The Cold Nowhere

49

Maggie waited impatiently for the light to change at Hiawatha and 26th. She drummed her fingers on the Corvette wheel to the screaming thump of Def Leppard. Beside her, the light rail train blocked traffic. The trolley clanged south toward the airport, its chimes as placid as church bells, and when the barriers lifted at the tracks, she turned right onto the side street. She drove half a block to the house where Vincent Roslak had been stabbed to death eight months earlier.

It was a two-story concrete house that had been sub-divided into apartments. Five satellite antennas were mounted in a row on the flat roof, with wires draping down the front wall into windows. Hairline cracks ran through the concrete walls. The postage-stamp lot was fenced, and the unlocked gate hung askew. Maggie let herself in, and at the front door she pushed the buzzer for the manager’s apartment.

‘Mr. Walton?’ she said, when the man answered the door. ‘I’m Sergeant Maggie Bei. I called you about the Roslak place.’

‘Yeah, yeah, come in.’

Bennett Walton was in his late twenties, with thinning red hair and thick black glasses. He wore a long-sleeved jersey and athletic shorts. He was tall and had a basketball player’s physique, with square shoulders and knobby knees. He wore Converse sneakers with no socks, and Maggie could see his big toe sticking out the front of one of his shoes.

Walton led her into a hallway painted in dingy white. There was a staircase at the back, and they climbed to the second story.

‘So the place hasn’t been rented yet?’ she asked.

Walton shrugged. ‘Nah, nobody likes a murder scene, you know? People get creeped out.’

‘Do you own the building?’

‘My mom does. I keep the tenants from calling her night and day.’

He opened a door on his left, its loose knob rattling, and let her inside. Roslak’s apartment was a narrow studio, running the length of the house. A kitchenette was immediately on her right. Through the bay windows facing the street she could see her rented Corvette parked at the curb. The apartment was unfurnished, and it had been repainted and recarpeted.

‘You had to tear everything out?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yeah. Had to paint the ceiling downstairs, too. Blood soaked through. Pretty nasty.’

Maggie wandered toward the front of the apartment. ‘Who found the body?’

‘Me. People started complaining about the smell. It was July and really hot. When he didn’t answer, I let myself in. I nearly crapped my shorts.’

‘How was the body situated when you found it?’

‘He was on his back next to the sofa,’ Walton said, pointing at the floor. ‘Eyes open. Blood everywhere. Yuck.’

‘Did you see the knife that killed him?’

‘Nope.’

‘Any idea what he was doing when he was killed?’

‘Well, his pants were around his ankles, and his dick was hanging out. That give you any ideas?’

Maggie nodded. ‘I get it.’

‘What a way to go, huh?’ Walton told her, wincing as if someone were holding a pair of scissors to his testicles. ‘You’re getting busy, everything’s hot, and then the chick goes all Basic Instinct on you. Ouch.’

‘How well did you know Roslak?’ she asked.

‘I barely knew him. He paid the rent on time, that’s all I cared about.’

‘Did he have a lot of people coming and going from his place?’

‘Oh, yeah. All the time. At first, I thought, maybe he was a dealer, you know? Or a man whore. He was a sexy-looking guy, and it was mostly women coming to visit. Then somebody told me he was some kind of shrink.’

‘You see anyone regularly? Like a girlfriend?’

Walton shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘How about a Hispanic teenager? Small, dark hair, very attractive.’

‘Like I said, I stopped paying attention. I’m a gamer. Call of Duty. If I’m home, I’m not looking out the windows.’

‘The police thought he’d been lying here for a couple days,’ she said. ‘You see anything or hear anything weird around that time? Shouting, arguments, screaming?’

‘Arguments happen all the time in this place, but the walls are thicker than you think. We don’t get a lot of noise between the apartments unless people have their windows open. It was so hot that most people had their window ACs running, and those things are really loud.’

‘I don’t see a window unit here.’

