Blind Spot (4 page)

Bernadette spotted the South Gate to Hidden Falls Park and hung a left. Police tape crisscrossed the entrance, with a uniform stationed on each side of the yellow X. The bigger officer stepped away from his post and went up to the driver’s window. “Who’re you?”

“FBI.”

“Flash me,” he said.

She whipped out her ID wallet and held it in front of his nose. “Bernadette Saint Clare.”

His eyes went from the ID to her face. “Lose the specs,” he said.

She hesitated and then pulled off her sunglasses. His eyes shifted back and forth as he studied her face. Like most people looking at her for the first time, he struggled to figure out which eye to focus on. She hated that; it made her feel like a freak. She slipped her glasses back on. “Okay?”

“Heard you were coming.”

She sensed the resentment in his voice. She wondered what else he’d heard about her. Could be it was just the usual pissing match between local cops and the feds. She forced a smile. “What’s the skinny?”

“There’s a God after all.”

She frowned. “What?”

He winked and stood straight. “You’re in for a treat, FBI.” He stepped away from the truck. He undid his end of the tape, dropped it, and waved her through. She rolled forward a few yards. Before she steered down the steep drive that led to the riverfront park, she glanced through her rearview mirror. The big cop was putting the tape back up. He and the other uniform were laughing, like they were at a picnic.

Three

A crime scene like a thousand other crime scenes, Bernadette thought as she surveyed what was at the bottom of the hill. She’d be the only oddball. Would anyone pick her out? It’d be like an exercise in a child’s workbook.
Which object doesn’t fit in the picture? Draw a circle around it.

She pulled in between a squad and a paramedic unit. While she turned off the truck and dropped the keys in her jacket, she took in the view through her windshield. She spotted her boss at a picnic table with two boys, the Vang brothers. A couple of crime-scene photographers. The cops’ crime-lab van. Bunch of uniforms and their squads. Two paramedics talking to one of the uniforms. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s hearse. A gurney sitting behind the hearse, waiting for a body.

She popped open the driver’s side and hopped out. While she walked across the grassy expanse toward the picnic tables, she dug inside her pockets for her notebook and pen. Garcia eyed her from his seat on the picnic bench. He got up and said something to the two boys. They nodded and stayed sitting. The older one rested his elbows on the table and propped up his chin with his hands. The younger one wiped his nose with the back of his jacket sleeve; his eyes were red. Bernadette figured he was the one who’d pulled in the prize. Gross thing for a little kid to see.

As Garcia walked to meet her, Bernadette took in his face and physique. Even under his trench coat, she could see he was built like a weight lifter, with a trim waist and big arms and shoulders. He had olive skin, and short black hair with gray creeping into the sideburns. The buzz cut was getting overgrown, and the ends were starting to brush the tops of his ears. She approved. Bosses who were too meticulous about their grooming and dress were often anal jerks in the office. As Garcia drew closer, his mouth stretched into that tight grin she knew too well, that familiar smile Minnesotans employed to hide their real feelings. She told herself she was reading too much into it. He’d sounded decent over the phone and seemed straightforward when she came into town to talk to him before getting the assignment.

As they met and stopped on the grass, he held out his hand and she took it. He towered over her, but then, so did most people. “How’re you doing?” she asked.

“You come from your new place?”

“From the office. I was unpacking.”

He eyed her sweatshirt and frowned.

“I was unpacking,” she repeated.

“Media’s gonna love this one.” He scanned the sky above them for news helicopters and saw nothing but gray. The mist was getting heavier, turning into a drizzle that clouded the air like a fog. “Wonder where those dogs are this morning?”

“It’s a little early for them. Give them time to have their coffee.” She flipped open her notebook. “The dead guy?”

“Sterling Archer.”

Bernadette’s eyebrows went up. She’d heard about him; he’d made the national news. Archer was a juvenile judge who’d molested a string of children and teens over a dozen years. Most of the victims had been in his courtroom. In one case, he’d elicited sex from both a girl and her mother in exchange for leniency on the bench. Archer’s team of attorneys got half of the charges thrown out and, during the trial, tore apart the credibility of the kids. The defense’s tactics and the resulting verdict—an acquittal—infuriated the cops and citizens. One of the young women who’d testified committed suicide. Some of the families had publicly vowed revenge.

Bernadette: “A vigilante thing, right? There’s gotta be a line of suspects snaking all the way down to the Iowa border.”

Garcia: “Maybe. Maybe not. Here’s the deal. After he was cut loose, Archer left the state, went to Florida. Miami. No one knew he was back in town except his Realtor lady. He came back for a day—to close the sale of his house.”

“Where’d he live?”

“Right up there.” Garcia tipped his head toward the top of the hill. “Mississippi River Boulevard.”

“Know the neighborhood. Nice little shacks.”

“St. Paul Watch Commander said the Realtor lady called the cop shop last night to report her boy missing in action. He didn’t show for his closing Friday afternoon, and she was worried.”

