Innuendo (15 page)

Studying everything about the scene—the trees, the parking area alongside the parkway, the spot where the bald man supposedly stood down by the water, the garbage can, that bush—Rawlins first of all tried to ascertain if it could have happened as the tipster had claimed. He checked the angles, the sight lines, and, yes, adding it all up, Rawlins realized it could have. The distance between the two was perhaps fifty feet, so the specifics might be a tad difficult, but even if it was a dark night, as it was last night, the lampposts would have provided a fair amount of light. Yes, there was no doubt, it was physically possible that someone could have stood hidden in those woods and watched as someone came down to the lake and heaved something out into the water.

But what about anyone else?

Minneapolis's saving grace—and perhaps the main reason it had not become the Los Angeles of the Midwest—was its extensive park system. More than a dozen small lakes dotted the city, all of them linked by fifty-plus miles of paths that led from lake to lake to Minnehaha Creek and the Mississippi River. Beautiful and safe, the parks were heavily used, day and night, winter and summer, which meant there were people out here all the time. Rawlins himself had jogged around Lake Calhoun at five on a dark winter morning, and he'd strolled around the very same body of water with Todd at midnight on a hot summer eve. So if one person had seen something suspicious, could there be a second out there somewhere, someone who might not have been lurking in the woods?

First things first, he told himself as he crossed the bike path. First you've got to find out if your tip caller really saw anything at all.

He spotted the green garbage can, an oil barrel of sorts with a small, spring-loaded trapdoor on the lid, the kind dotting all the parks. Crossing directly to it, Rawlins thought, okay, the bald man had reportedly stood by the lake, thrown something into the water, then come up here and thrown something away. But what? Lifting open the trapdoor of the receptacle, Rawlins looked in, but was immediately slapped with the most egregious of odors, something akin to a rancid melody of both food and excrement. Which, thought Rawlins, was probably exactly right. He dropped the small trapdoor, then pulled off the whole lid and let it fall to the ground. Peering in, he saw a small riot of garbage, from square Styrofoam containers dribbling refried rice to pieces of plastic wrap holding small crusts of bread smeared with sandy peanut butter. There was a running shoe, old and ripped. A healthy representation of just about every kind of pop can, the remains of their syrupy insides spilling over everything like a sticky waterfall. Entire newspapers. And a variety of plastic bags from clear to blue that held, of course, fermenting dog shit. Yes, by law and by nature, Minnesotans were tidy.

Rawlins spotted a small stick a few feet away, reached for it, then used it as a crude spoon with which to poke this stew of discard. Squinting as if the odor were burning his eyes, Rawlins poked about, thinking how things would be much simpler if he only knew what the hell he was looking for. He flipped back a newspaper, moved a dark green plastic shopping bag, lifted the shoe—had it given way mid-jog?—then dropped it. And suddenly saw that the end of the stick was covered with a dark red sticky substance. Was that what he thought it was?

A voice behind him said, “Are you looking for something, sir?” Holding the stick high in one hand, he turned around to see a black woman in the blue uniform of the Minneapolis park police. So, he thought as he reached into his jacket for his badge, just whose jurisdiction was this going to come under?

Holding up his badge, he said, “I'm Sergeant Rawlins, homicide, Minneapolis police, and I think we need to cordon off this area.”

It proved, of course, to be blood.

That
was the first thing the Bureau of Investigation team from Car 21 did, study the stick and in turn the dark green plastic bag, the inside of which was smeared with the dark red substance. They then sprayed it with Luminol, held a black light to it, and the substance fluoresced with a real attitude, indicating a massive presence of certain proteins found only in human blood. After that, everything kicked into gear, quickly.

