“Mr. Kuchinski, please step outside while Ms. Pennyworth and I talk.”
“No can do, deputy. I’m her lawyer.”
“You’re also a possible witness,” Deputy Sheriff Howard Oldenberg said, gazing steadily at Kuchinski. “I’d think that would make it ethically improper for you to represent anyone involved.”
“Well, I left my copy of the Code of Professional Responsibility back at the office. If you’d like to postpone this interview until I can track that point down, I’m sure Ms. Pennyworth won’t mind.”
“It’s OK, Walt,” Melissa said, looking over her shoulder from the hearth. “I don’t need a lawyer. Even if I had something to hide, all you could tell me is to shut up—and I’m not very good at that.”
“If this weren’t a new shirt I’d rend my garments at such blasphemy,” Kuchinski said as he strode toward the door. “Deputy, you’re interviewing a witness who’s still in traumatic shock and you’re doing it over the objection of her lawyer. Proceed at your peril.” A loud door slam punctuated his exit.
Melissa poked at the listless fire. She had spent nearly an hour with Gael at the rest area while Gael wept herself dry. Then they had agreed that Melissa should come back alone in the Escalade while Rep drove Gael back about a half-hour behind in the Sable.
“My opinion of lawyers just went down,” Oldenberg said. “And I didn’t think that was possible.”
“What can I help you with, deputy?” Melissa asked, husbanding a yellow tongue of flame that was trying bravely to wrap itself around a fresh log.
“Why were you running and why was the decedent chasing you?”
“I was running because I was afraid,” Melissa said. “Your next question is what was I afraid of, and I don’t have a very good answer. I heard strange noises on the property this morning. I had the feeling someone was watching the cabin from hiding. I had no idea Ken was anywhere in the area, and I was startled when he suddenly appeared. When we talked I got the idea he was obliquely trying to warn me about something. I overreacted, panicked, and ran.” Every word literally true and, taken together, quite deceptive.
“What did you think he was trying to warn you about?”
“About a guy named Roger Leopold. There, I think that fire may finally be in good shape.” She rose and found a perch on the couch. “Deputy, why don’t you sit near the fire? You must be chilled after tramping around in the snow all day.”
“Tell me about this Leopold character,” Oldenberg said, as he accepted her invitation. Melissa gave him a thumbnail sketch of the theft from Sue Key’s apartment and the events that had followed from it.
“Ken seemed to be saying there was something to the Leopold story that the police weren’t getting at,” she said then, “but he didn’t really say what. He just implied that my husband and I needed to be very careful.”
“What were his actual words?”
“The gist is what I just told you.” Wood crackled and Melissa felt a burst of warmth from the hearth. “I can’t remember his comments verbatim. Maybe they’ll come back to me after I’ve calmed down a bit.”
“Why was Stewart chasing you?”
“I’d say he was running after me, rather than chasing me. I suppose it was because he thought I was behaving oddly and he was worried about me.”
“I see,” Oldenberg said. “You say you were surprised when the decedent showed up here. We found a lightweight survival tent and a sleeping bag about twenty yards into the woods off the east edge of the property. Would you know anything about that?”
“No. If they’re Ken’s it doesn’t make any sense. This is his client’s cabin and he’d arranged for us to use it. He’d obviously be welcome here.”
“It doesn’t make any sense unless he didn’t want you—or his wife—to know he was here,” Oldenberg said.
“But that doesn’t compute either.”
For almost a minute Oldenberg said nothing. His eyes glinted with a simultaneously wary and expectant expression. As the seconds ticked by, Melissa felt an almost overwhelming urge to speak, to blurt something out just to fill the silent void. She suspected that the reason for Oldenberg’s studied silence was to create that very pressure. She held her peace.
“Ms. Pennyworth, how much do you know about firearms?”
“I can talk a good game because I have to read a lot of crime novels in my work, but I’ve never actually fired a gun. I could tell you, for example, that a lot of professionals these days favor something called a Sig Sauer. If you showed me five handguns right now, though, I couldn’t tell you which was a Sig Sauer and which were something else.”
“Well, what I’m about to show you isn’t a Sig Sauer. It’s a Ruger.”
Oldenberg extracted an unhandy bundle wrapped in an oily cloth from a backpack at his feet. Laying the thing on the floor, he unfolded the cloth to expose the largest handgun Melissa had ever seen—something that might be bought by a guy who had some serious compensation issues. It was a nickel-plated revolver. The barrel had to be eight inches long. A thin bar ran along the top of the gun. Mounted on the bar was a telescopic sight.
