by Allen Eskens
Chapter 37
A yawning half-moon slogged its way through furrows of clouds as Max pulled up to the next storage unit. The natural light, trickling over his shoulder, gave him just enough visibility to find the keyhole of door number 49—his fourth unit 49 of that night. He touched key to the lock and jimmied it, hoping once again to feel the key slide in. It did not.
He went back to his car, and in the dimness of its interior light scratched a line through yet another storage-unit address. In the two and a half weeks since receiving the mysterious note and key in the mail, he’d visited fifty-three different storage units. Working in a grid, he would eventually eliminate every unit in the state. Tonight brought him to St. Louis Park, where, according to the Internet, he had eight sites to visit. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and then typed the next address into his navigation.
He thought about going home and sleeping. He had a meeting with Dovey in the morning that was not going to go well. Max had reviewed every second of footage, looking for a red sedan. Max finished the last crumb of footage that night and found no Ben Pruitt. In the morning he would have to tell Dovey that he had no evidence of Ben Pruitt driving back from Chicago.
He would withhold from his report how he often found his mind wandering away from the tollbooth footage—especially in the beginning. How many times had he found his thoughts walking though the parking garage where she died, while his eyes still stared blankly at the tollbooth footage on the computer screen? He would back the footage up and try to find the last place where he’d been paying attention. He believed that he’d covered all the footage.
If he were asked under oath, he’d have to say that he wasn’t entirely sure.
But he needed to prowl the storage units of Minnesota; he needed to purge his mind of that distraction—at least that’s what he told himself. In truth, he knew that his hunt for unit 49 had no more tie to the Pruitt case than did the brand of bread he used to make his nightly ham sandwich. Yet, like an addict justifying his fix, Max left his home every night to once again try and find the home for that key.
As he pulled into his fifth location for the night, he glanced at the clock. 11:30. Three more units in St. Louis Park after this one, but he decided he would do only one more. After that, he would go home and sleep.
Pruitt would be appearing at the omnibus hearing in the afternoon, and Dovey was flipping out over the circumstantial nature of his case. In the two weeks since they arrested Pruitt, they’d found nothing to bolster their case. They’d hoped to find a web search showing that Pruitt mapped out a route from Chicago to Minneapolis, or maybe e-mail communications to support the theory that he bought a junker car in Chicago. But the computer forensics came back with nothing. Pruitt’s phone showed no activity outside of the cell-phone towers that fed the Marriott in downtown Chicago. Their entire case rested on motive, opportunity, and Malena Gwin’s testimony that she saw Pruitt outside his home on the night of the murder. Dovey expected more. Hell, Max expected more. But more never showed up.
As Max stepped out of his car at yet another storage unit, he tried to formulate a theory as to how Pruitt made it home without being seen by a tollbooth camera. As if to pile onto his sleep-deprived brain, he pondered a quote that circled in his head. Something about serving two masters. Was that from the Bible? Or did Abe Lincoln say that?
The moon had slipped behind the clouds, and he needed a small flashlight to see the keyhole for this latest unit 49.
Pruitt had to have planned an alternate route around the tolls. But that would have eaten up too much time.
He held the light in his mouth as he worked the key around, trying to make it fit.
No. It wasn’t Lincoln. Lincoln’s quote was about a house divided.
The key clicked into the hole.
Max jumped back, startled, his flashlight falling to the ground. He stared at the key, now fitted into its home like Cinderella’s foot into the slipper. His chest began to heave.
He reached down and picked up the flashlight.
He had no warrant. But someone sent him the key. That had to be consent. What was proper procedure here? Muddled thoughts of search and seizure and constitutional law began to pour into his already-saturated brain. He quieted the whole mess with a mental shout of I don’t fucking care. He reached out and grasped the key in his fingers, turned it, and slid the locking bolt out of the door.
The latch didn’t move at first, and Max stepped back and gave it a kick to loosen it up. This time, when he pulled it back, the latch popped open with a clack that seemed to echo through the darkness. He bent down, grabbed the handle, and rolled the door up.
He shined his flashlight into the black storage unit, and the beam of illumination bounced off the dusty, yellow paint of a Toyota Corolla.
Chapter 38
Boady Sanden had met with Ben Pruitt every day in the two weeks since the arrest. Some days were good and some were not.
The day that Boady told Ben about the custody hearing was a good day. Boady trounced Anna Adler-King and her two attorneys. The custody consent decree they had drafted was rock solid. Another good day came when Boady brought a full set of the discovery to Ben, all the police reports and witness transcripts. This included the grand-jury testimony of his neighbor Malena Gwin. Boady watched the confusion build in Ben’s face as he read her testimony for the first time.
“What the hell is she talking about?” Ben muttered as he went back and reread the passage about the red sedan. “This is crazy.”
“She gave this same statement the first time they talked to her—the day they found Jennavieve.”
“It makes no sense, Boady. I swear I was in Chicago. It wasn’t me she saw.”
“But this explains why they locked onto you right away.”
“I’ve never owned a red car in my life.”
“We’ll need harder evidence than that. We’ll need to discredit Ms. Gwin.”
