Relative Malice (2 page)

2

Ignoring questions shouted by the media, Kendall pushed her way through the crowd toward her five-year-old Highlander. She noticed a scuffle taking place at the end of the driveway as a couple of uniforms struggled with a young man fighting to make his way to the house.

She walked over to them. “Detective Halsrud,” she announced. The three of them froze. “What’s going on?”

The young man turned to her. He gasped for breath, the officers still restraining him. “I have to see Sienna!”

One of the officers said, “This guy’s trying to get in the house. Says he’s the girl’s boyfriend.”

The boy, about twenty, looked at Kendall, his dark blue eyes pleading. “Please, just tell me if Sienna’s okay. No one will tell me anything.”

“I’ll handle this,” she said, pissed that the guy hadn’t been brought to their attention. Freeing him from their clutches, Kendall led him over to her car. She opened the back to put the cat carrier inside, forgetting the interior had already been packed to the rooftop with all her earthly belongings. Crap. She kept forgetting her residence problem.

“Hang on a minute.” She walked around the car and set the cat carrier on the passenger seat, where it perched precariously on a stack of old books.

Kendall returned to the boy and opened a small notebook. “Okay, name?”

“Jeremy Dahlgren.” He frowned, looking toward the car. “That’s Malkin, Sienna’s cat,” he whispered.

Kendall looked him over. Girls his age would describe Dahlgren as hot—tall, dark-haired, with a body the result of either a lot of time working out or playing sports. He and the Glausson daughter would have made a handsome pair.

“How long have you and Sienna been dating?”

“Almost two years. I’m going to UWEC now—she’s still a senior in high school, but we’re keeping it together, you know? Is she okay? They’re saying everyone in there is dead.” He choked out the last words.

She realized he must not have arrived until after the bodies had been removed from the house. Kendall dreaded what she had to tell him. “I’m sorry, Jeremy. It’s true. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.” He turned away, his shoulders shaking as he succumbed to grief.

They’d gotten the media’s attention; the vultures were moving in. She put an arm around his shoulder. “Jeremy, I don’t want those reporters to glom onto you. I have to talk to you some more, but you shouldn’t drive. Is there someone who can bring you to the station? If not, I’ll have one of the guys give you a ride.”

Feeling guilty that her car barely had room for a cat, much less a witness, Kendall figured that’s what she got for procrastinating. She’d been essentially homeless for five days and had made little effort to find a place more permanent than the mom and pop motel where she’d been bunking.

Jeremy nodded toward a young woman who appeared at his side. “This is Ruby, a friend of mine from school. She can give me a ride.”

Ruby, who looked enough like Chelsea Glausson to be related, nodded, a cloud of strawberry-blonde curls bobbing with the movement of her head. “Sure, I’ll drive you.” They walked to her car, a rusty old K-car, a model Kendall didn’t remember seeing since the nineties. Watching them from a distance, she realized Ruby’s resemblance to Mrs. Glausson was mostly due to the hair. An attractive girl, but her edges were sharp, nothing light or perky about her. Kendall made a mental note to question her; she might have known Sienna.

The cat complained when Kendall slid into the driver’s seat. “Quit your bitching, cat. Things could be a lot worse; you could have gone home with my partner.”

The cat began howling as the Highlander picked up speed, the force of the feline cries amazing Kendall with their sonorous volume. By the time she reached the station the howls had become infrequent, diminishing to a low, pathetic mewing.

“You must be running out of steam. Hope that’s not catching.” Kendall stepped out of the car. The animal would have to wait it out until she made arrangements for its board.

She found Jeremy Dahlgren in an interview room. When he accepted her offer of a soda, she took advantage of the time alone to take out her phone as she walked to the break room. There were at least five calls from her father. The man didn’t know when to quit. A retired cop, he still had an ear to the force’s grapevine. Since he’d found out about his daughter’s living situation, he hadn’t let up on insisting that she move in with him and his brother Al. The two men had been sharing her father’s bi-level since her mother left more than four years ago.

Kendall entered the break room and punched in her father’s number.

“Kenny, I saw you on the news.”

“Dad, listen—we’ll talk later. I have to ask you a favor. Will you keep a cat for me for a few days?”

“A cat? You don’t even have a place to stay and you got a cat?”

“I didn’t get a freaking cat, Dad.”

He wouldn’t stop talking at her, and Kendall had no time to assuage her father’s concerns about her personal life. He should know how busy she’d be after a multiple homicide. The clock was ticking on the investigation. She might have to cut him off, find some other way to deal with the animal.

