“How did you manage to keep it going?”
“I didn’t,” I said honestly. “She did.”
“Hey, you guys,” Casper called to us as we stepped into the corridor. “You gotta talk to this woman, I mean … She says she knows who killed Thoreau, but man, is she weird.”
McGaney rubbed his face. “Has she confessed to anything before?”
“She isn’t confessing, she’s accusing.”
“Get the lieutenant,” McGaney said.
“Hell no, not me. You talk to her first.”
McGaney sighed and walked into the interrogation room, the same interrogation room where they had interviewed me. I followed.
The woman was about twenty-three with the kind of wholesome beauty that was spoiled by makeup. Her dress was simple and white, her eyes were dark and brooding, her hair was black and brushed the top of the shoulders. She spoke quickly, like someone had a stopwatch on her.
“I’m Brenda Clark,” she said, extending her hand to McGaney. “The Lord has sent me.”
McGaney smiled broadly. “That’s nice,” he said. “I’m Detective McGaney. This is Holland Taylor. He’s a … an investigator.”
The woman crossed her ankles. They were nice ankles.
“Detective Casper said you can help us identify Mr. Thoreau’s killer?”
The woman pivoted in her chair and smiled at Casper, who smiled back. “It was the Reverend Leonard Hoppe.”
“Reverend Hoppe?” McGaney repeated.
“‘For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.’”
“Say what?”
“Sixth Ephesians,” I told McGaney.
The woman smiled brightly at me. “You know the Word of the Lord?”
“I can also recite the entire roster of the 1987 Minnesota Twins.”
“Shut up, Taylor,” McGaney told me.
“Ms. Clark …” he said.
“Miss Clark,” she corrected him.
“Miss Clark. How do you know …”
“The Lord told me.”
“He did?”
“Not directly, of course.”
“No, I don’t imagine …”
“His messenger came to me. I was reading the morning newspaper,” she said, turning toward me. “So much pain and suffering. I began to pray. I asked the Lord, What can I do to help turn the tide against the Prince of Evil who has caused so much suffering? Suddenly, a dark-skinned, handsome man came into my kitchen; that’s where I was, in my kitchen,” she added, speaking casually, as if that sort of thing happened to her all the time. “I knew right away I was in the presence of a great spiritual power, an angel. He didn’t speak. Instead, he pointed at the newspaper and the pages started to turn, one by one, until finally they stopped and then the paper just burned away except for this.”
She pulled a clipping from her purse and gave it to McGaney, who showed it to me. It was an article from the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The headline read ST. PAUL MAN SLAIN IN HIS HOME. The edges of the clipping were singed.
“I asked the angel, “What does this mean?’ and he said, ‘He who has sinned against God and man speaketh the Word of the Lord. He is possessed of the demon and must be saved or destroyed, for his flock must be protected from the Evil One.’ Just then I heard Reverend Hoppe’s voice loud and clear on the radio and I knew it was he who was possessed by the demon and then the angel’s face began to shine as if there was a powerful light behind his eyes and then the angel was gone … It was a very interesting experience.”
“I bet.”
“Who is Reverend Hoppe?”
“He’s a radio evangelist on WKKK radio,” Casper said.
“Unfortunate choice of call letters,” I suggested.
“It is because preachers have tried to spread the Word of the Lord through television and radio that the demons have attacked,” Brenda Clark said. “The airwaves are the realm of the spirit world, it is where the demons reside, and when the preachers took to the airwaves, well, the demons didn’t like it and they came out against them.” She turned to me again. “That is what happened to Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart.”
“I knew it,” I said. “I just knew it.”
“Did you confront the reverend, Miss Clark?” McGaney asked.
“I attempted to. After the angel came, I drove to the radio station with the clipping and I saw him in the parking lot. But he was not alone. He was with…” She shook her head in disbelief. “He was with Vivian Olson, kissing Vivian Olson, caressing her.”
“I’m sure he meant it in the most paternal way,” Casper volunteered.
