by Greg Sisk
“I’d be happy to,” said Burton with feeling. “In fact, I was just talking with Bill Klein, the owner of this house and of the car and the father of the child killed here.”
“What’s he told you so far?”
“Well, the most notable thing he’s told me is that he works for a construction company, that the company uses explosives for demolitions, and that they just fired a guy who worked with those explosives.”
Kramer’s eyebrows raised. “Well now, that’s certainly a coincidence,” he remarked in a sarcastic tone.
“I don’t like coincidences,” said Burton.
He really didn’t. It wasn’t that Burton didn’t believe in coincidences. He had spent an entire career delving into people’s backgrounds and activities, discovering the surprising ways in which one person’s life intersected with a multitude of other people that he or she often didn’t even know, and trying to figure out why people had done the stupid (and sometimes criminal) things they had done.
Burton encountered coincidences all the time. Life was messy. Loose ends were common. Unlike the stereotypical mystery or detective novel, in the course of real police work and criminal investigation, lots of loose ends were never tied up.
Whenever he thought of coincidences, Burton was reminded of what Mark Twain once said: “Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”
Real life didn’t . . . have to make sense, that is. People did odd things for no apparent reason, often unable to explain even to themselves why they had done them. Other people, affairs, objects, and even weather and animals intervened in most unexpected ways. Random events occurred. Hence coincidences.
But that didn’t mean he had to like them. Burton knew that an apparent coincidence would make his work harder. He’d have to follow the conjectural path all the way back as far as he could before giving up on the possibility that it was something much more than a coincidence.
And even when he was left at the end of a case with no alternative but to dismiss some twist of events or peculiar connection as nothing more than a coincidence, it made him uneasy. He remained forever uncomfortable about the resolution of the case, harboring residual doubt about whether he read the evidence correctly and had reached the right conclusion.
“Well,” said Kramer, as he turned toward the burned-out car, “as long as you keep me fully informed, please feel free to follow this lead wherever it goes.”
“Will do.” And Burton went back into the house.
• • •
Klein still sat slumped in the chair at the breakfast nook, staring down at the floor, when Burton returned to the kitchen.
As he approached, Burton saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He jerked his head to the side, only to see a small orange-and-white cat creeping out from the next room and moving toward a food bowl sitting in a corner in the kitchen. The cat stopped short when he saw Burton, looked him right in the eye, and then slinked away down a stairway leading to the basement of the house.
“Mr. Klein,” Burton picked up the conversation. “We were talking about your construction company.”
“It’s my father-in-law’s construction company, Insignia Construction,” corrected Klein. “I just work there.”
“But you said you have access to explosives?”
“Yes.”
“And Mr. Pirkle—the fired employee—worked with explosives as well?”
“On occasion, yes.”
“And your father-in-law . . . His name again is?”
“George Peterson.”
“Could you please write down his name and home address for me?”
Klein stood up, accepted a sheet of paper from Burton’s notebook, borrowed Burton’s pen, moved over to a nearby desk in the kitchen, wrote something down on the sheet, and then handed the sheet and pen back to Burton. Klein sat back down. Burton remained standing.
“I don’t want to hold you much longer, Mr. Klein. But please tell me a little more about this Olin Pirkle and what happened.”
“Well, George—my father-in-law . . . and my boss—was noticing that the construction supplies had been running out a little faster than they should each month. He suspected someone was helping themselves. There’s quite an underground market for construction supplies. Theft is a constant irritation for construction companies. George asked all of the supervisors to keep an eye open.
“Just last week, I noticed Pirkle walking out to the parking lot after work with what looked like something rather big stuffed inside his shirt. I thought it was really odd. By the time I caught up to him, he had already thrown open the back of his van, pulled something out of his shirt, and tossed it in.”
“So,” Klein continued, “I said to Pirkle, ‘What’s going on here? Would you please open up that van and show me what you just threw in there?’ Pirkle got rather testy, told me it was none of my business, and brushed past me to the driver’s door and left. I wasn’t a cop so I couldn’t hold him there or make him open the van door and show me what was in there.
“I told George all about it. Next thing I heard was that Pirkle had been fired.”
“Is that all?” asked Burton.
“After everyone in the office had learned that Pirkle had been fired, other employees came up to me and said they’d seen him carrying supplies in his arms at the close of work several times over the past couple of years, but thought nothing of it. Pirkle was one of the more senior employees and was often given considerable responsibility. So I took notes on what they’d told me and put together a list of what they’d seen Olin carrying. It added up to quite a lot. And it didn’t seem to connect to any project that Pirkle would have been assigned to, especially not during the evenings.
“So I reported a suspicion of theft by Pirkle to the Golden Valley police. Insignia Construction is headquartered in Golden Valley.”
