by Allen Eskens
Dear Ms. Nash,
The Minnesota Board of Law Examiners has been notified of a concern regarding your application for admission to the Minnesota Bar, having to do with your character and fitness to practice law. Specifically, the Board had been informed that your answer to question 4.37 (b) may be inaccurate or incomplete. That question asked:
Do you have, or have you had within the last two years, any condition, including but not limited to, the following:
b) A mental, emotional, or behavioral illness or condition that impairs, or has within the last two years impaired, your ability to meet the Essential Eligibility Requirements for the practice of law set forth in Rule 5A of the Rules for Admission to the Bar?
It has been brought to the Board’s attention that a supervising attorney in your office has concerns about your fitness pursuant to Rule 5A. The informing party has written an affidavit and has provided documentation of a prior involuntary hospitalization and suicide attempt. While the hospitalization falls outside of the two-year look back, a more recent in-court event has raised concern.
To address this concern, the Board asks that you submit a letter from a treating therapist regarding your mental and emotional fitness as well as a letter from your supervising attorney as to your fitness to handle the stresses of the practice of law. We will then set up an interview with you.
Please understand that this letter is not intended to make your path to admission to the bar more difficult, but rather to ensure that any and all concerns are properly addressed. We look forward to working with you to address this issue.
Respectfully,
Lucius Wolterman
Director of Character and Fitness Evaluations
Minnesota Board of Law Examiners
“What the fuck?”
“What’s wrong?” Joe asked from the kitchen.
Lila read the letter again. “That son of a bitch!”
Joe walked in and Lila handed him the letter. “He’s going after my license.”
“Who is?” Joe started reading.
“Frank Dovey.”
“How?”
“You have to pass a character and fitness requirement before you can be admitted to the bar. Dovey must have sent something to the board.”
“I don’t understand. What do they mean by ‘in-court event’?”
Of course Joe didn’t understand. She’d never told him about freezing in court, or about Gavin Spencer’s lisp. She hadn’t told him about her trip to see Dr. Roberts or the afternoon she spent with Niki at the Fifth Precinct. She wasn’t ready to tell him yet, and she couldn’t tell him now that he was about to leave for North Dakota.
“I had a little stumble in court, that’s all. It was nothing, but Dovey was there. He has me under a microscope.”
“How would he know about you being in the hospital?”
“As a prosecutor, he has access to my case from…that night. All he’d have to do is type my name into the system, and there I am.” Lila remembered the list at the Fifth Precinct. He had done much more than just type in her name.
“And Dovey is using that to…”
“Stop me from becoming a lawyer.”
“That stuff is so old. Can he do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Lila’s knees softened, and she sat down on the bed.
“That’s bullshit,” Joe said.
“He’s head of the division. If he doesn’t stop me from getting sworn in, he could transfer me—or fire me. The only reason he hasn’t done something like that already is he knows he’ll catch heat when Beth comes back.”
“I’m not going to North Dakota,” Joe said.
“What?”
“It’s not right.”
“You’re going to North Dakota, Joe Talbert.” Lila spoke in that same tone her mother had always used when she put her foot down.
“It’s no big deal—”
“I’m not letting that asshole ruin your career too.” She turned to Joe and cupped his face in her hands. “I appreciate the thought—I really do—but I want you to go to North Dakota. Write a great story, and when you come back, I’ll have this all figured out—I’m not sure how, but it’s my dragon to slay.” She kissed him to keep him from saying anything more, and when she drew back she added, “I’m a legal ninja Jedi, remember?”
That brought a smile to Joe’s face. Lila smiled too, even though, in her heart, she felt the weight of her lies. How was she going to be okay? She pulled Joe in, wrapping her arms around him before he could notice the deception in her eyes.
Chapter 40
Alice Kempker wanted to meet with Niki Vang at a coffee shop rather than her house. Niki was more than happy to oblige, choosing a café on Southeast Main Street, a quaint and quiet place with outdoor seating where they could enjoy the morning sun and watch people stroll by on the cobblestone sidewalk. The place had a true old-town feel and just happened to look out over the Mississippi River at the spot where Chloe Ludlow would have floated by after Gavin Spencer killed her. The roar of St. Anthony Falls was unmistakable in the distance.
Niki arrived before Kempker and used the time to walk to the river, slipping into Spencer’s world. Niki imagined Spencer’s panic as he’d watched Sadie Vauk start to swim, heading toward the power plant instead of the falls. In trying to reach her he would have driven right past where she now stood. Niki looked at the line of shops and bars along Southeast Main and saw no cameras. The Sex Crimes unit had already canvassed the area for witnesses and footage, coming up with only a single shot of the Bronco, taken from a distance.
She could see the cameras of the power plant a block away, white bobbles stretching out at the corners of the building. With the abundance of outdoor lighting at the power plant, Spencer would have seen the cameras as well and ended his pursuit. He might have even parked within a few yards of where Niki now stood to watch the security guard pull Sadie from the river. Niki had scoured the footage from the plant and found nothing more than the shine of headlights in the periphery.
