From the Grave--A McKenzie Novel Page 13

  “In the TV shows I watched, it’s always the other way ’round. The woman says she’s being haunted, and it’s the husband or boyfriend who blows her off.”

  “I’m not blowing you off, McKenzie. But you’re asking me to believe a lot of stuff that I’ve been taught isn’t true, isn’t real.”

  “Believe me, I know exactly how you feel. I’m having a hard time dealing with it myself.”

  Nina smiled.

  “This is certainly a lot different than the usual miscreants you attract,” she said.

  “You mean like the guy you pushed down the stairs at the Minnesota Club that one time?”

  Nina chuckled at the memory.

  “Yeah, well, he had it coming.”

  * * *

  Hugs and greetings were exchanged at the front door. Nina and Shelby stayed upstairs while I made my way to Bobby’s man cave, which I had helped him build in his basement. He had the Minnesota Timberwolves on the big-screen TV; they were getting toasted by the Boston Celtics.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Same old, same old. Not watching the Wild?”

  “Between periods. Why are you dressed so nice?”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  “Why would I be?” Bobby asked.

  “Nina’s making me take her dancing. I thought you were coming with.”

  “Ha. By the way, your pals Smith and Jones contacted me the other day. Did they tell you?”

  “I haven’t seen them.”

  “Turns out they had video that you told them to send me of a red Toyota Avalon circling your building thirty minutes before Mr. Fogelberg left Friday.”

  “So it wasn’t about me, then,” I said.

  “They sent us a copy of the footage, but there’s not enough of it to confirm that it was the same car that followed Fogelberg.”

  “How many Toyota Avalons can there be?”

  “One million three hundred and seventy thousand in the United States alone, including hybrids.”

  “In Minnesota? In the color red?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” Bobby said. “Neither do you.”

  “Yet they happen all the time.”

  “McKenzie, what are you doing here?”

  “You invited me.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Bobby stared at me for a few beats. I stared back. He moved to the foot of the stairs and called up.

  “Shelby?” he said. “Shelby.”

  She appeared at the top of the stairs. She was grinning the way she had just before she shouted “surprise” at Bobby’s fortieth birthday party.

  “You guys should come up to the living room,” she said.

  * * *

  We walked up the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the living room. Hannah Braaten was sitting in Bobby’s favorite chair. Shelby was standing behind her. Esti Braaten was sitting across from her daughter, and Kayla Janas was standing near the front door. She was the only one who appeared uncomfortable.

  “Robert,” Shelby said, “this is Hannah Braaten and her mother, Esti. I told you about Hannah.”

  Bobby glared at his wife much the same way as when he learned that he wasn’t going to have the quiet fortieth birthday he had hoped for. Bobby hated surprises.

  Hannah rose from her seat and extended her hand. “Commander Dunston,” she said.

  Bobby shook her hand, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

  “McKenzie, it’s good to see you again,” Hannah said. “I hope you weren’t too upset by what happened at the festival this afternoon.”

  “Meh,” I said.

  Bobby glared some more. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I told Hannah that she could come over and speak with you,” Shelby said.

  “Why would you do that without asking me first?”

  “They told me they wanted to help you, and I thought—”

  “You know better than that.”

  They were the starkest words spoken in the harshest tone I’ve heard Bobby use to his wife in all the days I’ve known them and they jolted me. At the same time, Shelby shrugged as if she knew she had done wrong yet expected to be forgiven.

  I glanced at Nina, who was leaning against the railing of the staircase that led upstairs. She made a big production out of looking at her watch.

  “Well, you kids have fun,” I said. “Nina and I—”

  “This concerns you as well, McKenzie,” Hannah said.

  “In what way?”

  “The reason Leland Hayes was at the festival this afternoon spreading your name around—Ryan was there,” Hannah said. “He arrived just as you were leaving.”

  “Did he?”

  “This time, though, he wasn’t looking for a reading. He didn’t want to speak to his father. He hates his father.”

