Mars saw the television crew by the podium at gate 37 at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport moments before they saw him. But it wasn’t until they saw him that Mars realized he was their target.
He heard the reporter, Wayne Feiss, say to the cameraman, who’d been sitting on an equipment case, “That’s him. In the navy blue jacket with the tan carry-on. Let’s get going.” By the time they caught up with him, the camera was running and Mars was caught in the glare of the camera’s auxiliary lights.
“Mr. Bahr!” Feiss called, his voice ringing with false moral authority. “Mr. Bahr—Wayne Feiss with the Channel Twelve Eye-Watch Team. Mr. Bahr, can you tell me if you’ve been traveling at taxpayer expense … .”
Mars stopped, dropping his carry-on case to the floor. He knew the drill. Knew that what the reporter wanted was for Mars to keep walking away from the camera, like a fugitive, head down, ignoring their questions. So he came to a full stop and turned, facing the reporter and the camera.
“I have been traveling on police business.”
Dropping the microphone from his face, Feiss said, “We don’t want to hold you up. You can keep walking. We’ll follow.”
Mars settled into an at-ease position. “I’m not going to do that. It’ll make me look bad. I’m staying put until you’ve got your interview on tape. We stop talking, I start walking, and
you put the camera back on—I’ll stop and stay stopped. We’ll both be here for a long time. Which would make me unhappy.”
Feiss scowled. Then he signaled his cameraman to turn on the camera again. Feiss said, his voice doubly authoritative to compensate for his loss of ground, “Mr. Bahr, you have acknowledged that you have been out of the city at taxpayer expense. Is that correct?”
Mars fixed Feiss with a look that was between the two of them. “I have been out of town on police business.”
The booming voice again. “Mr. Bahr, will you tell us where you’ve been,” and before Mars could answer, Feiss added, “and will you please confirm or deny that you were in a resort area in the Southeast?”
“I will confirm that I was out of town on police business. Any details regarding that business will be released by the department’s public information office, if and when the PIO determines doing so is in the public interest. It is not our practice to release details regarding specific investigations until a public need-to-know purpose has been identified.”
“Mr. Bahr, you arrived on flight three-twelve from Chicago. Will you acknowledge that by using a connecting flight you have disguised your true point of departure?”
Mars couldn’t stop himself. He screwed his face into an expression of contempt and disbelief. “‘My true point of departure’? C’mon, Wayne. That just sounds dumb. My travel was scheduled by the department’s administrative division. They pick flights based on cost and schedules.”
“You are denying that you flew first class?”
“I flew for free in first class, Wayne. I had abdominal surgery a little over a week ago, and out of consideration, the department pooled frequent-flyer miles to get me a first-class ticket. It didn’t cost the department anything.”
“Other than the cost of tickets the department will have to buy, rather than get free by redeeming those miles for other travel.” Feiss looked particularly self-satisfied on this point.
“Wayne, have you tried to redeem frequent-flyer miles lately? Almost by definition, when the department needs to schedule airline travel it does so on short notice. Nine times
out of ten, the travel is covered by a blackout period. Bottom line is, the department has a pile of miles it hasn’t been able to use. The miles that were used for my ticket were miles that were about to expire.” Mars shook his head in impatience, knowing as he did so that being impatient wouldn’t get him anything. “These are all questions the PIO could and would answer if you bothered to ask. Anything else?”
Still looking smug, Feiss said, “Our sources tell us that regardless of the circumstances of your travel, the investigation itself is bogus. ‘Busywork’ is the term our source used. Busywork to conceal the fact that the department is wasting tax dollars to support an elite unit within the Homicide Division that is underworked and overpaid. How many uncleared cases are you working on right now, Special Detective?”
Mars sighed. “Our caseload is the lowest—in terms of number of cases—that it has been since the First Response Unit was formed. But as any seasoned police beat reporter could tell you, ten cases can take less time than a single case. It always depends on the facts of any particular case how much time, how many resources are going to be needed to clear—”
Feiss interrupted him. “Will you at least confirm that the investigation from which you are just returning is widely considered to involve a suicide rather than murder?”
“See above responses,” Mars said, picking up his carry-on. “We about done here?”
