by Eskens,Allen
“Maybe he used the recording to raise the bail money.”
“That’d be my guess. Kroll was a thug who needed one-hundred grand in bail money. A guy like that isn’t rolling cash. How else could he afford that kind of bail and a high-priced lawyer like Pruitt?”
“You think Kroll is one of the voices on the CD.”
“I do.”
“Is the voice on the CD distinctive? I mean could you identify him if you heard it again, even if it was only a word or two?”
“I think so.”
“If Kroll gave a statement as part of his assault case, we’ll have his voice.”
“I’m way ahead of you,” I said. “There’s no statement—not in any of his cases.”
Niki leaned back in her seat. “Let me think on that. There has to be a way to find his voice. YouTube? Internet?”
“I checked.”
“Does Kroll’s file give you any motive? I mean, why would he kill Jenni? What’s the connection?”
“In that phone conversation, one of the guys says that they’re killing a cop’s wife because she knows something she’s not supposed to know. The fact that she was a cop’s wife was secondary. All this time, I’ve been operating under the assumption that Jenni died because of me—because of someone I busted or pissed off. But that wasn’t it.”
“What do you think she knew?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m trying to recreate Jenni’s life from back then—trying to understand what she was doing.”
“Farrah McKinney?”
“That’s my starting point.” I told Niki what I’d learned about Zoya and that day in the hospital. “My best theory so far is that Zoya was being trafficked and Jenni got in the middle of it somehow.”
“Does Zoya have any connection to Kroll?”
“Not yet, but something else came from our talk. There’s this Jane Doe case I worked before your time. She had a tattoo.” I tapped behind my ear. “Here, on her neck.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out Farrah’s drawing. “Ms. McKinney gave this to me. It’s a drawing of a tattoo Zoya had on her neck. I think my Jane Doe had the same tattoo. It might be an odd coincidence, but then again . . .”
Niki nodded her understanding “We should take a look at Jane Doe,” she said.
“There might be a connection.”
“What do we do about Briggs?”
I gave that question a couple seconds of thought, and then said, “Briggs is still in the dark about most of Fireball’s case. I say we keep him there until we figure out his angle. Let him hover but don’t give him any details—not yet. We let him maneuver, but do our best to keep him outside the circle.”
Chapter 12
Chapter 12
I am an asshole—Niki was right. I am a bastard and an idiot. I knew these things to be true and her words echoed in my head as we made our way back to the Homicide Unit. Against my better judgement, I made her an accomplice to my professional suicide. The smile on her face and glint in her eye told me she was all in. If I allowed it, she would see this through to the end no matter the cost.
I’m an asshole because I let her think that we were a team. Butch and Sundance charging forward against all odds. She didn’t know that I lied to her. I had to. This wasn’t a noble charge, it was a freefall. We were plunging toward Earth and only one of us knew it—the one without a parachute. I knew then, that when the time came, I would have to pull the cord on her chute and leave her behind. She would never forgive me, but I would never forgive myself if I took her down with me.
We got to the door of the Homicide Unit and she paused and nodded as if to say, “Here we go.” Then we went in.
Niki and I no sooner sat down at our desks when the door to Lieutenant Briggs’s office swung open. I looked at Niki and she rolled her eyes. He sauntered up to the opening of our shared cubicle like some bored coworker hoping to shoot the breeze. Briggs never just wanted to shoot the breeze.
“I hear you two have a hot one going.”
I saw the joke—hot one—burned minivan. I didn’t play along. “Actually, it was about twenty below zero this morning.” I looked at Niki and she nodded as if this were a serious discussion of the weather.
“Even colder than that, if you count the wind chill,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, “but luckily, there wasn’t that much wind.”
“There was a little bit of a breeze. I could feel it on my face.”
Briggs interrupted our shtick. “I hear that some guy ended up in the hospital with burns? Is he your suspect?”
