by Allen Eskens
Ianna Markova had lived with the imposter in the penthouse of a twenty-story condominium at the edge of downtown Minneapolis, a building that overlooked the Mississippi River. Alexander flashed a badge, and a security officer buzzed him through the security doors.
An older building, its lobby had marble floors and cherry-paneled walls. It marked a vast improvement over the run-down tenements that Alexander frequented when he worked Narcotics—places that smelled of pit bulls, pot, and the unmistakable cat-urine scent of the meth labs.
The security guard, a young man who looked barely old enough to drink alcohol legally, sat behind the hotel-like reception desk, an economics textbook open in front of him.
“I need to see one of your residents,” Alexander said, still holding out his badge. “A Ms. Ianna Markova.”
“Is Ms. Markova expecting you?”
“She is not. But if you tell her it's about the death of Mr. Putnam, I'm sure she'll make herself available.”
The security guard picked up a phone, dialed, and spoke in a whisper. After a few seconds, he placed the phone back in the cradle and said, “Follow me.”
They walked to the elevator and the kid pushed the button for the twentieth floor—the penthouse. Alexander then rode up alone. When the elevator arrived, the doors opened to an antechamber. The door to the penthouse stood on the opposite side of the antechamber. Alexander walked over, knocked lightly, and waited until he heard the sound of diminutive feet padding on the floor inside. An attractive woman appeared, wearing a blue spaghetti-strap tank top, white yoga pants, and a soft smile.
“I'm Detective Alexander Rupert of the Minneapolis Police Department.”
The woman looked at his badge.
“Are you Ianna Markova?”
“I am.”
“Mind if I ask you a few questions about James Putnam?”
She didn't move at first. She looked at Alexander as though processing his request, and then said, “Come in.” Ianna walked to the heart of the apartment, where a fourteen-foot wall of tinted glass faced the Mississippi River. Alexander stepped up to the glass to look out. If Ianna Markova had been standing in that spot a couple hours earlier, she could have watched him on the Third Avenue Bridge, holding on to the cold, steel rail as though his life depended on it. “Nice view,” he said, turning his attention back to Ianna.
“If you like rivers,” she replied. She sat on a white couch and smiled at Alexander, motioning with her hand to show him to a love seat opposite her. Her eyes seemed to hold his just a little too long, and she smiled a little too easily for someone who recently lost a boyfriend, Alexander thought.
“Didn't the Highway Patrol already take care of this stuff?” Ianna asked.
“They did ma'am. This isn't about—”
“Oh, please don't call me ma'am.” Ianna curled her pedicured feet up underneath her. “Do I look like a ma'am to you?”
Alexander took a moment to look at Ianna and concluded that there was nothing “ma'am” about the woman. He swallowed hard and hoped that she hadn't noticed his stare. “No, I guess you don't,” he said. “By the way, I'm sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” she said casting her gaze to the floor not unlike an actor responding to a cue. “It all happened so suddenly.”
“How long did you know Mr. Putnam?”
“We were together for three years.”
“You own this place with him?”
“No. He owned it. I'm hoping to buy it. I have a little windfall coming.”
“The wrongful-death case?”
“You know about that?”
“So Dogget hasn't told you…”
Ianna sat up in her seat. “Told me what? Is there something wrong?”
Alexander hesitated, not wanting to be the one to bear bad news. “You may want to call him.”
“What is it?”
Alexander paused again, but then said, “He said that girlfriends can't collect on a wrongful-death action. Only wives.”
That cold slab of information seemed to catch Ianna off guard. She began absently looking around the apartment at the furniture and the adornments. “I don't understand. I thought…I mean, there was no wife. I was all James had. He didn't have a wife.”
“I'm sorry.”
“How can that be fair?” She pressed a hand against her chest. “You're saying that he told you I'm getting nothing…at all?”
“That's what Dogget said. It's not my call.”
She hesitated as if to collect herself, then said, “I'm sorry, Detective. It's just that I was counting on that settlement. I can't afford…” She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Dogget told me it was open-and-shut.”
“Dogget told you that because he wanted your help in tracking down James's family.”
“James always said he didn't have a family.”
“But you know better.” Alexander watched Ianna fold her hands together, a subconscious tick of discomfort. “I understand James has a brother.”
“What does this have to do with his death?”
“Maybe nothing,” Alexander said, “maybe a lot. If he told you that he had no family, how'd you know about the brother?”
Ianna lowered her eyes. “One day, when James was out of town, I was cleaning in the bedroom, and I found a box full of his personal stuff.”
“Where did you find the box?”
Ianna narrowed her gaze at Alexander. “Why are you here, Detective? What does this have to do with a car accident?”
“We came across some discrepancies in the accident investigation.”
“What discrepancies?”
“Where did you find the box?”
“In a hiding place,” she said. “A false bottom under the bed frame. I had to move the bed away from the wall to get to it.”
“While you were cleaning?”
Now she smiled at Alexander. “I'll have to watch myself with you, won't I?” She gave Alexander a slight nod before continuing. “So I wasn't cleaning. I was snooping, but I didn't open the box that day.”
