by Allen Eskens
Exhausted, she lay on her back, gasping, her ears ringing, her forearms burning. Her stomach felt so tight that she wasn’t sure she could move, but she managed to roll onto her side to peek over the edge. Andi was jumping up and down in celebration, a huge grin on her face.
Lila rose up on shaky legs and screamed her excitement, the sound filling the valley and bouncing back from the Wisconsin side of the river. She had done it. She had conquered the wall, and the wave of chemicals that rushed through her made her feel invincible. But there was something else, something she couldn’t quite put a finger on, something that hadn’t been there when she started her climb—and it filled every cell of her body.
From below, a chorus of whoops and cheers caught Lila by surprise. The riverboat, the one that Lila had passed on her way to the wall, now floated down the river, its passengers lining the rails, waving to Lila and cheering. Lila nearly exploded with exhilaration. She raised her arms above her head, punched her fists into the sky, and howled her triumph.
Chapter 44
Bright and early on Monday morning, Niki and Matty executed a second search warrant on Gavin’s house, this time hoping to find something that might lead them to the Ford Bronco. After her meeting with Alice Kempker, Niki spent some time examining the Bronco’s history through the vehicle’s registration and found that it had once been owned by a well-drilling company from Glencoe. They told her that they had owned three black Broncos, all purchased new in 1986, and all sold at an auction in the mid-nineties, one eventually finding its way through a maze of used-car lots to Gavin Spencer.
According to the company, all three vehicles had sported magnetic door signs featuring the company’s logo. The owner wasn’t sure if the signs had oxidized the paint, telling Niki that his mechanic took care of the vehicles before auctions, but he said if there had been a stain it would have been in the shape of a drop of water.
A stoplight camera a few blocks from Bebe’s Salon had caught what looked to be a black Bronco driving nearby on the evening Sadie disappeared. The grainy footage showed the vehicle at a poor angle, but Niki convinced herself that she could see a tear-shaped stain on the passenger door. Niki knew that wasn’t enough—the photo was like one of those trick images that could be either a frog or a horse, depending on the viewer.
But if they could find the Bronco itself—and it had the water-drop stain on the side—the jury might buy the argument that the surveillance camera had caught a picture of Gavin Spencer on his way to abduct Sadie Vauk.
Unfortunately, the second search wasn’t going any better than the first.
Niki and Matty spent the morning digging through the stacks of old bills and papers that Spencer kept under his staircase. They were hoping to find evidence of a storage unit or any place where Gavin might be able to hide a vehicle, but after three hours they’d found nothing: no receipts, no notes, not even a picture of the Bronco in the possession of a man who took pictures for a living.
A crime scene technician examined the floor of the garage and driveway for tread prints or dirt that might tie the vehicle to the soil of Nicollet Island, but found nothing.
They assigned two patrol officers to traipse up and down the surrounding streets, double-checking for surveillance footage from doorbell cameras. They all came back empty-handed. By noon, Niki had sent the tech and the patrol officers away.
Matty went for sandwiches while Niki paced through the house, trying to figure out what they had missed. How could there be no hair or DNA anywhere? The complete lack of forensic evidence would give Gavin a powerful defense argument.
When Matty pulled up, Niki joined him in his car to eat.
“When’s the omnibus hearing?” Matty asked.
“In three days, and we got nothing more than Sadie’s faulty memory and a couple grainy shots of what could be a Bronco.”
Hearing the defeat in her voice, Matty worked through it again. “Sadie puts Gavin in the salon—so we have that. That’s where she was when the amnesia kicked in. She didn’t knowingly consume the GHB, which means that someone had to slip it to her. We have a man with a lisp telling Sadie that all she had to do was ‘be nice’—and that was right before she ended up in the river. We have Sadie’s testimony, and it’s like you always say, a woman’s word should be enough.”
