The Bitter Season (33 page)

“I don’t have anything
more to say to you people,” Diana said as she came out of her apartment and locked the deadbolt with a key. She was dressed for yoga in black leggings and a sloppy gray top hanging off one shoulder, revealing a lacy turquoise bra strap. Despite the damp chill of the day, she wore no coat.

“You don’t want to give us your side of the story?” Taylor asked.

“My side of what story? You were there yesterday. You saw what happened.”

“I mean later, with Charlie.”

She narrowed her eyes and swept a messy chunk of hair behind one ear. “What about Charlie?”

“Come on, Diana,” Taylor said. “I saw him last night.”

“I’m not speaking to Charlie. I don’t know what he might have said to you.”

“He didn’t have to say anything. The cuts and bruises spoke for themselves.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did he have some kind of accident?”

“Yeah, he walked into some fists.”

“What happened to your hands?” Kovac asked, looking at the small cuts and the puffy redness of swollen knuckles.

Immediately she crossed her arms to hide them. “Nothing. This weather gives me chapped skin.”

“Funny, beating the shit out of someone gives the exact same results.”

She had the nerve to look incredulous. “Are you accusing me of hitting Charlie? That’s ridiculous! I’m a woman. I don’t go around beating people up. That’s Charlie’s department. Ken had to go get an X-ray on the way home yesterday.”

“You know, I think maybe we should go downtown to discuss this,” Kovac suggested. “We’ve got an assault victim to consider. It’s serious business.”

“Did Charlie tell you I hit him?” she asked. “He wouldn’t.”

“Because he’s afraid of you?” Taylor asked.

“Charlie loves me.” She said it like it was a challenge.
I dare you to tell me he doesn’t love me
.

“Yeah, well,” Kovac said, “live a few more years and you’ll figure out that doesn’t mean what you thought it did.”

“What does that mean?” Diana demanded. “Are you arresting me?”

“No, no. We just have a few questions for you,” Taylor said.

“I’m going to be late for my yoga class,” she complained, and pushed past them, headed for the front door of the building.

Taylor hustled ahead to hold the door for her, and then stepped out on the sagging front porch and cut off her angle to the steps down to the sidewalk. She gave him a nasty look.

“We need to have you take a look at a photograph,” he said.

“You know this guy,” Kovac said, showing her the photo of Gordon Krauss.

“No.”

“Oh, you misunderstand,” he said. “I wasn’t asking a question. You
know
this guy.”

“I do not!”

“Diana, we have a witness who puts you flirting with this guy at your parents’ house the day they had some repairs done.”

“He’s lying!”

“He’s got no reason to lie.”

“So? People lie just to lie.”

“Some people.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t remember him, Sarge,” Taylor said. “She’s a beautiful woman. I’m sure Diana has guys flirting with her every day.”

Kovac watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her demeanor toward Taylor instantly softened at the compliment. She couldn’t help herself. Though she was clearly annoyed with the situation in general, she gave him a little smile, looking up at him through batting lashes.

“You’ve got a point,” Kovac said. “My apologies, Ms. Chamberlain, if I seemed abrupt. We’re all running on a lack of sleep trying to solve the murder of your parents.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about it. I’ve told you a hundred times.”

“Let’s try this again,” Kovac suggested, holding up the photograph. “This is Gordon Krauss. You met him while you were a participant at Rising Wings, an outpatient drug rehab on the North Side. You met him again when you were at your parents’ house the day they had repairs done. He is now wanted for questioning in the murder of your mother and father. Is any of this ringing a bell?”

“Are you saying I had something to do with him?” Diana asked, her face twisted with disgust. “That’s just gross.”

“He didn’t try to ask you any questions about the security system at the house that day?” Taylor asked.

“No,” she snapped, done with it. “I have to go. Get out of my way.”

She made a move to go forward. Taylor blocked her.

Kovac looked around at the sorry old house with the peeling brown paint and ill-fitting aluminum replacement windows, the porch cluttered with students’ bicycles and a trash can full of beer bottles.

