Afterward I did a tour of the local video stores. There were six within two miles of the mall. None of the clerks who worked at the stores were willing to reveal whether or not Richard Nye or Debbie Miller had an account with them until I claimed that Richard and Debbie were suspected of renting films, dubbing them, and selling the copies to other video stores. Suddenly each store was happy—and relieved—to report that neither of them was a member.
It pleased me to gain information that way. Just like a semiprofessional private investigator, I told myself. I couldn’t wait to tell G. K.
There were police cars with decals plastered on the doors parked all over the place: County of Anoka, City of Anoka, Coon Rapids, Blaine, Fridley, Columbia Heights, Spring Lake Park, Ramsey, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Mixed among them were other vehicles, mostly vans, with decals that were even more garish: WCCO, KSTP, KMSP, FOX NEWS, KARE-11. Some of them were even parked legally.
It took me five minutes to find an empty meter along East Main Street and another five to walk back toward the courthouse complex. As I approached the impressive crowd gathered in front, I thought, Either Tuseman is giving a press conference or the circus is early this year.
Turned out it was Tuseman. He was standing in front of the entrance, his jacket off, his tie loosely knotted, his sleeves rolled up, the wind in his hair, and smiling like a man who just won the Powerball. Flanking him were uniformed representatives of the various law enforcement organizations, including Lieutenant John Weiner. They all seemed excessively pleased with themselves as well.
Arranged around them was a semicircle of TV cameras and klieg lights and the operators of both. Still photographers from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, and Associated Press stood or knelt next to them. TV reporters and representatives from WCCOAM and Minnesota Public Radio, each of them armed with a microphone, were scattered between the cameras, all of them vying for attention while trying not to block the camera lenses. Print reporters, their notebooks opened and pens poised, stood in back. Common folk, like me, watched from a distance.
I saw Genevieve Bonalay. She waved me to her side.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Shhh,” she hissed.
We listened to Tuseman. He was just getting warmed up, talking about the scourge of the drug methamphetamine; talking about its devastating long-term effects on the individual and its tremendous damage to the community. He spoke about how methamphetamine was spreading across the country, fueled by small rural labs and super labs in the Southwest and Mexico. He spoke about how he, personally, was dedicating the resources of his office to finding and punishing those that would “bring this poison into Anoka County, who would use it to poison our children.” It took him a long time to get to the point, and the media people were becoming increasingly antsy—just think of all the editing they’d have to do.
Finally, he announced what the media had been enticed there to hear. All of the law enforcement organizations present, under his direction, of course, had just that day executed the largest, most sophisticated “sting” in the history of Anoka County—Tuseman seemed to like that word, because he used it a lot. The sting resulted in the arrest of “eighty-seven individuals involved in the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine, also known as crystal meth.” The individual city, county, and state police organizations combined their resources in a coordinated assault—gue^s who did the coordinating—on suspected meth labs and stash pads throughout the county. The arrests were made with “lightning speed and precision” starting early in the morning and ending about noon.
Tuseman said the sting was the result of an intensive fourteen-month-long investigation by his office and the Anoka County Sheriff’s Department. He said that the arrests were carried out without incident. Not a single shot had been fired; not a single officer was injured. What’s more, Tuseman believed that these arrests would most certainly lead to even more arrests as suspects gave up fellow dealers and addicts in an effort to gain lenient treatment.
He said it was a great day for Anoka County, and he issued a warning to anyone who would bring crystal meth into his jurisdiction: “There is nowhere you can hide.”
“Muehlenhaus isn’t going to like this,” I said.
A TV reporter asked a question. “Is it true that you relied heavily on the services of an informant during your investigation and the subsequent arrests?”
Lieutenant Weiner leaned in and whispered in Tuseman’s ear. Tuseman nodded and said, “I cannot comment on that at this time. The investigation is ongoing, and we expect to make more arrests during the coming days.”
It sounded like “Yes” to me.
