Dead never smells good. And it never smells worse than when it’s been wet for a couple days.
It had been scarcely more than forty-eight hours since Owen Cook had gone off the stone arch bridge, but Mars could smell the body when he was only halfway down the hill above the river shore. From that vantage point, Mars could see the County Coroner’s Unit guys standing near what appeared to be a log lying on the shoreline. The CCUs were wearing face masks; the uniforms on the scene were holding gloved hands over the lower half of their faces.
Sliding sideways on the wet slope down to the sandy riverbank flats, Mars balanced himself by grabbing branches with his left hand, his right leg extended forward. Damn tricky. There might have been easier ways to get to the floater carrying Owen Cook’s ID, but Mars was sure this was the fastest route. Behind Mars, Chris slid on his butt. Mars tried not to think about what Denise would have to say when she came across Chris’s jeans in the laundry.
“Pee-yew!” Chris exclaimed as he caught the body’s drift. Chris had seen—and smelled—corpses in a morgue. But in a morgue, refrigeration and chemicals mask the odor of decaying flesh. This was Chris’s first nose-up-against-a-floater
that had been marinating for a couple days in the rich sauce of the Mississippi.
“Breathe through your mouth, keep your hand over your nose and mouth,” Mars called behind him. When he glanced back, he could see muddy fingerprints over the lower half of Chris’s face.
“I can sort of taste it, Dad, when I breathe through my mouth.”
“I think what you’re tasting is mud—sure you want to come down? If you want to go back to the car, I’ll throw you the keys.”
Chris shook his head. “Nah. I wanna come.” And he continued his slide.
Once on level ground, Mars slapped his hands together to shake off grit and slime. He waited for Chris to catch up, and said, “Stay by me. You know our rules—you got a question, you wait until we’re back in the car.” The caution wasn’t really necessary. Chris had an innate reverence for crime-scene etiquette, and he understood intuitively how to modify his behavior to minimize questions about what he was doing there in the first place.
“Got your jumper, Candy Man.” Nils Bergerson from the CCU grinned triumphantly as Mars approached. Nils held a dark, rectangular object in the air, flapping it at Mars.
Mars walked away from Bergerson, toward the floater. At best it was an abstract rendering of the trunk of a human body. No head, couple of stumps above where the elbows would have been, maybe five inches of thigh on the left, nothing on the right. If it hadn’t been for the body’s clothing, the notion that this was a body might not have been anybody’s first guess. Mars recognized the fabric on the upper half of the torso as resembling the jacket Owen Cook had been wearing when he went off the bridge.
“How’d we find out the body was down here?”
Bergerson said, “Nine-one-one was getting calls about the stink. Nobody was saying they’d seen a body, but everybody was saying there was something above lock and dam number one that smelled to high heaven.”
“Betty Johnson put it together?”
Bergerson gave a rueful grin, shaking his head at Mars’s question. “You got it. She looked up the call log and saw there were a bunch of calls about the same location. Then she got a call from a guy who said what it smelled like was his mother’s apartment after his mother hadn’t answered her phone for a week.”
“God bless Betty Johnson,” Mars said.
“Betty Johnson thinks she is God,” Bergerson said. “Other lucky thing—another half mile and your jumper would have run right into lock and dam number one. No way he’s gonna get through that without ending up wood chips.”
Mars pulled on latex gloves and folded open the wallet Bergerson handed him. The exterior of the wallet was swollen and slimy from being in the water. Remarkably, the wallet’s interior was in fair shape, the contents clearly identifiable. Carefully, Mars opened the passport to the photo. The passport’s pages looked like they’d been stained in tea, but the photo was easily recognizable. Owen Cook stared out at Mars, confident and unsmiling. Mars pried open the currency pocket and peered in.
Ding. Two—maybe three?—one-dollar bills. “This is it? You didn’t find any more cash in the wallet?”
Bergerson looked ticked. “Meaning, did I find a thousand bucks and pocket it?”
“Not what I meant. My information is that our jumper was carrying a hunk of cash when he jumped. I’m wondering where it is. Thought you might have taken cash out and
hadn’t been able to get it back in the wallet, so you inventoried it. That’s all I meant.”
“What you see is what we got. We’re damn lucky to have the wallet, much less identifiable contents. Only reason we’ve still got that, I’d guess, is that the guy’s jacket was buttoned, which probably kept it together first few days.”
