There was a full cast of characters in the mayor’s office by the time Mars arrived, the mayor, the chief, Nettie, and Glenn Gjerde, an assistant prosecuting attorney from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. Mars was running late, and they were pushing hard against their 3:00 P.M. target for releasing Mary Pat’s ID.
The mayor looked up as Mars came in. She did a quick double take. Looking at her looking at him, Mars remembered that he hadn’t shaved or changed clothes for two days.
“My oh my. Don’t we look cute, Special Detective. Do you intend to wear that outfit for the duration of the investigation?”
“Phil Keck is in charge of cute on this one,” Mars said, pulling up a chair.
“And doing a fine job, I’m sure,” the mayor answered. “Now that we’ve got cute covered, why don’t we put you in charge of good news. Let’s have it.”
“You must know something I don’t,” Mars said.
The mayor groaned. “So what happened to our great white hope, the boyfriend?”
“Well, I think he’s going to do just fine for us on limited circumstantial evidence for the next day or two, until we get
his alibi sorted out. But even without the alibi, I’m pretty sure he’s not our guy. Not a trace of guilty conscience in sight. Genuine shock when he got the news. He’s asthmatic. So when he gets the news, he has an attack—I mean he turns blue. We came close to calling nine-one-one. We get him stabilized, and he keeps processing the information and slipping back into ‘She’s not dead.’ If it was an act, he had me fooled.”
“How’s his alibi?” the chief asked.
“Like I said before, he goes up to Itasca County every spring, cuts wood to bring back to sell. He left Thursday morning—he thinks about eight-thirty. He talked to Mary Pat on the phone just before he left. No problems there. Said he’d stop by when he got back Sunday.
“When I first asked him if anybody could verify his whereabouts between nine A.M. and one P.M. on Thursday, he says no. That he didn’t see anyone on Thursday at all, that he got up to his cousin’s place around one, chopped wood until dark, then slept in the cousin’s cabin. Friday he went into Chisholm, had breakfast, same on Saturday. Sunday morning he loads the pickup with wood he didn’t have room for a year ago. Figures he’ll try and sell some yet this spring. Thinks he left Itasca County around nine-thirty, maybe ten o’clock. Gassed up the truck at a station in Chisholm before heading back to the Cities. So what we’ve got as far as the investigation goes—is that he was in his truck, heading north on Thursday morning, with nobody who can ID him during the critical time period. So far, so good.
“But when I push him on how long it took him to get to Itasca on Thursday, he says he got there around one-thirty P.M., maybe a little after. I say, ‘Why’s that? Can’t be more than a two-and-a-half, three-hour drive and you said you left at eight-thirty.’ He shifts around, looks blank, then remembers he stopped on Highway Two, just north of the Fond du Lac
Indian Reservation to help a woman with three kids who was having car trouble. He figures that was around eleven-thirty, noon.
“I look at him. He looks at me. He says, ‘Oh, right. I forgot about her.’ But he doesn’t know her name or anything. Says she looked like she was Indian, probably was heading to the res. Said the car was a big old gas-burning Buick. Junker, rusted out, two-tone. Doesn’t recall the plates. So, as soon as we find that woman, our great white hope is off the hook.”
Glenn Gjerde stood. “This doesn’t much sound like you’re going to need me anytime soon.”
The mayor held up a well-manicured hand. “Hold on. Mars, you said we had some good circumstantial evidence on the boy. Wouldn’t it at least be prudent to take him into custody, get the truck impounded—pending our getting the alibi pinned down?”
Mars, Nettie, the chief, and Gjerde all exchanged glances. No one missed what the mayor was up to. In a measured voice Mars answered, staring directly into her eyes. “I said we had some limited circumstantial evidence. What we’ve got is a critical time period not pinned down—but a pretty plausible story—and one witness who saw Brian hit Mary Pat … .”
“He’s hit her? And you’re calling that limited circumstantial evidence?”
“We don’t know if he did for sure, and we don’t know what the circumstances were if he did.”
“Oh, I get it,” the mayor said. “If he had good reason for hitting her it doesn’t count?” The mayor was not much of a feminist, but she knew an opportunity when she saw it. She turned to Gjerde and the chief. “Am I missing something here, or do we have a basis for bringing the kid in until his alibi pans out?”
