My head spun at the admission. I held it with both hands.
“You killed him!” I shouted.
“I most certainly did not,” Cilia insisted. “I merely allowed him to die, just like Father. There’s a difference.”
“No, there isn’t.”
I was on my feet now. I stepped toward the unlit fireplace, then pivoted to face her. “Do you realize what you’re telling me?”
“Yes,” Cilia replied.
When I continued to stare at her, Cilia added, “Do you wish to hear the rest of the story?”
I didn’t say if I did or didn’t, but when Cilia motioned me back to the chair, I sat. She took another sip of her drink, stared at me for a moment, then slowly took one of my bishops off the board as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
“Check,” she said.
I wasn’t surprised by the move. I had seen it coming and simply slid a pawn forward two ranks to block the attack. Cilia pulled her queen back into the first rank next to her king. I slid my queen to the fifth rank of the H file, attacking Cilia’s knight. She studied the move, shook her head, and slid her knight out of danger.
“Tell me about Brian Becker,” I said.
Cilia’s head jerked up. She held my gaze for a moment, then leaned back in her chair. She watched me over the chess pieces.
“Brian Becker abused Merodie, and I have no doubt whatsoever that in time he would have abused Silk. That, I could not allow.”
“So you killed him.”
“It was easy,” Cilia said.
“Did Merodie know you were going to kill him?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you conspire with Merodie to murder Becker? Did she trade custody of Silk for his death?”
“Mr. McKenzie. You’ve met Merodie. Do you honestly believe I would take the enormous risk of confiding in her?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
A more amazing story I had never heard. Yet throughout it all Cilia’s voice was at once warm and precise, as if she were confiding a minor personal secret to a lifelong friend instead of throwing open the closet door to a nosy stranger.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.
“So you’ll believe me when I tell you that I had nothing—absolutely nothing at all—to do with the death of Eli Jefferson.”
Who said you did? my inner voice cried.
“Perhaps not,” I said, “but aren’t you even a tiny bit concerned that I’ll run off to the county attorney and report that you confessed to three murders?”
“My father and Robert were both cremated, so there is no physical evidence to prove a crime was even committed, much less that I committed it. As for Brian Becker, you would need a court order to exhume his body, and I doubt you’d get one. After all, it’s merely your word against mine. If somehow you did manage it, the embalming fluids used by the mortician to preserve his corpse would conceal any trace of the GHB—if there’s any to be found.”
I had nothing to say.
“Besides,” said Cilia. “Why should you care?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. At least not one that Cilia would understand. Yet I did care. I cared a great deal.
Cilia resumed her playing position. She brought her queen out again. I removed a pawn with my own queen. She moved her bishop one space, giving me a clear shot at her king.
“Ms. St. Ana, you’ve been unusually forthcoming. It makes me wonder why.”
Cilia didn’t reply. Instead, she watched me push a rook into position. I watched her watch me. Two more moves and you have her, my inner voice announced.
“The simple truth is, I have nothing to hide,” she said. Cilia pressed her bishop against my king. “Checkmate.”
10
For all practical purposes, Priscilla St. Ana had admitted to three counts of murder, and her candor made me squirm in the seat of my Jeep Cherokee. Why would she do such a thing? Cilia claimed she confessed her past crimes so I would believe her when she denied any involvement in Eli Jefferson’s death. Well, I didn’t trust that motive any more than I would an unsolicited stock tip. It wasn’t that I thought Cilia was lying—I believed every word she spoke. It was more like Cilia was telling too much truth. The conversation reminded me of this time when I was still a rookie riding with a field training officer. A suspect had walked up to our squad and without so much as an “Excuse me, Officer” confessed to a burglary that my partner and I had known nothing about. Except here’s the thing—the suspect was adamant that the crime took place at exactly 10:15 P.M. in Highland Park, which, according to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner, was the approximate time the suspect’s wife and her lover were being slaughtered in a downtown hotel room.
The Anoka County Coroner’s Office was located near Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids. Except for a directory in the foyer that listed the names of the county coroner, five assistants, one chief deputy, seventeen deputies, and an investigative assistant, it didn’t appear much different than your typical outpatient medical clinic. Although, when I told the receptionist that I wanted to see Dr. Timothy Ronning, I was shooed into his office almost immediately. That was different.
It was Dr. Ronning who had performed the autopsy on Eli Jefferson. I reminded him of that when he shook my hand and asked how he could help me.
“Eli Jefferson, yes.” He shuddered as if he had just remembered a particularly shocking scene from a horror movie. “What about it?”
“I work for the attorney who’s representing the woman accused of the crime.”
“Then you know that I’m not at liberty to discuss my findings without a signed release of information form from the county attorney or next of kin.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Why are you here?”
“Dr. Ronning, I have evidence to suggest that before he died, Eli Jefferson had ingested GHB.”
“I don’t think so.”
“He was probably given at least two grams if the killer’s MO holds up.”
“If there had been even a trace of GHB in Jefferson’s system, it would have shown up in the urine drug screen.”
