by James Green
Thurber had news too. He had stopped by City Hall first thing in the morning, and gotten the logs of the elevators from the head of security. No surprises, no one had pressed a button to go to the 29th floor after 5 pm. “But,” Thurber added, “Someone had requested an elevator at 5:56 p.m. They rode it down to the basement. Assume they used the door on the west side to exit the building. Then nothing until 6:28, which is our cleaning lady.”
“Yep,” Burke said. “Peter Knaak didn’t need to request an elevator to go up to the 29th floor. He already was there. He just needed to leave quickly after he was done.”
They agreed their next order of business was to find Knaak and interview him. Burke swung by police headquarters where Thurber was waiting out front for him. They could have walked to the law firm, but Burke wanted to have the car handy in case they had to drive somewhere else to find Knaak. The drive to Snyder Knaak, LLP was five short blocks. Their offices were housed within a thirty story building in the heart of downtown. Made of black granite, it had an impressive foyer, with marble floors, thirty foot ceilings and floor to ceiling glass. Peter Knaak’s law firm was on the top floor.
“Mr. Knaak isn’t here,” the receptionist said tersely when they had asked for him; “he is out of the office the entire day.” From this vantage point, Burke could see the rest of downtown, the River Market and the river. Somewhere next to the river were workers, building Viceroy, unaware that their project had caused Peter Knaak to snap and bash John Vithous’ skull in with a bookend.
“Is he ‘out of the office’ really, or ‘out of the office because he doesn’t want to talk to two homicide detectives’?” Thurber hadn’t even tried to hide his hostility.
“He’s really out of the office,” she said, “my guess, on a beautiful day like today; he’s out playing golf at the Kansas City Country Club.”
“You bring your clubs?” Burke asked as they rode down the elevator back to the car.
“No, I wasn’t really ever the country club type,” Thurber chuckled as the elevator doors opened.
The drive to the country club took twenty minutes. They didn’t talk much. They drove with the windows down. Heading south on Broadway they saw a bunch of City workers, putting up crowd barriers and port-a-johns along the side of the street. Burke suddenly realized that tomorrow was St. Patrick’s Day. Consumed by the investigation, it had completely slipped his mind. Maybe he could get an arrest in time to still see his family tomorrow. But, he would have to work quickly.
Thurber had printed out a picture of Knaak from the firm’s website, so they knew who to look for. He had gray hair parted on the left side, a little long to hide his large ears. A generous smile on his face; Pete Knaak looked smug.
The golf course was lined with beautiful oak and maple trees that were just starting to bud. The trees and the bushes were still gray, but the course itself was a beautiful emerald green. It wasn’t terribly busy, but there were a few golfers out. They got the golf pro to give them keys to a golf cart and started down the cart paths looking in vain for Peter Knaak.
“All these rich fuckers look like him,” Thurber said, “blue blooded, golf shirt, slacks and a horrible golf swing.” Burke agreed with a nod. If Knaak was there, they only way they were going to find him -- sheer luck.
“It’s after lunch; maybe he already got 18 holes in and went home.” The golf cart made a high-pitched whine as Burke drove it as fast it would go. The golf pro told him that they were only allowed to drive on the cart paths, but Burke soon was cutting across a couple fairways to get back to the clubhouse and their car. They didn’t even bother to let the golf pro know they were back, they just parked the cart where they found it and left.
Burke drove as Thurber looked up Knaak’s home address. They were in luck. It was less than a mile from the golf course.
The street Peter Knaak called home was lined with enormous pin oaks, perfectly manicured lawns, and enormous homes. It was only a few blocks from Jane Hughes’ home, and it was just as magnificent in its stature. Burke knew that Knaak’s house was called Tudor Revival because he had grown up in a Tudor home too, although his boyhood home was about the size of Knaak’s garage.
They rang the door and waited. A young woman in a nurse’s smock and scrub pants answered the door.
“Good afternoon, I’m Sergeant Tom Burke, this is Detective Jack Thurber with the Kansas City Police Department,” Burke said. “We would like a word with Mr. Knaak if we could.”