The chief was off the mark before Gjerde could weigh in. “I agree with Mars. There’s not a lot to go on here. And
I trust Mars’s judgment. If the kid seems credible, that counts. Either way, the kid is going to take a beating on this deal, and I don’t want to expose him to unnecessary speculation.”
To Mars he said, “Am I right that we have impounded the pickup?”
Nettie unscrewed the cap of her Evian bottle and took a deep swig before she said, “It was picked up from the Fitzgeralds. The Peterson kid signed a release for a search on the spot. But based on what we got from Doc D and the crime-scene guys, even if Brian did it, I don’t think the truck is going to tell us much. I got the Crime Scene Unit’s preliminary report just before I came up here, and they haven’t found any evidence she was killed anywhere but on the bluffs. Fact is, they don’t have much of anything: no prints, no body fluids, nothing on the ground. But in looking at Doc D’s report, he noted that after she took the shaft to the aorta, the pooling of blood in her chest cavity was consistent with her falling forward and staying in that position until we found her. So it’s pretty clear Mary Pat got stabbed and died at the same place. That being the case, we’re not going to find any blood in the truck. And even if we find her prints, she must have ridden in the truck a thousand times, so her prints are going to be all over anyway.”
Mars said to everyone in general and the mayor in particular, “I don’t want it released that we’ve impounded the truck. That’s just normal investigative procedure. We release that and it’s the same as saying we think Brian did it.”
The mayor’s face set. She didn’t look at Mars. Looking at the chief, she said, “I’d like to know how we’d be handling this if some black guy on the near north side had just shot his girlfriend. Am I wrong, or would he be sitting in a cell on the third floor as we speak?” The mayor was no more a civil libertarian than she was a feminist, but once again, she wasn’t about to miss an opportunity.
The chief didn’t flinch. “Madam Mayor, I want to assure you it would depend entirely on the circumstances of the case. If the suspect’s girlfriend was dead and all we had was he couldn’t prove where he was at the time of death, I’d like to think he’d be exactly where Brian Peterson is under the same circumstances.”
“Except he probably wouldn’t be in Edina,” Glenn Gjerde said, moving toward the door. “Why don’t you call me if something comes up and you need some legal papers fast. Nettie’s got my pager number.” He waved as he walked out.
The tension was thick as Mars, Nettie, the chief, and the mayor went over the statement that would accompany the release of Mary Pat’s ID. The mayor and the chief debated having his name on the release as the contact person rather than listing the department’s public information officer. The chief had a lot of confidence in the IO and saw no reason for departing from standard procedure. The mayor wanted to send a signal that the city was pulling out the stops to clear the case. In the end, the chief convinced the mayor that the IO could be trusted to bring him in on any sensitive inquiries and that they’d take heat for handling a white suburbanite’s murder differently than a city resident’s. It was a message the mayor didn’t miss.
“Do we need to schedule a news conference?” Nettie asked.
“We’ll probably want something tomorrow,” the chief said. “By then there’ll be a herd of reporters trampling all over the bluffs and Southdale.”
Mars and Nettie walked back with the chief to his office after they left the mayor. Mars was still ticked. He didn’t trust the mayor to play fair with Brian Peterson. The chief tried to play peacemaker. “I don’t agree with the mayor that we’re giving the Peterson kid special treatment just because he’s a white guy from Edina. Based on what we’ve got so far, his
not being in custody is perfectly reasonable. But it’s also true—even if it isn’t fair—that in a situation like this, the boyfriend is gonna get tarred. Just the way it is.”
Mars said, “I understand that. I just don’t want us doing anything to set him up. The media knows all the key phrases: ‘Investigators are interviewing individuals close to the Fitzgerald family,’ ‘Investigators have not ruled out that the victim’s boyfriend, Brian Peterson, may be involved,’ or ‘Police sources say Brian Peterson has not been able to account for his whereabouts during the critical time period on Thursday, April third … .’ You know how that kind of stuff plays as well as I do.”
“Why aren’t you comfortable with what we agreed to in the statement?” the chief asked.
“‘Minneapolis and Edina police are pursuing all normal lines of investigation at this time.’ … Couldn’t be more boilerplate … .”
“I’m fine with that, as long as the mayor doesn’t go further with a few comments of her own. That’s all I’m saying.”
