Broken Ice--A Novel

by Matt Goldman

  Waller said, “So how did that bag of money end up in Winnie Haas’s laundry chute?”

  “At some point, Linnea learned what she was carrying down to the Cities and back. Then last week, either she or Roger made a drop while in St. Paul for the hockey tournament. Roger received a little over a hundred grand. He hid the money in the hotel suite. Or, more likely, put it in the suite’s safe. Linnea figured out the code, took the cash, and ran. Winnie hid Linnea in her big house on Crestmoor Bay. Ben had no idea.” I looked at Waller. “Did forensics check the lint trap in Winnie’s dryer?”

  Waller ignored the question because she’d ignored my suggestion. She said, “Why would Winnie Haas hide Linnea Engstrom?”

  “Linnea was her supplier.”

  Flynn said, “Of what?”

  “W-18. Winnie Haas was an addict. The first time I met her, she was glassy-eyed. I knew she was on something but I didn’t know what. I have friends who work at 3M. I made some calls. Winnie was in a car accident two years ago. T-boned. Busted up her whole left side. My guess is doctors prescribed pain meds, and Winnie got addicted. Then they took ’em away. Happens every day. Ben probably told Haley, and Haley told Linnea on one of those long drives to or from the Cities, if for no other reason than to have something to talk about. Linnea saw an opportunity, stole small amounts from the packages Roger gave her to deliver, and sold the drug to Winnie. It didn’t take much to do the job. The W-18 had no excipient.”

  They looked at each other but no one spoke. Then Flynn said, “Okay. We’re idiots. Tell us what that means.”

  “The excipient is the inactive part of a pill, the part that gives it bulk and holds it together so you can swallow it. Usually it accounts for at least two-thirds of a pill. If you crush a pill with excipient and snort it, the stuff gets stuck in your nose. If you inject it, the excipient can find its way into your lungs and kill you. But you can do whatever you want with pure W-18. And it’s easier to transport without the added bulk.”

  Flynn said, “Thanks for the lecture, professor.”

  “You’re welcome. Winnie paid Linnea with cash and friendship. Actually, more than friendship. Mothering. Linnea didn’t get much of it from Anne. She got a taste of it from her aunt Mel, but Mel felt guilty about it and cut her off. I guess you could say both Winnie and Linnea were in need of a fix.”

  Waller said, “So why would Linnea hide the cash in the laundry chute?”

  “It’s just a guess, but I think Linnea was in the house when Roger came over. She panicked and stashed the bag and ran.”

  Terrence Flynn rubbed one of his chins with his forefinger. “How did Roger know about Linnea and Winnie Haas?”

  “Winnie must have got in contact with him. She probably knew of Linnea’s plan to run but not that Linnea had taken Roger’s drug money. Winnie called Roger out of concern for Linnea and herself. She was an addict, and Linnea had supplied a cheap fix with no paper trail. Winnie wanted to make sure that wouldn’t end. She assumed Linnea would be out of the house by the time Roger got there or maybe she was just careless or high. But when Roger showed up, Linnea was caught off guard and hid the cash and ran and figured she’d come back for it after Roger left. But Roger never left, not alive anyway.”

  Stensrud said, “Because Ben Haas killed his mother.”

  “I already told you he didn’t do it. The only thing Ben Haas did wrong was ignore his mother’s addiction. But that’s hardly a crime.”

  Waller looked angry. I’d begun to suspect that was her resting face and she had no fat on it to soften her intention. She said. “Well, this is all very informative, but if Ben Haas didn’t kill Roger and Winnie—”

  “Or stick me with an arrow. I know you’re equally concerned about that.”

  Waller forced a smile. “Right.”

  “First I’d like to talk to Ben, if that’s okay with you.”

  Stensrud sighed. “I’ll go get him.” He stood but stopped when seeing the look on my face. “You want to see him alone?”

  “I think it would be better. I don’t care if you listen in or watch via camera or one-way mirror, but he should think it’s just the two of us.”

  “All right, then. Fair enough.”

  37

  Ben Haas sat where Waller had sat, directly across from me, his hands cuffed in front of him and resting on the table. He wouldn’t look at me. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything. Stensrud didn’t bother covering the red light that indicated the video conferencing camera was on. Ben Haas didn’t notice the light. Ben Haas didn’t notice anything.

