My auto-body man laughed when I said I wanted to bring the Audi in for an estimate. Apparently he got a kick out of repairing bullet holes— he actually seemed disappointed that there were only two this time. I told him that since my business brought him such mirth and merriment, he should give me a break on the price. He told me he’d give me a magnetic calendar for my refrigerator. I figured he might sweeten the offer, though, when I discovered a third bullet hole, this one lodged in the back of the car between the trunk lid and bumper. Funny I had missed it before, I told myself. The body shop was backed up and couldn’t service me for a couple of days, so I left the Audi in the garage and drove to the Rosedale Center in my old Jeep Cherokee.
Joley called later that morning.
I had just replaced my drowned cell phone. The aggressive young lady staffing the kiosk at Rosedale had attempted to sell me a device with enough features to manage the space program. It had e-mail, text messaging, Internet search engines, a music and video player, a camera, maps and a step-by-step navigation system, games, an address book, a calendar, a memo pad, and voice-activated dialing. I asked if it also made and received phone calls, and she looked like at me as if I were Robinson Crusoe, just rescued from a deserted island after a couple of decades. Eventually I settled on a sturdy flip-phone, even though it came with several features that I expected never to use, like the camera, and she helped me program it to accept my cell number. I designated the Johnny Mercer–Jo Stafford cover of “Blues in the Night” as the ringtone, only the first time I heard it on the tinny speaker, I decided to change it.
“Hi, Joley,” I said.
“McKenzie,” she said. Enough time passed that I thought the cell phone had already failed me, but there was a muffled sound as if she had covered the mouthpiece of her phone, followed by, “Oh, McKenzie.”
She must have heard about Scottie, my inner voice told me. I said, “Are you all right, Joley?”
“I’m… Yes, I’m fine. Could you come over? Could you come over to my house? Please?” Her voice seemed stilted and artificial; it held none of its usual seductive charm. She’s in mourning, my inner voice said.
“I can come over,” I said.
“Please hurry.”
It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have, talking about Scottie, yet I hurried as promised, parking the Cherokee in front of her place. Maybe you should get her out of the house, I told myself. Take her to an early lunch someplace crowded, where she’d be less likely to break down. I was considering a few spots as I walked up her sidewalk. I was halfway to the door when it opened abruptly. I expected to see her standing there, grieving for her lost love. Instead, I saw a man dressed in white coveralls and a black ski mask. That’s not what started me running, though. It was the handgun that I could clearly see when he pushed open the screen door.
I heard a single gunshot as I dodged to my left. I was accelerating quickly, pumping my arms the way I had been taught during my junior year in high school when I tried running track and playing baseball at the same time. I crossed Joley’s yard and her neighbor’s yard and the yard next to that. I had been a sprinter and proud of it, yet when I reached the hundred-meter mark I started doing the same thing I had done in school—I slowed down. A quick glance over my shoulder showed me that the man in the coveralls was still in pursuit. I couldn’t tell if he was gaining or not. He was carrying the handgun in his right hand. He brought the hand up as if he were going to try for a running shot. By then I had reached the street, and I cut hard to my right. If he fired the gun, I didn’t hear it.
I had no idea where I was going. I was just running, pumping my arms because Coach told me you can run only as fast as you can pump your arms. I was pumping them slower and slower. I had been slacking off for months now. Walking through my martial arts classes, watching TV instead of hitting the exercise equipment in my basement, finding something else to do other than Rollerblade five miles a day while carrying weights in each hand, like I used to. I told myself I’d get back in shape when I started playing hockey again. Well, good luck with that if you can’t even run a lousy half mile from a killer with a gun in his hand, my inner voice said.
I glanced behind me again. At least the shooter was struggling, too. He slowed, then stopped altogether, resting his hands on his knees and gulping oxygen. I took refuge behind a parked car and watched him, ready to begin running when he did. Only he didn’t, lucky me. He brought his gun up and sighted down the barrel. We were about a hundred yards apart. Even so, I ducked behind the car, although to hit me from that range with a handgun would have been miraculous. He must have thought so, too, because he didn’t fire. Instead, he spun around and half walked, half jogged in the direction he had come.