“I’ve been led to believe that this particular drug is a highly specialized analog, that its metabolism is so efficient that can’t be detected in urine two hours after it’s taken.”
“There is no such animal.”
“It was developed by a chemist working for St. Ana Medical.”
“Which doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Doctor, all I’m asking is that you take another look at Eli Jefferson. Confirm or refute my theory.”
“One. I don’t give a rat’s ass about your theory. Two. I don’t perform tests just because some guy walks in off the street and asks me to. If you have a problem, bring it to the county attorney or talk to a judge. Three—”
“Three,” I said. “If you don’t test for it, we’re going to ask you why. In court. In front of a judge and jury.”
Dr. Ronning barely concealed a yawn behind his hand. I don’t think he was too impressed by my threat.
“If, however, you do test for it and find it, you’ll be instrumental in helping to expose and capture one of the most clever, most heinous serial killers in the history of Minnesota.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Not to mention the publicity you’ll receive. People will be lining up to shake your hand. You’ll be asked to speak to every community group in the state. There might even be a movie or book deal in it—it’s happened before.”
Dr. Ronning looked me up and down as if I were suddenly interesting.
“You’re not trying to appeal to my vanity, are you, Mr. . . . McKenzie, is it?”
“Yes, Doctor, I am.”
“Well, you’re doing a fine job of it.”
“I’m not making this up, Doctor. If the GHB is there, it means that the woman who gave it to Jefferson killed at least three other men in the past sixteen years. Maybe more.”
“If it’s not
there?”
“Then I’ll go away. No harm, no foul.”
Dr. Ronning stared at me some more.
“The standard urine drug screen is designed to detect certain classes of drugs—barbiturates, opiates, cocaine, heroin,” he said. “I suppose it’s possible that a light dosage of GHB might slip by. I could run a blood GHB-level test. Just to be sure.”
“Just to be sure,” I said.
“Oh, hell. How do I reach you?”
My cell phone rang as I was walking back to my Jeep Cherokee, and I thought, That was fast. It wasn’t Dr. Ronning, though. It was G. K. Bonalay.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“We most certainly do.”
“My office, as soon as you can get here.”
Thirty minutes later I was standing in the cubbyhole G. K.’s law firm deemed appropriate to her status as a newly minted associate and looking out the window. G. K. had a spectacular view of the office tower directly across the street.
“Do you think she’s telling the truth?” G. K. asked.
She was sitting behind her cluttered desk, staring at her hands folded on a file directly in front of her. She was as surprised as I had been when I told her that Priscilla St. Ana had confessed to three murders, and like me, she was unsure what to make of it.
“It sounded like the truth when Cilia was telling it,” I said. “Now I’m not so sure. If it is the truth, Jefferson’s death would certainly fit her MO. She drugs him and then lets him die slowly—this time of blood loss instead of carbon monoxide poisoning. Anyway, we’ll know for sure in a day or so. I asked the county coroner to test Jefferson’s blood for GHB.”
“You did what?”
“I asked the coroner—”
“McKenzie.” G. K. shook her head violently. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . because . . . because I’m in charge here.”
“No one said you weren’t.”
“You have to ask me before you do things like that. What if—Listen, McKenzie. I think we should ignore her. Forget Priscilla St. Ana even exists.”
“Why would we do that? She’s a suspect. She’s even more of a suspect than most suspects.”
“It makes the case too complicated.”
“Not if we find the GHB.”
“No. Forget it. There’s an easier way of getting Merodie off.”
“Such as?”
G. K. unfolded her hands and picked up the folder. I took it from her outstretched fingers. The top page read:
Case #06-058939
Richard Scott Nye
Table of Contents
Gross Misdemeanor Domestic Assault
The file contained all the information gathered by the cops after Merodie had beaten on Nye with a Lady Thumper softball bat and he had broken her jaw—and more. Someone had done a judgment search on Nye, producing two sheets of computer paper filled with misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors, and felonies. According to the report Nye had a lifetime of arrests—yet few convictions—for arson, assault, possession, and disorderly conduct, plus two counts of sexual assault, both dismissed. God knows what he did as a juvenile, because the State of Minnesota wouldn’t say. It was the last few lines of type that most interested me, however. They indicated that the Anoka County Criminal Investigation Division had arrested Nye for possession with intent to distribute nearly a pound of methamphetamine. He pled out and was sentenced to sixty months in prison, but the sentence was stayed on the recommendation of Anoka County Attorney David Tuseman. Instead, Nye was made to serve five days shy of a full year in the Aonka County Correctional Facility—jail, not prison—pay a five-thousand-dollar fine, undergo chemical dependency treatment, and remain law-abiding for a period of five years upon his release.
“He cut a deal,” I said. Just what kind of deal the report didn’t say.
