The next morning, I was sitting at my computer, rereading Maryanne Altavilla’s case file, and taking more notes, especially addresses. Nina was dressed for work. She sat in the chair across from me.
“I think I need to talk to someone,” she said.
“About what?”
“You know about what.”
“Nina…”
“I had sex in my office. Who does that?”
“According to the adult film industry…”
Nina took her face in both hands. “Oh, God,” she said.
“You make it sound like a terrible crime was committed.”
“Not a crime, but, but…”
“Should I tell you what I think?”
“I know what you think,” Nina said. “You think what we did was great fun.”
“I think there are only two kinds of sex, regardless of what the evangelicals might tell you. There’s sex with love and there’s sex without love. I love you—”
“I love you, too.”
“That’s all that matters, not the where or the when or the how or anything else.”
“I agree with you.”
“Well, then?” I asked.
“It’s just that lately, I’ve been thinking about sex all the time. It’s like suddenly I’m a guy.”
“Um…?”
“An article I read in Psychology Today said that men think about sex an average of thirty-four times a day.”
“That sounds about right. Still, is that any reason for you to see a therapist?”
“I didn’t say I wanted to see a therapist. McKenzie, do you think I could be possessed?”
“Excuse me?”
“When I was looking up psychic mediums the other day, I read this piece about a woman who was doing all kinds of things that were out of character, including having sex any time of the day or night, and it was decided that she was being possessed by a woman who had died in the house that she and her husband bought. They eventually took care of her. She was fine. But ever since, I’ve been wondering if I might not be possessed by my dead mother.”
“I have no idea what to say to that.”
“Shelby’s into all this paranormal stuff. I’ll ask her.”
“No, no, geez, Nina, don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t tell Shelby what we do in private.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. You don’t think she knows we have sex? Now that her girls are older, she and Bobby practically—”
“Noooo,” I said. “Too much information.”
“Men. You guys think about sex all the time, yet you never want to talk about it. I have to go.”
For one of the very few times in my life, I was actually glad to see her walk out the door.
A few minutes later, I left the condominium myself. I checked the Mustang for GPS transmitters again just because, left the parking garage, and drove toward South Minneapolis. Along the way, I listened to Minnesota Public Radio and heard this:
The body of a fifty-four-year-old woman, who had been missing from her St. Paul home for nearly two weeks, was discovered by investigators late Monday in a farm field near New Richmond, Wisconsin. Mrs. Ruth Nowak was found wrapped in a blanket by officers of the New Richmond Police Department who were acting on a search warrant requested by the St. Paul police. A spokesperson said the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death were not yet known and the Ramsey County Medical Examiner will determine her cause of death. He refused to speculate on who put the body in the field or if a relationship existed between Nowak and the farm’s owner. The search for Nowak began twelve days earlier when Robert Nowak reported his wife missing from their Crocus Hill home. Nowak is the owner of RN Management Group, a business-consulting firm based in Shoreview. The couple had been married for thirty-two years.
“I wonder how Bobby managed to get a search warrant,” I said aloud.
Two of the addresses I had written down were in Ventura Village, a neighborhood more or less in the center of Minneapolis that took its name from the Spanish word for happiness or luck and had never experienced much of either. Case in point—I found statistics suggesting that nearly one out of every twelve residents experienced a violent or property crime in the past year. The neighborhood association actually paid off-duty cops to patrol the high-crime areas neglected by on-duty cops.
The first address belonged to Leland Hayes, and the second was next door, where LaToya Cane had lived. I didn’t actually expect to find her there, or anyone else who knew Leland, for that matter. Eighty percent of Ventura Village’s residents were renters squeezed into five ten-story towers, about fifty additional apartment buildings, and a hundred or more duplexes, triplexes, and quadruplexes, which gave the place a transient vibe—30 percent of the residents were replaced every year. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that both Leland’s and LaToya’s places were single-family dwellings.
Leland had lived in an ugly rust-colored clapboard house with rotting trim boards surrounded by a spotty lawn and a cyclone fence. At least, it was rust colored now. It might have been a bright yellow twenty years ago. It had a garage that seemed too small for a standard SUV and a short driveway leading to it that was located outside the fence, go figure. There was a small wooden shed leaning against the garage; Ryan’s hiding place, I told myself.