I couldn’t believe the change in Merodie. After just a few days of sobriety, a balanced diet, and plenty of sleep, Merodie Davies looked ten years younger. ‘Course, that meant she still looked a decade older than her chronological age, but what would you expect? She had been in jail only a week.
She greeted us when we entered Interview Room 109. “Good afternoon, Ms. Bonalay, Mr. McKenzie.” Her smile was bright and warm.
“Good afternoon to you, Merodie,” G. K. replied. “How are you holding up?”
“Oh, I’m getting along just fine. People have been very nice to me.”
G. K. pulled a red plastic chair out from under the wooden table and sat across from Merodie. She set her briefcase in front of her. I found a spot on the wall and leaned against it.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” G. K. warned. “I intend to get you out of here as soon as possible.”
Merodie smiled again. “I’d appreciate that,” she said. “So, what’s new?”
“You tell us,” G. K. said. “What’s all this about you being isolated from your fellow inmates?”
“Not all of them,” Merodie said. “Just one.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“Linda.” She said the word as if it were a sexually transmitted disease. “What happened was, I’m having breakfast. They serve breakfast here at 7:00 A.M. whether you’re hungry or not, and who eats at 7:00 A.M.? Usually, I eat breakfast at, I don’t know, noon. But the screws, they don’t care. Eat or don’t eat, it doesn’t matter to them. Only no raiding the refrigerator later. So I’m like sitting there, trying to choke down this, this—I don’t know what it was—oatmeal, I guess, and this woman sits next to me that I’ve never seen before, and the first words out of her mouth are, ‘Those bastards don’t care about us,’ which is what I’m saying, okay? So I start talking to her. Linda was her name. Turns out she was my new roommate, which kinda surprised me cuz it’s not like the jail is overcrowded. There are twenty-two cells in the housing unit—that’s what they call it, a housing unit—but four of the eighteen cells that have one bed, they’re empty, and so are three of the four cells that have two beds. So why do I have a roommate, cellmate, whatever? Only Linda, she seemed all right. She was polite and considerate, a good listener, so I’m like, ‘Okay.’ ”
“What did you tell her?” There was genuine alarm in G. K.’s voice.
“Nothing,” said Merodie. “I said—Linda wanted to know about Eli, and I told her what a swell guy he was and that I loved him to death.” G. K. and I both cringed at the word. “She wanted to know if we ever fought. She said she and her old man fought all the time. I’m like, ‘That wasn’t the story with me and Eli.’ I said we would yell at each other sometimes, but we never hit and we never stayed mad for long. You just couldn’t stay mad at Eli, no way. Only Linda, she wouldn’t leave it alone. She kept saying, ‘You never clobbered him?’ She said she heard that I clobbered him. She said she heard that I clobbered him over the head with a bat. I’m like, ‘That isn’t true,’ but she kept pushing me and pushing me and so finally I pushed her.”
“Pushed her?” I said.
“We were in the common area. That’s this place where we can sit at these tables and chairs that are anchored to the floor so you can’t move them. And Linda just wouldn’t stop ta
lking about Eli, about how he must have been a jerk or something for me to hit him with a bat even though I kept saying I didn’t hit him with a bat, so I pushed her over a chair—and a table—maybe I slapped her a couple times, too. And the guards, the detention deputies, they’re leaning on this railing on the second floor above us. They see us, and all of a sudden they’re hitting alarm buttons and spraying Mace at me. Next thing I know, they’re dragging me off to segregation or isolation or whatever they call it.”
“Merodie,” said G. K.
“Yeah?”
“When they let you back into population . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t talk to Linda again. Don’t even say hello to her.”
“Why not?”
“She’s either an undercover cop,” I said, “or more likely a police informant who’s trying to generate evidence to use against you.”
Merodie looked like a child who had just discovered how hot dogs are made. “Can they do that?” she asked.
We assured her that they could and often did.
“That sucks,” she said.
We agreed.
“Merodie,” I said. “We’ve been speaking to Priscilla St. Ana—”
She was off her chair and across the room in an instant. Her fists were clenched, and I was sure that she was going to hit me.
