You could move to someplace safer, my inner voice said.
Sure we could, I told myself. Sure we could.
I turned my back to the pond and the gun and the questions and went to the wall phone. I didn’t know why I still maintained a landline. Just too lazy to cancel it, I guess. I called my security firm. I told the woman who answered that my home had been invaded yet the alarm had not sounded. At first she didn’t believe me. Something in my voice convinced her not to argue the point, though. I told her I wanted the system repaired. She said she would send someone right out. I hung up. A moment later, my cell phone rang.
“What?” I said.
“Don’t yell at me,” Victoria Dunston said. “People keep yelling at me.”
“I’m sorry, Vic. It’s been a long morning so far.”
“Tell me about it. We’re not supposed to use our cells or iPods or anything else in class or the teachers will confiscate them. If the bell hadn’t rung just as you texted me I’d be screwed.”
“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m hiding out in the band room, so it’s okay. I have my laptop up. You want me to tell you what I know?”
“Please, except if it’ll be safer for you to talk after school…”
“No, no, I got this. Umm, okay. Felipe Navarre. He was an interesting man. Made a lot of money, ’specially in the tech industry. He didn’t invent anything, but he had this thing for being able to see stuff coming years before it arrived, you know? He was also politically active. About ten years ago, there was a group calling itself Euskadi Ta Askatasuna—which is Spanish for ‘Basque Homeland and Freedom’—that the EU labeled as terrorists—”
“Wait,” I said. “Is this ETA?”
“You heard of them?”
“Not till yesterday.”
“Same here. ETA, they wanted independence for what they called the ‘Greater Basque Country,’ which consisted of pretty much all of northern Spain. There’s an article that was printed in Diario de Navarra, a newspaper in the city of Pamplona in the region of Navarre, which is a part of northern Spain. This is where Felipe’s family is from, by the way. Apparently they emigrated generations ago. Anyway, according to the article, ETA kidnapped someone close to Felipe and forced him to pay a ransom for the person’s safe return, which he did. A couple weeks later, El País, a newspaper in Madrid, reported that the kidnappers were caught and executed, although the ransom money was never recovered. But here’s the thing—the papers never identified who the victim was, male or female. I guess Felipe was notoriously protective of Susan, his wife, and the rest of his family. By the way, Susan Kowitz met Felipe when she went to Spain as part of the University of Minnesota’s Learning Abroad Program. It must have been love at first sight, because she never came home.”
“What about Juan Carlos?”
“Zippo. I mean, I looked everywhere for him. There were about a dozen obituaries printed when Felipe and Susan were killed, and not one mentioned a son. But here’s the thing—I keep saying that, don’t I? Here’s the thing—the papers didn’t mention anyone else in his family, either. I guess that means he didn’t have a family or everyone in his family was keeping a low profile. Because of the kidnapping, maybe.”
“What about the car accident?”
“Seems to be a straight-up accident. Felipe and Susan were at a party; he drank too much, rolled his car off a mountain. His blood-alcohol level was one-point-three something. That surprised me, by the way, that the police reported that. I didn’t know foreign countries cared about drunk driving as much as we do.”
“There was no suggestion that ETA was involved?”
“Nope, none. I looked into it because I knew it was the kind of thing you’d want me to look into. It’s kinda moot, anyway.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The accident was such a long time ago and because—McKenzie, there is no ETA, anymore. A few years after the kidnapping, it declared a cease-fire. The year after that ETA announced—wait, I have the quote here—it announced a ‘definitive cessation of its armed activities.” A year after that it disbanded, so … I guess this means I don’t get my bonus.”
“The execution of the kidnappers—who did that? The Spanish government?”
“I don’t know. Want me to find out?”
“See if you can. Probably won’t amount to anything, but you never know. And don’t worry about your bonus. I’ll take care of you.”
“You’re the best, McKenzie.”
“How are things at home?”
“Better. The guy who cheated off my paper told the principal that I didn’t know he was doing it, so I’m off the hook. He took an F and a two-day suspension. It was kinda sweet, you know, him taking the bullet for me.”
“Honey, it’s sweet until he demands payment. Then it becomes something else.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just be careful. This kid could be all right, just a guy who took a step out of line, and don’t we all from time to time? Or he could be something else. You’ll know when…”
“I’ll know when he says he did something for me and now I should do something for him. I have a father, McKenzie. He talks to me all the time.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I appreciate that I also have a friend.”
“Yes, you do.”
“So when do I get my two hundred bucks?”
“One hundred. It’s two hundred if you get a photo. Do you have a photo?”
“I’m working on it.”
“That’s my girl.”
* * *
I mulled over what Victoria had to report until the security guys arrived. Nothing she told me supported Navarre’s story. Unfortunately, it didn’t entirely refute it, either. ’Course, Navarre could easily have learned everything Vic had discovered and shaped it to his advantage. She took all of a day and a half. Who knows how much time Navarre invested and what resources he employed besides the Internet to research his role? If it was a role.
“You sonuvabitch,” I said aloud. “Who are you? Where are you? What are you doing here? Why are you hiding?”
