Phil walked Mars back out to the Pontiac. Mars had left him with a substantial amount of investigative work to handle on the Edina end, but Keck wasn’t focusing. Getting into the Pontiac, Mars said, “Look, Phil, just get your best investigators going on the things I asked you to do. We’ll get together again after I’ve met with the chief and the mayor.”
Mars didn’t bother going into the squad room when he entered city hall. He headed directly to the mayor’s office on the second floor.
At one time the office would have been an impressive space. The red granite Richardsonian city hall had twelve-foot windows facing the county courthouse across the street. It was a large room with space for the mayor’s desk, bookcases, couches, a full-size conference table, and eight chairs. But there had been no room—fiscally or politically—for official grandeur in the city’s budget for the last three administrations, and the room had a haphazard air.
Mayor Alice Geff and Chief of Police John Turner sat at the table. Both looked liked they’d come in from Saturday night functions that didn’t have much to do with dead bodies on the Father Hennepin Bluffs. Mars had a measured amount of respect for the mayor. Unlike other mayors Mars had
worked under, Alice Geff knew by instinct when the police department had a case she should be involved in. And once involved, she was a force to be reckoned with.
Chief Turner was something else. Mars had almost left the department shortly after Turner became the city’s first black chief of police. Mars had been through a series of tough cases, had taken a lot of administrative heat, and his partner was set to retire. Turner’s appointment hadn’t done anything to make Mars optimistic about things getting better. Turner was a big man, always formally dressed and mannered. Mars had first seen him as a politically correct appointment who’d provide the mayor with a shield against minority community complaints. A chief who’d play it safe and be a weak chief at precisely the moment the department, and the city, needed a risk taker. Mars had made the mistake of reading the chief’s quiet good manners as weakness.
A couple of months after Turner’s appointment, Mars had been on his way out of city hall when the chief’s administrative assistant had called out to him. “Marshall? Glad I caught you. The chief wants a minute—”
Mars had knocked on the chief’s door, which was partially open, before going in.
The chief was sitting at his desk, his hand cupped over his mouth, reading a file. He wore a plain black suit, a stiff white shirt, and a nondescript tie. The suit looked a little tight on the chief’s bulky body.
The chief didn’t look up as Mars entered, but said, “Good afternoon, Detective Bahr.” It was the first time Mars had been alone with Turner, but the man’s tone was as formal as it had been in the news conference when his appointment was announced. He made a small gesture toward a chair in front of his desk. “Sit down.” The chief closed the file he’d been reading, smoothing it with big, hammy hands. There were no other papers on the chief’s desk.
“You’ve heard, I expect, that I’ve been meeting with senior sworn staff in the divisions?”
“Yes, sir.”
The chief was quiet a moment. “A difficult thing, gettin’ a handle on who’s who. What’s what. People tell you what they want you to know. What is in their interest for you to know. I suppose that’s to be expected … .”
Mars had been surprised by the casual sound of “gettin’.” It stood out like a piece of white lint on the chief’s perfectly pressed suit. Mars knew the chief was giving him an opening, but he purposely ignored it and sat silent.
“You have any idea what I hear about you, Detective Bahr?”
Mars smiled. “I could guess.”
The chief fixed Mars in his sights. “I hear you’re not one of the boys. Not among those who adjourn to The Little Wagon when their shift’s over. That you don’t drink.” A small glimmer of something—amusement?—nickered in the chief’s eye. “Kind of a tight-ass, is what I hear.” The last was said with the same sort of intentional irony with which the chief had said “gettin’.”
“True, for the most part.” Mars held back again.
“I hear you’re a good dad. Maybe more unusual, that you’re a good ex-husband. And when I ask officers, ‘If your wife or mother had been murdered, who would you want leading the investigation?’ Of course, they always say, ‘Me, my partner.” When I say, ’Who beside yourself, your partner.’ They think about it, then—most of them grudging it—they say, ‘Probably the Candy Man. Yeah, probably the Candy Man.’ Then I ask, if your son was accused of murder, and there’s no question he’s innocent, which officer would you want to head the investigation? Right off the dime—not even grudging it—they say, ‘The Candy Man. Absolutely the Candy Man.’”
This time the chief had him. Mars was surprised and it showed.