“I told you to stay away from her,” she said.
“Remember when I told you I was your friend?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“So shut up and sit down.” I was pointing at the chair. “I mean it.”
“McKenzie . . .” G. K. said.
I kept pointing at the chair. “I’m in a real bad mood,” I said.
“Your cold is better,” Merodie said. “Did you use the Vicks like I said?”
I nearly began to laugh. If they were going to strap her in the electric chair, Merodie would be warning her executioner not to stand too close.
When she was seated, I asked, “Why didn’t your tell us about your daughter?”
“Look at me, McKenzie. What do you see? You don’t have to say it, I’ll say it. You see a pathetic drunk. If I didn’t know it before, I know it now what with writing my history on a chalkboard all week. Silk, she shouldn’t have to suffer cuz of that. That’s why I gave her to Cilia, so she wouldn’t have to suffer. She’s got a good life with Cilia. My life has been just one thing after another, and some of it ain’t my fault but most of it is, and my daughter, she ain’t gonna suffer cuz of that. So you, you just shut up now about Silk. I’m the boss, I’m the client.” She glanced from me to G. K. and back again. “You have to do what I say, and I say you don’t talk about Silk and you don’t talk about Cilia. I don’t want no one pointing at them and saying things. I’d rather—I’d rather go away than let that happen.”
“Go to prison,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Merodie,” said G. K. “I think we have an opportunity to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Oh yeah?”
G. K. brought her hands together in a way that made it seem like she was appealing to the deity and said, “There’s something I want to say, but I don’t want you to interrupt until I’m finished. Okay?”
Merodie nodded.
“Now bear with me,” G. K. added. “It gets a little complicated.”
Merodie nodded again.
“It would be extremely valuable to us if we could furnish the county attorney with a second suspect in Eli’s death. Now, we wouldn’t need to prove this second suspect actually committed the crime—”
“The crime is hitting Jefferson on the head with the bat,” Merodie said.
“Yes, exactly. But, please, don’t—”
“I won’t.”
“Interrupt.” G. K. said. “A second suspect would interject reasonable doubt into the case to the point where the county attorney might consider dropping it altogether.”
“Do you really think—”
“Merodie, please,” G. K. said, exasperated.
“Sorry.”
“The question is, who would that second suspect be? Now, in your initial statement to the police, the one you gave when they first brought you to Mercy Hospital, you said, well, wait a moment. . .”
G. K. unsnapped the locks on her briefcase, opened it, and withdrew a copy of the Supplementary Investigation Report filed by the deputy who had taken Merodie to Mercy Hospital. I was looking at the door to the interview room, wishing I were on the other side of it. I always knew that defense attorneys would do almost anything to get their clients off, including coaching them into what might or might not be a lie, but watching it happen—it made me feel like a co-conspirator, and I didn’t like the feeling.
Finally, G. K. found the passage she was seeking and quoted from it. “You said, ‘Some guy with blond hair came into the residence and got into a fight with him,’ meaning Jefferson.”
Merodie nodded.
“ ‘I asked Davies’—that’s the deputy speaking now—’I asked Davies who that might be and she told me that she felt it could have been a former boyfriend. I asked for the name of the boyfriend but Davies claimed she could not remember.’ Now, here’s the thing, Merodie. If you could remember who that former boyfriend was . . .”
“I’m not sure.”
G. K. leaned forward in her chair.
“I was wondering if the former boyfriend might have been Richard Scott Nye, who has blond hair. Now, he had good reason to come to your house. He had just been released from jail on a drug conviction, and he believes you informed on him.”
“I did inform on him,” Merodie insisted.
“Yes. So Nye could have come to your house that day . . .”
“Yes.”
“To get revenge . . .”
“Yes.”
“And got into a fight with Jefferson.”
“Yes.”
“The question is: Do you remember Nye coming to your house and getting into a fight with Jefferson? In your statement you said that a man with blond hair who could have been a former boyfriend got into a fight with Jefferson. Do you remember now that the man was Richard Nye? Because if you do, we might be able to get you out of here.”