While they waited for the diving team to arrive, this team of B of I guys—two former cops, both around sixty, who'd burned out on street work and were waiting for retirement—practically combed the grass. They collected some pocket change, a couple of cigarette butts, and a pen, all of which they dropped into small plastic evidence bags even though it all looked as if it had been lying around in the park much longer than twenty hours or so. Rawlins, operating on little more than a guess, next had them search one particular area of the thin beach, hoping they'd be able to pick up something, ideally a footprint of some sort. But what the lake's small waves hadn't washed away since last night, a dog, running up and down the shore, had recently trashed. There was, in short, nothing to be gathered, save for a few pieces of junk Rawlins was sure were not relevant.

Just about an hour after Rawlins had made his first call, a team of divers arrived from the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office, which had jurisdiction over all the lakes and rivers, both above and below the surface. Launching their small aluminum boat by the band shell, they motored over, the sputter of an engine a rare sound on any city lake. By the time they dropped anchor and two divers in black wet suits plunged into the chilly fall water, the crowd of gawkers was none too shabby. Held back by a thin strip of yellow police tape, there was a gathering of thirty or forty people who'd stopped mid-walk and mid—bike ride to see what was going on. Turning slowly and looking about as casually as he could, Rawlins attempted to study them all, wondering if the tip caller was in the crowd and if he hadn't been a simple witness but in fact Andrew Lyman's murderer. There were three older men, perhaps retired, and a handful of older women out for their daily constitution. Some kids with skateboards. And any number of youngish people who seemed to be just out enjoying the day. When Rawlins saw some guy pulling out his cell phone, perhaps to report to someone what was going on, Rawlins knew there was a call of his own that he should make as well.

Staring out over the water as the divers slowly bobbed up and down, Rawlins took out his own phone, dialed a number he knew so well, and of course reached a recorded message. This, however, was too important, so he hung up and dialed a number based on WLAK’s call letters and reached the front desk.

“Good afternoon, WLAK-TV, how may I direct your call?”

“This is Sergeant Rawlins from the Minneapolis police, and this is an urgent message for Todd Mills,” he told the receptionist.

“Just a minute, I'll try his—”

“Wait, I just tried his office. Would you please just tell him to get down to Lake Harriet with a photographer right away?”

“You don't care to hold, sir?”

“No, just get him that message. Or give it to one of the producers or something. It's regarding the murder story he covered last night.”

“I'll take care of it right away” she said as coolly as a 911 operator.

As he hung up and slipped the phone back into his pocket, Rawlins saw Neal Foster ducking beneath the yellow tape and heading his way. His eyes lined with heavy circles, Foster had been down at the lab for the last several hours.

Mustering a small grin, Rawlins said, “Do I look as shitty as you?”

“Worse.”

“Anything new down at the lab?”

Foster shrugged. “Just like you thought, that towel they found by Lyman's bed has a large semen stain on it. It's way too early, of course, to tell if it's Lyman's, but they're guessing that it is, and they're guessing that there's only one person's semen on there.”

“Really?” said Rawlins, unable to hide his disappointment.

“But…”

“But?”

“Well, did you see any of that Kleenex they found in the waste-basket not too far from the bed?”

Of course he had, and he clearly remembered the B of I team emptying the contents of the cracked white plastic basket into a large evidence bag. By and large it had all been tissue, crumpled into tight, messy wads. And from the amount of tissue Rawlins had assumed that someone had either had a cold or used the tissue for cleaning up after a sexual encounter.

Rawlins said, “Let me guess, more semen?”

“Yep.”

“Excellent.”

“Again, it's too early, but let's hope we get lucky there. Otherwise, I spoke with the ME and he said so far they hadn't found any semen in the kid's mouth. None in his rectum either, but they have found evidence of a lubricant on his anus.”

“Tell me it's from a condom.”

“It is. At this point they think it's a Trojan.”

“So… since we didn't find any condoms at the scene, it's safe to say that whoever last had sex with Andrew—let's just presume that it was the killer—either flushed the condom or took it with him.”

“Something like that, anyway.”

The phone in Rawlins's pocket began to ring, and he pulled it out, and said, “Sergeant Rawlins.”

“Hey, it's me,” said Todd. “The receptionist just paged me and gave me your message. What's going on?”

