that same cabin, or what had been that cabin, lying
in a black, smoky ruin amidst the snow. This had been the property of Joseph Humann, aka
Joe Service. It lay approximately 200 yards over the ridge from the hot springs.
There were
several shots between the first one, of the pristine snow, no tracks leading up to the
cabin or the nearby shed/garage, and the later shot of the burnt-out cabin. These
intermediate pictures were murky, obscured for the most part by falling snow or partial
cloud cover. But they did show an automobile in the yard, near the shed. And another one
showed a female human figure walking through the snow, carrying an armful of firewood. And
finally, a shot of two women, one holding wood and another bending over, perhaps to pick
up wood to place in the other's arms.
This was of
great interest to Mulheisen because he knew, from the time line on the pictures of the two
women, that they were taken at a time when Joseph Humann, otherwise known as Joe Service,
was supposed to be in the cabin, attended by his nurse, Cathleen Yoder. Mr. Humann had
been nearly killed by a would-be assassin three months earlier, at approximately the time
of the pictures of the hotsprings, in fact. Humann had made a remarkable recovery. So
remarkable that by the time of this picture, just three months later, he had been able to
leave the hospital for a day or so, a kind of holiday, to visit his cabin.
What was
interesting in these pictures for Mulheisen was the presence of two women. The
pictures were not good. The visibility was bad and this camera hadn't been able to get the
resolution to within three meters, as the best of them did, but you could distinguish the
one woman from the other. Mulheisen had seen Ms. Yoder, the nurse, before. She was the
smaller woman, the one one with blond hair cascading from under the woolen hat, whose arms
were being loaded with wood. But the other one, that tall one, he didn't know her.
This was
significant because within a few hours the cabin would burn, the propane tank would blow
up, and everybody in the building, except for one man, would be killed. But there was no
body of Joseph Humann or Cate Yoder or any other woman in that burnt-out hulk. And Yoder's
car, the one he could see in the satellite shot, was gone. At the time of the explosion
there had been two other cars present, one of them rented by Helen Sedlacek and the other
belonging to a local crime figure. So Mulheisen and the other authorities had reasonably
concluded that Humann and his nurse had left before the arrival, probably separately, of
Helen Sedlacek and six men, known crime figures, five of whose bodies were found there,
plus the one who survived. Helen had been apprehended by Mulheisen shortly afterwards and
was presently in a Butte jail. But there was no sign of any second woman who had been
present with Humann and Yoder. Except in this satellite picture. It was definitely not
Helen; she was smaller than Yoder.
Mulheisen was
truly puzzled, because he had thought that he had pretty much figured out this whole
scenario. Humann and Yoder go to the cabin, then they leave; Helen Sedlacek comes to the
cabin, but she flees into the woods on foot when the killers arrive; the killers arrive,
invade the empty cabin, a fire starts, the cabin blows up, killing all but one of them;
Mulheisen and the other cops arrive; Helen is arrested.
The cabin
pictures were not of much interest, except for the presence of the unknown woman.
Mulheisen was almost sorry he had asked Vito to obtain them -- he'd been so sure of his
interpretation of events. It was practically a closed case, except for the disappearance
of Joe Service. But now ... an unforeseen element had muddied the water. By contrast, the
hotsprings pictures had clarified that situation. They weren't exactly witnesses to a
crime, but they certainly placed Helen on a remote scene within minutes of a homicide
occurring.
Mulheisen
considered that what he had really been looking for in the cabin shots was a picture of
Joe Service/Humann. He'd seen Joe Service when he was in the hospital, but he hadn't been
able to talk to him at the time. A picture of Joe Service was of no particular value. He
would no doubt be all bundled up, assisted by the nurse and, perhaps, the other woman. But
Mulheisen longed to see him. He had no strong evidence against Joe Service for any crime,
not enough to obtain a warrant for his arrest, anyway. But he had enough to hold him for
questioning, if he could find him, and more evidence could be found ... would be
found.
The simple
truth was that Joe Service had so plagued his investigations over the years that Mulheisen
felt an almost physical need to see him, to touch him, to know where he was. And he felt
that he would achieve this.
"Can I
keep these?" Mulheisen asked.
Belk looked
pained, but then he sighed and said, "All right, Mul. But for crissake, don't show
'em to anybody else. Don't even talk about 'em. Okay?"
Mulheisen
nodded agreeably. He shuffled through the pictures again, musing on their very existence.
An event occurs, he thought, and it is witnessed. But for various reasons the witnesses
will not, or cannot, or at least they do not, tell you what happened. Unless you can get
them to tell you, the event is lost to history. Only imagination can recover it. He
thought of the famous poem of Auden's about paintings of the Old Masters. In one of the
paintings the poet notices a murderer's horse, (indifferently or idly or innocently?)
scratching his butt on a tree while the deed is done. If only the horse could talk! Well,
what he had here was a talking horse. He almost shivered. Mulheisen put all the pictures
in a large envelope. He leaned towards Vito and said, with a nod toward the bar, "You
know about this place? About the escaped Luftwaffe pilot?"
Vito didn't
know the story. Mulheisen was surprised. It had been an important thing in his life, but
suddenly he saw that it was just a minor drama. He recounted it briefly.
"So they
never caught the guy?" Vito said.
Mulheisen was
staring into the middle distance, thinking. "He got away." He paused.
"Sometimes they get away." |
