The Heavens May Fall (5 page)

Niki stood at the door of the house with a uniformed officer at her side. Two more officers stood on the sidewalk at the base of a set of steps cut through the retaining wall. One more officer arrived just behind Max. Max signaled for the officers to follow him up the steps to Niki’s position.

“I’ve rung the doorbell and knocked. No answer.”

Max turned to the small group of uniformed officers. “Okay, we’re doing a welfare check here. We found a body this morning; we believe foul play is involved. We’ve identified the victim as Jennavieve Pruitt, and this is her house. We don’t have a warrant, so we’re going in just to make sure that there are no other victims, like maybe a family member in need of help. No going through drawers or cupboards. Just look for bodies. If you see anything else in plain view, call Niki or me, got it?”

The officers all nodded.

“You two,” Max pointed at two of the officers. “Go around back and check the garage and any out-buildings.” Then he addressed the remaining two officers in turn. “You go with Detective Vang, and you with me.”

Everyone drew their weapons. Max tried the handle on the door, and the door clicked open. Unlocked.

“Benjamin Pruitt!” Max yelled. “This is Detective Max Rupert of the Minneapolis Police Department! We’re coming in! Mr. Pruitt, are you here?” Max entered the foyer and turned to the left, his companion officer behind him. Niki turned right.

“Mr. Pruitt, it’s the police!” Niki shouted. “If you’re here, call out. We’re here to help!”

Max’s path took him into a study, a room with mahogany walls and twelve-foot ceilings—a corner office with paintings on the wall, the blurry kind that Max knew to be the work of an impressionist, the kind of painting that his Jenni loved so much but that he never quite understood.

On another wall Max saw a row of family photos, one of Pruitt standing beside Jennavieve. Next to that, a picture clipped from the
Minneapolis Star Tribune
, with Ben Pruitt standing next to Jennavieve. The caption identified the couple as well as a third person in the picture, their daughter, Emma. Max hadn’t even noticed the girl, about eight, maybe nine years old, peeking out from behind her mother’s black evening dress, the girl’s lower lip pulled into a bashful bite.

“They have a daughter,” Max yelled to Niki. “Her name is Emma.”

Max passed through the study to a mudroom and back porch, rain boots, three pair, in a neat row, unused slickers hanging on hooks, the smell of cedar and cloves rising from a wooden bowl of potpourri in the corner. Nothing amiss.

Max continued to call out his presence, as did Niki from the other side of the house. The mudroom connected to a pantry stocked full of canned and dry goods, organized by category, then content, then size. Max passed though the pantry and entered the kitchen at the same time that Niki entered the kitchen from the dining room.

“Anything?”

Niki shook her head no and opened the last unchecked door, which led down to a dank-looking basement. Niki called down. “Mr. Pruitt? Emma? It’s the police. We’re coming down.”

Max motioned and led his officer back to the entry and the staircase leading upstairs. They took the stairs two at a time. The first bedroom they came to had been turned into a storage room, filled with boxes and Christmas ornaments and old exercise equipment. The officer went to check the closet and shook his head no to Max.

Across the hall, Max found Emma’s room, painted in little-girl colors with a canopied bed, its sheets—horses and stars—matching the spread that had been wrapped around her mother at the bookstore. Whoever killed Mrs. Pruitt had used Emma’s bedspread to haul her out of the house.

Max looked around the room. Emma played soccer and had won four trophies, which filled a corner of her dresser. She’d pinned pictures of her and her mother and father on the wall above her bed, pictures taken on a warm beach with a bright-blue ocean in the background. Another set of pictures captured her and her father riding on horseback in a jungle. On her dresser, next to her soccer trophies, stood an eight-by-ten of Emma, a school portrait.

At a minimum, this little girl’s bed was now connected to a murder. It was possible that he might also have a missing child on his hands. He had probable cause to issue an Amber Alert. Max eased the back off the frame and slipped the picture out.

At the end of the hall they came to the master suite. There Max found his crime scene. To the left of the king-sized bed, blood spattered in a broken arc hitting the wall, spraying the keepsakes on a bedside table, and ending in the middle of the high-end Amish-built bed that had been stripped of its bedding. In the middle of the bare mattress, a large towel lay half folded, half wadded. Max pulled latex gloves from his pocket, snapped them on, and lifted a corner of the towel to expose a stain of blood the size of a turkey platter.

