by Tami Hoag
This time when she started for the stairs, Taylor stepped aside and let her go. They watched as she dashed across the street, hiking the strap of her yoga mat up on her shoulder. She got into her car and pulled away, tires hissing on the wet pavement.
“Namaste,” Taylor said.
Kovac gave him a look. “What the hell does that mean, anyway?”
“In this case I think it’s yoga for ‘Fuck you.’”
* * *
FROM DIANA’S RAMSHACKLE STUDENT HOUSING in Dinkytown they drove south to Charlie’s neat, nondescript apartment building. He didn’t answer his door, even though they knocked hard enough to rouse a neighbor from down the hall. His car was gone from its designated parking spot. Taylor tried calling. The call went straight to voice mail.
“He could be out making funeral arrangements,” Taylor offered as they went back to the car. “Or getting a CAT scan.”
“Where did he say he worked?” Kovac asked, settling into the passenger’s seat. He was getting used to being chauffeured. Getting soft in his old age.
Taylor consulted the notes he’d made in his phone. “Obern and Phipps, family law. But he didn’t go back to work with that face. I’d say he’s feeling like a used piñata today.”
“No, but let’s give them a call. He said he was online working the night of the murders. Maybe they can corroborate, and we can tick off a box on our list.”
Taylor called information for the number and then put his phone on speaker. A receptionist answered with a very professional “Obern and Phipps, Family Law. How may I direct your call?”
“This is Detective Michael Taylor with the Minneapolis Police Department. I’m calling regarding one of your employees, Charles Chamberlain. May I speak with his supervisor?”
“One moment please.”
Classical music came on the line to fill the time until the call was transferred. A woman’s voice broke in.
“This is Gloria Obern. How may I help you?”
Taylor went through the introduction again. “I need to ask you a couple of questions about an employee, Charles Chamberlain.”
“Oh, poor Charlie,” the woman said. “We all feel terrible about what happened to his parents. He’s beside himself, the poor kid.”
“Have you spoken to him recently?”
“No. We’ve been e-mailing. He’s a very quiet, private guy, but a terrific hard worker. I’ve never had such a thorough person doing my research. If there’s a scrap of information to be had anywhere on the Internet, Charlie will track it down. I’m going to miss him.”
“Excuse me?”
“Charlie e-mailed me his resignation last night. It was the first thing in my in-box this morning. Of course I’ll try to argue him out of it. He can have an indefinite leave of absence, as much time as he needs. I tried to call him, but it went straight to voice mail. I suppose he’s busy making arrangements.”
A sense of urgency spiked through Kovac. He grabbed the radio mike and called Dispatch even while Taylor was concluding his conversation with Charlie Chamberlain’s boss.
“. . . I need a BOLO on a Charles Chamberlain.” He gave the physical description as he fumbled through the pages of his little notebook. “. . . driving a gray late-model Toyota Camry, Minnesota plates Charles Ida Victor eight-seven-seven. He’s a suicide risk.”
He looked at Taylor.
“His parents are murdered, his sister beats him up, his inheritance is in question, and he won’t answer his phone. How are your door-kicking skills, Junior?”
“Let’s do it.”
They hustled back to the building. Kovac swore impatiently as Taylor punched buttons, hoping someone in the building would let them in again. Once inside, Taylor took the stairs two at a time. Kovac took the elevator. As he stepped into the hall on the fourth floor, Taylor was shattering the door of Charlie Chamberlain’s apartment with a well-placed kick. The neighbor two doors down stuck his head out, wide-eyed.
Taylor was already rushing inside the apartment, calling, “Charlie! It’s Detective Taylor! Are you here? Charlie?”
Silence.
“Holy shit,” Kovac murmured, looking around as he stepped through the door.
The neat and tidy midcentury modern sofa and chairs had been destroyed, cut open, the stuffing pulled out, and strewn everywhere. Lamps lay broken, the shades smashed. Down the short hall, the bedroom was in a similar state, the mattress and bedding shredded, the mirrored glass closet doors shattered and hanging askew off their track.