The room went silent as both men concentrated. Then Ben perked up. “The light! There’s a streetlight there on the corner, just like Malena Gwin says, but the day I left for Chicago, the bulb was burned out. Been out since . . . let’s see . . . Jennavieve called the city to ask that they fix it . . . that had to be at least two months ago. They said they’d get to it when they could. I’m positive that light was still out when I left for Chicago. If it was out on the night Jennavieve was murdered, the city will have records.”
“And if it was out when Jennavieve was murdered, then Malena Gwin has to be lying, or at the very least mistaken.”
Ben beamed. “She claims to have been able to recognize me because I parked under that streetlight. If there’s no streetlight, her whole story is blown.”
“Which brings us to the next question: Why would she make up such a detailed story?”
Again Ben went silent with concentration. Then he shook his head. “I honestly have no idea. I don’t really know her all that well. I mean, we say hi and wave as we pass on the street, but beyond that . . .”
“Maybe she saw someone else and thought it was you. Maybe she assumed it was you because whoever it was walked up to your house. Then she pieces the rest of the story together from a false memory, including the lit streetlight.”
“And without her, they have nothing.”
Boady left the jail that day in high spirits. But that would not always be the case. On the morning of Ben’s omnibus hearing, Boady came to his visit with a piece of paper that had the potential to crush his friend.
When they brought Ben to the room reserved for lawyer visits, Ben entered with one of his eyes nearly swollen shut and thick bruises on his neck.
“Oh my God,” Boady said. “What the hell . . . ?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Ben said. He tried to smile, but only one side of his mouth could move.
“It looks like hell. What happened?”
“Remember when I told you I was making nice with some of the guys by giving legal advice?”
; “Yeah.”
“Well, the guy I was trying to help out apparently killed the brother of another swell fellow in here. That brother took umbrage.”
“We need to get you segregated.”
“No, I think it’s over. They made their point. If they wanted to make more of a point, they would have. What I need is to get the hell out of here. Have you heard back on the injunction?”
Boady couldn’t look his friend in the eye as he pulled the court order out of his briefcase and slid it across the table.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to read it to me. My vision hasn’t quite returned.”
Boady turned red and pulled the papers back. “The Court denied our motion to quash the injunction.” Boady paused to let the news find roots before he continued. “You have no access to the estate. You won’t be making bail.”
Boady could see the panic rising in Ben’s chest, his ribs pulsing with abbreviated breaths. “I can’t do this. I’m going to die in here. They have me in the middle of some fucking turf war. I have to get out.”
“We can get you moved across the street to the old jail. It’s not as nice as the Hilton here . . .” Boady immediately regretted the joke. Ben looked at Boady through his swollen face, a tear slipping out of his good eye. “I’m sorry, Ben. I could appeal the order, but—”
“We need to get this on the calendar for a speedy trial. The sooner, the better. Hell, if the Court has time next week, I want this on the docket.”
“I’m with you on that,” Boady said. “We can win this.” As he spoke those words, Boady could feel his chest tighten. He had spoken those same words to Miguel Quinto in that exact same jail meeting room. He hadn’t been good enough to keep an innocent man out of prison the last time he tried. Boady wondered whether Ben could hear the undertone of insecurity in his voice, the one he tried so desperately to hide.
Boady could feel his body aging, exponentially, every time he thought about the consequences of failure. He held Ben’s life and Emma’s happiness in his hands, and he would lose his breath on those occasions when he stopped to take in all that was at stake. Instead, Boady focused on the next task at hand. That seemed to quiet the self-doubt that threatened to drown him.
“I checked with the Court,” Boady said. “If we demand a speedy trial today, we can be on the calendar by the first week in October.”
At first Ben’s shoulders slumped, but he took a deep breath and sat up nodding. “A month. That’ll work,” he said. “I can make it to October.” Ben put the back of his hand up to his good eye and wiped away the tear that had crawled down his cheek. “You know that Emma’s birthday is in a few weeks. I was clinging to the hope that I might be out of here for her birthday. I’ve never missed one before.”
“Diana and I were talking about Emma just yesterday. We think you should let us bring her here for a visit—”
“No!” Ben’s answer came back fast and sharp. “Promise me you’ll never let her see me like this.” He pointed to his orange jump suit and at the bruise that took up half of his face. “I said my good-bye to her. That’s how she’ll remember me. I don’t want her to see me again until I walk out of here, an innocent man. I dream about that moment. I live for that moment. It’s what keeps me going. Promise me. No visits.”
“I promise,” Boady said.
Chapter 39
Max had spent the night carefully searching the interior of the Corolla, cataloging what little he’d found and gently putting everything back so that a crime-scene technician could repeat the process later.
Before he went to his morning meeting with Dovey, he showered, shaved, and spent an hour at a copy store making a duplicate of Jenni’s investigatory file, every page—even the photos. He instructed the clerk to put the photos in a separate folder and tape it shut. He didn’t want them accidentally spilling out. He had never looked at those pictures, and he would never look at them, unless he had no other option—and maybe not even then.
After his meeting with Dovey, Max would return the file to the archive room at City Hall. The time had come to turn the investigation over to someone else, someone who could coordinate DNA tests and fingerprinting, someone who was not the husband of the decedent.