“Should be, but you know how this works. The defense attorney’s going to spend an entire day asking me about all the things we didn’t find. ‘Did you find any of Ms. Vauk’s hair in my client’s house? Did you find any of Ms. Vauk’s DNA in my client’s house? Did you find any computer forensics, any GPS, any texts, any skin cells?’ And I’ll have to say no to all of it. All we’ll have is Sadie.”
Niki finished her egg salad sandwich and was taking the first bite of a cookie when a postal worker rounded the corner pulling a cart. She walked up to the mailbox on the porch, inserted some mail, and walked away.
Niki and Matty looked at each other. “Did you look in the mailbox?” Niki asked.
“Not today. Did you?”
“No.”
They exited Matty’s car and walked to the porch, Niki pulling letters out of the overstuffed box and flipping through them. Near the end of the stack, Niki came upon a notice that a certified letter was being held at the post office for Gavin.
“What do you think it is?” she asked.
“A mirage,” Matty said. “Something to get our hopes up before it disappears.”
“That’d be our luck,” Niki said. “Your car or mine?”
* * *
With badges and a search warrant, they passed the tellers at the post office and went straight to the branch manager, an affable man with a Santa Claus beard who—once he saw the warrant—delivered the certified letter. Niki looked at it, grinned, and showed Matty.
Hideker’s Towing and Impound.
Niki opened the envelope and read.
Mr. Gavin Spencer,
This letter is to inform you that your vehicle:
1986 Ford Bronco (blk) Minnesota plate number DSM-345
has been impounded for: illegal parking.
You have thirty (30) days from the date of this notice to retrieve your vehicle and pay all associated costs and fees. If you do not retrieve your vehicle within that time, your vehicle may be sold at auction or scrapped, and any proceeds from such sale will be held to cover those costs.
* * *
Hideker’s Towing was a small, private operation that cleared cars away from a number of public facilities throughout the city. Because they weren’t on the city’s impound database, Matty hadn’t gotten a hit when he ran the Bronco’s plates. The company had a small lot just outside of city limits, and within ten minutes, Niki and Matty were in the office talking to Oliver Hideker.
“We towed it from a No Parking zone on campus,” he said, looking at the vehicle records. “Ain’t gonna be able to recover our costs, though. Strangest thing. The keys were in the ignition, turned on, and the plug for the oil pan was gone. It’s like they drained the oil and left it running—like they were trying to ruin the motor or something.”
“Can we take a look at it?” Niki asked.
“Absolutely.”
Oliver led the detectives out to the lot. Turning down a row near the end, Niki spotted the Bronco parked nose-out about forty yards away. From that distance, the car beside it blocked her view of the door, so she quickened her pace. When the passenger door came into view, she took it in as if beholding a stunning desert sunrise.
There on the side of Gavin Spencer’s black Ford Bronco was a gray patch, a stain in the shape of a tear.
Chapter 45
Lila spent her Monday morning drafting in-custody complaints, the charges fed by simple facts and well-written police reports. After delivering those documents to Andi, she turned her attention to a name that had been poking at her ever since she left her mother’s house—Silas Jackson.
Through her office’s databases, Lila found the highlights of Silas’s criminal history.
She could see when he was arrested, and for what, and in those cases where he had been charged, she had access to all the documents filed with the court. She found that he had been arrested at the age of eighteen for peeping into a neighbor’s window where a fifteen-year-old girl slept. Two years later, he was charged with stalking an ex-girlfriend—although she later dropped the charges. The cherry on top of Silas Jackson’s hot fudge sundae came a year after that, when he slipped into a bedroom at a party and touched the breasts of a woman who was passed out. A roommate walked in before Jackson could do more than partially undress the poor girl. He spent a year in prison for his act.
Reading through Silas Jackson’s transgressions was like viewing a constellation one star at a time; each incident burning a new pinpoint into the dark sky. But Lila could not see the whole. Where was the GHB? Where was the boldness? Nothing in his record rose to the audacity of what happened to Lila. He’d come close with the girl on the bed, sure, but guys like him were supposed to get more daring as they went along, not less.
