by Matt Goldman
“I have three daughters,” said Ellegaard, as if I didn’t already know. “No argument here.”
“What about Fine’s alibi?” I said.
“He was at home. Alone.”
“That’s not good.”
“Especially if we find out Maggie Somerville was raped.”
Ellegaard’s phone dinged. He looked at the text.
I took a second sip of Jameson. The second sip is always better.
Ellegaard put down his phone. “Julie Swenson wants to see us in the morgue.”
4
Maggie Somerville’s skin looked as rosy as the stainless-steel table on which she lay. She’d been vacuumed and washed to reveal a petite blonde with a girlish figure, small breasted with narrow hips. It’s impossible to see beauty in dead people, but if she were alive, I imagined Maggie Somerville more cute than beautiful. She had thin lips, a chin just shy of full-sized, and a small, undefined nose. Her face suggested that, somewhere in early adulthood, Maggie stopped ripening and preserved herself in a visually appealing state like a perfect-looking pear that was nowhere ready to eat.
“The cause of death is asphyxiation,” said Julie Swenson, whose long gray hair was tucked beneath a green surgeon’s cap. Her pale blue eyes remained placid as she snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
“Strangled?” said Ellegaard.
“Nope,” said Julie, manipulating the corpse’s head to show us the neck. “My guess is she was unconscious then smothered with a gloved hand or pillow. No signs of resistance. No skin under her nails. No bruises.”
“Was she drugged?” I said.
“Ding, ding, ding,” said Julie, “a hundred points for Nils.” She threw a faint smile my way, and I devoted the rest of my life to her. She picked up her iPad and read, “A blood-alcohol level of 1.9 and Rohypnol.”
“Rohypnol? She was raped?” said Ellegaard.
“She was not raped,” said Julie. “I’ve found no evidence of any sexual activity whatsoever.”
“We’ll find out where she drank that liquor,” said Ellegaard. “You can slip a woman a roofie, but it’s hard to slip her enough alcohol to get her to 1.9.”
“So the only reason she was drugged was to be killed,” I said. “That is one hell of a non-violent way to kill someone. The killer either cared about her, in his own fucked-up way or barely had the stomach to go through with it. So he rendered her defenseless because, if she fought back, he’d lose his nerve.”
“Or…” said Ellegaard. He stopped.
“Or what?”
“Men kill themselves with guns and nooses and driving head-on into trees. Women kill themselves quietly—slashed wrists in a tub full of water or, more often, with sleeping pills, which is what Rohypnol was when it was legal in this country. Maggie obviously didn’t kill herself. But whoever did—”
“Killed like a woman?”
Ellegaard shrugged. “I’m just saying we shouldn’t limit our focus to men.”
“Do you mind talking about this on your own time?” said Julie. “There’s one more thing. I vacuumed her lungs and nasal and oral cavities and found traces of gray dust. She was still alive when whoever killed her was spreading the stuff around the room.”
Ellegaard drove me back to Liquor Lyle’s to get my car. We rode in a Ford Taurus that I would have assumed was the department’s if it’d had a police radio and a shotgun in back instead of a booster seat. I said, “Why in the hell would you buy a Taurus for your personal car when you have to drive one at work?”
“I like having the same car at home and work so I don’t get confused about where the controls are.”
“You got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I’m not. It’s a safety issue.”
“It’s a something issue.”
“If I’m driving to a bank robbery or I got screaming kids in the back, I can’t get confused about where the wipers or brights are. It makes perfect sense. There’s nothing weird about it.”
“There’s something weird about a guy driving a Taurus if it doesn’t belong to his mom.”
Ellegaard smiled and glanced over, “I’ve missed you, Shap.”
I felt grateful for male friendships and their ability to lie dormant for years then pick up where they left off with neither feelings nor egos hurt. “Your family is on my refrigerator. That’s a good Christmas card. Only a select few make the refrigerator.”
“I’m honored, Shap. But it’s all Molly’s doing. I take none of the credit.”
“Three kids. What’s that like?”
