Funeral for a Friend

by Brian Freeman

  “Fine.”

  “So what do we know? Not what do we think, not what do we assume, not what do we hope, not what anybody else tells us. What do we know?”

  “Everything we know is thanks to Stride,” Maggie replied. “He opened up the case himself, which he didn’t need to do. He’s the one who told us about Steve Garske’s dying declaration. That’s the only reason we found the body.”

  “Okay,” Dan agreed. “Point goes to Stride. Have we heard anything from the medical examiner about the autopsy?”

  “Yes, Violet just sent over her report. She confirmed the body is Ned Baer. We got records from Ned’s dentist in Colorado, and the match is perfect. It’s him. Cause of death was exactly what it looked like, 9 mm to the skull. Violet recovered the bullet, and we’re sending it through the BCA to see if any matches show up in the system. That’ll take a while.”

  “What else do we have?” Dan asked.

  “Not much. Seven years ago, we were still trying to ascertain why Ned disappeared. We didn’t uncover any evidence to suggest a crime had been committed, so we didn’t investigate it as a murder. The circumstances suggested that it was probably an accidental death.”

  “Except Stride was the one who drew that conclusion, right?”

  “So did I,” Maggie said.

  “But you based it on Stride’s description of events,” Dan said.

  “Yes.”

  “A description we now know to be false.”

  Maggie frowned. “Yes.”

  “You still think he’s not a suspect?”

  Maggie said nothing.

  Dan took his feet off the table and dropped them heavily on the floor. “Well, it’s a homicide now, and we’re starting from scratch. We need to build a picture of what this guy was doing before he got shot. We’ve already got his cell phone records in the file, so let’s have Tubbo start following up on the calls Ned made to find out who he was talking to and what they were talking about.”

  “Guppo,” Maggie snapped.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s Guppo. Not Tubbo.”

  “Short guy? Mustache? Built like the Death Star?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh. I always thought it was Tubbo. Anyway, he can chase down the calls.”

  “What about me?” Maggie asked. “What do you want me to do?”

  Dan gave her another wolfish grin. He opened up a laptop computer in front of him, and he patted the chair next to him. “I want you and me working together. Side by side. So close we can read each other’s minds.”

  “Read my mind, Dan. What do you think it’s saying?”

  He patted the chair again. “Come on, sit over here. I set up a call with Debbi King. Ned’s editor.”

  Unhappily, Maggie relocated to the chair next to Dan, where they were squeezed so closely at the end of the table that their legs were forced together. His thigh rubbed against hers. He booted up the MacBook and used FaceTime to dial a number. A few seconds later, they were connected with a woman in a Denver office. Through the window behind her, they had a blurry view of the foothills.

  “Ms. King?” Dan said. “My name is Dan Erickson. I’m leading the investigation here in Duluth regarding Ned Baer. This is my partner on the case, Sergeant Maggie Bei. We appreciate your talking to us today.”

  “Your investigation is about seven years late, Mr. Erickson,” King snapped.

  “Yes, I understand that.”

  “Have you confirmed that the body you found is Ned?”

  “We have. I’m very sorry.”

  King shook her head in dismay. She was quiet for a while, and then she looked out the window and wiped her face. Maggie guessed that the woman was around fifty years old, which was the same age Ned Baer would have been if he’d lived. She had a shock of curly gray hair, and her face looked weathered and lined from time in the Colorado sun. Her nose was short and hooked, and she had pale eyes.

  “Is it true that Ned was murdered?” King went on.

  “Yes, he was shot.” When the editor didn’t react, Dan went on. “You don’t sound surprised to hear that.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Ned was an investigative reporter. It’s a nasty business. We get threats all the time. They’re usually just people trying to scare us off a story, but the risk is always there.”

  Maggie leaned forward. “Ms. King, can you give us some background on Ned Baer? Given that he wasn’t from Duluth, we don’t know very much about him. Had he worked for you for a long time?”

  “Ned didn’t work for me,” King replied. “He was my business partner. He and I started FR Online together twelve years ago. Before that, we both worked at the Post for fifteen years until we were laid off.”

  “So you must have known him well,” Maggie said.

  “Of course. We were good friends. I met him while I was still in college in California. He was a roadie for ZZ Top one summer, and I met him backstage when the tour came through San Jose. We were both journalism majors and both archconservatives, which is a pretty rare combination. We hit it off. We spent the whole night talking about Reagan and Bush. We had a very similar philosophy. Even back then, we both believed the future of the media was in advocacy. Having a point of view. We were convinced that ‘objectivity’ was simply bullshit covering up a left wing bias. Seventeen years later, that’s what led us to start FR Online.”

  “Did the two of you move to Colorado together after school?”

  “That’s right. The Post was hiring, and we both signed on. Like I said, we became close friends.”

  “Were you involved romantically?”

