by Allen Eskens
He found the elk, slightly larger than life-sized, its hooves anchored to a granite mound. Boady stood beneath the elk and faced in the direction of the animal’s stare. There he saw the giant silver maple tree, the one he stood beneath at the funeral. He walked to the base of the tree and looked into the shadows cast by the moonlight until he saw the form of a man sprawled out in the grass. Max lay prostrate, his mouth open, his face flattened into the ground, one hand clutching a tuft of sod, the other hand pressed up against the smooth granite of a headstone.
Boady knelt at Max’s side and immediately smelled the odor of whiskey radiating up from his friend. He tried to roll Max over, but Max resisted, muttering “no” and wrapping his protest with impotent threats and slurred expletives. When Max’s squawking grew too loud, Boady gave up his effort and let Max settle back into the grass.
The moon painted the surface of the lake with a wide swath of light that flickered off tiny ripples, giving the water a sequined cover. The shadows cast by the trees created patches of black on gray that swayed in the light breeze. Boady sat up against a nearby headstone to wait for Alexander to arrive. He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of freshly cut grass. In the distance he could hear a mockingbird singing to the full moon. This would be a nice place to spend eternity, if such things mattered to the dead, Boady thought.
Soon, Boady heard a hollered whisper coming from the direction of the elk statue.
“Max? Boady?”
“Over here,” Boady called back.
Alexander scampered through the shadows, partially crouching as he ran, as if he were advancing on an enemy pill box. He slid to a stop at Max’s side.
“Holy shit, he’s smashed.” Alexander gave a nervous chuckle and poked his brother in the side with his thumb. “I haven’t seen him this drunk since, well, never. Max, wake up.”
Alexander rolled Max over and started tapping his face. Max swung blindly at imaginary flies. As he did, an empty whiskey bottle slid out of his jacket.
“Christ, what was he thinking?” Alexander whispered. “Max never did handle whiskey well.”
“Leave me alone,” Max stammered as he rolled back over to resume his prostrate position at the base of his dead wife’s gravestone.
Alexander relaxed his grip on his brother and sat back to assess things. “If they catch us here after hours, it’ll be a problem, especially with Max being smashed.”
“It’s just a cemetery security guy. Surely, he’ll understand. He probably sees this all the time.”
“Maybe. But then again, maybe not. Let’s say he turns out to be a dick and calls this in. If the press catches wind of it, we might make the evening news. They’re always looking for cops-gone-bad stories.”
“How do we get him out of here? We can’t hoist him over that spiked fence. And he’s in no condition to climb over it himself.”
“Due west of here, there’s a gate. That’s where I parked. If we can get him there, I have a bolt cutter in my trunk.”
“A bolt cutter in your trunk?”
“Hey, I’m a narcotics detective. Bolt cutters come in handy. You’d be surprised how many drug dealers think a padlock will make a difference.”
“I’m not complaining.”
Alexander sat beside his brother and patted Max between the shoulder blades. “Max, I need you to listen.”
Max grunted something loud and unintelligible, something that sounded like a word and a belch combined.
“Max, I need to get you out of here. I know you want to stay, but that’s not in the cards.”
“Fuck you, Festus!” Max spoke with a snarl in his throat.
“Festus?” Boady said.
Alexander waved off Boady’s curiosity with a shake of his head. “Childhood nickname,” he said. Then he patted his brother’s back a little harder. “Max, I need you to get your shit together and stand up.”
“Fuck off,” came the reply.
“Fine. I’ll just drag your ass to the fence.” Alexander stood up and grabbed one of Max’s ankles. “Come on, Boady, grab a leg.”
Boady picked up Max’s other ankle, and the two began dragging Max, facedown, through the grass.
“God dammit! Leave me alone,” Max yelled. He began to kick and twist and claw at the grass, but Alexander and Boady kept walking.
