Stiff Competition

by Annelise Ryan

  “Bummer.”

  “Yeah. Heard from Hurley this morning?”

  I shake my head. “I talked to him last night and he said the guys on duty were on the lookout for Emily, but there’s been no sign of her. Hurley is thinking she might have tried to go back to Chicago. Have you heard anything this morning?”

  “I know some guys checked with the bus and train stations in the area and came up empty. No one saw any female travelers fitting Emily’s description. Of course, she might have hitchhiked her way out of town.”

  “God, I hope not.” The abduction theory worms its way back to the forefront of my thoughts.

  Richmond’s phone rings and he answers it. “Richmond.” After listening for a few seconds he says, “Okay, thanks,” and disconnects the call. “Bridget Rutherford is here. Why don’t you go up front to get her and I’ll head into the interview room and turn on the AV equipment.”

  “Okay, but first let me tell you what I know about Bridget. She’s a local who was a couple of years ahead of me in high school, and I went to school with her brother, Nate, who joined the Marines when he graduated and is now stationed overseas somewhere. Bridget married Pollard Gleason, also a local boy who made good with an investment firm in Chicago after he made bad with Bridget and got her pregnant. The marriage lasted for sixteen years, and their son, Tanner, is now a senior in high school and living full-time with his father in Chicago. Bridget came back home after the divorce, took back her maiden name, and has been living with her parents for the past two years. She works as a pharmacy tech at two of the local drug stores, and she’s taking classes in hopes of one day becoming a full-fledged pharmacist. And as we both know, she’s been dating Lars Sanderson, though I have no idea if that’s an exclusive relationship for her, or if she’s seeing anyone else.”

  “No local rumors about her being out and about with anyone else?”

  “Not that I know of, but then I’ve been out of the loop for several months so I’m not as up on the latest gossip as I usually am.”

  Richmond heads into the room that does double duty as a conference and interview room for the station. It’s fully wired for audio and visual, and there’s also an adjacent observation room, though it’s almost never used for anything anymore other than a secret trysting place. I head out front to the reception area, and since I entered the station this morning through the back door, I take a moment to greet the day dispatcher, Heidi.

  “Good morning,” she fires back just before she looks at me. For a few seconds her smile is frozen on her face. “You changed your hair,” she says in a dull, neutral tone.

  Damn.

  “Yes, I did,” I say with a smile.

  “Looks nice,” Heidi says, and then she quickly turns back to her switchboard and computer.

  I step through the locked door that separates the dispatch and back areas of the station from the front public area and walk over to Bridget Rutherford. She is a short, slightly overweight, brunette, a year or two past forty. Judging from her hairdo and her clothing, however, her fashion sense never made it out of the eighties. Her hair is teased and blown to three times the size of her head. Her jacket is a puffy thing with wide, fold-down lapels. Half of it is neon green and the other half is a black and white checkerboard pattern.

  I don’t know if Bridget remembers me from our high school days. She was a senior when I was a freshman, so I doubt I was on her radar back then.

  “Bridget?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hi, I’m Mattie Winston with the medical examiner’s office; I’m going to be sitting in with Detective Richmond when he talks to you this morning.”

  “The medical examiner’s office,” she echoes with great solemnity. “I guess that makes sense since Lars is dead.” She shakes her head and her eyes look moist, though she falls short of actually shedding a tear. “No more love grotto.”

  “Love grotto?”

  She blushes and waves my question away. “I’m sorry. That’s my nickname for Lars’s bedroom. I just can’t believe he’s gone. I heard he was killed with an arrow. Was it a hunting accident?”

  So much for keeping the details under wraps. Apparently the gossip mill is back in full operation.

  “We’re not sure,” I tell her. “But there are some circumstances that look irregular. That’s why we’re talking to as many people as we can who knew Lars.” She opens her mouth to say something else but before she can I grab her arm and steer her back toward the interview room. “Please, right this way. Detective Richmond is waiting on us.”

  The gambit works. She doesn’t say anything more until we are in the room.

  Richmond greets Bridget as soon as we enter. “Ms. Rutherford, I’m Detective Bob Richmond and you’ve already met Mattie Winston. Thank you for coming in to talk to us today. Please take a seat.”

  He gestures toward the other side of the table and Bridget dutifully walks around and settles in the seat right across from where Richmond is standing. Richmond sits, and I settle in next to him. Then Richmond begins by announcing the date, the time, who the interviewers and the interviewee are, and what case it is related to. When he’s done with that, he smiles at Bridget and says, “Can you please tell me the nature of your relationship with Lars Sanderson?”

  She blushes again, and lowers her gaze to the table. “We’ve been dating for the past year or so,” she says. “It’s not anything super serious, mostly just companionship and . . . well . . . sex.” Her blush extends all the way to the roots of her hair.

  “How often did you two see one another?” Richmond asks.

  “A couple of times a week. Some weekends. My son comes up to stay with me one weekend a month so I never saw Lars on those weekends.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Saturday night. I spent most of the evening and night at his place. I left around three in the morning. I was supposed to see him again on Sunday but he called off at the last minute.”