Because of the lack of furniture, my house always had a kind of echo. “What the fuck?” I shouted and then listened as the words bounced from wall to wall. That’s when the security guys chose to knock on my door. Talk about bad timing. I allowed my black mood to spill onto them. Probably it was unfair, although they discovered what the intruder had done to disable the alarm system quickly and with a minimum of chitchat. He was very clever, the intruder.
Don’t you forget it, my inner voice warned.
The techs repaired the system at no charge and then upgraded it at a discount so no one could bypass it again the way the intruder had. They thanked me for my business. I apologized for being rude. They left. I set the alarm, locked the house, and climbed into the Audi. I adjusted my holster and at the same time remembered the cell phone in my jacket pocket. I listened to the messages left on my voice mail.
“McKenzie,” Riley Brodin said, “the police want to talk to me about Juan Carlos. What should I do? Call me.”
“You sonuvabitch,” said Walter Muehlenhaus. “How dare you involve my family in a murder investigation? You and I are going to have a serious conversation and damn quick.”
“McKenzie, it’s Schroeder,” the third call began. “You just can’t help yourself, can you, pal? Give me a shout. We need to talk before Mr. Muehlenhaus has you whacked.”
“Oh, McKenzie,” said Riley. She was weeping as she spoke. “Is Juan Carlos responsible for all of this? Am I? Poor Reney…” She continued to cry until the voice mail cut her off.
I sat behind the wheel and waited for the courage to start the car and back it down the driveway. It was a long time in coming.
ELEVEN
The Cities, or perhaps I should say “the Greater Twin Cities,” although residents rarely c
all it that, actually consists of 188 communities scattered across seven counties. My place in Falcon Heights is more or less in the center of them. As a result, I’m not awfully far from anywhere. It took less than fifteen minutes using freeways and side streets to reach the Warehouse District in Minneapolis, and by then my mood had cheered considerably. There was something about being “up and doing, with a heart for any fate,” as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life” would have it. I wasn’t even annoyed when I couldn’t find an empty space on the street near where Riley Brodin lived. I hung a U-turn at the intersection and came back from the opposite direction, thinking I’d have to park farther away. Oh, well.
That’s when I saw him.
Anne Rehmann’s attacker.
Mrs. Irene Rogers’s killer.
He was standing on the sidewalk directly in front of Riley Brodin’s building and staring upward as if he were trying to figure out which windows were hers.
He was wearing the same black leather jacket. The same white T-shirt and jeans. His hair didn’t look as if it had grown at all.
Probably I should have called the police. Probably I should have parked somewhere out of sight and watched him until they arrived. The memory of Mrs. R’s naked and abused body was too vivid, though. It drowned all reason.
I accelerated hard and maneuvered the Audi past a fire hydrant and onto the sidewalk. I drove straight toward him.
He saw me at the last possible moment and dove between two parked cars.
I foolishly—and I mean foolishly—cranked the wheel to the left and tried to follow him. There was no way the Audi could fit through the space. I smashed the back bumper of one car and sheared off the front end of the other. The alarm systems of both vehicles pierced the air. The Audi came to an abrupt halt. The engine stalled. Why the air bags didn’t deploy I couldn’t say.
I opened the car door and slipped out. The SIG was in my hands.
The killer was in the middle of the street. He had a gun in his hands, too. He held it like he knew exactly what it was for.
He fired at me.
I ducked. Bullets peppered the Audi like hail. Most of them were stopped by the engine block. A couple pierced the body as if it were made of tissue paper and flattened against the sidewalk and the brick building behind me.
I counted one-two-three and came up shooting.
I missed.
The killer sprinted across the street and hid behind a parked SUV.
The SUV offered no more protection than my Audi, yet I couldn’t see my target, so I waited.
When his head came up, I shot at him again.
He took off running.
I tried to follow. The cars smashed together like that blocked my path. I had to dodge around them. By the time I did, the killer was out of sight.
I stood in a Weaver stance in the middle of the street and waited for movement. I heard a car start down the block. It drove off quickly in the opposite direction, too far away to read the license plate. I set my sights on the rear window. The shoot/don’t shoot scenarios I studied while practicing with FATS, the police academy’s firearms training system, kicked in and I removed my finger from the trigger and lowered the gun.
When the vehicle disappeared from view, I returned to the cars. The alarm of one died away, followed almost immediately by the other.
You are in so much trouble, my inner voice told me.
Movement to my right caused me to bring the SIG back up.
Riley Brodin emerged through the front door of her building. She halted at the top step and looked down at me. I put the SIG back in its holster.
“What the hell happened?” she wanted to know.
“Believe it or not, I think I just saved your life.”
“I never thought of you as a braggart, McKenzie.”
She raised her eyebrows up and down when she said it. Clearly the young woman was underestimating the situation.
I took my cell phone from my pocket.
“What are you doing?” Riley asked.
“Calling the police.”
“Should we do that?”
“They’ll resent it if we don’t.”
’Course, they’re going to be pretty damn miffed anyway, I told myself.
“I don’t want to get involved,” Riley said.