“So Realtor lady reports Archer missing last night.” She nodded toward the brothers sitting at the picnic table. “Then, this morning, the boys reel in a whopper.”

“With a ring still on the pinkie finger.”

The right side of Bernadette’s mouth curled up. For some reason, that detail pleased her. She clicked her pen a couple of times and started writing. “With a ring still on the pinkie.” She looked up from the notepad. “What about the rest of him?”

“As the squads are pulling into the South Gate, some hikers parked at the North Gate are giving the cops a jingle. They tripped across the judge halfway between here and there.”

“Cops already sweeping the park?”

He nodded. “They found some shoe prints around the body. Could produce some decent casts. They’ve got some boats doing some checking, too. Maybe they can dredge up the murder weapon.”

She looked past him and counted three twenty-foot boats bobbing on the water—one belonging to the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, one owned by the St. Paul Fire Department, and the third from the St. Paul Police Department. “Damn,” she said. “Every copper in this town’s got a boat. What about us? Do we have a boat?”

“We could get one if we needed it, but we don’t need it.”

Bernadette stuffed her notebook in her jacket. “Gonna check out the scene on dry land, then. Get a look at Archer while you finish up with the Vangs.”

“Already done interviewing the kids. Cops interviewed them. Nothing much to tell. Didn’t see spit or hear spit. Just reeled in some dead guy’s hand. The thing rattled the hell out of them. I told them to chill for a while, calm down, and then go home.”

“Between you and the cops and their flotilla, what have I got left to do?” She knew what she had left to do, why she’d been called. She wanted to hear him say it. She wished just once
anyone
in authority would officially ask for it. Of course, she knew it would never happen. To ask for it would be an admission, an acknowledgment of an ability they didn’t understand and a power that frightened them. She couldn’t blame them. At times, it scared her.

The wind picked up and blew the drizzle against their backs. Garcia turned up the collar of his coat. “Let’s go have a look-see at the dead guy before this turns into a monsoon.”

They didn’t speak during the brief hike through the woods. The ground beneath their feet was uneven and covered with fallen branches, dead vines, and low-growing vegetation. Above them, rain pattered the leaves on the trees. Garcia led her to a triangle of police tape wrapped around tree trunks. The yellow stood out like an exotic flower planted in the middle of the brown-and-green forest. At each point of the triangle stood a uniformed officer. All three of the cops were grinning.

“Guys,” said Garcia.

Two of them nodded and wiped the smiles off. “Hey,” said the third, continuing to grin.

Bernadette eyed the area around the triangle. The corpse wasn’t far from the riverfront or the park’s paved trail, but it was well hidden by the density of the trees and bushes. She stepped over the tape, hunkered down next to the body, and examined the right arm resting on top of the muddy ground. “He was alive when his hand was taken off.”

Garcia hopped over the tape and crouched down next to her. “What makes you so sure?”

She pointed at the stump. “Look at the way the dirt is sort of packed into the end of it. I think he tried to use it for leverage. Push himself up with it.”

“Ouch.”

Bernadette took her notebook out of her jacket, flipped it open, and wrote while she ran her eyes up and down the body. She’d seen Archer in the newspapers and on television. He’d been a short, obese man with an Alfred Hitchcock belly. Now, facedown in the mud, he looked flat and spread out—a jellyfish washed ashore. He was in khaki slacks and a short-sleeved polo shirt. “I assume there are no other parts missing, but let’s check out the B side.” She stood up and went around to the body’s left side and hunkered down. The left arm and hand were bound behind Archer’s back by the rope. She studied the knot resting on top of the body’s left shoulder blade. “Well, that’s interesting as hell.”

“What?” asked Garcia.

She stood up and stepped over to Archer’s feet. She crouched down and studied the rope coiled around his lower legs. “Very interesting.” She flipped to a clean notebook page and scribbled furiously.

“What?”

She pointed to Archer’s bound legs with the pen. “See how nice and neat the rope is coiled. It’s a pretty good imitation of a method called ‘sheer lashing.’ Sailors use it to tie poles together side by side. This loop here—the one by his ankles with the end of the rope threaded through it—see that?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a clove hitch.”

“Clove hitch,” Garcia repeated. “I heard of that.”

She thumbed toward the knot tied over the shoulder blade. “And that’s a double fisherman’s knot. Another sailing deal.”

“How do you know all that?”

“My husband was into sailing.”

“He quit?”

“Died.”

“Sorry. Didn’t know. New Orleans didn’t fill me in on that personal stuff.”

Liar,
she thought.
You’re my boss. They told you everything. You know more about me than I do. That’s the bureau’s job—knowing.
“That’s okay,” she said evenly.

Garcia stood up. “So you think the killer’s a man of the high seas.”

“Or thinks he’s one.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“These aren’t perfect renditions. And, really, there’re quicker and more efficient ways to restrain a person. The sheer lashing in particular—talk about overkill. Whoever did this was showing off or really into his cordage.”