YES, WHERE WAS LAURALEE? She had slipped away with as little sound as one hand clapping while John and I were haggling over the future condition of my throat with Officer Burnham.
A quick search of the apartment, including all the closets and both bathrooms, convinced us that she was not inside. Officer Wilson said he had not encountered her on the back deck during his surreptitious entrance. I wanted to get down on the floor and check under the bed but I was so shaky that I wouldn’t have been able to get up, so I asked Al to do it.
“Nothing under there,” he said. “Not even a dust bunny. Congratulate Martha on her housekeeping for me.”
“How do you know that I’m not the one who busts the dust bunnies?” I said.
“Because the floors in your old apartment were hopping with dust bunnies before Martha moved in.”
“That’s a hare-brained accusation,” I said, even though I knew he was right.
Two officers were assigned to search outside for Lauralee. Two others had the pleasure of handcuffing Robert “John” Obachuma, who had been revived by EMT Jackie and her partner, and were walking him to an ambulance that was double parked in front of the house for transportation to Regions Hospital. There he would be shackled and held under armed guard while being checked for a possible concussion. “Wouldn’t want to be accused of police brutality by the nice man who was going to slash your throat,” Officer Burnham said.
As the ambulance pulled away, it was followed immediately by a dark-colored Prius that had been parked at the curb beside it. I pointed to the departing Prius and said, “I’ll bet there goes the woman we’re looking for. She snuck out to her car but the ambulance had her parked in.”
“Damn it, I’ll bet you’re right,” Burnham said. “We didn’t check the cars for occupants. We need to get a statement from her. Do you know where she lives?”
“I do,” I said. “I have the address at my office. I’ll e-mail it in the morning.”
“You can bring it with you in the morning when you come in to give your statement. How about nine o’clock?”
“How about later in the day? I have an assignment to meet someone at seven thirty in Falcon Heights.”
We agreed on 1:30 p.m. and Burnham departed, along with his troops, leaving Al and me alone.
“You really think you’ll be up to meeting this John Doe guy in the morning?” Al said.
“Wouldn’t miss it for all the knives in Liberia,” I said.
Al said he’d be ready at 7:00 a.m. and departed, leaving me alone with Sherlock Holmes. I was about to sit down with the cat when I realized I had a story to report, even if it was my day off. I couldn’t imagine facing Don O’Rourke the next day if his first knowledge of my visit from Robert Obachuma came from a TV news report.
I decided to do it by phone. Fred Donlin, the night city editor, expressed surprise and concern, and then transferred my call to a veteran reporter named John Boxwood. John expressed surprise and concern as well, and then said to tell him what happened and he’d put the story together. I’d been planning to dictate, but discovered that my mind was too messed up to think coherently in orderly sentences, so I agreed to this.
In a disjointed, back-and-forth way, I told Boxwood everything that had happened. I thought about leaving out the visit from Lauralee Baker, but decided to include it with the explanation that she was a source in the Marilee Anderson case who had come to give me some background information. I was afraid if I didn’t mention Lauralee that the police report would include her presence and every other news report in the Twin Cities would pick up this tidbit. If Martha heard if first from Trish Valentine reporting live, she would assume that I was hiding something from her, which would have been correct.
When I finished my staggering report to Boxwood, I put down the phone and collapsed on the sofa with Sherlock beside me. It was then that the reality of what I’d just been through crashed into my brain. I was sweating, but I felt cold and started to shake. I’d been threatened by other killers, but never in such a close, physical manner. Both looking down a gun barrel and being pushed over the side of a boat into deep water had been terrifying. But being held in an iron grip and having a knife blade actually slicing through the skin of my neck had been beyond horrific.
For the first time in several years, I found myself feeling that I absolutely needed a drink. Only alcohol could steady my trembling body and soothe my racing, jumping brain. I told myself that this would be the most damn foolish thing an alcoholic could do and felt relieved that there wasn’t any alcohol in the house.
Ah, but there was. The bottle of wine that Martha had shared with Zhoumaya had not been emptied. It had to be somewhere in a kitchen cupboard. I told myself, “Do not look for it.”
I looked for it. And I found it. I held a one-third-full bottle of merlot in my quivering right hand. With the left hand, I pulled out the silver stopper that Martha had stuck into the bottle to keep the wine fresh. I told myself that just one sip wouldn’t hurt me. I needed this to steady my nerves and let me relax after the terror and shock of being held at knifepoint by a madman. I wouldn’t even pour the wine into a glass. I’d take one tiny, steadying sip, put the stopper back, and set the bottle back on the cupboard shelf where I’d found it.
