Unidentified Woman #15 (22 page)

“Yes, we have the money,” Mitch said.

He stared at Craig as if wondering what he had missed. Craig gestured with his head at Herzog, who had moved to the mouth of the garage. I did a little gesturing myself, and Herzog retreated back to the rental van. Craig let out a nervous sigh.

“Just a sec,” Mitch said.

He and Craig returned to their own vehicle and popped the trunk. At the same time, I closed the door to the storage unit and locked it. I turned from the unit and crossed the parking lot, key in hand. Mitch slammed the trunk lid closed and started toward me. He was carrying a wad of bills held together by a thick rubber band.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Dyson,” he said.

Above us on the highway, I watched a car slow until it came nearly to a stop.

“Get down,” I yelled.

At the same time, I grabbed Mitch by the shoulder and pulled him to the asphalt.

Craig was standing next to Mitch’s vehicle. He turned to see what I had been looking at.

Muzzle flashes appeared in the rear passenger window of the car on the hill, followed almost simultaneously by the pop-pop-pop of a semiautomatic.

Craig dove behind the vehicle even as the bullets tore into its body and splashed off the asphalt.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Herzog crouching next to the rental like a basketball coach anxious to see how well his team executed the play he had just choreographed.

I pulled out the nine-millimeter SIG Sauer that had been holstered to my right hip, but that was mostly for show.

The shooting stopped as abruptly as it began.

The car on the highway sped off.

A kind of unhealthy silence fell across the parking lot.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

Mitch hopped to his feet and dashed across the lot to Craig’s side.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Craig rose slowly, brushing the slush off his knees. At the same time, I turned toward my own partner.

“You okay, Herzog?” I said.

He grunted his reply.

“Who were those guys?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Mitch said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“This had nothing to do with us.”

“What are you talking about? You get a drive-by at your garage sale Sunday and now this? Of course it’s all about you.”

“No one knew we were going to be here,” Mitch insisted. “Just Craig and I knew we were going to be here.”

“Then you must have been followed, because it sure as hell wasn’t me.”

Mitch and Craig stared at each other as if they were running different equations yet coming up with the same solution.

“Gentlemen,” I said. “I told you before I didn’t want your crap coming back on me.”

“We can fix this.”

“Fix it, then, because if you don’t, I’ll find someone else to do business with.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, right. Give me my money.”

Mitch handed over the wad of bills. I gave him the key to the storage unit in return.

“Is your car good to drive?” I asked.

Mitch got behind the wheel and started it up while Craig looked beneath it.

“I don’t see anything leaking,” he said.

“I’ll call you later,” I said.

Craig climbed into the vehicle, and he and his partner drove off. I drifted back to the rental. As I did, I counted out a number of bills from the wad Mitch had given me.

“Was that necessary?” Herzog asked.

“I want to keep them motivated.” I handed the bills to him. “For your friends.”

“Much obliged.”

“Tell them the next time I say use fucking blanks they had better use fucking blanks.”

“They couldn’t find any.”

“What do you mean they couldn’t find any?”

“No one carries them. I can get you armor-piercing rounds for a .50 caliber machine gun, but man, go into a gun shop and ask for blanks sometime. Man looks at you like you’re up to no good.”

TWELVE

I don’t like funerals. But then, who does? Funerals for young people are the worst. It’s as if we’re not only burying them, we’re burying the future—theirs and ours. We’re interring everything that might have been. Oliver Braun’s parents, for example. They weren’t just saying good-bye to their son, they were laying to rest all the hopes and dreams they’d ever had for him, as well as the daughter-in-law they’d never meet, the grandchildren they’d never see, the continuation of their line, the remembrance of their name, the world made better by their heirs. The fact he died not of accident or illness but by the hand of an unknown other only made it more unbearable. There was no celebration of life. Only a deep mourning of loss. And the question—why?

