Unidentified Woman #15 (33 page)

“You keep thinking of me as Fifteen. You don’t know how much I appreciate that. Look, McKenzie, I know that I’m in trouble, if that’s what you mean.”

“Trouble?”

The word seemed so inadequate.

El stepped toward me.

“Is…” For a moment she was the little girl who appeared at my condominium on a cold Monday evening. “Is Nina—is she…”

“She’s fine.”

“Thank God.”

“You missed. Ruined her good coat, though. She’s pretty upset about that.”

“She must hate me.”

“Actually, Fifteen—Nina might be the only person left who’s still on your side.”

“You, though. Are you still on my side?”

I showed her the flat of my hand and gave it a shake.

“I’m wavering,” I said. “Holding a hostage at gunpoint—that’s not helping your cause any.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen. That police officer came out of nowhere.”

“What were you going to do if she hadn’t?”

“I just wanted to make her say.”

Hoover remained in the chair, staring straight ahead. If she was listening to our conversation, she didn’t show it.

“Say what?” I asked.

“What she did. Everything is her fault, you need to know that.”

“What’s everything?”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“Why did you shoot Nina?”

“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I didn’t even see her until they started shooting at me and I shot back.”

“They?”

“Mitch and Craig. I walked up to them and they just started shooting.”

Perhaps they were afraid,
my inner voice said

“Why were you even there?” I asked aloud.

“Mitch and Craig were supposed to be my friends. I wanted to ask why they were helping this bitch hire someone to kill me—some guy named Dyson.”

“But…” Emily Hoover’s voice was so low, that we barely heard it. “But … he’s Dyson.”

“What? What are you saying?” El turned her full attention on me. “Dyson?”

I gestured with my hands as if I had just sawed my assistant in half.

“Ta-da,” I said.

“You’re Nick Dyson?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

El stepped deeper into the living room. She brought the gun up with one hand and sighted on my chest. At the same time, two red dots appeared on the blue shirt she was wearing. They moved slightly and then became steady on her heart. I stepped around El until I was between her and the window. I knew the dots were now centered on my back. I recited a silent prayer. I was sure the Kevlar would stop a nine-millimeter slug even at close quarters. Yet a round from a high-powered rifle…?

“Put the gun down, Fifteen,” I said. “Do it now.”

She lowered the gun until the muzzle was pointing at the floor. I drifted back to my original position to allow the spotters to see that El was no longer an imminent threat. The dots did not reappear. The young woman returned to the chair and stared down at Hoover.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I was in disguise,” I said.

El thought about it for a few beats and came to the conclusion I wanted her to reach.

“You were looking out for me,” she said. “After everything I did, you were still looking out for me.”

“I said I would. Remember?”

“That doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change what this bitch tried to do.”

El brought the gun up again, this time with both hands, and pointed it at Hoover’s head. The older woman closed both eyes and angled her chin away, waiting for the bullet.

“Fifteen.” My voice was too loud. I deliberately lowered it when I spoke again. “Fifteen, did you really bring me here so I can watch you shoot your partner?”

Both women looked at me like I had just recited the entire Gettysburg Address by heart. El lowered the gun again.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“That you and Emily together were the Boss?” I stepped closer to the woman in the chair. “The clues were all there. Take the time we spoke in the coffeehouse. You said that Mitch and Craig were blackmailing you, that they had video of you buying stolen property. Yet they never heard of you, they had no such video, they didn’t know who was supplying the locations for the garage sales, and they didn’t communicate with you over the phone like you said. It was all done by e-mail. Your e-mail was the key, by the way.”

I stepped back so I could watch both El and Hoover at the same time. I spoke to El.

“They never knew where you were, yet you always seemed to know where they were. For example, you knew Karl Olson was going to Mr. Janke’s duplex—”

“I saved your life, McKenzie,” El said. “He was going to kill you.”

“It sure felt like he was going to kill me. Anyway, you also knew that Peter Troop was going to Oliver Braun’s funeral.”

“Troop was going to kill you, too. You and the lady detective. I saved both of you.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “Troop was surrendering when he was shot.”