As he and Niki waited in the conference room for Dovey, the exhaustion in Max’s eyes pulled with both hands. He tried to shift his thoughts from his wife’s murder to the Pruitt case, but his mind had become numb with fatigue.
Dovey entered with his usual confident stride. He sat down hard in the faux-leather chair and clapped his hands together in a crack that popped Max’s heavy eyes open.
“Let’s see what you got,” he said in a booming voice. “Impress me.”
Max and Niki looked at each other, and then at Dovey. Max went first.
“I’ve watched more than forty hours of cars going through toll plazas and . . . well, there’s no red sedan carrying Ben Pruitt.”
Patches of red began to work their way up Dovey’s neck. He forcefully grasped his right fist in his left, cracking all of his knuckles, then did the same with his other hand. Then he took a deep breath and continued. “So we can’t show that Ben Pruitt drove back from Chicago the night his wife was murdered?”
“There are other routes,” Max said. “He must have skirted the cameras.”
“I thought you said he’d have to take the Interstate to make it back here on time. Didn’t you say that? Or have I been hearing things?”
“He would have had to break speed limits if he took the back roads. That’s risky when you’re on your way to murder your wife. But it’s theoretically possible.”
“So I’m left with ‘theoretically possible’ for my case? Do you have any idea how far theoretically possible is from ‘proof beyond a reasonable doubt’?”
“I can’t change the tapes. You asked what I found and I’m telling you. Besides, you have Malena Gwin. She saw him here, so all you need is ‘theoretically possible.’ Her testimony makes it a fact. He made it back here from Chicago to kill his wife. Whether he drove the Interstate or a back road doesn’t matter. He was here.”
Dovey brought his hand to his chin and rubbed. “What can Boady Sanden get on her? Anything I need to be worried about?”
Niki, who’d been sitting motionless next to Max, spoke up. “I’ve looked into her and there’s not much to know. She’s a widow. Doesn’t work. Has some money left from her husband’s insurance policy that she lives off of. I’ve asked around the neighborhood, and other than being a bit nosey—which works in our favor—she’s absolutely normal. No criminal history. No ax to grind with Ben Pruitt. They’re going to have a tough time knocking down her credibility.”
“What about the computer forensics?” Dovey asked. “Find anything there?”
Niki shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing that moves the ball forward. I was hoping to find evidence that Mrs. Pruitt was talking to an attorney about divorce. I looked at her search history, and there’s nothing there. No venomous e-mails to her husband, or from him. I haven’t seen a thing about their relationship.”
“Great. Brilliant,” Dovey said. “We’ve had Pruitt in custody for two weeks, and we’re no closer now than we were then. What happened? You’re supposed to be the A-Team.”
“Watch it, Dovey.” Max leaned onto the table.
“You told me Pruitt did it.”
“He did.”
“Then, damn it, get me my proof!”
Max stood, angry enough to spit nails. A dozen insults whirled in his sleep-addled brain. But before he could open his mouth to speak, a memory blew in cold and swift like winter through an opened door.
It was his brother, Alexander, over-the-top pissed off at their wrestling coach. He’d won a wrestle-off and should have been on the A squad, but the coach put Alexander on the B squad. Said Alexander threw a punch to win his match. Max had to hold his brother back. Went so far as to carry him out of the gym.
It had always been Max’s job to settle his brother down. Be the level head while A
lexander got to spin like a pinwheel. “Max the Boy Scout.” That’s what Alexander always called him. And Jenni called him her rock. But Jenni was gone now. Alexander was gone now too. And Max could feel the ghost of that Boy Scout fading away to nothingness.
Max remained standing, let a slow breath leave his body, and walked out.
Chapter 40
When Emma Pruitt awoke on the morning of her eleventh birthday, she didn’t smile. Diana made her a breakfast of pancakes and bacon, one of the few meals that Emma would actually eat. The pancakes had the words “Happy B-day” spelled out with chocolate chips. When Emma saw this, she started to cry and ran to her room.
Emma had been a guest in their house for over a month, and the number of words she spoke in that time barely surpassed the number of days she’d been there. She cried often and would sleep until noon if Diana allowed it—which she did not.
One day they brought in a psychologist under the guise of her being a family friend. The three of them attempted to engage Emma in conversation. The psychologist asked Emma about her friends and about school. Emma’s responses were monosyllabic and gave no release to the pain that churned in her veins. After three attempts over the course of a week, the psychologist gave up.
“There’s no sense paying me to come out here anymore. She won’t talk to me. I think she suspects our ruse.”
“I’m worried about her,” Diana said. “She only talks when it’s absolutely necessary. She’s been acting up in school, refusing to obey the teachers. They tell me she doesn’t talk to her friends or anyone else for that matter. I just don’t know what to do.”
“Going to school may not be the best thing for her right now,” the psychologist offered. “The children in her neighborhood are at the heart of what she wants to avoid. Those children have parents who knew Mrs. Pruitt. They’ve been talking. The kids will know that Emma’s father is on trial for her mother’s death. Putting her into that environment may be the last thing she needs.”