by Stephen Frey
We’re sitting across a table from each other at a greasy spoon called the Lion’s Tap. It’s out past Chaska on a back road that overlooks the Minnesota River. When Chelsea called me yesterday to ask me to meet her she said she couldn’t go anywhere she could be recognized, so I suggested this place. It’s purely blue collar. My partner and I used to come here all the time for lunch during our shifts. The cheeseburgers are outstanding, even better than the Kro-Bar’s and miles ahead of Sara’s Saloon Burger. I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten yet today.
“The stuff’s in my car,” Chelsea says. “It’s in a box. I don’t know what it is. I haven’t looked at it, but Cindy told me to make sure you got it right away if anything happened to her. It’s probably old love letters she never sent you.” She shakes her head. “It’s weird,” she says in a soft voice. “She only gave it to me a few weeks ago.”
Chelsea’s eyes are red-rimmed and it seems obvious she’s been crying. Coming to meet me must have brought the tragedy of Cindy’s death rushing back to the surface. Chelsea isn’t nice to many people, but she loved Cindy more than life itself. “Can I get you anything?” I ask. “Something to drink?” I don’t want to insult her by offering her a cheeseburger.
She shakes her head. “No, I’ve got to go,” she says, standing up. “I’ve got to get home.”
The waitress is just putting a fat, juicy cheeseburger and fries down in front of me and it smells so good my stomach starts growling.
Chelsea’s halfway to the door when she turns around, puts her hands on her hips and scowls at me. “Damn it, Paul, let’s go!”
The waitress smiles down at me compassionately. “Don’t worry. I’ll wrap it up for you.” She raises an eyebrow. “If your wife can wait thirty seconds.”
I’m ten miles from home on a particularly lonely stretch of 681 north of Hayward when there’s a loud bang and the Cherokee’s front end pulls suddenly and sharply to the left. I wrench the steering wheel to the right and fight the truck for a hundred yards before I finally bring it to a sliding stop in the middle of the slippery road. A lot of snow melted today, but since nightfall the temperature’s fallen below freezing and there are ice patches everywhere.
I reach into the glove compartment, grab my gun, chamber the first round, holster it, then open the door and climb cautiously out of the truck. I’m not sure, but that bang I heard sounded like a rifle shot. Not the tire exploding,
It’s deathly quiet and pitch black outside the Cherokee. I shut the door and quickly move away from the vehicle. I’m a sitting duck out here and I figure I’ve got two choices. Walk home and dive into the woods on the way whenever I hear a car coming, in case I’m being stalked. Or change the tire and give anybody who’s out there the opportunity to sneak up on me and get an easy shot.
The way I see it, both choices stink.
21
BEAR PICKED ME up at the house this morning at seven sharp and drove me back down 681 toward Hayward to get the Cherokee. I ended up walking all the way home last night after the tire blew, and I didn’t get to the house until after three o’clock this morning. When I finally came through the door, Davy Johnson was sprawled out on my living room couch snoring like a chainsaw. I had to shake his shoulder several times to wake him up. Given how long it took me to get his eyes open, I’m not sure he would have heard anyone break in before it was too late anyway, but having him there made Vivian feel a heck of a lot better and that was all that mattered.
Davy was so tired he didn’t even ask me why my truck wasn’t in the driveway when we walked outside to his SUV. He usually catches stuff like that and doesn’t hesitate to ask questions when he does. I was glad he didn’t. I didn’t want to have to make something up about engine trouble that he would have found out later was a crock. Bat’s the only guy I let touch our police vehicles, and when Davy asked Bat about it—which he inevitably would have—he would have found out I hadn’t brought the thing in. If I’d told Davy the truth about having a flat tire, he would have asked me why I didn’t fix it right away. And no matter what I’d said it would have gotten him to thinking, because he’s just that kind of guy.
