What the Dead Leave Behind Read online

  “What is this?” Downing asked.

  “My references.”

  “I don’t know the federal agents or the assistant U.S. attorney, but I met Commander Dunston, and I worked with Lieutenant Rask a couple of months ago.”

  “Give them a call. Ask them about me.”

  “Why?”

  “So when I call back you’ll know you’re not talking to a complete moron.”

  *   *   *

  I was going to give him an hour. Instead, Downing called me twenty minutes later.

  “I’m not sure what to make of this,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bobby Dunston told me that you used to be a pretty good cop when you were with the St. Paul PD and that you’ve been very helpful to them in the past. Clayton, Lieutenant Rask, he said that you not only helped him solve a homicide a couple of years ago, you saved the Minneapolis Police Department considerable embarrassment, although he wouldn’t give specifics.”

  “It left the restroom with its zipper down—what can I say?”

  “They also said you could be a real smartass and that you like to play fast and loose with the rules.”

  “I’m sure they meant that in a good way.”

  “What’s your interest in the Harris case?”

  “His son, Malcolm—he came to me yesterday and asked me to look into it. He has a lot of unanswered questions. They’re keeping him awake at night. In fact, I’d say he’s displaying signs of PTSD.”

  “What do you think you can do about it?”

  “I’m just hoping to give the kid a good night’s sleep. He already said he didn’t care if anyone went to prison. He just wants to know the truth.”

  “Sometimes knowing the truth … Never mind.”

  “Do you know the truth?”

  “If I did someone would be in prison by now.”

  “I checked your division’s Web site. The cold case page says, ‘The NBDPS never forgets a victim of a violent crime.’ But you and I both know that the Harris investigation was redlined a long time ago. Just like you did with Raymond Bosh.”

  “We didn’t forget Bosh. I went back through the files just last summer.”

  “And?”

  “He gambled. Did coke. The lead investigator—he’s retired now—he believed Bosh was bludgeoned to death with an aluminum baseball bat by someone he owed money to.”

  “And?”

  The detective’s response was to sigh deeply.

  “Clark, I get it even if the public doesn’t,” I said. “You have thirty cops in New Brighton; only three detectives. You simply don’t have the personnel or the resources to keep the case active, to keep Harris’s case active.”

  “So?”

  “So how ’bout letting me take a look. If I find nothing, then you’re out nothing. If I find something, maybe I can help you move it out of the cold case files.”

  “What do you want exactly?”

  “Whatever you can give me.”

  “The case file isn’t public record until it goes to court.”

  “I’m not the public.”

  “This is what Dunston and Rask were talking about, isn’t it, about playing fast and loose with the rules?”

  “I like to think of them more like guidelines.”

  *   *   *

  Detective Downing agreed to meet me for lunch, but not in New Brighton. We settled on a chain restaurant near the Northtown shopping mall in Blaine. He arrived first and picked a booth facing the bar. He stood when I came in. His shield was attached to his belt; I think he liked that everyone could see it when he swept back the tails of his blazer. Pride of ownership, I decided. I was much the same way when I was with the cops.

  We shook hands. I stuffed my winter coat against the wall of the booth and sat across from him. Downing slipped a thumb drive from his pocket. He slid it across the table toward me. I picked it up and put it into my own pocket without giving it much of a look.

  “My case files,” he said. “Incident reports, supplemental reports, autopsy—normally, I’d let you read them inside the office while under supervision; make sure you didn’t take them home with you. That’s usually how we do things, except … Anyone asks; you didn’t get them from me.”

  “I understand.”

  “You don’t talk to anyone in New Brighton, either. Not the ME. Certainly not the deputy director. If you have a question, you bring it to me and I’ll get it answered.”

  “Whatever you say, but this isn’t television, Detective. In real life, police and private investigators work the same cases all the time.”

  “Licensed PIs hired by the family or the family’s attorney who carefully follow the regulations as laid out by the Private Detective Services Board. Not wealthy, bored ex-cops looking for something to do with their free time.”

  “Did Bobby Dunston tell you that?”

  “No. I have my own sources; I reached out after I spoke to you on the phone. Tell me something—did you really quit the St. Paul PD to take a three-million-dollar reward on an embezzler you collared?”

  Clearly he doesn’t approve, my inner voice told me. Well, get in line.

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said.

  “They say you were a good cop. They say…”

  “If you must know, my father raised me alone after my mother died when I was just a child. I took the money to give him a cushy retirement; we were going to travel, see the world, shit like that. Only he died six months later. So, here we are.”

  “I meant no disrespect.”

  “A lot of cops think I sold my badge. I bet most of them would do the same thing if they had the opportunity.”

  Downing stared up and to his left wondering if he was one of them.

  “Like I said,” he told me. “No disrespect.”

  A waitress appeared. Three days after Christmas and she was still dressed like one of Santa’s elves.

  “Drink?” I asked.

  “Not while I’m on duty,” Downing said.

