A Long December
In Donald Harstand’s most compelling novel yet, Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman returns for the latest installment in this fast-paced crime series.In a rural part of Nation County the body of a dead male is discovered in a ditch, one gunshot wound to the head. A routine investigation for Carl Houseman and his team, perhaps. Except strangely there is no way of identifying him: no fingerprint records, no dental records, nothing. Enter an FBI investigator, a new face from the bureau, who suspects it is the body of a Columbian terrorist.Meanwhile, a local meat-packing plant has been accused of passing off contaminated produce. In a town straining under the pressure of mass immigration, the Jewish plant owners suspect foul play. Can there be a connection with the Columbian corpse? Houseman and FBI agent Hester Gorse chase the leads once again in another nail-biting race to discover the truth.
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DONALD HARSTAD
A Long December
I WOULD LIKE TO DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THE MEMORY OF
KEITH LEMKA.
HE WAS A FINE OFFICER AND A TRUE FRIEND.
Contents
CHAPTER 01 TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2001 15:34
CHAPTER 02 TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2001 16:07
CHAPTER 03 TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2001 18:11
CHAPTER 05 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 09:45
CHAPTER 06 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 10:51
CHAPTER 07 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 13:27
CHAPTER 08 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 15:12
CHAPTER 09 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 18:04
CHAPTER 10 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 21:09
CHAPTER 11 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 08:09
CHAPTER 12 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2001 09:31
CHAPTER 13 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2001 10:40
CHAPTER 14 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2001 15:30
CHAPTER 15 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2001 19:30
CHAPTER 16 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2001 08:11
CHAPTER 17 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2001 12:21
CHAPTER 18 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2001 16:33
CHAPTER 19 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2001 19:27
CHAPTER 20 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2001 23:03
CHAPTER 21 SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2001 08:44
CHAPTER 22 SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2001 15:23
CHAPTER 23 SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2001 17:39
CHAPTER 24 SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2001 22:08
SLUGS RIPPED THROUGH THE BARN’S OLD BOARDS, showering us with dust and debris. I got even lower than I had been before, pressing my cheek against the sooty limestone foundation. I could see George hunker down along the thick support beam he’d found, and I heard Hester, who was off to my right in the gloom, say “Shit.” At first I thought she was just sort of venting, but then she kept going.
“Shit, oh shit, shit, shit.”
Hester’s no shrinking violet, but she’s not one to curse for the hell of it, either. I rose and turned to her, and noticed that she’d rolled away from her vantage point near the rotted ground-level boards, and was half sitting with her back against the foundation wall.
“What? You okay?”
“My face,” she said. She held the right side of her face with one hand while she struggled to reholster her sidearm with the other. I saw blood ooze between her fingers. “Shit, shit.” she repeated.
George and I both got over to her as fast as we could crawl. “Let me see.”
She reluctantly moved her hand from her face, and I saw blood and torn flesh. Not too much. It was hard to see in the shadows. I unsnapped my coat and daubed her face as gently as I could with the fleecy lining. It was all I had.
“Ahhh!” She pushed my hand away.
“Sorry, sorry, just a sec, just let me look.”
“Don’t press.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said as I pulled off my gloves, fumbled under my sweater, and dipped into my shirt pocket for my reading glasses. I put ‘em on and looked again. Sticking out of her right cheek was about a half-inch stub of an old, rusty square nail, flattened, but about half as big around as a pencil. It had embedded back toward the corner of her jaw. “I see it… it’s an old square nail. Part of one. There’s a chunk of nail stuck in your cheek.”
“Don’t touch it!”
“No, no.”
“I can feel it,” she said after a second, “with my tongue.” As she spoke, a rivulet of blood dripped over her lower lip and onto her parka sleeve. “It’s gonna hurt,” she said, and then shivered violently. “It’s inside my mouth. Oh shit.”
“It doesn’t seem to be bleeding very much,” I said. “But spit, don’t swallow it.”
“I just had a first aid class,” came Sally’s voice from behind the rickety and rusty milking stanchions. “Somebody get over here, and let me come take a look.”
George reached out and patted Hester on the arm. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Okay,” he said to Sally, “be right there. I’ll get you my stuff.”
Hester nodded, but said nothing as he crawled away.
“It’s not a bullet,” I said. She was shivering pretty hard, and breathing in deep, shuddering gasps, and I could see the clouds of frozen breath forming in the cold air. I didn’t want her hyperventilating on us, and tried to reassure her. “It’s just a piece of old nail, must have been hit by a slug. It’s not life threatening, okay? It’s not a bullet. Lots slower. There’s no damage other than a little hole.” It occurred to me that she might be worried about disfigurement. And it really wasn’t a very big hole. “Real small,” I said. “Try to slow your breathing, if you can.”
She nodded. “It’ll hurt,” she said, with a quaver in her voice. “Hit my teeth. Numb now…but it’ll hurt…oh boy.” She didn’t look at any of us, just stared at the concrete floor, concentrating, and beginning to try to breathe slowly and deeply.
If she was right about her teeth, it really was going to hurt like hell.
Sally scuttled over on all fours. “Hi, Hester. Let me see what I can do here, okay? You’re gonna be all right…”
“Sure,” said Hester. Her words were less distinct. Swelling inside her mouth?
Sally briefly examined the wound. “We need some sort of compress,” she said. “Just to protect it, if we can. Some water to irrigate it, maybe? Later, we better let the doc remove it, okay?”