“A sadistic sleep and SportsCenter deprivation experiment. But the best thing in the world. You’ll see one day.”
“I almost did,” I said.
“I know, buddy. I know.”
We drove along the south side of Lake Calhoun. The Minneapolis skyline on our left peeked down at the mile-wide city lake. It never really gets dark when there’s snow on the ground—too much white everywhere for light to reflect off of. Hockey parents had shoveled an oval of snow off the ice, snowbanks substituting for wooden boards. Eight or so teenagers had a game going—I heard their shouts and stick-slapping through the closed car windows. I let the day’s events simmer for a few minutes. Something had been gnawing at me, so I flat-out asked Ellegaard. “Why did you call me in on this?”
“What are you talking about? We wanted your help.”
“Whose idea was it?”
“Mine. McGinnis didn’t know you existed.”
“I mean whose idea was it to bring in someone from the outside. I get called in by a police department once in a while, but not until they’ve hit a dead end or there’s some sort of frustration with how the investigation is going. But to call in outside help before CSU works the crime scene, before the body’s been ID’d, before time of death has been established—that’s fucking weird.”
Ellegaard drove without saying anything. I looked at the thermometer on his dash. It was fourteen degrees out. Some warm-up that had been.
I said, “Are you going to tell me?”
Ellegaard squirmed in his seat then exhaled resignation. “McGinnis thought we needed help because of the dust. It’s not weird. He asked if I knew anyone. I suggested you. And you, Shap, are welcome.”
I said good night to Ellegaard in front of Liquor Lyle’s. He went home to his loved ones and I went inside for a drink. I sat at the bar, which had grown more crowded since our earlier visit. I ordered an Irish and made myself invisible. A new bartender worked behind the taps, a skinny kid with long hair. I sometimes play a game where I imagine how a stranger fits into the world of rock and roll. The kid pouring my Jameson likely played “Free Bird” full blast at Guitar Center on a Strat he’d never be able to afford. The sturdy-framed twentysomethings had grown in number, but I’d lost interest. I finished my drink and drove home.
My Nespresso machine made me a cup of whatever the green capsule is. I took it to my leather chair and sunk in. The chair had once been part of a pair that bookended a fireplace in a Kenwood Victorian. Micaela had the other. When we split, she insisted I take both. But when I bought the shitbox, I only had room for one and said she should keep the other. She agreed too easily. So when I sat in my chair, I couldn’t help wondering about who might be sitting in its twin. It was an object made of dead cowhide stretched over a wooden frame and foam-wrapped down, but it felt like a portal to Micaela. Furniture shopping was long overdue.
My phone said it was 10:03 P.M. and eight degrees outside. I finished my coffee, left the cup in the sink, visited my coat closet and chose my snorkel parka, a ski hat, a fleece-neck gator, lobster gloves, snow pants, and my Sorels. I exited the back door and then the gate that opened into the alley, walked south to 54th then east for four blocks then descended the hill to Minnehaha Creek, which, despite its blanket of snow, was still frozen—the ice thick enough that I couldn’t hear the water running underneath.
A jet roared overhead, its engines amplified in the dense, cold air. I started west and follo
wed the snaking creek. Cross-country skiers, snowshoers, and dog walkers had left overlapping tracks which made the walking easier. My heavy rubber-soled boots squeaked on the hardpack as if I were walking on Styrofoam. The leafless trees showed off their web of twigs like capillaries under a microscope. The snow eliminated the cover of darkness—the murderer leaving the scene before it fell made even more sense. I passed a sledding hill on my left where teenagers flew down the packed incline on plastic sheets and tubs and saucers, flasks and wineskins keeping them warm and brave. Windows in homes glowed yellow and cozy. I continued under the France Avenue bridge and into Edina where the yards grew deeper and the homes farther away.