  He ordered an iced tea; I had a Summit Ale. The waitress soon returned with our beverages and listed the daily specials, most with holiday names. We listened patiently before ordering sandwiches from the menu; I had a club, and Downing asked for a Philly cheesesteak. While waiting to be served, we decided that the Twins had a bright future but we weren’t so sure about the Vikings. Actually, that’s what I decided. Downing was into the Minnesota United Football Club, God help him. Turned out he played soccer when he was a kid. I played hockey. We eyed each other suspiciously until we were half finished with our meals.

  “Who do you like?” I asked.

  Downing knew exactly what I was asking.

  “The wife,” he said. “It’s always the wife, isn’t it?”

  “Not always.”

  “Jayne Harris was in the emergency room five times in the previous two years with broken ribs, a broken wrist, broken nose. Apparently she was the most accident-prone woman in New Brighton.”

  “She never claimed she was abused?”

  “Not in the hospital, and the docs and RNs asked a lot of questions; you know how they are. Apparently not to any of her friends or relatives, either. At least none would say.”

  “Her son?”

  “As I recall, he became very agitated when I asked about it. Said I was full of shit.”

  “That sounds like him.”

  Downing gestured more or less at my pocket.

  “When you read my notes, you’ll learn that Jayne was alibied tight, too,” he said. “The evening Harris was stabbed in the head, she was having potluck with seven other couples at the home of one of the couples. Fourteen witnesses. Exactly.”

  How convenient, I thought but didn’t say.

  “They were part of a group—called themselves the New Brighton Hotdish,” Downing said. “Their kids all played park-and-rec baseball on the same team back in … I think it was six years ago. It would be seven now, I guess. In any case, t
hey’ve been getting together the second Friday of the month ever since, alternating locations.”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s more, Jayne could account for nearly every minute of her time from the moment that Harris left work until his body was discovered. We had forensic auditors go over their financial records; there were no expenditures large or small that couldn’t be explained, that I could argue was a payoff to a hitter. We checked her cell and landline, texts, e-mails, Internet use, and talked to her neighbors—there was no suggestion of infidelity, that she had a boyfriend who might have done it for her.”

  “But you still like her?”

  “A kitchen knife is a weapon of opportunity. Usually you get stabbed with a kitchen knife; it’s in your own damn kitchen, am I right? The weapon close at hand.”

  “Are you sure about the knife?”

  “The Ramsey County forensic pathologist, what he told me, the brain material holds the shape of the knife blade better than other parts of the body. He said it was a serrated blade consistent with a kitchen knife. Six inches.”

  What are you suggesting? my inner voice asked. That Jayne Harris stabbed her husband in the head, dragged him to his car, drove the car to the park, dragged him out of the car, tossed his body into the ditch, and walked home? In subzero temperatures? Without noticing that he was still alive?

  My expression must have revealed my skepticism, because Downing dropped the remains of his sandwich on his plate and nudged it away.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Seems unlikely. But Jayne is the only one who benefited from Frank’s death.”

  “How did she benefit?”

  “IRAs, 401(k)s, and company investment plans, totaling about $660,000. Insurance benefit from where he worked paid twice his salary, so that was another one ninety. Then there was a separate life insurance policy worth two-fifty. Just over a cool million, all told. Plus, they had a policy that paid off their mortgage if one of them died, so…”

  “When was the life insurance policy put into effect?”

  “They took out policies on each other a couple weeks before they were married.”

  “When was that?”

  “Twenty-four years ago.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then there was the end to the spousal abuse.”

  “That she and her son claim didn’t exist, that no one else claims existed.”

  “It was her, McKenzie. Maybe Jayne didn’t stab him, but I know she had it done. I just … feel it.”

  I knew what he meant. Training and experience often reveal truths to police officers that physical evidence doesn’t always corroborate. Back when I worked homicide with Anita Pollack, we could usually ID the killer ten minutes after we arrived on the scene. At least she could—she had been at it so long it was that obvious to her. Afterward, it was just a matter of connecting the dots. Except sometimes the dots wouldn’t line up in a way that would make the case beyond all reasonable doubt. Which isn’t to say that we ever had any doubt. Still …

  “I don’t think that’s the answer Malcolm is looking for,” I said.

  “My boss and the assistant county attorney demanded more tangible proof, too.”

  “You said you couldn’t prove Jayne was cheating. How ’bout Frank?”

  “That’s a different matter. We checked his cell, computer, work phone. There were a few things that made me go ‘Hmm,’ but no discernible patterns. He didn’t call, text, or e-mail the same woman twenty times, for example. It’s all in my notes. We do know that Harris called his wife at about five the evening he disappeared. She said that he said he was going to be late to the Hotdish because he was putting in some overtime. We have no proof that she was telling the truth. What we do have is video of him leaving his place of employment ten minutes later, climbing into his car in the company’s parking lot and driving off.”

  “Did Harris drive directly to the park or make a stop along the way?”

  “To pick someone up, you’re thinking?”

  I shrugged.

  “No idea,” Downing said.

  “Why did he drive to the park?”

  “If he drove to the park. Like I said, I’m not sure it went down that way. If he did, obviously, it was to meet someone.”

