Denise called on the Friday before Thanksgiving week.
“You’re picking Chris up at James’s around nine tomorrow morning?”
“Okay by you?”
There was a brief silence. “No problem for me, but there are some things I wanted the two of us to talk about—without Chris. Could you come over here first?”
“Sure. I’ll come over around eight.”
Nothing ever changed in the house Mars had lived in for the five years he and Denise had been married. The furniture in the living room had been bought as a set, and looked as good ten years later as it had the day they’d bought it. Looked good as in looked unused. Mars hadn’t much liked the furniture ten years ago and liked it less every time he’d been in the house since. Anytime there wasn’t company over—company being anyone other than Chris, Denise, or Mars—there were cloth things that Mars called blankets and Denise called throws over the furniture. About a year ago, Mars had gone in to give Denise a check, and Carl and the throws were on the couch in the living room. Mars had known then that the relationship was serious.
At eight o’clock that Saturday morning, the throws were
in evidence but Carl was not. Mars was a little surprised, because nights Chris slept over at friends’ houses were the nights that Carl stayed over.
Denise handed him a Coca-Cola, cold with no ice, as soon as he sat down at the table in the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee, swiping the counter with a damp dishcloth on the chance that a drop of coffee had been spilled in the process. She folded the dishcloth precisely before she sat down across from him.
“You and Chris need to work out something different on the time you spend together.”
Mars looked at her, puzzled. She spoke again before he could ask what she meant.
“Chris is starting to not do things he wants to do with friends because he feels he has an obligation to spend as much of the weekend with you as you have time to spend with him.” She frowned a little after she said that, sipped her coffee, and said, “I didn’t say that very well. Do you know what I’m saying?”
He knew immediately, and realized he’d seen signs himself, signs he’d chosen to ignore.
“Two nights ago, Chris was on the phone with James when I was in his room putting his laundry away. And I heard him tell James that he couldn’t go to a party tonight because you and he were going to The Godfather at the Oak Street Cinema, and you’d been talking about that for weeks. You’d be really disappointed if he didn’t go. And I could tell Chris was really feeling bad about missing the party.”
Mars sighed. “I’m sure you’re right. I should have figured it out myself. I’d been telling him that I’d pretty much decided to take the job setting up the Metropolitan Division of the Cold Case Unit at the State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and that it would mean I’d have a more regular schedule,
more time to spend with him. Now that I think about it, he didn’t exactly jump with joy.”
“That’s going too far. He’s crazy about you, Mars. If he could spend every hour of every day with you and still have time for—”
“I know what you’re saying. It’s natural, at his age, to want to be on his own more. It just means he’s a happy, normal kid. Thanks for bringing it up. I’ll take care of it.”
Denise looked at him quizzically. “So you are going to take the new job?”
Mars gave a self-mocking laugh. “It’s the job I should have had when Chris was younger. I haven’t made a final decision, and the legislature hasn’t approved funding yet—so who knows. Nettie wants to do it, and she’d be just what they need—but she won’t go without me. That, and the chief maybe taking an offer in San Diego. They’ve appointed an interim chief with the understanding the chief will move in another year. He goes, I go.” There was a hollow pit in Mars’s stomach at the thought of doing a nine-to-five job.
Mars decided to seize the moment and make an immediate change in the breakfast routine. With Chris in the car, he said, “Turns out I’ve got a bit of a time crunch today. Okay with you if we just go over to the Modern for breakfast and then I drop you back at the house?”
Chris was untroubled at the change in plans. In fact, Mars thought he detected something like relief.
The only thing wrong with the Modern, a small restaurant in Northeast with tile floors and dark wood booths that were original to the 1950s, was that it was too small to really get away from the smoking section. Chris loved the food, which was also circa 1950. It relied heavily on potatoes: hash browns, garlic mashed potatoes, thick-cut french fries.
Chris asked for fresh tomatoes with his hash browns, sunny-side-up eggs, and two strips of bacon. He had a Coke to wash it down. Mars was in no position to object.
Once into their food, Mars said, “My agenda. I’ve been thinking we should maybe change how we organize our time together.”
Chris looked up at him, wary. “Like what?”