A couple cross-country skiing crossed my path, then an older man walking a Newfoundland, then a young woman skijoring behind her Malamute. I’d forgotten how much this creek is used as a thoroughfare when it’s frozen. I reached the pool at the 54th Street falls and heard trickling under the falls’ shell of ice. It was the only deep spot on my journey. The ice was untrustworthy. I stepped onto the bank and followed it up to 54th, crossed the quiet street, entered Arden Park, and walked along the creek bank down past the hockey rink to where the ice felt safe.
A wooded hill rose to my left. The flat open field of the park was to my right. Five minutes later, I could see the back of Maggie Somerville’s house. It had been built on a hill so what looked like two and half stories from the front revealed itself to be three and half stories from the back, most of which was windows.
Even from a hundred yards away I could see the yellow police tape running across the backyard. If anyone had walked the creek last night, before the snow fell, they’d have seen little to nothing. The police had left lights on in the house. In the windows, drawn translucent blinds created yellow rectangles of nothing.
The puzzle felt muddy. Hard to fit. I stared at Maggie Somerville’s house like a mathematician staring at an equation written on a massive board, hoping something would come to me. An answer. A question. Anything.
I smelled smoke. I looked to my left and saw a figure through a clump of naked saplings, a bundled human silhouette and the orange glow of a cigarette. Its head was level with mine so it, too, stood on the creek, just around the bend. I lifted my hood over my hat and pulled the drawstring. It formed a tube in front of my head rimmed with faux fur. Nothing on my face would reflect the ambient light of the snow-covered city. Other than my vibrant personality, I was as invisible as I could get.
I wanted a better view of this person who shared my curiosity for the back of Maggie Somerville’s house. I could step onto the frozen creek’s bank and approach through the trees, but I’d crunch virgin snow and break the fallen twigs, branches, and dried leaves beneath. Continuing up the creek seemed my only option but my boots made too much noise. So I untied them, pried the rubber shells off their liners, and stood in wool slippers like a fourteenth-century monk, the cold creeping through the felt.
Neither the figure nor its orange glow had moved. I picked up my boot shells then crept upstream, unable to tell if I moved in silence or if my hat and hood prevented me from hearing my own footsteps. I neared the bend and checked over my right shoulder. The person was still there.
I started around the bend and stopped halfway. If I moved forward I’d have a clear view of my creekmate, but he could have a clear view of me, as well.
A car purred along Oaklawn Avenue on top of the wooded hill. A few hundred yards away it stopped. Car doors opened and closed, and the enthusiastic voices of high schoolers rippled through the frigid air as kids descended the path for night hockey or broomball or just to fuck around. If the figure heard the kids, he didn’t care. He didn’t move. He knew what was happening down at the rink as well as I did. We two strangers, standing thirty feet apart on a frozen creek, would not be interrupted. We two strangers, one of whom had yet to notice the other. All we needed was an introduction.
“Hello,” I said.
My new friend took off in a dead sprint. I dropped my boot shells and chased after. He ran upstream, sticking to the hardpack as the creek entered a section of tight hairpin turns. I had canoed it dozens of times. This section of creek is where the amateurs oversteer, get their canoes stuck sideways in the current, and tip over, sending their coolers and oars downstream without them.
I lost sight of the figure when it reached the first hairpin turn. When I came around the bend, I’d made up no ground. The next hairpin bent to the left. When I came around that, I’d lost ground. Whoever it was could run. Maybe if I’d worn trail-running shoes I could keep up. But I didn’t and I couldn’t.
On the next hairpin turn, I cut up the bank and across an expanse of skinny trees and reeds and ran perpendicular to my creekmate’s course, reeds and twigs snapping underfoot. The snow was deep, the ground below it soft and uneven. Every muscle in my legs labored to maintain speed. My chest ached. My lungs fought to suck in more cold air. I angled farther right to cut off the person instead of T-boning him. Or her. I still couldn’t identify which. My only intention was to learn who shared my curiosity for the back of Maggie Somerville’s house.
A branch scraped across my face. My flesh burned. I looked up to see if I was on course to intercept my friend. But when my foot stretched out for the frozen creek, the creek wasn’t there. It had dropped two feet below the bank. I couldn’t see that in the flat light and tumbled forward—my head cracked off the hard snowpack. I got back up but the white and gray world blurred and turned and I lost my footing, rolled onto my back, and stared at the night sky. My heart beat in my hooded ears. My breath condensed into icy fog in front of my eyes.