Mars’s head had come up sharply: Ding number two. “The jacket was buttoned?”
“You bet. Like I said, we’re fucking lucky it was.” Bergerson looked sideways at Chris, hearing himself say “fucking.” A look of annoyance crossed his face. He was annoyed Mars was raising picayune questions on a sure thing. Jesus Christ. What did this fucking Homicide hot dog want? He has a guy who goes off a bridge upstream and CCU is giving them a floater with the jumper’s ID. And Bergerson was annoyed he had to watch his language because the Homicide Division’s number one hot dog had dragged his kid down to a recovery scene.
Mars wasn’t paying attention to Bergerson. He was remembering Owen Cook’s jacket flying—open—as he jumped from the Stone Arch Bridge. “You get video on the buttoned jacket?”
Bergerson’s voice was tense. “Yeah, we got video on the buttoned jacket. We got video of the whole scene before we touched anything, including the body. Just like always.” He couldn’t stop himself. “Why the fuck you care if the jacket was buttoned or not. We’re talking about a scene that fits perfect with your guy, and we’ve given you ID on a silver platter. What more you want, Candy Man? I can’t bring him back to life so he can get down on his knees and give you a goddamn confession.”
“Only because he hasn’t got any knees to get down on,” one of the uniforms said.
The other uniform said, “Knees ain’t all he’s missing … .”
They all laughed. Eyeing Chris for a reaction, Bergerson said, “Yup. It’s a Bobbitt. Nothing a raccoon likes better than cocktail wieners before the main course.”
Mars ignored them. He now knew the first question he was going to get from Chris back in the car. “I’m going to head back to city hall. Doc D in town?”
“He was in Friday,” Bergerson said. “Didn’t say anything about not being in town over the weekend.”
“I’d appreciate your giving him a call. Ask him to come in and do the post on this one. I’ll be at my desk at the division. Have him give me a call there. Then, if you could get the video and your recovery-scene summary over to me as soon as it’s available.”
“Will do,” Bergerson said, no enthusiasm in his voice.
Mars knew the guys were already rolling their eyes and shaking their heads as he and Chris headed back up the hill. He called back, “Thanks, guys.”
The passenger-side car door was barely shut before Chris asked the questions.
“What’s a Bobbitt? What were they saying about raccoons and cocktail wieners?”
“Few years ago—I don’t know, 1993, 1994—a guy named Bobbitt and his wife got in a fight. She cut his penis off. There was a lot of publicity about it. Since then, anytime we run across a male body that’s missing the penis, somebody’s gonna call it a Bobbitt. With cops, that’s humor.”
Chris’s face was distorted with horror. Mars suppressed a grin.
“What about the raccoon stuff?”
“Lot of coons down by the river. They’re real garbage pails. Eat anything, including dead bodies. I don’t have a clue if coons ate this guy’s penis.” Mars couldn’t stop himself. “My
bet would be on a bald eagle. They’re the real scavengers of the river.”
Mars pulled out the car phone, and handing it to Chris said, “Do me a favor. Call Nettie. Ask her to meet us downtown. If she gets there first, ask her to pull up the Owen Cook files.”
They were halfway downtown when Chris said, “Dad? At the river? It sounded like you didn’t think it was the right guy.”
Mars thought about his answer before replying. “There are a couple things that bothered me—odds are, it is Owen Cook—but I’m not willing to drop the hammer until I’ve checked some things out.”
“Like what?”
“The woman with Owen Cook the day before he went off the bridge said he had a lot of cash at the restaurant where they ate lunch. I don’t see him getting rid of that between the time he left the restaurant and the next day. The wallet we just looked at had a couple bucks. So where’s the money?”
Chris grinned. “Dad, you’ve got fifteen seconds. ‘Show me the money.’”
Mars grinned back. “Too easy. Cuba Gooding, Jr., to Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire.”
Chris’s face tightened again with concentration. “What if someone found his body before you did, and stole the money?”
Mars reached over to ruffle Chris’s hair. “Great minds think alike. I was just wondering about that. But think a little more. Someone comes across the body by the river. Number one, very few people are going to approach a dead body, much less go up to it and start digging around in the pockets. Number two, the kind of people who might do that are transients. On the river, transients hang out around downtown. I’ve
never come across a transient on the river south of the Lake Street Bridge, and this guy was more than a mile downriver from Lake Street … .”