  I glanced at Nina again. This time she was actually tapping the face of her watch with one finger.

  “What did he want?” I asked.

  “He apologized, Mr. McKenzie,” Kayla said. We all turned to look at her standing next to the front door. She was the only one who hadn’t bothered to remove her winter coat.

  “Apologized?” I repeated.

  “He said he didn’t know why he behaved the way he did, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me, threatening me,” Hannah said. “He said it was like an outside force was controlling him. His father, perhaps.”

  “He said that he was sorry and that he wanted to help if he could,” Kayla said.

  “Help who?” I asked.

  “Help you.”

  “Me?”

  “Leland Hayes isn’t just telling his son to kill you anymore,” Hannah said. “He’s telling anyone who will listen.”

  “Leland Hayes who was shot dead over two decades ago,” Bobby said. “That Leland Hayes?”

  “I know you’re skeptical,” Hannah said.

  “Skeptical isn’t the word for it. I’ve been a police officer for nearly twenty-five years. I’ve seen psychics come and go, all of them with information that they promised would help me solve a crime, usually a high-profile murder extensively covered by the media, and not one of them told me the truth. The Wetterling kid, Jacob Wetterling, who was killed back in ’89, the crime solved twenty-seven years later—psychics started coming out of the woodwork forty-eight hours after he was abducted. And they kept coming. For years. Clairvoyants, tarot card readers, Indian medicine men, people with witching rods, Satanists, voodoo priests, witches, psychic mediums—and they were right about precisely nothing.”

  “There are frauds, that’s true,” Hannah said. “And some well-meaning people without the skills—”

  “Well-meaning, my ass. This is a two-point-two-billion-dollar industry. You pretend to open a direct line to the afterlife and deliver messages from dead loved ones to vulnerable people who are in mourning and in grief solely for the cash.”

  “Commander Dunston—”

  Hannah’s voice had a hard edge to it, as if she were about to deliver a vigorous defense, only Bobby was having none of it.

  “Should I explain how you perform your magic tricks?” he asked. “With cold readings before a large crowd, you throw out simple generalities, a father who embarrassed you in public, a mother who died unexpectedly, because the broader the generalities, the greater the chance they’ll resonate with someone, and when they do you can use their responses and nonverbal cues to make narrower and narrower guesses. We do it all the time in law enforcement. The Reid technique. The PEACE method. The kinesic interview. Pick your favorite interrogation process.

  “With hot readings, you research the specific individual you’re going to read, doing deep dives into the individual’s social media history, often going back years and years. Not just theirs, but all of their family’s Facebook and Twitter pages, too, searching for those tiny tidbits of information that they can’t remember ever telling anyone. You find a pic of all the male members of the family wearing bow ties at Dad’s funeral,
you tell the subject, ‘Your father liked to wear bow ties,’ and the subject says, ‘Oh my God, how did you know that?’ I know how it’s done because I do it every day to catch criminals.”

  “Are you calling my daughter a criminal?” Esti asked.

  “Mother, please,” Hannah said.

  “We came here because we feared for Hannah’s safety. Ryan Hayes threatened my daughter. That didn’t get him what he wanted, so now he’s pretending to be cordial, but he could easily turn on her again. He’s the criminal, not Hannah.”

  “If you wish to file an incident report, there’s a police substation less than two miles from here,” Bobby said. “Or you could always call 911.”

  “Bobby,” Shelby said, “I believe her.”

  “Four out of ten Americans believe her, and nothing I say is going to change their minds. Evidence—”

  “Like the kind you take to court?”

  Bobby lowered his voice. “Yes, evidence like the kind we take to court isn’t the reason that you believe her, and it won’t be the reason that you stop.” Bobby moved next to his wife and gently stroked her shoulders. “Anyway, where’s the harm in telling you that your grandfather loved you, that he didn’t mean to die on your birthday, that it was just bad luck? Except it doesn’t end there.”