When I was a boy, I’d lie on my back in the snow, bundled like a toddler, looking up at the winter night sky, the heavens framed by the edges of my parka hood. I saw only a small section of sky washed starless by the city lights. Sometimes a plane traversed my view. Less often, a satellite floated through. I have known no greater stillness. I have known no greater peace.
My head hurt. It was 10:30 at night. The temperature was eight degrees and falling. I drifted into half-consciousness and dreamed a dream I knew was a dream in a place I visit in the gray light before color enters my day.
5
I stood on the driveway in February. I was sixteen. The temperature had not climbed above zero in two weeks. My father had just given me the keys to the Honda Civic he’d left idling after his drive home from work. He looked at me through heavy, silver-framed bifocals. His hair was black then, his face clean-shaven. He wore a white shirt with a yellow tie under a wool overcoat. “Be careful,” he said. “Don’t let some girl ruin your future.”
I was his son. If I impregnated “some girl” it would be she who ruined my future, not me who ruined hers. I considered pointing that out, but it was five below and, the truth was, if I had been a girl, it would have been some guy’s fault. My dad was just rooting for the home team.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”
“One more thing,” he said. “I don’t want you drinking, but if you do, never, and I mean goddamn never, have more than two on a night like tonight. You pass out anywhere out-of-doors and you will not wake up. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I said, twenty-two years later, half-conscious on a frozen creek.
Dead leaves crackled and crunched. I turned my head and saw a six-point buck nibbling on a fallen branch. I lived in a metropolitan area of three million people, four major professional sports teams, dozens of colleges, world-renowned museums, and Fortune 100 companies. And through it runs a creek where I’d seen deer and fox and bald eagles flying overhead. I’d seen three-foot-long northern pike in its shallow pools, mallards and wood ducks and blue-winged teal floating on its currents, and wild turkeys along its banks. Sights so common I thought nothing of them, until a deer helped keep me out of the morgue’s freezer section.
I rolled onto my stomach then pushed myself up to my knees. The buck looked at me knowing my predator status had been revoked. I got to my feet
, and it walked away without concern. The cold had penetrated my wool insoles—my toes stung. I walked back to my boot shells and slipped into them knowing warmth would not return.
I considered calling Ellegaard or Micaela to pick me up but thought the walk home would do me good. My head hurt like hell but my stomach felt fine. I shined my phone’s flashlight in my eyes for a few seconds then turned it off and the world got dark again. My pupils functioned. The victim of a head injury probably shouldn’t self-diagnose whether or not they have a concussion, but I was satisfied that I did not. I walked to the area my creekmate first stood and looked for a spent cigarette butt, but found nothing.
I’d had enough of the creek for one night so I cut across Arden Park to 52nd and back over France Avenue. When I stepped back into the shitbox, I removed my boots and put them on the heat vent. I walked into the bedroom, removed my clothes and dropped them on the floor, then slipped into flannel pajamas with dogs on them. They were Micaela’s last Christmas gift to me in lieu of a real dog, which neither of us wanted to bring into a failing marriage. Then I crawled under my comforter. My sleep was filled with the gray winter night sky and gray dust and a deer pulling dead leaves off gray branches.
For the second morning in a row, Ellegaard woke me with a phone call. “We just looked at Maggie Somerville’s cell phone records,” he said. “The majority of the calls are to one number. And most of her incoming calls are from a blocked number. The outgoing name in Maggie’s phone is Bella. But AT&T said the bill is in the name of Ansley Bell.”
“Who’s Ansley Bell?”
“We have no idea. I just got off the phone with Robert Somerville—he doesn’t know who she is, either.”
“Lover maybe?”
“Could be,” said Ellegaard. “We pulled her DMV records. She lives in Northeast.”
“A hipster lover.”
“I’m on my way to talk to her,” said Ellegaard.