“Like at your age you’re going to have more and more things that you need to do on weekends. I think we should set a schedule based on other things you’re doing. Even if we’ve planned to be together, if something comes up for you, we can always reschedule.”
Chris was staring at him. “So we wouldn’t have breakfast Saturdays?”
“That would depend on what else you had going on Saturday mornings. Maybe we’d have breakfast Sundays, if Saturdays didn’t work for you.”
“Church.”
Mars made a gesture of indifference. “Whatever. Nothing says we can’t do breakfast after church, right? All I’m saying is—I don’t want you to miss things a guy your age should be doing because we’re locked into a schedule we don’t have to be locked into.”
Chris’s face was smooth with pleasure. “That probably would be good.” Then, sounding cautious, “When do you want to start? I mean, changing from trying to spend all day Saturday together?”
“I thought what we could do is go over what you’ve got coming up. Like today. Then plan around that. We can just kind of play it by ear.”
“Yeah, but tonight is The Godfather.”
“Well, it’s up to you. There’ll be lots of times we can see The Godfather. We could even rent the video.”
“You said seeing it on video wouldn’t be as good.”
“I guess I think that seeing it in a theater would be the best way to see it, but video would be okay, too. So, if there’s something else you need to do, we’ll just plan on seeing it another time.” Mars was careful to say “need” to do, rather than “want” to do.
Chris hesitated, then he said, “Actually, I’d sort of forgotten. But there is a party tonight I should probably go to. Gloria’s having a bunch of kids over. Could we do something together tomorrow afternoon?”
“Sure. I’ll come over around one, we can decide then what we want to do … Gloria? Are you still going with her?”
Chris looked confused for a moment. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think we must have broken up.”
Chris called around six-thirty that night. “What are you doing tonight, Dad?” There was anxiety in his voice.
Mars said, without even thinking about it, “I may just go to The Godfather.”
“By yourself?” The anxiety in Chris’s voice intensified.
“I used to go to the movies by myself all the time, Chris. Before you were old enough to go with me. Your mom never liked movies much, and I got so I liked going by myself.” What Mars didn’t tell Chris was about all the times he told Denise he was going out on an investigation and instead had gone to the movies.
But it had been a long time since Mars had gone to a movie by himself, and he’d sort of lost the hang of it. He felt a little self-conscious about going by himself and probably would have skipped it if Chris hadn’t called again just before he left the house for his party.
“I wanted to see if you went to the movie.”
“I was just on my way out the door.” So he went.
The thing about the few theaters around that still showed old movies was that they ran on a shoestring. As the cashier
at the Oak Street Cinema gave him his change and tore his ticket, she said, “We’ve got a problem with the projector. The movie’ll probably start about a half hour late. Maybe a little longer.”
Mars made a face and thought about asking for his money back, but it was a request that would make a scene. It was easier to stay. He moved into the lobby, already half-full of college students.
It was then that he saw her. It was the intensity with which she watched him that first drew his attention. But more than how she looked, it was that she was watching him—watching him with a small, ironic smile. It struck him that not only did she seem to know who he was but she did in fact look familiar. He gave her a slight nod to acknowledge the attention she was paying him. She had been leaning against a wall, and after he nodded, she pushed off, coming toward him, the small smile unchanged.
“Hello, Special Detective.”
Mars nodded again, struggling to put the various components of the woman’s appearance into an identity. She lifted a hand to draw her hair back, her eyes still on him, and he noticed her hands. They were beautiful hands, small, fine boned, with long fingers … and he remembered.
“Evelyn … Evelyn Rau. Good God. I almost didn’t recognize you. Sorry—I haven’t seen you since the trial. What are you doing here, anyway?”
She shrugged. “You mean, why am I here instead of in jail? I thought I’d go to the movies is all.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“You must be pleased with how the trial went?”