Max motioned for the officer to stand still and not move while he checked the bathroom and walk-in closet. He stepped carefully so as not to disturb anything, and he made no move beyond what was absolutely necessary to make sure there were no other bodies. Then he pulled his phone out and called Niki.

“Anything in the basement?”

“Nothing out of place.”

“Come on up here to the master bedroom. I found our crime scene.”

Max instructed the officer beside him to go down and check in with the two officers searching the out-buildings. “Tell them to finish the search for bodies, then secure the perimeter. Stay put until we get a search warrant.”

When Niki entered, Max pointed at the first traces of blood in the carpet between the master bedroom and the master bath. “It starts here. I think your shower theory works. The blood seems to follow a path, as if the victim was stabbed here and was then thrown onto the bed, where she bled out. The bedspread we found on the victim came from the daughter’s bed down the hall.”

“So where’re the husband and daughter?”

“I have a theory, but I’m not a big fan of Ben Pruitt, so I don’t want to jump to any conclusion too quickly. We’ll need a warrant.”

Niki glanced around the room as if taking mental notes for her probable-cause application, then nodded. “I’m on it.”

Max handed her the photo of Emma. “Also, do an Amber Alert. Let’s assume that Pruitt has the child and is running.”

“Kills the wife and takes off with the child?”

“It’s as good a theory as any at this point.”

“But why take the bedding? Why haul the body to the bookstore parking lot?”

“I don’t know. But the best I can come up with is either Pruitt killed his wife and is on the run with Emma, or Pruitt didn’t kill his wife and the odds of us finding another body go way up.”

Chapter 7

Max stationed one officer at the front of the property and another in back, then called Bug to tell him that they found the crime scene. Bug and his partner, Dennis, had just finished combing through the contents of the dumpster behind the bookstore. As expected, they found nothing of interest. They would be at the Pruitt house shortly.

Max went to his squad car, an unmarked Dodge Charger, and slipped a digital recorder out of his jacket pocket. Then he used his phone to search the Internet for Ben Pruitt’s office number. He found it right away. He turned on the digital recorder and dialed.

A woman answered. “Pruitt Law Office, how can I help you?”

“I need to speak to Ben Pruitt.”

“I’m sorry, but Mr. Pruitt isn’t available at the moment. Can I take a message?”

This didn’t surprise Max. He’d have been surprised if Pruitt had been in the office. “Is he at court, or do you expect him back soon?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t discuss Mr. Pruitt’s schedule. Can I take a message, or would you like his voice mail?”

“Can you give me his cell-phone number? It’s vitally important that I reach him.”

“I’m sorry, but I cannot give out his cell-phone number. Let me put you through to his—”

“Miss, my name is Detective Max Rupert of the Minneapolis Police Department. I’m not calling Mr. Pruitt about a case. I have a matter of life and death I’m dealing with, and it involves Mr. Pruitt. I need to reach him immediately. This isn’t a matter to go to voice mail. Do you have the ability to reach him or not?”

“Well, I . . . I could have him call you.”

This came at odds with what Max expected. “So you know where he’s at?”

“I do, but I am not at liberty to say, seeing as I don’t know who you are for sure. Give me your number, and I’ll get a message to him to call you. That’s all I can do.”

Max gave her his number and hung up to wait for a call he didn’t believe would come. After five minutes, his phone rang. Max turned on the recorder again and answered.

“Detective Rupert?”

“Mr. Pruitt?”

“Yes.”

“I need to talk to you, and I’d like to do it in person.”

“No problem. Just stop by my room, number 414 at the Marriott on Michigan Avenue.”

“Michigan Avenue?”

“Yeah. Chicago. So you can either fly down here to chat, or you tell me what this is all about over the phone.”

“Is your daughter with you?”

“What?” The tone in Pruitt’s voice lost its edge of cockiness. “My daughter? What do you mean, ‘is she with me’? No, my daughter isn’t with me. What’s going on? Is Emma missing?”

“Mr. Pruitt, calm down.”

“You’re scaring me, Detective. What’s—”

“Mr. Pruitt, we’re trying to find your daughter. Do you know—”

“Where’s my wife? Let me talk to Jennavieve. She’ll know. She has to know.”