Finally, his relentless dialogue ended. “Oh. It’s the family’s cat.”

“Right. You’ll need to pick up cat food and a litter box.” When he hesitated, she said, “I can’t talk now. You want to help me out? Pick up the damn cat.”

Kendall returned to find Jeremy Dahlgren with his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. She passed him a can of soda and sat across from him. “I’m sorry about Sienna, Jeremy. And her family.”

“Thanks.”

“Can you tell me where you were last night?”

He jerked up straight in the chair. “You don’t think I did it?”

“Relax. It’s a formality, but we have to eliminate you as a suspect. Then we can move on and find out who did this. Right now everyone’s considered a person of interest.”

“I was with my study group until about ten. Some of us went out when we were done and had something to eat. I think I got home about midnight. My folks were still up, you can ask them.”

She passed him a pad of lined paper. “I’ll need the names and phone numbers of your friends. And your parents.”

While he wrote, she asked, “Tell me about Sienna. Did she have any enemies, anyone she was having a problem with?”

He stopped writing. “This wasn’t just about her, was it? Her whole family was murdered.”

“Part of finding out who murdered the family is determining whether this was done by someone who had a problem with the Glaussons or even with a single family member. We need to know as much as possible about all of them.” Kendall didn’t mention the infant. They were keeping a lid on the baby situation, at least until they got the results of the analysis on the blood drops found in the baby’s room. For now, there was no reason to let it be known the baby could still be alive.

“So, you’ve been dating Sienna for how long?” Kendall asked,.

“About a year and a half, two years.”

“Is your relationship an exclusive one?”

Jeremy finished his list and passed it over to Kendall. “Yeah. For about a year now. Sienna didn’t have any enemies. Everyone liked her. Her family kind of kept to themselves, you know? I don’t know why anyone would have anything against them.”

“Sienna was an extremely attractive girl. Maybe someone was jealous of her, or another guy resented that she only dated you—“

He stopped her. “No, there was nothing like that. She would have told me about it.”

“How about girlfriends? Anyone she was close to?”

“Sienna had lots of friends. Probably Jennifer and Katelyn were the ones she spent the most time with.”

Kendall turned the paper around and had him add the names of Sienna’s friends and how to contact them. “Did the family have any relatives you know of?”

“Not that I heard about. And I never met any.”

“What about the rest of the family? Are you aware of any problems?”

“No. I told you, they were all nice people.”

Kendall remembered the cat. It might not be too late to intercept her father. “Would you like to take Sienna’s cat?”

Jeremy’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t; I’m allergic to cats. Will he be all right?”

“Don’t worry. If we have to, we’ll find a home for him.”
Kendall passed him one of her cards. “I’ll have to talk to you again, Jeremy. If you think of anything before then, call me. Sometimes what seems like an unimportant detail could be vital information.” As he rose to leave, she asked, “Will you send Ruby in now?”

Ruby Rindsig, her wild curls tamed with an elastic band, took the chair Jeremy vacated. She sat primly, her buttocks nearly on the edge of the seat.

“Why do you want to talk to me?”

Defensive, are we?
“Were you with Jeremy’s study group last night?” A question Kendall already knew the answer to; her name had been on Jeremy’s list.

“I was. We were at one of the guys’ apartment until about ten.”

“Did Jeremy leave at the same time you did?”

Ruby wrinkled her patrician nose. “You don’t think Jeremy could have done this, do you? He loved Sienna. He was like—part of their family.”

“Please. Just answer the question.”

“Yes, Jeremy was with us. Five of us went out for a pizza at the Pizza Hut over by the university. We were all there until close to eleven.”

“Did you know the Glaussons, Ruby?”

“I knew Sienna from school, but not real well. She was a year behind me.”

Kendall explained once more how important it was for them to rule out the possibility that the murders were personal. “Is there anything you can think of that might explain their deaths?”

“No. Like I said, I didn’t really know them.”

Kendall concluded the interview. She didn’t care for Ruby Rindsig. Dahlgren might not be aware of it yet, but she had a feeling the girl wanted to take Sienna’s place with him. In Kendall’s opinion, a woman who moved in on a man right after his girlfriend was murdered couldn’t be trusted.

Whitehouse motioned Kendall to his desk as she came out of the interview room. “Get anything?”

“No. He seems like a good kid. The girl not so much, but she didn’t really know the family. She went to the same school as Sienna, but said she didn’t know her.”