“Okay,” said Burton. “I’ll follow up on that. The only other thing I want to ask about right now is when you last used explosives at work and whether Pirkle was there.”
“Just a couple of days before Pirkle was fired. We were preparing a field between the Twin Cities and St. Cloud for a strip mall. You know, they call St. Cloud the ‘Granite City’ for good reason. In this particular area nearby, which is called ‘Boulderville,’ we are preparing the ground for a simple foundation. But with the granite base there, it can be like mining a rock quarry. So we’ve had to use quite a bit of TNT to break up boulders and blast rock formations into more manageable pieces.”
“Was Pirkle involved?”
“Yes, he was the one who directly handled the TNT after I retrieved it from the locked cabinet. I supervised.”
“Did anything unusual occur? Did any TNT go missing?”
“It was just routine.”
“I’m no expert on this, Mr. Klein, but I assume you all have paperwork for using explosives.”
“Oh, yes, there’s lots of paperwork, which is what I spend much of my time doing. And I’ve kept all the records on TNT up to date and complete.”
“And where would those be?”
“At the company headquarters. They get filed in the main office, where George runs the show.” Klein looked up at Burton, his hands now limp in his lap. He stared blankly, not so much at as through Burton.
Burton decided to wrap up the questioning. “All right, Mr. Klein. I’ll let you go now. Be sure to lock up the house as best you can,” instructed Burton. “I’ll see that someone comes and boards up the broken windows. You should pack a suitcase because you’ll have to stay somewhere else tonight. This house and the yard are now an active crime scene.
“Please wait just a few more minutes so that I can arrange for my partner, Officer Garth, to escort you to the hospital.”
Chapter 3
[ONE HOUR AFTER THE TRAGEDY]
Burton then went back to his unmarked police car. He pulled out the sheet of paper Klein had given him and had just begun to punch the home address for George Peterson into his GPS, when the dispatch radio crackled:
“Ed, there’s a George Peterson who’s been calling the police department every few minutes, saying he’s the father of the woman who was in the car bombing. He heard about it when someone called him to say they’d seen it on the news. Peterson said he tried driving over to the house but couldn’t get past the police barricades blocking the street. He wants to know where his daughter and grandson are. He’s very persistent, Ed.”
“Tell Mr. Peterson to meet me at his . . .” Ed paused and looked again at Klein’s handwritten directions to the Peterson house. He changed his mind. “Tell him to meet me at Insignia Construction in Golden Valley. Get me the directions there, and tell Mr. Peterson I’m on my way.”
• • •
George Peterson was a man of average height—five foot, nine inches—and a slim build. Burton, who struggled to keep his weight under control, even though he was still in his late-forties, couldn’t help but admire a man in his sixties who had stayed so trim. Peterson was completely bald, except for a thin and closely-cropped strip of gray hair around the lower back of his head.
Although Burton had seen Candace Klein for only a few moments before she was ushered into the ambulance at the crime scene, and her face had been scratched from hitting the pavement after the explosion, Burton could see the resemblance. Father and daughter both had the same prominent, but not unseemly large, nose. And both had large, intelligent eyes.
Peterson was standing right outside the front door to Insignia Construction, as Burton walked up.
“Mr. Peterson,” began Burton, “I’m Lieutenant Ed Burton. I think it would be best if we went inside and you sat down.”
Instead, Peterson interposed a series of questions in a rapid-fire stream, “What’s going on? No one will tell me anything. Please, please let me know where my daughter is? Is she all right? What about my grandson?”
“Please, Mr. Peterson, I promise to tell you everything I know about them. But first, let’s go inside to your office.”
Peterson seemed reluctant to move at first. But then he opened the front door, stepped aside to let Burton through, and led the way into the building. Burton saw a large open work area with several desks and a couple of long tables where about half a dozen employees were standing together with curious and anxious looks on their faces. Peterson walked through the group, accepting friendly and sympathetic pats on his back.
Without pausing to say anything to his employees, Peterson escorted Burton to the far back of the building, where he had a spacious office. They both went inside, where Peterson turned away from his desk and instead went over to a small table with two chairs. Burton closed the door behind them. Peterson sat down. Burton remained standing.
Speaking more slowly this time, Peterson said, “I know it’s bad. I heard on the news about the car explosion. They say it was a car bomb. They say there were deaths. Are my daughter and grandson both dead?”
Burton couldn’t help but notice that Peterson didn’t ask about his son-in-law, Bill Klein.
“No, Mr. Peterson. Your daughter’s pretty shaken up, but I think she’ll be fine. But I’m afraid the boy was in the vehicle when it exploded. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
George Peterson’s chin dropped to his chest. His hands started up toward his face, but then fell back into his lap.