Mars went back to the squad room to go over reports that were in so far. Like Nettie said, the Crime Scene Unit guys had turned up zilch. The ground was still too hard to yield anything by way of footprints, and it was clear the perp had had limited physical contact with Mary Pat. It being a weekend, the file of interviews with people who worked in the Pillsbury A Mill or in the converted warehouses along Main Street was still pretty thin. Nettie had half a dozen guys lined up to comb those sites starting first thing in the morning. She’d had photos of Mary Pat duplicated from the picture Mars had taken from the Fitzgeralds. Doc Fitzgerald had been cropped out of the photo. Mars held up the eight-by-ten black-and-white glossy of Mary Pat and stared at it. Mrs. Fitzgerald said the picture had been taken in February. Just a
couple of months earlier. The haphazardness of life always struck Mars. The image of someone standing on a golf course in Arizona with a camera focused on a beautiful young girl and her father came into his mind. There was nothing to suggest that in two months the image the camera was capturing would be of a dead girl, that the photo would appear in Twin Cities newspapers. That the photo would be carried all over the Cities by cops asking if anyone had seen the girl in the picture on Thursday morning, April 3.
He turned to the files that Nettie had collected from the Edina investigators. No more statements from anyone saying that Brian had been abusive to Mary Pat. Two clerks at Southdale reported seeing Mary Pat just after nine-thirty. One had helped with the fitting of her prom dress. The second was a classmate who worked part-time at Dayton’s. She’d seen Mary Pat walking through the store just before ten. Jeez. And an hour later, Mary Pat was on the bluffs, knowing she was going to die.
It was almost 9:45 P.M. when Mars had finished going through the files and making notes about things he and Nettie’ d need to do next. He’d missed calling Chris. Then he remembered that he’d told Chris he could stay up to watch the ten o’clock news, so he called.
Chris answered.
“Dad? I told Mom you said I could stay up. You find who killed that girl yet?”
“No such luck. What you been up to today?”
“I was over at James’s. We watched part of the Twins game and played Nintendo. Dad, can we watch the news together?”
“Sure. Only I’m still down at city hall. I’ll have to go into the lounge and watch on that set. I’ll finish up a couple little things and call you right back.”
The employee lounge just the other side of the squad room had a pop machine, two plastic couches with metal tube arms, a floor lamp, and a small laminated wood table with an old black-and-white TV sitting on it. A wall phone hung to the side of one of the couches. Mars fiddled with the set, managing to bring up an image and acceptable audio, sat down, and called Chris again.
“Don’t expect too much tonight. They’ve just got the ID and they’re still getting their acts together on what they’re covering. Tomorrow will be the first big day and, no, you can’t stay up late to watch tomorrow. Tape it.”
The faded image of Channel Four’s two weekend anchors popped out. They chatted amiably about the weekend weather and professed curiosity about what the rest of the week would be. A third, sad face joined the anchors to lament a bad weekend for the Twins, promising details later in the program. The two anchors bucked each other up.
“Still early in the season, though, Bruce.”
“That’s right, Nancy, the Twins have a long way to go, and Larry has a preview later on in the program about new players on the team who are creating real optimism that this season could be a replay of nineteen eighty-seven and nineteen ninety-one.”
The camera shifted to a tight front angle on the woman anchor. Her face became appropriately serious as she said, “On a tragic front, Bruce, and leading tonight’s news, the Minneapolis police released this afternoon the name of a young Edina woman whose partially clad body was found on the riverfront yesterday morning. Let’s go to Linda Ronay who’s live on the scene. Linda, what can you tell us about the girl who was killed and what police know about her killer?”
Mars groaned.
Chris immediately said, “What?”
“Linda Ronay. She’s the absolute worst. Always reports every story like it’s the apocalypse. Quiet now … I want to hear this.”
Ronay, microphone in hand, heavily lit by kliegs, was standing at the head of the stairs leading down to the bluff trails, just above where Mary Pat had been found.
“Nancy, shocking news this afternoon from the Minneapolis PD. The girl’s body found on the bluffs Saturday morning has been identified as Mary Pat Fitzgerald. A senior at Edina High School, Mary Pat may have been the last person you’d expect to find dead under these circumstances.” The scene shifted to a late afternoon shot of the Fitzgerald’s house. Then, a shot of Phil Keck talking to Ronay. Mars suppressed another groan so as not to provoke a question from Chris. Phil went through the litany of Mary Pat’s achievements. He had tears in his eyes as he talked.
The camera came in tight again on Linda. “Bruce and Nancy, investigators say it’s much too early to say yet what happened to Mary Pat Fitzgerald, but Edina police chief Phil Keck says early indications are this was a random event and that Mary Pat Fitzgerald did not know her attacker.”
