Love 'Em or Leave 'Em Dead

by Bubany, Midge;

  “An assassin,” I whispered.

  SPANKY ARRIVED AT THE OFFICE about 7:00 a.m. “Sorry I didn’t get your messages until this morning. My bad. Anything go down?”

  I told him about the Palmer cabin.

  “I’m waiting for the judge to sign the search warrants this morning.”

  “There may be something on his cellphone records that can help.”

  “Yeah, I’m hoping.”

  Spanky started his paperwork, and I had a visit from Patrice.

  “Zabrina didn’t come home last night and isn’t answering her phone. I called Sarah, and she said Zabrina wasn’t in Minneapolis. She must be at the lake house.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “Bobby said there were lights on out there for the last two nights.”

  “Two? Well, I don’t like that. Do you suppose it’s Grady?”

  “You could send a patrol out to check,” I said.

  “No, I don’t want it written up. I’ll go myself, but I’d feel better if you came with me.”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Let’s go.”

  “You’re not wearing your uniform.”

  “Want me to go home and change? I hadn’t planned on coming in today.”

  “Fine.”

  PATRICE WAS QUIET for a few blocks before she said, “I thought we’d have Vincent Palmer in custody by now.”

  “Yeah, me too. Deputy Deitz and I checked out the family cabin on Island Lake last night. Looked like someone had been there earlier. He’s probably back in the Cities. Spanky has search warrants and is going back down today.”

  “Why do you persist in calling him ‘Spanky’ instead of Austin? I think it’s awful and unprofessional.”

  “Because he likes it.”

  She shook her head. “Do you think Vince Palmer took off for parts unknown?”

  “Would be the smart choice.”

  “You have a look I’ve never seen—like you want to rip his limbs off.”

  “That would be accurate, but I won’t. I know the consequences.”

  Bobby was right. If I took my Louisville Slugger to Palmer, I’d be the one to land in jail and would likely lose everything. Part of me wanted Bobby to kill Vince, or at least maim him. I was afraid with the right lawyer Palmer would land probation because assaulting Dallas was his first offense. And what had Bobby found out about him that he didn’t like?

  Patrice began to sing along with Brad Paisley as he sang “Whiskey Lullaby.” She had a terrible voice. Somewhere between Prairie Falls and Bittern, she said, “David blames my job for the break up of our marriage.”

  “Do you agree?”

  “He was in on the decision for me to run for sheriff. He knew how time consuming the job would be, and is that an excuse to have an affair with my friend’s mother, for God’s sake?”

  “No, but sometimes people can’t know how difficult a lifestyle will be until they experience it.”

  “I guess that’s true. So I’m curious, will you support me or Matt?” she asked.

  “Patrice, don’t draw the line.”

  I glanced at her as she looked out the window. “You just answered my question . . . and if you, one of my friends, support Matt, then I’ll have to rely on the civilian vote.”

  She considers me a friend? Huh.

  THERE WERE THREE CARS in the Donovan yard: Zabrina’s Miata, Grady’s Mazda, and a white Nissan.

  “Recognize the Nissan?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “I’ll run the plates.”

  Within a short time, we had the answer. “It’s Zach Whitman’s. I’m not sure this is a good situation, with the kiss I saw.” I said.

  “What kiss?”

  “Zach and Zabrina at Cadillac Jack’s.”

  “Oh, shit, that could mean trouble.”

  We got out and approached the door. Patrice had a key and let us in. The kids were not in the great room, which was littered with empty wine bottles and pizza boxes.

  “Party time,” I said.

  She picked up a wine bottle. “They’re drinking her good stuff. So where are they?”

  “In bed . . . or in the pool.”

  “Good lord, I hope it’s the pool.”

  We walked through to the back of the house. Patrice pushed open the heavy door to the pool. I stayed close behind. The heavy chlorine odor hung in the humid air. This was no pool party. Grady stood midway along the side of the pool. Zabrina was standing down by the shallow end. Zach, fully clothed, was treading water in the middle of the pool.

