The Heavens May Fall (6 page)

Bug got on his belly and snapped four shots of whatever it was that Niki found. Then Niki pulled out a second towel, white with splotches of blood, in long oblique patches, staining half it. Niki turned the towel sideways as if she were going to wrap it around her body, and the blood stains matched up to where the blood would have spurted out of Jennavieve Pruitt’s neck.

Max pointed at the towel in Niki’s hands. “She used that one to dry her body and this one for her hair,” he said.

Niki sniffed her towel and nodded. “Body wash.” They put their towels into paper evidence bags.

“Detectives?” Bug had stopped taking pictures and was looking at a wooden display case about the size of a cereal box centered on the fireplace mantle. Niki and Max joined him. The mahogany shadow box had a blue felt interior that appeared to have been molded to hold a missing, ceremonial dagger. Max could tell from the shape of the mold that the dagger’s blade was long and angled on both sides to suggest a double-edged blade. The handle, also long with a walnut-sized pommel at the end, gave the impression that the knife was more of a decorative piece than an actual weapon. The cross guard, the piece of metal that keeps the hand from sliding from the handle to the blade, curved toward the blade almost in a perfect
C
. An inscription on a gold plate attached to the bottom of the display read: “FOR CARVING OUT MORE PROTECTED LAND.”

“Get a picture of that with measurements and send it to my phone. I want to show this to Maggie. Also check for prints. If that missing knife turns out to be our murder weapon, someone had to hold the box to pull it out.”

Max went back to the bed and followed the blood trail, which started at the side of the bed and led to a bathroom larger than Max’s bedroom, complete with a hot tub, a double-sink vanity, and a tiled shower big enough to host a small party. The floor was dry, but a washcloth wadded up on the floor was still damp. Niki watched from the doorway of the bathroom as Max narrated his thoughts.

“Mrs. Pruitt takes a shower . . . the washcloth is still damp, so sometime last night fits with what Maggie said. She wraps a towel around her body and another around her hair. She . . .” he walked to the vanity, where a bottle of vanilla body lotion lay on its side, and next to it, a hair dryer and night cream. “She puts body lotion on her legs, maybe some night cream on her face. But she doesn’t dry her hair.”

“She’s interrupted,” Niki said. “She hears something.”

Max nodded agreement. “She walks into the bedroom to check.” Max walked to the spot where the blood trail began, just past a corner that separated the bathroom and walk-in closet from the rest of the bedroom. He stood facing the bedroom door. “She turns the corner and sees her killer. The killer stabs her in the neck. Blood hits the wall as she is moving toward the bed. We have blood on the towel around her body. The towel falls to the floor, and she falls onto the bed?”

Niki looked at the trail of blood spanning about seven feet and shook her head. “Maybe the force of the blow sent her to the bed, or maybe the killer pushed her there. She didn’t have defensive wounds, so no struggle.”

“She was either surprised, or she knew her attacker. Either way, the attack happened quickly. There’s very little blood on the floor. She’d have been pushed onto the bed right away. She lands with her throat in the middle of the mattress and bleeds out. The towel around her body falls off or is pulled off and gets kicked under the bed. The killer lets her bleed out here and then wraps her in Emma’s bedspread to haul her to the bookstore.” Max crossed his arms over his chest, bringing his right hand up to grip his chin in contemplation. “But why take her to the bookstore?”

“And where’s the bedding from this bed?” Niki asked. She stepped into the walk-in closet. “It’s not up here anywhere, and it’s not in the laundry room. It looks like Jennavieve Pruitt was getting ready for bed, so logic suggests that the bed was already made.”

“And where is Emma?” Max asked. “No sign of a struggle. The killer took Emma’s bedspread, but the rest of her room is untouched. If she was taken, where’s the fight?”

“She left voluntarily?”

“Left with someone who’s carrying her dead mother wrapped in a blanket?”

Niki, who’d been looking down at the trail of blood in the carpet, suddenly jerked her head up. “Her bed was made.” Niki skirted past Max and into Emma’s room. “Look. Her sheets are still tucked in. Emma didn’t go to bed here last night. If Jennavieve Pruitt was killed within a couple hours of midnight, Emma would have likely been in bed. She didn’t sleep here last night.”

“And, if she wasn’t here, Mrs. Pruitt would have known where she was.” Max went to the nightstand and picked up the cell phone.