Whitehouse reached in a pocket and frowned at the empty candy wrapper in his hand. “I talked to Mark Glausson’s brother, Graham. He’ll be in tomorrow. Said he and his brother have been ‘on bad terms’ for some time. Wonder what that’s all about. He’s a bigwig at one of the paper mills, lives on Lake Wissota. He didn’t seem too concerned about his brother, but sounded pretty broken up when I told him about the rest of the family. When he comes in, we’ll take him to make the formal IDs; then we can interview him.”

Thinking about the ID process sent a shiver up Kendall’s spine. Definitely not something she looked forward to, but she’d have Whitehouse with her.

“No other relatives?”

“None. The brother said their folks passed about six years ago. Glausson’s wife grew up in the system—parents killed in a car accident when she was six.”

“Any close friends?”

Hank referred to a rumpled notebook. “Yeah, got one name. Betty Ruffalo. A neighbor said she was tight with Mrs. Glausson. Ruffalo runs a pizza joint called Emilio’s on the north side of town. She sounded pretty shaken up. She couldn’t leave yet because one of the employees called in sick tonight. She’ll be free about eleven when things slow down at the restaurant. I told her I’d send you over.”

At the words “pizza joint,” Kendall’s mouth watered. She’d had nothing but coffee all day. She didn’t ask why her partner wouldn’t be accompanying her; it had been a long day, and she’d welcome some time alone. “Sure. I’ll stop over there when I leave.”

“Monson and Burnham were over at St. Luke’s talking to some coworkers of Doctor Glausson. They did an inventory on his floor—no drugs missing and no incidents of missing pharm since Glausson started. Hopefully, that eliminates the doctor/drug angle. Far as the hospital goes, anyway. Everyone liked him, no obvious grudges, yada, yada. Looking more like a random hit.”

“How about a disgruntled patient?”

“No hint of that so far, but they’ll be going back to the hospital tomorrow to question the day crew.”

“Any word from the field?”

“They’re still searching all the areas around the house. Nothing so far and nada from the neighbors. The houses are all pretty far apart in that subdivision, and everyone minds their own business.” Whitehouse rubbed his eyes. “I’m gonna take off pretty soon. Not much more we can do tonight.”

What was Whitehouse thinking? A case like this could keep them going all night. It wasn’t like him to ditch a case, but he’d been openly unenthusiastic about this one. Kendall’s mind crawled with copious lists of things that still needed to be done. For starters, they would have to interview Chelsea Glausson’s coworkers, even though she worked from home. There was an FBI agent who kept calling, someone would have to talk to him, and they needed to have a group meeting. “Before you leave, we should probably get everyone together, go over what we have so far and give out assignments for tomorrow.”

“I’ve already set it up. Tomorrow morning, eight o’clock.”

It irritated Kendall she hadn’t been consulted before he set the meeting. The others assigned to the case would want to hear from them tonight. She realized there was nothing stopping her from interacting with them herself—have a pre-meeting, which could get things organized for the next day. But Kendall would have plenty to do to fill in the time until she went to talk to Chelsea Glausson’s friend.

Ed Lipske called over to her. “Hey, Kenny. Someone’s looking for you.”

Her father stood at the front desk, dressed like he had a date. He usually did. Ignoring a barrage of his questions, she hurried him out to her car and handed him the cat carrier. “He’s all yours.”

“It’s a boy?”

“What? I don’t know what it is. I felt sorry for it, okay? Poor creature, his whole family’s dead.”

“Kenny, I’ll take care of the cat. But what about you? You can’t stay at that Bates Motel forever.”

“It isn’t a Bates Motel, Dad. The place is clean and the owners are fine. It’s temporary. I’ll figure things out.”

“I told you not to move in with that dyke.”

“That’s enough, Dad. I’m an adult. Who I live with or don’t live with is none of your business. I don’t have time for this.” She turned to go back into the station.

“Kenny, wait. Al knows this guy, Morrie Wychen. He owns a bar near and has some apartments upstairs. One of them is empty. He’d love to have a cop living in the place.” He held out a piece of paper. “Here’s the address. At least give it a look-see.”

She took the note, glancing at the address and the name of the bar. Catering to the over-sixty crowd, The Rat Pak was an old-fashioned tavern featuring an antique jukebox that cranked out the music of Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Tony Bennett and other crooners of the ‘40s and ‘50s. Not the kind of place the police got called in to break up bar fights; the clients didn’t have the strength or the energy.