by Blake Pierce
high road. His language reminded her of his past charges and she wanted him
to think she and DeMarco were simply servants, timid and just doing their
jobs. She wondered how much about himself he might reveal if she allowed him to rely on his anger without correcting him.
He stormed back into the hallway, waving them on as he passed. He
walked with those same pissed off, thundering steps as he led them into a
large room that held only a gorgeous piano and a couch. A woman of about
twenty-five or so sat behind the piano, taking everything in with extreme
worry on her face. Knudsen basically threw himself on the couch in a far-too-
dramatic fashion and looked at the lady behind the piano.
“Courtney, I’m sorry but we’ll have to cancel the rest of the lesson. I’ll
add the forty-five minutes to your next lesson and maybe I can even get one
of these rude ladies to pay for it.”
“Do you—” the woman—Courtney, apparently—started to say.
“Not now, please,” Knudsen said. “Tomorrow, same time.”
“I have to work tomorrow morning.”
“Figure it out then,” he snapped. “It’s your forty-five minutes.”
Kate was about to interject, as he was nearly screaming at the poor
woman. Courtney got up from the piano stool and made her exit, though. She
barely looked at the agents as she made her way to the hall and toward the
front door.
“I charge one hundred dollars per hour, per lesson,” Knudsen said. “Are
one of you prepared to make that up to me?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Kate said sarcastically.
“It’s not even nine in the morning,” DeMarco said. “Isn’t it a little early
for piano lessons?”
“To the untalented, sure. But studies have shown that the practice of any
art—particularly music—is best done in the morning. The brain is more
adaptable to the memory of it all. My first lesson this morning was at six
o’clock.”
“Are all of your lessons out of your home?” Kate asked.
“No,” he said, looking at her as if she had just burped in his face. “That
would be stupid. I do about half of my lessons here and half at the homes of
my clients. But what care is that of yours?”
“I’m glad you asked,” DeMarco said.
“Mr. Knudsen,” Kate said, “can you confirm that you have students by the
names of Karen Hopkins, Marjorie Hix, and Meredith Lowell?”
“Not in actuality. I have not worked with Karen Hopkins in almost a year.
She was not very good and gave up. I think it saved the world several headaches, if I’m being honest. But yes, Meredith and Marjorie are current
clients. I have a lesson with Marjorie Hix later today. Not that it’s any
concern of yours. Is that why you’re here? To get some sort of odd roll call?”
“Mr. Knudsen, those three women have all been killed within the past ten
days,” Kate said. “So it looks like your day just opened up a bit, huh?”
“What? This is a joke, yes?”
“No. All three of them are dead. And so far, the only concrete thing we
have to link them all is that they took lessons with you.”
Kate thought the shock on his face was genuine, but the anger and
pompousness he had displayed since the moment they arrived was still very
much on his face. “So then how can I help?” He paused here, as if letting the
news truly catch up to him for the first time. “Karen was…well, she was a
very nice woman. She had talent but was afraid to really dig it up…”
“We need to know when you last saw each woman, for starters,” DeMarco
said.
“I saw Marjorie just four days ago. She was here, right there on that
bench, for a lesson.”
“Did you ever go to her house for lessons?”
“No. It’s always been here.”
“And what about the others?”
“For Meredith and Karen, I did go to their homes. But as I said, it’s been
almost a year since I last saw Karen Hopkins.”
“Do you have any proof of that?”
Again, he looked to Kate as if she had done something offensive. He let
out a nervous laugh and said: “How am I supposed to prove that I have not
seen someone?”
“Did the lessons end mutually, on a good foot?”
“Yes, it was her decision. She felt the money could be spent better
elsewhere.”
“What about Meredith Lowell?” DeMarco asked. “When did you last visit
her home to give lessons?”
“Last week. Thursday, I believe.”
“Did any of your clients give you passcodes or other access to their
security systems?”
Genuinely confused now, Knudsen got to his feet and scowled at them.
“Of course not. I’m a piano teacher, not a repairman. And quite honestly…I see where this line of questioning is headed. And it’s beyond insulting.”
Kate nodded, but slowly made her way over to the piano. She had taken a
few lessons as a kid before she realized she did not have the patience or, quite
frankly, the musical aptitude to be any good. She knew very little about the
instrument, but the one in Knudsen’s house was gorgeous. It was an older
model Bosendorfer—a model Knudsen must have continuously poured
money into in order to keep it sounding like it had when she and DeMarco
had heard it from the porch. There was a single piece of sheet music on the
holder above the keys. Kate couldn’t even begin to read it, as it was far too
complicated.
