By noon on Monday Danny Borg had identified Owen Cook’s photo as the man he had talked with on River Road on Friday. The photos he had looked at included a shot of Andrew Shard, but Borg hadn’t even blinked at Shard’s picture.
Shortly after Borg’s identification, Nettie confirmed with the Missing Persons Division that Andrew Shard’s red Volvo had a Wellstone bumper sticker. The Volvo had two parking tickets on the windscreen. The first ticket was issued Saturday morning, the second had been issued after the ticketing officer had noticed the first ticket and called in the plate numbers to find that the car’s owner had been reported missing. Nettie had checked with both the Minneapolis Park Patrol and the Third Precinct on other parking tickets that had been issued in the area on Friday. Tickets had been issued along West River Road Friday morning, but nothing on Friday afternoon. The next ticket issued had been Saturday morning when Shard’s Volvo got the first tag. What that gave them was strong evidence that Shard had parked the car between noon and the time Danny Borg saw the car Friday afternoon. In other words, Shard arrived at the river during the critical time period.
“Time to talk with Mrs. Shard,” Mars said. But first he called Sgt. Dale Nelson in Missing Persons to let him know
where they stood on the floater. Nelson was a workmanlike cop who liked regular hours and avoided getting emotionally involved in his cases. He was delighted that it looked like the floater was going to clear the Shard case.
“I’m just about to call Janet Shard,” Mars said. “Anything I should know before I do that?”
Nelson laughed. “Good luck. All I can say is, if I were married to that woman, I’d be missing too.”
Janet Shard picked up on the first ring. Her voice was tight, edgy.
Mars said, “Mrs. Shard? I’m Special Detective Marshall Bahr with the Minneapolis Police Department. I’m calling in connection with a case that may be related to your husband’s disappearance … .” Without being aware that he’d done it, Mars had pronounced her name Share-ed.
“If you’re going to have a shot at finding my husband, Detective Bahr, I think you should start by pronouncing his name right. It’s Shard, not Share-ed. You go around town asking about a guy named Share-ed, and you’re not going to get a lot of right answers.”
What a pisser, is what Mars thought.
“Actually, Mrs. Shard—”
“I prefer Ms. Shard.”
Mars paused. “Actually, Ms. Shard, I’m not directly involved in investigating your husband’s disappearance. As I said, I have a case that may be related. I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time for some questions that may—”
“Detective, I really don’t have time to solve other people’s problems.”
Mars said, not meaning it, “I can understand your frustration.”
“No, you can’t, Detective. I went from being a vested member of the upper middle class to having enough debt to
keep me homeless until I die—all thanks to my husband. Between you, me, and anybody else who cares to know, I don’t give a flying fuck what happened to the guy. You want to find him or anybody he knew, I suggest you run a nationwide search on blood banks. That was how he got walking-around money and change for the quarter slots at Mystic Lake Casino. I told the same thing to Sgt. Nelson. From where I sit, he doesn’t turn up, I’m in debt for the rest of my life. He turns up a suicide, and I’ve got enough insurance that maybe I’ll be out of debt by menopause. Now, if you can find he died a natural death—then I might just be ahead of the game financially, and you and I might have something worth talking about.”
Mars said, “How you feel about his turning up a murder victim?” He’d caught her off guard, which gave him considerable satisfaction.
Her words were sarcastic, but her voice was serious. “I’d have to work real hard to keep from jumping for joy.”
Mars quickly went through the connections he had between Cook and Andrew Shard. Janet Shard asked, “Okay—so what do you need from me?”
“I’ll want you to confirm some details, and I’d like to know if there’s any reason your husband might have been near the Lake Street Bridge and West River Parkway on Friday afternoon.”
“That’s easy. Andrew rowed. It was one of the few things he kept up—other than playing blackjack and the slots—and he was a member at the Minneapolis Rowing Club. The boathouse is, like, a half block north of the Lake Street Bridge on River Road.”
Which is where they found the car, Mars thought, but did not say. What he had to say next was easier because Ms.
Shard clearly wasn’t going to be blown away by the possibility that her husband was dead.
“Ms. Shard, I think we have some pretty strong circumstantial evidence that our suspect killed your husband. What would be very useful would be locking that likelihood down with DNA analysis. Our County Coroner’s Office has ordered a DNA profile on the body we found. What I want to do is create a profile for your husband, which will show he was the victim, not our suspect. You have children, Ms. Shard?”
Her answer was slow. “This is the first time I’ve regretted not having children with Andrew … .”
“Other relatives? Mother, father, siblings …”
She was silent. “This might be a problem. I’ve been married to Andrew for seven years. He said his mother died when he was in grade school and his dad died the year he got out of law school. His father’s second wife had a kid from a previous marriage—but there weren’t any other kids.”
“Were the parents buried?”
“His dad was cremated. His mom? I don’t know. I can try to find out.”
Mars bounced a pencil on its eraser a couple times. “Do that, Ms. Shard. In the meantime, if you’ll give us permission, I’ll have a technician come out to your house and collect any personal belongings of your husband’s that might provide cells for testing—hairbrushes, razors—things like that.”
“That’s gonna be real easy. I dumped anything he’d ever touched into cardboard boxes. They’re stacked in the garage.”