‘People yank them during the winter,’ Walton told her, ‘but this place never had one. In the heat, his body pretty much fermented, you know?’

‘Yeah.’ She dug in her pocket for a photograph of Margot Huizenfelt. ‘You ever see this woman around here?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Okay. Thanks for your help, Mr. Walton. Mind if I hang out here for a few minutes?’

‘Knock yourself out.’

Walton left her alone, but he left the apartment door open. She stood where the body would have been found. She smelled fresh paint, and the new carpet was springy under her heels. The apartment was sterile now, but she tried to imagine a sofa against the wall, with Roslak engaged in intercourse. Pants and underwear pooled at his ankles. The girl beneath him.

Somewhere in mid-fornication, she changes her mind. Or maybe she never consented. She attacks him, stabs him, drives him backward to the floor, and keeps stabbing. He’s too surprised even to scream. His lungs fill with blood, and he can’t talk. He just dies.

The cops never found the knife. She took it with her. Did Roslak have the knife when they started? Was he threatening her with it?

Or did she have the knife all along?

Maybe it was close by. In her boot. The way Cat always kept it.

Maggie decided that she had learned one thing by coming here. Roslak’s death didn’t smell like a murderer bent on keeping a decade-old secret from being exposed. He had been up close and personal with his killer. Very close, very personal. They knew each other; they were intimate. This was about sex gone bad, suddenly and violently. It didn’t feel as if it had anything to do with a stolen ring hanging around Cat’s neck.

She opened a window facing the street. Cold air blew inside, and bare branches knocked together from the tree in the yard next door. Distantly, with the wind, she heard the light rail trolley on Hiawatha. Back then, on a blistering July day with no air conditioning, Roslak would have opened a window. If anyone were passing on the sidewalk outside, they would have heard the noises of sex rippling from the apartment. Or murder.

Maggie slid down to sit on the carpet with her hands wrapped around her knees. It was nearly dark. She sat in the deepening gloom without moving. She was convinced she’d overlooked something important. Even with no furniture, with nothing to remind her of the crime scene, the apartment spoke to her, but it was in a language she didn’t understand.

What was she missing?

Outside the apartment, she heard heavy footsteps. She assumed it was Bennett Walton coming back, but then she saw the face and burly body of Ken McCarty grinning at her from the doorway. She found it hard to muster a smile in return.

‘Hey, you,’ he said. ‘I got your text.’

‘Hey.’

Ken strolled through the apartment and slid down next to her. He sensed her bleak mood. ‘You okay? Guppo told me you rolled the Av.’

‘I’m fine.’

He nudged her in the ribs with an elbow, and her torso was tender. ‘You don’t look fine.’

‘I’m fine,’ she repeated, with a hint of irritation.

‘Okay. Just asking. Nice wheels outside.’

‘It’s a rental.’

‘Yeah, when I rent, I don’t get a Vette. Are you sticking around overnight? You want to come over to the love shack?’

‘No, Stride wants me back up north.’

‘Too bad. Did you learn anything down here?’

‘Nothing that ties Roslak’s murder to Duluth. Nothing that ties Marty Gamble to Fong Dao. I talked to Fong’s girlfriend, and she’s convinced that Fong was set up. He wasn’t involved in the Keck break-in at all.’

Ken chuckled. ‘Sure. Him and all the other innocent men with multiple burglary convictions.’

‘I know, stupid, right? The crazy thing is, I think I believe her.’

‘Maggie Bei doubting herself? That’s new.’

She shrugged. ‘I was too sure of myself in those days. Too cocky. I should have asked more questions.’

‘Sounds like twenty-twenty hindsight to me. We got a tip, we got a warrant, we nailed him. They should all be so easy.’

‘Maybe it was too easy,’ Maggie said. ‘Djemilah says the people at St. Luke’s knew about Fong’s criminal record. Any one of them could have pointed us at him. Once we found the stash in his apartment, I was ready to close the book.’