Max searched Pruitt’s voice for any hint of pretense. He sounded genuinely upset and confused. “Mr. Pruitt, your wife isn’t here. We need to know where your daughter might be. Do you have any idea?”

“No. I don’t know where Emma is . . . I . . . I don’t understand.”

“Mr. Pruitt,” Max paused for a second to put the words together in his mind before he spoke them. “Mr. Pruitt, a body was found this morning, deceased. We believe it’s your wife.”

“My . . . but . . . I . . . I can’t breathe. Give me a second. I just need to . . . breathe.”

“Do you have any idea where Emma might be? Any at all?”

“My God. Detective Rupert, you have to find her. You have to find Emma.”

“Where could we look? We need a place to start.”

“What happened? When did she go missing? I . . . I have to get home.”

“Mr. Pruitt, we’re doing all we can to find your daughter. Does your daughter have a cell phone?”

“No. We were going to get her one for her birthday in October. What happened to Jennavieve? How’d she . . . I mean . . . are you sure?”

“We’ll need you to make a final ID, but we believe it’s her. I can’t discuss any more right now.”

“I’m on my way. I’ll catch the next flight back. If you hear anything, I mean anything, you’ll call me, right?”

“Sure, but in the meantime, if we could look through your house, maybe there’s a note or something else that will tell us where Emma is.”

“Absolutely. You can search anywhere you like. Do what you need to do to find my daughter.”

Max disconnected with Pruitt, tucked the recorder back into his pocket, and called Niki. “How’s the warrant coming?”

“I’m just getting ready to run it over to the courthouse.”

“Add this to the probable cause: ‘The victim’s husband was located by phone, but the victim’s daughter is still unaccounted for. The victim’s husband claimed to not know the whereabouts of their daughter.’”

“You believe him, Max?”

Max thought about the fear he heard in the man’s words. Pruitt was either genuine, or very good at playing the part. “I’m holding off making a judgment right now. He seemed shaken up. He even granted consent to search his house.”

“We have consent? So we don’t need a warrant?”

“Get the warrant anyway. You don’t know this guy. I don’t want him pulling his consent and screwing with us. Also, get an order to seize his business computer. He’ll probably claim attorney-client privilege, but let’s secure it so he can’t delete anything. We’ll let the County Attorney figure out what we can look at later.”

“You think Pruitt’s a good bet for this?”

“He says he’s in Chicago, and he sounds like he’s freaking out about his missing daughter, but that could all be bullshit. He could be on the level, but the guy’s a snake. Let’s be extra careful on this one. I don’t want to step into any traps.”

Chapter 8

The open front door of the Pruitt home was thick enough to stand up to a medieval battering ram and smelled of wood oil. Max stood just outside of the door and watched as Bug and Dennis inspected the runners of the mansion’s elegant stairway for footprints. Niki arrived with the search warrant just about the time that Bug gave them a nod that it was okay to enter the house. Max and Niki slipped cloth booties over their shoes, put on gloves, and made their way upstairs to the master bedroom.

Nothing in the room gave the impression of a fight. Books on the nightstand stood next to a water glass and a charging cell phone. Knickknacks, a jewelry box, and pictures on the dresser appeared orderly. The bed, with its missing sheets and bloody towel, held the only signs that something bad took place in the room. Max waited for Bug to snap a few pictures of the towel in the middle of the king-sized mattress before picking it up and inspecting it. He found three long strands of red hair matted into the blood in the towel. They were consistent in both color and length with the hair he’d seen wrapped around Jennavieve Pruitt’s face that morning.

Max pulled out his digital recorder and began dictating notes for his report. “Three strands of red hair were matted within the area of dried blood on the towel found on the bed in the master bedroom. These strands appear to be visually consistent with the hair of the deceased, Jenni Pruitt.”

“Jennavieve, you mean,” Niki said. She was on her hands and knees looking under the bed.

“What?”

“You called the deceased ‘Jenni.’ Her name is Jennavieve.”

“Did I say Jenni?”

“I’m pretty sure.” Niki reached under the bed, her arm buried up to her shoulder, her eyes focused on something at the end of her reach. “Hey, Bug, come get a picture of this.”