The Heavens May Fall

by Allen Eskens

  “I’m truly sorry for your loss,” Max began.

  “Are you sure it’s Jennavieve? I mean there’s been no positive ID.”

  Good one, Max thought, don’t tip your hand that you know for sure it’s your wife. Jennavieve’s murderer would know that she was dead and exactly how she was murdered. An innocent man would be asking questions. “You’ll have to go make a positive identification, but I have a photo I could show you, if you want to see her.”

  “Yes . . . I . . . I need to see.”

  Max opened his file enough to pull out a black-and-white picture from the autopsy. He turned it around and slid it across the table. Now watch his reaction.

  “Oh my God!” Pruitt began to shake, his fingers clamped tightly on the edges of the picture of his wife’s pale, dead face. “Oh my God, it’s Jennavieve. I can’t . . .” He put the picture down, leaving it face up, not as Max expected. A guilty person would feel compelled to turn the picture over, to hide the face of the person they killed. They wouldn’t want to see their victim looking back in judgment.

  “What happened? Who did this?”

  “I assure you we’re doing everything we can to answer those questions.” An answer but not an answer.

  “Anything you want from me, just ask.”

  “I appreciate that. It’ll help a lot if we could exclude you as a suspect. Can we get your fingerprints and DNA?”

  Pruitt straightened up. “Exclude me? You know you’ll find my fingerprints and DNA all over that house. How will that exclude me?”

  “You know how this works. It’s standard procedure. If we know what’s yours, we can figure out what isn’t yours.”

  Max could see a hint of anger pass behind Pruitt’s eyes.

  “I’m the husband. I know I’m gonna be the first person on your list of suspects. That’s standard procedure too. Or am I wrong?” Pruitt’s eyes stared into Max’s, waiting for a response, a response that Max refused to give. “And, by the way, don’t think I didn’t notice that you didn’t answer my question. How did my wife die?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss an active investigation.”

  “Bullshit, Detective.” Pruitt continued to stare at Max and spoke in a controlled tone. “I know it’s technically confidential, but I also know that you release information all the time if it helps you. Well, I want to help you. I did not kill my wife.” Pruitt leaned harder into the table and calmly said it again. “I did not kill my wife. I know you don’t like me. I know we’ve crossed paths before and it left a bad taste in your mouth. I’m a criminal-defense attorney for God’s sake. It’s my job. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t piss off a cop or two along the way. You may have it in for me, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s all water under the bridge. I want to help you find who did this. And to that end, you need to know that I did not kill my wife.”

  “Mr. Pruitt, I never said that you killed your wife. I never said you’re a suspect. I just want to get as much information so that I can find the person who did this.”

  “Then tell me what happened. How’d she die?”

  A lab tech knocked on the door and entered with a portable fingerprint scanner. “May we?” Max asked.

  “Sure,” Pruitt said. “But you’re wasting your time.”

  Max glanced at the camera above the door, and gave a nod to his commander, who was watching the interrogation on a computer monitor and had sent the tech in. Pruitt looked at the tech, then at the camera over the door and offered his hand to the tech before returning to the conversation.

  “I was in Chicago,” Pruitt stated. “I was attending an NACDL convention.”

  “NACDL?”

  “National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. It was a conference on white-collar crime. I flew down yesterday, Delta Airlines. Check it out. They’ll confirm it. Got to Chicago about eleven a.m. The first panel discussion didn’t start until two in the afternoon.”

  “How’d you get to the airport?”

  “Park-and-ride.” Pruitt pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and produced a receipt.

  “Can I hold on to this?” Max asked.

  Pruitt narrowed his eyes, as if calculating advantages and disadvantages of Max’s request. Then he answered, “Sure, if it’ll help find my wife’s killer.”

  “What hotel did you stay at?”

  “The downtown Marriott.”

  “Is that also where the convention is being held?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “Absolutely, I have a few friends I see at those things.”