  I said, “Ben. Are you okay if I take off the handcuffs?” He stared at something that wasn’t there. He sat still. “I’m going to do that, Ben. I want you to be more comfortable.” I’d asked Stensrud for the keys. I stood and walked around the table. I removed the cuffs and carried them back to my seat. Ben rubbed his wrists but remained mute.

  “You hungry?” He shook his head. “You want some water or coffee or anything?” No reaction. “Ben, I’m sorry for what you’re going through. I want to tell you what’s going on. If you’re feeling up for it.” He looked at me for the first time since being led into the conference room. I took that as a yes.

  “You know I’m a private investigator. I’ve learned the best way to do my job is pay attention to the little nagging questions that stick in my head and won’t go away. I found a couple at your house in Woodbury.

  “One was the first time I visited. Remember that? My friend Ellegaard and I, we showed up kind of late for a weeknight. The police had found Haley in the cave that day. Your dad was there to see how you were doing. And your mom couldn’t have been nicer. She acted like our visit wasn’t an inconvenience at all, even though she was ready for bed. She acted as if our visit was a happy surprise, as if we were old friends or relatives she hadn’t seen in a long time. Seemed a bit strange at the time. I made note of it but let it go because she gave us what we needed, which was access to you at 10:45 on a Wednesday night.

  “Then, the day I found your mom and Roger Engstrom, I noticed another little thing that bugged me. Those architectural models in your room downstairs. Architectural models used to be made of foam board and they were just walls with cutouts for windows and doors. Maybe a roof. But the models in your room showed the frames of the houses. Studs, headers, floor joists, everything. And I thought, Who in the hell has time to cut out all those little pieces and glue them together? Kind of weird, isn’t it? I find your mom and Roger with arrows in them. I find a paper bag with a hundred grand in it, but the images that stick with me are of those architectural models. They were houses your dad designed. One-off custom designs. So I knew they weren’t mass-produced.”

  I had Ben Haas’s attention. He wasn’t in his own world anymore. A dozen bottles of water sat on the credenza. I walked over, got two, returned, and twisted off the caps. Ben Haas and I became drinking buddies.

  “Then Char Northagen, the tall blond medical examiner you may remember seeing at your house that day, told me that the arrowhead that went into my shoulder had a fingerprint on it. And you know who it belonged to? Warroad hockey coach Gary Kozjek.”

  Curiosity flashed across Ben’s face.

  “I was shocked. Kozy shooting me didn’t make any sense. He had no reason to. And for one of Minnesota’s favorite sons to sneak around downtown Saint Paul unnoticed in broad daylight, it just didn’t add up. So I wondered if someone faked his fingerprint.”

  My phone lit up. Ellegaard. I ignored the call.

  “Faking a fingerprint isn’t hard. Especially with a high-resolution digital camera. You find a clean print on a glass or other hard surface and take a picture of it. Then you print it. But not on a regular printer. On a 3-D printer. Except you print with silicone instead of hard plastic. So it’s like making a little silicone fingertip. Then you rub it on the oil of your nose and press it onto wherever you want the fingerprint to show up. Simple.”

  My phone lit up again. Ellegaard texted CALL ME!!! I said
to Ben, “Hey. I got to make a quick call. Sorry. Looks like an emergency.” Ben didn’t respond. I didn’t know how far away Stensrud, Flynn, and Waller were, so I wasn’t comfortable leaving the room. I pressed call and headed toward the credenza while waiting for Ellegaard to answer. He did on the first ring.

  “I’m following him, Shap. He’s headed southeast on Highway 11 toward Baudette.”

  “What?”

  “I was pulling out of The Patch Motel parking lot to head home when I caught a glimpse of the blue Highlander heading east out of the Marvin Visitors Center. I called Stensrud. He put the word out. Baudette police are setting up a roadblock. We should be hitting it any minute.”

  “I’m having a little chat with Ben. Call me when it’s over.”

  I hung up and walked back to the table. Ben said nothing. I picked up where I’d left off. “So then the two weird things from that day, the architectural models and the possibility of a fake fingerprint, became not so weird. In fact, they made sense, not in spite of each other but because of each other. Those architectural models in your room, nobody spent a million hours gluing those together. Not even close. They were printed on a 3-D printer. Just like the silicone stamp to make the fake fingerprint.”