There was no graveside ceremony, which would have been unendurable in the polar vortex that enveloped the Twin Cities—yes, another one. Oliver’s parents chose cremation instead, so following the church service, mourners gathered in the church’s large community room, where an early lunch was served mostly by relatives glad to be doing something besides just sitting there feeling sad.

Nearly everyone present had been drawn to the funeral out of love for Oliver or some other personal connection, and most embraced the attitude that if you were a friend of his then you were a friend of mine, at least for the morning. At the same time, cliques formed. Close family members settled in one area, extended family in another, and friends, classmates, and co-workers in yet others. A group of college-age kids banded together around a cafeteria table far from Oliver’s parents as if they wanted to grieve their loss but didn’t want to share their profound pain. I took my plate of sliced ham on a bun, potato salad, and three-bean casserole and sidled up next to them. No one questioned my presence in word or manner. Perhaps they thought I was one of Oliver’s college professors. Conversation whirled around me.

“I can’t believe it’s so cold.”

“I guess the medical examiner wouldn’t release his body. That’s why it took so long—the funeral. Said he had to maintain control of the remains until the forensic work was completed.”

“That means they cut him up, doesn’t it?”

“I thought we had turned the corner.”

“What was Oliver even doing in Highland Park? Does anyone know?”

“The cops aren’t saying.”

“That’s cuz they don’t have a clue.”

“It’ll never be spring. We’re gonna go from winter straight to summer.”

“I just hate it.”

“What do you hate?”

“Everything.”

I spoke as casually as I could. “I’m surprised El isn’t here.”

“Where is El, anyway?”

“She moved back home after she and Oliver broke up.”

“Some cop from St. Paul asked about her.”

“What did you say?”

“That she moved back home after she and Oliver broke up.”

“Who’s El?”

“Girl Oliver met at a bar in Dinkytown.”

“Is she a student?”

“No, but holy mackerel is she pretty. Long blond hair…”

“She was crazy about him.”

“Do they think she did it, the cops?”

“Who knows with cops?”

“I heard the high tomorrow is supposed to be forty-eight degrees.”

“I heard it was going to snow.”

“You’d think she’d come back for this, breakup or not.”

“Would you stop talking about the damn weather?”

“She might not even know what happened.”

“He liked older women.”

“Who?”

“Oliver. He broke up with El because he liked older women.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I bet the Twins wish they had built a roof on Target Field now.”

“You’re worse than Mark Twain, always complaining about the weather, yet never doing anything about it.”

“He was seeing an older woman. It’s true.”

“Mark Twain?”

“Wait. What?”

“Her.”

A finger was pointed at a woman dressed in a black wool coat and a black short-brimmed cloche hat with a red-ribbon hatband and side bow. She was hugging Oliver’s parents each in turn.

It’s the femme fatale from Woodbury,
my inner voice reminded me.

“Who is she?” someone asked.

“Ramsey County Commissioner Merle Mattson.”

“The woman he worked for over the summer?”

“Here I thought it was an unpaid internship.”

“Stop it.”

“If you want to fuck a MILF, that’s the MILF to fuck.”

“She’s not a mother. She’s not even married.”

“That takes some of the fun out of it.”

“You two are disgusting.”

“Did you tell the cops?”

“Cops didn’t ask.”

“How come it’s okay for an old man to sleep with a young woman yet people go crazy when an old woman sleeps with a young man?”

“How old is she?”

“Old enough to know better; young enough not to care.”

“Stop it. I mean it this time.”

I drifted away from the kids.

There was a table loaded with soiled plates, so I added mine to the pile. I moved to a different table closer to the door and found a seat. I wanted to be in position to intercept the commissioner when she left the gathering, even though I was unsure how to approach her. Asking why she didn’t tell the police she was sleeping with Oliver came to mind. Simply blurting out the question seemed combative, however, and if she was any kind of politician, she’d know how to deal with it. At the same time, the fact she was a politician made gaining her trust, her confidence, problematic at best.

It was because of the internal debate that I didn’t feel Jean Shipman’s presence until she pulled the chair next to me out from under the table and sat down.