  “Can I get some names?”

  “Um . . . let’s see, there was—”

  The tech, who had been taking Pruitt’s fingerprints as he spoke, now waved a long-stemmed cotton swab in the air to signal that he wanted a DNA sample. Pruitt hesitated as though confused by the interruption, then opened his mouth. When the tech finished, Max slid a legal pad and pen across the table, and Pruitt wrote down two names. As he did, Max looked at Pruitt’s hands—no marks, no cuts, nor were there any on his face. Max didn’t expect to see any, though, as Mrs. Pruitt showed no signs that she struggled with her attacker.

  “What about last night?” Max continued.

  “I’m an old hand at these conferences. They had a social hour at one of the hospitality suites, but that’s for the young guns. I don’t need to do any of that politicking. A couple friends invited me to join them for a drink. At first I planned to, but then I felt tired, so I ordered room service—a club sandwich and some fries—and stayed in for the night.”

  “What time did you go to your room?”

  “Around five or so. I called Jennavieve to touch base. She didn’t answer, so I sent a text. Told her to kiss Emma good night for me. You can check the cell-phone records for the exact time. For that matter, check the cell-tower data. It’ll show that I’m telling the truth.”

  “Is it common for her not to answer when you call?”

  “No more common or uncommon than anyone else with a cell phone, I suppose.”

  “And you didn’t leave your room after that?”

  “No. Not until I got up this morning. I started for the conference, but I forgot my schedule. Went back, grabbed it, and was in the big room by the time the first speaker took the stage. Nine a.m. if I recall.”

  “So no one saw you between the hours of five yesterday evening and nine this morning?”

  Pruitt dropped his head and sighed in apparent exasperation. He paused, then raised his head, looked Max in the eyes, and spoke in a slow, clear voice. “Listen, Detective Rupert, if a client called me and said that his wife was murdered and that a homicide detective wanted to talk to him, I’d tell him not to go. I don’t care how innocent that client is. I’d tell him not to talk to the cops because the cops are good at getting perfectly innocent people to say things that make them sound guilty. And if I call up any criminal-defense attorney worth his or her salt, they’d tell me not to talk to you, especially given our history. I mean, you have a problem with me, I know that. But here I am. I want to talk to you because my wife was murdered and I didn’t do it.”

  Pruitt’s face reddened as he spoke, his pitch rising with each new statement. “I want you to find the sonofabitch that killed my wife—that took my Jennavieve away from Emma. I want to be helpful. But if this is just some bullshit attempt to hang this on me—to get back at me—then we’re through. So ask me what you want, but make the questions productive, because if I think you’re not interested in my help—if I sense that you’re just laying some kind of trap for me because you have a problem with me—then I’m done here.”

  “Mr. Pruitt, I’m not trying to hang this on anyone right now. I’m just gathering information. I don’t know what’s important and what’s not.” Keep him talking.

  “Whether or not anyone saw me after I went to my hotel room won’t help you find my wife’s killer. Of course I was there alone. I read a book. Fell asleep early. No friends st
opped by. No one-night-stand with some lonely lady at the bar. No escort. Just me and my book and no fucking way to get from Chicago to here and back by morning.”

  “Mr. Pruitt, there’s no need to get riled up. Like you said, it’s standard procedure. We need to exclude you.”

  “Well, you have what you need. Now do your job and find the person who killed my wife. And, by the way, where was Emma when all this happened? Is she safe?”

  “She stayed with a neighbor last night, the Kolander family. She had no idea. She’s still at Terry Kolander’s house.”

  “Where was Jennavieve killed? At the house? Is that why it’s swarming with cops and lab techs? Jesus, what if Emma had been there?”

  “Did your wife have any enemies? Do you know of anyone who might want to hurt her?”

  “No . . . I mean . . .” Pruitt brought his hands up to his forehead and rubbed his temples. “She had some enemies, but I can’t imagine anyone resorting to murder.”