  “Did he say why?” I ask.

  “Yeah, something about a friend who was sick.”

  “Did he say who the friend was?”

  “No, he seemed to be in a big hurry, so I didn’t ask a lot of questions. I was expecting him to call me yesterday sometime, and then I heard the news.” She pauses and shakes her head, once again with the damp eyes.

  Richmond gives her a second before asking his next question. “Ms. Rutherford, was your relationship with Mr. Sanderson an exclusive one?”

  She looks puzzled for a moment. “I wasn’t stepping out on him with anyone else, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Does your ex-husband know you were seeing him?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t talk about that sort of stuff. In fact, we really don’t talk at all. All of our communications are via e-mail. But if you’re implying that he might have been jealous or something like that, I can assure you that’s not the case. He’s had himself a hot little number for the past six months who is barely older than our son.”

  “How does your son feel about you dating other men?” I ask.

  “I don’t discuss my private life with my kid. He knows I’m seeing someone, but I’ve never discussed any details with him.”

  Richmond says, “That’s probably a wise approach. Now back to the question of exclusivity. Was Mr. Sanderson seeing other women?”

  “I don’t think so,” she says. “If he was, I think I would have known. I would have sensed something. That’s how my first marriage fell apart. My husband was having an affair and I figured it out. He started working late all the time, and then I noticed that his shirts sometimes smelled like perfume.”

  “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm Mr. Sanderson?” Richmond asks.

  Bridget lets out a little chuckle. “Well, he did have a knack for ticking people off,” she says. “From what I hear, his business tactics were disagreeable to many, and he wasn’t the most tactful person at times. Fortunately his personal side and his business side were tw
o entirely different animals. I’m sure there were a lot of people who would like to have told him off, and probably a few who actually did. Maybe there were even some who wanted to hit him. But kill him? If that’s what you’re getting at, I don’t see it.”

  “Then you’re not aware of anyone making any threats against him recently?”

  “No, but then I’m not sure he would tell me about it if anyone had. He never talked about himself or his day much when we were together. He always wanted to hear about me and my day. He was sweet and considerate that way,” she says with a sad smile.

  I’m not surprised that Lars didn’t talk about himself much. That’s how he managed to juggle three girlfriends, only one of which apparently knew fully of the others. The less talking you do, the less chance you have of slipping up and saying something incriminating, or somehow contradicting yourself. Clearly he had Bridget duped, and Cynthia Parker was clueless, too. Kirsten Donaldson knew Lars was seeing and sleeping with other women, but she didn’t seem to care. Or did she? Maybe her nonchalance was all a façade.

  Richmond asks Bridget where she was the morning of Lars’s murder and she informs him that she was at her parents’ house, which is where she lives. She got up at six and had breakfast with her parents, both of whom are early risers. Then they all watched TV for a while—Good Morning America, and Bridget is able to summarize the show for us—and then Bridget got ready for work at the pharmacy, where she arrived a little before ten. When asked about cats, she informs us that her parents have two cats, one all white and one black and white.

  Her alibi is easy to verify, and as soon as we let Bridget go, Richmond does so immediately by phoning her parents. They provide the same sequence of events Bridget gave us and as a result, Richmond moves her name to the bottom of the suspect list, though he isn’t willing to remove it all together. “We can’t rule out the possibility that the killer may have been a hired gun,” he says.

  With that out of the way, Richmond calls Brad Donaldson, Kirsten’s ex, and invites him to the station for a chat later. Judging from Richmond’s end of the conversation, Donaldson is clearly confused as to why we’re making this request, but he agrees to come at three o’clock.

  “We have some time to kill,” Richmond says, glancing at his watch. “I want to go to Swenson Hardware and talk to this Bo Jurgenson guy about people in the area he may know who are good with bows and arrows. Want to come along?”

  “Sure, but let me give Hurley a call first to get an update on what’s going on with Emily.”

  Richmond nods and I step out of his office and head for the break room, where I dial Hurley’s number. Hurley sounds exasperated when he answers. “Any news?” I ask, though judging from Hurley’s tone I know what the answer will be.

  “No, nothing. It’s as if she vanished from the face of the earth.”

  “I’m so sorry, Hurley.”

  “I’m on my way to Chicago to poke around and see what I can dig up in the way of old friends and contacts for her,” he says. “Since she took that cash I had stashed away, I keep thinking she must have planned to go somewhere.” I notice that he, like me, is afraid to give any more voice to the more frightening alternative. Was he doing so to protect me, or himself? Either way, I feel compelled to address it.

  “Are you looking into the abduction idea at all?”

  “Of course,” he says, and I can hear the subtle undertone of fear in his voice. “Her picture has gone out with the Amber Alert and I’ve got cops in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan all on the lookout.”

  With that out of the way, I switch to a less emotional topic. “Listen, I talked to Maggie Baldwin this morning. She wouldn’t tell me anything because of the whole confidentiality thing, but she did say something that got me to wondering. She said girls Emily’s age tend to be very secretive.”