As the camera lights went off and Mars walked away, he heard Feiss say to the cameraman, “We need to go down and cover baggage. If he had golf clubs, he’s not gonna pick ’em up tonight. But if there are clubs down there with his name on them, we can get a shot of that.”
Without looking back, Mars called out, “Your source at the Police Union should have told you. I don’t golf—not here or anywhere else.”
Nettie’s back was to him when he entered the squad room. She glanced around, caught sight of him, and turned.
“Where’s the suntan?”
“Pretty much what the television crew that met me at the airport wanted to know.”
Nettie groaned. “I should have warned you. I had a call from the Police Union, asking where you were. Like, when have they ever cared? I gave them a very ambiguous answer. But then they wanted to know when you’d be back. I told them tonight.”
“Don’t worry about it, Nettie. What’s going on here? Any more hanging victims with Beck’s number?”
“Nothing. And the chief has been doing some follow-up on the last teletype that got sent. He’s saying he thinks the three are all there is at this point. But the big news is …” She turned. “Got this late this afternoon. Tried to get hold of you in Richmond, but you were already in the air.”
She had a large manila envelope with exotic postage. She pulled out a sheaf of pages and a piece of cardboard to which was stapled a couple of plastic envelopes.
“Sheep news from across the pond,” Nettie said. She rifled through the report, stopped, tracing lines as she read, then began to nod. “Here it is, down in the summary section on this page.” She passed the report over to Mars.
It was what they wanted. The lab in Bradford, England, confirmed that the fabric sample from Beck’s noose included fibers that matched Herdwick sheep wool produced on a Yorkshire farm.
Mars read out loud: “‘The materials used in the construction of this fabric are consistent with fabric woven from wool produced by the Herdwick breed sheep currently bred on Thwaite Farms in west Yorkshire. Microscopic analysis was made by a binocular-zoom surgical microscope with a magnification power of two-ten. Chemical analysis was not conducted on samples provided as microscopic analysis was judged to be conclusive. It was further concluded that the age of the sample material is contemporary. While the weave pattern and wool source are consistent with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century flag materials, damage to the fiber’s scaling suggests a bleaching process was used to enhance a
white or cream fabric. Such a process would not be consistent with fabric processing prior to 1960. Furthermore, microscopic analysis suggests that thread used to sew the seam in the sample provided was of a polyurethane type, again, not used in thread production prior to the 1960s. Chemical analysis of conclusions with respect to the age of the sample provided are available if requested.’”
“Hot damn,” Mars said.
“And,” Nettie said, “I got some harebrained clerk at Quality Flag Fabrics to fax me their customer list for that fabric.”
“Boosey or Macintosh on the list?”
Nettie shook her head. “Couple West Virginia addresses, though. Probably figures that Boosey and Macintosh wouldn’t use their own names for a mailing.”
Mars flipped through the full report, stopping briefly under the section headed “Age Analysis.” He stopped cold when he read, “There is microscopic staining of the fabric sample determined to be related to fragments of berry seeds found in the fabric. Given the positioning of the fragments, it is judged that the seed fragments were introduced by the individual sewing the seam in the fabric sample.”
“You have the fax from the fabric place handy?”
Nettie handed over the fax. “What?” she said.
He traced down the list, looking for Green Springs. Nothing. But his eye stopped at a Darlene Jessup who had a post office box address in East Hill, West Virginia. If Mars remembered the map of West Virginia he’d used on the trip, East Hill would have been the closest town of any size to Green Springs.
“Shit.” Mars slapped his head. “Boosey’s sister’s name wasn’t in the Feebie’s file, and I didn’t ask when I talked to her. Shit!”
“You’re thinking the sister ordered the fabric, made the noose?”
“More than thinking.” He pointed to the age analysis section. “They note the presence of berry seeds in the fabric. When I talked to Boosey’s sister, her toddler was eating
dried berries.” Mars sat forward, rubbing his temples. Then he turned back to Nettie.
“Is there any way you can get me a phone number for an Esso station in Green Springs?”
Nettie looked at him. “It’s almost midnight in West Virginia, Mars.” She saw his face, and shrugged. “You have your travel expense receipts with you?”
Nettie had the number for the Best Esso service station in Green Springs, West Virginia, in five minutes. As Mars dialed the number, he tried to remember if the old guy in the baseball cap and wool jacket had a name. It would make it simpler if Mars could ask for the guy by name, but nothing came to mind.