“So maybe he got robbed near downtown, and then the robber put the body back in the river?”
Mars nodded. “That could happen. But ask yourself, why would a transient rob the guy and leave a couple bucks in the wallet, put the wallet back inside the jacket, and button the jacket—which, by the way, is the other thing that’s bothering me. I saw Cook go off the bridge. His jacket flew open when he jumped. It wasn’t buttoned.”
Chris’s head started bouncing off the back of the car seat, a sure sign he was thinking hard and enjoying it. In a singsong thinking-out-loud voice, he said, “Soooo, Owen Cook came out of the river and buttoned his jacket because he was cold and then he remembered his money, so he checked his wallet—”
“Unbuttoning his jacket …” Mars said.
Chris’s voice slowed down. “Okay, unbuttoned his jacket, looked at his money—then he starts to feel sick because he hurt himself jumping and he drops a bunch of the money and he feels too sick to bend over and pick it up so he puts his wallet back in his pocket … .”
“And buttons his jacket but walks away from the money?”
Chris sighed. “It’s not working.”
“I think you’ve put your finger on the only possible scenario for why the money wouldn’t be in the wallet—and I also think you’re running up against the same problems I’ve got in explaining why the wallet would still be in his jacket, with only a couple bucks, and the jacket buttoned.”
“So how do you figure out what did happen?”
“Ask yourself this: Who really needed that money?”
Chris’s answer was quick. “Owen needed it. To help him get away.”
“I agree. So, let’s say that the reason that the wallet on the corpse didn’t have anything but a couple bucks is because Owen kept the money. Meaning? …”
Chris turned toward Mars. “Owen found a dead guy and put his stuff on that guy, except for most of the money?”
“Well, I suppose that’s possible. But that would take a lot of luck—for Owen to be walking along the river and come across a dead guy—not to say Owen hasn’t had most of the luck in this case. But I just think that’s probably too much of a stretch. What I think is more likely is that Owen ran into somebody near the river, saw his chance, and took it.”
“He killed someone else!”
“That would be my first guess.”
“Dad, you know why else that makes sense?” Chris didn’t wait for an answer. “Because there was still a little bit of money left in the wallet. Like you said, someone stealing the money would have taken all of it. But Owen would think the wallet would look funny if there wasn’t any money in it.”
“Outta the mouths of babes,” Mars said.
Pulling into the underground garage at city hall, Mars said, “I’m gonna make a stop in the communications center before I go up to the squad room … .” He paused. “Do you have some homework you can do in your backpack?”
“Yeah. And Nettie said she had a book for me to read.”
“You won’t get bored?”
Chris shook his head in a vigorous no.
Mars looked around the garage. He didn’t see Nettie’s car. “Looks like we beat Nettie coming in. You better come down to the communications center with me before we go upstairs.”
The city hall communications center was in the bowels of the building, a huge room set in a below-floor pit and staffed by a couple dozen operators, all fielding 911 calls. Late afternoon on a Sunday, the phone volume was slow. Mars wound
his way down the aisles, heading in the direction of a small, gray-haired black woman sitting on a slightly elevated platform in the far corner.
Betty Johnson, shift supervisor for city of Minneapolis 911 operations, and a legend in her own time. More than once Betty had figured out that information from various calls linked to a single perpetrator. Or that a call that didn’t sound serious was a matter of life and death. Once she decided something was important, you’d better pay attention. You didn’t pay attention, and one of two things would happen, neither of them good. Betty would either hound you to within an inch of your sanity, or you’d miss something that would make a big difference in a case. More likely, you didn’t pay attention to Betty and both bad things would happen.
“Well, well, well,” Betty said in her deceptively soft, slow drawl. “The prince of Homicide graces us with his presence. Do tell, Special Detective. To what do the likes of us owe this honor?”
“Just paying my dues to the queen of nine-one-one,” Mars said. “Wanted to thank you for giving a push on the stink down by the river. Turns out we got a floater that connects to a case I had last spring, the Edina girl found dead on the bluffs.”
Once given her due, Betty always affected modesty. “Oh, my. Well, I had no idea, I’m sure. Perhaps you should mention your gratitude to your colleagues in the Third Precinct, as well. After all, it only took me seven calls and a personal appearance to get them to dispatch someone down there for a look-see. Always quick off the dime, those fellows from the Third.” Betty bent back in her chair and looked around Mars. Chris was hanging behind.
