A Deadly Development (16 page)

“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 Peter 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.

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 75
^th
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.