It was a moot issue. Mars recognized the old guy’s voice as soon as he picked up.
“Esso.” He sounded wide awake.
“I’m Marshall Bahr. Sorry to bother you so late, but I bought gas at your station a couple days ago …”
“Two point three.”
“Pardon?”
“You bought two point three gallons. Put it on a credit card. Noticed the name. Parked bad and asked a lot of questions.”
Mars saw an opportunity. “You got it in one.”
“Always do,” the old guy said.
“I appreciated the directions you gave to Junior’s place. But I need to talk to his sister again, and find I don’t have her name. I was wondering if you? …”
“You a cop?” the old guy said.
Mars said, “You got it in one again.”
“Married name Jessup,” the old guy said. “Darlene Boosey married Wayne Jessup.”
Within three hours of Mars’s confirming that Junior Boosey’s sister’s name was Darlene Jessup, Gordon Ball
and Mars had worked out what Ball would need to get a search warrant on Jessup’s double wide and Junior’s Airstream. Ball had cautioned Mars that if the search didn’t yield anything definitive, the best they could hope for was to get Junior to say something that would give them a clue who he might be working with. Ball had made contact with county authorities in Green Springs who would support an arrest, just in case Junior stepped in it. And Ball promised Mars that if Junior wasn’t taken into custody, surveillance would be in place immediately.
After talking to Ball, Mars said to Nettie, “Put that one in the plus column. Remember that case in Ohio? Where they did DNA analysis on some kind of vegetation at the crime scene? Don’t know if that’s a possibility with these berry seeds, but it’s worth a try. At the very least, we can match them visually to the fragments in the fabric.”
Mars got up and started pacing. He looked at his watch. At best it would be another ten, twelve hours before he’d hear from Ball. He looked at the white board, seven names now in the column to the right of the seventeen names of the First Minnesota Volunteers who’d died at Gettysburg.
Nettie said, “Mars, I’m beat.”
“Get out of here. Depending on what we hear back from Ball, tomorrow could be chaos. Get some sleep while you can.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be out of here in fifteen minutes.”
After Nettie left, Mars remembered something he’d thought about when he’d put the suspect profile together. He’d thought it likely that their suspect would disassociate himself from the flag controversy in advance of beginning the killings.
Now that they were pretty confident that the three hangings they knew about were the only three hangings that had taken place, they had a starting point. Which meant Mars could check people who’d been involved in the flag controversy who had dropped out or become inactive prior to the first killing.
Mars went through Keegan’s files again to see if there was anything on Hec Macintosh, Junior Boosey, or Phil Stern that referred to individuals dropping out of the group. Macintosh had been forced out of the ROFers, but had continued a more damaging association with the Pure Blood Boys. Other than that, Mars didn’t find anything. Maybe Keegan was right. Maybe their suspect was a guy who’d never joined up, who’d kept his nose clean.
His eyes were starting to get heavy. Mars carried Macintosh’s file back to the lounge, bunched his parka on one end of the couch, and lay down. As he read through the file in detail he shook his head in regret. Macintosh would have been the perfect suspect. But there was absolutely no one who fit their invisible-man profile. Mars got back up, unable to sleep, and walked back into the squad room. He stood, staring, in front of the white board.
No question about it. They were making progress. But it was impossible to feel comfortable with where they were. The first time Mars could expect to take a deep breath would be when they’d identified all the target victims and had them under protection.
Before heading back to the apartment, Mars picked up the full report on the fabric analysis. Under the report was a thin file labeled Twenty-eighth Virginia/19 Dead. Mars flipped it open. It was a file Nettie had started as she began the process of identifying any of the nineteen members of the twenty-eighth Virginia who’d died at Gettysburg who had been hanged.
Mars sat down on the edge of his desk, reading what Nettie had pulled together. They knew almost nothing about these men. Nettie’s information—as far as she’d gone—was scant. She had one page that listed the names of the nineteen. She’d begun individual sheets for two of those, but had little information filled in, other than birth dates, a marriage date for one. He held the file in his hand for a moment. If he had trouble getting to sleep, he knew he’d regret not having it with him. So he dropped the file on top of the fabric analysis report and headed out.
