The Devil May Care

by David Housewright

  “Do you think Navarre is a fraud?”

  “I’m still working on it.”

  “Navarre’s boat—the Soñadora—is it on the lake?”

  “Anne Rehmann said he left her dock early that morning. Other than that…”

  I had a few questions of my own, starting with how the killer managed to get inside a secured building.

  “Suspect gained entry through an unlocked balcony door of an unoccupied condominium on the ground floor,” Pelzer said. “After that he just walked up to her place. There was no forced entry, so she must have let him in.”

  “I was on the phone with Mrs. Rogers last night,” I said. “She said she had to hang up because someone was knocking on her door.”

  “What time last night?”

  “Nine.”

  Pelzer closed his notebook. “The ME gave us a preliminary estimate of the time of death. Set it at about nine this morning.”

  We both knew what that meant.

  He had her for twelve hours, my inner voice said.

  “Sonuvabitch,” I said aloud.

  “Where can we reach you if we have more questions?” Pelzer asked.

  “South Lake Minnetonka jail, I guess. Assuming it has a jail. They might transfer me to your pretrial lockup in downtown Minneapolis.”

  Kampa examined the SIG balanced on his thigh.

  “Fuck that,” he said.

  I was surprised. The way his head whipped around to look at the major, Pelzer was downright astonished.

  Kampa slid out of the car and walked purposely toward Tschida, my SIG Sauer still in his hand. He saw Chief John Rock and waved him over. They reached Tschida at the same time. Kampa showed my gun to both of them. I couldn’t hear what he said, but his words prompted Chief Rock to reach behind Tschida and smack him on the back of the head—an idiot slap. More words were exchanged, and Tschida half walked, half ran to the squad car. He opened the car door, pulled me out, unlocked the cuffs, and said, “Please, McKenzie, would you just get the hell outta here and don’t come back?”

  A few minutes later, both Major Kampa and Lieutenant Pelzer joined me where I had parked my Audi. Kampa returned the SIG to me, handing it over butt first.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Without backup from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department, the South Lake Minnetonka PD ceases to exist,” Kampa said. “I don’t work with screwups.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The book says you’re all done, McKenzie. This is a capital offense, and you don’t involve yourself in our investigation even a little bit or I’ll toss your ass for obstruction, ex-cop or no—you’re not even licensed. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “My gut tells me, though, that you might be useful. You can talk to Mr. Muehlenhaus and his daughter, for one. I doubt I can get through the front door. So you keep looking for Navarre if you wish. Just stay away from the murder, and don’t even think of doing anything illegal, not even spitting on the sidewalk if you know what’s good for you, and ’specially don’t go around telling people that you’re working with us, and we should be okay.”

  “Thank you,” I said again.

  “Keep in touch, McKenzie.”

  I watched Major Kampa turn and walk away. Lieutenant Pelzer lingered to give me his contact information.

  “He’s a real cop, isn’t he?” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t often see real cops rise up that high. Usually it’s just the politicians.”

  “Sometimes you get lucky.”

  * * *

  I didn’t feel lucky, though. Or talkative. Yet there were debts to be paid, the first to Sarah Neamy. I had sent her to Mrs. Rogers’s condo. She had seen what I had seen.

  I found her in the office just behind the reception desk where I had first met her. The door was open, and I saw her sitting very still in a straight-back chair against the wall, her hands folded in her lap, looking down, a penitent schoolgirl in her uniform. She seemed to know who I was without looking up to see.

  “How could someone do that to another human being?” Sarah asked. “McKenzie, do you know?”

  In my time, I had heard that question answered in so many ways by so many people—psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, even stand-up comedians. Explanations included everything from a chemical imbalance in the brain to childhood abuse and neglect to environmental pressures to an overdose of Twinkies. For a long time, I went along with them. I used to pride myself, especially when I was a cop, on telling people, “I don’t believe in evil, I believe in motive,” as if that somehow proved I had an understanding of the human condition that the average citizen simply couldn’t fathom. I had seen so much over the years, though, that the theories no longer satisfied. I discovered that I preferred the much simpler answer that I gave Sarah.

  “Some people are evil.”

  She nodded her head as if she believed it, too.

  “They’re having an emergency meeting, the board of directors,” Sarah said. “I don’t know exactly what they hope to accomplish. Better security. Armed guards? They kept saying it wasn’t my fault. ‘It’s not your fault, Sarah.’ I don’t know how it could be my fault. I’ll probably be fired within the month, though.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s all about the morale of the members. Everyone will want to put this behind them as quickly as possible. If I stay, the members, every time they look at me they’ll be reminded of poor Mrs. R because they’ll know I was the one, the one … that I discovered … I saw…”

  I rested a hand on her shoulder, and she covered it with her own hand. She looked up at me for the first time.

  “I’m sorry I sent you there,” I said.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said.

  I said, “I’m sorry,” again, just the same.

  “Juan Carlos didn’t do this, did he?”