“I suppose you’ll be moving out of this dump and back to the house as soon as we release the scene,” he said. “Assuming you inherit.”

She looked offended. “Of course we inherit. We’re their children. Why wouldn’t we?”

“Well, your dad was pretty fed up with you. He spoke to his lawyer on Monday,” he lied. “Of course, the lawyer can’t tell us what it was about, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.”

“And we know for a fact he was donating his collection to the university ASAP to secure the promotion you were trying to keep him from,” Taylor said. “So that’s off the table as far as inheritance.”

“You don’t know any of that.”

Kovac shrugged. “Maybe they died before the paperwork was done, but yeah, I’d say you were getting chucked off the gravy train, sweetheart.

“But maybe Charlie will throw you a bone,” he suggested. “He was the good kid, right? Always trying to pull your pretty butt out of the fire. You might want to reconsider using him for a punching bag. Maybe take up a career in the UFC instead. Put your rage in the cage. Earn a paycheck doing it. You’ll need it.”

“I’m leaving now. Namaste,” she said directly to him, enunciating each syllable with venom. Her eyes were nearly white with anger.

This time when she started for the stairs, Taylor stepped aside and let her go. They watched as she dashed across the street, hiking the strap of her yoga mat up on her shoulder. She got into her car and pulled away, tires hissing on the wet pavement.

“Namaste,” Taylor said.

Kovac gave him a look. “What the hell does that mean, anyway?”

“In this case I think it’s yoga for ‘Fuck you.’”

*   *   *

F
ROM
D
IANA
’
S RAMSHACKLE
STUDENT HOUSING
in Dinkytown they drove south to Charlie’s neat, nondescript apartment building. He didn’t answer his door, even though they knocked hard enough to
rouse a neighbor from down the hall. His car was gone from its designated parking spot. Taylor tried calling. The call went straight to voice mail.

“He could be out making funeral arrangements,” Taylor offered as they went back to the car. “Or getting a CAT scan.”

“Where did he say he worked?” Kovac asked, settling into the passenger’s seat. He was getting used to being chauffeured. Getting soft in his old age.

Taylor consulted the notes he’d made in his phone. “Obern and Phipps, family law. But he didn’t go back to work with that face. I’d say he’s feeling like a used piñata today.”

“No, but let’s give them a call. He said he was online working the night of the murders. Maybe they can corroborate, and we can tick off a box on our list.”

Taylor called information for the number and then put his phone on speaker. A receptionist answered with a very professional “Obern and Phipps, Family Law. How may I direct your call?”

“This is Detective Michael Taylor with the Minneapolis Police Department. I’m calling regarding one of your employees, Charles Chamberlain. May I speak with his supervisor?”

“One moment please.”

Classical music came on the line to fill the time until the call was transferred. A woman’s voice broke in.

“This is Gloria Obern. How may I help you?”

Taylor went through the introduction again. “I need to ask you a couple of questions about an employee, Charles Chamberlain.”

“Oh, poor Charlie,” the woman said. “We all feel terrible about what happened to his parents. He’s beside himself, the poor kid.”

“Have you spoken to him recently?”

“No. We’ve been e-mailing. He’s a very quiet, private guy, but a terrific hard worker. I’ve never had such a thorough person doing my research. If there’s a scrap of information to be had anywhere on the Internet, Charlie will track it down. I’m going to miss him.”

“Excuse me?”

“Charlie e-mailed me his resignation last night. It was the first thing in my in-box this morning. Of course I’ll try to argue him out of it. He can have an indefinite leave of absence, as much time as he needs. I tried to call him, but it went straight to voice mail. I suppose he’s busy making arrangements.”

A sense of urgency spiked through Kovac. He grabbed the radio mike and called Dispatch even while Taylor was concluding his conversation with Charlie Chamberlain’s boss.

“. . . I need a BOLO on a Charles Chamberlain.” He gave the physical description as he fumbled through the pages of his little notebook. “. . . driving a gray late-model Toyota Camry, Minnesota plates Charles Ida Victor eight-seven-seven. He’s a suicide risk.”

