I waited until midmorning before returning to the duplex where the girl who was killed once lived because I wanted to give Mickie Umland plenty of time to eat her breakfast. I knocked, waited, and knocked some more. Even though I was expecting it, the door opened swiftly enough to give me a start. The woman standing on the other side seemed older than her roommate did by a couple of years and thinner by many pounds. She was wearing shorts and a tight tank top without a bra. Her feet were bare, and I wondered if I had roused her from bed. If so, she was one of those women who slept pretty.
“Ms. Umland?” I said.
“Are you with the airline?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Working for the airline?”
“No, no. This has nothing to do with your airline.”
“Yeah, right.”
“My name is Taylor.”
“Oh, oh, okay. Lisa mentioned you when I got in this morning. She just left to do some shopping. I’m sorry. My head is … Please come in.”
Mickie stood aside and let me pass, closing the door after me. She led me into the living room and gestured at a chair even as she spoke.
“I’m expecting trouble from the airline, and I thought you might be it.”
“Trouble?” I asked.
“I love my job. I love flying. I love going places. There are some serious downsides, though, and the biggest of them is pilots, some pilots, not all. There are serious protocols in place that’re supposed to eliminate sexual harassment, yet you still get guys … The other day I got up at four A.M., drove to the airport, and was hit on by a pilot. He was relentless. The only time it stopped was when I was in the cabin. We landed, I got hit on some more; had to listen to his BS all the way to the hotel, had him follow me to my room, had him call me while I was in my room. Pilots are forbidden to drink, but he knew I could sure use one. Or two. Or three. To relieve the stress, he said. Finally, it’s midnight, I’d been on my feet for close to twenty hours, the pilot knocks on my door and tells me he can’t sleep and he’s pretty sure that I can’t either, if you know what I mean—he actually said that. The man is twenty years older than me and married, so I”—she feinted a jab from the shoulder—“punched him in the nose and slammed the door. I’ve been waiting for someone to punch me back ever since.”
“Did he report you?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Not if it meant I had to explain to HR what I was doing knocking on your hotel room door at midnight.”
Mickie wagged her finger at me.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “He could be in more trouble than me. Well…” She sat on a stuffed chair across from me, her long legs curled neatly beneath her. “How can I help you?”
I asked Mickie to tell me everything she knew about Emily Denys, which turned out to be very little, now that she had time to think about it. Emily had asked her once about becoming a flight attendant, and Mickie said she would help as much as she could. Only it never went any further than just talk.
“She was certainly pretty enough,” the flight attendant said. “That’s not supposed to make any difference in hiring, not the way it used to, anyway. You’d be surprised how much it helps, though. Or maybe you wouldn’t be. You meet as many people as I do every day and you get pretty good at reading them. Taylor, you don’t look to me like someone who’s surprised very often.”
“Did Emily ever surprise you?”
“Not really. She liked to play the virginal innocent, the sweet little thing from small-town USA, but really, she was just like everyone else, looking out for herself.”
“How did she look out for herself?”
“Well, first there was the psychologist fresh out of the U trying to get a job as a counselor in the St. Paul School District. He lasted until Em found out about the humongous student loans he was carrying. Then there was the investment banker who also just graduated who drove a ten-year-old Mercedes. He seemed like a keeper until Emily realized it would be awhile before he could afford to buy a new Mercedes. Next came Barrington. He was already where Emily wanted to be, so she played him.”
“Played him?”
“A pretty girl manipulating a man with money? That comes as a surprise to you?”
“Doesn’t fit what others have told me about her.”
“I’m not saying she was a bad person. Not saying she didn’t genuinely like the guy. I’m just saying the woman had goals, okay? And she knew how to reach them. What I mean—I have these very short shorts that only come to here.” Mickie indicated a spot on her thighs that suggested her shorts weren’t much longer than her panties. “I hardly ever wear them but this one time that I did, and Em kinda turned up her nose and said she didn’t think they were appropriate for a good Christian girl. That surprised the hell outta me because in all the time I knew her, she never said or did anything to make me believe she was some kind of religious fanatic.
“Then later, the three of us were watching Buffy, and I asked her where the boyfriend was, and Em said he was with his mother, which seemed to annoy her. I asked if she and he had ever been intimate. She said no. She said that she was waiting for her wedding night. She was so very matter-of-fact about it. There was no preaching or anything. At the same time, it made me feel … It made me think I had given up a lot that I didn’t need to give up. It made me wish I were more like her, okay?”