  “No. It’s someone looking for him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you find Juan Carlos, will that help you find out who … hurt Mrs. R?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Juan Carlos had to fill out a questionnaire before he could be considered for membership in the club. I can get you the form. Will that help?”

  “It might.”

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  “Sarah, just get me a copy. Keep the originals. The county deputies might want them, and I don’t want to mess with those guys. They did me one favor, I don’t expect another.”

  “I will.”

  “You should go home.”

  “Home?”

  She looked at me as if it were the first time she had ever heard the word.

  * * *

  I returned to Anne Rehmann’s office. It was locked up tight. I called her number and was sent to her voice mail. I told her she could return my call—even though I hoped she wouldn’t—otherwise I would try to see her tomorrow. I didn’t want to talk any more, didn’t want to comfort anyone, didn’t want to think. It was Thursday evening in early October, and there were any number of sporting events taking place that could distract me from the day. Baseball was in the first round of playoffs, college football was approaching midseason, the NHL was ramping up—there might even be a game on the NFL Channel. If that failed, I had access to a cabinet stocked with beer, wine, and other assorted alcoholic beverages. All things being equal, drinking myself silly didn’t seem like a bad idea.

  Halfway home, though, I broke my cell phone rule again and called Nina.

  “Can I come over to your place?” I asked.

  “’Course you can, you know that. You don’t have to call first.”

  “I thought this time maybe I should.”

  “Are you all right, McKenzie?”

  “No. No, I’m really not.”

  TEN

  I woke in Nina’s bed to the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. Nina used to make lousy coffee—the EPA considered it a toxic substance—a
nd I would invent excuses to avoid drinking it, until the head chef at Rickie’s gave her a tutorial on how it was done. Now it was fabulous. Still, it wasn’t enough to rouse me. I lay there instead, naked between the warm sheets, and listened to the sounds of morning outside the window. Even in the suburbs you can hear it, traffic like surf in the distance, a barking dog, a child’s squeal, and for a moment I felt the icy hand of panic grip my heart. What the hell was I doing with my life? Where was I going? What did I hope to accomplish? They were questions I had been asking quite often lately, yet the events of the previous day made them seem more urgent. Questions without answers. Or did I simply refuse to give them answers for fear that I wouldn’t like what they revealed?

  Screw it, I told myself. I flung the top sheet aside and slid out of bed, determined to make the best I could of the day.

  I had clothes in Nina’s closet and bureau. I found them, and after taking a quick shower and shave—yes, I kept a razor there, too—I put them on. I paused briefly to check my cell. There were two messages from Riley Brodin, one from Mr. Muehlenhaus, and another from Greg Schroeder—nobody that I wanted to talk to at the moment. I ignored them all and sent a text message to Victoria Dunston.

  “Well?” it read.

  A few moments later she replied.

  “OMG! U want 2 get me in trouble? I’ll call l8er.”

  I went downstairs and found Nina in the kitchen. I would have paid real money to see her in the clinging silk number she had worn the previous evening. Instead, she was wearing gray sweatpants and a loose-fitting black T-shirt that proclaimed her affection for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band—a gift from Erica, who was attending Tulane University in New Orleans. The sweat at her temples and down the center of her back proved that she had already made her morning run. It did little to lessen my desire for her.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Morning.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Please.” She went to her coffeemaker and retrieved the glass pot. I said, “You’re up early.”

  “Actually, you’re up late.”

  I glanced at the clock on the wall. Eight fifteen. That wasn’t late for me, but then I was gainfully unemployed.

  I sat at the table. She leaned across me and poured the coffee into a mug. “What are your plans for today?”

  I pulled her down until she was sitting on my lap.

  “I was toying with an idea,” I said.

  Nina kissed my cheek. “Besides that.”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Yes, you have. You’re going to find the man who killed your friend, who attacked the real estate agent.”

  “I am?”

  Nina slid off my lap and returned the coffeepot to the maker.

  “You decided that yesterday before you even called me, you know you did,” she said. “I was just wondering how you were going to go about it.”

  “The key is Navarre. If I find him … I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  “All right, change of subject.” She sat across from me. “I’ve been thinking.”

  I took a sip of coffee. Damn, it was good, and I wondered if Monica Meyer would share her formula with me. Probably not. She and I had been fencing with each other—sometimes playfully—ever since the chef was hired to manage Nina’s kitchen.

  “What have you been thinking?” I asked.

  “Should we make this permanent?”

  I took a deep breath the way you do just before you dive into a lake.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I was thinking…”

  “Are you proposing, Nina? Because if you are…”

  “No, no, God no.”

  “The answer is yes.”

  “What I meant, should we move in together?”

  “Not marry?”

  “You and I have no business getting married to anyone, much less to each other.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “McKenzie, if we were married you’d want me to be Shelby Dunston, the perfect wife of the perfect policeman, keeping the perfect home, raising perfect children, providing you with a refuge from the troubles of your day, and let’s face it—I’m not Shelby. I’m not the perfect wife. Ask my ex-husband if you don’t believe me. I’m a girl who runs a saloon and likes it. I spend twice as much time there as I do here, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “You—I’d want you to be the dutiful husband, mow the lawn, shovel the snow, open jars, and pretty much attend to my every desire. Only you’re not that person, either. You’re an adventurer. You do what you do for fun and because you think you’re making the world a better place and because of some code of justice that you’ve never been able to articulate even to yourself, much less to me. Marriage would demand that we both make compromises for each other that would interfere with the lives we want to live. We’d end up making each other miserable. Look, we’ve had this conversation before.”