“That your little man, Special Detective?”
Mars beckoned to Chris. “Betty Johnson, my son, Chris.”
Chris stepped forward, holding his hand out. Mars was used to his son’s smile until he saw Chris use it on other people. The kid was a heartbreaker.
“What a handsome boy,” Betty said. “Just like his daddy. And nice manners, too. Like his daddy.”
“Gets good manners from his mother.” Mars bent over and kissed Betty’s forehead. “Thanks, kiddo.”
To the other operators, all of whom were paying close attention to what was going on between Mars and Betty, Betty called out, “Hope you all saw what happened just now. I’ve been sexually harassed, I have. You all are witnesses in my lawsuit.”
A fat, bleached-blond operator sitting kitty-corner from Betty called out, “In your dreams, Betty, in your dreams. Hey, Homicide. You wanna harass me sometime, just dial nine-one-one and ask for Rhonda. And ten years from now I’ll take calls from your little sidekick.”
Mars and Chris exited the communications pit to a chorus of laughter. Chris walked fast, his face bright red.
By the time they got to the squad room, Nettie had arrived.
Chris said, “You remember the book you were going to borrow me to read?”
Nettie winced. “Lend you. Yes, I did.” She handed Chris an old, hardbound book with a red cover.
Chris looked at it. “In Cold Blood. What did you say it was about?”
“Good people with really bad luck. So, Mars. What’s up?”
Mars reached over and took the book from Chris. He looked through it quickly. To Nettie he said, “This okay for him to read?”
“Not half as bad as the stuff he sees following you around. Scary, though—the people who get murdered are about as
unlikely victims as you’re gonna find. And speaking of unlikely victims …”
“They’ve pulled a floater out of the river. Owen Cook’s ID was on the body.”
Chris said, “The guys down there called it a Bobbitt.”
Nettie rolled her eyes. “So what you’re saying is, the guy was missing his, uh, male part.”
“He didn’t have a head or arms or legs, either. The guys said the raccoons probably ate the penis.” Chris was making the most of his newfound knowledge.
“I just love it,” Nettie said. “You’ve got, like, six men—all professional crime-scene guys—standing around a corpse that has no head, no arms, no legs. And what they talk about is, Where’s the dick?”
Chris said, “Dad doesn’t think it’s Owen Cook.”
Nettie looked at Mars. “How could it not be Owen Cook? I mean, you’ve got a body in the river after Cook jumped from the bridge and the body has Cook’s ID—who else is it going to be?”
Mars walked her through the ideas he and Chris had talked about in the car.
“I think I see where I come in on this action. You want me to do a missing-persons search, right?” Nettie asked.
“Exactly right. And while you’re doing the missing-persons search, I’m going to go over the incident reports we got from officers patrolling the river area after Cook jumped.” Mars looked at Chris who’d sat down at a desk and was already deeply engrossed in his book. “We should probably eat something. Anybody want pizza?”
Chris nodded without looking up. Nettie said, “Hey. I almost forgot.” She dug around in her purse, pulling out a candy bar, which she tossed over to Chris. “Try this. I had one yesterday and thought it was pretty good—and a lot cheaper than Ghiradelli or Godiva.”
Mars said, “That’s a felony: contributing to the chocolate addiction of a minor. Chris, save the chocolate for after pizza.”
Doc D called shortly after the pizza arrived. “I’ve got a rotten piece of meat over here my people tell me you want cut up.”
“Remember the homecoming princess from Edina who got killed on the bluffs early last spring?”
“Fitzgerald. The one with the classy watch …”
“The same. And the guy we think killed her jumped from the Stone Arch Bridge on Friday. Your piece of rotten meat was carrying the perp’s ID. But I’ve got some doubts. Any chance you can do the post sooner rather than later?”
“You available right now?”
“I can be over there in ten minutes.” Mars hung up. To Nettie he said, “I’m going over to the morgue. Doc is going to do the post now. That’s not going to leave me time to pull the incident reports—they on-line?”
Nettie shook her head. “Haven’t gotten to that level of document yet. The only links we’ve built are with arrest reports and case summaries.” She pushed up out of her chair and walked over to the files. “Go on. I think they’re filed up here and that they’re together. I’ll have them ready when you get back.”