The chief said, “You ask yourself, what would make a bunch of guys pay a high compliment to somebody they don’t much like? I think the answer is with cops there’s a loyalty that goes beyond ego and friendship. It’s loyalty to the profession, and it’s that loyalty that keeps them from denying recognition to a fellow officer who deserves it. Even if that officer is too much of a tight-ass to go over to The Little Wagon for a drink, now and again.”
“It doesn’t work that way. Going over to The Little Wagon ‘now and again.’ You’re either a regular at the Wagon, or you’re not there. That’s the way it is.”
“I know that. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m something of a tight-ass myself.”
“I had noticed, as a matter of fact.”
“What else I hear is that you’re thinking about leaving the force.”
Mars shifted uneasily. He wasn’t prepared to put his professional future on the table without having made the decision to leave or stay. His answer was ambiguous. “Well, I’ve been on the force, one way or another, for almost twelve years. I suppose everyone asks himself now and again if this is what he wants to do for the rest of his life.”
The chief nodded. “I can understand that. I just wanted you to know that I need you to stay, so if there’s anything I can do to make you stay, I’d like an opportunity to do it.”
Mars stared at the chief blankly. “I must be missing something here. Apart from the fact that I’m a great ex-husband and I don’t hang out at The Little Wagon, why is it you care if I go or stay?”
“Why don’t you start by telling me why it is you’re thinking of leaving. Unless I’m missing my bets, the reasons you
want to go and the reasons I want you to stay are gonna be more or less the same thing.”
“As long as it’s understood I haven’t actually made a decision to leave or stay …”
“Of course,” the chief said.
“My issues are simple. Last couple of big cases we didn’t get the support we needed. The division all but had us punching clocks to make sure we weren’t logging any overtime. You can’t clear homicides working a shift. And it doesn’t seem to me that we’re organized right. We’re getting blown away by drug- and gang-related cases that really need someone who’s wired in tight to those scenes. But we keep shifting people between those cases and murders that aren’t related to drugs and gangs. It’s just not efficient, and it keeps us from developing the kind of expertise we need. Other thing is, my partner retires early next year. I really can’t think of anybody I’d want to partner with, or, for that matter, who’d want to partner with me. Goes back to my being a tight-ass.”
The chief didn’t look at Mars when he said, “Pretty much what I was expecting you to say. The way I see it, we could use a few more tight-asses in the department. And I can’t afford to lose the ones I got. You notice it or not, younger guys comin’ up pay attention to a guy like you. Down deep they don’t want to be one of the guys sitting over at The Little Wagon with their guts hanging over their belts. If I’m gonna turn the department around, head it in the direction it needs to go, I’ve got to start bringing new types in, and I need someone like you to show ’em what being a cop means.”
He tapped the file he’d been reading when Mars came in. “You know you’re the only officer with more than ten years on the force who hasn’t had a single citizen’s complaint filed against him?”
“That’s not necessarily a good thing. And I’ve been lucky.”
“Maybe so, maybe so. But I put that together with what else I see in the file and I don’t think it’s all luck. Fact is, this city’s about to hit some rough road. If we’re gonna get over it in one piece, the community’s gonna have to have a higher level of trust in the department than it does right now. And that trust is gonna come from the character of the officers we put out there. That’s my biggest challenge, as I see it. What I’d like to ask you is this: Give me a month or so to work something out with the division directors and the union. Then I’d like to sit down and talk again. Maybe I can put something together that’ll make you want to stay.”
And when they got back together five weeks later, the chief had put together exactly what it took to make Mars Bahr want to stay.
“Say it isn’t so, Special Detective.” The mayor’s face was grim. The chief’s face remained impassive.
Mars sat down at the table. “The best I can offer is I think we’ve got a good shot that the perp is her boyfriend—homegrown Edina boy, from what I understand. Nobody can offer any explanation why Mary Pat Fitzgerald would have been down on the bluffs. Her best friend doesn’t know where the bluffs are, much less why she would have gone there. We getting any noise from the press?”
The chief shifted in his chair. “All we’ve released is that a woman’s body was found on the bluffs and that release of her identification is pending. No one’s nose seems to be up. Given the location, I think the assumption is she’s a transient.”
“The first transient homecoming queen in Edina’s history,” Mars said.
The mayor groaned. “You’re serious? She was a homecoming queen?”
“She was everything. Homecoming queen. Class president. Valedictorian. A state high school golf and swimming
champion. Beautiful. Her father has delivered half of the Catholic babies born in Edina in the last twenty years. She was going to be a freshman at Brown in the fall.”