She paused, though, as she spotted three other items on the thin ledge that
held the sheet music stand. There was a small, finely polished white seashell,
the kind you could buy for a buck at any beach gift shop. There was also
some old, faded coin—a buffalo nickel, she saw upon closer inspection. The
third item cause her a moment of pause, one she could tell right away
alarmed Knudsen.
And it should have.
It was the top portion of a stalk of cotton. While the cotton itself appeared
to be real, the stalk on which it had been placed was very fake. It was the
same sort that stocked the shelves of just about every hobby and craft store in
the country.
And it was the exact same kind that Karen Hopkins had in her office. Kate
could remember being drawn to the fake stalks as she and DeMarco had first
investigated Karen Hopkins’s office.
“This cotton seems rather random,” Kate said. “You want to tell me where
it came from?”
For the first time since they had arrived, Knudsen seemed to be shaken.
He shook his head and took a step towards the wall.
“It was just a random thing I picked up at a craft store.”
“It also happens to be the exact same fake cotton plant that sat in the office
of Karen Hopkins. Did you know that?”
“Actually, yes, I did know that. And I see what you are insinuating…”
“Do you?”
He sighed here, doing a very good job of trying to play the victim. “So
what if I did take it from Karen Hopkins’s house? It’s just a piece of fake
cotton plant…”
“That’s right. But as I said, the plant is in her office, where she died. The
piano is in a completely different room. So why would you have any
need to
go into her office?”
“No reason, I just…”
He trailed off here, taking another step back. DeMarco followed him this
time, keeping the same distance between them. Kate noted that now that he
was truly worked up and starting to worry, she could hear a bit of a Danish
accent coming out. She hadn’t noticed one at all up until this point.
“Mr. Knudsen, we need you to come with us,” DeMarco said. “Peacefully
and cooperatively would be preferred.”
“I think not. I’ve done nothing. I took a fragment of fake plant. How in the
hell does that link me to a murder?”
He didn’t realize it, but the rhetorical question was pretty damaging on his
part. Kate took a few steps forward as she and DeMarco triangulated on him
while he continued to back himself into a corner. He started to look around
for a means of escape but realized that his two errant steps backward had
screwed him up quite badly.
In the end, he apparently decided that given he already had a record, there
was no reason to fight. He simply bowed his head and offered his wrists.
“Fine,” he said with a shaky breath. “Fuck both of you, by the way.”
“Very classy of you,” Kate said, more than happy to take out her cuffs and
apply them to his offered wrists.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Thomas Knudsen did not say a single word on the way from his home in
Chesterton to the Frankfield police department. He was as still as a concrete
slab as they transported him. DeMarco called Bannerman and gave him the
update and in return, Bannerman told them a bit more information he and the
police had dug up on Thomas Knudsen.
Knudsen left Denmark sixteen years ago after a brutally bad marriage that
ended in a case of domestic violence. It truly was a shame, as he had been
one of the country’s foremost pianists, filling in on orchestras and playing
infamous locations and venues for government-funded events. He had been in
the studio with one of Denmark’s most famous vocalists when his marriage
had gone south, and after he’d come out of the mess of the divorce and the
legal proceedings, he had come to America and lived in obscurity. He’d
played in a few jazz bands in the New York area before ultimately choosing a
quiet life by the Great Lakes, where he had floated around the Chicago area,
ultimately landing in Chesterton seven years ago. He’d been teaching piano
lessons all that time, also working on some freelance work for small film
studios.
As Kate led Knudsen into the precinct, it was hard to imagine such a
successful life trailing behind this curmudgeonly old man. But she supposed
she could identify; she had her own life that had also quickly gotten behind
her, a past that even now would not let go of her in the form of a career.
Bannerman led the way, making silent cues to the officers they passed not
to stand and stare. They obeyed for the most part, and Kate could see that
Knudsen was starting to look embarrassed. Still, he did not utter a single
word as they came to the interrogation room and remained equally silent as
Bannerman sat him down in the single chair behind the small table.
“Mr. Knudsen,” Kate began, “we need to know everything about your
relationship with those three women. Every little detail.”
“I’m sure you do,” he said. “But as you have infringed upon my rights,
I’m afraid I won’t say a single word to any of you until I have my lawyer
present.”
“You really want to play it that way?” Bannerman asked. “Makes you
look guilty as far as I’m concerned.”