In fact, with a little training, I think he could have made detective on a small-city force like Duluth’s. I encouraged him to think about doing that a few years ago because I knew a guy over there who could have helped him. It would have meant a solid bump in pay, but after he thanked me for having the confidence in him to suggest it, he told me he was satisfied with his life just the way it was. He told me he liked leaving work at work when he went home to his wife and three kids at the end of his shift. But he knew that if he were a detective he’d never be able to completely let go of the cases he was working on. After he explained the way he felt about it, I nodded and smiled, and I haven’t bothered him about it since.
When I called Davy and asked him for the favor he was very curious about why I wanted him to stay with Vivian. He asked me several questions before he agreed to go over to the house and do it. Not because he felt put out, he didn’t act that way at all. He’s a decent man who became a cop because he likes to help people, not because he needs a power trip every time he walks out his front door like a lot of lawmen I know do. He just wanted to understand what the deal was because I’d never asked him to do it before. I told him Vivian had a death in her family and she needed company while I was in Minneapolis working on Cindy’s case—a story she quickly agreed to go along with, because she was just happy I’d found someone to stay with her. A story Davy would have had no way of checking out as long as Vivian didn’t crack. Which I knew she wouldn’t, because it wasn’t in her self-interest to do that, and we all have a way of acting in our self-interest most of the time. I could tell Davy wasn’t completely satisfied with my answer, but he’s a subordinate, and though he’s not hesitant to ask probing questions, he usually knows when to stop. Unfortunately, that won’t keep him from speculating with Chugger and Frankie Holmes about it, and that’s what worries me.
I left three messages for Bear yesterday afternoon while I was in Minneapolis, but I didn’t hear back from him until he pulled into the driveway this morning to take me down to the Cherokee—on the last message I told him I needed the ride, which was why he showed up at the house at seven. I never asked him why he didn’t call back and he never gave me an explanation. I did talk to him about giving orders to the other guys on his own, but all he did was grunt when I asked him if we were clear on the matter. After that we didn’t say anything to each other the whole rest of the trip to the Cherokee, and he didn’t offer to help me change the tire, either. When we got to the truck he just dropped me off, turned around, and roared back to Bruner without so much as a wave. It was strange.
What’s happened since last week has put a lot of pressure on our friendship, and I’m looking forward to getting things back to normal. I hate being at odds with Bear in any way. He’s my damn best friend and it makes me feel really bad when we’re like this. And I could really use his support right now. All of it.
I’m glad I decided to walk home last night—and hustle into the woods three times on the way when I heard vehicles coming. I can’t be sure, because the tire was pretty chewed up all the way around after I fought the truck so hard for control, but it looked like the thing had been punctured through the side, not through the tread. Which I know doesn’t rule out the possibility that a large, sharp object was lying on the road and it kicked up, causing the damage, instead of a gunshot. But I was coming around a tight curve—the tightest one between Bruner and Hayward—when the tire blew, at a point when I’d slowed down to less than twenty miles an hour on the road’s slick surface. That slow a speed would have given a shooter a perfect chance to hit the tire.
And about a hundred yards back of where I finally got the truck under control after the tire blew, there were bootprints leading into the woods that stopped and turned around just inside the tree line, then headed deeper into the woods. After I put the spare on I drove back to where I figured the
tire blew, and the tracks leading off into the forest were easy to spot. It was obvious that they were recent, too. They were sharply defined in the snow, not at all melted, so I could see the tread on the sole and even read the name of the boot’s maker—which was Big Buck. I followed the tracks into the woods for a ways, but I turned around and headed back to the truck when I remembered my eight o’clock meeting with Clements and I realized it was already seven-forty-five.
The Cherokee had been broken into while it was sitting on the side of the road. The lock on the driver side door had been popped, which is easy to do for someone who knows what he’s doing, so the breakin didn’t really surprise me. In this part of the north-country even police vehicles are vulnerable to scavengers when they’ve been abandoned on lonely stretches. The thing is, it usually takes a few days for people to move in. The Cherokee had only been sitting there for a few hours when I got back to it. I’m just glad I grabbed the Jenkins tapes and the box Chelsea gave me off the passenger seat before I took off for home last night.