A sign hanging on the fence said the house was for sale. I parked my Mustang and went up to it. There was a sleeve attached to the sign filled with red and black trifolded sheets of paper that provided specific details—two bed, one bath, 672 square feet, partially furnished, one-car garage, built in 1913, foreclosure, est. $89,000, $5,000 assistance grant available to homeowners who purchase a house in Ventura Village and live in it for five years, tour by appointment only. I didn’t know it was possible to buy a house for less than $100,000, but what do they say? Location, location, location.
There was a gate in the fence. I opened it and walked to the front door. I knocked. There was no answer. I didn’t expect there would be. I pressed my face against the glass. Despite the sofa, stuffed chair, and coffee table that I saw, the place appeared empty.
I walked back. There was a black man standing at the fence watching me. He was big enough to play the defensive line for the Vikings. On the other hand, the dog he was walking was about the size of his right foot.
“You ain’t thinkin’ of buyin’ this place, are ya?” he asked.
I stepped outside the fence, closed the gate, and bent to pet the dog. He wagged his tail and growled at the same time.
Mixed messages, my inner voice told me.
I decided to let the dog be.
“I haven’t decided,” I said aloud. “The price is right.”
“You gotta know—the place is haunted.”
“Haunted?”
“I know what you’re thinkin’, but I ain’t makin’ this shit up, man. Place has had at least a dozen owners in the past twenty years. That’s gotta tell ya somethin’.”
“People come and go, don’t they?” I said. “Especially in Ventura Village.”
“Not like that, man. I’ve been here ten years now. Live right over there.” He pointed at a small well-kept house across the street and down a couple of lots. “This one time, musta been what? Three years ago. It’s night. Summer. I’m havin’ a cold one on the porch. All of a sudden these people come runnin’ out the front door screamin’ their heads off. They see me and come runnin’ my way like I was supposed to protect ’em or somethin’, and I’m like, I told you not to buy the place.”
“What frightened them?”
“Oh, they was yellin’ that there was this guy inside the house with half a head tellin’ ’em to get out, get out.”
“Half a head?”
“What they said.”
“Did you go and take a look?”
“Fuck no.”
Do you blame him?
“So what happened?” I asked aloud.
“They moved out, whaddaya think? Place is fuckin’ haunted, I’m tellin’ ya. Next people that moved in, nice couple. Hispanic. They lasted two months. Just packed up and drove away; didn’t even take all their furniture. Let the bank worry about it, man. You know, in some states, they gotta tell ya if a house you want t’ buy is haunted. It’s the law. They call it—are you ready? Ghoul disclosure.”
I don’t know exactly why I laughed, but I did.
“Ain’t funny,” the man said. “Maybe it is a little, but I’m tellin’ ya—you don’t want t’ move here.”
“The guy with half a head, did you ever find out what that was about?”
“Oh, yeah. Woman who lived next door told me. Guy what used to live there, I can’t remember his name, he got hisself shot robbin’ a bank in St. Paul. Guard took his head off wit’ a shotgun. Boom. Now he’s like, you know, a permanent resident. Hanging around a shitty place like that, you gotta wonder what he’s thinkin’.”
“Maybe he has nowhere else to go.”
“Yeah, but if you’re gonna haunt someplace, go to the Mall of America, someplace like that, you know? If it was me, I’d be hangin’ over t’ Target Center watchin’ them Timberwolves play.”
“The woman next door, does she still live here?” I asked.
“Naw, naw, naw, Ms. Cane”—he spoke the name with respect—“she moved over t’ Standish-Ericsson, only three miles away but might as well be on the far side of the moon. Why? You wanna ask ’er ’bout the ghost? I’m tellin’ ya, man.”
“The askin’ price is pretty reasonable.”
“That’s just the starter. You could git this place for seventy-five. Less even, if you negotiate.”
“What I’m saying.”
“I don’t know Ms. Cane’s home address, but she’s got a business over on Thirty-fifth Street near Twenty-third. I was over there once just to say hi. Sells all kinds of ghost shit.”
“Ghost shit?”
He held his hands up like he couldn’t believe it either.
“I know, I know,” he said. “Right? Somethin’ else. You know the area where her store is, what they’re startin’ to call it now? The Witch District.”