  King chuckled. “Me and Ned? No, our friendship was purely platonic. Oh, he hit on me when we first met, but I shot him down. He wasn’t the kind of man who gets my motor running. Honestly, Ned never dated much. He always had kind of an inferiority complex about his looks. Small guy, not much hair, beady eyes. So he never had much of a personal life. To be honest, he could be prickly, too. Angry, hard, always convinced the world was out to screw him. Not exactly the ideal e-Harmony profile. But that’s also what made Ned a terrific reporter. He loved cutting powerful people down to size. I still miss him.”

  “Ms. King, can you tell us about that summer in Duluth?” Dan asked. “What exactly was Ned doing here?”

  “Well, as you know, the Minnesota Attorney General, Devin Card, was running for the US House of Representatives. Card checked a lot of the Kennedy boxes. Liberal, good-looking, but also a reputation for bad behavior. When the anonymous rape accusation leaked to the press, there was a feeding frenzy to find out who was behind it and whether the allegation was true. Ned was convinced he could find the woman. He saw an opportunity to take down a rising Dem star.”

  “Did he?” Dan asked.

  “Obviously not. Card won the election. Now he’s running for the Senate.”

  “No, I meant, did Ned find the woman behind the accusation?”

  King rocked back in her chair. “I don’t know.”

  “You sound like you think it’s possible?”

  “Well, I told you, Ned was good at what he did. Unfortunately, he was also secretive. Reporters are competitive, and Ned usually didn’t share stories with me until he was ready to go public. But he was dropping hints that he had something big.”

  Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of hints?”

  “Well, it was nothing he said. He never told me if he was close, or if he had the woman’s name. That wasn’t his style. But I’d worked with Ned for a long time. He had certain quirks. I knew his voice when he was onto something. He was like a puffer fish, and I could almost hear his ego inflating. That was how he was that August.”

  “How did Ned work when he was doing research?” Maggie asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “W
ell, did he take paper notes? Use a laptop? Voice recordings?”

  “Yes, all of those things, but Ned was old school. He still wrote things down. He’d fill dozens of yellow pads with ideas.”

  “We didn’t find any notes in his motel room,” Maggie told her. “No notebooks and nothing electronic either. His car was broken into, and we think his laptop could have been stolen. But there were no paper notes anywhere.”

  King didn’t say anything immediately. She grabbed a pen from her desk and twisted it between her fingers. “So he had the story.”

  “What?”

  “He had the story. That’s what got him killed. Whoever did it took his notes. Did you talk to Devin Card? That son of a bitch had to be the one who killed Ned. If he thought his whole career was going down the crapper, he would have found a way to make Ned disappear.”

  “Do you have any proof of that?” Maggie asked. “Did Ned mention any conversations with Card?”

  “No, but what else could it be? Damn it, I knew that was what happened. As soon as I heard he was missing, I figured it was because of the story. I’ve been waiting seven years to hear that Ned was murdered.”

  “I wish you’d shared your suspicions with us,” Maggie said.

  King’s face screwed up with anger. “What are you talking about? I told the Duluth Police exactly what I’m telling you now. You were the ones insisting it was an accident, that Ned drowned in some river. I never believed that.”

  Dan shot a glance at Maggie. “Ms. King, do you remember who you talked to at the Duluth Police?”

  “Sure I do,” she replied. “I wrote it down. It was a police lieutenant named Jonathan Stride.”

  15

  Stride found Andrea’s sister, Denise, smoking outside the fence that bordered the runway at the Duluth airport. Crisp air blew across the hillside, making the long grass flutter. An F-16 from the National Guard unit was lined up for takeoff, and Stride waited to approach her until after the jet screamed into the air with a roar that he could feel under his feet like an earthquake. As the waves of noise faded, he crossed to the fence, and smoke from the woman’s cigarette enveloped him.

  He only met Denise a couple of times when he and Andrea were married, but he recognized her immediately, despite the years in between. Unlike Andrea, Denise had inherited the Forseth family height. She was several inches taller than Andrea and three years older, making her nearly fifty. Denise didn’t color her hair; it was gray and short. Her physique was lean, with leathery skin heavily inked with tattoos. She wore a loose black T-shirt over camouflage cargo pants and work boots. Wire-rimmed sunglasses covered her eyes.

  Two sisters who’d grown up in the same household couldn’t be more dissimilar.

  “Hello, Denise,” he said.

  She looked at him when she heard his voice. “Stride. What do you want?”

  “Andrea told me you moved back to Duluth this year.”

  “So what are you, the rep for the welcome wagon?”

  “I just wanted to talk,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not really interested in talking to you, Stride. You’re not exactly one of my favorite people, given what you did to my sister.”

  “I understand that. I hurt Andrea, and I won’t pretend otherwise.”

  “Do you expect to get points for honesty?”

  “No.”

  She whipped off her sunglasses. Heavy bags sagged under her blue eyes. “Why’d you do it?”

  “What?”

  “Why’d you cheat on her?”

  “I’m not sure how to answer that,” he admitted. “I fell for someone else, and I made a mistake. Things between me and Andrea were bad, but that doesn’t excuse it. I know that.”

  Denise put her sunglasses back on. She inhaled deeply on her cigarette, then coughed raggedly. “Well, if it makes you feel better, I’m a hypocrite to be blaming you.”