  Bobby turned to Hannah. “Does it?” he asked.

  “It was a mistake to come here,” Hannah said.

  “Why did you come here?” Nina asked. She was no longer looking at her watch. Instead, her arms were folded across her chest and she was leaning backward against the staircase as if she were surrendering to the inevitable. “Why didn’t you call 911 if you felt threatened?”

  “We believe if we can help the police find the stolen money, the money that Leland Hayes hid—without it, he has nothing to offer his son or anyone else. Without it, he has nothing with which to threaten McKenzie’s life. Or mine.” Hannah spun to face Bobby again. “I would think you’d want to find the money.”

  “Not me,” he said. “I’m just a lowly local cop. Armored truck robbery is a federal beef. You should be talking to the FBI. Want me to give you some names?”

  “Hannah,” I said. She turned to face me. “This search for the hidden loot—would it be conducted in front of the cameras I saw at the festival?”

  “What cameras?” Shelby asked.

  “They’re thinking of making a TV series based on Hannah’s life,” I said. “Model Medium. They’ve been following her around with a camera crew, director, producers—”

  “That has nothing to do with this,” Hannah said.

  “The woman, the young woman, with the clipboard…” Shelby was looking up to her right as if trying to remember. “At the reading. The one who stayed behind when all the others left. She was taking notes.”

  “I saw a woman at the festival with a clipboard, too,” I said. “If we’re thinking of the same person, she’s a producer.”

  “What a coincidence,” Bobby said.

  “One thing has nothing to do with the other,” Hannah said.

  “You know what? I’m going to take your word for it.”

  “I’m sure you will. Good-bye, Commander Dunston. Mother?”

  Esti rose from the chair, and together mother and daughter moved toward the front door.

  “I’m sorry,” Shelby said.

  “Think nothing of it,” Hannah said.

  She opened the front door and Esti passed through it. Kayla Janas did not move, however. She stood as if fixed to the spot, her eyes staring off into the distance. Her lips moved slightly as if she were talking to herself.

  “Kayla?” Hannah said. “Are you coming?”

  Kayla’s response was to take several steps forward until she was standing in the center of the living room, her arms held loosely at her sides. Her eyes were wide and moist and unblinking. She looked like someone about to do something that frightened her.

  “Commander Dunston,” she said, “Ruth Nowak says she’s waiting for you to find her.”

  “What did you say?” Bobby asked.

  “Ruth Nowak—”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “She’s cold. She’s alone.”

  “I don’t know who you think you are—”

  “She’s wrapped in the quilt that her mother gave her for Christmas three years ago, purple and gold with a football helmet and the name Vikings stitched in the center.”

  Bobby moved toward the young woman until he was close enough to strike her. His fists were clenched, yet he did not raise them.

  “Get out of my home,” he said.

  “Ruth needs you to find her.”

  “Let me guess—she’s in a wooded area not far from running water, and there’s an elementary school and train tracks and—”

  “She’s hidden in the trees between a small pond and the back fence of a farm near New Richmond, Wisconsin. A woman owns the farm. Animals live on it. Ruth doesn’t know her name or what kind of animals.”

  Bobby stared for a good ten beats. I was a little speechless myself. Kayla had been so specific.

  “Who are you again?” Bobby asked.

  “Kayla Janas. I’m a student over at Macalester. Commander Dunston, please don’t be angry. I’m new to all of this, and it scares the heck out of me.”

  Bobby stared some more.

  “Good night, Ms. Janas,” he said.

  “Good night, Commander.”

  Kayla turned and walked out of the door that Hannah was still holding open despite the winter cold. After she passed, Hannah looked up at me.

  “I’ve never seen skills like hers,” she said.

  Then she too left, closing the door behind her.

  Bobby stared at the door for a long time. The look in his eye, the expression on his face—they told me that his cop’s brain had left the room and he was now doing exactly what he’d told Deputy Chief Hodapp he was doing—working the case.