  “This is screwy,” I said.

  Patrice and I simultaneously unsnapped the straps on our holsters and placed our hands on our weapons. We made no sudden moves as we moved in closer to assess the situation. Zabrina let out a sob, then wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Zach pointed to Grady.

  “What’s going on here?” I said, as I walked around Patrice.

  “They lied to me,” Grady screamed.

  “No, Grady,” Zabrina said.

  “Grady, let’s sit down and discuss this calmly.”

  He ignored me. The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

  “Grady, kneel down and put your hands behind your head,” I said firmly, calmly.

  He ignored my request. I said it louder.

  “This is ridiculous,” Patrice said from behind me. She brushed past me.

  Then, boom! Patrice’s firearm came up and she fired. Zabrina screamed. Grady lifted an arm and fired several rounds at Zach. Zach dove into the water. Patrice pulled off a cluster of rounds.

  By the time I had my weapon trained on Grady, he’d fallen to his knees and toppled over. His gun skittered across the tile and landed near the wall. Two seconds, max, it was over—and I hadn’t taken a single shot.

  As I called 911, I looked for blood in the water. Couldn’t see any.

  “Are you hit?” I asked Zach.

  “No.”

  What with the ringing in my ears, I could hardly hear his answer.

  Good thing water slows bullets. And good thing Grady was as bad a shot as Patrice was. If I’d seen the gun, I would have taken a head shot since he’d been standing sideways to us.

  I holstered my firearm and knelt over Grady. I checked his pockets for additional weapons, then as I spoke to the 911 operator, I assessed his injuries.

  “We have a nineteen-year-old male, gunshot wounds to his upper arm and thigh”.

  Lorraine said she’d dispatch the ambulance from Dexter Lake ASAP. They’d take him to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Brainerd, as it was closer than Birch County Hospital in Prairie Falls.

  Patrice was standing frozen in her tracks.

  “Patrice!” I yelled.

  She looked up.

  “Put on gloves, pick up the gun, bag it and lock it in the Explorer. While you’re out there, get the first-aid kit.”

  Without saying a word, she pulled gloves out of her pocket and picked up the gun. She moved zombie-like toward the door.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  ZACH HAD CLIMBED OUT of the pool and sat next to Zabrina on a bench near the changing room wall. She pulled her knees up, put her face between them and covered her head with her hands.

  “Zach! I need some help here.”

  He looked at me.

  “Get some towels out of the pool room.”

  Grady moaned.

  “You’re gonna live, kid,” I said.

  “It hurts.”

  Zach handed me the towels. “Now go back to Zabrina.”

  I wrapped the towels around the affected limbs. “Whose gun was that?” I asked Grady. “You know.” “My partner’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Storage unit . . . in Jordan.”

  He must have retrieved it before Minneapolis police secured the search warrant.

  When Patrice returned with the kit, I tied a tourniquet around Grady’s upper arm and leg to decrease the bleeding. Patri
ce crouched nearby and held her head. She lifted a hand to show me it was trembling. “I’m a wreck.”

  “It’s the adrenaline. I have to call Bemidji in with an officer-involved shooting.”

  “Shit.”

  LATER, AS WE WATCHED the ambulance pull away, I said, “This could have been a lot worse. I didn’t see the gun in his left hand.”

  Her brows furrowed as she snuffled. “I knew something was up when I saw the fear in Zabrina’s and Zach’s faces. The media will have a heyday with this one.”

  “When’s the last time you were at the range?”

  “I don’t go often enough. Why?”

  “Why? You were shooting all over the place. Did you look at the back wall?”

  She took a deep breath. “Shit.”

  PATRICE FOUND ZACH A LARGE terrycloth robe to wear and while his wet things were in the clothes dryer, Zabrina went upstairs to change clothing. I asked Patrice to go up and get Zabrina’s side of the story. I would get Zach’s.