Max continued to cuss and twist for about twenty yards before they heard him mutter, “Okay. I’ll walk. Just let me go.” Alexander gave Boady a smile, and they dropped Max’s legs. They let him catch his breath before lifting him off the ground, each pulling one of Max’s arms across their shoulders.
Max walked on billowing legs, his body lurching sideways every few steps. They had to duck behind a clump of arborvitae shrubs at one point to let the security car roll past, but the march to the gate went smoother than Boady expected.
Once there, they lay Max on the grass behind one of the larger headstones, and Boady stayed with him while Alexander went to get the bolt cutter and open the gate. While they waited, Max heaved up the contents of his stomach, the sound of his retching seeming to blast through the night like a siren. Boady walked to a clearing to watch for the security guard, but the car never appeared.
Soon, Boady heard the clinking of the chain being pulled free of the gate. He and Alexander found Max lying next to a puddle of stomach acid and whiskey, his eyes closed and a snore catching in his throat as he slept.
“I’ve never seen Max drunk before,” Boady said. “I mean, we drink when we play poker, but he never has more than a couple beers. He’s always so in control.”
“He and Jenni were together since high school.” Alexander squatted beside his brother and laid a hand on the back of Max’s head. “I think, maybe next year, I’ll keep an eye on him when this comes around.”
Alexander grabbed one of Max’s arms and Boady the other, and they lifted the passed-out man to their shoulders again and walked him through the gate to Alexander’s car.
Boady brushed back the stubble of that memory as he once again climbed over the wrought-iron spikes protecting Lakewood Cemetery. Alexander Rupert had been true to his word in attending to his brother every year on the anniversary of Jenni’s death. But it had been nine months now since Alexander died in the line of duty. Max had stopped coming to their monthly poker games. He’d only returned a couple of Boady’s phone calls, and when he did, he claimed that his absence from the card games was fallout from being overworked. Boady didn’t believe him, not entirely, but he heard nothing in Max’s voice to warrant any further uninvited intrusion.
Boady brushed pine needles from his sleeves, glanced over his shoulder at the last traces of the sun’s penumbra fading from the sky in the west. Then he began to make his way into the cemetery, his eyes once again searching for the lake and the bronze elk.
Chapter 16
Over the years, Max had found it easy to avoid detection when he would visit Jenni’s grave. A security guard patrolled the cemetery at night, but a caretaker’s shed blocked the view of Jenni’s tombstone when it passed. Max liked leaning against her headstone because from there he could view the lake, and he liked looking at the lake when he talked to Jenni.
Max looked up at the splinters of moonlight slipping between the branches of a silver maple tree. He tried to find her face in the shadows it cast. He used to see her there, back in those early months when her vagabond memory moved through the periphery of his world, dropping him to his knees when her presence was strongest. Now he looked at the tree and all he saw were shadows.
“I miss you,” he whispered. He brought his legs up and rested his forearms on his knees. “I feel like I miss you more now than I ever did. Just think, our child would have been three years old by now. Walking and talking up a storm, I bet.”
But there had been no child, only a pregnancy. Max had pretty much given up on that dream, but Jenni never did. Maggie Hightower had been the one who performed the autopsy on Jenni’s body. Maggie had been the one who told Max about the pregn
ancy, so new that Jenni herself may not have known about it. The day he buried his wife, only Max and Maggie knew that they were laying two souls to rest.
“The world seems so quiet now, so empty. That one twist of fate changed everything. I could be sitting beside you, watching our child tear through the house right now. But instead, I’m here and you’re . . .” Max reached down and stroked the grass beside him.
“I get the feeling Niki’s worried about me. The other day, she asked me what I had going on besides work. I made a joke about it, but it got me thinking. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I need to have something else to focus on, something to distract me. So, I’m thinking I might go down to the pound and see if they have an old dog, the kind of mutt that everyone else overlooks.”
Max stopped talking when he heard footsteps approaching from the hill above him. He started to pull out his badge, a move he’d contemplated doing if he were ever discovered in the cemetery after hours.
