“You don’t play anymore?”
“No, I quit a couple of years ago when I tore up my knee. Merodie still plays, though.”
“Do you see much of her?”
“On and off. It kinda goes in streaks. I’d see her a couple of times a week and then not for a few months. We started drifting apart after I quit softball. We lost most of what we had in common. Softball and drinking. I don’t do much of either anymore.”
“How did Merodie meet your brother?”
“I introduced them, I don’t know, maybe a year ago. It was at Dimmer’s. Eli and I walked in and there was Merodie and there you go. They started living together about a month later. Listen, McKenzie, I have to get back to my job.”
“I appreciate your talking to me.”
“If you have any more questions, just call or drop by the house. I’m in the book.”
I thanked her and opened her car door. She slid inside and looked up at me.
“My brother. You wouldn’t believe what a good-looking guy he was. Right up until Merodie bashed his brains in.”
The street where Merodie Davies lived was teeming with young children enjoying their final weeks of summer vacation. I also saw a few stay-at-home moms. Instead of minding the kids, nearly all of them seemed to be intently watching me as I made my way to the Anoka police cruiser parked in Merodie’s driveway. I didn’t actually hear the words, but I could see them passed from one set of lips to another: “Now what?”
Officer Boyd Baumbach sat alone inside the cruiser, the windows and doors shut tight, the motor running. I tapped on his window, startling him. He quickly lowered it. Cool air lapped against my chest and face.
“McKenzie,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Rollie Briggs, he’s the assistant county attorney, he said someone should let you look through the house.”
My inner voice took notice. Rollie Briggs—is he G. K.’s pal in the county attorney’s office?
“Why you?” I asked.
Baumbach silenced the car engine and stepped out. He looked directly into my eyes when he spoke. “I apologize for the other day. I had no right getting rough with you, and I should not have abused my authority by arresting you. I apologize. I hope you will forgive me.”
“Wow.” I was so shocked by his words that I nearly laughed in his face. “Moorhead must have really put the screws to you.”
The straight line of Baumbach’s mouth told me that it sure wasn’t his idea.
“Do you accept my apology?”
“Sure,” I said, although I knew his heart wasn’t in it.
“Are you going to report me?”
“Report you to who?”
Baumbach brushed past me and moved to the front door of the house. “The assistant county attorney, Mr. Briggs, he said that the tech guys have been through it a couple of times. So has Human Services, so there’s nothing you can foul up for us.”
“Fine.”
Baumbach unlocked the door and opened it. He waited for me to pass him. He took hold of my elbow when I did.
“Is there anything else, Officer?” I asked.
He released my elbow and stepped back.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Are you coming inside?”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll wait out here.”
“Sure.”
Baumbach tried to smile, but it was too much effort, so he stopped. “I’ve been in the house before,” he said.
“Sure.”
I stepped inside and was immediately met by a punishing wave of warm, stale, fetid air that smelled strongly of rotting meat. It literally pushed me back against the door.
“Oh, God,” I said, clamping a hand over my mouth.
The Anoka Fire Department had used its enormous fans to pull much of the odor from the house, and the county’s Human Services Department had made an honest effort to clean the dwelling of the feces and garbage. Yet the stench, compounded by the August heat, was still so strong that I seriously doubted anyone would ever live there again.
I fished a handkerchief from my back pocket and cupped it over my nose and mouth. I inspected the nearly empty living room. A faded white chalk outline on the carpet represented the body of Eli Jefferson as he lay in death. Red chalk was used to outline the softball bat. I examined both outlines from several angles, using the CID’s Photo Report as a guide. I didn’t have any of the actual 147 photographs taken at the scene by the Criminal Investigation Division; however, I did have a sheaf of about fifty photocopies, plus the investigator’s narrative describing in sequential order each photo that was taken. By using both, I was able to stand in the exact spot where each photo was taken and see what the camera saw.
Photo #18-22. These are overall photos showing the position and condition of the body as it was found.
Photo #29-31. These three photographs depict a softball bat that was found near the body. Note in particular the blood smear that is clearly visible in Photo #31.
Except for the missing body and softball bat, the living room looked exactly as it had in the photos. Cream-colored drapes were open to let in shafts of sunlight swimming with dust motes. Forest green carpet flecked with blue was stained in more places than I could count. A sofa was shoved against the wall; a floor lamp with a dirty white shade sat next to the sofa; a chair was hiding in the corner. The pieces of furniture seemed unrelated to each other and all had a secondhand shabbiness. A black velvet painting of a clown framed in gold hung on the wall, a solitary tear on the clown’s cheek. That was it. I checked the report again. Apparently, nothing had been moved, removed, or added to the house since the photos were taken.
I pushed on.
Photo #34. This is an overall photo taken at the top of the stairway showing the condition of the top landing as well as partially looking into the kitchen. The hallway would be to the right, leading into the living room area.
Photo #42. This is looking through the open doorway of the kitchen off the hallway. Note the bloodstains on the kitchen floor and, in particular, in front of the stove, which is visible to the left center.
