Falling to Iowa

By Richard Mueller

When the body of an Armani-suited wiseguy drops from the sky into Cornflower County, it sets in motion an investigation that pulls Sheriff Gleason into a mob conflagration. From a simulated war in Florida, to murder and revenge in Iowa, crime will take a terrible toll on the lives of Glen, Anne and Kat before it thunders to an explosive conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Mueller
• Release date: Dec 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465972811

Richard Mueller

Richard Mueller served in the U.S. Coast Guard before moving to Hollywood to work as a writer, first in science fiction and then television and film. He also runs the “best open mic show” in L.A.”

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FALLING TO IOWA

a Glen Gleason Mystery

by Richard Mueller

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COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2001, 2010

all rights reserved

Edited by Yvonne Dauphin

Smashwords Edition: December 2011

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or a vendor partner and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Smashwords Edition Photo Credit: Dan Coffey. Used by permission.

Smashwords Edition Cover Design Credit: Shannon Muir. Used by permission.

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DEDICATION

For Robert Mueller

For Shelley Martin

For Ray Bradbury

But mostly for Yvonne

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

FEBRUARY 1

APRIL 2

APRIL 3

APRIL 4

MAY 5

MAY 6

JUNE 7

JULY 8

JULY 9

JULY 10

AUGUST 12

AUGUST 13

AUGUST 14

ALSO BY RICHARD MUELLER – DEATH ON THE PRAIRIE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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FEBRUARY

1

The body of Mark David Staines was discovered by a high school senior named Mike Ferebee on a clear white frozen morning in late February. On the previous evening Mike, to impress his girlfriend, and after consuming half a pint of apricot brandy, had driven his rebuilt, baby-blue Trans-Am off of County Road W55 in an attempt to cut across to the Badger Line, an unimproved dirt track that followed the Badger River from Athens to Woodlot. If he hadn’t attempted to cross the rutted rough-plowed field, or if he had succeeded in reaching the foaming banks of the Badger, there’s no telling how long Mark David Staines’ death would have gone undiscovered. Perhaps until planting time or until some pheasant hunter had stumbled across it. As it was, Mike Ferebee’s car hit a rain-widened depression, his transmission dropped, and I got the call at breakfast.

Anne and I were aging newlyweds, having been married just ten days. During the previous year I’d moved to West Harlan from Los Angeles, met Anne, fallen in love, gotten mixed up in a string of murders, been elected reluctant Sheriff of Cornflower County, and helped to bring legal closure, law and order, and a return of peace and quiet to the town where I’d gone to college many years before. Illusory peace and quiet to be sure, but an improvement over the string of killings that had dogged the town the previous year. Naively perhaps, Anne and I had been hoping for a spell of dull routine to let our lives get back to normal, but as she had told me early on in our relationship, don’t ever expect to be bored. I was finishing my coffee when the phone rang. Anne answered it.

It’s Kat, she said with a grin, handing me the phone. Most women I’ve known smile well but they can’t grin. Anne is an exception. My beautiful wife always looks as if she is up to something, and she usually is. I shook my head.

You’re impossible, I said, taking the phone. Hey, Kat. What’s up?

Hey, Sheriff. Kat was our best friend and had been Maid of Honor at our wedding. I’d met her last June but she and Anne had known each other for years. She was also my Deputy, and a pretty good cop if I’m any judge

Glen, we’ve got a body. In a cornfield south of Miller. I’m heading out there now. Want me to swing by and pick you up? She sounded excited.

I knew things were too quiet, I said. See you in five minutes.

"Problem?’ Anne asked as I replaced the phone on its cradle.

Someone found a body in a cornfield near Miller. I stretched to take a kink out of my back, and then looked around for my boots. Murray the Cat was sitting on them. I evicted him and pulled them on.

Probably some hunter who shot himself, Anne said as she stacked the breakfast dishes in the washer. We get at least one every year.

Or a heart attack. As I pulled on my parka, Anne came up behind me, slipped her arms around my waist, and brought her hips up against my backside. I reacted immediately, but covered it with a cough.