Had he lost his nerve? Had the two men fed off each other out in that bean field, crossing a line only because they were together? And still, no mention of a lisp. There had to be more to the story, but Lila’s head hurt from trying to see it.
Then, just before the clock struck noon, Ryan Kent stuck his head into her office, breaking her focus.
“Got a second?”
“For you, always. What’s up?”
He came in and closed the door behind him. “Beth Malone gave Nelson her notice this morning. She’s taking an early retirement.”
Even though Lila had been expecting the news, it still sent a spike through her. She closed her eyes and sighed.
“I know, right?” Ryan said. “Looks like Dovey’s going to be the permanent head of Adult Prosecution. I’m meeting Patrick for lunch. Wanna come?”
Lila nodded her answer, still unable to muster up words.
After Ryan left, she looked around her office. With Beth gone, Lila’s departure would be in a matter of days, and her bare walls whispered, I told you so.
On her desk, Sadie Vauk’s file lay open, a picture of Gavin Spencer staring up at her. It wasn’t fair. She wanted to be there for Sadie, to sit with her before she took the stand to testify. Lila wanted to see Gavin’s face when a jury convicted him, and when a judge sentenced him to prison. None of that would happen now.
Lila had no appetite, but she stood and began the long walk to the cafeteria to have lunch with her fellow newbies—knowing it could be the last time. She arrived at the bank of elevators just as Frank Dovey stepped into one of the cars. He was with Colin Nelson, and the two men seemed lost in conversation. It grated on Lila to see them so friendly together, and she waited to take the next car.
On the ground floor, Lila spotted Dovey and Nelson heading for the north exit of the Government Center. In the opposite direction was the escalator that would take her down to the cafeteria. She stood still for a moment and remembered Andi’s words about making Dovey own his decision to fire her. She thought about the weight of her own regret if she were to hand Dovey her letter of resignation. And she thought of Gavin Spencer and felt a cold sting of defeat in her chest.
Then she thought of Sadie, her words whispering in Lila’s ears. Why’d he do that to me? Why did he think he had the right? Lila wanted to join her friends in the cafeteria, but a powerful gravity pulled her toward Dovey and Nelson, who were leaving the building. She couldn’t abandon Sadie—not without a fight. With no idea what she planned to do, she turned and followed the men.
Dovey and Nelson chatted seriously as they walked across the brick courtyard. At the street, they paused, as if deciding where to go for lunch. It was a beautiful summer day, a day that would normally have made Lila feel light and agreeable. But something about the sun on her face now turned her blood hot.
The men made their decision, crossing Third Avenue and entering the building on the corner. Lila followed at a careful distance. The atrium was full of glass, and sun, and people. Straight ahead of her, an escalator carried Dovey and Nelson to the second level.
At the top, they made their way into a restaurant with tablecloths and waiters in white shirts, a far cry from the cafeteria where the rest of the employees ate. But this was Colin Nelson—the big boss—having lunch with his division head. Their meal was important and weighty and would be paid for by taxpayers’ money. Why not eat at a restaurant with a wine list?
The hostess seated the two men while Lila stayed outside, peeking in and pretending to look at a menu on the wall. She had no guiding force beyond the absolute unfairness of it all. Dovey had attacked her with every arrow in his quiver and all because she had rightfully beaten him in court. He had sunk so low as to use her suicide attempt against her, exposing the darkest part of her life to the Board of Law Examiners. Again, Sadie’s words echoed in Lila’s ears. Why did he think he had the right?
Why indeed, Lila thought to herself, and with those words, something took hold deep within her, a thought so powerful, it nearly caused her to stumble backward. He didn’t have the right—why hadn’t she realized it before? And just like that, the pieces on the chess board shifted around until Dovey’s king stood vulnerable in the corner.
She started to walk into the restaurant but paused briefly to consider Joe. What would he say if he were there? She smiled. He would tell her that she was a legal ninja Jedi. This was the woman he saw when he looked into her eyes. Then she heard the echo of Andi’s voice, yelling up to her as she stood frozen on that stone wall. You know what to do, so do it. If she was going down, it would be on her terms, not Dovey’s.