Photo #59-81. Overall and close-up photos depicting the condition of the master bedroom. Note in Photo #72 the close-up of the waterbed and, in particular, the rolled-up blanket found on the waterbed. In examining the blanket, it was found to contain what we believe to be human feces.
Photo #90. This is a photo looking down the steps into the basement level.
I found nothing that the police had overlooked, but I was moving quickly, driven onward by the foul odor and the lack of air-conditioning. I lingered only at a small bedroom made up for a young child on the downstairs level. Just one photo had been taken of the room, Photo #96. The narrative said simply:
This bedroom is referred to as a child’s bedroom in my previous report.
The room was well cared for. There was no dirt or stains of any kind, only surface dust. It contained one bed, made up with a bedspread featuring characters from a Disney film. The bed was in the corner. Above it, a net was strung from wall to wall, supporting dozens of stuffed animals of every shape and kind. Across from the bed was a white wood dresser. The drawers were empty. I found half a dozen dolls on top of the dresser, along with three photographs of a girl I judged to be eight or nine years old. The girl was dressed all in white and standing next to a tree in one photograph, sitting in a chair holding a teddy bear in the second, and standing on a diving board, her arms stretched toward heaven, in the third. There were no names or dates written on the photographs. A fourth photograph framed in silver hung from the bedroom wall next to the door. It featured a truly beautiful young woman with chocolate-colored eyes and auburn hair, holding an infant. The young woman was about sixteen. Someone had written across the bottom left corner of the photograph:
The two of us forever.
“You wouldn’t think something like this could happen here,” the woman said.
It seemed to be a recurring
theme among the neighbors I had interviewed up and down the street where Merodie Davies lived.
I had started my canvass shortly after Officer Baumbach, having satisfied himself that I hadn’t swiped Merodie’s silverware, drove away. The stay-at-home moms were still out in force. They all seemed a little bit frightened for their children and for themselves. Out in the far suburbs, they figured they were safe—isolated from “big-city” violent crime. I couldn’t imagine why they felt that way. After all, Anoka was a twenty-five-minute drive from downtown Minneapolis, and the bad guys have cars, too.
I didn’t want to quote crime statistics, though. I wanted to talk about Merodie Davies. Unfortunately, most of the neighbors hadn’t even known her name until she was arrested. They saw her coming and going, and for a while it seemed the cops were camped on her doorstep every other night, but during the last year or so, they weren’t even sure Merodie still lived there. The mother of four across the street was convinced that Merodie had moved out. Only the neighbor living next door to Merodie had a story to tell. She was home, nursing a broken ankle that kept her from her job.
“I broke it yesterday falling off a curb, do you believe it? I fell off a curb.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Not as sorry as I am.”
The woman ushered me into her overfurnished living room.
“Been living here long?” I asked.
“Two years. Moved in right before I divorced my husband, the prick. God, it’s warm.”
“I think the word is hot.”
“I think the word is sweltering. Would you like something to drink? Pepsi? Beer?”
I declined.
“You sure? It’s cold.”
In Minnesota, it’s considered impolite to accept food or beverage until it’s offered at least three times, but I was thirsty.
“Pepsi,” I said.
The woman said, “I’m going to have a beer.”
“Well, in that case . . . ”
Her name was Mollie Pratt, and she served Grain Belt Premium, brewed in New Ulm. It went down smooth, and I had to keep myself from gulping it.
“Yeah,” said Mollie, “I moved in two years ago next week. Paid for the house out of my settlement. I had married poorly, but I divorced real well. Anyway, at first I wondered what I was getting into, all the cops and such.”
“What do you mean?”
“That first year, seemed like the Anoka cops practically lived next door. People kept calling them because of the loud music, the loud arguments—it was always so loud. Merodie and Richard were fighting all the time, fighting and drinking, drinking and fighting. I even called my real estate agent and said, ‘Hey, you told me this was a quiet neighborhood.’ It was crazy.”
I took out my notebook.
“Tell me about Richard,” I said.
There’s no special trick to conducting an interview. All it requires is a little patience, an ear for the important utterance, and the simple knowledge that to most people the sweetest possible music is the sound of their own voice.
“Richard was Merodie’s boyfriend,” Mollie said. “That’s all I really know about him. I don’t think he had a job. He was always around, always entertaining friends. Must have been a million people in and out of his driveway. My ex, the prick, he figured Richard was dealing drugs. Sure, dealing drugs out of a split-level in Anoka. What a laugh.”
“Hysterical.”
Mollie’s eyes grew wide. “You think?”
“It’s certainly possible.”
Mollie didn’t like the sound of that at all. She left her chair and limped to the window, fighting her cast all the way. She gazed out at Merodie’s empty driveway. “You think he might have been a drug dealer?”
“You said a year?”
After a brief pause, Mollie answered, “Huh? A year? Yeah. Richard left after about a year. I didn’t see him no more. Things got real quiet. You wouldn’t have known anyone was even living next door.”
“Where did Richard go?”
Mollie shrugged her ignorance.
“Do you know his last name?”
Mollie shook her head.
“Richard is all I know,” she said. “I only heard it during the arguments.”