“Don’t want to take you off putting together the missing-person stuff—”
“Won’t happen. Get on over to blood-and-gutsville.”
Normally Chris would have been bouncing up and down begging to go with Mars to the autopsy. Mars glanced at him. Chris wasn’t paying attention to Mars and Nettie. Mars recognized the surefire signs he was concentrating hard: Chris’s pupils were big and black and his cheeks were pink.
“Chris, I’m going over to the morgue. You okay here?”
Chris nodded but didn’t look up.
Doc was wearing a face mask when Mars came in. He handed one to Mars, shaking his head.
“Wish we had more time to chill this one out. What’s on your mind?”
“I’ve got some doubts that this guy is my jumper. I’m thinking it’s possible that my jumper survived and that what we’ve got here is an opportunistic killing—that our perp used this guy as a decoy to cover his trail. I’d just like to get a closer look at the body to see if there’s anything that points us one direction or the other.”
Doc D said, “Well, given the condition of the corpse, I’m not optimistic. But let’s have a look.”
With delicacy, he pulled away the outer layers of clothing from the body. He stopped. Mars was staring at a remnant of fabric around the torso’s waist. “What?” Doc said.
“Can you use your scalpel to clear off right around here—” Mars pointed. “I want to look at that fabric under …” The scalpel pulled off a chunk of suit pants with a frayed belt loop. Directly under the suit pant’s fabric was what was clearly the remnant of the elastic waistband of a pair of briefs. Mars could make out three faded letters woven into the band: H-A-N.
Ding. “Hanes,” Mars said.
“Say again?” Doc asked.
“Our suspect’s shorts would have had a flat waistband, button fly. This isn’t my jumper.”
“How’d the autopsy go?” Nettie asked when Mars came back to the division. She was still at the computer.
Mars shook his head. “I don’t know yet how I’m going to prove it, but our floater is not Owen Cook. Remember that underwear we brought back from Cook’s hotel room?”
Nettie thought about it. “Oh, yeah. Bone buttons on the fly.”
“Exactly. Our floater was wearing Hanes Jockey shorts. Owen Cook would rather be dead than wear briefs you buy in a plastic three-pack.” Mars stood behind Nettie at the computer. “Where, by the way, is Chris?”
“He went back to the lounge. Was gonna read on the couch. You get any material that looks like we can draw a DNA profile from the floater?”
“Doc said that shouldn’t be a problem. Just need a family member—either from Cook’s side or the floater’s side, provided we can prove the floater’s not Cook.” Mars sighed. “I need to get started on the patrol incident reports—”
“On your desk.”
“How we doing on our missing persons?”
Nettie grimaced. “Nothing yet. The connection is slower than mud.”
Mars stared at the stack of sixty-seven patrol reports on his desk. Within a half hour of Owen Cook’s jump, four police squad cars had been dispatched to patrol West and East River roads between the Stone Arch Bridge and Ft. Snelling. With the incident reports, Nettie had included a copy of the patrol assignment the Downtown Command had issued. Mars read through the assignment before starting on the reports.
Patrolling officers are instructed to question all males found on foot on the assigned surveillance route meeting the following general description: Caucasian male, early to mid thirties 6’-6’2”, 190—200 pounds, wavy light brown hair of medium length, eyes green to hazel, no identifying facial features, wearing tan dress slacks and a brown herringbone tweed jacket. Search subject is a British citizen and may speak with an English accent. The search subject jumped from the Stone Arch Bridge at approximately 13:30—14:30 on
August 14. The subject may have visible injuries and his clothes will show evidence of having been in water. Any subject meeting this description should be asked to show identification and should be detained pending further questioning. Patrol officers are instructed to file incident reports on all subjects questioned, including subjects that are not detained, with the duty officer, Downtown Command. The patrol will continue until further notice. Officers are advised that the search subject may be armed and should be considered dangerous.
Mars exhaled heavily after reading the patrol assignment.
Looking up from the computer, Nettie said, “What?”
Mars stared at the paper in front of him. “I just reread the patrol assignment issued to the squads that patrolled River Road after the jump.”
“And …”
“It’s—fine. In fact, a good piece of work given how fast the Downtown Command got squads out after the jump. Thing is, it’s almost too good. Too much detail. Great detail if the guy you’re looking for hasn’t changed his appearance. But the scenario I’m checking—that Cook disguised himself using another guy’s clothes—a description like this can mean a patrol would exclude someone who should have been included.”
