The next time Mars felt like crying was Monday morning, four days after Rau had identified Neville Cook’s photograph, when Mars picked up a phone message from Glenn Gjerde. Glenn’s message was that the photo ID wasn’t enough to get a warrant to go after Neville Cook’s financial records. They both knew Mars needed the records to begin to build the case that Neville had been in Minneapolis on or around April third.
Glenn’s message had been recorded at 4:30 A.M. The chickenshit didn’t even have the guts to tell him live. Mars hadn’t bothered to call Glenn back. He started off at a run from the third floor of city hall. Going outside at the first floor and across the street would have been faster, but he would have drowned in what weather reports were calling the rain of the century. Instead, he went down to the Hennepin County Courthouse tunnel, taking the escalator steps three at a time to get to the courthouse elevators.
Glenn Gjerde was just wheeling his seventeen-hundred-dollar racing bike into his office on the twenty-first floor as Mars, still winded, came up behind him.
“Got your message, Glenn.”
Glenn started and turned. He was still wearing his bicycle helmet with a small mirror sticking out on either side, like
insect antennae. There’d been occasions when Glenn had forgotten to take his helmet off and showed up in court with it still on his head. People around the courthouse were so used to seeing Glenn in his bicycle helmet that no one thought anything about it, except people who were in the courtroom for the first time. That no one else seemed bothered that one of the lawyers was wearing a bicycle helmet became just another reason why the judicial process, to a normal person, was like landing on the moon.
“Oh, hi, Mars. Sorry about that. I thought about your request all weekend. Decided it just wasn’t going to fly.”
“Do you mind giving me a little more explanation?”
Glenn took the keys out of his office door and motioned Mars in. The office wasn’t big to start with, and Glenn had legal files stacked up like pillars all over the floor. They both walked delicately through narrow channels where, if you put the heel of one foot directly in front of the toe of the other foot, you could get by without knocking anything over. Maybe.
Glenn lifted his fourteen-pound titanium bike over his head and hung it on hooks he’d screwed into a wall bookcase. Mars stood, deciding the effort to clear a chair wasn’t worth it. “I mean it. I want to know why you’re not gonna go for the warrant.”
“It’s like I said. It wouldn’t fly. We’ll just have to figure out another way to get the job done. I went over what we’ve got and it’s all too—too circumstantial, too many holes.”
“You can’t be serious. I’ve got Ann Amundsen’s statement about Neville’s association with her sister, Holly, and the similarity between the MO on the two murders.”
“You’ve played this game too long, Mars, not to know without my telling you that there’s no judge in this county who’s gonna give us a warrant based on something a suspect
might have done in another case, in another jurisdiction—maybe especially another case that’s never even been changed.”
“I’ve got a suspect whose lifestyle exactly matches what we’d expect for this type of crime. Highly organized personality, attractive to women, someone who they would start by trusting—”
“Weak. Very weak. And you know it.”
“Okay. So I’ve got Dr. Karen Pogue’s interview with Ann Amundsen, which is the basis for Pogue’s conclusion that there is a psychopathological basis for suspecting that Neville Cook could be capable of committing the crimes given his obsessive behavior with Amundsen—”
“Bullshit. First of all, Pogue’s conclusions are thirdhand. You know how the court is going to view that. Second, Pogue’s got all kinds of qualifiers built into what she says, like she does not find it ‘typical that the suspect would have been capable of normal sexual relations,’ such as he had with Ann Amundsen.”
It took effort for Mars to contain his anger. “Glenn, that totally disregards Amundsen’s statement that she didn’t view her sexual relationship with Cook as being anything like normal. Give me a break here. Did you or did you not see Evelyn Rau ID-ing Neville Cook? I’ve never seen a more impressive performance on a photo lineup. That should stand on its own. A judge should give us a warrant just on the basis of that ID. Rau is going to make one hell of a witness.”
Glenn Gjerde shook his head. “The judge isn’t going to be looking at a witness. He’s going to be looking at a piece of paper that says a junkie drug dealer, making a deal to get out of jail, ID-ed a guy she saw once for less than three minutes. It’s just not compelling in that context.”
Mars decided he needed to sit. He leaned over, scooping
a pile of junk off the nearest chair, stepped over a pile of files, then eased himself down onto the seat. “So what are you suggesting would be compelling?”
Glenn pulled open a desk drawer, and sitting back in his chair, propped up his Nike clad feet.
“I don’t see why you need a warrant for what you want, anyway. Why can’t you get what you need from Amundsen? She was living with the guy for most of the period we’re looking at, wasn’t she?”
“I told you. We’ve already gone that route. She doesn’t have any kind of records to document when she thinks he was in Minneapolis—hell, most of the time he didn’t tell her where he was.”
Glenn looked unperturbed. “Well, whatever. I just figured if she wanted to get this guy bad enough, she’d be willing to help out.”
“Funny,” Mars said. “That’s what I’d figured about you.” He stood to leave.
