Code 61 (50 page)

Harry and Hester showed up just as we were taking Dan Peale out to the ambulance. Harry, in particular, was very disappointed to have missed the excitement. Hester told me that she and Harry thought Tatiana had snitched Huck off.

“I believe,” she said, “that she wanted to make sure Dan did something terrible. So he'd get out of Jessica's life, permanently.”

Considering that we thought Jessica had damned near invented Dan Peale, and would probably create another one, it had been a waste of time.

After countless examinations and three separate hearings, Dan Peale was eventually declared insane, and placed in a secure mental health facility. God only knows what he'll do there. He is scheduled to stand trial in Wisconsin, for the murder of Randy Baumhagen, but is currently fighting extradition on the grounds that he's been already declared legally insane. What really bothers me is that, since he wasn't tried, we haven't been able to get a determination on exactly what happened with Edie. Hester and I talked about that at some length, and what we came up with was this:

Dan and Toby had Edie in that “crypt” of his. Dan seems to have planned to bleed Edie for a while in advance, and while he intended to bring Edie very close to death, we couldn't prove he intended for her to die. That would have been enough for second-degree murder, though, and we were fairly certain he would have been convicted. That left us with the question as to just what happened after she died. We found that out at Toby's trial.

Toby said that Dan didn't want people snooping around, doing a search for a missing woman. He was afraid they might stumble across the elevator, or just go looking for her in the mine. He decided to make it look like a suicide, to prevent a search. Dan was the one who made the cut in Edie's neck, to cover the needle entry point. Toby insisted it was post mortem.

Then they had to carry her back to the Mansion, and put her in the tub. They'd used the elevator, and that explained the wood stain on the body bag. They carried her to the house, and had to set the body down while Toby was sent to get Kevin. Since they didn't want to be seen, Dan had unlocked the back stair door to the third floor, and they'd placed her in the stairwell. That fit nicely with that bloodstain.

While Toby was up with Kevin, Huck had awakened, and was moving about. Toby thought she was taking a shower. He hustled down to Dan, and they took Edie right up the main staircase, so they didn't have to pass Huck's room. The stain on the carpet came from setting her down, just as we figured. Our only mistake on the direction was in thinking the stain at the bottom of the back stair meant that they'd brought her down from the third floor.

The weird part was, Toby was the only one who actually did any prison time for the whole thing. He got five years for helping Dan kill Edie. When he'd told us that he hadn't been able to kill her in the so-called crypt, he'd told the truth. But he'd held on to her while Dan did it. But, I mean, is that ironic or what? Here he was, the only one nuts enough to really believe the officially insane Dan Peale was a vampire, and he was the one judged sane enough to stand trial. “The fool? or the fool who follows him?” I think it goes.

Hanna and Melissa continued rooming together, around the general area. Huck, after a brief stay in the hospital, moved to Dubuque, and got a job dealing on the gaming boat down there. She came back to testify at Dan's hearing, but seemed distant to us.

Kevin turned up in Freiberg. He'd split as soon as he became aware that Dan was back in the house. The county attorney said we didn't have much on him, and subpoenaed him as a hostile witness in one of Dan's hearings.

Jessica and Tatiana both testified that Dan had flagged them down, and taken them hostage at gunpoint, and forced them to take him back to Lake Geneva. They got away with it. Hester, Harry, and I approached the prosecutor's office, with a request to prosecute Jessica as the principal orchestrator of the entire business. They told us that they'd never be able to convince a jury of that, especially in the light of the defense team she could afford to retain.

I'll never forget what the head prosecutor said. “You guys just have to learn to be realistic about these things.” Right. While working a vampire case?

Jessica is still doing her thing, as far as we can tell. Hawkins keeps in touch.

We found William Chester's pack in the woods well north of the elevator shaft. It contained a stake, garlic, a crucifix, and a mallet. We didn't have any idea where he'd gone for several weeks, and were beginning to wonder if Dan Peale had killed him and dragged him into a dark area of the mine. Then Harry got a call from the cops in Lake Geneva, wanting to know if he'd ever heard of the man. They'd popped him in a stalking case. Apparently, he was taking an interest in Jessica Hunley. When questioned, he'd actually used Harry as a reference. That was a hoot. Personally, I think he caught a glimpse of Dan Peale that rainy night on the bluff. I think the reality of Peale finally dawned on him, and he just couldn't handle it. I think he simply ran away.