“Sorry, sweetie,” I told her.
“Dammit, McKenzie.”
Riley fished her own cell out of her handbag. She dialed as I dialed. The 9-1-1 operator asked, “What is your emergency?” at the same time that Riley said, “Grandfather?”
* * *
The first thing I did when the Minneapolis cops arrived was surrender the SIG Sauer. The second thing was to inform them that I would answer no questions until Lieutenant Pelzer of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department arrived. That caught the officers by surprise. Often they hear suspects screaming for their lawyers. But another cop? Still, they weren’t so impressed that they neglected to slap the handcuffs on me.
They didn’t cuff Riley, although they threatened to. Riley claimed she was late for an appointment, that she had nothing to do with the crashed cars and gunfight, that she had nothing to say anyway, and if they didn’t like it they could take up the matter with her attorney. The cops weren’t impressed with her, either.
I motioned for her to sit on the building steps next to me. When she did I told her to stop being so belligerent.
“It won’t do you any good,” I said. “Just go with the flow and everything will work out.”
“I should never have contacted you, McKenzie.”
“Too late now.”
* * *
More officers arrived, and a lot of things started happening all at once. Techs and investigators, impressed by the bullet holes in my car, the sidewalk, and the wall of Riley’s building, started shooting photographs, making measurements, collecting bullet fragments, and taking notes. A sergeant from the Violent Crimes Investigations Division was asking questions. I explained to him that this was all connected to yesterday’s killing on Lake Minnetonka.
“The old woman at Club Versailles?” he asked.
I bristled at the word “old” yet let it slide. I informed him that when Lieutenant Pelzer arrived, the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department would probably claim jurisdiction, in which case he wouldn’t have to deal with this mess. That didn’t seem to cheer him up at all.
Meanwhile, another officer was making diagrams of the Audi and the cars I had piled into for a traffic report. Yet another wanted to see my driver’s license. I asked Riley for help. She reached under my jacket, removed the wallet from my inside pocket, and gave it to the cop—either he didn’t see my expired police ID or it didn’t impress him at all. Next, the cop wanted to see my proof of insurance. I told him it was in the glove compartment of the Audi. The cop looked at Riley as if he expected her to retrieve it for him.
“I’m not your bitch,” she told him.
“You got some mouth on you, honey,” the cop said.
“I have a bad attitude, too. Want to do something about it?”
The cop shook his head as if he had heard it all before and moved to the Audi.
“You do have a bad attitude,” I said.
“I called my grandfather. He’s not happy.”
“What else is new?”
“This is crazy, McKenzie. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that the man who murdered Reney and who attacked Anne Rehmann was standing outside your front door. If I had arrived just three minutes later, he would have taken you.”
Riley shuddered at the thought of it. She took my arm, closed her eyes, and rested her head against my shoulder. I didn’t know if she was feeling sorry for herself or Mrs. R until she said, “Reney was so kind to me.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“Mrs. Rogers was your friend?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you only spoke to her twice?”
“I was her friend three minutes af
ter I met her. It works that way, sometimes.”
“It’s never worked that way for me.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
Riley tightened her grip on my arm.
There had been moments in our brief relationship when I was tempted to give Riley the spanking she so richly deserved. Other times—I would have hugged her if not for the handcuffs.
The sergeant seemed less charitable. He stood by listening to every word I spoke. I nearly shouted at him, “Yes, this is what’s considered a spontaneous utterance and it can be used against me in a court of law whether you read me my Miranda rights or not, which you haven’t by the way, you nitwit.” I didn’t, though.
By then the owners of the two vehicles had appeared. I had more trouble dealing with them than I did with the cops. How was it possible, they wondered loudly and angrily, that I had managed to crash into two parked cars, and what in the hell was I doing driving on the sidewalk in the first place? That, of course, was exactly what the cops wanted to know.
I knew I was going to get a ticket for either careless or reckless driving and wouldn’t that make my insurance company happy? I was already paying an ungodly amount for coverage since they had me ranked as high-risk. The cops asked me to submit to a PBT, and I agreed. The preliminary Breathalyzer test came up negative, though, eliminating the possibility of a DWI charge—so I had that going for me. I had no doubt, though, that the cops were thinking I should be cited for DWHUA—driving with head up ass.
Lieutenant Pelzer finally arrived, trailed by a small army of deputies, and both he and the sergeant listened intently while I explained myself. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, what with the questions they both insisted on asking. They then asked the same questions of Riley, who was her usual ultradefensive self.
Eventually Pelzer took official charge of the investigation, and the Minneapolis cops handed over the evidence they had collected to the deputies, who promptly double-checked it all. The cop who had caught the call in the first place reluctantly removed the handcuffs. He kept my gun, though; or rather the deputy he had given it to kept it. The owners of the two damaged cars were on their cells making travel arrangements and discussing lawsuits. No one seemed happy except for the tow truck operators who carted off the vehicles—oh, and my auto mechanic. ’Course, he was always delighted to hear from me, considering how much business I’ve thrown his way over the years.
The Devil May Care Page 12
