Her given name was Jeanette.
If she’d gone by Jean, it would have fit. But she went by Nettie. Nettie Frisch. A name that gave rise to the image of a plump woman with frizzy hair, padding around in Birkenstocks.
Nettie Frisch, in the flesh, didn’t fit that image or any of its parts. She was sleek and glossy, with high-shine, precisioncut black hair, chalk white skin, and sharply angled features. She wore only black and white clothes because, she said, it made life simpler.
She got stared at by people trying to reason out the unusual combination of her features. Individually those features were not attractive, but as the result of some mathematical law of aesthetics, in which negative values combine for a positive result, Nettie was, at a minimum, striking. There were many who confused Nettie’s style with beauty, which in Mars’s judgment was a mistake.
When Mars and Chief Turner met after their first conversation about Mars’s future in the department, the chief gave Mars an attractive option. The chief proposed a plan for two special detective units within the Homicide Division. He wanted Mars to head what he called the First Response Unit, which would report directly to the chief. The FRU would
focus on high-profile cases that didn’t have drug or gang connections, could log overtime without prior approval, and could draw resources it needed from anywhere in the department. The chief had informal approval from the police union for the plan and the mayor had committed funding. The second unit would focus on drug- and gang-related homicides and Jim Risser, an officer Mars respected but didn’t much like, would be asked to head that unit. It was a savvy strategy. Mars being given a plum assignment on his own wouldn’t have been doable politically. But Risser was popular on the force and with him as part of the package, it flew. That—and the fact that both jobs were jobs anyone in the division would want to aim for—got it through.
For Mars, it was close to a perfect job. Not just because it gave him access to resources when he needed them, but because it kept him out of the management side of things, which had always been part of other promotion opportunities he’d considered but passed up.
The one thing the chief’s proposal didn’t resolve was Mars’s partner problems.
Mars thought about it and came back with a request. He wanted to pull Nettie Frisch from the division’s administrative section and have her assigned as his partner.
“Why Nettie?” the chief had asked. “I’d give you anybody you wanted. Henderson. Couldn’t do better than Henderson.”
“Because,” Mars said, “I want what I don’t already have. Henderson would just duplicate me. I want somebody who’ll stay on top of the paper, who’ll develop databases, keep track of where we are on different stuff. Nettie’ll do that. Besides which, Nettie thinks real close to the ground. I’ll go off doing what I do, making assumptions that get me in trouble, that lead me off the path, and Nettie will ask a simple question. Exactly the right question. Plain commonsense kind of thing. It’ll bring me right back where I need to be. Henderson—he’d
be off making the same assumptions I’m making. Together we’d get ourselves so deep in the woods we’d never find our way back.”
The chief frowned. “Problem is, I’m gonna have a hell of a time getting the union to go along with pulling someone out of the admin pool and making them a detective. She’s got no training credentials, no uniform experience—”
Mars interrupted. “I’m not suggesting Nettie would be a sworn officer. Not even sure that’s something she’d want. What I’m saying is, instead of putting me with another sworn officer, just give me the administrative support.”
The chief shrugged. “It’s your call. That’s what you want, go get it.”
Nettie came into work every day with a liter bottle of Evian water. She’d walk into the squad room and head straight for the fridge, which sat next to a row of file cabinets on the far wall. She’d put the Evian bottle into the freezer for a couple hours, until it was partially frozen. Then, taking it to her desk, she’d slam the bottle bottom on the top of her desk—causing anyone in the squad room at the time to jump off their chairs. Then she had a bottle of chipped-ice drink she’d swig from for the rest of the day.
When Mars sat down to talk to Nettie about the change, she looked at him hard and without pleasure. “I don’t think that would work for me,” she said.
Mars felt a little silly at his disappointment that she wasn’t sputtering with gratitude at what he offered. Then he realized it wasn’t just a crazy scheme he’d pulled out of the air in response to the chief’s open-ended offer. He’d been counting on her to take the job to make his own new job work.
He tried to stay calm. “Why not?”
“What about my Evian water?”
“Your Evian water? What does your Evian water have to do with you getting promoted as my partner?”
“Unless you’re willing to put a freezer in the backseat of the Pontiac, I don’t see how it would work. I really need icecold Evian to get through the day.”