The woman turned and looked at him but did not speak.
“Vivian Olson?” McGaney asked.
“She’s the assistant station manager; an evil, evil woman,” Brenda Clark said. “A plaything of the devil, Satan’s strumpet. I realized when I saw them together that Reverend Hoppe could not be saved, that he must be destroyed.” She turned to me again. “Lay down with dogs and rise up with fleas,” she said.
Casper chuckled and Brenda Clark, McGaney and I all turned toward him in unison, staring at him like he was Lucifer himself. “Excuse me,” he said, coughing into his hand.
McGaney excused himself as well and headed for the door. Again, I followed him.
“Martin,” Casper implored. “What about …” he nodded at the woman.
McGaney took his arm and whispered loud enough for her to hear: “Take Miss Clark’s statement and make sure she gets home. Then drive over to WKKK and find out where the Reverend Hoppe was Friday night.”
Casper nodded and smiled.
“Thank you, Miss Clark, you’ve been very helpful,” McGaney said. “And I want to see a report,” he told Casper.
Casper stopped smiling.
While we waited for the elevator, a file folder McGaney was carrying slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. “Oh, damn,” he said. “Confidential information on the Lamb case. I must be more careful.”
I stooped to retrieve the folder. It was McGaney’s working file. I was glancing at the contents when the elevator doors slid open; McGaney punched the button marked B for basement.
The first page was labeled TIMETABLE—LAMB MURDER, TUESDAY, OCT. 8. It was virtually the same as mine, except it omitted C. C. Monroe. The second page, a list typed on Ramsey County Medical Examiner stationery, was headed WOUNDS CHART, AMY LAMB. There were six by the ME’s count, all carefully and clinically identified. I skipped over them, stopping at the part that suggested the wounds were caused by .9mm bullets fired at a distance of three to five feet. Most of the other pages were handwritten and barely legible. From what I could make out from McGaney’s scrawl, a door-to-door canvass of the neighborhood had proved fruitless—no witnesses, no gun. Nothing had been taken from Amy’s apartment. Nor was there any evidence of forced entry, no jimmy marks on the door jambs or windowsills, no scratches on the perimeter of the locks. The front and back doors had Yale deadbolts that must be locked with a key both inside and out. The front door was locked; the landlady had let me in. The back door was not; the key was still in the lock, on the inside.
“Killer went out the back,” I assumed.
“Wouldn’t you?” McGaney asked.
“How did he get in?”
Still another page contained notes taken during an informal discussion McGaney’d had with the ME: “Preliminary examination reveals no evidence of sexual assault.” “No evidence of sexual assault” was circled three times.
“She knew her killer,” I volunteered. “She let him in.”
“Or her,” McGaney reminded me.
I leafed through the rest of the file, asked about physical evidence, hair samples, skin tissue. “Did you check the sinks like Anne suggested?”
“Of course.”
“Well?”
“C’mon, Taylor. It hasn
’t even been two days yet.”
“I’ve seen more information on a dog bite complaint,” I said, handing back the file.
“I’m expecting a report from the lab this afternoon,” McGaney replied almost apologetically, but not quite.
Amy Lamb. I closed my eyes and there she was. I tried to see her as the young woman eating Vietnamese and talking about Starbuck. Instead, it was her blood-splattered body that I saw, her hands clenched in fear and rage and pain, her fingernails cutting bloody half moons into the palms. I shook my head, but the image would not disappear.
“A couple of things that are not in this file,” McGaney said as the elevator doors slid open. “Thoreau and Brown were not killed by the same gun; Thoreau was shot with a twenty-five and Brown with a nine. So far there is no evidence to suggest they were companions except your girl’s message.”
“When was Thoreau killed?” I asked.
“Between nine and midnight Friday night.”
“Friday night? Are you sure?”
McGaney shrugged. It wasn’t his job to fix postmortem intervals.