I think Kat’s just looking for an excuse to get you alone, Anne said playfully. Canoodling in the cornfield.

Canoodling? I’d expect better language from a poet of your stature.

What’s wrong with my stature? You knew I was short when you married me, she said, copping a quick feel.

I turned and kissed her, my fingers roaming through her curly brown hair. She was wearing a soft gray sweater over darker gray slacks and she fitted against me like a puzzle piece. Anne, I would canoodle with you anywhere. But somehow, standing around in a freezing cornfield over a dead body while Doc Crouch hacks and spits and delivers forty-year-old coroner jokes over the newly departed is not my idea of a romantic rendezvous.

Her nose wrinkled. You’re no fun.

So Kat tells me.

Good for her. She handed me my badge. Go get ‘em, Sheriff. I’ll be in class till three.

* * *

Kat and I rolled up U.S. 218 in the crackling cold air. I scratched at the frost on the window as Kat hummed a tune I could not recognize. She was looking inordinately cheerful. When I pointed this out, she laughed. Hey, this is a cause for celebration, our first murder of the new year.

That’s a ghoulish sentiment, I said. Besides, who said it was a murder? My money’s on a hunting accident.

Kat shook her head, her short black hair bouncing against her collar, and refused to let me curb her cheery bloodlust. Nope. I woke up this morning and the first thing I said to myself was, ‘We’re gonna have a murder.’

Great.

Kat laughed, and swung us around a grimy lump of ice that had fallen off the underside of a truck. Maybe I’m in tune to the cosmic fates.

Maybe you’re gonna be the primary on this, I said. You solve it and I’ll promote you to plainclothes homicide.

She shook her head. No way. I like wearing my browns. Besides, the guys love a girl in uniform.

So do the girls.

How indelicate of you to say so, she said, blowing me a raspberry.

We turned off 218 onto H28 and then, after passing through Northwest Harlan, north on W55, following county roads that meandered in right angle turns around the ends of farm fields. After a mile or so we came upon a farmer waving to us from the west edge of the road. As we stopped he came over to the driver’s side window, blowing cold air, and nodded respectfully to Kat. Just follow the tire tracks, Sheriff. It’s about a mile in.

We turned off the road and Kat rolled the big Crown Victoria slowly across the furrows, cracking ice and wallowing sharply from side to side, until we crested a rise and saw vehicles ahead. There was a blue Trans-Am, a County Ambulance and a tow truck. E.M.T. Stokes, Doc Crouch, two tow truck drivers, and a kid stood watching us as we bumped to a stop behind the ambulance.

What happened? I asked, sniffing against the sharp air, the hairs in my nose quickly freezing up.

Hey, Sheriff, Stokes said. He was a giant of a man with a melodious bass-baritone voice and I wondered absently whether he sang in one of the local church choirs. Kid got his car stuck last night. Came out this morning to get it towed and found a body behind it.

I stared at him. Stokes was normally taciturn, and this was more than I’d ever heard him say in one sitting.

So he couldn’t have run over it.

Nope.

Tow truck driver call it in? Kat asked.

Stokes nodded. We gathered around the corpse. Doc Crouch was snuffling in the cold as he pulled the blanket off the body. He cleared his throat and spat, getting some of it on his scarf. He either didn’t or refused to notice.

The deceased looked to be in his mid-thirties, and, outside of being dead, reasonably fit. His expensive clothes had seen better days, but I recognized an Armani suit when I saw it, even in this condition.

Doc?

Crouch looked like a bushy, unkempt old tinker, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He’d been the county’s number one authority on death for thirty years. Kat had probably routed him out of bed as soon as she’d gotten the call. His name is Mark David Staines. He’s dead. He’s not from here, Crouch said. He handed me a wallet, which I passed to Kat. She poked through it with her gloved fingers.

According to this he’s from Terre Haute, Indiana. License. Credit cards. About eighty bucks in bills. Picture of a woman. She dropped the wallet into a paper bag.

Funny place to dump a body, I said, looking around. Nothing but corn stubble in every direction. I could just make out the line of gaunt winter trees along the Badger River. And a long way from Indiana. You got any ideas, Doc?