I hadn’t considered Joley until the shooter turned away, hadn’t given her safety any thought at all. It was me I was concerned about, which, I decided, made me some kind of a jerk. I felt the guilt as I went to my pocket for the cell phone and fumbled it—my hands were shaking. Fatigue, I told myself. The cell phone was unlike the one I had dropped into the Mississippi River, the buttons were in different places, and it took me a few moments to activate it. Eventually I called 911. “Shots fired,” I said, even though there had only been the one. I gave the operator Joley’s address as well as my name. She asked for my location. I had to walk up the street a bit to read the signs. She told me that the police were on the way. I told her that I would meet them at the house. She said that was unwise, and I agreed with her.
The St. Paul cops were already on the scene when I reached Joley’s house. ’Course, I had given them a big head start while I cautiously retraced my steps, leery that the attacker would jump out at me again at any moment.
Joley’s front door was open. I saw two uniforms inside, along with Detective Jean Shipman, Bobby Dunston’s young, beautiful, smart-as-hell partner. I opened the screen and stepped across the threshold. Joley was sitting in one of her immaculate chairs; Jeannie was interviewing her. The cops didn’t see me until Joley sprang from the chair and crossed the room.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she chanted as she wrapped her arms around me. “He made me call you, he made me. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I was glad she was apologizing to me. It meant I didn’t have to apologize to her.
Jeannie was standing directly behind her. She was a tall woman and attractive, with freckles the same color as her hair. When she was a kid, everyone told her how cute the freckles were and she liked to hear it; not so much now that she was passing for an adult. She flashed a two-second smile at me.
“There you are, McKenzie,” she said. “I thought we’d have to send the dogs out after you.”
I told her that would have been nice, especially if one of the dogs had been carrying a keg of brandy around his neck.
“I couldn’t help it, McKenzie,” Joley said. “You have to believe me.”
I brushed the hair out of her eyes; they were tearless, bright, and clear. “Of course I believe you,” I said. With a voice like hers, how could I not? I led her back to the chair.
“I don’t know how he got into the house,” Joley said. “I turned around and there he was. At first I thought he was a thief. Then I thought he might be a client who somehow discovered my true identity. He touched me, McKenzie. He did things with his hands. I was so frightened. Then he pushed me into a chair and said, ‘Maybe later.’ ”
“Did you recognize his voice?” Jeannie asked.
“No.”
“Could it have been one of your customers?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t really be sure. He didn’t speak much. He said, ‘Maybe later,’ and then he told me to call McKenzie. He said I was to call him and tell him to come over to the house—that was about all.” Joley looked into my eyes. “He didn’t say anything about you or why he wanted you. After I called, he waited by the door. When you drove up, he went outside and started shooting. That’s the last I saw of him.”
“Did you search the house?” I said.
Jeannie grimaced as if I had insulted her, then let it go. “Tell me about the shooter,” she said.
“He was dressed like the men who kidnapped Bobby Dunston’s daughter,” I said. “He was dressed like the man who killed Scottie Thomforde.”
“He must really hate you.”
“It worked in my favor. If he hated me just a little less, he might have waited until I rang the doorbell. I wouldn’t have had a chance.”
“You didn’t recognize him, Ms. Waddell?” Jeannie said. “You didn’t recognize his voice?”
“No.”
A question came from behind us. “Do you know Thomas Thomforde?” We spun toward it. Harry was standing just inside the doorway. He held his ID in front of him like a shield.
Jeannie shouted at her uniforms. “Can I get someone to secure the goddamned door? It’s a crime scene, for chrissake.”
Harry smiled at her. “Good afternoon, Detective Shipman,” he said.
Jeannie smiled back. “Good afternoon, Special Agent Wilson. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“There is an excellent chance that the case you are currently working is connected to a federal kidnapping case that I am working. I would be grateful, Detective Shipman, if you allowed me to sit in on your interview, perhaps share any evidence you might have uncovered.”
“May I ask who called you?”
“I did,” I said.
Jeannie gave me a look that could have melted asphalt. “Certainly, if McKenzie says it’s all right, I’ll be happy to cooperate with the FBI,” she said, although the tone of her voice suggested otherwise.
“You’re most kind, Detective Shipman,” Harry said.
“Think nothing of it, Special Agent Wilson.”
“Hmm.”
“Ahh.”
“What’s going on?” Joley said.
“Mating dance,” I said. Both Harry and Jeannie gave me a look. Forget melted asphalt. Think about what’s in a deep, dark hole beneath the asphalt.
“Do you know Thomas Thomforde?” Harry repeated.