He was at the intersection of Portland and Eleventh Street when he became conscious of a small point of green light deep within his consciousness. He pulled over and concentrated. Nothing came. The light flickered. On instinct, he picked up the file on the dead Virginians, flipping on the dome light.
He looked twice at the birth date for Algernon Broaddus. Broaddus had been born on May 11, 1843. Was Mars remembering correctly that Gaylord Rowe had been hanged on May 11, 1999? If he was remembering correctly, were the two dates a coincidence?
Mars switched off the dome light and pulled a U-turn on Portland, driving the wrong way on the one-way street as he headed back to city hall.
He didn’t take his jacket off as he entered the squad room. He went straight to the white board. He’d remembered right. Gaylord Rowe died on May 11, 1999.
Mars’s hand trembled slightly as he flipped to the only other page that contained a birth date. Purvis Graham Jr. had been born on January 4, 1845. Of the two remaining hanging death dates—for Beck and the Salina, Kansas, victim—neither death date matched January 4. But without knowing the death dates for the other names on the board, he couldn’t be sure. The only way Mars could rule out that the May 11 match between Rowe’s death and Algernon Broaddus’s birth was a coincidence was to come up with as many birth dates for the remaining names of the nineteen Twenty-eighth Virginians as he could, and see if any of those birth dates matched Beck’s or the Salina victim’s death date.
Still in his jacket, Mars sat down at his computer. He fiddled around with the Yahoo and Google search engines, cursing himself for being too reliant on Nettie to handle this kind of thing. After a few false starts he found a Web site for the Virginia Historical Society. That site allowed Mars to enter a search date for documents going back as far as the sixteenth century. It was simple enough to enter the name, specify a death record—which he felt pretty sure would include
a date of birth—and limit the search to July 1863. George E. Whitman had been born on October 9, 1837; Mars noted the date next to Whitman’s name on Nettie’s list, but he couldn’t match it to Beck’s death date of December 6 or the June 3, 1998, Salina hanging.
An hour and three names later, it was Frederick James Olm’s birth date that matched Beck’s death date of December 6. The next name Mars checked, Gideon Walsh, showed a birth date of June 3.
He’d matched the death dates of all three known hanging victims to birth dates for three of the nineteen dead Virginians.
His sleep-deprived brain struggled for the obvious conclusion: by identifying birth dates for all nineteen of the dead Virginians, they’d know when the remaining target victims would be at risk. Knowing that would make all the difference.
Just before dawn he’d found birthdates for all nineteen of the Virginians who’d died at Gettysburg. He stared, numb with fatigue, at the array of dates. What he saw jolted him into full consciousness.
Boyle Keegan’s voice was fuzzy when he answered Mars’s call. Mars could hear Keegan yawning softly and moving about as he listened to what Mars had to say.
“It’s a break,” Keegan said, his voice still thick with sleep, but now charged with oxygen. “It gives us a way of managing this thing. Fax me the dates, will you? I’ll see that they get out immediately to all the jurisdictions where we’ve identified targeted victims. We’re going to need to pull together a task force meeting—can Minneapolis host? Some hands are going to need to be held to keep this thing on track. We’ll want all the jurisdictions that have a victim or a target, the chiefs that have been involved, the FBI satellite offices—”
Mars said, “I’m not sure we want to pull those guys in to Minneapolis now.”
“Not on the target dates,” Keegan said, “I’m talking about getting this done in the next few days.”
“That’s the problem,” Mars said. “We’ve got a target date coming up on January fourth. And we haven’t identified all the target victims yet.”
For sure Mars woke Linda VanCleve.
“Linda, it’s Mars Bahr. What’s going on? I thought we were going to have researchers working shifts to identify our target victims. I got back from Richmond last night, and I haven’t seen anybody.”
Linda VanCleve may have been sleeping when he called, but she managed to give Mars a sharp reply.
“It’s been difficult, the time of year and all. We should be able to go to shifts after New Year’s.” Her voice was intentionally unresponsive.