“One other thing,” Glenn said, not looking at Mars. “I talked to the public defender about your witness. We’re gonna have to release her. We’re dropping the possession and accesory charges—nothing turned up from the crime scene to tie her directly to the drugs that were in the apartment and we got a plea from the shooter that lets her off the hook on the boyfriend’s shooting. I suppose we could dink around and try hanging on to her as a material witness to the murder—but my guess is it’s a smarter move to create a little goodwill. Keep her sweet. You’ve got your signed statement and the ID evidence. She told the PD she’s willing to keep us informed of her whereabouts and not leave town as a condition of release—so, unless you can come up with a strong argument in the other direction? …”
Mars sighed. “Let her go. She may be the only doper I’ve
ever come across that I’m inclined to trust. And she’s earned an out. She was damn brilliant on the photo lineup.”
“She’s outta here,” Glenn said. He kicked the desk drawer shut and stood, stretching. “You come up with some solid physical evidence that ties this Cook guy to the scene—and a motive, a motive would be real nice—and we’ll be cooking with gas. And now, if you will excuse me, I am due in court to oil the wheels of justice. Thanks for stopping by.”
The brightest spot in Mars’s deteriorating investigation was that Nettie came back from vacation three days early. Mars didn’t even go through the motions of chastising her for cutting her vacation short. For her part, Nettie was disgruntled. It had rained the whole time she’d been in San Francisco and was raining even harder now that she was back in Minneapolis.
Mars briefed her on where they were on the investigation. “Boston sent us the case file on the Amundsen case—I haven’t had a chance to go through that as yet—could you give it a go-over? I’m interested in matching what Boston’s got with what we have on Mary Pat. And anything you can find in the written reports on Cook’s alibi. I talked to the investigating officer who checked the alibi, and I have to say it sounds solid. Cook got called out of town unexpectedly on the morning of the day the Amundsen kid got killed. His flight departed two hours before Amundsen was last seen alive. And Boston confirmed Cook’s arrival in Dallas with people he met there. Still, from what Ann Amundsen and Bobby Fitzgerald are saying, if there’s a guy who could manage an airtight alibi, it’s Cook.”
Nettie said, “What’s your thinking on Cook’s motive?”
Mars grimaced. “We’re looking at deviant behavior. A psychopath. It fits with the profile Karen Pogue had come up
with—I was uncomfortable with that, given that until the Amundsen case turned up, we couldn’t find any matching cases. Now, with the Amundsen case, I’m a little more comfortable … .” His voice trailed off.
“But it still doesn’t feel right, huh?”
Mars stared, thinking back to the crime scene. “Not exactly. There was something too—too neat about the scene. I just didn’t get any sense of emotion in what the killer had done to the kid. Karen says that the image of a drunken, partially undressed kid might have been what the perp was after—but, I don’t know. That just doesn’t quite do it for me. My impression of the scene was that it almost looked—staged. What I’d like to know is, did Cook have a motive for staging the murders.”
“So. What next?”
“Well, Bobby Fitzgerald and Ann Amundsen are cooling their heels over at the Marriott, waiting for us get the search warrant for Cook’s financial records. We should get together with them and decide if there’s anything they can do, given we aren’t going to get the warrant.”
Bobby Fitzgerald and Ann Amundsen came down to city hall that afternoon. Mars gave them the bad news about Gjerde’s decision not to go for a warrant. But Mars felt honor bound to confess his own reservations.
“What really gets me is that I kind of agree with Gjerde. All we’ve really got to go on is the witness who identified Neville from your photo and the association between the two murders. We get evidence with a questionable warrant, and we lose what we do have. Besides which, if the case isn’t solid, if the search warrant is shaky, we’re gonna tip Cook. He’ll know what’s going on. And nobody’s saying this isn’t a smart guy. We’ll never get him back.”
Bobby said, “How do you feel about the witness? Everything I hear about eyewitnesses is that they’re notoriously unreliable.”
Mars agreed. “That’s exactly right. But our witness was impressive on the photo lineup—and it was as tough a lineup as I’ve ever given a witness. Admittedly, the witness has had some personal problems with drugs … .”
Simultaneously, Bobby’s and Ann’s brows furrowed. Mars held a hand up. “But my judgment is she got involved in an abusive relationship and ran off the rails. She’s intelligent and articulate—she’s been a graduate student in English at the U—any chance you have any contacts in the English Department here?”
Bobby shook his head. “Not anymore.”
Mars pushed the transcript of his first interview with Rau across the table. Ann picked it up and started reading, but Bobby was preoccupied with other thoughts. He looked around the table, and said, “There is another way. Might be another way.” To Ann he said, “Owen. We could ask Owen to help.”
Mars said, “Owen?”
Bobby nodded. “Cook’s younger brother.”
Mars shook his head. “That wouldn’t work. The chance that a brother is going to work with police against a brother—first of all he’s not going to be willing to do it, and second, he’s gonna tell his brother what’s up. Then we’re cooked. No pun intended.”
Ann looked up from the transcript. “No. I think Bobby might be right. If you were suggesting we ask Neville’s sister, Jocelyn, to help—forget it. Not a chance. But Owen? I think it might work. Owen has a soul. Unlike the rest of the family. Confronted with what we know about his brother, he’d want the truth as much as we do. Besides—even if he didn’t have
a conscience, he has motivation. If Neville’s done this Owen’s going to come into his share of Neville’s share of the estate, which is the one thing Owen wants more than anything.”