“Tommy? Sure I do,” said Joley. “I knew him when we were kids. I haven’t seen him for a couple of years, though.”
“Was he the man who terrorized you?”
“No. Why are you asking about Tommy?”
Harry gestured with his head, and he, Jeannie, and I moved away from Joley. “Tommy Thomforde is missing,” he told us.
“Missing or hiding?” I said.
“We pulled our men off him to back up McKenzie when he delivered the ransom,” Harry told Jeannie. “No one has seen him since.”
“His mother?” I asked.
“She says she hasn’t seen Tommy since he left for work yesterday morning. Beyond that, she’s not being very cooperative.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Jeannie said. “One son dead.”
Harry smiled at her.
Jeannie smiled back.
I brushed past both of them and went to where Joley was sitting. I knelt in front of her chair and took her hands in mine. “Joley, listen to me very carefully. This is important.”
“What?”
“Was Scottie Thomforde really here the night before last, the night Karen Studder and I spoke to you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
Joley pulled her hands out of mine. “Yes, I’m sure,” she said.
“He knew I was looking for him.”
“He was in the bedroom upstairs. He was listening. I’m sorry I lied, McKenzie. I didn’t know what else to do. Scottie and I… I didn’t want you to know that we were, that we were… I was embarrassed.” Maybe she could read my mind. Maybe the expression on my face told her that my brain was screaming at the contradiction, because she added, “The person I am on the phone isn’t the person I really am.”
Probably it was cruel; I said it anyway. “Considering what you do for a living, Joley, I doubt anyone would have cared.”
“I thought you might have cared.”
You can be such a jerk, my inner voice told me.
No one spoke for a few moments, and I was working myself up to apologizing when Harry broke the silence. “Ms. Waddell, when did Scottie arrive?” he asked.
“It was early.”
“How early?”
“Right after lunch. About one thirty.”
“Did he make any phone calls?”
“No, we spent the entire afternoon… He didn’t make any phone calls.”
“At what time did he leave?”
“About ten.”
“Thank you, Ms. Waddell.”
There was more talking to be done, mostly about the intruder who tried to pop me, and Jean Shipman did most of it. Afterward, Harry and I went outside and walked slowly to his car.
“Where’s Honsa?” I asked.
“It’s my case now,” Harry said. “He does his thing, the NOC stuff. This is my thing. Listen, McKenzie. We know that Thomforde made three phone calls to Bobby Dunston’s home. The last one was at six-oh-five, and he made the call while on the move.”
“Which means Joley was lying,” I said.
“Unless it was someone else on the phone.”
“No.”
“It could have been Tommy. The voice was disguised.”
“No.”
“Then how do you explain the discrepancies?”
“I told you, Joley is lying. Think about it. If she was telling the truth, then logic would suggest that the moment Karen and I left her house she would have hurried upstairs to tell Scottie that we were looking for him. Scottie would have immediately contacted the halfway house and reported in. He didn’t. Instead, Scottie arrived at the halfway house at least two hours later. Is that logical?”
“It is if he figured he was already screwed so he might as well get in one more good one before he was violated.”
“How ’bout this: Mrs. Thomforde tells Scottie that Karen and I are looking for him. To protect himself, Scottie comes over here and convinces Joley to alibi him for the entire day.”
“Why would she still be sticking to the story? Scottie’s dead.”
“Two possibilities,” I said. “One, she’s frightened by the man who put a gun to her head and told her to call me. Two, she’s in on it.”
“Three,” said Harry. “She’s not in on it, but having lied for Scottie the first time, she’s now afraid that if she tells the truth she’ll be implicated.”
“Victoria Dunston said that the T-Man spoke to someone on the phone. Someone he called ‘babe.’ ”
“Do you think Joley Waddell is the babe?” Harry said.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“Still, he could have been speaking to a man. Babe Ruth. Babe Winkelman. Babe the Blue Ox.”
“I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“We’ll pull Joley’s phone records and canvass the neighborhood, see if we can find a witness who saw Scottie Thomforde. It doesn’t make sense, though. Kidnapper has a million untraceable, why hang around to kill you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why risk revealing himself by trying to kill you?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he wanted both the money and you dead, why not take you off the board at the ransom drop?”
“You keep asking the same question,” I said.
“Whoever the second kidnapper is, this isn’t about being afraid that you might identify him,” Harry said. “He has a grudge. A big one. Big enough that taking a million off you won’t satisfy. Tell me, McKenzie. Who doesn’t like you?”