“You’re not listening, Nettie. I don’t want a partner riding around with me in the Pontiac holding on to a lukewarm bottle of Evian. I want you right here. Holding down the fort, doing your thing on the computer. Keeping the investigation organized. Pretty much what you do now, except you’d be dedicated to the investigations I’d be working on. I wouldn’t have to stand in line to get you to do stuff. We could work whatever hours we needed to.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, that would be okay. I guess. As long as I don’t have to run all over town dealing with the scum of the earth.”
“I’ll even move your desk right next to the fridge, if that’d make a difference.”
“No, that won’t be necessary.”
Mars called Nettie at around 9:30 P.M. There was no answer first time around, but she picked up on the first ring when he called at 9:45.
“Hello?”
“Chris said I needed to call.”
“Did he say why?”
“Dead girl found down on the Father Hennepin Bluffs.”
“I bet it was that girl—what was her name, the one the detox crew thought was dead when they picked her up last week—Wanda something. The Indian girl.”
“Nope. Near as I know, Wanda still walks the earth, although probably not in a straight line. The girl we found was a beautiful blond from Edina. I spent most of the afternoon
with her folks, trying to get them and Phil Keck to believe something this bad could be real.”
“Oh, my God. Her Honor must be having a cow.”
“Her Honor is counting on me, and by association on you, to pin this one on a fellow Edinan. Wash our urban hands of the mess, so to speak. I trust you had no more compelling plans for the remainder of the evening?”
“I’ll be down in about a half hour.”
By the time Nettie showed up in black jeans and a black cotton V-neck over a starched white shirt, Mars had three possible lines of investigation worked out. Flipping his cigarette box back and forth between his right and left hands, he laid it out.
First, that Mary Pat Fitzgerald had either planned to meet her boyfriend at Southdale or he planned to run into her there. That the boyfriend had talked Mary Pat down to the bluffs and killed her—for whatever reason.
Second, that Mary Pat had run into someone she knew at Southdale—other than the boyfriend—and for reasons unknown, the two of them had decided to go to the bluffs. And that person had, for whatever reason, done the deed.
Third, when Mary Pat went out to the parking lot and found her car with a flat tire, she started to walk the seven, eight blocks between Southdale and Cornelia Drive. On the way, someone offered her a ride that ended with Mary Pat dead on the bluffs.
Of the three possibilities, the logical one was the first. The one that felt right to Mars was the third. But it was too early to say why.
He and Nettie worked out what Nettie needed to do over the next forty-eight hours. Nettie would start putting together the case profile they’d run through the FBI’s database. Nettie would maintain contacts with the Edina investigators doing
basic legwork with the folks at Southdale. Nettie would work up and assign interviews to patrolmen to conduct along the bluffs. Nettie would work with the Public Affairs Office to get a statement ready for the press, making sure it got cleared first through the chief’s office, and in this case, the mayor’s office as well.
That sorted out, they sat back and took stock of where they were. Mars said, “You’ve got fifteen seconds: ‘God forgive me, but I love it.’”
“Patton. George C. Scott is standing on the battlefield looking at a bunch of dead bodies.”
Mars snapped his fingers. “Bingo.”
Nettie said, “Now that the games have begun, what’s first on your to-do list?”
“I need to start lining up what we’ve got on each of our three theories underlying the investigation so I can start proving—or disproving—the theories. Once we can narrow down the investigation to one of the three, it’s going to help a lot. And I’ve got to pin down what we know, what we don’t know, where we can find out what we need to know.”
Nettie stretched and yawned. “Well. I think I’m ready for tomorrow. You going back to your apartment at all tonight?”
“Nah. Think I’ll keep going while I’ve got adrenaline working for me. Oh, geez. I told Phil Keck I’d call him about six hours ago. I wonder if the asshole has moved from the phone since then.”
“It’ll keep him out of trouble if he hasn’t. I’m shoving off. See you in the A.M.”
“It is the A.M., Nettie.”
“So? I’m still right.”
When the adrenaline ran out, Mars couldn’t have said for sure. But he’d been sleeping with his head down on his desk
when something caused him to wake with a start around 7:00 A.M.