“Okay.”
“But then I came home this one time. It was late, a hot summer night, Emily’s front door was open, although the outside screen door was locked, and I could hear her, not shouting or anything, yet I could hear her saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, just like that,” and I’m like, what the fuck? I look through the window and, well, there was Emily bent over the arm of a sofa taking it from behind, Joel feeding it to her, and you know what? It didn’t look like this was a new experience for her, okay?”
“You’re telling me Emily wasn’t who she claimed to be.”
“None of us are, but Taylor, I liked her even so. The woman who killed her, the boyfriend’s mother—she makes me wish to God that Minnesota had capital punishment.”
* * *
I asked more questions, but Mickie’s answers weren’t any more illuminating than her roommate’s had been. I gave her my card, and she promised to call me if she thought of anything more. She walked me to the door, opened it, and gave me a hug. I don’t think she was interested in me so much as she craved human contact, which seemed to prove that it isn’t how many people you meet, it’s how many you connect with that matters. At the same time, it caused me to remember the hug Claire had given me the evening before. It was all I could do to keep from hugging Mickie back.
The door was closed, and I stood outside the duplex, my back to the street. The yellow crime scene tape had been removed from Emily’s door. I tried the handle. Locked. I gave it a shake, just the same. I had burglar tools, although it’s illegal for me to possess them. It would have been easy to let myself inside. If I could have thought of a good enough reason to risk arrest, I probably would have. Only I doubted that there was anything I could see that the cops hadn’t, so I let it go. Instead, I turned and started down the sidewalk.
I saw a man approaching at a right angle. He was in his early twenties with brown hair cut in the military style, and he was dressed in camouflage hunting clothes, which I thought was ridiculous. Not only were they warm—I could see sweat beading on his forehead—it was the middle of St. Paul, for God’s sake. What was he stalking? Chipmunks?
Movement on my left caused me to turn my head. A second man, dressed in identical clothes, was advancing on me as well. He was the same age and had the same haircut, except that his hair was blond. He was speaking into his sleeve. While he spoke, the first man pressed his hand against his left ear.
They weren’t wearing the same camo outfits because they were Duck Dynasty wannabees, I told myself. It was a uniform.
And they were closing in.
My fight-or-flight reflex activated. Most people, when that happens, they blow it off, tell themselves that they’re behaving foolishly. So they get onto the elevator with the stranger, they stop to assist the driver whose car is stalled on the road; they continue walking across the dark and deserted parking lot. Time and experience had taught me to never do that.
When the hunters closed to within ten yards on either side of me, I dashed straight toward my Camry, moving as if a starter’s pistol had sent me down the track. If I looked foolish, who cared?
The two hunters adjusted their routes and moved to intercept me. They might have managed it, too, if I had stopped to get inside the car. Instead, I continued across the street, running toward Professor Campbell’s house.
Their hands reached under their shirts.
Guns were pulled.
Shots were fired.
“Wait,” one of them shouted. If he was talking to me, he was wasting his breath.
There was a car parked across the street, and I dashed around it, using it for cover.
Bullets tore into it.
I kept running.
“Cease fire, cease fire.”
“He’s getting away.”
Campbell opened her front door and stepped out, holding the door open. What an incredibly foolhardy thing to do, I thought. Did she not know what was happening?
“Taylor, in here,” she said.
Apparently she did know.
I ran straight at her.
Behind me, a voice spoke.
“We were sent to ask questions, dammit.”
I dove across Campbell’s stoop, my arms wide. I hit her high in the chest and drove her back through the door into the house, a perfect flying tackle.
She went down hard. The back of her head hit the floor. I heard a moan.
I rolled onto my back and used my foot to slam the door shut.
My cell was in my hand and I was dialing 911. I didn’t hear any more shooting, yet I kept low as I crawled to Campbell’s picture window just the same. I peeked carefully over the ledge.
“911, where is your emergency?” the voice asked—where, not what.
“Shots fired,” I said, and recited the address of the duplex.
I stood slowly and surveyed both ends of the street through the window. The two hunters had disappeared.
“Is anyone injured?” the operator asked.
