The message was on his desk when Mars Bahr walked into the squad room of the Minneapolis Police Department Homicide Division.
Call Danny Borg.
He looked at it for a moment before turning to see his partner, Nettie Frisch, come across the room from the direction of the employee lounge. The message wasn’t in her handwriting, but he asked her anyway.
“You know what Borg wants?”
“Wasn’t here when he called.” In front of her computer, Nettie immediately focused on the monitor. She took a big gulp from a partially frozen bottle of Evian water and said, without looking at him, “He probably just wanted to hear your voice.”
Mars sifted through stuff on his desk that had come in while he’d been out. Nothing urgent. Things were slow. Minnesota Nice was in ascendance; the city was in danger of losing its hard-earned sobriquet as Murderapolis. He dropped papers back on the desk and glanced over at Nettie. It struck him that something was wrong. It took him a minute, then he said, “You’re wearing denim, Nettie. What happened to the black-and-white-only rule?”
“Denim is consistent with the rule. The reason I made the only-wear-black-and-white rule was to keep my life simple. Denim doesn’t make my life complicated. Plaid
would be complicated. What I want to avoid is having too many options.”
“There’s no such thing as too many options, Nettie. Not in our business.” Mars shifted his attention back to Borg’s message, the only thing on his desk with any promise of being interesting. He stretched back in his chair and dialed the downtown command.
Mars had worked with Borg on another case and had been impressed by Danny’s hustle. Borg wasn’t the most sensitive guy around, but Mars had liked his commitment and energy. Some cops, even good ones, went for the easy answers in an investigation. Borg focused on hard questions.
The duty officer in the downtown command said Borg was out on patrol, but offered to page him. Mars hung up and looked at his watch, making a bet with himself that Borg would call back in less than five minutes. Mars got up to walk back to the lounge for a Coke, but his phone rang before he’d made it out of the squad room.
Danny Borg’s voice was breathless. “Special Detective Bahr? I apologize for missing your call.”
Mars shook his head. One of Borg’s endearing characteristics was a deep capacity for reverence, which was fine except that Mars had become the object of Borg’s worship. He’d told Borg to drop the title and call him Mars almost a year ago. Borg’s response had been, “Yes, sir. I’ll do that, sir.”
“Not a problem, Danny. What’s on your mind.”
Danny Borg’s voice lowered. “Do you recall hearing about the guy who hung himself in his office last week? There was a big article on the front page of the Metro/State section on Monday …”
“I remember seeing the article. Sounded like a slam-dunk suicide. This is the guy who’d gone bust, right?”
“Yeah. Frank Beck. He’d lost his business, most of his family kind of backed off on him—and the ME’s office found out he had colon cancer when they did the autopsy.”
“Yeah. I definitely remember reading about it. Homicide never got a referral—at least, it never came to me. And it
would definitely be my kinda case if someone thought it was a homicide.”
Borg didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice had dropped another octave. “No, there wasn’t any referral to homicide. My sergeant’s decision. I was the investigating officer on the scene. Got sent over when the nine-one-one call came in.” Borg hesitated again. “The thing is, sir, I did recommend a referral to homicide, but my sergeant said ‘No way.’ And on the face of it, I can understand that. It’s just that there were a couple things I thought merited a second look. But my sergeant is saying to leave things as they are. He’s probably right … .”
“Tell me why you thought it should have been referred.”
“There were two things. A number written on the guy’s arm, and I couldn’t find anything that connected to those numbers. No bank accounts, pin numbers, nothing. That, and I couldn’t find where the guy got the fabric for the noose. For that matter, I couldn’t find anyone who knew him who said Frank Beck knew how to tie a hangman’s knot. What everybody said about him was that Beck wasn’t a detail guy. He was a big idea man. Was sloppy about doing anything that required a long attention span. So I have to ask myself, how’d a guy like that tie a picture-perfect hangman’s knot?”
Mars didn’t say anything right away. He bounced a pencil on his desk and thought about it. His first reaction was that if Danny Borg had a gut feeling something wasn’t right on a death, that in itself was enough to bring homicide in. And he agreed with Borg that questions about the number and the noose should be resolved.