Doc D was sitting at Nettie’s desk, reading the Sunday paper. In violation of all city administrative policies, Doc D held a burning cigarette in his right hand.
“You were up all night?” Mars asked, rubbing his eyes.
Doc D continued reading the paper. “No. Wasn’t much of a job. Like we were saying at the scene, there’s not a lot coming out of this one.” He drew the pages of the paper together, flapped it shut, and pulled a narrow notebook from his back pocket.
Squinting at the notebook, he said, “Couple of things, though.”
Mars smiled. “You want some coffee?”
“If it’s being offered, I wouldn’t say no.”
Doc D started talking while Mars walked over to the coffeepot Nettie’d left on. Mars sloshed the dregs of the pot into a paper cup and carried the cup back to Doc D.
“What I find most intriguing—apart from the fact there’s so little of the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a violent death—is that the kid had a belly full of gin. Blood alcohol was high—point two-one—but nothing like it would have been if what was in her stomach had made it into her bloodstream before she died. If all that gin had made it into her bloodstream, the gin alone coulda killed her.”
Half to himself, Mars said. “Like mother, like daughter.”
“Say what?”
“I was just thinking that the kid’s mother looked like an alkie to me.” Mars got up and shook himself. Walked around to loosen up, get the juices flowing again. “You said at the scene that you’d thought you’d be able to tell better what the weapon was? …”
“Looks like, say, a three-eighths-inch screwdriver. A veryclean entry wound, directly to the aorta, delivered with enormous
force. No shoving in some, taking another draw and shoving again. Then, once it was all the way in, he did a nice little twist—holding the shaft pretty straight—that tore the shit out of the aorta but left the entry wound smooth. Very nice piece of work if you wanted someone to lose a lot of blood fast, and not make much of a mess while you were at it.”
“How long would she have lived after she took the hit?”
“Given the hole in the aorta, she would have gotten lightheaded within, say, fifteen seconds. Blacked out in another forty-five seconds. In combination with the alcohol, she wouldn’t have been able to stand up after she got the shiv.”
“No sexual assault?”
“Well, she wasn’t the Virgin Mary, if you take my point. But there was no evidence of recent intercourse, no sperm or any trauma to the vagina. What I did find under the scalp was a very substantial cephalohematoma. Fresh. Someone had grabbed her good by the hair—so hard that the scalp separated from the cranium. The cephalohematoma was toward the rear of the cranium, on the right side, and under her jaw, left side, there was a puncture wound. Barely enough to draw blood, but enough to hurt. Remember the dirt on the knees of the pants? My guess is you had it about right. The guy had her kneel down, so he’d have real good leverage, then he grabbed her by the hair with one hand and stuck her under the jaw with the pick.”
“I’m not getting it. What is it he wants her to do? She hasn’t been raped, she wasn’t robbed. What’s the guy’s motive to go for the aorta? She’s got enough alcohol in her system to let him pretty much do whatever he wants anyway. If it’s a rage killing, one jab isn’t gonna provide much gratification.” Mars sighed. “Or why, if she was as drunk as she was, would he have to use an ice pick to get her in line. I’m not liking this. What else have you got?”
Doc D stubbed out his cigarette and did not, as was his practice, immediately light another. He looked at Mars directly. “This is what I found most interesting. You remember the Weissie wristwatch? Stopped at eleven-oh-five on the third? With a blood alcohol of point two-one, she wouldn’t have been capable of doing the fine motor movements she’d need to stop the watch. Especially if she was trying to do it without someone noticing her doing it. So when she did it, she was more or less sober.” Doc D stopped, took out a cigarette, but did not light it.
“My guess is that—for whatever reason—the guy grabbed her hair, stuck her under the chin with the pick—and that’s the moment she knew she was in trouble. That’s when she stopped the watch. She started drinking, or at least started drinking heavily after she stopped the watch. Then you’ve gotta ask yourself, why would she start drinking with the guy after she knows she’s in trouble? And not just have a drink to pretend to be sociable, to try and talk her way out of trouble. Drink enough to get her blood alcohol to point two-one. I mean, go figure. At eleven-oh-five she thought she was going to die. I’m guessing if you could find out why she’d get drunk once she knew that, you’d have something worth knowing.”