He continued. “We speculate he was entertaining; we found female pubic hair and secretions in his bedroom and on his genitals; the lab is working them. No suspects. The neighbors claim they saw no women going in or out, claim they saw nothing and heard nothing.”
“You sound surprised,” I told him.
“When I was a kid, the neighbors saw and heard everything. My parents always knew what I did on a Saturday night two hours before I got home.”
“Yeah, the same with me,” I said. “Now no one wants to get involved. Twenty-five years ago you couldn’t stop them. How ’bout Brown?”
“A single shot, close range, like this,” McGaney said and poked a finger in my ear.
“Had to be someone he knew to get that close,” I volunteered.
“Not necessarily,” McGaney said. “He was bombed; toxicology report says his blood alcohol content was point-two-one. The assailant could have walked up to him carrying a bazooka and he wouldn’t have noticed.”
“Witnesses?”
“A gas station attendant remembers a man matching Joseph Sherman’s description coming in around midnight. The man asked to use the john, and the attendant lent him the key.”
I let “That fits” slip out and McGaney jumped all over it.
“What do you mean, ‘That fits’? That fits what?”
I didn’t answer and McGaney pushed me up against the wall of the corridor.
“Let’s get something straight,” he said, jabbing a finger at my face. “I ain’t your buddy, I ain’t your pal, I ain’t your expartner. I don’t give a damn if you’re sleepin’ with some college kid or playin’ poker till dawn …” He noted my surprise at the last statement and added, “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No, I never …”
“I’m cooperating with you because I think you might be able to help me. And the lieutenant. If you can’t or won’t, I’ll cut you off at the knees. Got it?”
“What do you mean, help the lieutenant?”
“Something’s bothering her. Originally, I figured it was her old man. But that remark you made about obstructing justice, it has to be something else.”
“You don’t miss much, do you, Detective?”
“Not a helluva lot, no,” McGaney admitted.
I appraised him for a moment, realizing for the first time that he closely resembled one of my favorite actors, Paul Winfield—when Winfield was thin—even down to the smile that he wasn’t using just then. He let me look.
“There are an awful lot of cops who get their pensions without ever leaving this building,” I told him. “They work nine to five for twenty years and figure they’ve accomplished something with their lives. And then there are cops with a fire in their belly and a …”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard the speech when I was a rookie. Get to the point,” McGaney said.
“A real cop, you tell him a certain thing and he might feel he has to do something about it; he can’t just let it slide. He’ll tell himself he has to do something because it’s his job, because it’s important. So maybe, you don’t tell him …”
Now it was McGaney’s turn to study me; I wondered if I reminded him of a favorite actor. Probably not.
“So, where does that leave us?” he asked after coming to a decision he preferred not to share.
“I give you my word of honor: If I uncover any tangible evidence that identifies the killer of Thoreau or Brown or Amy Lamb, I’ll give it to you, no matter who it implicates.”
“Your word of honor doesn’t mean jack shit to me,” McGaney said and jabbed his finger at my face again. “I’ll be watching. I’ll be watching real close.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
“One more thing. If I have to bust the lieutenant I will,” he said. “I won’t like it, but I’ll do it and I won’t lose any sleep over it later.”
Sergeant Alexander Mankamyer, the St. Paul Police Department’s forensic firearms expert, was sitting on a stool at a high workbench and examining the disassembled parts of a sawed-off 16-gauge shotgun with a cut-down stock. He did not look up when we entered the cluttered room. He did not say “Hello” or “What do you want?” or “Who are you?” or “Get lost.” Instead he said, “Had a gang shoot-out last night and a couple of uniforms took this off a juvvie. Now the CA wants to know if it can be fired. Shut the door.”
I did.
“Can it be fired?” I asked him.
“What? You the CA?”
“You brought it up,” I reminded him, leaning on the edge of the bench. Mankamyer frowned at me. “Sorry,” I said and pushed myself upright.