“Let’s do this. Send me a copy of your report from the scene, the medical examiner’s report, and anything you took from the scene. I’ll look it over. If anything comes out of our review, we’ll open an investigation. No promises, but I agree with you. It sounds like we should know more than we do about the number and the noose.”
“I really appreciate that, sir. The other thing is, Beck’s youngest son was pretty torn up about what happened. Either
way—it stays a suicide or you find out something that makes it a homicide—the kid is going to feel better being sure. He’s a good kid, just started college last fall. The only one who stuck by his dad when things got really tough.” Borg hesitated again, then said, “I hate to put you on the spot, but can we handle this without a formal referral? I mean, without the paperwork and everything? Like I said, my sergeant hasn’t authorized …”
“Don’t worry about it. Just send me what I asked for. We’ll worry about paperwork if we decide to open an investigation.”
Without looking at Mars after he hung up with Borg, Nettie said, “What was that about?”
“Remember reading about the guy who hanged himself in his office—about a week ago?”
Nettie gave Mars a look.
Mars ignored the look, and said, “Borg thinks there are a couple of issues we should review before closing the file.”
Nettie put words behind the look. “C’mon, Mars. There was nothing—less than nothing—to suggest this might be a homicide. And lots to support suicide. From what I read, this guy had every reason to die and nothing to live for.”
Mars nodded. “I agree—from what I read at the time. Nothing that raised any flags, that’s for sure. But I also remember from what I read that the family was pretty devastated. First the financial losses, then the suicide, then finding out after the fact that the guy had cancer. And Borg said Beck’s youngest son is taking it pretty hard. I don’t mind taking a look at the file and talking to the kid. If it’ll make him feel any better …”
Nettie said, “I know what’s happening here. You’re projecting.”
“I’m what?”
“You’re projecting. You’re thinking, ‘What if something happened to me, and Chris needed to talk to someone about what happened?’”
Mars made a face. “So what you’re saying, is, I make decisions about work priorities based on stuff that I connect to
my ten-year-old son? I don’t think so. If my taking an afternoon to look at the file helps a family accept the medical examiner’s conclusion, I’d say the public interest is being served. Chalk it up to goodwill. Something the department needs as much of as it can get.”
“What I’m saying is the First Response Unit is already having credibility problems, what with the murder rate being down nearly seventy percent since we got the FRU assignment. Chasing around trying to make a big deal out of a case the downtown command has already called a suicide isn’t going to win us any friends.”
Mars shifted in his chair and turned away from Nettie. “Winning popularity contests has always been my weak suit. If we can’t keep our enemies off our backs, we might as well make them happy by giving them something to whine about.”
“Project away, if it’ll make you feel better,” Nettie said.
Mars was on his way out of the squad room when the phone rang. He walked back to his desk, looked at the caller ID, and picked up.
“Hi, Karen. Dinner off?”
“Nuh. Just that I’ve had a hell of a week. I want to go someplace really nice. Someplace with cloth napkins and good wine.”
“Fine with me. As long as they don’t water the Coca-Cola. You’ve got somewhere special in mind?”
“Restaurant Alma. It’s new. On University, between Fifth and Sixth Avenue. Ted and I had dinner there a week ago with some of his clients. It was sublime.”
“So I’ll meet you there at seven?”
Karen was silent for a moment. “Mars, you’ve got to promise me something.”
“Depends on what it is.”
“Dinner tonight is on me—” Mars started to protest, but Karen came back at him fast. “I mean it, Mars. I know how much you make and I know what your child support payments
are. You can’t afford to eat at Alma. And I don’t want to stint on what I order because I’m worrying about what you can afford. I want to have salad, an expensive entrée, dessert, coffee—I want to order whatever I want without thinking about it. And the only way I’ll do that is if you do the same and I pay. Don’t be a bonehead about this, Mars. If it were the other way around, we wouldn’t even be discussing this.”
“It’s my son you should be having dinner with if you’re bent on charity. He could bankrupt you in two courses without even ordering a glass of wine.”