  I put on my iPad to record his initial statement. His hands shook as he pushed back his hair, still wet. Red blotches filled his cheeks, and he’d acquired a nervous tic near his eye.

  “So what happened?”

  “Zabrina and I were just hanging out when Grady showed up. I told her not to let him in, but she said it would be fine. Well, it wasn’t. He started screaming at us like a lunatic.”

  “You were with his girl.”

  “Former girl. They broke up.”

  “Like five minutes ago.”

  He lifted his eyebrows and took a breath.

  “How long have you and Zabrina had a thing?”

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds. “I knew her before I knew him.”

  “Define ‘knew’?”

  “We met up here a couple summers ago, hooked up a couple times. Then she started dating my new roommate.”

  “What a coincidence. So . . . by hooked up you mean sexual activity?”

  He nodded.

  “What about lately?”

  “During Thanksgiving vacation I saw her at a party up here. She told me Grady was already getting serious, and she didn’t feel the same way. She was thinking of breaking it off. Well, then her grandmother died . . . and her mother, and, well, things got crazy.”

  “So you had sex at the party?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why were you all in the pool room?”

  “Grady pulled out a gun and forced us back there. He was talking crazy—said Zabrina was going to get to feel what it was like for him to watch her grandmother drown.”

  “He admitted he saw her drown?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “Just crazy shit like that. It was like he was high or something. On the way into the pool I whispered to Zabrina to tell him what he wanted to hear, so she told him they would run away to Las Vegas to get married like they planned. I think she had him believing it . . . then you guys came.”

  “If we hadn’t, you might be dead. By the way, you do know she’s pregnant.”

  He looked up at me. “What?”

  “Yep, the baby was Grady’s little gravy train.”

  “Well, now everything makes more sense.”

  “But . . . maybe you’re the father.”

  “Nah,” he said, but his cheeks bloomed pink as watermelon flesh.

  PATRICE MADE COFFEE, and we all waited for BRO. Zach and Zabrina sat in stony silence side by side on the couch, while Patrice and I quietly compared their versions of the incident. They were remarkably similar.

  Forty minutes later, while Zach was changing back into his dry clothing, car lights shone through the expansive window announcing Leslie Rouch and her two crime lab technicians’ arrival. We gave them a brief rundown before they commenced to the pool area to do their thing.

  “To save time, I’m going to show them where the stray bullets and bullet holes are. You stay here with these two,” Patrice said.

  When Patrice was gone, Zach appeared out of the downstairs and joined Zabrina on the couch again. The kids were staring straight ahead, both appearing shellshocked.

  “Had you two considered Grady would be upset by the breakup?” I asked.

  They ignored my question.

  “Not in a talking mood? Okay, we can wait until we get back to the department to get your statements.”

  Patrice came back. “I have a headache,” she said. “I need to find some Advil.”

  I admit I was relieved she was the shooter. If I had been, Grady would be dead, and I’d be on the hot seat. The BRO would justify the shooting, but good old Brenda LaMere would surely capitalize on the current public opinion of the excessive use of police force and encourage her son to sue.

  I asked for a unit to transport Zach back to our department. When Deputy John Odell showed up, they took off. Patrice rode in my backseat with Zabrina. They didn’t speak for the forty-five minutes it took us to get back to Prairie Falls. When Leslie arrived, she questioned the kids individually. Since we were not allowed to observe, Patrice and I went to our separate offices.

  I called Silas Hill, Zach and Grady’s roommate.

  “Did you ever see anything going on between Zach and Zabrina?”

  “Um . . . yeah.”

  “What?”

  “They sleep together when Grady isn’t around. I think Grady was starting to suspect them.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Because he asked me if I thought Zach had a thing for Zabrina.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I didn’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Zach’s my friend.”

  “You never bonded with Grady?”