“They used the description I gave the squads that went down to the bridge to back you up when you went after Cook.”
Mars shook his head. “Not sure I would have done any better at that point. Probably wouldn’t have anticipated this scenario, would have thought the search assignment looked great. And it probably doesn’t matter anyway.” He put the
patrol assignment aside and restacked the incident reports. “This,” he said, “is going to be a lot of fun.”
It took him a few minutes to decide how he was going to review the reports. As he flipped through the pages something written across the top of one report caught his eye.
Jumper?
Mars’s breath caught. Why would a patrolman write “jumper?” on one of—Mars flipped through the reports with the officer’s signature—why would Officer Danny Borg write “jumper?” on only one of eleven incident reports he filed unless there was something special about that subject that made Borg think this guy might be the jumper? And, if there was something special about that subject, why hadn’t the subject been detained for questioning or, at a minimum, why hadn’t the report been forwarded to Homicide?
Mars traced his finger over the report for anything unusual. The incident reports had been formatted with preprinted search items to minimize the time patrolmen had to spend writing interview summaries. Danny Borg had checked height, weight, eye color, and age as matching. He had not checked any of the special features—English accent, wet appearance, injuries, clothing description—Mars stopped. There was the start of a check on injuries, but it had not been completed. And the space that followed “specify” if injuries had been checked was blank. There was no information under identification verification, meaning Borg hadn’t asked for identification. Which meant Borg hadn’t thought there was any reason to ask for identification.
This was probably nothing. Borg had probably been doodling on the report when he wrote “jumper?” If Mars spent this much time with each report he’d never get through all sixty-seven.
Nettie said, “I’ve got a live one.”
“I could use a live one.”
“Here we go. How about this? An attorney, Andrew Shard, age thirty-seven, five feet eleven. Went missing—get this—Friday, reported yesterday morning. Nada since then, except for his car turning up, a red Volvo station wagon.”
“Who’s the investigating officer?”
Nettie peered at the screen. “Dale Nelson.”
“Do me a favor. Talk to Nelson. Number one, see if there’s any reason Shard would have been in the vicinity of the river Friday afternoon. Number two, find out why the car was left where it was.” He stopped, his eyes dropping down to the incident report with “jumper?” written across the top. “One other thing. See if you can get me a number where Patrolman Danny Borg can be reached. He works out of the Downtown Command. I’ve got a question about one of the incident reports.”
Danny Borg was in a deep sleep after working seven days in a row, a double shift the last day. He jumped, answering the phone before he was awake; his girlfriend, Fay, still sound asleep at his side.
A slow, easy voice on the other end of the line said, “Patrolman Dan Borg? Mars Bahr, special detective in Homicide. Sorry to call so late, but I’m following up on a floater we pulled out of the river this afternoon.”
Borg’s heart was pounding. He sat bolt upright on the edge of the bed, squeezing his brain into action. “No problem, sir, how can I help?”
“I’ve got an incident report you filed on your patrol—one of your incident reports had the word ‘jumper’ written across the top. A question mark after the word. Just wondering if there was anything special about that subject that made you write ‘jumper’ … .”
“Oh, geez. I mean, God. I must’ve filed a dozen reports from that patrol … .”
“Eleven, actually.”
“Eleven sounds right. Ahhhh. And you’re saying I wrote ‘jumper,’ on just one?”
“That’s right.”
Borg could hear the interest draining out of Bahr’s voice. He broke out in a light sweat. “God, I’m really sorry, but …” He was tempted to tell Bahr about the last hellish thirty-six hours of work since he’d completed the River Road patrol. About the drunk at Cub Foods that had been waving a gun. The drunk who, after Danny had single-handedly disarmed him and gotten him cuffed, had shit in the backseat of the squad car. Danny knew going into detail would only make things worse. Finally composed, he said, “I’m really sorry. I can’t come up with anything … .”
“Not a problem,” Bahr said. “It was a long shot. Just wanted to make sure it didn’t mean anything. Sorry to bother you. Let me give you a couple numbers where you can reach me if you think of anything.”
Not about to make Bahr wait for him to get paper, Danny wrote the numbers on his pillow with a tube of lipstick from Fay’s makeup bag on the nightstand. Then he said, “Detective Bahr? Could you just tell me the address where that report was taken?”