Mars shook his head. “Relieved it’s over and that Cook got the maximum. But the County Attorney’s Office did some follow-up with the jurors. We came damn near having a hung
jury. Cook’s defense—that his brother was the perp in Fitzgerald’s murder and that Shard’s death was self-defense—kicked up a lot of dust. Three of the jurors felt there was reasonable doubt on the Fitzgerald murder—and Shard’s history of financial problems and erratic behavior made Cook’s claim that Shard tried to rob him seem possible. Frankly, without your testimony and the information you provided on the vehicle which we were finally able to tie to Owen Cook—we might have lost it. The other thing that helped was Cook luring you down to the bridge. There just wasn’t any way he could explain that in a way that was believable. The three uncertain jurors were prepared to believe that your identification might be wrong or that Owen Cook killed Andrew Shard when Shard tried to rob him—but when we added Cook’s attack on you at the bridge—well, it’s what we call critical mass … .”
“You know what I’ve never understood? Why he bothered to come after me.”
“Makes perfect sense, really. Once he knew there was a witness, there was always the risk you’d see him and recognize we’d made a mistake. His mistake was thinking it would be easy to implicate his brother. And he had a piece of bad luck: his brother’s schedule changed at the time of the first murder and that change gave the brother an alibi. If Neville hadn’t had an alibi for the first murder, Owen’s scheme might have worked. The second murder was too good—we didn’t have anything to tie either brother to the scene. So, Owen brought the brother and sister of the two victims together in England in hopes they’d see a connection to Neville. And they did. Then Owen caught a real piece of luck. We got the photos of the two brothers mixed up. From the standpoint of the investigation, your ID was the linchpin for all the evidence.”
“Nice to know something good came of out of the mess
my life was then.” She looked at her watch. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee while we wait?”
Mars hesitated, then took the path of least resistance. “You can buy me a Coke.”
They walked down to the coffee bar on the corner. It was crowded with other moviegoers waiting out the delay. Mars and Evelyn stood for a while, until a table opened up. There wasn’t much to say, but being quiet with her was easy. That was something he noticed. He never found talking with women difficult, but a good silence was hard to come by.
After they were seated, he said, “What have you been up to? I take it you’re back in graduate school?”
“I had one option when I got out of jail. I called a woman I’d worked with in the English Department at the U. I said, ‘Rita, I’m in trouble and I need a place to stay.’ She said, ‘Where are you?’ and when I said the Hennepin County Jail, she said, ‘Don’t move. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’ And she was.”
“What have you been doing with yourself since then?”
“I’m going to finish my degree, get my Ph.D. Just for the sake of finishing what I started.” She stopped. “Well, that’s history. Somehow, going back just to meet my own personal goals feels right. If I can get myself to England in the next year to finish some research, I’ll get my degree within the next couple of years. Then I’ll probably just do freelance writing. Keep my eyes open for a chance to do a book, if the right subject presents itself. And you. You’re going to be a cop forever?”
“For now.” He didn’t bring up the possibility of moving to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Mars shifted, looked down at his Coke. “Ask me six months from now.” He regretted saying it right away; he didn’t want her to think he was suggesting anything.
“When your partner took my statement … the first time you interviewed me?”
Mars nodded. “Yes?”
“Afterwards, I saw you leaving with a boy. Your son?”
“Yeah. I guess Chris was with me. We’d just left the movies when I got paged about you. He lives with his mother, but she was out of town that weekend, so I brought him along.”
“You’re divorced?” It was just a question, with none of the coyness he’d gotten from other women asking the same question. He started feeling a little more comfortable about her expectations.
“Since Chris was three. Chris’s mom is fine, we have a good relationship. Better now than when we were married. But I just couldn’t make it in the marriage. My problem, not hers.” Mars shifted a bit. “My partner says I have an ‘intimacy problem’ with women. Not that I’ve ever figured out what that means, but I’ve heard it from more than one woman, so there must be something to it.”
Evelyn Rau looked away from him for a moment. Then she said, “Let me take a shot at it—not that I can give you a definition—but I think a couple of examples will make the point.” She grinned. “I’ll even use movies as a teaching aid—to make sure you get it. Have you seen Klute?”
“Sure. Great movie.”
“The scene where Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland are wandering through a fruit market late at night?”
“Yeah …”
“And she puts her hand on his back …”
Mars nodded.
Evelyn pointed a finger at him across the table. “That was intimacy from a woman’s point of view. And the movie When Harry Met Sally? The scene where Harry and Sally are on
the phone, split screen, watching a late-night movie together, each in their own apartments …”
Mars nodded again. This was definitely making sense. Evelyn said, “That was intimacy, whereas the scene where they have sex, was, well, anti-intimacy.”
