“Is that the exact location where you think he is?”
“No. That’s the center of the town of Pine Ridge. Which covers thirty-five square miles.”
“What makes you so sure you have the right place?”
“I’m not sure. Dorothy’s cross-checking property records against Google Earth satellite views.”
“Looking for what?”
“Land that’s big enough and private enough. Multiple points of egress. Unoccupied, abandoned, foreclosed, whatever. Absentee owner goes to the top of the list.”
“What about utility bills?”
“We don’t have your resources. We’re sort of running blind here. So try to get SWAT up here as soon as possible.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said. “See you up there.”
“I hope so.”
A minute or so after I hung up, I had an idea. I reached Dorothy on her cell. “Can you get me the home number of the chief of police in Pine Ridge?” I said.
91.
“Oh, believe me,” the police chief’s wife said, “you’re not interrupting dinner. Walter’s out there sandbagging, and I don’t know when to expect him home. They’re all out there, the part-timers and every volunteer they can rustle up. It’s a mess. The river’s swollen and there’s mudslides just all over the place. Can I help you with anything?”
“Think he can use one more volunteer?” I said.
“Head out there.”
“What’s his cell phone?”
Chief Walter Nowitzki answered on the first ring.
“Chief,” I said, “I’m sorry to bother you during such a difficult time, but I’m calling about one of your officers—”
“That’s gonna have to wait,” he said. “I’m up to my neck in alligators here.”
“It’s about Jason Kent. He was on your force, reported as a homicide?”
“Who’s this?” he said sharply.
“FBI,” I said. “CJIS.”
He knew the jargon. Any cop would. CJIS was the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which maintained the central NCIC database of all reported crimes.
“How can I help you?”
“You reported this as a 908, a premeditated homicide on a police officer, and I was following up on that.”
“All right, I—you know, this is probably not the best time to talk, we’ve got some real bad flooding up here in New Hampshire and we’ve got people stuck in their cars and the river’s swelling its banks, and—”
“Understood,” I replied. “But this is a matter of some urgency. We’ve got a homicide in Massachusetts that seems to fit some of the basic parameters of the one you reported, so if you could answer just a couple of real quick questions…”
“Let me get into my vehicle so’s I can hear you. Can’t even hear myself think out here.”
I could hear him fumbling with the phone, then the door slam.
“Tell me what you wanna know,” he said.
“Do you have any suspects?”
“Suspects? No, sir. I’m sure it was someone from out of town.”
“Was he investigating a crime or anything of that sort before he was killed?”
“We don’t get a lot of crime in these parts. Mostly speeders, but they’re usually not from around here. He made some routine rounds, checked up on a noise complaint, but…”
“Did he make a traffic stop near where he was killed?”
“Not so far’s I know. That was my theory, but he didn’t call anything in.”
“No run-ins with anyone?”
“Not that he mentioned.”
“Any theory at all what might have happened to him?”
“No, sir. I wish I did. That kid—they didn’t make ’em any better than that one—” He seemed to swallow his words, and he went quiet for a moment.
“I’m very sorry.”
“If that kid met Satan himself he’d offer him the shirt off his back. Only bad thing I can say about him is he probably wasn’t cut out to be a cop. That’s on me. I shouldn’t never have hired him.”
“The day he was killed, what were his duties?”
“The usual. I mean, I asked him to look into a sort of, well, I call ’em nuisance calls. We got a fella called Dupuis who’s sort of a fussy sort, you know? Kept calling to complain about one of his neighbors, and I asked Jason to go check it out. And I’ll bet you Jason didn’t even—”
“What sort of complaint?”
“Oh, I dunno, Dupuis said he thought the guy down the road stole his dog, like anyone would want that mangy mutt, and he said the guy mighta been doing work without a permit.”
I was about to steer him into another line of questioning when I had a thought. “What kind of work?”
“Construction maybe? All I know is, there hasn’t been no one living on the Alderson farm for years, not since Ray Alderson’s wife died and he moved down to Delray Beach. I figured