‘Not just you. Stride was convinced, too. So was K-2.’

‘Yeah, but I sold it. I said we had our guy. I looked for an accomplice and didn’t find one, so that was that. Except obviously, I screwed up the whole case. Think about it, how could I find an accomplice in Fong’s life if Fong wasn’t even involved in the crime?’

‘Come on, don’t dump on yourself because of what this girl told you. If we convicted men based on the stories they tell their girlfriends, the jails would be empty.’

‘You’re right about that.’

‘Of course I am.’ He checked his phone and read an incoming message. ‘Anyway, duty calls, babe. I gotta run, but I’m glad you let me know you were in town. Shame you can’t stay.’

‘Yeah.’ She leaned across and kissed him. Plenty of tongue. ‘You coming this weekend?’

‘I’m practically coming now.’

‘Go,’ she said.

Ken pushed himself to his feet and left her alone in Roslak’s apartment, which was now nearly pitch black. She lingered in the darkness, thinking about Fong Dao and his conviction for murder. She’d led the raid on his apartment herself. She’d been the one who found the box, opened it, found the jewels, found the cash, found the gun. It was all laid out for her. Open and shut.

Too easy.

No matter what Ken said, and no matter what she told herself, she couldn’t shake a sick feeling in her gut. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

She was beginning to think she’d made a mistake ten years ago that had cost a man his life.





50

Stride checked his watch. ‘He’s late.’

They were miles from the heart of the city. The bone-white Catholic church building dated back to 1896, with a copper dome and cross atop its steeple. It was located on a lonely road in the township of Gnesen, in wooded land tucked among the northern lakes. A handful of graves rested in the quiet lawn surrounding the church, dwarfed by evergreens.

Serena cast her eyes around the deserted churchyard. ‘Why would he ask to meet us here?’

‘He doesn’t want anyone to see us together,’ Stride concluded.

It was dark, but there was a streetlight near the church, and the light cast shadows into the cemetery. They sat on a bench in front of a stone grotto. The rough stones were dusted with snow. Inside the cave created by the rocks, Christ clasped his hands in prayer. Behind the grotto, agitated crows hidden in the trees warned them away. Serena sat close to Stride, their bodies touching, his arm around her shoulder to keep her warm.

‘Cindy came here with K-2 for services sometimes,’ Stride said.

‘Did you?’

‘Me? No. You know I’m not religious the way she was.’ He listened to the peaceful solitude. ‘I always thought, though, that if you had to spend eternity somewhere, this wouldn’t be a bad place.’

‘It’s just frozen ground, Jonny.’

Stride said nothing. He knew that Serena, growing up the way she did, had no belief in God. There had been a time after Cindy died when he’d felt the same way, bitter and certain that he was alone in the world. Now, he was content not knowing whether there was any kind of guiding hand. There were moments when the universe felt random and cruel. There were other moments that felt predestined and made him feel arrogant not to believe.

Like finding Cat in his bedroom closet.

Like kissing Serena on Michaela’s porch.

He stood up from the bench. ‘Come on, you’re freezing. Let’s wait inside.’

She smiled. ‘Me in a church? God might smite me at the threshold.’

‘I’ll go in first and take the hit.’

Serena stood up and took his hand. Her long, slim fingers were cool. They walked through the graveyard to the double church doors, which led inside to the nave. Three modest stained glass windows lent colored light to the floor from the streetlight outside. Rows of empty pews lined the space. The sconce lights on the walls glowed like candles.

Halfway to the altar, Stride slid into a pew and Serena sat beside him. She took a hymnal from the bench in front of her and turned the pages. The binding was broken and worn. She closed it carefully and put it back.

‘Cat was really shaken,’ Serena said. ‘I’m sorry I did that to her. Bad idea.’

‘Maybe she needs to remember that night,’ he said. ‘That’s part of the healing.’