I’m fifteen minutes late for my meeting with Darrow Clements, and, predictably, he’s not happy about it when I walk into my office. But then he’s never happy about anything. I don’t bother shaking hands with him when I come in and I notice him glance nervously at the door after I bang it shut. What happened last time left an indelible impression on him—which is fine with me.
“What do you want, Darrow?” I ask with a frustrated groan as I sink into my chair. With only a few hours’ sleep last night and the stress of everything that’s going on, I’m beat, and I’ve got no patience for this guy. I simply don’t want to deal with him. “How can I get you out of here as quickly as possible?”
“Easy,” he says, not at all sidetracked by my nasty remark, at least, not outwardly.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Just agree to a blood test.”
My eyes flash to his. “What?” I regret the emotion in my reaction instantly. He saw and heard my fear. We both know it.
“You heard me, Summers. Give me some blood so I can find out whether your semen is the other semen that was inside Cindy when she was murdered. Other than her husband’s.” He breaks into a cocky smile. “Or maybe you don’t want to. Maybe I’ll have to force you to do it.” He leans forward in the chair. “I will, too. I’ll get a court order if I have to.”
How in the world did Clements find out about the two different semen samples? It had to be Peter Schmidt. That’s the only way he could have found out, and I curse the guy under my breath. Schmidt didn’t need to tell Clements about that. All he had to do was give up Cindy’s body. At least he could have told me on the phone when we talked yesterday what he’d done so I would have been ready.
“Schmidt was real easy to deal with after his boss’s boss called him from Madison while I was in the office. He got the message real quick when we started talking about his pension.”
I shake my head. It’s all about the money for most people.
“It’s like I’ve been telling you, Summers,” Clements keeps going. “Lew Prescott will call in any favor he needs to call in to bring his daughter’s killer to justice as quickly as possible. Don’t fight it. It’ll be worse for you in the end if you do.”
All I can do is try to stare Clements down, because I can’t think of anything to say. I’m too tired. So that’s what I do. I just stare back at him.
“Congressman Harrison told us that he and Cindy had sex the day he drove up to the estate,” Clements continues. “That was Friday of last week, the day of her murder.” He points at me. “The same day you went to the estate twice. The first time in the morning to fix a pipe you claimed was broken. Even though Mr. Prescott had a plumber from Superior go to the place to inspect the plumbing yesterday and the guy couldn’t find a thing wrong with anything. And the second time you went there was in the afternoon. Cindy and her father actually spoke on the phone while you were there that time.”
So that’s how Prescott knew about my second visit. Cindy got out of bed and went downstairs to get a drink, and, now that I think about it, she was gone for a while, longer than it would have taken just to get something to drink. She must have called her father while she was down there, because I didn’t hear a phone ring. But why the hell would she tell him I was at the estate? That doesn’t seem right, it just doesn’t add up. It’s like Prescott and Clements are trying to fool me into saying something I shouldn’t. I mean, she knew full well that he wouldn’t want me to be there. Maybe they got into an argument while they were talking and she told her father in spite. But, as I think back on that day, she didn’t seem upset when she slipped back into bed with me and kissed me.
“Yeah, you went there the second time. After Congressman Harrison left to go back to the Twin Cities.” Clements’s stupid smile morphs into an accusatory sneer. “We know about it.”
I’m tempted to tell Clements what I know about Jack. How the congressman filled up his Porsche at the independent station just south of Hayward at seven-forty-five the night of the murder. How he didn’t leave the area when he said he did. It’s so tempting to blurt everything out—but I don’t. I can’t. That would give Prescott and Jack the chance to come up with an excuse or an alibi. Or time to get to the old guy who owns the gas station south of Hayward and convince him with money or threats that he was wrong about seeing Jack. I have to keep it all bottled up because, as shocking as it is to me, I’m starting to think Prescott and Jack are responsible for Cindy’s murder. And I can’t give them the chance to avoid the trap I’m setting for them.