G. K. said that last part very slowly and very carefully, then sat back in her chair and waited while Merodie worked it over in her head.
It took Merodie forty-seven seconds by my watch before she said, “It wasn’t Richard.”
G. K.’s mouth hung open, but nothing came out. She closed it again, licked her lips, and said, “Let me explain this again.” She did, too. Slowly. Carefully. Yet in the end, Merodie’s answer was the same.
“It wasn’t Richard.”
“But it could have been him,” G. K. blurted.
Merodie leaned across the table, her elbows supporting her weight. Her voice was like the first frost of autumn.
She said, “You wouldn’t want me to testify to something that wasn’t true, would you, Ms. Bonalay? Isn’t that, whaddaya call it, suborning perjury?”
In that moment I searched Merodie’s face and found something there that I hadn’t noticed before—raw intelligence. Merodie Davies had a plan. I just didn’t know what it was.
12
Dark and menacing storm clouds were gathering at the horizon by the time we left Merodie, but they were far too distant to worry about. We were walking toward our cars on East Main Street.
“I don’t know what to do,” G. K. said.
“Merodie isn’t leaving us many options,” I said.
“I could use a drink. McKenzie, would you have dinner with me?”
The question was so abrupt that I stopped walking.
“I’m sober, clear-headed, and feeling no pain,” G. K. said. “At least not much.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
A look of disappointment flashed across her face. I liked the look. A woman disappointed because I was turning her down for a date—you bet I liked the look. I wished for a
moment that Nina Truhler had seen it.
“Is it because we’re working together? Because I could fire you.”
“It’s not that. It’s . . .”
It’s Nina, dammit. Say it!
“Gen, the day we met, just hours before we met, I broke up with a woman—or I should say, she broke up with me. She was, she is—The thing is, I cared for this woman very much and I still do. The ego in me thought that the hole she left in my heart could easily be filled, but it just isn’t true. You could drive a truck through the hole, it’s that big. You’re very smart and very tough and very considerate and very beautiful, but in the end—I’d love to spend time with you, it would be time well worth spending, but in the end . . .”
“In the end I’d be the rebound girl,” G. K. said.
“Something like that.”
“And if the other girl called, you’d go running to her.”
“It’s not very fair to you.”
“At least you’re being honest. Most guys wouldn’t. Most guys would take advantage.”
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it.”
“I want to thank you anyway.”
“For what?”
“For all those ‘verys’ you recited before. Especially the very smart and very tough. I don’t always get credit for that.”
“I’m sorry, Gen.”
“Don’t be. But you know, McKenzie, if that hole you’re talking about ever shrinks to a manageable size—you know where I live.”
“Yes, I do.”
I didn’t feel like returning to an empty house, so after I left G. K., I grabbed some fast food—which wasn’t particularly fast and didn’t taste much like food—and drove over to the Coffee Grounds coffeehouse in Falcon Heights and bought myself a double café mocha. Real Book Jazz was onstage, and Stacy, the pretty college girl who was fronting the group, gave me a little wave as I claimed a small table in the back. She did this partly, I’m sure, because I was a fine figure of a man—just ask G. K.—but mostly because I have been known to stuff a fifty into the tip jar. I waved back.
Real Book Jazz wasn’t a group so much as it was an idea. Once a week a ragtag collection of amateur musicians would gather at the coffeehouse to play for tips and the love of music. Nearly anyone who had mastered the “real book,” that near mythical compilation of standards that all jazz musicians are expected to know, was invited to sit in. As a result, the musicians changed from week to week and sometimes even from set to set. On this night a Lutheran pastor, a social worker, a part-time studio musician, a high school music teacher, and a bus driver had joined Stacy, a biochemistry major who was on summer break. They were riffing on “Scotch and Soda,” the old Kingston Trio tune, and really had it going. The xylophone player in particular was outstanding, and I thought, Nina should hear this guy.
Dead Boyfriends Page 21