  “Not really. At first he seemed really nice, but he’s got a side to him I don’t trust.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He says creepy things out of the blue. One day we were talking about what pets we had as kids, and he said he wished useless old people could be euthanized, like dogs.”

  Wow. Like his grandparents? “Anything else?”

  “Well, last fall, maybe September, a few of us were having a few beers. We were talking about how cool Cadillac Jack’s was. Anyway, Grady started asking Zach questions about whether he’d inherit the business after his grandfather and dad died. Zach said he didn’t think about it much, and it’d be a while. Then Grady brought up how rich Zabrina would be when her mother died. Zach said her mom was still in her forties, and her grandmother was in really good shape for an old lady. Grady got this weird grin on his face and said people got sick and died—or there were accidents, and that Zach and Zabrina could be rich before they knew it. I just thought it super weird.”

  “Did Zabrina hear that?”

  “No.”

  “Did Zach know Zabrina’s family?”

  “Yeah. One weekend last summer when I went home with him, we were at CJ’s—that’s what he calls Cadillac Jack’s. Anyway, Zabrina and her family came there to eat. That’s when I met her.”

  “Did you think he had a thing for her back then?”

  “Zach has a lot of girlfriends. I didn’t think much about it.”

  “Silas, you’ll probably hear about it on the news tomorrow. Grady pulled a gun on Zach and was shot by someone in our department.”

  “No shit. Did he shoot Zach?”

  “No. Grady was the only one injured. He’ll be okay.”

  “Man, that’s like . . . totally shocking. What happened?”

  “I can’t discuss the details.”

  “Will Grady go to jail?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  IT WAS EXACTLY THREE HOURS before I was called down to give my statement. Leslie questioned me for an hour. She said Grady was in surgery, and would be held in the hospital until he was ready to be released to the Birch County Jail. She would interview him as early as tonight or tomorrow morning. She said Patrice put herself on administrative leave, but my leave
would be delayed until after the holiday.

  I then went to my office to start the paperwork on the incident. Spanky was there working at his desk.

  “Did you trace Palmer’s credit card transactions and his phone records?” I asked.

  “That’s what I’m doing now. We’ll find him, Cal.”

  I began to write up my report; I wanted to finish before my administrative leave started. I had no problem taking two weeks off.

  Spanky said, “I think I have something. Palmer has called this same number several times over the last few months. It belongs to a Cassandra Foley.”

  “Don’t call. If he’s there, it’ll alert him, and he’ll take off. Get the address and go on down.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now. I’ll go with you.”

  “No, Patrice told me you can’t go near him. Don’t worry about it. I’ll find someone.”

  He grabbed his jacket and left. After he took off, I watched the clock, a useless habit. It would be a couple hours before he’d be at this woman’s house.

  When my phone rang, I grabbed for it so fast I almost dropped it. It wasn’t Spanky, but Shannon. She called to ask me to pick up a crisp white wine. Iris was preparing a special New Year’s Eve meal: lobster mac and cheese, salad, and baguette.

  “I thought Iris’s idea of cooking was opening containers of take-out.”

  She laughed. “She knows how to make a few specialty items, like you do.”

  “Huh.”

  I grabbed my jacket, stopped for flowers, then drove to see Dallas. She was propped up on the sofa, her face swollen and bruised. I set the roses on the coffee table.

  “Pretty,” she said.

  When I hugged her, she started crying.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you, too.”

  I told her we were still looking for Vince and asked if she knew of any friends he might turn to. She gave me a few names, said she was sleepy, then nodded off.

  Clara motioned me to the kitchen. She handed me a Budweiser. I sat at the table and watched as she cut the ends of the white roses I’d brought Dallas and placed them in a vase.

  “She’s so sleepy because of the medication,” she said.

  “I know. Where’s Jamie?” I asked.

  “He went home. Are they close to arresting Vince?” she asked.

  “I think so. I can try calling Deputy Spanney.”