“Max?” The whispered voice sounded like Boady Sanden.
Max peeked over the top of the headstone. “Boady? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Just came by to see how you were doing.”
Max leaned back against the headstone. “You’re babysitting me, you mean?”
“Can’t a guy break into a cemetery after dark to say hi to a buddy?”
“I know all about you and Alexander thinking I need watching on this particular night. Alexander told me.”
“Well, you have to admit, it’s not without reason. I mean, three years ago you were a bit of a mess. I just stopped by to see if you might need a bolt cutter.”
Max smiled. “Pull up a seat.” He pointed at the next headstone over, a gray, granite slab with the name “Hoover” on it, the one that Boady leaned against three years earlier as he waited for Alexander to arrive.
“I thought this might be a tough year for you, with Alexander being gone as well.”
Max nodded. “I can’t say the thought didn’t cross my mind.”
“And you haven’t been to a card game since he died.”
“Haven’t felt like playing cards, I guess.”
“With all that’s happened, I thought . . .”
“I didn’t bring any whiskey this time.” Max patted his shirt as if to show his pockets empty.
“And here I was hoping you’d offer me a shot. Climbing that damned fence has me a little shaky.”
The two men slipped into a comfortable silence, both staring at the lake for a few seconds that seemed so much longer. Finally it was Boady who spoke.
“In all seriousness, how are you holding up?”
Max gave the question some consideration before answering. “I may have backslid after Alexander died.” He pressed his head to the cool granite. He could feel the engraving of her name against his scalp. He rolled his head slowly across the letter N. “And today—I swear, it seemed like every time I turned around, there was something to remind me of Jenni.”
“If I ever lost Diana . . .” Boady paused mid-thought. “Well, I don’t know where I could go that wouldn’t make me think of her.”
“That’s not the half of it. Today we found a body in Kenwood . . . well, you probably heard about it on the news. It was Ben Pruitt’s wife.”
“Jennavieve Pruitt. Yeah, I heard.”
“It threw me at first. With her red hair and all, she reminded me of Jenni.”
“Before you say any more,” Boady interrupted. “Ben came to see me today.”
“That’s right, you two used to be partners back in the day.”
“He’s asked me to be his attorney . . . if things get . . . well, you know.”
Max turned to look at Boady, hoping to see some sign that he was joking. Boady kept his gaze fixed on the lake.
“I thought you quit practicing law,” Max said.
“I still have my license. I can take a case if I choose to. Just because I teach, doesn’t mean I forgot how to practice law.”
“This isn’t the case to come out of retirement for, Boady.”
“I know you and Ben have issues, Max, but that’s—”
“Boady, this isn’t about what happened between Ben and me. I’m telling you that you don’t want this case.”
“We shouldn’t be talking about it, Max. I just felt that you should know before you said anything to me that might be in confidence.”
Max turned back to the lake, suddenly irritated that his time with his wife’s memory had been interrupted. As if Boady could sense the change in Max’s mood he said, “I probably shouldn’t have come tonight. I just felt that I owed it to Alexander. To make sure . . .”
Max didn’t say anything.
“Well, I’ll leave you to your evening.”
Boady stood up and brushed the grass from his jeans. Max could tell that Boady was waiting for some final word from Max, something to let them part as the friends they were before Boady mentioned Ben’s name. When no words came, Boady started walking away.
Max said, “Tell Diana I said hi.”
Boady stopped and turned back to Max, smiled, and nodded. “Will do,” he said.
When Boady had gone, Max felt more alone than he’d felt in a long time. He reached behind his head and grazed his fingers across the letters of his wife’s name. He tried to talk to her again, but it didn’t feel right. So instead, he tipped his head back against the stone and looked up at the sky where a gap in the trees framed a swath of stars so deep and so beautiful that it almost brought tears to his eyes. He wanted her to be there with him. He wanted her to come down from those stars and whisper into his ear that everything was alright, that she forgave him for all of his failings. Max watched the heavens and waited in silence for an answer that would never come.