“What are you doing here, McKenzie?” she asked.

“Apparently the same thing you are, Detective.”

“Shhhh.”

“You don’t want the mourners to know a police officer is hanging around, conducting surveillance, hoping to see or hear something that’ll help close the case?”

“Quiet.”

“I’m sure the family would embrace you heartily, especially since you already arrested the suspect who killed their child—oh, wait.”

“That’s what I mean.”

We sat silently, Shipman surreptitiously scanning the guests while I more or less studied the county commissioner. A college-age kid thought she was old. I was twice his age and I disagreed. Older, maybe, but old? Her eyes were bright, and the lines on her face looked as if a very considerate and generous sculptor etched them there. When she opened her coat, she revealed a body that was familiar with exercise, and when she removed her hat I saw waves of red-brown hair without a hint of gray—whoever colored it had done an expert job. She appeared to be taller than I was, but that might have been the heels on her black dress boots talking.

A late mourner arrived; a burst of icy wind followed him inside the room, causing those of us closest to the door to revolve in our seats to gaze at him. He was young, tall, and thin, with brown hair, and he wore sunglasses and a neutral expression. He walked with a limp.

He stopped just inside the doorway and glanced about, his head rotating slowly as if on a swivel—just like it had at the garage sale. Now, as then, I didn’t think he was looking for anything specific, just getting the lay of the land, as it were, until he found the county commissioner, and his head stopped turning. At the same time, Mattson saw him. She closed her eyes and opened them again as if she were hoping he was a mirage that would vanish as quickly as he appeared. When he didn’t, she deliberately involved herself in the conversation of the mourners around her, pretending he wasn’t there. He found an empty table and moved to it, all the while watching the commissioner as if afraid he’d lose sight of her. He unzipped his coat, yet did not remove it; nor did he take off his gloves.

“I’ve done this many times,” Shipman said. “Intruding on the grief of a victim’s family, and nothing good has ever come of it. How ’bout you?”

“You mean besides today?”

“Do you have something to say, McKenzie? Or are you just giving me the business, as usual?”

“The man who just walked in—see him sitting there, blue-green jacket?”

“What about him?”

“He’s the one that was shot in the leg Sunday at the Woodbury garage sale.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“What’s not to believe?”

“That you would actually be useful to me. What’s he doing here?”

“No idea.”

“Name?”

“Peter Troop.”

“And you know this—how?”

“I’m psychic.”

“Yeah, well, when you see a pig fly you’re not disappointed if it doesn’t stay airborne all that long.”

“Are you calling me a pig?”

“You take the right, I’ll take the left.”

Shipman and I moved to the table where Troop was sitting. As instructed, I sat in the chair to his immediate right, Shipman to his left.

“Terrible tragedy, isn’t it,” Shipman said. “A boy so young.”

If Troop was surprised by the intrusion, he didn’t show it.

“Did you know Oliver personally or are you just a friend of the family?” I asked.

Only his head turned, looking first at Shipman, at me, and back to her again.

“Are you trying to kid me?” he asked.

“Do we look like we’re kidding?” Shipman asked.

“Leave me alone.”

“Seriously,” I said. “Who crashes a funeral? The food is lousy.”

“If you’re not a friend of Oliver or his family, why are you here?” Shipman said.

“Who wants to know?” Troop asked.

Shipman gave him a look at her badge, neatly cupped in her hand so no one else could see. He stiffened at the sight of it.

Dammit, she’s leaving,
my inner voice warned.

I had been half-watching the county commissioner while I sat with Troop and Shipman. She seized my full attention when Mattson replaced her hat, buttoned her coat, made her good-byes, and headed for the door. I wanted to follow her, yet I was committed to Shipman’s play.

“I didn’t do anything,” Troop said.

“No one said you did, Peter,” Shipman told him.

Troop’s eyes widened with alarm at the sound of his own name. “You can’t arrest me,” he said.

“Why would I want to?”

“I just came in to get warm.”

“As good an excuse as any.”