  “That was fun,” Nina said.

  “I’m sorry, Bobby,” Shelby said. “I didn’t mean—”

  Bobby spun around, moved to his wife, and wrapped his arms around her.

  “Bobby…?”

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  “Go where?”

  “McKenzie, you’re coming with me.”

  “I am?”

  “You’re driving.”

  “I am?”

  Bobby left the living room. He returned moments later wearing boots and putting on a heavy winter coat.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” I asked.

  “Wait a minute,” Nina said. “I thought we were going dancing?”

  “Nina,” Bobby said, “forgive me, please. I don’t know how to explain this. It goes against my better judgment, yet I just … I have to go do this. Shelby, I just … There’s someplace I need to be. McKenzie…”

  I followed Bobby to the front door.

  “Where are we going?” I asked again.

  “New Richmond.”

  FIFTEEN

  The road to New Richmond, Wisconsin, began for us back at the Cretin-Vandalia entrance ramp, where I regained I-94 and went east until we encountered I-35E and went north. At Highway 36 we drove east toward Wisconsin. Bobby didn’t have much to say except “Nina’s mad at you now. That’s on me. Tell her I’ll make it up to her.”

  “Oh?” I said. “Are you going to take her dancing?”

  He didn’t say if he would or wouldn’t. I had the hockey game on the radio. The Wild rallied to beat the Maple Leafs in a shootout. Bobby didn’t have anything to say about that either.

  “Why are we doing this?” I asked.

  We were fast approaching the St. Croix Crossing, the bridge over the St. Croix River that connected Minnesota to Wisconsin.

  “That young woman, Kayla…”

  “Kayla Janas,” I said.

  “She was so sure. So specific, telling me where Ruth Nowak was. There was no hemming and hawing, no probing to see if anything she said resonated.”
/>   “Did anything resonate?”

  “Robert Nowak, Ruth’s husband, has a receptionist working in his office. Molly Finnegan. She lives in New Richmond on a forty-acre alpaca farm.”

  “Alpaca?”

  “You know, like llamas.”

  “I know what they are.”

  “Finnegan has a side hustle selling alpaca fleece. She has pictures of her animals on her desk.”

  “Let me guess—she’s also young and pretty.”

  “No, she isn’t. She’s over fifty and looks it. Also, there wasn’t any history of calls from Nowak to her cell, work phone, or landline. That’s why it didn’t click that she and Robert might have had a relationship beyond employee-employer.”

  “’Course, this doesn’t answer my original question,” I said. “Why are we doing this? You don’t believe any of this psychic-medium crap.”

  “It’s just a feeling I have. McKenzie, c’mon. Half the decisions you make are based on feelings that you have. Give me this one.”

  “Okay, but why do we have to explore your feelings in the dead of night? Why can’t you do it with your team tomorrow morning?”

  “I don’t mind looking ridiculous in front of you.”

  “I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere.”

  Once we crossed the bridge, Minnesota State Highway 36 became Wisconsin State Highway 64. We followed it through the town of Somerset, passing softball fields where we once competed in a tournament when we were kids. I mentioned them to Bobby, but he was busy working the case.

  About forty-five minutes after we started, we reached the outskirts of New Richmond. Bobby used the GPS app on his phone to direct me north after we passed the municipal golf course, then west, north, east, and north again. We slowly passed a farmhouse sitting on a high hill. After a half mile, Bobby had me stop on the narrow shoulder of a country road. There were no lights to be seen, only the flickering stars in a brilliant night sky.

  “Look at this.” Bobby showed me a satellite image of the area on his smartphone. “This is Molly’s farm. Her house, some kind of a barn, pond, wooded area, fence.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Follow this fence here. That’s the neighbor’s property. Follow it to the far corner here. Cross under the fence over to the wooded area. See what’s there. Do you have a flashlight?”