Kovac stuck his head in the bathroom, where the mirror over the sink was cracked into an elaborate spiderweb of lines. “There’s blood all over the sink in here.”
“There’s some on the door frame,” Taylor said. He picked a suit jacket off the floor and held it up. It had been cut and ruined. “What the hell happened here?”
Kovac took another look around at the chaotic destruction.
“At the risk of being politically incorrect,” he said, “this has Crazy Bitch written all over it. Get on the horn to the hospitals. See if Charlie Chamberlain made it to one of them.”
37
“I’ve been checking the homeless shelters and soup kitchens all over the area, asking about Jeremy Nilsen,” Seley said. “A couple of the places downtown thought they remembered the name. One that tries to keep track of return customers had him on their roster, but not recently.”
Nikki sat back in her chair and rubbed at the tension in the back of her neck. She had driven past Donald Nilsen’s house on the way back from Evi Burke’s. The guys sitting on surveillance reported that Nilsen had not returned. Where the hell was he?
“I’ve got two missing Nilsens, an uncooperative witness, and I talked a woman into trying to kill herself,” she muttered. “I’m batting a thousand here.”
“Don’t forget multiple threats of lawsuits,” Seley added.
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“You shouldn’t sell yourself short.”
“Where’s Mr. Congeniality?” Nikki asked, nodding in the direction of Grider’s empty desk.
Seley rolled her eyes. “He made a grand announcement that he was going to try to help smooth things over with the Duffy family.”
“Oh, right,” Nikki said sarcastically. “You watch. He’s going to try to yank this case out from under me, so it can go nowhere for another quarter of a century. Asshole.”
“Then we’d better get it solved before he can make that happen,” Seley said, getting up from her desk and scooping up a file folder. “I printed off a stack of the Gordon Krauss photos in case he’s our man. Let’s go check out these places where Nilsen might have been seen.”
* * *
FOR A CITY WITH months of inhospitable weather, Minneapolis seemed to have more than its share of homelessness. The truth of that pressed down on Nikki’s heart like an anvil. And the fact that too many of the men living on the street had been discarded after serving their country made her angry.
At lunchtime on a raw, wet, cold November day, the line for lunch snaked outside the Daily Bread mission and partway down the street. Sullen men in dirty clothes hunched their shoulders against the wind and avoided eye contact while they waited for a hot bowl of beef stew.
“Minnesota has an aggressive initiative to eliminate homelessness among veterans,” the director of the shelter told them. Leonard Westin was a smallish balding man in his forties, with glasses and a polite expression. “We’ve reduced our numbers by forty-seven percent since 2010. But it’s still a problem, especially for soldiers coming back with significant psychiatric issues. If they end up on the street with paranoia, PTSD, drug problems, any and all of the above—that’s a difficult situation. The programs are voluntary. We can’t force people to accept help. And when a person doesn’t trust anyone, or their primary objective in life has become scoring crack, that person isn’t coming in here asking to sign up.”
They stood in the hall between the administrative offices and the dining room of the shelter
, where the moods of the clientele had improved with calories, and conversations rose and fell and were interspersed with occasional laughter.
Seley held out the photograph of Gordon Krauss to the director. “This is the man we’re searching for. Does he look familiar?”
Westin squinted at the picture, frowning, searching his memory. “Possibly. We get so many men through here, it’s tough to remember faces unless they’re regulars. Who is he?”
“He’s calling himself Gordon Krauss,” Nikki said. “But he was found to have half a dozen IDs in his possession, one of them belonging to a Jeremy Nilsen. We’re trying to determine if the two might be one and the same.”
“I know we’ve had a Jeremy Nilsen come through here,” he said. “I found the name several times in our roster from the last year. We try to keep track as much as we can. If we don’t, who will? But I couldn’t say I remember what he looked like. He wasn’t a regular, and according to the list, he hasn’t been in for several months.”