Bug, who still stood beside the knife case, piped up. “You’ll mess up the metadata if you turn that on.”

“We have a missing child.” Max said. “I suspect that Forensics will forgive me this once.” He turned on the phone and saw that it was not password-protected. He also saw an icon for text messages. He touched it and read the most recent text, which came from Ben Pruitt.

At 5:30 p.m. Ben Pruitt texted: “Going out with some folks from conference. Tell Emma I love her and give her kiss good night for me.”

At 5:35 p.m. the reply from Jennavieve Pruitt: “OK.”

“This makes it sound like Emma was going to be here all night,” Max said. “Someone’s plans changed?”

Max was about to dig into older text messages when a uniformed officer called up from the bottom of the steps. “Detective Rupert, there’s a little girl out front. Says her name is Emma Pruitt and that she lives here.”

Chapter 9

Max hurried down the steps, stopping briefly at the front door to remove his latex gloves and booties. At the bottom of the outside steps, standing on the street curb, was a little girl talking to a female officer. Max took a couple deep breaths, not wanting to alarm the child, and strolled down the walk to her.

Emma looked like her picture, strawberry-blonde hair, cut with bangs, skinny arms and legs, gangly and awkward in her stance. She glanced back and forth between the crime-scene tape and the female officer until she saw Max walking down the steps, then her attention turned to him and stayed there.

“Hi, are you Emma?”

The girl nodded her head, but said nothing.

“I’m Max. I’m a police officer.” He slid his jacket aside to show her the gold shield in his belt. “How are you?”

Emma shrugged her shoulders and glanced again at the crime-scene tape behind Max.

“We’re here to meet with your father. He was worried about you.”

“He’s in Chicago,” she said.

“I know. I talked to him on the phone. He didn’t know where you were, so he called us. Where did you just come from?”

Emma pointed up the block and said, “Catie’s house.”

“Does Catie live up that way?”

Emma nodded.

“Is Catie a grown-up, or one of your friends?”

“Friend.” Emma’s eyes danced from Max to the officer then to the house and all of its activities. “Where’s my mom?”

“Do you know if Catie’s mother is home? I’d like to talk to her. Could you show me where she lives?”

Emma looked at the female officer then at the ground. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

The female officer went down on one knee so that she could be at Emma’s level. “That’s right, sweetie. It’s important that you be very careful, but we’re the police. We protect little girls like you.”

Max had seen the female officer around, but he couldn’t remember her name, so he glanced at her name tag. Sandra Percell. “Emma, would you feel better if Officer Percell walked with us?”

Emma nodded.

“Okay. Why don’t you show us where Catie lives?”

Emma walked up the block, the way she’d pointed earlier. As they walked, Max sent a text to Ben Pruitt.
Emma is okay. Was at neighbor’s house
.

Two blocks later, they approached the front gate of a house that looked like a grown-up version of a doll’s house, two stories of blue siding and white trim capped with cedar-shake shingles. The place even had a turret. Emma led them to the front door, and Max rang the bell. The woman answering the door froze halfway through the motion, a look of fear taking over her features.

“Oh my. Is something wrong?” The woman looked back and forth between Max and Officer Percell.

“Everything’s fine, ma’am. Would it be alright if Emma stayed here for a little while?”

“Of course.” The woman opened the door wider to let Emma pass. “Catie’s upstairs in her room. Go on up.” Emma started running up the stairs but paused near the top to have one last look at Max. Her expressionless face couldn’t hide her understanding. She knew something was wrong. Max could see it in her eyes. She knew he lied to her. Max held her stare for all of two seconds before he looked away and she disappeared up the stairs.

“I know I probably should have walked Emma home,” the woman said. “But she’s ten, and that’s old enough I think. When I was ten, I was babysitting and everything, so I didn’t think there’d be anything wrong—”

“Ma’am, can we talk . . . somewhere that we won’t be overheard?”

“Um . . . sure. Come on in.”

Max nodded to Percell, who nodded back and left to return to the Pruitt house. Catie’s mother led the way through the house and out the back. She brought Max to a gazebo painted the same blue and white as the house and that overflowed with an array of flowers. On the gazebo they took seats opposite one another.

“My name is Detective Max Rupert.” He held out his hand and the woman took it.