  Ben shook his head.

  “The question I couldn’t get past was: How did a persnickety, highbrow, high-fashion-wearing, manicure-getting Lilliputian architect named Raynard learn to shoot a bow so well?”

  Ben shut his eyes.

  “I spoke to your grandma Catherine today. She told me something about your dad you might not know.”

  Ben gulped some water but it didn’t help. His voice crackled. “What?”

  “Your grandpa Frank was always out of work. And for the most part, drunk. Your grandma said whiskey was his preference. The cheap Canadian stuff. He bought it by the jug. So your dad didn’t have it easy growing up. That part of the country was depressed enough. All the mining and lumber jobs were gone. The Haas family was on welfare most of the time. But they lived in Northern Wisconsin. They liked meat. Lots of meat. But meat’s expensive. Yet the ironic thing is it’s running all over the place.

  “You know what someone in a bar told me, Ben? Something like twenty-five thousand Wisconsin deer get killed by cars every year. I didn’t believe the guy so I got out my phone and looked it up. The actual number was over twenty-six thousand.”

  “But the hunting season is only a couple months a year, and licenses are expensive. And even then, you’re only allowed one deer, even though they’re overpopulated and getting hit by cars all the time.

  “So your dad learned how to poach. Your grandma said he became quite skilled at killing deer and gutting them in the field and burying the entrails and head and everything they didn’t want then cutting up the meat and packing it into plastic bags and backpacking it out of there along with his bow and arrows.

  “He never used a rifle because rifles made too much noise. He’d buy a couple arrows a year. That was it. He was famous in his family for never losing an arrow because he almost never missed his target. And if he did, he wouldn’t leave ’til he found the arrow, and if it got dark he’d mark the spot and go back the next day. The arrowheads were expensive ’cause he needed the ones that sliced right through so the deer would bleed out in minutes. He couldn’t have a deer run off with an arrow in it. Not out of season anyway.”

  “Wait,” said Ben. “Grandma Catherine told you all this?”

  “She did. I told her I was a reporter doing a story on how successful your dad’s become. She had so much to say, I had a hard time getting off the phone with her.”

  “I don’t believe my dad grew up like that. I would have heard about it.”

  “No, Ben. You wouldn’t have. Your dad is about image. His business and reputation depend on it. Your mom said he had to hold his nose to even step into her McMansion. You think he’s going to tell you he had to poach deer to eat? You think he would have told your mom? He wanted to keep that well buried.”

  Ben took a sip of water, but said nothing.

  I said, “Your grandma said when your dad was in high school he invented the smallest bow she’s ever seen. Apparently, he’s great with mechanical stuff like that. I guess that aptitude is part of what makes him a good architect.”

  Ben dropped his eyes and played with his water bottle. I stole a glance at the video conferencing camera hanging over the TV. The red light was still on. Without looking up, Ben said, “My dad would never kill my mom. Never. There’s no way he’d do that to me. He’s a great dad. Plus, he was in Chicago. He couldn’t have.”

  “The police checked that out. He being the ex-husband. He definitely flew down to Chicago a few days before the murder then flew back when hearing the news. He must have come back up to Minneapolis and flown back to Chicago in between. Probably on a private plane. They’re reviewing flight plans right now.”

  Ben shook his head.

  “Ben, you know your dad did it. You know it’s true. I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry.”

  Ben burst into tears. My phone lit up again. I excused myself and answered. “Yeah, Ellie?”

  “Police just pulled him out of the car.”

  “Good.”

  “Not good,” said Ellegaard. “It isn’t Raynard Haas.”

  38

  An hour after I spoke to Ellegaard, Ben Haas was back in his cell and Gary Kozjek sat in Ben’s chair. Stensrud, Waller, and Flynn rejoined the party. Ellegaard was headed home. Again. Poor guy couldn’t get away from me. Before he left he’d filled in Kozjek on why the coach had run into a roadblock. Kozy seemed both relieved and insulted it wasn’t intended for him. We settled in with new bottles of water. Kozjek poured water into his mouth rather than drinking directly from the bottle, an old hockey squirt-bottle habit.