He thought about the drive back to his cottage. Cat had said little. There’d been no more memories or revelations. She’d stared out the window and resisted their efforts to draw her out. When they’d left her with a policewoman for the evening, she’d stretched out on her stomach in front of the fire. Her face had been far away.

‘Is any of it real?’ Serena asked. ‘Can we trust what she told us?’

‘For now, let’s assume we can. She thinks that someone else was there that night. If that’s true, whoever it was probably shot Marty.’

‘And Michaela?’

‘No, Marty definitely killed her,’ Stride said. ‘He was covered in her blood. It wouldn’t have taken much to gin him up to butcher her. Someone simply pushed him over the edge.’

‘But why?’

‘Because Michaela’s death made the whole story work. If Marty got murdered, we’d start digging into his life to find the answers. But to snap and murder Michaela? And then shoot himself? That made perfect sense. We all saw it coming.’

Stride shook his head. He’d been played. They’d all been played. They’d been given a scenario that fit their expectations, and they’d swallowed it whole. Marty was the perfect fall guy. So was Fong Dao. A home invasion and then a murder-suicide. Both crimes solved, with no one the wiser.

‘Someone walked away from that heist free and clear,’ Serena said.

‘Until that ring showed up,’ Stride said. ‘You think you’re safe for ten years and then all of a sudden there’s Margot Huizenfelt putting Marty in the middle of Rebekah Keck’s murder. Whoever it is must have been desperate to keep the connection from being exposed.’

‘Once you’ve gone that far, there’s no going back,’ Serena said. ‘Everyone involved in the home invasion was guilty of murder. Get caught, and your life is over. Kill, and stay free. The question is, who’s still out there? Did Fong and Marty work with an accomplice? Is that who we’re looking for?’

‘That assumes Fong was involved in the burglary at all,’ Stride said. ‘Maggie says she’s not so sure anymore. We looked for an accomplice in all of Fong’s activities back then, and we didn’t find one, so we assumed he pulled the job himself. One perp. End of story.’

‘Don’t blame yourself, Jonny.’

‘I don’t like being fooled,’ Stride said. ‘Whether Fong was guilty or not, Marty didn’t do this alone. How did he get the alarm code? How did he know that Lenny and Rebekah were out of town? He needed a lot of information to pull this off. He needed someone close to Lenny to help him.’

‘Or Lenny,’ Serena said.

‘Yeah. Or Lenny.’

Serena said what he was thinking. ‘We have to face a nasty possibility here, Jonny. This might not be a burglary at all. The theft may simply have been a cover-up to draw the investigation away from what it really was.’

‘Murder,’ Stride said.

‘That’s right. Everybody assumed that Rebekah Keck stumbled into a home invasion and got killed, but maybe this was all about making her murder look like an accident. She comes home, Marty’s waiting for her. He shoots her and ransacks the house. A few weeks later, everything’s recovered at Fong Dao’s place, and Fong goes away for life. Meanwhile, Marty winds up in the middle of a murder-suicide that looks completely unrelated. No loose ends.’

‘You think Lenny arranged for Rebekah’s death,’ Stride said. ‘He got Marty to pull it off and then killed him.’

‘I think it’s possible. Don’t you?’

He didn’t answer. Instead, they heard a loud voice at the front of the church.

‘You’re both wrong.’

Leonard Keck, in a royal purple tracksuit, stood by the stained glass windows with his hands on his hips. His gray hair was a mess, and his tanned, blotchy face was angry. Behind him, Police Chief Kyle Kinnick stood in the open doorway of the church. The cold air made a draft past the chief.

Lenny marched down the aisle in his tennis shoes.

‘You are both wrong,’ he repeated. ‘I didn’t know this man Marty Gamble. I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Rebekah. I loved her, and that’s the truth. I don’t care what the two of you think of me. I may be a son of a bitch, but I didn’t do this. I didn’t kill my wife.’