“Have you heard anything about guys getting their IDs stolen?”
“It happens. Life on the street is no picnic. Men get rolled for their drugs, for their pocket money, because they looked at someone the wrong way. Most of them don’t want to deal with the police, so crime goes unreported. It’s a transient population, so if we stop seeing a face, we assume they moved on, not that something happened to them.”
Nikki sighed, frustrated.
“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. That’s the situation we’re dealing with.”
“Thanks anyway,” Seley said. “Do you mind if we show this around the room? Maybe someone will recognize him.”
“By all means, and good luck.”
They drifted up and down the rows of tables, trying to get people to look closely at the photograph of Gordon Krauss. Most weren’t interested, glancing at the picture and passing it on, wanting nothing to do with cops. Then one man looked at the picture and sat up a little straighter.
“Do you know that guy?” Nikki put the man in his late fifties. With curly gray hair that had receded halfway back on his skull, he had the regal profile of an African king. The name on his army jacket read, KUMAR.
“Yeah. He’s a bad dude,” Kumar said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Dude hit my friend Martin in the head with a hammer!”
“When was this?”
“Couple months ago. Down by the river. There’s a camp down there in the summer. Some guys were passing a pipe. This guy brought some substances, if you get my drift.”
“This guy brought drugs to the party?”
“Yes, ma’am. And when they was all high—I don’t partake, myself—this guy pulled a hammer and hit Martin a couple of licks in the head. BAM! BAM! Just like that!” he said, pounding a fist on the table.
“Martin had cashed his benefits check that day and bought some liquor. It was a nice party up until the hammer came out,” he said wistfully.
“Do you think he was going to rob your friend? Or was he just freaking out?”
“Oh yeah,” he nodded. “I had my eye on him. He was hardly smoking. He was a man with a plan, for sure. We got more selective about our party guests after that.”
“And what happened then?”
“Cops heard the commotion and pulled up on the bank. Everybody went their own way.”
“Did you ever see this guy again after that?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Do you remember his name?”
He gave her a look. “We’re not big on names at the parties.”
“What happened to your friend?”
“He had seventeen staples in his head and went deaf in one ear.”
“That’s rough. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I look on the bright side,” Kumar said with a smile. “It knocked some sense into him.”
“Thanks for speaking up,” Nikki said. “You’ve been a big help.”
“Despite all outward appearances,” he said, “I always try to be a good citizen.”
* * *
“SO, JEREMY NILSEN IS either a thug rolling homeless guys or a homeless guy who got rolled by a thug,” Nikki said as they walked back to their car, leaning into the wind and spitting rain.
“And there were five other IDs found in Krauss’s room,” Seley reminded her.
“Call the morgue and see if they’ve had any unclaimed John Does that match Jeremy Nilsen’s description—or any of the men on those other IDs—in the last six months,” she said. “Whoever this guy is, he could be worse news than anyone imagined.”
Her phone announced a text message with a bright ping! She dug it out of her pocket and looked.
“We’ll find out soon,” she said, turning the screen to show Tippen’s message: GOT HIM.
38
Gordon Krauss had nothing to say. Nothing at all. He had neither waived his rights nor invoked his right to counsel. He sat across the table from Kovac in the box, his back to the wall.
A suspect was put in that position, cramped behind the too-small table that was bolted to the wall on one end of the room, to feel as if he was cornered. Kovac had the option of increasing or decreasing the sense of pressure by moving closer in his chair, which was on wheels, or sliding subtly back away from the suspect.
He stayed back from Gordon Krauss, waiting. This was going to take time. Krauss appeared dead calm, his posture straight but not tense. He stared past Kovac into the middle distance, expressionless, observing his right to remain silent.
He had obviously been living rough since they had flushed him out of Rising Wings. His clothes were dirty and wet. He smelled like a Dumpster. His hair was greasy and flat from hiding under a watch cap. His beard needed a serious grooming. He had been caught trying to shoplift a pair of scissors and a pack of disposable razors from a drugstore.