“He’s not home,” the woman said, looking surprised that two police detectives would be at the door, “did you try his work?”
“We did, and he wasn’t there,” Burke replied. “And you are?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Carrie; I’m Mrs. Knaak’s home health nurse.”
“Home health nurse?” Burke repeated. He knew what a home health nurse did, but he was hoping by acting dumb Carrie might tell him something useful.
Carrie looked around and closed the door behind her and began to talk in hushed tones.
“Mrs. Knaak has advanced Parkinson’s disease. I stay with her to help take care of her. She is a very sweet lady. You know what Parkinson’s is, right?” Carrie asked earnestly. Burke apparently had played the dumb card too well.
“What Michael J. Fox and Ali have, right” Thurber said, “makes you shake all over.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Carrie said, “it’s a progressive neurological disease. It is very sad. Mr. Knaak hired me over a year ago to help out. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this though.”
“No worries,” Tom said, trying to assure her, “we won’t tell anyone you said anything.”
They sat for a moment in the car before driving off. Burke was thinking about Parkinsons, what he had read – how awful it was, how there wasn’t a cure. Then something – totally out of the blue - registered in his head.
“We’re idiots,” Burke said to Thurber.
“Yes, but how so more today than any other day?”
Burke looked at the digital clock on the dash: 3:28.
“He has a standing meeting every Friday at 3:30 with Mayor Hughes and a standing meeting every Thursday at 4, right?”
“That’s what her schedule showed,” Thurber agreed.
“We don’t need to be running all over town looking for him; we know where we can find him half an hour from now.”
Burke sped as they drove back downtown. He didn’t put on the siren or the lights, but he did run a few lights and went as fast as he could without endangering anyone. Thurber put a call in with the Mayor’s scheduler. Yes, the scheduler confirmed, the Mayor’s calendar still showed a four o’clock meeting with Mr. Knaak. However, the Mayor was out at a ribbon cutting so she might be running a few minutes late.
“Perfect,” Burke said after hearing the news from Thurber, “that might give us the time we need.”
“But maybe not enough time,” Thurber countered. “Maybe I should wait in the garage for her to arrive, and then call you to give you a heads up when she arrives.”
“Good idea.” The rest of the trip had talked about how to approach both Knaak and Jane Hughes.
Twenty minutes later Burke was waiting for Knaak in the lobby of the Mayor’s office. He was starting to feel like he worked there with all the time he had spent there in the last week. He looked at his watch, 3:53 p.m. Would Knaak show? Burke thought. And at that very moment, Peter Knaak walked off the elevator. Knaak apparently was very punctual.
“Mr. Knaak,” Burke stood up, “I’m Tom Burke with KCPD Homicide.”
Knaak tried not to look surprised, but Burke knew better. The man eyes showed the surprise, even if Knaak’s mouth was able to hide it.
“What can I help you with Detective?” he said, offering his hand. Burke took it, not bothering to correct Knaak about his rank. Knaak tried to squeeze Tom’s hand hard, but Burke wasn’t about to let a man six inches shorter and twenty-five years older do that. Tom squeezed back to the point he could see some discomfort on P
eter Knaak’s face.
“I’d like to talk to you about John Vithous,” Burke answered while releasing his grip.
“Detective, Burke, right?” Knaak responded, “I’d love to, but I have an appointment with Mayor Hughes.” Knaak motioned to her office.
“We are in luck,” Burke replied, “Turns out she’s running late. This shouldn’t take long. Oh, and its Sergeant. Burke, here’s my card.” Burke took one of his business cards out of his breast pocket and handed it him.
Knaak reluctantly took the card. He looked at it for a moment, studying it. Tom wondered if Peter had suddenly remembered his father and that night at the bar, but he doubted it. Knaak dutifully put the card in his own pocket, and walked with Burke into Jane Hughes’ private office. Burke closed the door behind them. He didn’t have much time.
Peter Knaak took a seat on a couch by the door. Burke took a seat about ten feet away, at the end of a long conference table.