“We’re looking for surveillance footage from the area,” I said, ignoring his question. I heard Niki pick up her phone and dial.
“Got an ID on the guy yet?” Briggs asked.
I was pretty sure that Briggs knew full-well who we had in the hospital. “We’re working on a few things.” I said. Not an answer, but true nonetheless. “What brings you in on a holiday?” I asked, trying to turn the table.
“Just catching up on a few things,” he said, not answering my question either.
“Has he said anything?” Briggs asked. “You take a statement?”
“Not yet, but that reminds me. I need to call the hospital to see if he’s conscious.” I picked up my phone and dialed the number for my own land-line phone at home.
“What’s his—”
“Yes, could I speak to Doctor Patel? Tell him this is Detective Rupert calling.” My voicemail greeting yapped in my ear as I pretended to call the Burn Unit. “Yes Doctor Patel, it’s Detective Rupert. I’m just calling to check in . . . yes. Is he still intubated? Tell me what we’re looking at.”
Behind me I could hear Niki pretend to contact companies in the area where the van burned, searching for surveillance cameras. We both kept up our ruse until Briggs huffed and walked back to this office.
Once he’d gone, we laid our receivers down on our desks, keeping the lines lit up so Briggs would think we were still on the phone.
“See what I mean?” Niki said.
“Yeah, he’s up to something.”
From his office Briggs had no clear line of sight to our desks. I quietly got up and walked to a filing cabinet at the opposite end of the Unit—our cold-case drawer—and brought back the Jane Doe file.
“A Salvation Army employee found her in a dumpster behind their facility on North Fourth Avenue. The worker was tossing a bag into the dumpster when he saw a shoe that looked nicer than what he expected to see in the garbage. He reached in to retrieve the shoe and discovered that it remained attached to a human foot.”
I handed Niki a crime-scene photo. Jane Doe had black hair tangled around fair skin, her face showing a hint of freckles under her makeup. Her eyeliner and lipstick were both badly smeared and had been applied in thick, dark shades, the work of someone wanting to look older—or sexier—than her years allowed. She wore a black dress, skimpy, with no bra and no panties.
“Given her attire, we’re pretty sure she was killed indoors and moved to the dumpster postmortem.”
“Rape?”
“The autopsy couldn’t determine if there had been sexual penetration at or near the time of death, although the evidence suggested that the she’d undergone significant sexual abuse in the days and weeks preceding her death.”
“She looks young.”
“Mid to late teens we figured. We could never fully determine her age because we never figured out who she was.”
“Cause of death?”
“Drowning.”
“Drowning?”
“She had bruises on both cheeks and around her neck, as if someone had held her by the throat and smacked her around. She also had bruises up and down her torso, and finger marks on both arms. She had been handled roughly in the hours before she died. My first thought was that she was beaten and then strangled, but the medical examiner’s report came back with drowning.”
“She’s not dressed for the swimming pool, so . . .”
“The water
in her lungs didn’t have enough chlorine to be pool water, nor was it lake or river water.”
“Bathtub?”
“That was my conclusion, but this was no accidental fall. She wouldn’t likely step into a tub with a full complement of makeup, nor the black dress. A young girl, drowned, dumped, and left to be disposed of like trash. That was all we knew about Jane Doe—except for the tattoo.”
Niki spread the file across my desk, fanning out the autopsy and crime-scene photos. “You think this is Zoya?” Niki whispered.
I picked up one of the autopsy photos. With her face scrubbed clean of makeup, Jane Doe looked child-like, freckles, thin eye lashes, thin lips. “She matches Farrah’s description: five-five, dark hair. And there’s the tattoo behind the left ear.” I laid Farrah’s napkin drawing next to a close-up photograph of the ruble symbol on Jane Doe’s neck.
“You know,” Niki said, “I think I remember meeting a girl . . . when I was in Vice. She had . . . I swear it was the same tattoo.”
“You met Jane Doe?”