  “So we have.”

  “Well?”

  “Would I be moving in with you or would you be moving in with me?”

  “We could find a place that we both like. Somewhere in the city. Somewhere with a view of the river.”

  I liked that she said “the city.” I’m a St. Paul boy, born and raised, and can’t imagine living anywhere else, although … When I came into my money I moved my father and myself to a house on Hoyt Avenue. I thought I was moving to St. Anthony Park, a smart neighborhood near the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until after I made an offer that the house was on the wrong side of the street; I had inadvertently relocated to the suburb of Falcon Heights—and Bobby Dunston and my other childhood friends have been teasing me about it ever since.

  “Whose name would we put on the lease?” I asked.

  “Mine, of course.”

  “Why of course?”

  “If things go sour, I’ll be the one throwing you out.”

  “Why can’t I throw you out?”

  She stood and spread her hands wide as if she were revealing herself to me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’ve got a point.”

  * * *

  Despite my best lobbying efforts, Nina insisted on taking a shower and getting dressed alone. Apparently she needed to go early to her club, and I wondered if this was what she meant by compromises. It took me twenty-five minutes to drive from her place in Mahtomedi, a suburb northeast of St. Paul, to my home. That’s something I won’t miss, I told myself as I pulled into the driveway—the long commute. It wasn’t until I put the Audi in park and turned off the engine that I noticed the back door to my house was standing wide open.

  I started the Audi again, opened the garage door with my remote, and drove inside—I didn’t want to be exposed to the open back door when I got out of the car. I exited through the side door of the garage, dashed across my lawn, and hugged the side of my house. I was carrying the SIG in both hands, the safety off, as I edged along the stucco wall until I reached the open door. I poked my head around the jamb, glanced inside, and quickly pulled it back again. I didn’t see anyone, and no one threw a shot at me so I looked again, this time lingering for a moment. The house had a lot of windows, especially the kitchen. The morning sun shone through them, giving it a light, airy, and empty appearance. I eased myself inside.

  The dining room was on the right; the “family room,” as my father called it, was on the left. I went left because if I were waiting to ambush me, that’s where I would be hiding. The room was cluttered with furniture, overflowing bookcases, vinyl records and CDs and the machines needed to play them, speakers, personal computer, flat-screen TV, and Blu-Ray player. Nothing seemed out of place. Even my Dr. Who sonic screwdriver had been left undisturbed.

  Most people who find their homes broken into but nothing missing would be relieved. I was nervous with the realization that the intruder had not come to steal. Plus, he was savvy enough to bypass what I had been led to believe was a state-of-t
he art security system.

  This is the second time someone got past your home defenses, my inner voice reminded me. You’d be better off keeping geese.

  It was easier to search my house after I left the family room because there were so few places to hide. My dining room consisted of a matching table, buffet, and a half-dozen chairs. There was no furniture in my living room and two of the upstairs bedrooms at all. I bought the house for my father and myself. That’s why I took the price on Teachwell—to buy the house and guarantee my father a comfortable retirement. My mother died when I was in the sixth grade, and it had just been the two of us. Unfortunately, he passed six months later, and I never got around to furnishing it properly.

  A quick glance in my basement proved that the floor safe where I stowed a few guns, cash, and a couple of false IDs was unmolested. The safe and its contents got me thinking. If Navarre was from Spain, he must have a passport, right?

  I returned to the kitchen. There were dishes on the table and a couple of empty Summit Ale bottles that I hadn’t noticed before.

  Really? my inner voice said. The sonuvabitch raided my refrigerator?

  I looked closer. He had finished off my leftover beef stroganoff. Yet beyond that, he had done no damage whatsoever. I was convinced the intruder was the same man who killed Mrs. R and who attacked Anne Rehmann. Anne had used my name in her office. Learning more about me, including where I lived, probably hadn’t been all that difficult for him. Which increased my anxiety. I imagined him sitting in the dark, eating my food, drinking my booze, waiting for someone to hurt. If Nina and I had been living together, it might have been her …

  I tossed the SIG onto the tabletop. It bounced against a bottle and came to a rest. While I stared at it, the old questions returned—what was I doing with my life, where was I going—plus a new one. Nina’s life had been endangered once before because of me; would I dare put it at risk again?

  I lifted my eyes to the window. I could see the pond with the fountain at the center that my father had built in my backyard just before he died. At one time there were a dozen ducks nesting on its banks, plus a flock of wild turkeys that had taken up residence. I had actually tried to name them all. The turkeys were gone now, and the ducks—a few still paused on their flight south, attracted by the open water, yet not nearly as many as before, and none nested there.