As she listened to the water churning in the distance, a woman in her late twenties hesitantly approached. Niki recognized her from her driver’s license photo as Alice Kempker.
“Ms. Kempker, I’m Detective Vang.”
Kempker held out a hand to shake, but extended no pleasantry beyond that, not even the slightest hint of a smile. The woman had pretty eyes, green like olives, but the rest of her carried a plainness that murmured, Leave me alone.
A waiter showed the two women to an outdoor table and took their orders for coffee.
“I appreciate you meeting with me like this,” Niki said. “I only have a few questions.”
“I don’t know what more I could say that I didn’t tell your people two years ago.”
“I understand, but we’re taking a fresh look at the case. Just making sure that nothing was overlooked.”
“Fine, what do you want to know?”
Niki opened her pad of paper. “Chloe had been your roommate for how long?”
“About six months.”
“How would you describe your relationship?”
“We got along all right.” The answer came across as snide.
Niki paused, tapping her pen against the pad as she contemplated the path the interview was about to take. “Alice, it’s really important that you be straight with me. We have reason to believe that Chloe’s attacker had killed before, and might kill again. I need honest answers from you today.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Tell me about your relationship with Chloe Ludlow.”
“She was a…” Alice pursed her lips as though to hold back some venomous words. Then she proceeded in a calm tone. “I should’ve never taken her in. We were a bad fit from the start. She was pretty and tall—not that I have anything against that, but the way she flaunted it in my face. I had a boyfriend, and she’d walk around the apartment wearing next to nothing—prancing in front of him like she was trying to seduce him or s
omething. I told her to stop, but she’d just say, ‘I can’t help it if boys like to look at me.’ She had no respect for other people—none at all.”
“Was Chloe seeing anyone—a significant other?”
“She saw lots of men, but significant? She used to bring guys to the apartment, guys she met at the bars. Sometimes she didn’t even remember their names. What do you expect when you act like that? I told her she was gonna get herself in trouble, acting that way. I told her—I said, ‘One of these days, you’re gonna run into the wrong kind of guy and end up dead.’ I said that to her. You can’t live that way and not expect consequences.”
“You make it sound…like you think she deserved what happened to her.”
“I’m not saying she deserved it, but what’d she expect?”
Niki said nothing for a moment, letting the rumble of St. Anthony Falls fill the silence. “Hear that?” Niki asked. “The falls?”
Alice looked toward the river but didn’t answer.
“He drugged Chloe—then he raped her. When he was finished, he drove her over there to Nicollet Island. She was probably groggy because he wanted as little of the drug in her system as possible when he dragged her down to the river and held her under the water. When he was sure she was dead, he pushed her out to let her wash over the falls. The pull of the undertow probably held her body at the bottom of the spillway for a while—minutes, hours, who knows—before letting go. Chloe might not have lived up to your expectations, but nobody—nobody—deserves what happened to her.”
Alice looked at her hands on the table and didn’t say anything.
“Now, I want you to tell me everything you can remember about Chloe’s last days in that apartment. Don’t leave a single detail out, no matter how small. Did you meet the man who came to pick her up?”
“No, I was in my bedroom. He never came in.”
“Prior to him coming to pick her up, did she say anything about him?”
“We weren’t exactly speaking at that point.”
“In the days or weeks before her death, did Chloe have any event she attended where there might have been a photographer—a wedding or a modeling job?”
Alice paused to think. “Yes. She did some modeling. She was behind on rent and got this gig at…I think it was the auto show. Is that in March? She paid her March and April rent with the money.”
Niki pulled out her phone and sent a text to Matty. Check auto show for connection to Chloe. “Did she say anything about meeting a photographer at the auto show?”
“Like I said, we weren’t talking much, but maybe. I think it was later that week when she said something about getting some headshots done.”
“And you told Detective Voss that the guy drove a black SUV?”
“He pulled up in front and honked, and that irritated me. I went to the window and saw Chloe get into this older, black— It was big, but I wouldn’t call it a truck either.”
Niki pulled up a stock photo of a 1986 Chevy Blazer she had on her phone. “Did it look like this?”
“Yeah. It could have been one of those.”
Then Niki pulled up the same year model of a Ford Bronco. “What about this?”
“They look alike to me, but yeah—except it had that mark on the door.”
Niki perked up. “What mark?”
“A faded spot. It looked like a big teardrop. I told the other detective about it—at least I think…” She looked at Niki as though struggling to find a memory. “I’m sure I did.”
“There’s nothing in the file about any tear-shaped mark. Can you describe it more?”
Alice held up her hands to indicate a circle the size of a turkey platter. “It was about this big around, with…you know, a point at the top like it was a tear or a drop of water. The truck was black and the mark was kind of gray, like it had faded where there used to be a sign or something.”
“And you’re sure about this?”
“I’m sure I told that detective about it.”
“Did you see the driver?”
“No. The windows were tinted.”
“Anything else you remember about the truck or the guy?”
Alice took a minute to think on it then shook her head no. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember anything more.”