“No. It wasn’t her; at least I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her. We were doing a sting at one of the hotels downtown.” Niki paused as if struggling with her memory. “I had agreed to meet one of the guys in the hotel bar. While I was waiting, I struck up a conversation with another working girl who was also there to meet a client. She had an accent.”
“Russian?”
“I believe so.”
“But you don’t think it was Jane Doe.”
“No. The girl I met looked nothing like these pictures. Part of the job back then was to build up a network of informants. Try and gain their trust. It’s the only way to learn who the inside players are. I remember this girl fidgeting with her hair and I saw a tattoo behind her ear. I think it was like this one.” Niki pointed at the ruble on Jane Doe’s neck.
“Identical tattoos on two different girls?” I said.
“Branding,” Niki said.
I closed my eyes, and to myself I whispered, of course.
“If it’s a brand,” Niki continued, “it’s pretty low key. Most pimps put their marks where it’s more visible. Back in the day, I saw tats that covered the girl’s entire chest. The name of their pimp plastered forever for the world to see. I mean that was the point. Brand the girl so other pimps stayed away.”
“So why the small ruble? Hidden behind the ear? Doesn’t that cut against the rationale?”
Niki leaned back in her chair to ponder. On this subject, she was the teacher, having spent five years in Vice. “My guess? When you work for a really bad man you don’t need the billboard on the chest. All you need is enough proof of ownership that the other gorillas know to leave her the hell alone.”
“And you only saw the one ruble tattoo during your time in Vice?”
“As far as I remember. That suggests that the pimp is careful. Probably does referral clients only. You have to be vetted to get into the club. I’ll check the database of known tattoo brands, see if that ruble’s on the list.” Niki turned to her computer and started typing.
For my part, I began looking for the reports tied to Zoya’s visit to HCMC. I searched Cappers for anything written on the same day as my wife’s death. If Farrah had her facts straight, then an officer found Zoya wandering the streets. She was taken to HCMC which suggests that she was found in Minneapolis. Also, an investigator showed up at the hospital. That investigator would have made a report even if no information had been gained at the hospital.
The Homicide Unit took on the solemnity of a library as Niki and I clicked away on our keyboards. The wind had picked up outside, but it was still too cold for snow. A furnace kicked on somewhere in the bowels of City Hall and added a low hum to the room, a base note beneath our keyboard castanets. Neither of us spoke for a long time.
Then Niki said, “Do you think there’s a connection?”
I had been so deep in my concentration that I didn’t understand what she was asking. “Connection?”
“Between this Zoya girl and Jenni’s death.”
“I honestly don’t know. This could be important, or it could just be a coincidence.”
“Don’t worry, Max. We’ll get ‘em.”
There is no we. I wanted to say. This was a mistake. I should have never let her get involved. I was about to say something, although I had no idea what words were going to come out of my mouth, when an incident report popped onto my screen with the name Zoya on it.
“Here it is,” I said. “I think I found it.” I read down the page. “It’s a report from the same day Jenni died. A patrolman with the Second Precinct found a girl walking down Broadway. She was bleeding and dazed. The report lists her as Zoya. She couldn’t speak English, and the officer thought she might be speaking Russian. He couldn’t understand if she gave a last name or not. He took her to HCMC.
“Are there any pictures in the file?”
The directory for the case had a file marked Photos. I held my breath and clicked it. Nothing but an empty page.
“God dammit!” I muttered through gritted teeth. “It’s empty. There’s a file for photos, but there’s nothing in it. Just when you think you’re catching a break.”
“Empty?”
“The officer created a file for the photos but forgot to—or just didn’t bother to download ‘em.”
Tendrils of lost possibilities twisted around my fingers, knotting my hands into fists. No last name. No address. No path to known associates, occupation, enemies. If we had a picture we could have gotten a search warrant for Zoya’s hospital records. That might have opened a thousand doors. Without those records, all we had was speculation.