She walked into the restaurant with a purposeful stride, grabbing a chair along the way, and dragging it to the two-person table where Frank Dovey sat with Colin Nelson. When the two men looked up at her, she felt the same dizziness she’d experienced on that cliff ledge, but she continued forward, clapping the chair down to join them at their table. The look of stunned confusion on Dovey’s face was enough to make getting fired worth it.
“Hi, Frank,” she said, taking a seat.
“Um…Ms. Nash, this is a private meeting,” Dovey said, a far more polite reaction than what Lila had expected. She’d caught him off-guard.
“This won’t take long.” Then to Colin Nelson, she said, “My name is Lila Nash. I work for you.” She held out a hand, and a bewildered Nelson shook it. “I’m one of your new hires. Frank here’s my boss.”
“Ms. Nash,” Dovey said, “what are you doing?”
Lila ignored him. “Here’s the thing, Mr. Nelson. There’s a rumor going around the office that Beth Malone is retiring, and that you may be thinking about giving Frank her job. I’m here to tell you that that’s a terrible idea.” Lila’s pulse raced, but she spoke with the ease of a storyteller, her words flowing like fine cursive writing. She had been waiting for this moment for a long time and didn’t even know it.
“Have you lost your mind?” Dovey’s eyes popped with indignation, his words starting to jam up in his throat. “If you don’t leave this table…”
“You need to hear this, Mr. Nelson.”
“Of all the…”
“I just need three minutes of your time, and then I’ll leave.”
Dovey drew in a breath to continue, but Nelson held up a hand to stop him. Then he looked at Lila and said, “You work for me?”
“In Adult Prosecutions. I’ll be sworn in this fall, and whether or not I’ll still be working for you then…Well, that’s what this is all about.”
Nelson said, “Go ahead, Ms.…”
“Nash. Thank you, sir. You see, when I was in law school, I worked on a case with one of my professors, Boady Sanden, and we—”
“I know Professor Sanden quite well,” Nelson said. “We came up through the ranks together. A damned fine attorney.”
“I agree,” Lila said. “We had this case against Frank and…well, to put it bluntly, we kicked his ass. Rumor has it, he lost a judgeship
as a result, and I think that’s why he’s been trying to push me out of my job.”
Again Dovey tried to interject. “Push you out—?”
Nelson lifted a finger to silence Dovey.
Lila continued. “Just the other day he cornered me alone on the elevator and told me that I didn’t belong here. But here’s the thing, Mr. Nelson, I do belong here. I’m damned good at this job.”
“You froze in court,” Dovey said. Then to Nelson, “She has emotional issues—significant ones.”
Lila shot Dovey a cold glare. “And how would you know about that, Frank?”
Dovey looked back and forth between Lila and Nelson, but didn’t answer.
She turned her attention back to Nelson and softened her tone. “When I was eighteen, I was raped by two men. It was…” She paused, not to wrestle with her emotions but to find the right word. Her hands remained calm and folded in front of her. Her voice held no quaver.
“Mr. Nelson, I honestly don’t think there’s a word in the English language that could tell you all that I went through. Those men took something from me that will never be replaced. The shame from something like that can be devastating. People look at you like it’s your fault. Hell, my own mother refused to acknowledge what happened to me, and when it became too much, I swallowed some of her pills.”
Nelson seemed to balance discomfort and empathy better than most people. It fed Lila’s resolve.
“That was eight years ago,” she said. “And I clawed my way out of that hell. I went to college and law school, and now I have the job I’ve always wanted—except Frank doesn’t think I’m cut out for it. He sent a letter to the Board of Law Examiners telling them about my suicide attempt.”
Nelson looked at Dovey. “Frank?”
“Ms. Nash had to be relieved in court because she had some kind of episode. I was being prudent.”
Lila said, “But you didn’t just tell the board about the episode, did you? You told them that I’d been involuntarily committed in a psych ward because of a suicide attempt.”