  “Yeah, I talked to Baldwin, too. She wasn’t much help. She said Emily hasn’t opened up much yet.”

  “When I was Emily’s age, my primary confidants were my sister and my girlfriends at school. There had to have been someone Emily talked to besides Johnny.”

  “I don’t know who. I already talked to several of the kids at school and they all said the same thing, that she didn’t have any really close friends other than him.”

  “What about cyber friends? Maybe she had someone online she was close to. Have you taken another run at her laptop?”

  “I tried all the logical possibilities—her mother’s name, her uncle’s name, our names, Johnny’s name, her middle and last name, pertinent birthdates—none of them worked.”

  “Would you mind if I came and got the laptop and let someone else take a crack at it?”

  “Like who?”

  “Remember Joey Dewhurst?”

  “That giant man-child who thinks he’s a superhero and runs around in a costume? He’s kind of hard to forget.”

  I smile at the memory. “Yeah, he is. But in addition to his little idiosyncrasies, he also has that savantlike ability with computer hacking, remember?”

  Hurley sighs. “I suppose we have nothing to lose by trying.”

  “Good. I’ll come by later today and get the laptop while you’re in Chicago. When are you going to get there?”

  “Within the hour.”

  “Good luck and keep me posted on how it’s going. I’ll let you know if Joey comes up with anything.”

  Chapter 19

  Richmond offers to drive and since nothing urgent seems to be coming up with Emily at the moment, I agree to ride with him. Besides, any place in town we go is only a few minutes’ drive away from my office and my car.

  I give Richmond an update on the Emily situation as we go, concluding with “I’m going to go over to Hurley’s place when we’re done here and grab Emily’s laptop so I can let Joey Dewhurst take a look at it. If anyone can break into it, he can.”

  “Who is Joey Dewhurst?”

  I give Richmond a startled look. “You’ve never met Joey? Boy, are you in for a treat.”

  “The name rings a bell, but I can’t quite pull it up.”

  “He’s a huge hulk of a guy, sweet as can be, but kind of scary looking until you get to know him. He has some sort of brain damage that he suffered at birth. It left him mentally challenged and he has the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old boy. But he also has this savant ability when it comes to computers.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Actually, that’s not the most interesting thing about him. He also fancies himself something of a superhero. He has a costume he wears all the time, complete with a red cape and tights, and a big, yellow letter H on his chest that stands for Hacker Man.”

  “Wait, now I remember. Wasn’t he in that picture of you that was in the paper last year, the one where you were naked from the waist up?”

  “That’s the one,” I say with a roll of my eyes. “Nice to know you remember that part.”

  “Hey, for a while there you were appearing in the papers in all kinds of states of undress.”

  “Don’t remind me. Between those pictures and Matthew’s birth with all of you guys standing around gawking, I feel like everyone in town who sees me now thinks of me naked. Though at the time of my delivery, I couldn’t have cared less if my hoo-ha was being shown on national television if it would have made the pain go away.”

  Richmond looks at me and smiles. “Yeah, I saw parts of you I probably shouldn’t have, but I have to tell you, seeing your son born was the most miraculous, memorable thing that has ever happened to me, Mattie. I’d never seen a birth before. And I imagine I won’t ever see one again. So while you may not be comfortable knowing I was there, know that I appreciate the fact that I was.”

  “Fair enough,” I say.

  The Swenson hardware store is an old family-run business that has been in Sorenson for as long as I have and then some. It’s a dusty, cramped place, filled with every imaginable tool, nut, bolt, screw, nail, and gadget you can think of. If you try to find them yours
elf, you’re likely to get lost among the shelves and never be seen again. But the staffers, all of whom are family, know where every single item is located. It’s kind of uncanny the way they do it. You can go in and ask for something and they’ll lead you so far back into the dark recesses of the place that you start to wonder if you’re about to become the star victim in one of those true crime shows, and then they’ll reach over, under, around, and sometimes through other stuff and grab the item on the first try. How they do it is beyond me.

  Bo Jurgenson is part of the Swenson family by marriage. He’s been working at the store for the past four years, ever since a bad knee injury ended his hopes of playing professional football. He looks like a football player: broad shouldered, six-four, muscular with a bit of extra meat on his bones.

  “Hi there,” he greets as we come through the door. “What do you folks need today?”

  Richmond flashes his badge and says, “Information.”

  Bo frowns and takes an involuntary step back. “Is there a problem of some sort?”

  “Not here,” Richmond says. “I understand you’re something of an archery expert.”

  Bo relaxes and smiles, clearly charmed by the flattery. “I’m pretty good, if I do say so myself.” His smile vanishes all of a sudden and he tenses up. “Oh, wait, is this about Lars Sanderson?”

  “What about Lars Sanderson?” Richmond says.

  “Well, I heard he was killed yesterday with an arrow.”

  “Yes, he was,” Richmond says with a sigh. “We’re interested in knowing who might have the skill to do something like that.”