I was staring at the bottle, preparing to bring it to my lips, when my cell phone, which was lying on the counter beside the kitchen sink, rang. The caller ID read MARTHA. I picked up the phone in my left hand and said, “Hi.”
“Hi, lover, how are you?” Martha said.
“I’m just fine now,” I said.
“Your voice sounds a little weak. Are you okay?”
My right hand was still trembling as I poured the contents of the wine bottle down the sink. “Let me tell you about my day,” I said. I could apologize later for wasting the wine.
* * *
IPICKED UP AL at his home in the Midway at 7:10 a.m. and continued driving north on Snelling Avenue to Falcon Heights. I was still wearing a patch of gauze taped to my throat, even though the oozing had stopped after the second change. I preferred to have people curious about the bright white dressing rather than getting nauseous looking at the deep red scab.
This John Doe, who we’d dubbed John Doe the First, lived on a side street near the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. As we passed the fairgrounds, I remembered trying to pry information out of an uncooperative Falcon Heights homicide detective after a murder there the previous summer. Al remembered her also, and reminded me that her initials were KGB, which fit both her tactics and personality to a T.
We were singing, “Doe, a deer, a female deer,” when I parked in front of John Doe’s number, which was attached to a one-story rambler probably built in the housing boom that followed World War II. It was painted white, with green shutters and trim, and surrounded by a neatly kept assortment of shrubs and flowers. The small lawn was mowed and the sidewalk was free of debris. John Doe the First obviously took meticulous care of both the house and its surroundings.
A two-foot-tall plastic gnome with a red hat and a silly grin stood on the top step beside the front door. Al patted it on the head and rang the bell. Nobody came to the door. He rang again. Still no response.
“Maybe he’s deaf and doesn’t hear the bell,” Al said. He knocked hard on the metal screen door. When this brought no response, he opened the screen door and knocked on the wooden inner door. Same result.
“I don’t like this,” Al said. “He promised he’d be here to meet us if we got here by seven thirty.” He knocked again, but no one answered. He tried to turn the knob and discovered that the door was locked.
We decided to try the back door. We walked around to the side of the attached single-car garage and peeked in a small window. There was a black pickup truck inside. We continued around the garage to the backyard, which was as neat and trim as the front, and found a small porch in back. Al went up the steps and knocked loud enough to be heard at the house next door.
Getting no response, Al tried turning the knob. “It’s open,” he said. “I’m going to stick my head in and yell.” He stuck his head in and yelled. Nobody yelled back.
“I’m going to peek inside,” Al said. “Something’s wrong with this picture. His pickup is in the garage and the door is unlocked. He should be in the house.”
Al went in the back door and I climbed the steps to the porch. I was just opening the door when Al yelled, “Holy shit! Come here.”
I bolted through the door into a small room containing a washer and a dryer. A few quick steps took me into the kitchen doorway, where Al stood looking into the room at a balding man lying on the floor. The man, who was wearing pants but no shirt, lay on his back with his eyes wide open and his right hand resting on the left side of his naked belly just beneath his ribs. The entire front of his body was coated with blood and the proverbial pool of blood (a cliché we were forbidden to use in the Daily Dispatch) had spread across a wide expanse of the kitchen floor. There was no point in wading through the sea of red to check him for a pulse.
With my breakfast rising in my throat, I swallowed hard, tiptoed around the red sea and escaped into the dining room. Al followed, almost stepping on my heels. My call to 911 was answered by a business-like woman who took my information and assured me that emergency personnel would be on the way immediately.
“Do you need an ambulance?” she asked.
“Too late for that,” I said. “The victim is ready for a hearse.”
Four minutes later, two Falcon Heights squad cars with lights flashing pulled up in front. Al unlocked the front door from the inside and greeted the officers who got out. I followed Al into the living room and stood pointing toward the kitchen.
All four cops strode past me to the kitchen, and after a quick look, one of them returned to the living room. “Did either of you touch anything?” he asked.
“Nothing, Officer,” I said. Then I thought about what we might have touched. “We both grabbed the back doorknob. When you dust for prints, you’ll find ours there.”
“Hope you haven’t messed up any others that might be there,” he said.
“Homicide is on the way,” said another officer, who had called in as soon as he’d seen the body.
“Who is this man?” asked the first officer. He wore a badge that said HARRISON.
“Don’t know his name,” Al said. “He invited us here for an interview under the name John Doe.”
“You got some explaining to do,” Harrison said. “Don’t you two go anywhere until homicide gets here.”
Al and I adjourned to the front steps, where we sat waiting for homicide to arrive while the officers inside were doing their thing. After about ten minutes, another Falcon Heights squad car pulled up and a tall, dark-haired woman in a black pantsuit emerged from the passenger side.
“Oh, no,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” Al said.
It was KGB.