  Kozy said, “I’m not talking without a lawyer.”

  Stensrud said, “You’re not under arrest. We just want to know how you ended up driving Raynard Haas’s car.”

  “Yeah, I hear you. I want a lawyer.”

  Waller said, “You got one in town?”

  “Not for criminal defense. But I know one in St. Paul. Let me call her.”

  Flynn said, “Jesus Christ.”

  I said, “You don’t need to call her, Kozy. I’ll tell you what she’ll say.”

  “Oh, you will, asshole?”

  “Hey, I thought we were friends.”

  “Friends don’t drag friends into bullshit like this.”

  “That lawyer’s going to tell you to keep your mouth shut until she gets up here. Soonest that’ll be is two hours. That’s if a private plane’s available on a Sunday afternoon. One just flew Anne Engstrom up here, so that’s one less available. Maybe your lawyer will fly commercial, but chances are her quickest way up here is to drive. That’ll take six hours.” I looked at the clock on the wall. “That’d get her here about 10:00 P.M. Then our conversation will have to wait until morning. I’m sure officer Stensrud will be happy to put you up in his finest cell. But waiting until tomorrow will give the Twin Cities reporters plenty of time to get wind of the story and be up here by morning.”

  “Reporters? I thought I wasn’t under arrest.”

  “You’re not,” said Stensrud, “yet. But we may have to arrest you for solicitation of a prostitute to keep you here overnight.”

  Well bullshitted, Stensrud. Well bullshitted.

  Kozy said, “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Waller said, “Then you have nothing to worry about.”

  I said, “Other than the press.”

  Stensrud said, “With everyone’s permission, I’d like to offer Coach Kozjek a deal.”

  Flynn said, “Jesus Christ.”

  Waller said, “Let’s hear it.”

  Stensrud said, “We agree not to file charges if Coach here tells us all about his connection to Raynard Haas.”

  Kozy poured more water into his mouth, swallowed, then said, “You won’t charge me for anything?”

  Waller said
, “I’ll agree to that. Except for rape or murder.”

  “Rape?”

  “I’m not saying you raped someone. I’m just not letting you walk for it if you did.”

  Stensrud, “Works for me. Officer Flynn?”

  Flynn nodded his wide head. We all looked at Kozjek, who squirmed then said, “All right. Deal.” The hockey great didn’t seem to understand cops can’t cut deals. Only prosecuting attorneys can do that. But he was sure of himself the way other arrogant masters of one field tend to be arrogant about all things, even those they know nothing about.

  Kozjek said, “Haas knows a lot of pro athletes. He’s designed homes for some Minnesota Vikings and Twins and Timberwolves. Done a couple homes for guys on the Wild, too. I met him at a charity event and talked to him about designing me a new place up here. Something I could age into. He had this idea for a single-story house made of poured concrete walls and aluminum windows that don’t look like metal or nothing. Zero maintenance for life. So I hired him to design the place.

  “One day, we’re walking my land to pick a site, and he can see I’m in pain. I tell him anyone who played nineteen years in the NHL is in pain. He asks if I’m on anything for it. I tell him no. Doctors told me to manage it with Advil. He says he knows someone who can get me something stronger if I want it. I ask how much stronger. Like oxy? He says way stronger than oxy. I tell him no thanks. I’m a fucking hockey player. Opioids are for pussy football and baseball and basketball players.

  “Then I tell him when the pain gets too bad”—he glanced at Waller—“and I apologize for being a smidge crude here, I find one of my local admirers to play a little hide the lamp shade. Takes my mind off my knees and hips. Haas figures we’re buddies at this point, and we kind of were, even though the man dressed like a freak. Anyways, he says he knows a young woman in town with all the body and can-do attitude I could handle. Available most anytime I want. For a price.

  “So I ask who is this young woman, and he tells me it’s Haley Housh. Fuck, I know the Houshes. Generations of ’em. So I think no way. Plus the girl’s only seventeen. But I see her around, you know. Small town. She’s at all the hockey games. A guy can’t help but let his imagination get the best of him. Then she turns eighteen. Raynard’s up here. We have a few cocktails and I go against my better judgment. Tell him to make the call. Then once it started, I didn’t feel much like stopping it.”