“Jesus fucking christ, Linda! This isn’t recruiting hall monitor volunteers. People could die while we put this information together. I thought you understood that. And why, if you’re having problems finding people to work, haven’t you told someone? We could have brought in people from other states, if necessary. We can’t just sit on our hands while we wait for people to come back from Hawaii, or wherever. You need to fucking communicate if you’re not able to do what you said you’d do, when you said you’d do it—”
“Oh, I love this,” Linda hissed. “You lecturing me on proper communications. Do you want to explain when you intended to let me know that you’d brought in the legal beagles to return the flag to Virginia? After all the effort we’ve put out to help? Including Christmas Fucking Day, to borrow your language?”
For a moment Mars was too angry to speak. Controlling himself he said, “That’s what this is about? Keeping the flag in the basement of the History Center? That’s more important to you than saving the lives of innocent people?”
Her response was clipped. “I’m sorry you see it that way. I thought we’d worked pretty effectively together until now.
Which is why I felt so betrayed when the center’s attorney in the AG’s office told me what you were up to. I even had the impression that we’d gone above and beyond the call of duty to try and—how did you put it—keep innocent people alive.”
“You’ve done a lot. It’s been appreciated. But doing a lot shouldn’t be confused with doing everything that needs to be done. And right now, we have to identify the targeted victims fast. Because we’ve gotten a break in the case that indicates one of them is scheduled to die in four days. And if giving the flag back to Virginia—even on a temporary basis—increases their chances of staying alive, it seems to me to be more important to do that than to waste time and energy throwing a hissy fit over who gets the flag.”
“Maybe, Mars, you should spend some time thinking about what was important to the innocent men of the First Minnesota who died at Gettysburg.”
Mars lost it. He was tired, he was scared, and Linda VanCleve was making him crazy.
“Put it in a can and eat it with a fork, Linda. Read your own documents on what was important to the innocent men of the First Minnesota. What they cared about was the Union. They did not go to war, they did not risk their lives, so you could keep a flag in a drawer in the basement. And consider this: If we lose one of the First Minnesota’s descendents in four days’ time because keeping the flag in your basement is more important to you than saving their lives, I’m not going to be too concerned about letting any number of people know what your priorities are. You can be over here with your researchers by—” Mars glanced at his watch, startling himself. It was eight o’clock in the morning. “You’re over here with your researchers by ten, or I’ll find somebody else who can do the job. And I can promise you won’t like the consequences if it comes to that.”
Mars slammed down the receiver and blew air. When he turned around, Nettie and Glenn Gjerde were standing behind him in slack-jawed amazement.
Nettie said, “I didn’t know you felt that way. That you felt that strongly about giving the flag back to Virginia.”
Mars jammed his hands into his pants pockets. “Neither did I. Until just now.” He nodded toward the white board. “I figured something out last night about the schedule for the hangings. We’ve got four days to complete the target victim identification.”
To Glenn he said, “I assume you bring glad tidings.”
Glenn pulled up a chair and sat down. “Based on what I just heard, I’m not feeling all that great about what I’ve got to say.”
“C’mon, Glenn. It won’t be the first time you’ve told me something I didn’t want to hear.”
“I’ve spent a fair amount of time with John Yanch—Yanch is the attorney in the AG’s office that handles History Center business.”
“He’s the guy who issued that convoluted opinion justifying why Minnesota was entitled to keep the flag?”
“The same,” Glenn said. “But like it or not, Mars, Yanch is a first-class lawyer. And he’s saying no federal court is going to order Minnesota to return the flag to Virginia. The federal court is gonna say this is a state issue that needs to be resolved in state courts. Which pretty much puts a lid on it. A Virginia court can order Minnesota to return the flag, but you don’t need me to tell you what Minnesota is gonna do with that order.”
Mars tossed his cigarette box on his desk. It had been beaten up pretty bad in the past twenty-four hours. “The fact is, Glenn, right now, I don’t have time to work this issue. We need to have the victims identified in the next forty-eight hours so we can get protection in place by January fourth. Maybe if the flag had gone back a week ago, it might have made a difference. Right now …” Mars shrugged. “Right now I figure we’ve missed our chance to return the flag and have that make a difference.”
Mars dropped down in the chair next to the chief’s desk.
“Developments,” he said.
The chief sat back, fixing his eyes on Mars.
Mars talked through what had happened with the fabric
evidence and the target dates. The chief’s eyebrows went up in response to what Mars was saying, but he stayed quiet.