  “Yes, but why the Long Lake Regional Park? It was a little close to home, wasn’t it, for a clandestine meeting?”

  “A couple blocks from where he lived, yeah. My guess, he picked the location because it was close to home, a place he was familiar with.”

  “If he picked it.”

  “You’re starting to understand my frustration.”

  “The article I read, it said he was stabbed between five forty-five and ten twenty,” I said. “That’s pretty specific.”

  “The five forty-five—we know exactly when he left the Szereto corporate offices and estimated the approximate amount of time it would have taken him to drive to the park providing the traffic wasn’t unusually heavy, which it wasn’t. The ten twenty—there we got lucky. The park had a posted curfew; no vehicles allowed in the lot after ten P.M. An officer making his rounds spotted Harris’s car and wrote it up.”

  “Nearly four and a half hours. Damn, that’s a long time.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Where did Harris work, again?” I asked.

  “The Szereto Corporation.”

  “Did he have any enemies over there?”

  “Probably. Harris was the director of human resources. Everyone who was fired might have hated him. Everyone that made a complaint that wasn’t addressed, I suppose they could be considered suspects, too. Only nobody stood out.”

  “What does the company do?”

  “They make beauty products, shampoos, conditioners, whatnot.”

  “That’s a pretty competitive business, isn’t it?”

  “So I’m told.”

  “Could he have pilfered proprietary information and attempted to sell it to one of Szereto’s competitors? Met his contact at the park, argued over price…”

  “I have no evidence to suggest such a thing.”

  “Still…”

  “Listen, McKenzie—it’s possible I made a mistake by grabbing hold of the idea that Jayne killed her husband and not letting it go. Maybe I lost objectivity. Maybe I missed something. Don’t do the same thing.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “I promise I won’t get angry if you solve the case. I will, but not at you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Something else. We don’t get many violent crimes in New Brighton, much less a dead man in the snow. Not being able to solve it … What I mean, Harris’s kid isn’t the only one who’s lost sleep over this.”

  I could relate to that, too—all those goddamn dots that never aligned properly.

  *   *   *

  I had been at it for over an hour, sitting at my computer, reading the final summary issued by the Ramsey County coroner, taking notes on Detective Downing’s supplementary investigation reports. I wasn’t so much interested in Downing’s conclusions as in the names of all the people that he interviewed. Talk to them, I told myself, draw your own conclusions.

  Erica arrived. She dumped her bulky winter coat, hat, and gloves on a chair near the door—“dumped” being the operative word.

  “Wut up?” she said.

  Wut up? my inner voice asked.

  “Hey,” I replied.

  Erica slouched in a chair in the living area where she could get a good view of me working at the desk in the library area. Nina was one of the most beautiful women I had ever known, with amazing silver-blue eyes. Erica didn’t have those eyes, but she possessed the rest of her mother’s genes.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I talked the lead detective on the Harris case into letting me look at his case files.”

  “Have you figured it out yet?”

  “Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t had a ch
ance to speak to you since last night.”

  “You were out late with the boyfriend.”

  “Malcolm is not my boyfriend. We met at Tulane—both of us from Minnesota, so we kind of bonded, but he’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve known him since we were freshmen, and he’s always been good company until … Well, you know what happened. I just wanted to help him, and since I couldn’t, I mean not really…”

  “You asked me to. It’s okay.”

  “Is it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you. Karen says hi, by the way. Girl’s always had a crush on you.”

  “Who’s Karen?”

  “You know Karen. We were on the fencing team together in high school, only she was saber and I was épée. You sometimes drove us to the meets.”

  “I remember,” I said, although I didn’t.

  “I just had lunch with her. She’s getting married the summer after she graduates, if you can believe that—an eighteen-month engagement.”

  My head snapped upward and I found her eyes. The gesture caused Erica to smile.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not contagious.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I love you, McKenzie.”

  Wait! What?

  “Look at you. You’re embarrassed. McKenzie, that is so cute.”

  “Stop it.”

  “You didn’t know? After all these years? McKenzie, you’re the father I never had. At least the father who didn’t cheat on my mother and go to prison for dealing that I never had.”

  “Seriously. Stop it.”

  “You know why I love you? Because you’ve always treated me with respect. Always. My mother dated before she met you, you know, and those guys, they were all like ‘Oh, aren’t you pretty, aren’t you smart; bet the boys chase after you.’ But you never said those things, never tried to bond with me. You never—heck, you called me Ms. Truhler until I said Erica was fine. I knew you were sleeping with Mom, but you never did it at my house. At least you never stayed the night while I was there. Never hung around, never raided the refrigerator, never watched TV like it was yours. Never commented on my clothes or study habits or anything like that. Never offered advice unless I asked for it, never started a conversation with the words ‘When I was your age,’ and never took sides when my mom and I quarreled. Yet you were always there for me, just like you are now. Something else even more important—you were always proud of me no matter what I did, even when I convinced those TV ghost hunters that Mom’s club was haunted. You have to admit, that was pretty funny.”