The mayor had removed her glasses. “My God. It’s not like any kid dying this way isn’t a tragedy, but this is my worst nightmare. The heat I took on the money we spent down there to try and clean the area up. And we’re due later this month to find out if we’re going to get a federal matching grant to do more development on the riverfront. Now this. Well, at least we’ve probably got another twenty-four hours before the press realizes this isn’t just Jane Doe—which means I’m counting on you to nail the Edina homeboy between now and tomorrow afternoon.”
The chief asked, “What does the boy say?”
“The boy,” said Mars, “is somewhere up north cutting wood. I’m guessing he’s a probable because”—Mars paused, holding up one finger—“first, as we all know, the boyfriend is never a bad guess, and, second”—his second finger went up—“Mary Pat Fitzgerald’s best friend is clearly antsy about the boyfriend. Before she knew Mary Pat was dead, she kept asking why we weren’t tracking Brian down. And, when she found out Mary Pat was dead, she clammed up. Now, this kid—the best friend, Becky Prince—is a class A bitch princess, but she’s no fool. If she’s worried about the boyfriend, I’m betting there’s a reason to be worried.”
“How are you doing on tracking the boyfriend down?”
“All we’ve got to go on is that he’s up in Itasca County. Nobody’s been able to tell us where. And a description of his truck, which we’ve asked the Itasca County Sheriff’s Department to keep an eye out for. Apparently he’s on a relative’s property, but there’s no phone on the property.”
“That’s just fine, Special Detective. But like I said, let’s wrap this up fast and send it back to Edina. The last thing the city needs now is Terror on the Bluffs.” The mayor stood.
“Well, gentlemen, I need to get back to a banquet where I’m the guest speaker. I trust you all understand my agenda: I don’t want Minneapolis taking the rap on this case. Damn suburbanites want to get killed, they should do it in the suburbs.”
Mars and the chief headed back toward the police department offices. “What do you need?” the chief asked.
“Well, I’ve got Keck’s people working the Edina angle. Southdale, high school teachers and counselors, friends. You know what that asshole did? Keck’s people find the car Mary Pat drove to Southdale—which for all we know, may be the last place she was seen alive—sitting in the parking lot at Southdale with a flat tire. They call Keck, and Keck tells them to change the tire and drive the car back to the Fitzgeralds. As a courtesy, he says. My God. Probably the best piece of evidence we had at this point, and three thousand people have driven in and out of that spot in the last forty-eight hours and the car is sitting back in the Fitzgerald garage. ‘So I didn’t know she was dead then,’ Keck says to me.”
“You trust him to carry out the investigation in Edina?”
“Keck? No. But Keck isn’t going to be the one doing the investigating. He’s got a couple of pretty good investigative detectives out there. They mostly work robberies, penny-ante drug stuff, but they’re plenty smart. Know the drill. And they’ve got their fur up on this one. Probably see it as the opportunity of a lifetime. Soon as I get hold of Nettie, I’ll have her coordinate their activities. They’ll do fine.
“What I will need is some uniforms to check out the Bluff area for any witnesses and to follow up on anything I turn up with the boyfriend or that comes out of the Edina side of things. Three, four guys should do fine. And Nettie will need some help putting together the routine record search stuff. She’ll nail down what she needs there. Doc D and the crime-scene
guys are getting together with me first thing tomorrow, so I’ll touch back then, let you know how things stand. After I meet with them tomorrow A.M., I’m going back to the Fitzgerald’s. The boyfriend’s due sometime tomorrow morning, and I want to be there when he shows up.”
Back in the squad room, Mars sat down at his desk and put his feet up. He punched out Denise’s number. As the line rang, he glanced at his watch. Good grief. It was already almost 9:00 P.M. Chris would be in bed, but Mars was sure he’d be awake.
Simultaneously, Denise and Chris said, “Hello.”
“Keep it short, kiddo. Hi, Marshall.” Denise hung up her line.
“Dad? Who’s dead? Can I stay up to watch the ten o’clock news?”
“A girl who should have lived a long, happy life. And there won’t be anything on the news. You can stay up to watch the ten o’clock news tomorrow night. How was Scouts?”
“Boring. Did she get shot?”
“Nope. Stabbed.”
“You call Nettie yet?”
Mars smiled. Nettie and Mars had been partnering since Mars had taken on his new assignment as a special detective. And Nettie and Chris had become soulmates shortly thereafter.
“I call Nettie as soon as I hang up with you.”