They had not offered him fresh, dry clothes. Kovac wanted him uncomfortable. They had not offered him food. Kovac wanted him irritable, in the hope of eliciting an angry outburst, but none had been forthcoming.
They had been in the box for seventy-three minutes, mostly just staring. Kovac asked the occasional question that went unanswered. The afternoon was almost gone. It had grown dark outside by now. Most people would be thinking about going home and having dinner. His own stomach was grumbling. Krauss’s face was gaunt. He probably hadn’t had a decent meal in days.
“Everyone said you were a quiet guy,” Kovac commented. “They didn’t say you were a mute.”
He sat back in his chair, yawned, and stretched his arms over his head. He had all the time in the world.
“You’re a real man of mystery, Gordon,” he said. “We found six IDs in your room at Rising Wings. I don’t think any of them are you. You convinced a bunch of people you’re a vet, but we can’t find your fingerprints in any system. So if you’re a veteran, you must have been in the French Foreign Legion. Then again, I’ve got a guy who thinks you’re some kind of shadow-world ninja assassin for the government. A poor man’s James Bond, if you will. That would make a good movie,” he said. “I’m not much for movies, but I would go to that.”
Krauss had no interest in discussing his potential as an action star.
“I doubt you’re that interesting in reality,” Kovac said. “I think you’re probably just a garden-variety mutt. You’re just another lazy mutt who took a low-end honest job so you could case some nice homes during the day and then come back after hours and steal what you could carry in a knapsack. There’s nothing special about that. Just your average workaday thief.”
If Krauss was insulted, he didn’t show it.
“Yeah, you’re a little bit clever,” Kovac conceded. “That’s a good gig you landed with the rehab. That was smart. Too bad you had to meet Diana Chamberlain there. That chick is bad news. Bat-shit crazy. Look what she pulled you into. You’re never gonna see the light of day as a free man again because of her.”
Krauss said nothing. He didn’t acknowledge or deny know
ing Diana Chamberlain. He didn’t deny being a thief. He didn’t say they had nothing on him or that he didn’t belong in jail. His expression didn’t change at all. He stared past Kovac, barely blinking. His eyes were empty, dead-looking, like a shark’s eyes.
“What did she promise you, Gordon? Money? Drugs? Sex? All of the above? She’s a party waiting to happen, that one.”
He opened a file folder and took out several photographs from the Chamberlain crime scene, gruesome close-ups of the victims, and laid them out on the table.
“Was she there with you? Did she help out with the alarm system that night?” Kovac asked. “She’s the kind of chick who would get off on watching this go down. But you know she’s going to totally throw you under the bus on this, right?”
Krauss didn’t look at the pictures. He seemed lost in some fantasy world. Meditating on murder. The guy made his skin crawl. Kovac had been in the box across from every kind of dirtbag known to man, but only a handful had given him the sense of being in the presence of something truly, darkly evil. Something in the blank, soulless stare made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“Yeah, well . . .” He stood up and rolled his shoulders, picked up the file folder, but left the photographs on the table. “It’s been nice talking to you, Gordon. I’m gonna take a break here, go get a cup of coffee, grab some dinner, take a piss. Do you need anything, Gordon? Can I get you anything? No? Suit yourself. I’ll see you later.”
He walked out of the interview room and went directly to the war room, where the whole gang had gathered to watch the show on a monitor.
“He’s not much of a conversationalist,” Kovac said.
“But is he our killer?” Mascherino asked. Standing among the guys (and Liska), in her prim black suit and sensible shoes, she looked like the headmistress of a school for incorrigible overgrown boys.
“This guy probably killed his own mother and ate her the day he hatched,” he said. “Whether he killed the Chamberlains or not, I don’t know. I want to get Diana Chamberlain in here and see if we can play one off the other.”
