SIX

I KNEW DENNIS Thoreau’s neighborhood well. It wasn’t far from the College of St. Thomas, where I spent several years deciding what to do with my life. That was before it became the University of St. Thomas and turned the surrounding residential area into a parking lot. School was in session, and I was forced to walk three blocks to Thoreau’s house from the nearest open parking space.

The house was in the middle of the block. It was a small, weathered two-story in need of paint and surrounded by a neglected lawn. There was an unattached one-car garage in back facing a rutted dirt alley that must have been tough to negotiate in winter. I knocked on Thoreau’s door and waited. I knocked again and waited some more. I walked around the house, looking through the windows. The front windows showed me nothing. However, through a side window I could see a man wearing a royal blue bathrobe lying on the carpet between the front door and the bottom of the staircase. I went back to the front door and worked the lock with a pick and wire I keep hidden in the lining of my sports jacket—it’s illegal to carry burglary tools in Minnesota. It gave easily enough and I squeezed through the opening, trying not to disturb the body by bumping it with the door.

“Oh Christ!” I cried when the odor hit me, and I fought off a sudden urge to vomit. It was the kind of smell that you never forget, that you never confuse with anything other than what it is: the odor of decaying flesh, the smell of death. When I worked Homicide, I used to stick cigarette filters up my nostrils to mask the smell. Sometimes I would smoke a cigar; a lot of wagon men would smoke cigars. Unfortunately, I had long since given up smoking.

I found myself taking short, shallow breaths as I bent to the body, trying hard not to gag; beads of sweat formed on my forehead and my eyes began to water. He was nude except for the bathrobe. From C. C.’s description, I guessed it was Thoreau; his eyes were open, they were brown. There was a single bullet hole just above his right eyebrow but not much blood—a dark, dry ring encircled the hole; a dribble, also dry, followed the contour of Thoreau’s nose to the floor. The back of his head was intact—no exit wound. He had been shot with a small caliber, a .22 maybe. I guessed by the odor he was at least three days dead.

Travel brochures littered the floor around his body, most of them for the Caribbean. One brochure, for Martinique, was wedged under his thigh. Was that where he planned to go with the money?

I did a quick three-sixty. The house was a shambles; it had been systematically destroyed, searched by someone who knew what he was doing. Chair cushions had been ripped open, carpet taken up, light fixtures removed; in the kitchen, food packages had been emptied onto the table and floor. I debated returning to my car for the rubber surgical gloves I keep—where else?—in my glove compartment. I decided against it and hunted slowly through the rubble for something that might have been overlooked, being careful not to touch anything that might hold a print. I found nothing. It was a very professional job and must have taken hours. I went upstairs and found more of the same—even the toilet tank had been torn away from the bathroom wall. In the bedroom, the king-sized mattress had been cut open, the box spring overturned. The contents of Thoreau’s bureau had been strewn around the room.

It was while standing in the bedroom, sweating like a pig, that I heard it: the sound of a car door slamming. I went to the window, tripping on a tripod in my haste. Three squad cars bearing the distinctive blue stripe of the St. Paul Police Department had gathered in the middle of the street. One officer was standing next to his vehicle, looking at the house—I guessed one of Thoreau’s neighbors must have seen me pick his lock and called it in. I cursed and moved away from the window. Again I tripped on the tripod. “Dammit,” I swore, then thought better of it. The tripod was attached to a video camera; apparently it had been set at the foot of the bed. I checked the camera and was amazed to find it contained a tape. I yanked it out and glanced through the window again. The officers were approaching cautiously, hands on their holstered guns. I cursed some more. The last thing I needed was to be caught breaking and entering a house containing a murder victim with ten thousand dollars cash in my pocket—more than enough to buy a couple of guys dead.

The upstairs consisted of a bathroom and two bedrooms. The second bedroom, which had also been carefully explored, had a window that opened up over the backyard. It wasn’t quite as high as my father’s roof. I kicked out the screen, hoping it didn’t make too much noise, and jumped. I hit the ground with both feet, jabbed myself in the eye with the tape, rolled, came up running. I made the alley without anyone shooting at me and did not stop until I hit the street. From there I walked as casually as possible toward the St. Thomas campus, trying hard not to stare at the blue Ford parked at the corner.

I found a restroom in a white brick building—Murray Hall, it was called—and inspected the damage to my eye. There was a slight swelling, hardly noticeable. Good. I didn’t need any distinguishing marks. Next I went searching for the bookstore, which wasn’t where I left it fifteen years earlier, asked directions and was pointed toward a building that hadn’t existed when I was a student. It cost me seventy-nine dollars to disguise myself with a red backpack printed with the university’s logo and a large, used textbook—A History of Western Civilization. I put the videotape and my jacket into the bag and slung it over my shoulder. I carried the textbook in my hand and slowly made my way to the campus grill where I sat at a corner table. I opened the book to Chapter Sixteen—“The Inquisition”—sipped a Dr. Pepper and waited for a K-9 unit to sniff me out.

College life swirled around me—it seemed more exciting than it really was. I know many people who would love to relive their school days. Not me. Except for the occasional course taught by the rare enthusiastic professor, I hated college. I spent nearly three years there working toward a business degree before deciding, out of sheer boredom, to transfer to a community college and try for a law-enforcement degree instead.

The grill filled and emptied at approximately fifty-minute intervals with young men and women—children, really, although I wouldn’t have said so when I was their age—most of them taking life too seriously, not really appreciating how serious it can be.

As my heartbeat slowed to normal, I eavesdropped on four young women who encompassed the spectrum of natural hair color: black, blond, brown and red. They were sitting two tables away and talking about presenting a resolution to the All Student Council demanding the adoption of politically correct language on campus—“womyn” instead of “women,” “freshperson” instead of “freshman,” “teenage womyn” instead of “girl.”

Their conversation annoyed me. None of their demands addressed the real problems facing women in today’s society, problems such as being paid only sixty-five cents for every dollar earned by a man, such as inadequate day care for children, such as sexual discrimination, harassment and abuse. None of them addressed the problem of a man with a neat little hole in his forehead not six blocks away. I pushed that last image out of my brain and concentrated on the women, wondering why they seemed so much more attractive than the women with whom I’d gone to college.

I gave it forty-five minutes; then I left the grill and made my way to the library, surprised and pleased by the number of students who actually sat reading within its silent walls. I found a spot near a window that looked out over Cleveland Avenue and watched for the cops. I gave it three hours and two chapters of the text. I could have read more but I was too busy glancing at the door and jumping at every noise. Finally, I took a deep breath, tossed the bag over my shoulder, tucked the book under my arm and strolled back to my car, walking several blocks out of my way to avoid going near Thoreau’s house.