“How was I supposed to know that? It looked to me like he was attacking you. I was trying to help.”

“You know what? That’s a good defense. Go with that at your trial. It just might work out.”

“But it’s true.”

“Where was I? Yeah, yeah, yeah—you knew Olson would be at the duplex and Troop would be at the funeral. You knew all about Dyson and that Mitch and Craig were going to meet him at Como Park. You knew that Dyson was driving to Deer River—you did call Cyndy M to warn her, right? It was like you were reading their minds. Or their e-mails.” I pointed at Hoover. “That’s how the Boss communicated with her partners; how they contacted her. Through e-mails. It’s also how you knew Raymond Hangarter”—that was Waldo’s real name—“wouldn’t be here to protect Emily. Mitch must have guessed from what I told him that I was headed for Mr. Janke’s duplex to look for you, and he sent Emily an e-mail telling her so. You read the e-mail that Emily then sent Hangarter telling him to—do what? What did you tell him, Emily? To kill El? Kill me? Kill everyone? Hangarter’s dead, by the way.”

From the way she hung her head, I guessed that Hoover was genuinely distressed by the news. El didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

“Except you’re not a hacker,” I said. “Fifteen, you don’t have those skills. The only way you could have managed it is if you had the username and password. How could you have those unless the two of you shared the account to begin with?

“My only question—who came up with the idea in the first place? To be the Boss. Hmm? Emily, you hired El to house-sit some of the properties you were selling, give them that young and beautiful sheen. That’s how you two met, isn’t it? So, did you approach her, or was it the other way around?”

“I have nothing to say,” Hoover told me.

“Really? Do you want those to be your last words—I have nothing to say?”

“It was my idea,” El said. “Staying in those wonderful homes, meeting the people who went through them … I knew what I wanted and how to get it. Mitch and Craig had recruited us from Deer River to do their stealing for them, and we went along because we were broke and because—Mitch explained how everyone was doing it and how the stores figured it into the cost of doing business and … It seemed like as good a way to get by as any until things improved. Only you’re never going to get rich being just a worker bee. The only way to do it is to become—”

“The queen bee,” Hoover said.

“Management,” El said. “Only I couldn’t have pulled it off by myself. Look at me. Mitch and Craig, Kispert—they weren’t going to listen to me. So I invented the Boss.”

“
We
invented the Boss. You would have been lost without me.”

“I never pretended otherwise, Emily. But shoplifting and selling what we stole—that’s one thing. Blackmailing our customers?”

“You’re just a kid. I’m old. I’m facing retirement. I don’t want to sell houses for the rest of my life. So we make the extra money and then we quit. Why did you turn it into such a big deal?”

“People get hurt.”

“What do you think stealing their stuff does?”

“That just hurts businesses and insurance companies.”

“Is that what you tell yourself? You’re a thief, Ella. Admit it.”

“What are you? Whoring around with John Kispert so he’ll do your blackmailing.”

“I’m not a whore. I didn’t even speak to him directly. It was just business.”

“You tried to have me killed.”

“You deserved it.”

“Fuck you.”

Hoover made an attempt to come out of the chair. El brought the Beretta up with both hands and sighted on her head. At the same time, she backed away from the chair into the center of the room. Red dots appeared on her shirt, three of them this time.

“Fifteen,” I said.

She pivoted so that the gun was pointed at me and turned back to Hoover. I moved in front of the window, once again putting myself between her and the snipers.

Bobby is going to kill you,
my inner voice said.

Two of the dots disappeared; the third remained steady on El’s chest.

“Fifteen,” I said. “Please. Lower the gun. Please.”

“It’s all her fault,” she said. “Emily’s the one who crossed the line, not me.”

“Lower the gun.”

She did.

The dot remained.

“Please,” I said.

The dot disappeared.

“Thank you.”

El looked at me. Her eyes were wet with tears.

“Don’t be mad at me,” she said. “You’re my only friend in the Cities. You and Nina. That’s why I asked for you. Please, McKenzie, tell me what to do.”

In a minute. First …

“Tell me what happened,” I said. “From the beginning.”

El backed against the wall, still holding the gun with both hands, and sighed deeply. Hoover settled back against the chair. It was as if they both were preparing for a long story.