“I’m Terry Kolander,” she said. “Am I in trouble?”

“Not at all, Ms. Kolander. I’m going to tell you some things that I need you to keep to yourself for a little while. Can we have that understanding?”

“Of course. I used to be a nurse. I understand confidentiality.”

“That’s good.” Max leaned forward in his chair so that he could talk in a hushed tone. “Did Emma spend the night here last night?”

“Yes.”

“What time did she come over?”

Terry thought for a moment. “A little after five. Jennavieve called and asked if I could watch Emma for the night. She said she had something she had to attend to. I said yes, of course. Catie and Emma are best friends.”

“Did Mrs. Pruitt say what she was going to do last night?”

Terry raised a hand to her lips. “Has something happened to Jennavieve?”

“Was it a business meeting or something personal?”

“Oh, no. I mean, um . . . I don’t think she said. She just said . . . she said ‘Can you watch Emma for the night? I have . . .’” Terry furrowed her brow in thought. “‘I have some things to take care of.’ That’s what she said. I just assumed it had something to do with her foundation.”

“Her foundation?”

“Yes. Jennavieve is the director of a foundation that restores wetlands. She’s always having meetings in the evenings. She was in the paper not too long ago. Her foundation won a big court case.” Terry stopped talking, as if a new thought kicked its way to the forefront of her consciousness. She locked her eyes on Max’s. “What happened? Why are you here?”

“When’s the last time you saw Mrs. Pruitt?”

“Detective Rupert, what happened to Jennavieve?”

Max dropped his head, knowing that his conversation would not continue until she had an answer. He raised his head back up, looked her in the eye, and said, “We found a body this morning. We believe it to be the body of Mrs. Pruitt.”

Terry gasped and looked toward the house, to an upstairs window where two young girls stood, watching the gazebo.

“I need you to be calm, Ms. Kolander,” Max said, drawing her attention back to him. We haven’t had an ID of the body, and we’re waiting for Mr. Pruitt to get here from Chicago. I’m hoping you can watch Emma until we get things squared away.”

“Absolutely.” Ms. Kolander’s eyes began to tear up.

“And I need you to act like nothing has happened. If it turns out to be Mrs. Pruitt, we’ll let her father decide how best to let Emma know.”

“Sure.” Terry slid a fingernail under each eye, catching the forming tears in the corners and wiping them on her pleated shorts.

“What can you tell me about Mrs. Pruitt?”

Terry took a breath to settle her emotions before answering. “She’s incredible. I know she comes from a wealthy background. Her family owns a bunch of businesses. I think they made most of their money in paper milling. They own a ton of land up north and a handful of paper mills. But Jennavieve isn’t the corporate type. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s a powerful woman, on the Board of Governors for the Minneapolis Club, a big donor at the Guthrie and Hennepin Theater Trust. She’s very involved with just about every important local charity, but her baby was the Adler Wetland Preservation Foundation.”

“Adler?”

“That’s her maiden name. She devoted a lot of time to that foundation.”

“And what about Mr. Pruitt? What can you tell me about him?”

“We weren’t close friends with the Pruitts. Not that we disliked them. People live busy lives. We’d see them around the neighborhood, they seemed nice. They came out a couple weeks ago for the Fourth of July. We have a little get-together every year. Nothing fancy, just drinks and steaks.”

“How’d they seem?”

Terry scrunched her face—the look of a woman who had a thought but wasn’t sure about sharing it.

“Anything you can tell us might be helpful,” Max said.

“Well, it’s probably nothing, but when they were here, Ben was being very attentive to Jennavieve.”

“Was that unusual?”

“I don’t know if it was unusual . . . I don’t know them well enough. He just seemed . . . I don’t know . . . maybe ‘overly charming’ might be how I’d describe it. He can be a charming man to begin with, but that day he was floating around here like Gene Kelly. Kept asking Jennavieve if he could refill her drink or get her a napkin, that kind of thing.”

“And how was Jennavieve?”

“She was her normal self. Between the two of them, she’s the serious one. At one point, Ben found an oleander blossom that one of the kids must have broken off, and he brought it over and put it in Jennavieve’s hair. I said ‘Wasn’t that sweet.’ And Jennavieve said ‘It’s all for show.’ I wasn’t sure how to take that. I mean, Jennavieve can be so serious. I didn’t know if she was joking or not.”