“What can I help you with, Sergeant? I didn’t know John all that well,” Knaak stated nervously, before Burke had even asked him about him.
“Oh really?” Burke responded with a smile, “That’s not what I heard.” Burke looked at his phone. It was four o’clock on the dot. He needed to pick things up.
“I know you own the Viceroy property. I know that John Vithous’ girlfriend also owns a part of Viceroy, through her company, NestEgg. I also know John Vithous asked personally to hold your second phase of that development off the docket on the very day he died. And, I have a guess as to why.”
Knaak squirmed a little in the couch, but he didn’t say anything.
“I’m guessing,” Burke went on, “John Vithous wanted a little more money before letting that deal to move forward, that he asked you for that, or even better, for NestEgg to be a minority owner in that property, too.” Burke could tell that Knaak was surprised he knew about NestEgg. But, Knaak didn’t speak right away. He waited at least thirty seconds before responding.
“Sergeant Burke, postulating about things doesn’t make them facts,” Knaak said with authority.
“Maybe not, but I bet if I start pulling some financial records and phone records I’m going to see a lot of connections between John Vithous, NestEgg, and Snyder Knaak. I bet it all matches up well. Also, I bet even though your old man got you out of that assault charge back in college, the record of that little incident is still around, too. You have quite the temper.”
Tom could see Pete Knaak’s façade crumbling. He had touched a nerve with that last fact.
“You’re a smug little shit, aren’t you Burke?”
“Can be,” Burke admitted, “you going to pound me over the head with a bookend if I turn around?”
Pete Knaak had tried to hide his surprise out in the lobby minutes earlier, but now – between the anger that was rising within him and the fact that Burke knew so many of the details, he couldn’t contain himself any longer.
“You know, you kind of remind me of Vithous. That little prick thought he could get away with anything,” Knaak acknowledged, “even with me.” Knaak seemed relieved to be finally talking to someone about what he had done.
“And he couldn’t?” Burke asked.
“Not this time,” Knaak replied. “You see, I needed every cent of the second phase of the Viceroy project for myself and my family. I’m sixty-two years old, Burke. My wife is very sick. Our son and our grandchildren live in Florida. I needed this deal to happen so I could call it a career, move to Florida and give my wife as much dignity as money could buy with the time she had left.” Knaak’s voice had started to fade with the last sentence. He took a moment, pulled a perfectly folded handkerchief out of his pocket, and blew his nose before putting it back into his pocket. He swallowed audibly, and then continued.
“But that son of bitch wasn’t hearing any of it,” Knaak went on. “He’d already made a hefty fee and grabbed a bit of land on the first phase of the project. Now he wanted to own forty percent of the second phase property. Forty percent! Can you imagine? Gave me a guilt trip about how none of it would have happened without him. How I wouldn’t have gotten the help from the state for the environmental cleanup, the road moved, none of it,” Knaak sighed.
“I told him, it wasn’t possible. We started to argue.”
“And then?” Burke asked. His phone buzzed on the table. It was a text from Thurber. Mayor is pulling into garage. Should I stall her? Burke typed back yes. “Then he got really angry, stormed out. I had thought he left. I sat here, in this very seat and got madder and madder.” Knaak stopped and took a deep breath. “About five minutes later, he shows back up. Asked me, ‘You’re still here?’ his voice full of contempt. He threw a copy of the proposed ordinance for phase two at me. ‘Your ordinance is dead, Pete’, he said. ‘What do you think of that?’
Burke’s phone buzzed again. Can’t stall her much more. Burke frantically typed back Try, he’s about to confess.
Knaak went on. “I told him I didn’t care, go ahead and kill it, I wasn’t doing business with him. He could go fuck himself. And then the son of a bitch just got mean.”
“How so?” Burke asked, thinking to himself just tell me you killed him.
“He said if I did that, he would leak it to a blog that I was having an affair with Jane Hughes. I told him he was crazy, no one would believe that. He laughed at me, he actually laughed in my face. I told him I would tell Jane it was him who leaked the story.”
