Known Dead by Donald Harstad Page A

it.
    ‘‘I’ll arrange to have the state get it back to you.’’
    ‘‘Thanks.’’ He couldn’t do that. They’d give it back on their own, or not, regardless of what he said. But he had to save a bit of face.
    When I got back, Lamar collared me. After I told him about the task force, he told me to take my scheduled days off on Monday and Tuesday.
    ‘‘That’s not necessary, Lamar.’’
    ‘‘Yeah, it is. I think this is gonna be a long one, and I want you in shape for the long run. Let the state and the Feds earn their keep for a couple of days.’’
    I really didn’t want to go home for two days. Which, come to think about it, is as good an indication that you should as any you could find.
    I drove myself nuts on Monday. I’d been building a model of HMS Victory for nearly a year. She had been Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar in 1805. I was researching the rigging, wanting it to be truly accurate. I had purchased copies of The Anatomy of Nelson’s Ships and The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War. They usually relaxed me past all reason. After I had read the description of the winding around the forestay and the fore preventer stay, and the method of bringing both stays into their collars, I read it again. And again. And again. Well, that obviously wasn’t going to work out. I covered the ship and came up out of the basement, books under my arm.
    ‘‘Done already?’’ asked Sue.
    ‘‘Nope.’’
    ‘‘Okay.’’
    ‘‘Sorry, I just can’t concentrate, that’s all.’’
    ‘‘Oh, you can concentrate all right,’’ she said. ‘‘Just not on that.’’
    I grinned. ‘‘Yeah.’’
    ‘‘Why don’t you go out in the yard and poison some more ants.’’
    Not a bad idea, really. We’d had ants in the house that spring, and I’d sort of made a crusade out of getting rid of them in the yard. Just walk around looking for hills in the grass, and ‘‘bombing’’ them with Diazinon crystals. ‘‘Death from Above,’’ as they say. I was losing the battle, but it was relaxing just the same.
    ‘‘Good idea.’’
    ‘‘I’ll call you for lunch.’’
    I must have walked around our little yard for thirty minutes, absently bombing an anthill now and then, and thinking about the case.
    Nothing. We had nothing. What was really bothering me, though, was that I didn’t know if my lack of progress was due to a simple absence of evidence, or if the narcotics people were withholding on me. It sure wouldn’t be atypical. Since I was working a homicide, I theoretically had access to everything that impinged on that case. The only problem was, how in the hell could I know what I didn’t know? Especially if the ones holding back were federal narcotics people. Or the FBI. Or the IRS, for that matter. I didn’t know anybody who could find out that information, and the only people I could try to ask were the ones who would be holding back. If, indeed, they were holding back at all.
    I gained a little on the ants. It was a good cause.
    Tuesday, and more of the same. I finally called the office. Nothing new. I called Hester. She was on an enforced day off too. But there was one item of interest. The Feds were having a meeting at our office on Wednesday, the 26th. Tomorrow.
    Speculating will drive you crazy. But I was hoping that I was going to have an opportunity to get some information. They had to have something to give on this one.
    We had some neighbors in Tuesday night, for a light supper and conversation. Everybody was thinking about the case, naturally. Nobody could talk about it, except to say the routine things like ‘‘It was horrible,’’ and ‘‘I really feel sorry for his family,’’ and stuff like that. Nothing of substance. Other than that, I had a pretty good time, as the conversation turned to gardens, which eventually took us to ants . . . If not one kind of case, then another, I guess.
    As Sue and I were cleaning up afterward, it occurred to me that I had needed