“Does the incident report give us anything to go on?” Niki asked.
I read through it again. “It’s pretty thin. The girl had glass in her hair, so they did a search of the area to see if they could find any broken windows. Found a motel five blocks away with a broken front window. Room rented for cash.”
“Yeah, that sounds like the life of a sex worker.”
As I stared at the screen, at the scant report by the patrol officer, something caught my attention—not something I saw in the report, but something missing from it. “That’s strange,” I said. “There’s no supplemental.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ms. McKinney said that an investigator showed up at the hospital that morning. She said that Zoya freaked out when the investigator walked into the room. But there’s no supplemental. No mention of an investigator at HCMC.”
“Maybe it got logged in under a different incident number,” Niki said. “Let’s come at this thing another way?”
Niki pulled up Cappers on her computer and typed Jennifer Rupert into the search box. The screen lit up with rows of reports listing Jenni as a witness.
“Holy crap,” Niki said.
“Yeah, Jenni was a mandated reporter. She dealt with this kind of thing all the time—girlfriends and wives getting assaulted, sex workers being abused, children molested. Her name will be listed as a witness on hundreds of reports.”
But Max, look at this.” Niki pointed to the screen. “The day she died, there’s a report of the hit-and-run, but there is no report of an investigator meeting with Jenni at HCMC.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe Ms. McKinney got it wrong. It’s been four years. Maybe the guy that walked in was a doctor or . . .”
Briggs’s door creaked open again. I folded the Jane Doe file closed and Niki and I returned to our fake phone calls. When Briggs stepped past our cubicle, Niki was pretending to convince a convenience store manager to check his security system, and I was pretending to learn the healing time for third-degree burns. Briggs stood at the opening of our cubicle for less than thirty seconds before giving up. This time he went back to his office, grabbed his coat, and left the Homicide Unit, waving at us without actually looking our way.
Niki and I hung up our phones and looked at each other.
“So where does
that leave us,” she asked.
“About the same place we started,” I said. “We know that Farrah McKinney was right about Zoya. Brought to HCMC after getting beat up. Probably a working girl. Has a tattoo of a ruble behind her ear that may or may not be a pimp’s brand. What do you see?”
Niki gave pause, then said, “I see a witness who is spot on, but also said there was an investigator at HCMC—yet we have no supplemental—nothing to verify that the man in the room was a cop at all. There’s a file for photos, but no photos. Something’s not adding up.”
“Welcome to my world,” I said.
“Where do we go next?”
“Home.” I looked up at the clock on the wall. Almost three o’clock. “Let’s finish up what we need to do on Fireball and call it a day.”
“I got ahold of the Holiday station this morning,” Niki said. “They should have a copy of the surveillance footage ready for pick up anytime now.”
“I need to stop by the Burn Unit to see if Orton is able to talk yet. I want to question him before he has too much time to think.”
“I’ll swing by and pick up the surveillance footage,” Niki said. “It’s on my way home.”
“It’s the opposite of your way home, but thanks.”
“What are partners for?”
“Look Niki, about that—”
“No you don’t. I will kick your ass if you take back anything you said today.”
“But the thing is—”
“Fuck you. We had a beautiful moment. Don’t ruin it.”
“But—”
“I mean it. Not another word. You get out of here. Go interview Fireball. I’ll shut the computers down and lock up.”
I stood, but hesitated.
“Go!” She pointed at the door, her face scrunched up into her best tough-matriarch look.
I picked up my coat and shuffled out the door.
Chapter 13: Up North
Chapter 13
Up North
I put the tip of the auger on the ice and turn it. The spoon-shaped bit doesn’t bore at first, so I push down on the cap of the auger. With that, the bit starts to dig. The growl of metal against ice breaks a silence which holds little more than my own heavy breathing. I expect the man to start talking again, but instead he just sits there, watching me. He’s probably trying to figure out his next move, studying me to size up the strength of my backbone. His silence is fine by me.