Cole walked to the front of the main conference room of the Crawford County Courthouse. The two-story sandstone structure housed the county sheriff’s department and jail and, in a twist, Prairie du Chien’s Police Department. The county and city decided they could save their residents some money if they shared space and collaborated more closely. It made Cole’s job easier, too.
The conference room was long and narrow, with two simple, dark wood tables pushed together lengthwise. The tables were lined on both sides with matching wooden folding chairs with black faux leather padding covering the seats. A massive flat-screen TV was the focal point on one wall. Twelve area law enforcement agents filled the chairs closest to the front of the room and Cole had to move sideways at times to reach the blank whiteboard there.
As he picked his way forward he saw a framed mission statement. He’d been in a number of local law enforcement buildings and wasn’t sure he’d ever seen one with its own mission. He scanned it quickly and the words that stood out were courage, honor, and integrity. Under the “Integrity” heading the statement read: We are responsible for our conduct, both professionally and personally. We are honest, fair, and strong of character. We hold ourselves accountable to the highest standards of ethical conduct and endeavor to be role models for others. Cole thought if everyone in law enforcement lived up to those words, their shared profession would be in a better place, and the world would be a better place to live.
He picked up a purple marker that was labeled “grape,” but when he pulled the cap off and wrote his last name, “Huebsch,” the pungent glue-like scent that caught his attention didn’t smell like any grape he’d ever want to put in his mouth.
“Hello, everyone. I’m Special Agent Cole Huebsch with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said loudly, looking around the room. He’d invited the Prairie du Chien Police to this briefing, along with the county sheriff and his deputies. He’d also called in four state troopers who worked the area. Cole grinned a bit and thought that for the next hour or so, speeders in the county wouldn’t get any tickets. He shook away the thought and continued.
“This briefing will be, out of necessity, brief…and low tech.” His nose wrinkled involuntarily and he capped the marker and set it back on the ledge by the whiteboard. He squinted as he addressed the men and two women in front of him. The long fluorescent tube lights overhead washed the length of the room with a sickly yellow cast.
“I’m sure most of you, if not all, are aware of the two recent and separate murders of abortion doctors in the state, the first in Milwaukee and the second in Oshkosh.
“The killer fatally shot both doctors with 30/30 lever action Marlin rifles with four power scopes. He left his murder weapon at the crime scene both times, but that has led to dead ends or red herrings. We don’t know much about the killer, but we believe from boot prints taken in the snow at the Oshkosh murder scene that he’s a shorter male, somewhere between five foot even and five four in height, and around one hundred and fifty pounds in weight.”
“Sounds like a short, stocky son of a bitch!” a heavyset young deputy in the back blustered, his face turning beet red when every eye in the room focused on him. When he reached up and covered his goatee with a big hand, Cole thought he might be trying to obscure his identity.
“Right now, based on the best data we have, we think we’re looking for a short, kind of chubby fella,” Cole diverted the attention back his way.
“We don’t have much on the killer, but we suspect he lives in, or at least has close ties to, Prairie du Chien.” That caused a buzz in the room.
He picked the marker back up absently and walked down the right side of the room. He was wearing a charcoal gray pinstripe suit with a white button-down shirt and a blue and gray striped rep tie. His black loafers made a clicking sound as he walked.
“Your former mayor is staging a hunger strike a couple blocks from here. Two blocks from there, the editor of your local newspaper is running a count on the front page of each edition of his paper that provides an estimate of the number of abortions committed in this country since the Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision. Both the hunger strike and the paper’s abortion counter began a couple weeks before the first murder.
“If this was a town with a population of a million people or so it would strike me as more than odd that two different people who weren’t colluding would start protesting abortion in two very different ways. In a town like Prairie, with a population south of six thousand, it’s way too big a coincidence. I’ve spoken to John Lawler and Grant Grae, and both told me they were inspired by the pastor of St. Gabriel’s, Father Wagner, and his Christmas sermon. I think the shooter was in St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church here, in Prairie du Chien, on Christmas morning. I think he was likewise inspired by Father Wagner’s homily, but he took it in a more deadly direction.”
Cole made his way back to the front of the room and turned to face the officers again. “Our best theory right now is that the killer is a member of St. Gabriel’s parish. If he’s not a member, then someone related to a member. A lot of people who go to Christmas Mass are people who grew up here but moved away. They come back to be with family for Christmas. Unfortunately for us, there are probably more non-parishioners and other irregular attendees in church on Christmas than any other day…except maybe Easter Sunday. In order to run this down, we’re going to have to get a number of things done and done quickly, before our bad guy pulls the trigger again.
“First, when I leave here, I’m going to have a talk with Father Wagner. I plan to lay this all out for him and get his cooperation. Second, I will want a shortlist, pun intended, of any adult males in the parish ages sixteen through seventy who are shorter than five-six and between one forty and one hundred and sixty pounds. I can’t believe there are going to be more than a few guys who fall into this group, and I want deep background checks and bios on anyone on this list. This has got to be a priority. We don’t know for sure if the killer is working alone, and something could always have gone wrong when we developed the physical description of the boot imprints in Oshkosh, so we’re going to need to cast the net wider.
“Next, I want a diagram made, a grid that shows every pew on both sides of the main aisle at St. Gabe’s, and we need to place on that grid every person who was in Church on Christmas morning. We need a parish directory and we need to begin calling the names on that list to populate our grid. Every time we get a new name and drop that onto the grid, we call back here and update the master grid. Ask the parishioners if they were at Mass Christmas morning and where they sat. Ask who was ahead, behind, and on the sides of them. If you’re Catholic, you know that they share the sign of peace, a handshake, or even a hug, right before Communion. You get a pretty good idea of who’s around you. Also, ask them if they saw other people they recognized on their way into or out of Church, or while Communion was going on. Finally, at some point in Father Wagner’s sermon, he asked people to stand and be counted if they were ready to make a difference. We know that Grae and Lawler stood up at this point. They’ve both admitted this to me. I want to know if the people in the pews saw anyone else stand up.
“I’m asking the police chief and sheriff to work with the Highway Patrol to divvy up the assignments.” Cole took a deep breath then and paused. He took a slow look around the room and made sure his gaze took in every person present. When he began again his words were slower, measured, and deliberate. All eyes in the room were on him. “Every assignment is big. In cases like these, it’s getting the little things right that catches the killer. Work fast but don’t cut corners. We need everyone on this; nine-one-one dispatchers, clerical people, everybody can pitch in. Thank you and good luck.”