“Uh—let’s see. Little north of the Lake Street Bridge. West River Road.”
“Thanks, sir. Sorry …”
Bahr said good night and hung up.
Danny Borg dropped to his knees next to the bed and pounded the floor with clenched fists. “Jesus fucking christ! Goddamnit all to hell. Damn, damn, damn!”
Fay sat up on one elbow and squinted at Danny. “What is it? What happened?”
“I just fucking ruined my career, is what happened. Jesus. I didn’t give him one single thing—I can’t even remember the guy I talked to, much less …”
Fay dropped back down on the bed, hands over her eyes. “I don’t get it. What could you possibly have done in a two-minute phone call in the middle of the night that could ruin your career?”
“On the phone. Just now. That was Mars Bahr. He’s a fucking legend in the department. Special detective in Homicide. Handles all the big cases. And one thing everybody knows is that if you help him out on something, he remembers. He’s given a lot of guys a hand up. You do a good job, and Bahr sees you do it, it can make a big difference on moving out of a uniform and into a suit. And Jesus. He calls me, and all I come up with is, ‘Dub?’”
“You were sleeping, for God’s sake, Danny … .”
Danny suddenly scrambled up and started pulling his clothes off the chair.
Fay propped herself up on two elbows. “What are you doing now?”
“I’m going to drive the patrol again. Something may come back.”
He drove all the way downtown to where he’d started the patrol Friday afternoon. Then he reversed direction and turned left off Fifth toward West River Road, picking up the road just below Portland Avenue. As he headed south he could feel it coming back. He remembered the first two guys he’d stopped. Couple guys who worked downtown, out for a run. Except for clothes, they fit the general description, but—not a chance. Next stop was just north of the Franklin Avenue Bridge. The guy was at least twenty years older than the search subject.
It wasn’t until he passed Twenty-sixth Street that he remembered the guy who’d made him write “jumper?” on the incident report. What he remembered was that a couple of blocks south of Twenty-sixth, he’d noticed a beat-up red Volvo station wagon illegally parked. The Wellstone bumper sticker had caught his eye, and he’d considered pulling over to ticket the car. He fucking hated all those bleeding-heart liberals, and Paul Wellstone, Minnesota’s senior senator, was the worst of the lot. But when it came down to simple civil obedience, these were always the guys who broke the rules. Like parking their fucking Volvos—which was the car they always drove—in a no-parking zone.
Danny Borg caught himself. How would it look if he turned in a parking violation ticket when he was supposed to be patrolling for a missing suspect. He refocused, and as he did, he saw the guy coming up the hill. Right height, weight, age looked good—but nothing else fit. Danny slowed and pushed the power window control.
Looking up at the guy, he got a good look at his face. The description—which could have been just about anyone—fit. And this guy had a gash across the top of his nose that ran down to his cheek. Danny felt uneasy. But the guy sounded cool, had a reasonable explanation for the injury, didn’t have an English accent, and was dry as a bone.
Now, two days later, in the dark, Danny Borg pulled over and rolled his window down to get a better look at where he’d seen the guy. Night air filled the car—Danny shivered. And then Danny remembered. It had been unusually cold the afternoon of the patrol, and the guy he’d stopped only had on a jogging suit. Danny had said something about needing to keep moving to stay warm. And the guy had said something about “wearing a jumper.” As Danny had pulled away, still feeling uneasy about this one, he’d scribbled, “jumper?”
on the incident report. Not for any special reason, just because he felt a little uneasy. What the hell had the guy meant about wearing a jumper? What he thought was he’d probably misheard; Danny had been thinking jumper and the guy had said something else.
It wasn’t a lot. But at least he’d remembered something. Should he call the number Bahr gave him when he got back to the apartment?
Nettie picked up, then handed the phone to Mars. “For you. Patrolman Borg.”
As Mars reached for the phone, Chris, tired but still bright-eyed with interest in his book, came into the squad room. “Dad? Is there a dictionary? I need to look up a word.”
Mars covered the phone with one hand and pointed to a bookcase against the wall. “If we’ve got one, it would be with those manuals on the wall.” He brought the receiver up to his ear. “Yeah, Borg. You thought of something?”