The Mansion is still there, although Jessica sold it soon after Dan was committed. I understand it's about to become a resort, since it's so close to the gaming boat and the Mississippi. I don't think Sue and I'll be staying there. I never did get inside the Hunley estate in Lake Geneva.

Oh, yeah. Borman. He lost his action against me. He tried to say that I'd done the same thing that he had done—ffred a warning shot. One that just happened to hit Peale by accident. Right.

Borman left the department after that, and signed on with a university security service on the West Coast. That was too bad, in my opinion. I still thought he had a lot of potential.

GLOSSARY

AG: Attorney general, either state or federal.

COMM: Police radio call sign of the communications center in Nation County.

DCI: Division of Criminal Investigation, a division of the Iowa Department of Public Safety.

DEA: Drug Enforcement Administration, an agency of the U.S. Government.

DNE: Division of Narcotics Enforcement, an agency of the State of Iowa and an offshoot of DCI.

DNR: Department of Natural Resources, an agency of the State of Iowa.

FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation, a bureau of the U.S. Department of Justice.

ISP: Iowa State Patrol, the uniformed division of the Department of Public Safety.

ME: Medical examiner.

SA: Special agent, either of the Iowa DCI or the FBI.

SAC: Special agent in charge, either of the DCI or the FBI.

SO: Sheriff's office.

SOME NOTES ON CODES IN GENERAL

In law enforcement communications, codes are used both as a shorthand method of communication and as a way of concealing information from the prying ears who listen in on police radio transmissions. The Ten Codes, listed below, are our basic shorthand for radio use.

Other codes are used to fill in the gaps or to cover unusual situations that arose after the Ten Codes were established. One example would be the use of “code blue” to indicate that the subject of concern in deceased. This has become so well known that it's really no longer very useful, and has often been replaced with other codes.

Many departments developed a code system that would use a common number and give it another meaning known only to the officers and dispatchers. Code sixty-one is a good example. Briefly, it started with the old 10-61, which meant “Personnel in area.” Being a superfluous number, it slowly changed over the years to mean “Unauthorized personnel in area,” and eventually came to indicate “Be aware that this conversation is not secure because an unauthorized person is listening.” That particular definition proved to be pretty useful, and is used in that context today. It then developed, by replacing the “10” with “code,” into “Be very circumspect in all your transmissions, as we don't want any casual listeners to garner information from your radio traffic.” Strangely, code sixty-one came into general usage about the time the general public began obtaining police scanners.

SOME USEFUL TEN CODES

The so-called Ten Codes were developed in the very early days of police radio communications. Range was very short, and most of the vehicles that carried the expensive equipment for two-way communication were owned by states or large cities. The codes, as used in Iowa, were meant to cover the situations commonly encountered by the Iowa Highway Patrol. The IHP in those days was very likely the only outfit that operated in rural Iowa which could afford radios. Many times, the early equipment was so unreliable that the first part of a transmission would be lost due to equipment vagaries. Long transmissions merely meant that the chances of a message becoming garbled were just that much better. The Ten Codes enabled the reduction of the length of the transmissions, and their clarity was improved by assigning simple numbers to the most common messages. Therefore, the “10” was used to alert the listener that a message number was to follow. This system has remained in use, and seems likely to do so for the foreseeable future.

As an example, if you as an officer were to suddenly encounter an armed suspect, shots were ffred, you needed help, and thought somebody had been injured, you might transmit: “Ten-thirty-three, ten-thirty-two, need ten-seventy-eight, and get me a ten-fifty-two—this is ten-thirty-three!” (Note the use of 10-33 twice, which officers tend to do when emphasizing dire straits.) An excellent dispatcher will get the whole picture, and may merely try to discover your position by saying, “Tenfour, ten-twenty?” As with any system, the clarity and usefulness depend entirely on the quality of the personnel involved. An excited officer may be merely garbled, and the transmissions result in a “Ten-nine?” An inattentive dispatcher may “tune in” halfway through the message and receive incomplete data. This, too, can lead to additional risk and hazard.

This is, by the way, one example of why the retention of your top-notch people is so important.