Niki’s phone dinged. “Excuse me a second.” She opened the text and found a set of pictures from Matty. High-end cars—Bentleys, Ferraris, Porsches—all parked inside the Minneapolis Convention Center. Niki had seen those pictures on Spencer’s website, filed under corporate events, but hadn’t given them much thought. Matty’s message read:
Spencer shot publicity for
T.C. Auto Show. March 15-17.
1 week before death.
There would be surveillance footage and photos from that event, tons of them. If they could find one with Chloe and Gavin together, it would fill in Gavin’s MO. It wasn’t a lock, but this was a step in the right direction.
She put her phone away. “Chloe’s gig, was it the Twin Cities Auto Show?”
“That sounds right.”
“Did Chloe say anything about meeting a photographer at the auto show? Think hard.”
Alice stared out at the river, the unrelenting thunder of the falls permeating the air around them. “I can’t remember. I’m trying—I really am.”
“I know.” Niki slid her business card across the table. “Keep thinking on it, and if you come up with anything more, promise me you’ll call.”
“I will.”
As Niki stood to leave, Alice said, “You were right, you know…about Chloe not deserving what happened. I feel bad for saying what I did.”
Niki wanted to say that it was okay, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay that Alice Kempker let her dislike for Chloe interfere with the statement she gave Tony Voss. She left out the identifying stain on the side of the Bronco. It might not have changed things, but who knows? If she’d mentioned it, maybe Sadie Vauk wouldn’t have gone through her ordeal. So Niki only gave Alice a slight nod.
“Did I give you anything that helps?”
“I hope so,” Niki said.
Chapter 41
Lila carried the letter from the Board of Law Examiners into the Government Center that Friday morning, rolled up in her hand as she made her way past the metal detectors. She’d brought it to show Andi, hoping that there might be a way to get around Frank Dovey, although in the back of her mind she knew there wouldn’t be. That letter had been the reason Dovey ordered Andi to go through him with Lila’s personnel matters. It was simply one more maneuver in a much longer strategy.
When she arrived at the bank of elevators, she spotted Frank standing amid a handful of people waiting to go up. Lila stayed back away from Dovey’s view. Two elevators dinged their arrival at the same time, one in front of Dovey, the other closer to her. The small crowd divided toward the two open doors, and once inside, Lila pushed the button for the twentieth floor. The doors juked as if wanting to shut, but popped back open—and Frank Dovey stepped in.
He stood close enough to Lila that she could smell the cutting scent of his cheap cologne. The doors closed and didn’t open again until they got to the fifth floor, where Lila stepped off to let a woman behind her out. As she waited, it occurred to her that if she stayed there—let the doors shut—she could take a different car up to the twentieth floor.
After the woman stepped out, Lila didn’t move to get back in the elevator, and neither did she walk away. She watched the bottom of the elevator door, paralyzed, waiting for it to close, to make the decision for her. And when it didn’t, she looked up to see Frank Dovey holding it open. He gave a subtle wave of his free hand as if to gesture her back into the car, and she obeyed.
Floor by floor, people stepped off, the crowd thinning until after the fifteenth floor only she and Dovey remained. And when the doors closed, Dovey turned toward her and stared, no words, no sound, just like he had done before. Lila wanted to say something, but her words died at the back of her throat. Her
breath quickened, and her palms began to sweat.
She started counting, the numbers ticking down as the elevator crept upward. Ten, nine, eight, seven…The elevator crawled so slowly that Lila had to slow her counting. Six…five…four…three…two…
A ding announced their arrival on the twentieth floor. One.
Lila’s heart thumped inside of her chest hard enough that Dovey should have been able to sense it. Her fingers still clutched the letter from the Board of Law Examiners, now damp from the sweat of her fists. She should confront him. This was her chance, but she wasn’t ready. She hadn’t prepared for this.
After the doors opened, he continued to stare at her, making no move to exit the elevator, and when she glanced up at him, he wore the smile of a man on the verge of saying, Checkmate. Lila stepped past him to exit the elevator, and as she did, he murmured, “You don’t belong here.”
Lila pretended that she hadn’t heard him, both furious and sickened by her cowardice—and counting her steps in measures of ten.
By the time she got to her office, Lila was so mad that she could barely think. She wanted to punch something, but she also wanted to curl up on her chair and cry. She would allow neither. The heat in her chest reminded her of that rage she felt when she’d first drawn a razor blade across her arm. Stop it! Lila grabbed her desk and squeezed her anger out through her fingers. You’re not that girl anymore.
As her anger slowly eased, Lila saw Sadie Vauk’s file lying on the desk in front of her. She and Andi were scheduled to meet with Sadie that morning. She picked it up and opened it to the pictures: Sadie after they’d pulled her from the river, weak and confused, Sadie showing the cuts and bruises she got as she clung to the rocks, Gavin Spencer at the lineup, the beauty salon where he’d kidnapped her, his house where they were sure he’d taken her. With each new image, the thought of Frank Dovey faded further into the distance until it was little more than a dust mote floating on the breeze.
Her job—her calling—was to put monsters like Gavin Spencer in prison. If she let Frank Dovey sidetrack her from that mission, she would become someone small, like him, focused on her career and not on her job.