“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.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I chanted.
I twisted the gun and yanked some more until it came out of El’s hand.
“The hostage is safe,” I said. “The gunman is disarmed. I’m coming out.”
I turned and left the room, left the house.
Shipman was going in while I was coming out. I handed her the Beretta, butt first. She took it without a word.
I continued along the sidewalk and down the concrete steps to the street. Bobby was still standing behind the patrol car, and I walked toward him.
Behind me, the cops were hustling El and Hoover out of the house, their hands cuffed behind their backs. Hoover was resisting. She kept repeating that the police couldn’t arrest her, that she was the victim.
Bobby was smiling when I reached him.
“Took you long enough,” he said.
I removed the forget-me-not that had been pinned to my jacket and gave it to him.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
JUST SO YOU KNOW
It was late October with the sun shining bright. I was sitting on the balcony of our condominium, the chair up against the wall as far away from the edge as possible. Nina was leaning against the railing and looking down. Winter had been a long time going—a ball game with the Dodgers in the last week of April had to be rescheduled because of snow, for God’s sake. Which was why we were attempting to stretch the following summer as far as we could.
“Shelby called,” Nina said. “She wants us to stop on the way and get some ice.”
“Okay.”
“It’ll probably be the last barbecue of the year.”
“Could be.”
“Shipman will be there. Are you two going to growl at each other all night?”
“Probably.”
“These terse replies of yours—I don’t feel good about what happened either.”
What happened is that everyone went to prison. It took three county prosecutors seven months to figure out where they were going, for how long, and for what crimes, yet no one was spared. Well, almost no one.
The final trial had just ended. The results were in the morning paper. Emily Hoover’s attorneys had argued that the statements she made over my cell phone were inadmissible, along with her e-mails and a knife found at the home in Highland Park where she had been conducting an open house the evening Oliver Braun was killed—a kitchen knife, by the way, that the Ramsey County medical examiner proved conclusively to be the murder weapon. Fruit of the poisoned tree, the lawyers called it. The trial judge disagreed. The attorneys appealed. The Minnesota Court of Appeals said, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.” Hoover was given a three-hundred-and-six-month jolt in the Minnesota Correctional Facility located in Shakopee.
Meanwhile, each member of the Deer River tribe was convicted of theft crimes and given one year and a day in Lino Lakes. The judge could have stayed the sentences, given the kids probation instead. Apparently he was not in a giving vein that day.
Mitch, Craig, and John Kispert each accepted seven-year sentences in St. Cloud. That was also severe by the standards laid out in the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines, yet a damn sight better than if they had also been convicted of a boatload of other complaints that were subsequently dropped in exchange for the guilty pleas, including conspiracy to commit murder and blackmail.
That left El, who went to trial for killing both Karl Olson and Peter Troop. Her attorney argued that since her actions saved the life of others, including a decorated member of the St. Paul Police Department, she shouldn’t be charged with anything. The argument might have succeeded, too, if El had only done it once. But twice? In the end, she accepted a forty-eight-month sentence for each of two counts of second degree manslaughter, the sentences to be served concurrently, all other charges dropped. That meant she’d be out in thirty-two.
“We can help Fifteen when she’s released from prison, can’t we?” Nina asked.
“Sure,” I said.
Yet El doing time wasn’t what bothered me. It was the woman who didn’t pay for her crimes.
The day after El and Hoover were arrested, I went to see Ramsey County Commissioner Merle Mattson. I told her that neither El nor Troop killed Oliver Braun—it was Emily Hoover. She accepted the information with a shrug.
“I asked this question before,” I told her. “Maybe now you’ll answer it. When the police interviewed you after Oliver was killed, why didn’t you tell them that the two of you were having an affair?”
“I don’t like that word—affair,” Mattson said. “It suggests something deceitful. It suggests cheating. I’m not married, McKenzie. Certainly Oliver wasn’t. There was nothing dishonest about our relationship.”
“Why keep it a secret?”
“Have you ever been in love?”
I flashed on the face of Shelby Dunston, which was inexplicable, and then Nina’s, and finally Jillian DeMarais, of all people.
“Frequently,” I said.
“I haven’t.”
The look in her eye, the catch in her voice, the use of contraction—trying to make you believe she was actually in love with the kid? my inner voice asked.
“Partly, we kept it a secret because of my job,” Mattson said. “I didn’t know how my constituents would take it. Or the party. Yet mostly we kept the relationship to ourselves because I just didn’t want to face questions from my family, my friends. Their smirks. I didn’t want the headache. It was better this way for him, too. Young men don’t respond well to teasing, and given the disparity in our ages, he would have been teased.
“Besides, I knew it wouldn’t last. Ms. Elbers, young women like her—stiff competition, Mr. McKenzie. It was only a matter of time before Oliver outgrew me. Until then … I wanted to keep it pure. I wanted to keep it simple. I wanted to remember our love in the years to come as being pure and simple.
“You know what, though? Call the police. I don’t care anymore. Call the media. Shout it from the rooftops. I might think differently about it tomorrow. Today—today, I’m proud to have been in love with Oliver. I’m thankful that he loved me.”
“Bullshit.”
The word jolted her. It was meant to.
“If you really meant what you’re saying, Commissioner, you would have told the cops the truth the moment you learned Oliver had been killed. You would have told them that you were being blackmailed and why. You would have told them that Oliver had taken a gun and gone to see Emily Hoover in order to protect you. But you didn’t love him enough to even acknow
ledge his sacrifice.”
“McKenzie—”
“You’re a public servant. You were a sheriff’s deputy. Yet you did nothing to put his killer away. Tell me again how much you cared.”
“Don’t talk to me like that. I have a reputation for being an honest woman, an honest politician. I didn’t want voters to remember me for this. I didn’t even know the handbags were stolen. How could I? I thought I was getting a deal.”
I had nothing more to say. Neither had anyone else. Because of the way the trials played out, Commissioner Mattson’s name was never mentioned. It annoyed me that she never paid for her sins. But then, I didn’t pay for mine either.
“I’m thinking of getting involved in politics,” I said.
Nina thought that was hysterical.
“No, I mean it,” I said. “Start small. Find someone to support in the race for Ramsey County commissioner.”
“You don’t live in Ramsey County anymore.”
“A minor detail.”
“I think it would have been better if we hadn’t been involved in any of this.”
“Then Emily Hoover might have gotten away with murder. The Deer River tribe would still be out there shoplifting, Mitch and Craig still selling what they stole. Kispert would be running his burglary ring and helping Hoover blackmail their customers. El—she might be dead instead of safe and sound in a cozy women’s prison. I’m sorry they went to prison, El and the kids, but sweetie, they all crossed the line.”
“Is that what it comes down to? Which side of the line you’re on?”
“Almost always.”
“But we crossed the line, too, didn’t we?” Nina said, meaning you crossed the line. “We all kept secrets. We all did good things for bad reasons and bad things for good reasons. We all screwed up.”
“Yes.”
She paused for a moment and then asked, “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes.”
Yet we didn’t leave. Instead, I kept sitting in the chair and Nina kept leaning on the railing and looking out at the city sprawling beneath her.
“There were no good guys in any of this, were there?” she said.
“Just us.”
“Us? What makes you think we’re the good guys?”
Unidentified Woman #15 Page 27