Chapter 17
On Monday, Niki and Max brought their investigation to the office of Frank Dovey, an Assistant Hennepin County Attorney in the Adult Prosecutions Division. Frank had summoned them and when they arrived, they were ushered into the conference room where fresh coffee steamed up through the mouth of a white coffee pot, surrounded by four coffee mugs on a tray. They had scarcely taken their seats before Dovey walked in. He slid the coffee tray in front of Niki and sat down.
“I thought we could have some coffee while you filled me in.”
Dovey, a large man whose spikey military cut and sagging jowls reminded Max of a dollop of cookie dough, sat across from Max and drummed on the table with his thumbs. Max looked at Niki, who seemed to be lost behind the coffee tray. Max slid the tray away from in front of Niki, moving it to the opposite end of the table.
“No coffee? Sure. That’s fine. I just thought, you know.” Dovey spoke like a man with a thousand-dollar-a-week cocaine habit, but that was just his way. The man stayed on high speed until he walked into a courtroom. There, Dovey had a talent for reigning in his motor mouth when the situation called for it. In front of a jury he could instantly turned his tap dance into a waltz.
“The Pruitt case has been assigned to me.” Dovey said. He looked at Max as if waiting for him to speak. “So, what you got?”
Max nodded to Niki, who opened her investigation file and began to summarize the case.
“The victim is Jennavieve Pruitt. Socialite. Philanthropist. Daughter of Emerson Adler.”
“I met Emerson Adler once,” Dovey said. “It was a fundraiser for Chief Justice Patten. It was quite the Who’s Who of the mucky-mucks.”
Niki shared a glance with Max, then continued. “She runs a number of foundations, but her main focus was a wetlands preservation group. She was married to Ben Pruitt, the criminal-defense attorney, and they have a child, Emma.”
Max took over, opening his file and pulling out the preliminary autopsy report. “Friday morning, a jogger found Mrs. Pruitt’s naked body wrapped in a blanket from the daughter’s bed and lying in a parking area behind a bookstore in Kenwood. Secluded. No one saw any vehicle going in or out. ME puts her time of death within an hour of midnight the night before. She
was stabbed in the throat with a knife, double-bladed. We have a knife case at the Pruitt house that is missing a knife. It fits our murder weapon.”
Niki pulled out the pictures from the house and picked up the narrative. “We believe she took a shower and was getting ready for bed. When she came out of the bathroom, she was attacked. There’s little sign of a struggle. It looks like the attacker caught her off guard, stabbed her, and maybe held her on the bed while she bled out.”
“No defensive wounds,” Max added. “Nothing under her fingernails.”
Dovey examined the pictures, pausing on the pictures of Mrs. Pruitt’s naked body in the parking lot. “Forced entry at the house?”
“No.”
“We’re looking at the husband for this, I hope.” Dovey said.
“We think he’s a good possibility, except he may have an alibi,” Max said.
“Alibi?”
“He says he was at a legal conference. We have him on a flight to Chicago Thursday, and he flew home on Friday after I called him. He sounded surprised, but he could be a good actor.”
“Phone records?”
“We show a call that he made to Mrs. Pruitt’s cell phone at 5:27 p.m. Thursday evening,” Niki said. “Mrs. Pruitt didn’t answer. We then have a text message from Mr. Pruitt’s phone to Mrs. Pruitt’s phone. We’ve requested the cell-phone-tower data.”
Dovey rubbed a hand over his bristly scalp. “So, the husband has an alibi?”
“Not necessarily.” Max smiled. “We have a neighbor who swears that she saw Ben Pruitt drive up in a red car, park on the corner, and walk up to the house around midnight.”
Dovey flopped back in his chair, a smile spreading across his face. “Are you shitting me? Is she solid?”
“Rock solid,” Max said.
Dovey sat back up and leaned into the conversation. “So how’d he get back here?”