Bobby said, “There’s something else. Owen is the one person, other than Neville’s personal assistant, who pretty much knows where Neville has been over the last five years. They’re in business together. The way they work is that when they’re considering buying a property, Neville sends Owen out as an advance man to do the donkey work. Owen crunches the basic financial information, does the due diligence on the properties, checks out marketing data on the area—that kind of thing. Then Neville comes in to negotiate, to do the deal.”
Mars said, “Would Owen have access to the company’s files? Would he be able to document their activities?”
Bobby and Ann looked at each other. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t,” Ann said. “He uses the Boston office, too. I’m sure staff there wouldn’t think anything of his asking for records.”
“Sounds good to me,” Nettie said. She turned to Bobby. “Any ideas on how best to approach him?”
Ann interrupted. “Bobby—if you don’t mind? I think it would be best if I made the contact. I think Owen trusts me. At a personal level.”
Bobby nodded, and Ann went on. “The other thing is, I think Owen would feel less—less threatened by my confronting him. Let’s get real here: a woman confronting him with this information is going to be less threatening than if it were a man. Am I right?”
Nettie said, “I think I agree with Ann. And you bring up something that I think is important. We don’t want Owen to feel confronted or threatened. This should be a personal appeal. I don’t think Owen should know—not at first—that you and Bobby have gone to the police. I think the approach should be along personal lines: You and Bobby had talked on
the plane about your sisters being murdered. And after you started thinking about it, you started wondering if Neville could have been involved, and it’s been bothering you. You’d feel better if Owen could tell you Neville couldn’t be involved.”
“That’s good,” Mars said. “I think if you start with the guy by saying that you’ve talked to the police and they think you’ve got something …”
“He’s going to close up on you if you take that approach,” Nettie said. “I don’t care how altruistic he is, or how much he stands to benefit from his brother being in trouble. Starting with our involvement is going to make him defensive. Whereas if you talk to him one-on-one, in confidence, about something that you haven’t articulated in any detail—well, that would likely be very effective.”
“And it’s consistent,” Ann said, “with what our relationship has been in the past. From the first he’s been—sort of a confidant. Somebody I could talk to. More than to Neville. He was somebody I talked to about Neville.”
“Sounds good,” Mars said. “The question is, how do you make contact with him?”
Bobby said, “He was going to Winnepeg on a property deal just after Ann and I left England. For all I know, he’s still there.” He thought for a moment. “That’s only—what?—four hundred miles from here? What I could do is invite him to Minneapolis to talk about the Henry James piece he wanted me to write for the publishing venture he’s trying to get off the ground. I’ll say that I’m in Minneapolis wrapping up some family business, that Ann’s here, and that she’d enjoy seeing him. I think he’d go for that.”
“Sounds good,” Mars said. “But it’s important he not think that Ann has told you about her suspicions. The idea that you two are in cahoots would be as bad from his point of view as if he thought this were a police investigation.”
“Not a problem,” Ann said. “I’ll tell him I’d like to see him alone, just the two of us. He’ll assume I want to talk about Neville and that I wouldn’t do that around Bobby.”
“So,” Mars said. “How do we want to proceed from here?”
“The simplest thing,” Bobby said, “would be for me to call the Cooks’ Boston office and tell them I want to get hold of Owen. I’ve done that before, and he’s used that office to contact me.”
The Cooks’ Boston office gave Bobby a number for Owen in Winnepeg. “Cross your fingers,” Bobby said as he dialed.
Their luck held, and Bobby had Owen on the line within minutes. The three of them could track the conversation just by listening to Bobby’s side.
“Owen? Bobby Fitzgerald in Minneapolis—yeah—no, it was kind of sudden. My parents sold their house here, so I had to come out and settle some things. Right, right … No, the house is sold. I’m staying in a hotel downtown. I’m calling because I’ve been thinking about the James piece … . Yeah, I thought you would be, sure … . What I was thinking was, as long as I’m here, and you’re up in Winnepeg—any chance you could get away for a day or two and we could talk more specifically about what you want … . You do that when? … Well, sure … No, that would work, that would be good for me. No problem … Owen? One other thing. A little awkward, but I wanted you to hear it from me. Ann Amundsen, your brother’s friend … right, right … no, I did hear that she and Neville had split. In fact, I heard it directly from Ann. We ended up on the same flight back from England. The thing is, since then, we’ve been seeing quite a bit of each other and …” Bobby hesitated for the barest moment, his eyes lifting to the three of them, before he lied to Owen. “Anyway, she’s out here with me, and when I mentioned to her that I
was going to call you, she said she’d love to see you, so … right—no, no problem. Wednesday or Thursday would work for her, too. Great. Do you need a ride from the airport? Okay. Well, if your plans change, let me know. Sure. Sure. No, I look forward to seeing you then. Say, one-thirty, in the bar? That works. Great. See you Wednesday.”
He hung up and looked at Ann. “We’re having drinks with Owen in the bar at Palomino at one-thirty on Wednesday. He’ll be here Thursday, as well, so you can try to meet with him then.”