He looked at Taylor.

“His parents are murdered, his sister beats him up, his inheritance is in question, and he won’t answer his phone. How are your door-kicking skills, Junior?”

“Let’s do it.”

They hustled back to the building. Kovac swore impatiently as Taylor punched buttons, hoping someone in the building would let them in again. Once inside, Taylor took the stairs two at a time. Kovac took the elevator. As he stepped into the hall on the fourth floor, Taylor was shattering the door of Charlie Chamberlain’s apartment with a well-placed kick. The neighbor two doors down stuck his head out, wide-eyed.

Taylor was already rushing inside the apartment, calling, “Charlie! It’s Detective Taylor! Are you here? Charlie?”

Silence.

“Holy shit,” Kovac murmured, looking around as he stepped through the door.

The neat and tidy midcentury modern sofa and chairs had been destroyed, cut open, the stuffing pulled out, and strewn everywhere. Lamps lay broken, the shades smashed. Down the short hall, the
bedroom was in a similar state, the mattress and bedding shredded, the mirrored glass closet doors shattered and hanging askew off their track.

Kovac stuck his head in the bathroom, where the mirror over the sink was cracked into an elaborate spiderweb of lines. “There’s blood all over the sink in here.”

“There’s some on the door frame,” Taylor said. He picked a suit jacket off the floor and held it up. It had been cut and ruined. “What the hell happened here?”

Kovac took another look around at the chaotic destruction.

“At the risk of being politically incorrect,” he said, “this has Crazy Bitch written all over it. Get on the horn to the hospitals. See if Charlie Chamberlain made it to one of them.”

“I’ve been checking the
homeless shelters and soup kitchens all over the area, asking about Jeremy Nilsen,” Seley said. “A couple of the places downtown thought they remembered the name. One that tries to keep track of return customers had him on their roster, but not recently.”

Nikki sat back in her chair and rubbed at the tension in the back of her neck. She had driven past Donald Nilsen’s house on the way back from Evi Burke’s. The guys sitting on surveillance reported that Nilsen had not returned. Where the hell was he?

“I’ve got two missing Nilsens, an uncooperative witness, and I talked a woman into trying to kill herself,” she muttered. “I’m batting a thousand here.”

“Don’t forget multiple threats of lawsuits,” Seley added.

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“You shouldn’t sell yourself short.”

“Where’s Mr. Congeniality?” Nikki asked, nodding in the direction of Grider’s empty desk.

Seley rolled her eyes. “He made a grand announcement that he was going to try to help smooth things over with the Duffy family.”

“Oh, right,” Nikki said sarcastically. “You watch. He’s going to try to yank this case out from under me, so it can go nowhere for another quarter of a century. Asshole.”

“Then we’d better get it solved before he can make that happen,”
Seley said, getting up from her desk and scooping up a file folder. “I printed off a stack of the Gordon Krauss photos in case he’s our man. Let’s go check out these places where Nilsen might have been seen.”

*   *   *

F
OR A CITY WITH
months of inhospitable weather, Minneapolis seemed to have more than its share of homelessness. The truth of that pressed down on Nikki’s heart like an anvil. And the fact that too many of the men living on the street had been discarded after serving their country made her angry.

At lunchtime on a raw, wet, cold November day, the line for lunch snaked outside the Daily Bread mission and partway down the street. Sullen men in dirty clothes hunched their shoulders against the wind and avoided eye contact while they waited for a hot bowl of beef stew.

“Minnesota has an aggressive initiative to eliminate homelessness among veterans,” the director of the shelter told them. Leonard Westin was a smallish balding man in his forties, with glasses and a polite expression. “We’ve reduced our numbers by forty-seven percent since 2010. But it’s still a problem, especially for soldiers coming back with significant psychiatric issues. If they end up on the street with paranoia, PTSD, drug problems, any and all of the above—that’s a difficult situation. The programs are voluntary. We can’t force people to accept help. And when a person doesn’t trust anyone, or their primary objective in life has become scoring crack, that person isn’t coming in here asking to sign up.”