“Well, sir, I thought it might help if I redrove the route.” There was a mixture of pride and embarrassment in Borg’s voice. “And I did remember the guy—and why I wrote ‘jumper’ on the incident report. I’m just not sure it means very much … .”
“I appreciate the extra effort. Tell me what you do remember, whether you know what it means or not.”
“The guy fit the general description, sir. Which could have been anybody. But none of the specifics fit—I mean, he was dry as bone, had on a jogging suit, didn’t sound like any Englishman I’ve ever heard—so I didn’t think I had cause for detaining him … .” Danny thought about the gash across they guy’s nose, and the same sense of uneasiness he’d felt on the patrol came back. “Thing is, he did have a—well, like a cut—across his nose, ran down on his cheek. But when I
asked him about it, he didn’t even seem to know it was a problem. Said he’d hurt himself doing yard work and it must have reopened while he was running. I didn’t see any problem with that … .”
“He was just walking along the road—you didn’t see him come up from the river?”
Danny thought about it. “Thing is, sir, I had been …” Danny hesitated, not wanting to say he’d been thinking about the bleeding-heart liberal’s illegally parked car and hadn’t noticed the guy until he was almost on him. “There was a car illegally parked on the road, and I was considering inspecting the car, sir, when I saw the guy on the road—”Danny stopped. “Actually, sir, the guy told me himself. He said he needed to piss, so he’d gone down toward the river. Made some sort of joke about it … .”
Mars pulled over the notes he’d made when Nettie called about the missing lawyer. She’d said something about a red Volvo. “Borg? The parked car. You have a description on that?”
“Pretty much a beater, sir. I’d say late eighties Volvo red station wagon. A Wellstone bumper sticker—”
“And ‘jumper?’ on the incident report, Borg. You said you remembered why you wrote that.”
“Right. And this part still doesn’t make sense to me. As I was pulling away, I said something to him about keeping moving because it was cold—and all this guy had on was a jogging suit. What I think he said was, ‘I should have worn a heavier jumper.’ I think I must have been thinking about the search subject, sir, and misheard him. Anyway, I wrote it down, just sort of thinking on it—not meaning anything … .”
“His words to you when you commented on the cold were ‘I should have worn a heavier jumper.’”
“Like I said. That’s what I thought I heard … .”
“Doesn’t make any sense to me, either—but this has been helpful. Could I ask you to come over to Homicide tomorrow and look at some pictures?”
Danny was scheduled for his first day off in over a week, but he didn’t hesitate before saying, “Absolutely. First thing, sir.”
“Thanks again, Borg. I look forward to meeting you.”
Mars sat thinking for a moment after hanging up with Borg. Nettie looked up. “Anything good?” she asked.
“Yeah. I think we’re going to be able to tie the missing lawyer’s car to River Road. Need to follow up on some details, but from what Borg said, it looks probable. And Borg may be able to identify our photo of Cook as being a guy he ran into while doing patrol. He still can’t figure out why he wrote ‘jumper?’ on the incident report. He thought the guy said he was cold and should have worn a heavier jumper—but that doesn’t make any sense. Why would he take note of that?”
Chris dropped the dictionary on the desk next to Mars with a heavy thud. “Dad, you know what c-o-n-n-o-t-e-d means?”
“Yes, I do. And when you look it up in the dictionary, you’ll know too. How’s the book.”
“Pretty good. But it’s got some hard words. And I don’t understand what the dictionary says. Listen to this.” Chris’s finger followed the words on the page. “It says, ‘Imply additional meaning,’ and then its says, ‘Two. Imply as a condition … .’ I still don’t know what it means.”
“It’s like if I said, ‘I think it’s too late for you to be up reading your book,’ I would also mean you need to stop reading and start sleeping. Why don’t you sack out on the couch—I’ll try to finish up here in the next hour.”
Chris said, “First I’m going to look up ‘jumper.’”
Mars said, “We know what jumper means, Chris. We just
don’t know why the guy would use the word the way he did.”
Undaunted, Chris turned pages in the dictionary. Then his face twisted. “It has jumper twice, Dad. The first one is ‘a person or animal that jumps.’ But then, the next one says, ‘One, sleeveless dress worn over blouse.’ Then it says, ‘Two, Brit. A pullover sweater.‘What does b-r-i-t period mean?”
Nettie and Mars looked at each other. Nettie said, “British usage.”