Doc Crouch hiked up his trouser legs, shifted his feet, and got painfully down into a squat. He pointed out the ground around the body. See the cracks in the surface crust? This ground’s hard but it’s been broken up. He ain’t heavy enough to do that. Not by himself he ain’t. Doc dislodged one of Staines’ hands which had been trapped under his chest. The blackened fingers appeared to have been smashed and splintered.

Geez, said the kid, who’d come up behind me. His face was pale, his eyes wide. He was breathing hard. I glanced at Stokes, who nodded and walked the kid over to the ambulance. Stokes was 6’6, 250 pounds, and pure muscle. People didn’t argue with him. Stokes would check his vital signs and keep him away from the crime scene. It was bad enough that he’d found the corpse without having to listen to Doc Crouch talk about it.

Kat and I helped Doc lift the body because we knew by then that we couldn’t just roll him over. We eased Staines to the side and turned him face up. There were ragged holes in his chest, abdomen and right thigh that roughly corresponded to three corn stumps sticking up in the depression in the earth where the corpse had rested. Scraps of cloth had been driven into the wounds but had done nothing to staunch the blood that had pooled and frozen under the wounds. The side of Mark David Staines’ face was dark with bruising and lividity and the facial structure appeared to have been beaten in. One eyeball was out of its socket.

Man!

Yeah, I said. How far would you have to fall to dig a hole like that?

Let’s just say that he attained terminal velocity, Doc said. And he had time to think about it all the way down. It’s a shitty way to go.

It is that, I said, looking up at the winter white sky. It also was making no sense, not yet.

Kat went off to interview the kid, who was certain that he and his girlfriend, one Lynn Bonner, had left the car and walked back to the road at 12:15. The tow truck had picked up Ferebee in Northwest Harlan and they’d arrived at the site at 8:15. That was an eight hour window. Doc Crouch was certain that he could pinpoint the time of death to within an hour.

We packed up the site and followed the ambulance back to West Harlan. Kat was looking thoughtful, as if the murder had been arranged as a test for her abilities.

So? Still think it’s a murder?

Kat shrugged. Seems a bit weird to be an accident. We’ve had no report of debris, so I doubt there was a plane crash. If a door came open and sucked him out…

How often does that happen?

Yeah.

I shifted to take a stiff spot out of my hip and watched the quiet cold fields going by the car window. Off in one, someone was riding a horse, trotting in a barrel racing figure eight, the horse puffing out great clouds of steam. There were distant farmhouses and clumps of trees, washed out against the gray-white background of the western sky. Cold, rural, and normal, yet unaware of a death in the corn. The ambulance ahead was running with lights and no siren. It was as if the world was holding a moment of silence for a dead stranger from Indiana.

When we get back, I said at last, I’ll contact the F.A.A. You talk to the Terre Haute P.D. and the State Patrol. I’m not sure about the jurisdiction here, I added.

He landed in our county, he’s our corpse, Kat said stubbornly. I grinned.

Not willing to give him up, huh?

Like you said, I’m the primary.

Deputy Van Kirk, you are some piece of work.

She broke into a brilliant smile and licked her lips, once, like a satisfied diner. Still think you married the right girl?

Yes, I said smugly. I do.

So do I, Kat said, and with that we settled down for the ride into town, wondering what the investigation would bring.

* * *

Very little, as it turned out.

The F.A.A. had had no word of any aerial problems over the State of Iowa. All commercial traffic that had passed over Cornflower County had done so intact. No small plane flight plans had been filed. Mark David Staines could have been dropped by a U.F.O., but when I suggested it Kat merely gave me a sour look.

The State told us that, barring any evidence to the contrary, it was our corpse and we could solve the case, or not. They seemed less than interested. On Kat’s urging, I called up Bert Manson in the U.S. Marshal’s Office in Des Moines. After asking me how my marriage was going, sending his best wishes to Anne, and making a few disparaging remarks about West Harlan, which he insisted on referring to as Dogpatch, he consented to check his database.

I don’t have a Mark David Staines from Terre Haute. In fact, there’s not one in the Indiana D.M.V. database. How old is this skydiver?