Mars said, “You’re onto something. You should publish that.”
“Maybe I will.” She looked at him closely. “You know, I’d think after solving a case like the Fitzgerald murder—you’d be jumping up and down. But you aren’t quite as—satisfied—as I’d expect. You almost seem sad when you talk about it.”
“Resurrection syndrome,” Mars said.
“Say what?” Evelyn asked.
“I should be dancing a jig. But sometimes, after a long, frustrating case, you almost feel worse when it’s over.”
“Why?”
Mars ran both hands back through his hair. “Have you seen the old Otto Preminger movie Laura?” Evelyn nodded. “Well, it’s kind of like that. When you start the investigation there’s no attachment to the victim. You deal with the victim’s friends and relatives who are in denial about the victim being dead. Then you spend months finding out everything there is to know about the victim—the victim kind of comes alive for you. You start feeling like you own that person, who that person was. Then you solve the murder, and by now, the victim’s family is accepting that the victim is dead. All they want is justice. But for me, at that point, the victim is the most alive they’ve ever been. And it’s kind of an emotional shock to realize that after everything you’ve done, everything you’ve been through—that none of that has changed the fundamental fact that the victim is still dead. Resurrection syndrome.”
Evelyn said, “Did you go to Mary Pat’s funeral—or to her grave?”
Mars shook his head. “No. There really wasn’t a funeral. The family had a private interment ceremony at Lakewood Cemetery—and about four weeks after that there was a big memorial service at her high school. Edina PD covered that—thought they’d have a better shot at spotting something out of the ordinary.”
Evelyn looked at her watch. “We should probably get back to the theater—” She stopped, hearing “we” the same way he did. “I’m sorry, I’ve kind of horned in on your evening—would you rather go on your own from here?”
“No, I’m fine as is,” Mars answered, not at all sure that he meant it.
It was almost midnight before Mars headed back to his apartment. Seeing Evelyn Rau reminded him he hadn’t touched base with Bobby Fitzgerald since the trial. He reversed direction and drove down to city hall. A new Homicide detective was hanging around the squad room when Mars walked in.
“Hey. Candy Man. What brings you in? Number forty-three hit the city’s murder list?”
Mars shook his head. “Nope. Just needed a phone number.” He rooted through a desk drawer, pulled out a notebook, said good night, and headed back to the apartment.
In the apartment, he dialed Bobby Fitzgerald’s number. It was a little after 1:00 A.M. in Boston, and Bobby’s voice was sleep laden when he picked up.
“Mars Bahr in Minneapolis.”
“Geez. Mars. Don’t tell me Cook’s out on the appeal? …”
“No, he’s still our guy. But I think maybe I have an insight about what women mean when they talk about intimacy. You and I made a promise to get in touch immediately if we figured anything out on that score.”
“Let’s have it.”
“You’ve seen the movies Klute and When Harry Met Sally?”
“Sure. Liked them both.”
“Okay. The scene where Jane Fonda touches Donald Sutherland’s back when they’re in the fruit market, and the scene where Harry and Sally are watching an old movie together, only they’re in separate apartments, watching the movie on the phone? …”
“Sure …”
“That’s it. Those two scenes represent intimacy from a woman’s point of view.”
The other line was quiet for a moment, then Bobby said, “You know, that makes sense. This is very helpful.”
“You want another piece of good news?”
“Always.”
“Owen Cook has been served with notice that Neville Cook had petitioned the English courts to exclude Owen as a beneficiary of the trust on the grounds that Owen has breached the trust’s moral turpitude clause. The same clause Owen was going to use when Neville was convicted of murder.”
“That is what is known as poetic justice.”
“I’ll tell you what’s poetic justice. Owen had pledged his interest in the trust as collateral to retain a top-flight criminal defense lawyer for the appeal. With his interest in the trust subject to litigation, his top-dollar lawyer took a walk. Owen’s going to have to use a public defender.”
Bobby let out a small moan of appreciation. “Ahhh—there is a God, Mars. And he is just.”