How Mankamyer functioned in this laboratory of violent death was a mystery to me. There were hundreds of firearms hanging from hooks along two walls, and plastic envelopes containing bits and pieces of evidence stacked on desks and tables and shelves all around.
“You guys slumming?” he asked.
McGaney gave Mankamyer the bullet. “What kind of slug is that?” he asked.
“It’s not a slug,” Mankamyer told him. “It’s a bullet. A slug is round and flat and has a hole in it and kids use them to rob vending machines.”
“Bullet, then.”
“Probably a nine; I’ll weigh it to be sure.”
“I need to know if the weapon …”
“Gun, gun,” Mankamyer repeated, obviously annoyed. “Anything can be a weapon. A can of whipped cream can be a weapon. Remember the woman with the Pine-Sol?”
McGaney took a deep breath. “I need this bullet checked against the bullets taken in the Brown and Lamb cases; I need to know if they were fired from the same gun.”
“How much time do I have?”
“Lieutenant Scalasi wants it right away.”
“You still a cop, Taylor?”
“No, I left about …”
“At least the bullet is clean. I remember once they took a thirty-eight out of this guy’s brain and stuck it in a plastic bag. Only thing, no one bothered to clean it and the guy’s bodily fluids destroyed most of the markings. Later, they bring me the gun and ask for a match. Yeah, sure. Amateurs, I’m telling you. Amateurs. That Scalasi, though, she knows her forensics.”
“How long?” McGaney asked.
“How long what?”
“How long before I get a report?”
“What is this, takeout? Do I look like I’m frying chicken here? These things take time. I remember once we had this bullet from an S and W …”
“Mankamyer, how ’bout I start putting goldfish in your firing tank again?”
“You were the one who did that? You sonuvabitch.”
“Mankamyer!”
“Friday, end of the day,” Mankamyer promised and then shook his head. “You people must think I live for this.”
McGaney and I started for the door.
“Taylor, what are you doing here?” Mankamyer suddenly asked. “I thought you pulled the pin m
onths ago.”
TWENTY-ONE
LOUISE TURNED HER head abruptly away and pretended not to see me pass quickly through the campaign headquarters to the office in back. Marion Senske was not happy about my presence, either. She was sitting behind her desk, observing while an image consultant instructed C. C.
The consultant was tall, with shoulder-length auburn hair. She was wearing a conservative two-piece, double-breasted blue suit with gold earrings and a thin gold chain around her throat. She looked like she should be running for governor.
“As I said, there are two things to remember,” she told C. C. “Use the right grip—two firm pumps, yes?—and maintain a pleasant facial expression. It’s important that you look interested. I know that will be difficult. You shake, what, a hundred hands each day?”
“More,” C. C. said, rolling her eyes.
“That makes it even more crucial that you leave a positive impression. Most of us make assumptions about a person’s level of success, trustworthiness, credibility, economic standing, education, social position and sophistication based on that first meeting—within seconds in fact. And consider: The vast majority of the people you meet during the course of a campaign will never shake your hand again. Therefore, the first impression you make is the one they will carry with them, quite possibly forever.”
I was leaning against the doorframe watching the show, when the image consultant noticed me and decided I would make a good prop.
“Smile when you approach the voter,” she instructed as she moved toward me. “Extend your hand.” She did. So did I. “One hand. No limp-fisted fish, no bone crushers, no two-handed sandwiches.” She took my hand and, true to her word, gave it two firm pumps. “Hi, I’m Deborah Dixon.”
“Will you marry me, Debbie?” I asked. C. C. giggled. Even Marion cracked a smile. Deborah was not amused.
“You will occasionally have to deal with inappropriate behavior,” she told C. C., turning her back on me.
“Ms. Dixon, could you and Carol Catherine continue your instruction in the next room, please? I must speak to Mr. Taylor.”
Deborah agreed and moved past me. C. C. extended her hand. “Hi. I’m Carol Catherine Monroe and I would be happy to marry you,” she said smiling broadly.
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