When Mars stopped, the chief said, “Sounds like we need to have a status call with our colleagues in other jurisdictions.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk about. Keegan’s suggesting a task force meeting in Minneapolis. But that can’t happen until we complete the target victim identification and have protection in place in advance of the next target date—January fourth. Ideally, I’d like to get the victim identification completed in the next forty-eight hours, which takes us to New Year’s Eve. If we could get the task force meeting in place on January second, we’d have time to contact all the jurisdictions with target victims and everybody attending would have time to get back to their own jurisdictions well in advance of the fourth. And they’d be fully briefed, we’d be better coordinated. Thing is, can we pull off a meeting here on that kind of notice—three days from now? Our resources are pretty well tapped out in the division. Can your office handle arrangements for the task force meeting?”
The chief gave Mars a nod. “Consider it done.”
Boyle Keegan arrived shortly before noon. He was too hyped to stay in Washington, running the administrative end of the show. “Everything’s in line there,” he said, “I need to be on this end. Target victim identification is where it’s at now. Can’t we get more people working this thing?”
“We considered it,” Mars said. “Decided the best way to manage quality control—and maintain confidentiality—was to have the same group working the research, supervised by people close to the investigation. The last thing we want to do is make a mistake and either miss someone or identify the wrong person. Of course, we made the decision to keep the research here before we knew the target dates. Now it’s really too late to rethink that decision. It would just take resources away from the effort to train new people.”
Mars sighed. He was tired and wanting to get over to see Chris, who’d returned with Denise the previous night. And there wasn’t much he could do in the squad room until they completed target victim identification.
He rubbed the heels of both hands across his face. “Our biggest problem is turning out to be coming up with accurate current address information, once we’ve identified the target victim.” He blinked and stared over at the white board. His brain was making a buzzing sound inside his skull.
Keegan said, “Shit, Mars. The Bureau can run those checks with both hands tied behind our backs. Have your people feed the Bureau the information on the target victims as soon as they have a name. Then your people can get back to doing the family line research. Should speed the process up no end.”
Keegan’s suggestion took a lot of pressure off. Mars should have thought of it himself, but his brain was showing serious signs of burnout. Relief washed over him now that completing the target victim identification process looked to be a sure thing. Relief was quickly followed by profound sleepiness. Mars picked up the phone to call Chris.
“Dad! Can you come over? I want to set the computer up.”
“You’re welcome.”
Mars could hear Chris’s embarrassment in the silence that followed. Then Chris said, “I’m sorry. I thanked Mom. I would have asked for one, but I thought it cost too much.”
“It did cost too much. But your mother and I agreed you’d earned one. Okay that it’s not a dog?”
Chris’s voice resumed its buoyancy. “I named it Spot. And I can get software that’ll make it bark every time I turn it on.”
“Just so it doesn’t get muddy paws and shed hair.”
“So can you come over?”
“Yeah. But I can stay just long enough to get the computer set up. Then I’ve gotta get some sleep.”
Denise’s expression was grim as Mars walked in. She was trying to dump a cardboard box full of Styrofoam mailing peanuts into a plastic trash bag. From where Mars stood, it looked like her success rate was significantly under 50 percent. Chris was on the couch, hand over his mouth, working hard to control laughter, with about the same success as Denise was having with the Styrofoam peanuts.
Gulping back laughter, he said, “Mom? If you’d gotten me a dog, it wouldn’t have been wrapped in all that plastic stuff.”
“That,” Denise said, straightening up, “is the best argument for a dog you’ve come up with.” She looked at Mars. “I’ve been trying to get rid of these things for the past twenty minutes, and so far I’ve got a lot more on the floor than in the bag.”
This statement broke through the remaining shreds of Mars’s and Chris’s self-control. The truth was that more of the Styrofoam peanuts had, through the miracle of static electricity, stuck to Denise’s clothes and hair than had fallen to the floor.
“What,” she said, hands on her hips, a plastic peanut hanging artfully from her elbow, “is so funny?”
Mars pulled his coat off and started to help Denise. It was roughly like herding cats. Within seconds, the electricity that had been generated when he’d removed his jacket was sucking peanuts out of the box and onto his pants and face. The peanuts clung to his hands as he tried to shovel them into the bag.
Rolling with laughter, Chris said, “Mom? Know what we should do? We should just put you and Dad in plastic bags.”