“Fuck!”
“Dad? Number one?”
“No. This fuck doesn’t have a number. Chris, I’ve gotta go. Talk to you tomorrow.”
Mars’s phone was ringing by the time he got back to his desk. He was expecting it to be the chief, or worse yet, Her Honor herself. It was Phil Keck.
“Mars? Jesus Christ, Mars. I didn’t say what that woman on Channel Four said at all. Honest to God. She kept pressing me on what we thought happened and all I said was, at this point, as far as we knew, it could be anything. It could be a friend, it could be a complete stranger. Honest to God, Mars—”
Mars said, “Keck. At this point it doesn’t matter what you
did or didn’t say. The damage’s been done. I spent a half an hour this afternoon trying to get the mayor to cool off on Brian Peterson, and I can tell you after the news tonight she’s gonna go after him hard. You’ll have yourself to thank for that.”
“But Mars. Put yourself in my place. What could I have said that would’ve been okay? I swear, I didn’t—”
“It’s simple Phil. All you had to say was, ‘Sorry. If you’ve got any questions call the information office at the Minneapolis PD.’ Write that down, Phil. This isn’t gonna be your last opportunity to screw up before we’re done.”
By Monday morning, the media swarm was in full swing. Mars knew personally most of the print and TV reporters who covered the police beat, so he made it a point to stay away from city hall. He called in to pick up messages, and Nettie said he had twenty-one pink slips from eight reporters. “I’m just telling them to call the IO, which is making them mad as hops.”
“They scheduled a press conference yet?”
“At five o‘clock. It’ll run live on the five o’clock news shows. The chief and Her Honor are giving a bunch of interviews afterwards that’ll run on the six o‘clock and ten o’clock news.”
“What’s the Strib up to?”
“Something, for sure. They’ve been asking for details on how many people we’ve got working on the case and how many were assigned to Deanna Rae Cater’s case in March. My guess is, they’re gonna run a comparison of how the two cases were managed.”
“Predictable. Any progress on pinning down the kid’s alibi?”
“Nothing yet. I’ve actually got Edina following that up. Figure they’re motivated. They’ve called the tribal office and asked them to get the word out—they’ve faxed a notice for
the tribe to put up. I’ve seen the mayor’s statement, and she’s not saying anything about looking for someone to come forward—which is good news, bad news. It at least means she isn’t identifying Brian Peterson as a suspect.”
“Yeah. Well, what’s in her statement and what comes out of her mouth tonight are apt to be two different things. She’s still doing a slow burn about what Keck said yesterday. I’d love to tie up the alibi before the mayor’s news conference. Keep on that, will you?”
“So. What’re you doin’?”
“Well, I had coffee with Mary Pat’s brother, Robert, Jr.—Bobby. Nothing much there, other than he’s as sure as I am that Brian isn’t our guy. The brother and Mary Pat were close, but the fact is they haven’t seen much of each other in the past eight or nine years, which is when he left home to go to college. He was in graduate school after that, teaches college English in Boston now. But the big news is I got a call from Hal Willens. He’s working for the Prince family. Apparently Hal and Jack Prince were at law school together, and Jack Prince asked Willens to contact me. They’ve finally agreed to let me talk to Becky Prince. I’m meeting with them tomorrow afternoon. Anything turning up on our Main Street interviews?”
“Zilch. I’m running down the other alibis right now. Doc Fitzgerald clears easy. He was in the delivery room or thereabouts at Fairview Southdale Hospital all Thursday. Like three blocks away from where Mary Pat parked the station wagon. A pile of people can verify that. Robert, Jr., isn’t clear yet, but I should be able to confirm his alibi by this afternoon. Ma Fitzgerald isn’t gonna clear, but she just doesn’t fit. She doesn’t drive, she can barely stand up, much less drag her daughter down to the bluffs and stick a screwdriver in her … .”
“Agreed. Look. I’ll come back downtown before the news conference. Beep me if you get anything in the meantime.”
As Mars put down the phone, he felt discouragement rising. It had surged on his first sight of Brian Peterson. And as each lead spun out, thin and empty, discouragement began to take solid form. He knew the effect that feeling would have: it would make him dull, inattentive, drain his energy. What he needed was a piece of luck with enough charge to get him going again. Did it feel like he was going to get lucky?
Not at all.