23

Driving back to the Twin Cities, Mars considered his options for investigating Senator Alan Campbell’s connection to the Green Man.

Sig hadn’t been able to tell him anything other than that there was a man who drove Campbell’s car at the Bergstad barbecue who might have fit the Green Man’s description. Sig was going to try to pin down dates when Campbell had been in Redstone in 1984. He was sure Campbell had been there—at least in the summer, as Redstone was in Campbell’s congressional home district, and it was an important base for his senatorial campaign.

Investigating a suspect on a cold case was tricky for all the reasons that investigating a suspect in a current crime could be tricky. There were times when you didn’t want the suspect to be aware that he was under investigation. Times when you particularly didn’t want the suspect to know the specifics of what you were interested in. Most times, you didn’t want to implicate the suspect by investigating him—not unless you were real, real sure about what you had.

The only thing Mars was sure about in this investigation was that he wasn’t sure about what he had. But not being sure about what he had was an altogether different thing from being sure he was on the right track. On that point, he was dead certain.

How to prove his instincts when all the difficulties of conducting the investigation were compounded by the fact that the principal suspect was a powerful political figure? Mars didn’t give a shit that Campbell might use his political power to hurt him professionally. He did want to avoid having Campbell use his political power to stymie the investigation.

What he needed was an insider. Preferably someone outside Minnesota. Someone he could trust implicitly to keep Mars’s suspicions confidential.

Mars drove for miles across the flat Minnesota landscape without a single name coming to mind. And then, without consciously thinking of the investigation where he’d first encountered Boyle Keegan, Boyle Keegan’s name came to him.

Boyle Keegan. An FBI specialist in domestic terrorism who’d assisted Mars and Nettie on a case a couple years back. At the very least, Keegan would be a place to start. If Keegan didn’t know anything, he might know somebody who did.

Mars leaned forward, stretching to reach the glove compartment. He squeezed the release, then fumbled in the open box to see if by chance he’d left his personal directory there. No luck.

Just as well. Mars was too tired to articulate the questions he wanted to ask Boyle.

Mars tuned the car radio to a golden oldies station. He needed golden oldie energy to get him back to the Twin Cities after having only a couple hours’ sleep the night before.

It wasn’t really working. He continued to feel groggy. At the next rest stop, he pulled over, parked, and cranked the seat back, leaving the car running to keep the air-conditioning going.

It was a golden oldie that woke him almost two hours later. He was awake without being conscious of waking up. Somebody, he didn’t know who, was singing “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.”

Mars got out of the car, used the john at the rest stop, then got a Coke from a vending machine. He drank half the can before getting in the car and backing out.

An unformed thought stopped him. He pulled back into the parking spot and sat, waiting for the idea to crystallize. What came first was Jim Baker telling him that Campbell had been in his tent, listening to a “make-out” song the day after the massacre at Khe Ranh.

Where was that coming from? Why did that memory come to mind?

Probably just something that bubbled into his consciousness from listening to golden oldies, Mars thought, pulling out again. He drove another nine miles before he noticed he needed gas. It was when he pulled up at the convenience-store gas pump that the memory came back. Something from Sig Sampson’s case files. Something about the radio being on full blast at the One-Stop. And, if he was remembering right, something in Erin Moser’s statement about a song that had been on the radio when she’d been talking to Andrea.

Mars remembered something else, then. From the surveillance tape. He remembered Andrea walking away from the phone toward the counter, and reaching up. They never had figured out why she’d done that.

Mars forgot about the gas and called Sig Sampson, asking him if Mars was remembering right—that Erin Moser had mentioned the name of a song that had been on the radio when she’d talked to Andrea Bergstad the night she’d been abducted.

“That’s right,” Sig said. “Let me just check here, and I should be able to tell you the name of the song. We used it to confirm the time Averill was at the One-Stop…”

Mars could hear Sig fumbling with the three-ring binders. Then Sig came back on the line. “Here it is. ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me.’ Mel Carter. That’s what you need to know?”

“That’s it, Sig. Thanks. I’ll talk to you later. Just checking an idea.”

“You must be back home by now, right?”

“Not quite,” Mars said. “I took a rest break. Talk to you soon.”

Mars punched 411 on his cell phone and got three numbers for James Bakers in Decorah, Iowa. He got his James Baker on the first call.

“One detail I wanted to check,” Mars said. “Probably nothing, but who knows. You said Campbell listened to a tape on his cassette player. That you heard him listening to it the day after the massacre at Khe Ranh…”

“That’s right,” Baker said.

“You remember the title by any chance?”

It was a moment before Baker said, “No. I don’t. I’d know it if I heard it, but the title doesn’t come to mind.”

“Do me a favor,” Mars said. “See if you can get hold of a song called ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me,’ by Mel Carter, then let me know if—”

“That’s it,” Baker said. “Those words are repeated over and over in the song. That’s it for sure. I didn’t know that was the title, but I remember those words in the song.”

*   *   *

Mars drove away from the gas station without getting gas, invigorated by yet another connection between Andrea Bergstad and Alan Campbell. A moment’s reflection tempered his excitement. He put his two major pieces of evidence at this point—a soup can and a golden oldie—in the context of filing a criminal charge against Campbell in connection with Andrea Bergstad’s 1984 abduction.

As his car sputtered, lost power, then coasted to a stop on the shoulder, Mars could imagine hearing the prosecuting attorney’s laughter.

Mars had run out of gas forty miles south of the Twin Cities.