Beneath the computer sheets I found still another case file, this one detailing Nye’s meth bust. I paged through it quickly while G. K. waited until I came across a photocopy of the search warrant the sheriff’s department used. The warrant had been issued based on information provided by an unnamed source that “has been proven to be true and correct”—or so a sheriff’s deputy testified to the judge. However, they CIA’d the informant, giving him or her a “cooperative individual agreement”—the informant’s name, sex, and age were not listed on the search warrant, nor were they revealed in court. There was no way for Nye to know with certainty who the informant was, but he could have guessed, couldn’t he? After all, Vonnie Lou Lowman knew that Merodie had dimed him out. I was sure Nye could figure it out, too. Especially since—I compared the dates of the two reports against each other to be sure—the warrant was issued just two days after he put Merodie in the hospital.
“I tried to get this information earlier,” I said. “I was told that Nye’s files were in the custody of the county attorney. How did you get them?”
G. K. shrugged at me.
“Rollie Briggs?”
G. K. shrugged some more.
I tried to return the files, but G. K. refused to take them.
“What?” I asked her.
“Look again,” she said.
I glanced through the folder a second time. “What am I looking for?”
“You tell me.”
“C’mon, G. K. We haven’t got time for this.”
“There’s an old saying. ‘God is in the details.’ ”
“God is in a lot of things.”
“Nye’s physical description.”
I found it under the heading
Defendant’s Driver License Record
“He’s blond,” I said.
G. K. smiled triumphantly.
I said, “In Merodie’s original statement to the deputies, she said a man with blond hair had broken into her home and fought with Jefferson. She said it could have been a former boyfriend.”
“Now, was that so hard?” G. K. asked.
“But in her second statement Merodie said she couldn’t identify the man. She said she wasn’t even sure that he had blond hair.”
“I don’t care. We’re looking for information that can be used to create reasonable doubt as to the guilt or innocence of our client. In this case, confusion is our friend.”
“So now we can place two people at the scene of the crime,” I said. “Nye and St. Ana.”
“Forget St. Ana. Nye is more than enough.”
That doesn’t make sense, my inner voice said, but I didn’t press the matter.
“I want you to meet me at the jail,” G. K. said. “Make it about five. We’ll hear what Merodie has to say. In the meantime, do you think you can find Nye? He was released to the Anoka County Department of Corrections a couple of months ago, but when I called, the flunkies refused to reveal his address to me. I think Tuseman is trying to keep him under wraps.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll find him,” I said, and headed for the door. “Oh. You got my message earlier, right? You know that Merodie is in isolation?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why?”
“It seems that our girl has a bad temper.”
While waiting for the elevator, I punched Bobby Dunston’s code onto the keypad and my cell phone automatically dialed his office number. As usual, he was happy to hear from me.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Geez, Bobby. Can’t a guy just call up to chat? You know, find out how you are, how the family is?”
“Yes, a guy can do that.”
“Well, then.”
“I’m fine, the family is fine.”
“Good.”
“Now, what do you want?”
“I need a favor.”
“I knew it.”
I told him about Nye.
“You don’t want to go through Corrections, you could probably find him through DMV,” he said.
“I don’t have the time.”
“More likely you don’t want to pay the nine fifty it would cost to do a search.”
“There’s that, too.”
“A guy with your money—you are so cheap.”
“A penny saved is a penny earned.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
“Thanks, Bobby.”
I stepped aboard the elevator car and, as convention demanded, turned to face the doors. They were polished to a high gloss, and I was able to study the female rent-a-cop as well as the other passengers in the reflection. The rent-a-cop wore a regulation blue uniform shirt. It was a man’s shirt, and I remembered that when I was with the St. Paul Police Department some of the female officers would complain that they didn’t make a woman’s shirt in the same material and in a sleeve length that fit them comfortably. They also complained about the regulation men’s pants that had to be tailored because the manufacturer didn’t make them to fit the female body. Suddenly I could see his reflection in the elevator doors—Benjamin Simbi—and he was slowly raising his hands . . .
I wasn’t aware that the elevator car had reached the ground floor and that my fellow passengers had departed until the doors closed again and I was heading up. I quickly punched the button that stopped the elevator on the skyway level. I stepped out of the car so quickly that you might have guessed there was a bomb on board. Sweat streaked my forehead and puddled under my arms, and my breath was coming much too fast.
“I can’t go on like this,” I said aloud. “This is nuts.”
People moving past me on the skyway must have heard what I said but pretended not to. Which didn’t surprise me. I tend to ignore crazy people as well.
You need help, my inner voice told me.
The skyway system was an elaborate network of streets in the sky—enclosed pedestrian bridges connecting the downtown Minneapolis office towers with each other. It stretched fourteen blocks north to south and another ten blocks east to west, and its purpose was to move pedestrians from one building to another without making anyone actually step outside. It has reached the point where you now often see people commuting from their attached garages in the suburbs to one of downtown’s many enclosed parking ramps in nothing more than shirtsleeves and light jackets regardless of weather conditions. I didn’t care for the skyway myself and seldom used it, yet followed it just the same, walking east, then south, until I reached One Financial Plaza.
Dead Boyfriends Page 18