“Why not?”
“It wasn't my box.”
Alexander dipped his head slightly and fixed a look of disbelief across his face.
“Okay,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I waited until I knew that James would be gone for a while. He used to go on a small trip every December. I waited until then to open the box.”
“What was in the box?”
“His birth certificate, his Social Security card, and a stack of letters.”
“Letters from William?”
She leaned back in her seat, spreading her arms across the back of the couch. “If you knew about this already, wouldn't it have been easier to just come out and ask to see the letters?”
“Can I see the letters?” Alexander said.
“Sure, but what's this all about?”
“Please…the letters?”
Ianna stood and went down the hall, disappearing into a room at the opposite end of the apartment.
Alexander took the opportunity to stretch his legs and look around. The apartment had been furnished with pieces that could only survive in a home with no children or pets. A Japanese sandalwood hutch held antique silver, delicate crystal, and pottery that looked older than the Bible itself. In the kitchen, fine Californian wines lined the racks of a wine cabinet. Through an open door, Alexander could see an office with mahogany wainscoting and shelves filled with books, and a desk with a computer monitor on it.
In the front room, a carved-stone fireplace acted as a counterbalance to the windowed wall that overlooked the river. The over-mantle on the fireplace, a grid of stone panels, rose to the ceiling. A painting of a fountain hung above the fireplace. Alexander walked up to the painting and read the name Peterson in the bottom corner. A woman, dressed in a Victorian-era, long, white dress, descended steps behind the fountain.
“That's an original Peterson,” Ianna said, walking into the room with a small, green box in her hands.
“Never h
eard of him. Is he famous?”
“She. And yes.” Ianna had fixed herself up a bit while she'd been retrieving the letters: her face softened by a touch of makeup, her hair brushed just enough to give it a shine. And Alexander thought he caught a whiff of perfume in the air that hadn't been there before.
Alexander said, “If you don't mind my asking, what's a painting like that go for?”
“James bought that before we got together. He told me that he paid seventy thousand dollars for it.”
Alexander whistled his surprise and tried to imagine how this imposter could come up with enough money to pay a year's salary for a painting of a fountain. “What did James do for a living?”
“Nothing…I mean he occasionally traded stocks online.”
“All this from the occasional stock trade?”
“He never talked about how he made his money. He was kind of secretive that way. Is that what this is about?”
“Can I see the letters, please?”
Ianna sat on the couch, opened the box, and handed the documents to Alexander. He returned to the love seat and flipped through the letters from William Putnam to James, looking for the dates. As he suspected, there were no letters after October 2001. “Do you mind if I take these with me?”
“Sure, you can have them,” she said. “Now do you want to tell me why you're here?”
Alexander leaned forward so that he could watch her reaction. “Miss Markova—”
“Please call me Ianna.”
“Ianna, the man you knew as James Putnam was an imposter. I believe that he stole the identity of the real James Putnam back in 2001 and has been living under that false identity ever since.”
Ianna didn't move at first; her whole body seemed frozen by what Alexander had said. It seemed as though she was waiting for the words to form a pattern that might make sense. “That's impossible.” She shook her head. “That's just crazy. I know James Putnam. What you're saying can't be true.”
“Those letters you found…they're letters that William Putnam sent to his brother, James—the real James.”
Alexander reached into his pocket and showed Ianna the MySpace photo. She gazed at it with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. Alexander continued. “This man is the real James Putnam. But in November of 2001, a new James Putnam appeared in the records. This new James is the man you knew.”
“If he wasn't James Putnam, then who was he?”
“I'm trying to figure that out.”
“This makes no sense.”
“Have you ever seen that man in the picture before?”
“No.”
“Did James ever mention anything from his past? Any clue who he might have been.”
“He was James Putnam. I never…I mean it never occurred to me.”
“He ever talk about his life, maybe a childhood friend or relative?”
“He said he grew up in Brooklyn…and that his parents died when he was in high school.” She put the photo down and thought for a minute, then said. “I'm sorry, Detective. I know it makes me sound like an idiot—some dumb blond—but I don't remember him saying anything about his past. I just figured something bad happened, and he wanted to keep it buried. This is unreal. I can't think of anything that would explain…”
Alexander pulled out a card with his name and number on it and gave it to Ianna. “This can't be easy for you. I would really appreciate it if you would think back on your conversations with James, and if anything pops into your head, give me a call.”
“Sure,” she said.
“I just have one more thing.”
“I'm almost afraid to ask.”
Alexander pointed at the office. “I'd like to get a copy of the hard drive off of that computer in there. Would that be okay?”
“The hard drive?”
“If the man you knew as James Putnam kept any ties to his past life, he might have left a clue on his computer.”
“You want to take the computer?”
“No, I can make a copy of the hard drive.” Alexander pulled a computer-data-collection kit from the pocket of his jacket, a package slightly larger than a wallet. “With this I can create an exact duplicate of the computer's hard drive.”