Wanting to talk to him about this and so much more, Rawlins hesitated a split second, then pushed into business, saying, “Well, I'm down here at Lake Harriet, by the Rose Gardens, and…”

Rawlins looked out over the small waves, which were moving across the surface at a soft but steady pace. He saw a man in the boat staring at the water. And he saw one of the two divers, his head sheathed in the black wet suit and his eyes covered with goggles, surface and swim to the boat. The diver raised one hand and gave a thumbs-up sign, and then a second diver appeared from beneath the water.

“Listen, Todd,” said Rawlins into the receiver, “things are happening pretty fast. I think you better get down here.”

He'd
been almost positive of what he'd seen last night. He'd been lurking in those woods right over there and he'd seen that guy hurl something into the lake and then drive away in that Saab. And when he'd read this morning's newspaper, he knew he had no choice but to call the police.

Yes, thought the man with the light hair, standing deep in the crowd of gawkers on the end of Lake Harriet. There was no doubt about it, he'd done the right thing. He'd wondered how they would handle it, if they'd actually take him seriously since he hadn't identified himself to the detective this morning. But he just couldn't tell him who he was. Hell, no. There was no way he could have given his name, no way he could let anyone know he was down in these woods last night.

About a half hour ago he'd driven down here just to see if the police had followed up on his call. Surprised that they had already done so and that the area was now cordoned off, he'd turned past the Rose Gardens and parked. And now, his large camera hanging by a strap around his neck, he surveyed the scene, looking for any good shots. There were a bunch of cops in uniforms and he wondered if one of them was him, that detective he'd spoken to. Or could he be that guy in the middle, the one in plainclothes with the dark hair and mustache? Or was he the old guy who'd just arrived?

Everyone's attention now seemed focused on the divers who had just resurfaced and were swimming back to the boat. What did that mean? That they'd given up?

“Look,” said an older woman wearing a lavender nylon jogging suit and sun visor, even though she'd surely never broken into a sweat in her life, “the divers are getting back in the boat.”

“What's that?” asked her friend, who wore a similar outfit but in peach, with fingernails painted a matching shade.

“What's what?”

“That thing. Doesn't one of ’em, one of the diver guys, have something in his hand?”

“Oh, God, Marge,” said the lavender one with a sardonic chuckle. “The eyes—they're going!”

A nearby younger man, his large German shepherd leashed and sitting by his side, squinted and said, “Yeah, looks like the second guy's got something in his hand. Something like a knife.”

“A knife?” gasped Marge, the one in peach.

“Heavens, I wonder what this is all about,” said her walking pal, clucking her tongue and shaking her head in matronly disapproval.

So, thought the man as he stood listening, he'd been exactly right in what he'd witnessed last night. It was just as he thought. That big bald guy had snuck down here and disposed of a knife in Lake Harriet. Which meant what? That the police would be able to tie it to the murder of that kid? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe a night soaking in Lake Harriet would have washed away any definitive evidence.

Shit, he thought, raising his camera and peering through the telephoto lens at the divers, what the hell was he supposed to do now? Even if they were able to confirm it was the murder weapon, then what? How in the hell were they going to find the bald guy and then link it? After all, even if they somehow managed to find a few suspects for a lineup, he sure as hell wasn't going to come forward to identify the guy he'd seen down here.

Okay, he thought, you gave the police some information and led them this far. Now it was time to give them a little more.

You're supposed to be
a rich boy. A rich gay boy. Your family is supposed to have a huge house overlooking Lake Minnetonka, some twelve miles due west of downtown Minneapolis, and this is supposed to be the big homecoming scene. Big, big homecoming scene. After all it's been eleven long, painful years. Your sister's gotten married, has two kids, and Mom's gone totally gray and Dad's lost sixty pounds because it's eating him, this thing he himself once cursed as the gay disease. Just as you said to yourself when you drove out of the driveway and off to California over a decade ago, nothing would ever be the same again.