Definitely a pisser, is what Mars thought as he hung up. He sat by the phone for a while. He’d better hope Ms. Shard turned up some blood relatives. He didn’t want Glenn Gjerde going into court arguing that the DNA match between Andrew Shard and their floater was based on trace evidence from a razor that had been found in Shard’s garage.
He heard the rattle and slosh of Nettie’s Evian bottle behind him. He looked over his shoulder. “Just talked to our floater’s wife.”
“That must have been a little rough.”
“Not really. She’s pissed. Sounds like he was a gambler, left her chin-high in debt. She’ll stand on her head to help us prove her husband was murdered, and won’t shed a tear while she’s at it. Problem is, we may have a tough time coming up with relatives for DNA analysis—” Mars stopped. “Jeez.” He sat forward and redialed Ms. Shard’s number.
“Ms. Shard? Special Detective Bahr again. Sorry to bother you, but I started to think about what you said about your husband being a blood donor. You have any idea where he was donating?”
Nettie took over tracking where Andrew Shard had been donating blood—and, if where he donated blood could be located, determining if Andrew Shard’s donated blood was still available for DNA typing.
“We get blood,” Nettie said, “then what?”
“I’m not waiting for blood or for the results of DNA analysis,” Mars said. “We need that for court, but as far as I’m concerned, we have solid evidence that Owen Cook is alive. My priority right now is to find Cook before he leaves town.”
“What makes you think he’s still in town?”
“Well—first off—nothing’s turned up from the net we set up on Friday at the airport, Amtrak, the bus depots, and rental car agencies … .” He held up a hand to keep Nettie from challenging what he’d just said. They’d faxed alerts with photos to all public transportation sites in the seven-county metropolitan area on Friday. In addition, they’d put holds on Cook’s credit cards. But Mars knew the net wasn’t fail-safe. “What we’ve really got going for us is that I think Cook is going to be real edgy about trying to get out of town while
he thinks we’re still actively investigating his disappearance. I think he’s smart enough to know that, for now, we’re going to be looking for him at all the places he needs to go to get out. So I think he’s going to lay low for a few days.”
Nettie said, “That I can buy. So we’re going to rely on our net to catch him when he decides to make a move?”
Mars bounced the pencil on its eraser again. “Not much else to do at this point. Right now, I’m going across the street to get a commitment from Glenn Gjerde to support us legally on anything we need to locate Cook.”
Nettie pulled a face. “Good luck.”
Three things surprised Mars about his meeting with Glenn Gjerde. First, Glenn’s office—which was normally stacked floor to ceiling with legal files and Glenn’s athletic equipment—was bare. Second, Glenn was wearing something that vaguely resembled a suit. And third, in Glenn’s own words, the case Mars presented sounded “one hundred percent copacetic.” Mars should just give Glenn a whistle if he needed search or arrest warrants, extradition orders—whatever.
“So you’re on board on this.” Mars felt a little like Charlie Brown looking at Lucy holding the football.
“Like I said. One hundred percent. God, the evidence you’ve already got? I could take this into court this afternoon, and I guarantee you, half hour into our evidence, the jury would rise en masse and scream, ‘Enough already, let the sucker swing.’”
“That’s assuming I had the sucker in custody by this afternoon and that the state legislature held a special session in the next two hours to enact a capital punishment statute—”
“Admittedly a bit of a stretch. But you get my point. You’re on solid ground, Detective. I can prosecute this one blindfolded with my shorts on backwards. Bring me Cook, and you’ve got drive-through justice.”
Mars nodded, still feeling like there was something more he wanted to do. He’d come prepared for an argument. Looking around Glenn’s office, he said, “What happened in here, anyway?”
“I got busted. County has a cleaning contract with a company that hires South American immigrants to clean. Don’t speak English. In fact, I’m going to check into it. I’d bet anything they’re illegal. Anyway, for as long as I’ve been in this office, I’ve had a sign up on the door saying that cleaning staff is not to enter. First day on the contract, these South Americans come in and decide nobody’s gonna notice if they have a cigarette—like, I wouldn’t smell it immediately in the morning. So they’re sitting in here smoking, and a live ash lands on one of the legal files. A fire starts. Fire department comes. Fire department puts out the fire. Hardly any damage. Fire department issues a complaint saying my office was a fire hazard. Gives me thirty days to get it cleaned up … .”
“What did you do with all the stuff?”
“Friend’s got a pickup. Loaded it all in the pickup. Took it home.”
“Took it home?”
“Wait. You haven’t heard anything. Fire department’s complaint gets reported to country administration. They hold a review hearing with the Hennepin County District Attorney. I mean it. With Jill. The DA herself. The review concerns my fucking professional conduct. Not my conviction record, mind you. But whether my office is neat, whether I dress appropriately in the courtroom, the fact that I bring my bike into the building. Really important stuff. Then I get a disciplinary notice: clean office, no bike in the building, suit in the courtroom. To her credit, Jill said she was sorry, but the precedent argument—you know, if one county employee does this stuff, everybody can do it, except it would be unmanageable if everybody did it so nobody can do it. Bottom
line: I’ve gotta walk around looking like Donald Fucking Trump … .”
Mars, who had heard more than enough about Glenn’s lifestyle change, backed toward the door. “Don’t worry, Glenn. You don’t look anything like Donald Trump.”