“I’m no idiot, Sheriff. I know how your corrupted system works in this
backwards country. If three women are dead, as you all say they are, and I am
the only link between them, the media will make their assumptions and I will
be made out to be a villain. Which would be a shame for you, your
department, and even the FBI. Because as you will find out soon enough,
depending on your level of skill, I’m innocent.”
“That’s for us to determine,” DeMarco said.
“And I’ll be happy to help you reach that conclusion…once my lawyer is
here.”
Bannerman looked furious, but clapped his hands firmly to his hips and
started pacing back and forth across the room. Kate knew that Knudsen was
within his rights to wait on his lawyer and she would typically be fine with
that. But she knew Duran would be waiting for her in DC, that he would start
to get suspicious if she didn’t show up by noon or so.
“Sheriff, can I see you outside?” she said.
He nodded and opened the door with a bit too much force and anger for
Kate’s taste. Kate and DeMarco followed him out into the hallway, where he
seemed to instantly calm down a bit.
“First things first,” Kate said. “Get someone to hand Knudsen a phone and
let him call his lawyer. Let him feel as if he’s running the show. In the
meantime, that piece of cotton we found in his house is bigger trouble for him
than he realizes. We have enough speculative evidence to assume that it came
from the Hopkins residence.”
“Not to mention he even admitted to it,” DeMarco said.
“Right. So that, plus his admitted link to all three victims, gives us more
than enough evidence to support a full investigation of his home. Sheriff, if
you can get some men on that right now, I’d like to continue trying to press
him. If we can get some more evidence together before his lawyer makes it
here, his hole gets even deeper.”
“You’re welcome to try,” Bannerman said, “but it seems to me that he’s
made up his mind to be quiet until his lawyer gets here.”
“Just let me handle that. In the meantime, give him what he wants. Let
him call his lawyer.”
Bannerman nodded and hurried off to set someone to the task. DeMarco
gave Kate a skeptical look, one that was punctuated with the thinnest angle of
a grin. “You got a plan brewing?”
“Not really. I just don’t have the time to be yanked around by a lawyer
right now.”
DeMarco looked like she was about to say something but then bit it back.
She then sighed and took a step closer to Kate. “Duran called me last night
and told me he asked you to step down off of the case. He asked me to make
sure to keep him posted if you showed any signs of not following the rules.”
“I see. So did you call him yet to rat me out?”
“No. And I’m not going to. So get in there and do whatever it is you have
in mind. How long do you think we have until Duran figures out that you
went against orders?”
“Maybe three hours.”
“You think Knudsen is our guy?”
Kate thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “I honestly don’t
know. If it weren’t for that damned stalk of cotton, I wouldn’t have even
given him a second thought—aside from his being an ass and all.”
DeMarco nodded. “He does pretty much fit all of the slots we’re trying to
fill.”
Kate nodded and turned back toward the interrogation room door. “Let’s
see if we can
fill a few more.”
***
Kate had sat silently while Knudsen had called his lawyer. She’d stared at
him during the entirety of the conversation, her gaze relaxed and nonchalant.
Knudsen eyed her viciously as he spoke, breaking eye contact with her only
once he had killed the call and slid the phone back to the officer who had
given it to him.
When the officer left the room, DeMarco came in and took his place.
Knudsen looked to her and back to Kate. “What, exactly, are you looking
at?”
“A man who seems to have all the time in the world,” Kate said. “I, on the
other hand, have no time to spare. Three women are dead and, if I’m being
honest, I have a supervisor that is riding my ass for not having many answers.
When did your lawyer say he’d be here?”
“About an hour and a half. Am I expected to sit here until then?”
“Yeah. Shame he’s going to take so long. As I said, I don’t have the time to waste either. It might save us both the time and headache if you just tell me
everything you can.”
“I have already told all of you that I will not say another word until my
lawyer is here.”
“Well, here’s the deal. That cotton stalk you took from the Hopkins
residence, along with your own verification that you worked with all three of
the victims, gives us more than enough cause to search your home, no
warrant needed. So right now, as we wait for your slow lawyer, Sheriff
Bannerman and a few of his men are headed to your house right now. So
between just the three of us right now, can you tell me if they’ll find anything
else?”
“That isn’t legal.” Although it was a curt statement, he did not sound so
sure.
“Oh, it is. Just ask your lawyer…when he gets here.”
Knudsen started to look panicked for the first time. He looked trapped,
coming to the realization that no matter how much of an asshole he tried to
be, he was no longer in control of this situation—if he ever was.
“Whatever you have, share it now and it might make it easier on you.”
Knudsen looked so angry that Kate thought he could probably chew nails
in that moment. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Me? Visiting this part of the country to look into why three women were