“Shouldn't you have a search warrant or something?”
“Not if you give me your consent. I could go get a search warrant if you prefer.”
“No, that's okay,” she said. “It's just that…”
“What?”
“There may be some pictures of me on there…you know…personal pictures.”
Alexander looked at her with reassuring eyes, a mask he'd worn many times working undercover. “I'm not looking for pictures. I want to see if there's anything on the computer that might explain who that man really was.”
“Believe me,” Ianna said. “I want to know the truth as much as you do. It's just…the thought of a bunch of cops or computer geeks looking at pictures of me…”
Alexander considered the problem. There would be metadata lurking in the shadows of the hard drive, and he would need the forensics guys to uncover that. But to leave the computer alone with Ianna while he sought a search warrant—she could destroy a lot of information if she tried. If she truly had concerns about people seeing her private pictures, he could work around that.
He said, “You could consent to let me look at it—just me—and no other cops or forensic guys. If you let me look at the hard drive, I promise I won't take it to Forensics without coming back to give you a heads-up. And I promise I won't go into any picture files that might be personal. You have my word.”
“And you'll let me know what you find? You'll tell me who he really was?”
“Well, technically, you're a witness and—”
“And technically you don't have a search warrant. I'll wash your back and you can wash mine.”
“You mean scratch.”
“That works too,” she smiled.
He'd expected a grieving mess of a woman barely able to function—not this. Ianna Markova radiated a clever mix of high-end savvy and country charm. She struck Alexander as the kind of woman who could sum up the competing angles of any game and know where best to place her bets. She would have made a great undercover cop, he thought. “I guess you have a right to know who you've been with all these years,” he said.
Ianna stood, led Alexander to the study, and turned on the computer. As the screen flashed through the wakeup sequence, Ianna wrote on a piece of paper. “Here are the passwords that I know about. I'm not sure if there are any others.”
“He gave you his passwords?”
“Some,” she shrugged. “I…acquired some others.” The curiosity must have shown on Alexander's face because she continued. “A girl's got to take care of herself, doesn't she?”
Alexander smiled and looked at two telephone numbers she had written on the bottom of the paper. “And what are these?”
“My home number and cell, so you can keep me updated.” Then Ianna continued in a voice that held a hint of mischievousness. “And if you come across any pictures that you find…interesting, it's okay if you take a little peek.”
Max Rupert sat at a table in Delancy's Pub and waited for Alexander to arrive. Max had sent his brother a text message to join him there for a beer, and he made the invitation benign—just a chat after work—so that Alexander would show up. He chose Delancy's Pub because it was close to City Hall and had a certain leave-me-alone feel to it.
As he waited, Max picked at the label on a bottle of beer, not sure how he would broach the true purpose for their meeting. He had spent his lunch hour that day chatting with Reed Osgood, his former partner from Homicide, who now chased bad guys for the FBI. After bribing Reed with a lunch of steak and eggs, Reed passed on a tidbit about the Task Force investigation. Reed didn't work the case himself, but the piece of information came from a credible source inside the investigation, and Max trusted Reed.
A little after 6 p.m., Alexander walked into Delancy's, with a pur
poseful stride that Max hadn't seen in months. He plopped down at the table with Max and immediately hijacked the conversation. “I've got a case I want to run past you.”
“Well, hi to you too. You want to maybe order a beer first?”
Alexander waved at a waitress walking by two tables away and hollered, “Grain Belt.” The girl nodded, and he picked up where he left off. “Right now it's an identity-theft case, but I got a feeling it's a lot more.”
Alexander launched into an explanation of the Putnam case, starting with the car accident and ending with his conversation with Ianna Markova. As Alexander spoke, Max sat silently across the table from him and sipped at his beer.
“What do you know of his life in New York before he disappeared?”
“He grew up in Brooklyn Heights, graduated with decent grades in high school, despite losing both his parents in a car accident. He was about to enter his senior year at Pace University.”
“I get the feeling that you think James is dead?”
“If it quacks like a duck,” Alexander said. “I don't see any other logical conclusion, do you?”
“Sounds like a duck to me. So who killed him, where, and why?”
“That's what I'm working on. I haven't found any evidence that the real James Putnam ever left New York. He sent a letter to his brother in October of that year, saying he was leaving the city because 9/11 freaked him out, but after that—nothing.”
“Did you look at the handwriting and the signature on that last letter?”
“The letter was typed, but the signature looks authentic. It's hard to tell because I don't have a proper handwriting exemplar—just a few old letters.”
“So, what's next?”
“Well, the way I see it, someone should probably do some digging around in Brooklyn. I don't think I'm going to find anything more here in Minnesota—at least nothing that will lead me to the real James Putnam. I want to go to New York. If I look around his old neighborhood, maybe…I don't know…something might open up.”
“Seems reasonable to me. Have you talked to Commander Tiller about it?”
“Not yet.” Alexander circled the heel of his beer bottle on the tabletop. “I've played that conversation in my head a few times, and it never comes out good.”