Mid-thirties. Brown hair. I remembered the eye hanging out of its socket. Brown eyes, I think. About six, six-one.

I could hear Bert Manson’s surprised groan. Congratulations. I think you’ve got a wiseguy. Mark David Staines, 38, Boca Raton, Florida. He’s some sort of shotgun for the Wayner Gang.

What the hell is the Wayner Gang? I asked, then added, Please tell me that they’re not Russians.

The previous summer, thanks to Anne’s sister’s involvement in a New York City murder case, a half-dozen Russian mob hit men had descended on West Harlan. In the melee that followed I’d been shot for the first and, I hoped, the last time. And that hadn’t been the worst of it. But Bert hastened to put my mind at ease on that score. No connection with Sonny Denisovitch, he was saying. At least as far as we know. Wayner’s a new kind of criminal, or maybe a new version of the old hired gun. He’s a facilitator.

A what?

He hires out to do mercenary work for the bad guys. Hits, escort jobs, protection, deliveries, anything illegal.

I laughed. It sounds like something out of a bad movie.

Didn’t you used to write bad movies? Bert asked.

Ha ha. Ha, I said flatly. For a U.S. Marshal you’re the funniest thing since Joey Pants.

Who?

Look him up in your database, I said. So, this Wayner character is someone you can’t catch?

We’re working on it, Bert said with a touch of weariness. Clues don’t just fall into our laps, you know. We have to depend on old-fashioned police work. And while we’re on the subject, we want that corpse.

Fine with me. Talk to Kat Van Kirk. She’s the primary on this case.

The primary? Bert laughed. Whadda you got down there? Four cops?

Five.

Well, she is the best you’ve got, Manson said.

You’ll get no argument from me on that score.

Bert said he’d be down in the morning and hung up. I looked at the map of the Midwest I’d put up on cork. There were also state and county maps. Nothing that covered Boca Raton, Florida. Or Terre Haute. If Mark David Staines was going to get a set of fake I.D., why keep the same very recognizable name? What was the point? And why Terre Haute? What was Terre Haute to the mob?

Kat came in. She’d talked to the Terre Haute P.D. with no result, but she reminded me of something I’d forgotten. There is a maximum security federal lockup in Terre Haute. They kept the worst of the worst in Terre Haute. Timothy McVeigh had taken the Big Sleep there.

Well, it’s all pretty academic right now, I said. I told her about Staines and the Wayner Gang, and that Bert Manson was coming down tomorrow to take charge of the late wiseguy and his effects.

That figures, Kat said. Just when we get a good one, the feds step in and take him away.

I sat back on my desk and looked at her. Dutch-Javanese heritage in her shaggy black hair and perpetual tan, but an all-American tough girl from Kansas, and, outside of Anne, my best friend. Look, I said. This isn’t a treasure hunt. Corpses are expensive. First off, the Cornflower County tax structure can barely pay us, let alone spring for trips to Boca Raton. Second, this guy is in the federal database, which means that he is very likely material to an ongoing investigation. He’s also committed no crime in our jurisdiction. If Bert wants him, Bert gets him.

Shit.

Kat, what happened to the lady who cried on my shoulder last fall because professional criminals were moving into our county? Who was afraid that we weren’t up to this? To the needs of policing in the Twenty-First Century?

Kat bristled. She grew up, Glen. She got shot and frostbit and the man she wanted married her best friend, but you know something? We won. I won. And I’m not afraid of anything now when it comes to my job. And if you and Bert Manson don’t like that, you know what you can do with it.

She turned and walked out of my office. Work on your management style, Glen, said a little voice in my ear. Shit, the day had gone on long enough. I grabbed my coat and went home.

* * *

Over dinner I told my wife what had happened and Kat’s reaction to it. She’s got an itch, was Anne’s amused assessment.

Hey, this isn’t sexual—

I know that, she replied with a wink. At least, no more than it ever is with Kat. No, she’s got an itch for action.

I put down my fork. This hadn’t occurred to me, but then I was quite happy with peace and quiet, when I could get it. You’re saying she’s bored?

Anne leaned