They stood in the hall between the administrative offices and the dining room of the shelter, where the moods of the clientele had improved with calories, and conversations rose and fell and were interspersed with occasional laughter.

Seley held out the photograph of Gordon Krauss to the director. “This is the man we’re searching for. Does he look familiar?”

Westin squinted at the picture, frowning, searching his memory. “Possibly. We get so many men through here, it’s tough to remember faces unless they’re regulars. Who is he?”

“He’s calling himself Gordon Krauss,” Nikki said. “But he was found to have half a dozen IDs in his possession, one of them belonging to a Jeremy Nilsen. We’re trying to determine if the two might be one and the same.”

“I know we’ve had a Jeremy Nilsen come through here,” he said. “I found the name several times in our roster from the last year. We try to keep track as much as we can. If we don’t, who will? But I couldn’t say I remember what he looked like. He wasn’t a regular, and according to the list, he hasn’t been in for several months.”

“Have you heard anything about guys getting their IDs stolen?”

“It happens. Life on the street is no picnic. Men get rolled for their drugs, for their pocket money, because they looked at someone the wrong way. Most of them don’t want to deal with the police, so crime goes unreported. It’s a transient population, so if we stop seeing a face, we assume they moved on, not that something happened to them.”

Nikki sighed, frustrated.

“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. That’s the situation we’re dealing with.”

“Thanks anyway,” Seley said. “Do you mind if we show this around the room? Maybe someone will recognize him.”

“By all means, and good luck.”

They drifted up and down the rows of tables, trying to get people to look closely at the photograph of Gordon Krauss. Most weren’t interested, glancing at the picture and passing it on, wanting nothing to do with cops. Then one man looked at the picture and sat up a little straighter.

“Do you know that guy?” Nikki put the man in his late fifties. With curly gray hair that had receded halfway back on his skull, he
had the regal profile of an African king. The name on his army jacket read,
KUMAR
.

“Yeah. He’s a bad dude,” Kumar said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Dude hit my friend Martin in the head with a hammer!”

“When was this?”

“Couple months ago. Down by the river. There’s a camp down there in the summer. Some guys were passing a pipe. This guy brought some substances, if you get my drift.”

“This guy brought drugs to the party?”

“Yes, ma’am. And when they was all high—I don’t partake, myself—this guy pulled a hammer and hit Martin a couple of licks in the head. BAM! BAM! Just like that!” he said, pounding a fist on the table.

“Martin had cashed his benefits check that day and bought some liquor. It was a nice party up until the hammer came out,” he said wistfully.

“Do you think he was going to rob your friend? Or was he just freaking out?”

“Oh yeah,” he nodded. “I had my eye on him. He was hardly smoking. He was a man with a plan, for sure. We got more selective about our party guests after that.”

“And what happened then?”

“Cops heard the commotion and pulled up on the bank. Everybody went their own way.”

“Did you ever see this guy again after that?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Do you remember his name?”

He gave her a look. “We’re not big on names at the parties.”

“What happened to your friend?”

“He had seventeen staples in his head and went deaf in one ear.”

“That’s rough. I’m sorry.”

“Well, I look on the bright side,” Kumar said with a smile. “It knocked some sense into him.”

“Thanks for speaking up,” Nikki said. “You’ve been a big help.”

“Despite all outward appearances,” he said, “I always try to be a good citizen.”

*   *   *

“S
O
, J
EREMY
N
ILSEN IS
either a thug rolling homeless guys or a homeless guy who got rolled by a thug,” Nikki said as they walked back to their car, leaning into the wind and spitting rain.

“And there were five other IDs found in Krauss’s room,” Seley reminded her.

“Call the morgue and see if they’ve had any unclaimed John Does that match Jeremy Nilsen’s description—or any of the men on those other IDs—in the last six months,” she said. “Whoever this guy is, he could be worse news than anyone imagined.”

Her phone announced a text message with a bright
ping!
She dug it out of her pocket and looked.

“We’ll find out soon,” she said, turning the screen to show Tippen’s message:
GOT HIM
.