I look down at Professor Campbell. She was gasping for the breath I had knocked out of her.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“No, I’m not. Are you?”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know how she’d react, but I felt fine. I felt exhilarated. I didn’t tell the 911 operator that, either.
“I don’t think we need medical attention,” I said.
The operator told me to remain on the phone until help arrived.
I went to Campbell and helped her to her feet.
“That was incredibly brave,” I told her. “Opening the door like that. My God, though. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that there was a neighbor who needed help.”
I eased her into a chair.
“When you threw yourself on top of me, you were trying to protect me, too, weren’t you?” Campbell said. “From the bullets, I mean.”
“Honestly, Alex, I was just trying to knock some sense into you.”
“At least we’re on a first-name basis again.”
* * *
It took ninety-seven seconds before the first officer appeared at the scene and only two and a half minutes before three other squad cars joined him. Seventeen minutes later, Detective Casper of the St. Paul Police Department arrived. He wanted to know if the shooting was connected to the murder of Emily Denys. Six minutes after that, Martin McGaney drove up. He wanted to know the same thing.
I said yes, of course it’s connected.
“How do we know it’s not about something else you’re working on?” Casper asked.
“I heard one of them say they were sent to ask me questions. Apparently the other panicked when I took off and started throwing bullets around.”
“Questions about what?”
“About the Denys killing.”
“Did he say that?”
“Why else would they have been here? Obviously they had staked out the place.”
“Obviously. You’re way too smart to let someone tail you.”
“That’s right. I am.”
“Puhleez.”
“What can you give us besides the camouflage suits?” McGaney asked.
I gave him estimates of age, height, weight, and skin color.
“They had military-style haircuts, one brown, one blond,” I said.
“Is that it?” McGaney threw a thumb in my direction. “He calls himself a trained investigator.”
“I can’t believe I used to work with this guy,” Casper said.
“Did you?”
“For about six months, wasn’t it, Taylor? Just before you pulled the pin?”
“Stop it,” I said.
“’Course, that wasn’t long after Scalasi was promoted over him.”
“Sounds like jealousy to me,” McGaney said.
“She is a woman, so…”
“Stop it,” I repeated.
A door-to-door was conducted; neighbors were questioned. Apparently Mickie Umland had stepped into the shower immediately after I left her place and didn’t see or hear a thing, although she did confirm that I had stopped by to ask questions. But no, she hadn’t seen two camo-wearing hunters carrying handguns beneath their shirts lurking about. Neither, as it turned out, had anyone else within a several-block radius.
Meanwhile, Alexandra gave her statement—gave it several times without wavering. Most eyewitness testimony is unreliable, yet hers was shockingly accurate. It was the scientist in her, I figured. It also reminded me that her testimony against Mrs. Barrington would be formidable.
I asked her several times if she was all right, and so did the others. She said no the first time I inquired, of course, yet ever since Alex had kept insisting that she was fine.
“Shaken,” she said finally, and smiled. “Not stirred.”
That’s what made me think she was hanging on by her fingernails. Why wouldn’t she be? A running gunfight on the front lawn right after breakfast is not a common occurrence for most people.
“I’m sorry about your car,” Casper told her.
“My car?”
“That’s your vehicle parked on the street?”
It was stated as a question, yet Casper already knew the answer. He ran the plates before arranging to have the car towed to the impound lot so forensics could start pulling bullets out of the body.
“Yes, that’s my car,” Alex said.
“It’s pretty badly shot up. If you have comprehensive, your insurance should cover it. Otherwise—”
“My car,” she said. “My poor car.” I knew she could have been just as easily talking about herself.
Alex sat down in the middle of her floor and pressed her limbs together until she was about the size of a beach ball. I sat next to her, wrapping my arms around her shoulders. She leaned her head against my chest.
“It could have been me,” she said.
I made a lot of comforting sounds, and so did the officers, yet at the same time I told myself that this is what comes from opening your door to strangers in need.
We stayed like that for a long time while the officers went through the motions of an investigation. Finally Casper asked, “Professor Campbell, is there someone you can call to stay with you? A friend or relative?”
Alexandra patted my arms, indicating that it was time to let her go. I helped her to her feet.
“I have friends,” she said. “You’re leaving, too, aren’t you, Taylor? To work your case?”
“It’s what I do,” I said.
The way she smiled sadly and shook her head, I think she took more meaning from my words than I meant to put there.