  “How so?”

  “I cheated, too. A lot. Repeatedly, in fact. My husband finally got sick of it and threw me out.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, he was no prize, either. I wanted custody of our daughter, and he said, sure, fine, take her. Father of the year, that one. So Lexi and I moved back here. Thirty years away, but Duluth is still home.”

  “You left the Air Force?” Stride asked.

  “Years ago. I put in my twenty.” She gestured at the runway. “Sometimes I still miss it, though. I like to come up here and watch the jets.”

  “I went to your house. Your daughter told me you’d probably be here.”

  Denise turned around and leaned against the fence. She bent one leg and propped her boot against the mesh. “So why’d you want to talk to me?”

  “Has Andrea told you what’s going on?” Stride asked.

  “About that body being found? Ned Baer? Yeah. She called me. Is she a suspect in the murder?”

  “Actually, right now, the top suspect is probably me.”

  Her thin lips curled into a smile. “I heard that, too. Did you do it?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. Sounds like that asshole deserved what he got.”

  “I have to ask, do you know why Ned Baer was interested in Andrea?”

  Denise tossed her cigarette butt to the ground and put her boot down and crushed it. “You mean, do I know about her and Devin Card? Yeah.”

  “Did she tell you about the assault when it happened?”

  “Back then? No. She never said a word. I didn’t have a clue.”

  “When did she tell you?”

  Andrea’s sister sighed and lit another cigarette. “Seven years ago, I got a strange call from her. She was asking me about the summer before I left for basic training. She made it sound casual, sort of nostalgic, but she was asking about parties we went to and where they were and who was there and what I remembered. I don’t know, it sounded forced. I didn’t think much about it, but then a few weeks later, I saw the news about Devin. Someone made an anonymous accusation that he raped a girl at a party that summer in Duluth. I put two and two together. I called Andrea and asked if she was the one behind the allegation, and she admitted it.”

  “Did you tell anyone else about it?” Stride asked.

  “Not a soul.”

  “Do you know if Andrea told anyone else?”

  “About being the one to make the accusation? I doubt it. She said our parents were the only ones who knew about the rape back then. She told them a few weeks after it happened, but my parents would have thought their daughter being raped was too shameful to admit to anyone. I’m sure they encouraged her not to talk to the police. Anyway, they’re both dead, and I imagine they took it to their graves.” Denise folded her arms across her chest. “Why are you asking me all this anyway?”

  “I’m trying to figure out how Ned Baer found Andrea and who else knew the truth about her. That might give me a clue about who killed him.”

  “You think Andrea did it, don’t you?”

  “Actually, I don’t,” Stride replied. “On the other hand, I know it wasn’t me, and Andrea was desperate to keep the secret concealed. But as far as I knew, she didn’t have a gun. I don’t think she even knew how to fire one.”

  Denise was quiet as he said this. He saw an uncomfortable expression on her face, and then she said, “Actually, that’s not true.”

  “What?”

  “Andrea knows how to shoot. Sometimes when I came home on leave, I’d take her to the range. I made her get a gun, too, for protection. That was long before the two of you met. She was single and living alone.” Then Denise rushed on before Stride could say anything more. “But if you’re asking if I think she killed him, the answer is no.”

  “Did she talk to you at all about Ned Baer?”

  “Yeah. She called me in Miami, and she was pretty freaked out about him. She said this reporter k
new it was her; she said he’d broken into her house and seen all of her private records. But she never said a word to me about killing him.”

  “Would she?”

  Denise shrugged. “Probably not.”

  “What about the summer when she says she was assaulted? What do you remember from back then?”

  “Come on, Stride. That was thirty years ago.”

  “I know, but whatever happened was important enough that it led to murder years later.”

  Denise waited through the roar of another plane taking off. Then she stared at the sky, as if she could clear her head and bring the memories back. “Andrea talked about a party crawl that summer. If that’s when she was raped, I’m pretty sure I know when it was. I was heading out to basic in a few days, so that night was kind of a last hurrah with my friends. Go to a big concert, get drunk, stay out all night, whatever. I encouraged Andrea to come with us. She didn’t go out very often, never did anything except run her science experiments. I pushed her to have some fun. If something bad happened to her that night, I feel responsible.”

  “If?” Stride asked. “Are you not sure she’s telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see her lying about it. Plus, it would explain a lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How she is. So closed off. After that summer, she barely talked to me for years. Her marriage to Robin failed. Her marriage to you failed. When she finally told me what she’d been through, her life began to make sense. And yet … I don’t know.”

  “You still doubt her?” he asked.

  Denise hesitated. “It’s not that I doubt her. She’s my sister. It’s that I knew Devin. I can’t picture him doing something like that.”

  “Take a college kid and add alcohol,” Stride said.

  “Oh, I get it. I’m not naïve. Believe me, I dealt with my share in the service. But Devin was a friend. I knew him pretty well throughout high school. He was a stud. No matter what party he was at, there were a dozen girls who would have spread their legs if he asked. He never had a reputation for pushing it too far, because he didn’t need to.”