“The Boss thing worked,” El said. “Mitch and the others did what we said, held the garage sales at the locations we scouted; security was arranged so nothing bad would happen.”

“Raymond Hangarter was my nephew,” Hoover said. “Olson and Troop were his friends.”

“And then one day I invited Merle Mattson to a sale. She was a Ramsey County commissioner; my boyfriend worked for her.”

“Oliver Braun,” I said.

“Yes. A month or so later, this … this whore—she started blackmailing her. The commissioner blamed me. She complained to Oliver. I knew nothing about it, but Oliver called me a slut and said he never wanted to see me again, and said if I didn’t fix it he’d call the cops. I went to Mitch and Craig and told them I wouldn’t put up with blackmail. See, I thought it was them and Kispert. I didn’t know it was Emily until—until her nephew and his friends tied me up and threw me off the back of my own pickup truck. Do you know why? Do you know why they tried to kill me that way? It was because the Boss wanted to send a message. She wanted everyone to be afraid of her—don’t mess with the the Boss—like she was some kind of Bond villain.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell Commander Dunston?”

“Because, when I woke up in the hospital—McKenzie, I really did lose my memory, I really did forget my name. It was terrifying. But what scared me more, this woman”—she pointed the gun at Hoover—“came into my room and threatened me. She told me to keep my mouth shut about what happened or my friends would get the same treatment.

“McKenzie, I didn’t know who she was, I didn’t know who my friends were; I didn’t remember what happened. What could I tell the police that made sense? They thought I was brain-damaged as it was. I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing. Then my memory returned. It was a day or two later. I went to sleep, and when I woke up, it was all there. Everything. I felt—I felt ashamed. I felt angry. Ashamed and angry that I wasn’t the person that I had wanted to be, that I had hoped I was. But I thought if I didn’t tell anyone, if no one knew who I was, I could be. I could become Fifteen. She was nice, even if she did hit on you.”

We both smiled at the memory.

“Only she … Emily—you should have let me go. Instead, you sent Karl Olson. You sent Karl to kill me, goddamn you. That’s what made me decide if I wanted to become someone else, first I had to make amends for who I used to be.

“But McKenzie—how do you stop blackmailers without hurting the people they’re blackmailing? And what about my friends from Deer River? I called Oliver and told him what happened. I didn’t ask for forgiveness. I didn’t think I deserved it. I called him because I hoped he might talk to the commissioner and ask her to help me. I knew she was an ex-sheriff, something like that. He said he would. I gave him one of my guns, your guns, for protection. Afterward, I went to the duplex and hustled my friends out of town. I sent them to my friend Cyndy for safekeeping.

“And then they killed Oliver.

“And I knew what I had to do.

“Why, Emily? Why did you kill Oliver?”

Hoover smirked, actually smirked, which I considered amazing given the circumstances.

“Do you expect me to confess?” she asked. “Is that why you brought McKenzie in here, so he could hear my confession? You’re so stupid, Ella. Stupid little Barbie doll with a plastic head. It doesn’t matter what I say. Don’t you get it? You can’t use what I say against me. You have guns—”

“Gun,” I said. “Singular.”

“I’ll claim duress. You forced the confession from me. You’ll never be able to use it in court.”

“Lady, look around. We’re not in court.”

“That stupid boy. That stupid, stupid boy. He came to my open house in Highland Park with that stupid, stupid gun. He wanted me to confess, too. I told him that anyone could walk in at any time. I told him to wait for me in his car. And he did, too, that stupid, stupid boy. I took a knife out of the kitchen and sat in the car and talked until he relaxed and then I stabbed him. Is that what you wanted to hear, El? How I killed that stupid, stupid boy? Afterward, I shoved him over on the seat and drove his car to the ice arena. I walked the two blocks back to the house, washed off the knife, put it away, and drove home. I slept like a baby, El. Happy?”

El brought the gun up. I had no doubt that finally, she was going to use it.

I stepped in close, grabbed the Beretta by the muzzle, and yanked upward. The gun went off. A single bullet bore into the ceiling above us.