“You want a list?”
Harry took a notebook and a pen out of his pocket and gave it to me. “Seriously?” I said.
He opened the passenger door of his car. “Sit. Write.”
I sat, I wrote, jotting down names as they came to me, names of people who might want to kill me. It took nearly an hour. I was distressed by the length of the list and depressed by its quality. They were punks, all punks, even my upper-middle-class enemies. No one smart or audacious enough for a caper like this.
I gave the list to Harry. He said, “Maybe you should lie low for a few day till we can sort all this out.”
“I could do that,” I said. At the same time, I was staring across the street at nothing in par tic u lar, contemplating my next move. Harry hit me hard on the shoulder with the back of his hand.
“Go home,” he said. “Lock the doors. Stay away from the windows.”
“Sure.”
I didn’t go home; I doubted Harry believed that I would. Instead, I drove to the Thomforde residence. On the way, I took the time to call Nina on her cell phone. She was at Rickie’s. I told her that I was coming over and she shouldn’t leave until I arrived, and she said okay. I didn’t tell her that she might be in danger. I figured it was one of those conversations best had in person.
Mrs. Thomforde answered the door when I knocked. I was a bit surprised when she hugged me and asked me to come inside.
“Some of my friends are coming over in a few minutes,” she said. “I have to go to the funeral parlor to start making arrangements. The police said they would release Scottie’s body in a couple of days.”
“I am so, so sorry,” I told her.
She thanked me for my concern and offered coffee, which I accepted. I watched as she poured. Mrs. Thomforde was old-school, like my father. Time and experience had draped a cloak about her shoulders, the same cloak worn by many of her generation. She wore it to keep the hurt to herself, so as not to burden others with it. Any tears she had for her youngest son were shed in private. At the same time, there was a great tenderness to go with the reserve. I saw it in her eyes when I mentioned Scottie’s name.
“I wish,” she said, stopped, started again. “I think when you look back on your life, you’ll find that there are one or two moments that change everything, that set you down a path that you just can’t get off of. You don’t recognize these moments at the time they take place. Sometimes you won’t even know that they took place at all until years and years later. Like with Scottie. I should never have bought him that drum kit. If he hadn’t played the drums, he would have kept playing hockey and baseball with you. He wouldn’t have met Dale Fulbright. He wouldn’t have gone to prison. He wouldn’t have… I don’t want to believe it, McKenzie. I know it’s true what they say about Scottie. That poor little girl and Bobby Dunston—I never liked him, but for this to happen, for Scottie to be involved. I just don’t want to believe it.”
“I don’t want to believe it, either.”
“People keep asking questions. The police. The FBI. Who were Scottie’s friends? What did he do? Where did he go? I don’t know the answers, McKenzie. I don’t know anything. He wasn’t staying with me. He was at the damn halfway house. They should be asking questions over there. The person who runs it. Roger something…”
“Roger Colfax?”
“Even he was here asking questions about where Scottie went and who he knew. If he doesn’t know the answers, how am I supposed to? If Scottie had been staying here, if he had been with me, maybe, maybe… I don’t know.”
Mrs. Thomforde didn’t say anything for a few moments, just stared into her coffee mug. Finally I spoke. “They can’t find Tommy.” I said “they,” not “we”—I wanted to maintain the illusion that I was merely a family friend offering my condolences. “Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“Do you think maybe Tommy was involved in the kidnapping?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Mrs. Thomforde, when we were at the Silver Bucket the other day, Karen Studder said that Scottie went out to a bar the Saturday night he was supposed to be at your house. You said it wasn’t true. It was true, though, wasn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Do you know who he went with?”
“Tommy,” she said. “He went with Tommy. I thought it would be all right, two brothers having a beer together. I thought Tommy would take care of him. I thought…”
“That night at the Silver Bucket, right after Karen and I left, you made a call on your cell phone.”
“How did you know that?”
“Who did you call?”
“Tommy. Why?”
I didn’t say. Mrs. Thomforde closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, “You never know when those moments will sneak up on you, McKenzie. You never know when a decision will change your life.”
I called Harry as soon as I left Mrs. Thomforde and repeated what she had told me. Turned out she had already confessed pretty much the same thing to him earlier. Still, he thanked me for the information. Then he told me to go home. “You’re interfering with an ongoing criminal investigation,” he said.
Like I haven’t heard that before.