  “Who?”

  “Jennavieve ran a foundation that fought to restore wetland habitat. They would coordinate efforts among conservation groups and the federal government to stop development that might impact a wetland. Jennavieve’s group brought the lawsuits. They were always pissing people off. She got threatened all the time, but we never took them seriously.”

  “Anything recent?”

  “No. None that I can think of right now.”

  “Anybody from your side of business have a beef with you?”

  “Like one of my clients? No. You’d be surprised how accepting my clients can be of the trouble they get themselves into. They appreciate anything I can do to lessen that trouble.”

  “Business must be doing well. That’s one hell of a house you have.”

  Pruitt didn’t respond.

  “You two weren’t having any kind of financial issues, were you?”

  Again, Pruitt just stared at Max.

  “No marital issues?”

  Pruitt dropped his head and sighed. “These are not productive questions, Detective. I told you to ask productive questions, questions that might help you find my wife’s killer. I didn’t kill her. I loved my wife, so quit trying to bring me into this. I had nothing to do with Jennavieve’s death. I know you’d love nothing more than to come after me, but you’d better start asking questions that will actually help find her killer, or I’m leaving.”

  “I’m just trying to see a full picture, Mr. Pruitt. I mean, every couple has the occasional disagreement. That doesn’t paint you as a bad husband.”

  “Detective, we’re done.” Pruitt stood up. “I’m still free to leave, am I not?”

  “You are.”

  “Then I’m leaving. And for the record, I’m invoking my right to deal with you through an attorney.” Pruitt headed out, but he stopped halfway through the door and turned to look at Max. “I would have stayed here and talked, you know. I would have done everything I could to help you. But it’s clear why you brought me here. You want this to be on me, and to hell with any other possibility. Well, if that’s the way you want to go, then screw you. My attorney will be in touch.”

  Ben Pruitt walked out of the interview room. After he’d gone, Max looked up at the camera and signaled to shut down the recorder before he slammed his fist onto the table.

  PART 2

  The Defense

  Chapter 12

  Professor Boady Sanden sat on a rocking chair on his front porch, soaking in the warmth of the late-afternoon sun and listening to the chatter of birds in the two massive oaks in his front yard. Beside him lay a stack of papers, notes, and cases he’d collected over the past year, changes in the law handed down by various courts, sharp-pointed edicts that he needed to add to the syllabus for his criminal-procedures class, a class he’d been teaching for six years.

  He took a break from work to look up and down Summit Avenue to see if anyone else had a job that let them sit on a porch on such a nice afternoon. He saw no one. He propped one foot up on the porch rail and smiled. Summers off. It was one of the best perks of being a law professor. Of course, he could teach summer term—and had in the past—but not this year. The time had come for the meniscus repair in his right knee, and even though he felt he could have been back teaching in time for the summer session, he was under strict orders from his wife, Diana. And Diana was the boss. She assured him that they didn’t need the money, although he noticed that she’d been hinting lately that she might want to stay home for Christmas and not take their usual winter-break trip to the Caribbean.

  She always took care of him like that, and he loved her for it.

  Even back in the day, back when Boady had a private law office in Minneapolis with a small army of law clerks and associates, back when he gave keynote speeches at criminal-defense conferences and brought home paychecks so big that it sometimes made him giggle, it had always been Diana who called the shots at home. It was Diana who orchestrated the numbers so that they could buy a house on Summit Avenue, a stretch of pavement they shared with the governor’s mansion and the Cathedral of St. Paul. Their house was a decent-sized Victorian, bigger than what the two of them needed, but smaller than what the gawkers expected to find on the street where James J. Hill once ran his Great Northern Railway and F. Scott Fitzgerald wroteThis Side of Paradise.