She’s getting in the elevator – you’ve got 30 seconds, tops Thurber texted.
“Go on,” Burke felt his heart racing.
“He told me, ‘you know and I know Jane always takes my side’. And he was right. I had seen that with the way she treated Dick Houlihan. Then he said ‘I hope that news doesn’t kill your wife.’ And then laughed some more and slammed the door behind him. I sat here and thought about my wife, thought about what a story like that would do to her. Thought about how hard I worked, for forty years to build something, thought about him laughing at me, dismissing me. And I snapped.”
“So you picked up the bookend, and beat him, didn’t you?”
Knaak nodded. “I felt like I was watching someone else do it. It was cathartic. I felt all this rage and pain in me smashing into his thick smug skull.”
“What did you do with the bookend?” Burke knew time was running out.
“I actually forgot I had it with me when I got off the elevator and threw it down a storm drain outside. I...”
“What the hell is going on here, Sergeant?” Jane Hughes had made it to her office. A look of disgust and venom on her face. She was trailed by her security team and two assistants.
“We were just having a discussion, Mayor,” Tom replied, “Mr. Knaak just told me how he killed John.”
“Pete, don’t say another word,” Jane Hughes said, admonishing him like he was a child, “I’m sure this man bullied you into something -- don’t worry, we will get this figured out.”
But Pete Knaak, with tears running down his face simply said, “No!” as he got up, pushed his way past a stunned Jack Thurber, and ran to the stairwell door.
It only took Peter Knaak eight steps to move from the couch to the stairwell. The alarm sounded as soon as Knaak pushed open the door. The stairwell to the Mayor’s office was armed with an alarm. Knaak ran up the stairs, which surprised Burke. Burke thought he would make a break for it down the stairs and to safety. Thurber had lunged at Knaak’s legs as he took the first step up, but had missed. Knaak now was leaping over steps, and Tom had to jump over Jack to continue the chase.
Where is he going? Burke thought. Tom knew from all those tours as a kid the only thing above the Mayor’s office was the observation deck. There was only one way in or out. Knaak was trapped. Burke saw the door to the observation door open, a flash of bright sunlight temporarily blinded him. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw a blur of clothing and he heard himself yell, “Don’t!” Then nothing but the sound of the wind and his own heartbeat.
<
br /> Burke could tell from the shadows on the floor the sun was setting outside. He was sitting on the couch where less than a half hour ago, Pete Knaak confessed to killing John Vithous. Thurber was sitting beside him. Mayor Hughes was gone, but Captain Michaels was there. Michaels was sitting at the conference table, glowering at Burke and Thurber.
Burke felt like a kid when he had been sent to the principal’s office. Once, when he was thirteen, he and Bobby had skipped school. They got caught by their gym teacher who had seen them crossing 75th Street on the way to the video arcade. They sat in small plastic chairs waiting for their fathers to arrive. The waiting was always far worse than the actual punishment. This time, it wasn’t their dads they were waiting for. It was Chief Williams.
Williams strode in confidently. His demeanor left no question - he was pissed. He sat down next to Michaels, looked up and scowled at Thurber and Burke, then looked back over to Michaels.
“How in the hell did this just happen, on my police force, Michaels?”
Michaels shrugged. “Chief, I had no idea these two would pull something like this.”
“Not good enough, Michaels! NOT GOOD ENOUGH!” Williams thundered, his voice echoing across the office.
“Boys,” he went on, “we’ve got a major problem. We’ve got an unsolved murder from six days ago, and now we’ve got a suicide, from the very same office, after two of my investigators decided to question him. And, all of this was done without my prior knowledge.”
Williams got up and stopped only a foot in front of Burke. His shoes were almost touching Burke’s. They were so polished, Burke could see his reflection in them.
“Burke, what in God’s name were you thinking?” he said in disgust. “You decide to question the Mayor’s private attorney, in her office, without notifying me first?!”
“Chief, Pete Knaak killed John Vithous, he told me, I…”