I’m finally sure. I almost wish I weren’t. Almost.
“That looks very formidable,” she said.
“It is. It’s designed for hunters who want to go after big game with handguns. We found it on the decedent’s body.”
“But Ken wasn’t a hunter. He hated the very idea of hunting.”
“No, ma’am, I don’t think he brought this gun up here for hunting. It’s a forty-four magnum. Most rifle hunters use something considerably lighter—thirty-ought-six, three-oh-three, thirty-thirty. During deer season, though, you’ll still find some hunters here and there with a forty-four/forty. That’s an Old West rifle caliber, supposedly developed so that cowboys could use the same cartridge with their handguns and their rifles.”
“I see.”
“Ma’am, this Ruger is not a defensive weapon. It’s heavy and inconvenient to carry, and it takes a good six seconds or more to haul it out and deploy it. The decedent brought this gun up here to kill a human being with it, and make it look like a deer hunter with a rifle had done it.”
“You clearly know a lot more about it than I do,” Melissa said. “But it’s awfully hard for me to square that with the Ken Stewart I thought I knew.”
“Who do you think he came up here to kill?”
“I can’t think of a good reason for Ken to kill anybody.”
“How about your husband?”
“Why in the world would Ken want to kill Rep?”
“Why would he sleep outside instead of with his wife?”
“Ah, comes the dawn,” Melissa said. She supposed she ought to feel indignant, but instead she found herself intrigued by Oldenberg’s idea. “You think Ken and I were having an affair. He came up here to kill Rep or Gael or both, with or without my connivance. Either I got cold feet or I found out what he was up to. Whichever, I panicked and ran terrified into the woods. He ran after me to keep from spoiling everything, but with fatal consequences for himself instead of me. Is that your theory?”
“I may have some details wrong here and there,” Oldenberg said. “Why don’t you tell me the way it actually was?”
“Okay, here’s the way it actually was,” Melissa said briskly. “The Milwaukee detective I told you about earlier wanted Rep and me to get out of town for a week to bait Leopold into burglarizing our apartment so the police could catch him. We agreed. Walt Kuchinski—the lawyer who stomped out at the beginning of our interview—invited Rep on a hunting trip, but that left the problem of finding a place to stash me. Ken solved that problem by coming up with this cabin. So your theory that this was all a plot to murder Rep requires either a lot of convenient coincidences or a conspiracy reaching into the heart of the Milwaukee Police Department.”
“You’re sticking with that, are you?”
“Deputy Oldenberg, I was not carrying on an affair with Ken Stewart or anyone else,” Melissa said, her voice ringing effortlessly with conviction now that she could tell the real truth. “I wasn’t cheating on my husband. I’ll agree to a vaginal swab if you’d like to have a nurse check me for Ken’s DNA.”
“I may, at that. But I think you’ve read too many of those crime stories you were talking about.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“Look, this is my job.”
“I know it is, deputy. I’m not upset. Your questions were perfectly proper, and I’m not blaming you for asking them. But your premise is wrong. Ken Stewart’s tragic death had nothing to do with a sexual affair between him and me, because nothing of the kind ever took place.”
“The hunter who shot the decedent is a yooper, but the guys with him are from around here and they vouched for him. So I can’t make the decedent’s death into anything except a hunting accident. But too many things don’t fit. You’re no hysterical schoolgirl, and you didn’t go running into the woods in a blind panic just because you got bad vibes from this guy. There’s something you’re not telling me. You might want to re-think that approach, because if my theory is wrong, then right now I’d say the decedent was right about one thing: you were in danger, and you still are. The sheriff’s office and the Highway Patrol can’t do much for you if you won’t tell me the whole truth.”
Melissa lowered her eyes briefly to show respect for the intense law officer. After all, he was right.
“There’s nothing more I can tell you,” she said.
“Then you’re on your own. Enjoy the rest of the day—what’s left of it. And please get word to me when Ms. Stewart arrives.”
It took Kuchinski forty seconds to come back in after Oldenberg went out. Melissa overheard a short, sharp conversation in the interim.
“How did it go?”
“Fine. What’s a ‘yooper’?”
“Someone from the UP—the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It’s a natural part of Wisconsin, but Michigan wanted it so we gave it to them. Raised the average IQ in both states.”
“That’s the second new thing I’ve learned today,” Melissa said. “I also found out that Ruger makes hunting pistols that look like small cannons.”
“Well, here’s number three. Rep and Gael Stewart are about a hundred yards down Old Logging Road Lane, making themselves scarce until the deputy leaves. She’d like to speak with you alone before she talks to him.”