“Did you have any contact with Merodie after Richard left?”
“I never had any contact with Merodie before Richard left. Not really. It was like, ‘Hi, how you doing?’ when we met on the street, which wasn’t often. We didn’t sit around the kitchen table drinking coffee or anything.”
“You saw her come and go.”
“Not lately. As near as I can tell, she was always in her house. She never left it.”
“Not to go shopping?”
“Well, she must go shopping, for food and stuff, you know? I just never see her.”
“The mail gets picked up.”
Mollie didn’t know what to say to that.
“The lawn gets cut.”
“She must do that stuff when I’m at work. Truth is, I don’t remember the last time I saw Merodie. Or Eli.”
“Eli Jefferson? The deceased?”
“Yeah. I was really bummed when I heard he died. He seemed like a nice enough guy.”
“You knew him?”
“I’ll say. He hit on me. Couple of times.” Mollie smiled at the memory. “The first time was in winter. He helped me shovel the driveway, then invited himself in for hot chocolate, and then tried to invite himself into my bed. I’m saying, ‘What about Merodie,’ and he’s saying real dumb-ass things like, ‘What Merodie doesn’t know won’t hurt her.’ Guy was a jerk. Charming, though. Real charming. The next time, I’m in the backyard working on my tan. I look up and there he is, grinning. He starts talking about Minnesota’s scenic wonders, meaning me, right? He asks if I’ve seen the Split Rock Lighthouse. I say, ‘You mean up by Duluth?’ He says, ‘Oh, it’s much closer than that,’ and then looks down at himself. I say it now and I think, God, what a jerk. Only at the time it made me laugh. I’ll tell you, though. Something I learned from my ex-husband, the prick. For some people, charm is a weapon.”
“How long did Jefferson live with Merodie?”
“I don’t know. Six months?”
“Have you seen any activity at the house in the past two weeks?”
“Cops asked me the same thing. I really haven’t. Last I saw of anyone over there was two weeks ago Saturday.”
“That would be . . .”
“August first, but even then all I saw was a car drive up and then leave a few minutes later.”
“What kind of car?”
“It’s like I told the cops, I don’t know from cars except it was black, a sports car. Now my ex, the prick, he knows cars. If he treated me as well as he treated his car . . . ”
“Did you see who drove the car?”
“Not really. It could have been anyone.”
“What time did you see the car?”
“Around noon?”
“Is that a guess?”
“I remember eating lunch and that’s when I saw the car, so I figured it was around noon. It could’ve been later.”
We talked some more, but nothing new came of it. Mollie offered another Grain Belt, and I was tempted. Instead, I passed, telling myself that a semiprofessional private investigator wouldn’t drink while on the job. I gave Mollie one of the cards I had made up. It read R. MCKENZIE and had my phone numbers printed on it. Mollie set the card on her table and promised if she thought of anything more, she’d call.
I returned to my Audi, still parked in front of Merodie’s house. The car was broiling. The AC worked well but took time to cool the interior, so after I started the engine and turned the air-conditioning on full, I slid out of the car and shut the door behind me. While waiting for the Audi to become habitable, I glared at Merodie’s house. The stench of death was still in my nostrils, hair, and clothes and probably would be for some time to come.
I turned away from the house and looked across the law
n toward Mollie Pratt’s place. For a moment I thought I saw her watching me from behind her living room drapes, but then she disappeared.
5
Woodbury, located southeast of St. Paul, was nearly an hour’s drive from Anoka. Yet more than distance separated the two cities. Anoka was old, with a history and traditions that stretched back to 1680. Woodbury, on the other hand, was brand-spanking new—I had a Carl Yastrzemski autographed baseball that was older. It wasn’t even a city when Yaz won the Triple Crown in 1967, yet it was now home to over sixty thousand residents.
The private street where Priscilla St. Ana lived served a quintet of estates that somehow all bordered on different holes of the Prestwick Golf Course. Like most of Woodbury, the five houses looked like they had all been built yesterday. I parked in front of the one with red brick, white trim, and a slate gray roof set way back from the street, only a little more pretentious than its four neighbors. It reminded me of an Italian villa, or at least what I supposed an Italian villa to look like, having never actually seen one.
I hurried along the tile walkway to the front door of the estate—I couldn’t think of it as a house—and used the bell. A doughlike woman of indeterminate age answered. She was dressed in a fawn-colored uniform and demonstrated no emotion or interest when I announced that I had an appointment to meet Priscilla St. Ana. With a curt “Wait here,” she closed the door, leaving me outside with no way of looking in. She returned a few moments later with instructions.
“Follow me, please.”
I trailed the maid into the immense house, moving through sumptuous, decorator-perfect rooms that would have caused my father to faint dead away at the excess. ‘Course, my father was a man who used the same toaster for thirty years and believed the automatic icemaker that came with the refrigerator I bought when we moved to Falcon Heights was an unnecessary luxury. I told him that since I was now filthy, stinking rich I intended to surround him with a lot of unnecessary luxuries. He fought it every day of the six months he had left to live.
Dead Boyfriends Page 8