After I sent Davy Johnson home to his wife at three o’clock this morning and made sure that Vivian was fast asleep, I opened that taped-up box Chelsea gave me in the Lion’s Tap parking lot. I’m glad Chelsea thought it was full of old love letters, because she wouldn’t have given it to me if she knew what was really inside it. As much as Chelsea hates her father, she loves the life she leads, and she’d be helpless without money. The box Cindy sent me from the grave was full of financial information that seems to prove what she told me about Prescott Trading. That it’s on the brink of disaster. There’s no way Chelsea would want that kind of information getting out.
I’m no financial guru—far from it—but it didn’t take a genius to see the red numbers splashed all over the internal statements inside the box. Or to read about how the Minneapolis operation had made a lot of bad bets on oil prices right before the crude market crashed two years ago and that was why company accounts were suddenly pouring blood to the tune of something like a hundred million dollars a month. Or to read that hand-scrawled memo from Jack to Lewis Prescott that was in the box—dated just a month ago—indicating that the company would be lucky to stay solvent until spring. It said that the company’s bankers were already starting to ask tough questions. It said that if the bankers called their margin loans due at the end of March, Prescott Trading would be forced into bankruptcy and that any monies that had been distributed to shareholders during the nine months before that would have to be repaid.
I’m going to make copies of the information in that box, then take one of the copies to a friend of mine in Minneapolis who’s a CPA so he can confirm what it all seems to indicate. It scares me to death to think that somehow Prescott and Jack suspected Cindy of getting her hands on the information in the box and they killed her to keep her quiet while they pilfer what’s left to pilfer of Prescott Trading, then hide the proceeds in overseas accounts where the Feds can’t find it so it’s there for them when they run. It scares me but it makes a lot of sense, too.
And what if they find out that Chelsea gave me a box full of something from Cindy? I doubt they’d believe me if I told them it was just old love letters she’d never sent me.
Then it hits me. Maybe Jack was at the estate last Friday when I went back there in the afternoon. Maybe he left—maybe they kissed good-bye and Cindy watched him motor down the driveway in the Porsche—then somehow he got back into the mansion without Cindy knowing. Ma
ybe that’s how Lewis Prescott knew I was there a second time; maybe Jack told him. Maybe that’s why they think they can pin Cindy’s murder on me like Sheriff Wilson said Clements was trying to do.
“You had sex with Cindy that afternoon, didn’t you, Summers?”
Clements jars me back into the moment.
“Or maybe it was even later than that,” Clements adds ominously. “Maybe it was more toward evening when you forced yourself on her.”
“Forced myself on her?”
“Okay, raped her.”
I manage to keep my eyes locked on Clements as he makes these awful accusations, as he conjures up wild ideas in his head. My God, if he starts telling people about my raping Cindy on the day of her murder I’d be finished in Bruner. The town council wouldn’t put up with that if they thought there was even a grain of truth to it. The last thing they want is trouble with the River Families, especially the Prescotts. Mrs. Erickson has been telling people for years that Cindy and I are more than just friends, but there’s never been a sliver of proof, because it isn’t true. We had our fling when we were young, but since I’ve been married, it’s never happened. People around here whisper about us behind my back, but they all recognize who the source of the information is, so it’s all taken with a pile of salt. But if Darrow Clements and Lew Prescott are the sources and they tell everyone they have proof to back up their claims, I’m done.
But what’s even worse is that my marriage would be finished, too. I’ve never felt as guilty in all my life as I did when I left the Prescott estate after Cindy and I had sex Friday afternoon. In all the years we’ve been married I’ve never been unfaithful to Vivian until that day, not with anyone, not at any time. For years and years Viv accused me of running around on her with Cindy, but we both understood that she was just using the accusation to try to make me feel bad. And I never did run around on her—until Friday.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I hiss, still glaring at him as hard as I can. “You’re out of your mind.”