  It was Diana who put Boady’s mind at ease when he needed to quit practicing law. It was she who convinced him that they had set aside enough money that he could walk away from his law practice and move to a tiny faculty office on the second floor of Hamline University School of Law. She had watched him struggle under the weight of a client’s death for two years before, finally convincing him to give up his law practice. In those two years, she watched him drop twenty pounds. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. The practice of law had become more deadly to Boady than a malignant cancer, and Diana feared every day that his drive to work might end in a car crash that only she would know had not been an accident. She’d told him this when she begged him to apply for the law-school opening.

  She had saved his life, and he loved her for that, as well.

  Boady liked the city of St. Paul. Being the older of the twins, St. Paul bore the deep scars and hunched shoulders of experience. The city was thoughtful and somber and had nothing to prove. It may move a bit slower than its brother to the west, but there was no city on Earth more sure-footed.

  Boady had once been a man of Minneapolis. He moved through its halls with a naïve confidence completely undeserved. There had been a time when it seemed as though every decision Boady made, no matter how reckless, ended well for him and for his clients. He felt like one of those action heroes who could run through a warehouse full of flying bullets and never get hit. He was untouchable—until the day he wasn’t. Now he understood. Now he was a man of St. Paul.

  Boady had let his mind drift away from his syllabus and onto a couple squirrels chasing each other across his yard. They scurried up a tree when the black car pulled up and parked in front of the house. Boady looked up to see Ben Pruitt heading up the walkway.

  Boady smiled and waved. “Well, shut my mouth. If it isn’t the great Benjamin Lee Pruitt himself.”

  Ben waved back with no smile. He walked like a man at the end of a long journey even though he had just stepped out of his car. The sadness behind Ben’s eyes caused Boady to stand to greet him, a serious greeting for what suddenly had the feel of a serious meeting.

  Ben embraced Boady in a hug. “Jennavieve’s dead,” he said, his voice tripping across the words. He pulled back from the embrace, his eyes thick with tears ready to fall.

  “What?”

  “She’s dead. They found her body this morning. She was murdered.”

  Boady motioned to a second rocking chair, Diana’s chair, and the two sat down. “Are you sure?”

  “I just came from the morgue. I identified her.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I was in Chicago. I flew down yesterday morning for
a conference. I got a call today from your buddy, Max Rupert, saying that Jennavieve was dead and Emma was missing.”

  “Emma’s missing?”

  “They found her. She spent the night at a neighbor’s house. She’s alright. I haven’t seen her yet, but I’m going there after I talk to you. They tell me she doesn’t know her mom’s dead yet. I . . . I don’t know what to say to her. Her mother was everything to her.”

  “I’m so terribly sorry . . . Jennavieve . . . I can’t believe it. Have they told you anything about how it happened?”

  “Not much. I managed to get the ME to tell me that Jennavieve was stabbed. When I viewed her body, she had stitches along the right side of her neck. I’ve seen autopsy photos before, and I knew that wasn’t part of the normal procedure. I pushed until the ME gave in and said that’s where the knife . . .” Ben’s eyes glazed over and tears began rolling down his cheeks. He wiped them on the sleeves of his white button-down shirt.

  “Where was she killed?”

  “I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything. I think she was killed at our house. There’s an army of cops there. They won’t let me go home.”

  “If you need a place to stay—”

  “No. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I think I need a lawyer.”

  Boady started to say something. He wanted to tell his friend to look elsewhere if he needed an attorney, but the words knotted up in his throat.

  “I’m afraid Rupert’s going to try and hang this on me.” Ben shifted in his seat, as though settling in for a longer conversation. “I mean, you heard about the problem between Max Rupert and me, I assume.”

  Now it was Boady’s turn to settle in. He leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and tried to recall what he could about the bad blood between Pruitt and Rupert. “I read something about it in the Minnesota Lawyer. I also read the Board of Professional Responsibility opinion.” Boady tried not to look disappointed, but he must have failed because Ben dropped his eyes as Boady spoke. “You were suspended for . . . was it thirty days?”