“Where is she? When can I see my daughter?”
“She’s been taken to the hospital and undoubtedly will be kept overnight for observation. I’d like to ask you a few questions and then you can go to the hospital to see her.”
“And my grandson?”
“I’m afraid he’s presently at the medical examiner’s office. It may be a couple of days before we can release the body for burial.”
Peterson lifted his head up and looked at Burton. “Please, Lieutenant, leave any arrangements regarding the boy to me. I don’t want my daughter to have to see him . . . like that.”
“I understand. I’ll need to share the death certificate with your daughter and son-in-law. But unless they ask to see the body or object in some way, I’ll instruct the medical examiner’s office that any identification can be made with you. I know this is delicate and awkward, but I may need you or Mr. Klein to get the boy’s dental records for me today.”
A pained expression crossed Peterson’s face and his chin dropped down again. “We’ll take care of it before the day is out,” Peterson replied.
Peterson remained silent, looking down at the floor. Burton patiently waited.
After a couple of minutes, Peterson looked up again and focused directly on Burton. With a surprisingly fast recovery of composure and the tone of a man who was accustomed to the lead role, Peterson declared, “Now, then, you said you had questions for me.”
“Yes, Mr. Peterson. Your son-in-law, Bill Klein, tells me your company handles explosives.”
“That’s right. Most every construction company does. We’re tightly regulated, everything’s on the up-and-up, and I insist that the TNT is kept carefully under lock in the magazine—that’s the storage locker—just like the regulations require. And all daily transactions and inventories are kept contemporaneously and up to date.”
“That’s what Mr. Klein told me too.”
“He sure better have said that. Those records are mostly his responsibility.”
“Before I leave this office this morning, I’d like to get a full set of those records, especially for any work sites involving Olin Pirkle.”
“Pirkle?” asked Peterson as his eyes narrowed. “Does he have something to do with this?”
“I can’t say, Mr. Peterson. We’re checking into every possibility. Could you tell me about Olin Pirkle? I understand he was fired last week?”
“Yes. Very disappointing. Very disappointing. Olin had been with me for fifteen years. I’ve had to lay-off many employees, including some who had been with me a long time, with the economy being in the toilet.” Peterson then muttered, “Damn politicians and their government spending, taxes, and regulations are going to kill whatever’s left of private enterprise in this country.”
In a louder voice, Peterson continued, “But I’d never expected to dismiss Olin. I trusted the guy. I was pretty sure someone had been skimming construction supplies. Bill caught Olin carrying something out to his car and told me about it. I couldn’t believe it at first.
“I called Olin into my office first thing the next morning, and he blew me off and then blew up. I started by saying he’d been a friend and employee for so long, that if he was having financial problems I wished he’d come to me, that maybe I could forgive him if he’d just made a mistake and was straight with me.
“He got angrier and angrier, said the whole thing was an insult, and stormed out. I didn’t have any choice but to dismiss him at that point,” concluded Peterson. “I later heard from other employees that Olin had been seen carrying lots of supplies out over several months. It seems now there’s little doubt he was the person stealing from me.”
“What have you learned from the Golden Valley police about their investigation into the theft?” asked Burton.
“What police investigation?” asked Peterson. “I had no choice but to fire Olin. But I didn’t make a police report.”
“Mr. Klein did.”
“Well, well, what do you know?” said Peterson with raised eyebrows. “I wouldn’t
have thought Bill had the initiative to do something like that without running it by me. Still, I can’t say he was wrong to report it to the police.”
“Last question,” said Burton, “before you get me those records on the explosives. I understand that Pirkle was the one who used the TNT at the Boulderville construction site a few days before he was fired. What can you tell me about that?”
“Nothing really,” replied Peterson. “I wasn’t at the site. That was Bill’s watch. I knew TNT was being used there. Bill had the lock codes for the TNT. As far as I know, it was just routine.”
• • •
After collecting the Insignia Construction records on the explosives, and taking leave of Peterson, Burton placed a cell phone call to Alex Kramer at the ATF. He related what he had learned so far and told Kramer he had the records on explosives from Insignia Construction. Kramer arranged to receive the records from Burton and have them analyzed at the ATF office. He told Burton he’d been able to fast-track the forensics investigation and reserve priority lab time to examine the car bomb debris. If all went well, they should have preliminary results from the lab within a couple of days. *
• • •
Burton’s next stop was at the Golden Valley police department. He came as a courtesy to let the police of this neighboring suburb know he had been questioning George Peterson in their jurisdiction. He also wanted to find out the status of the theft investigation into Olin Pirkle.
Golden Valley police officers had visited Pirkle’s apartment, located nearby in western Minneapolis, right after receiving the theft report from Bill Peterson at Insignia Construction, five days prior.
