As I make my way back down the path, now with the power of one hundred and fifty horses under my butt, my thoughts again turn to Nancy and the day she could have left us but didn’t.
I was in sixth grade and by that time knew enough about relationships to know that my dad’s and Nancy’s was falling apart. I would hear them having heated conversations, their angry words smudged by the thin walls that separated their bedroom from the living room. I knew they were fighting; I think Alexander knew, too. And when they emerged, they barely spoke, and what few words they exchanged were as fragile as eggshells. Yet Nancy never stopped talking to us boys, her words light and cheery, her smile genuine. It was her way of plastering over the fissure that was splitting our little family apart, probably hoping that my brother and I might not notice what was happening.
But we noticed.
I never let it show, especially to Alexander, but the thought of her leaving filled me with a dread more powerful than any emotion I had ever known. Alexander couldn’t remember a time before Nancy. He was so young when she appeared that it seemed to him as though she had always been there. But I remembered. I remembered feeling alone in our house even though my father sat in the next room, drinking his after-work beers. I remembered the hole in my life, a sense of missing something. Although as a five-year-old I had no way of understanding that feeling, I remembered what it was like before Nancy came to us, and the thought of losing her scared me.
Then, one day, when I was in sixth grade, we came home from school and everything had changed.
Our house had three bedrooms upstairs, so Alexander and I each had our own room. The third we used for storage. That day, Alexander and I came home from school to discover that Nancy had cleaned out the storage room and had moved upstairs with us. She never again shared a bed with my dad.
At the time, she told us that she had moved upstairs because my dad snored too much. We accepted that explanation without question. But, over the years, as I watched my dad sink deeper into his own solitude, I came to understand something much more profound. Nancy had left my father. To use the vernacular of my teen years, she broke up with him. They had dated for six years, and then she ended their relationship. But she didn’t end her relationship with me or with my brother. Nancy moved upstairs to be with us, to raise us. She had no obligation to do that. She and my dad had never married. She hadn’t adopted us. She chose to stay because she knew that we needed her. That was all there was to it.
When I pull up to the cabin where the chase began, I figure it’s close to midmorning, the dim glow of the sun barely breaking though the low cloud cover. In the west, I can see a sliver of blue where the edge of the clouds gives way to an open sky. I can expect a drop in temperature once the sky clears. Hopefully by then I’ll be finished with what I have to do.
I stop the snowmobile near a shed about fifty feet from the cabin. I remember peeking in there earlier and seeing implements and tools, the standard fair that you might find at a cabin in the middle of a forest. None of those implements meant a thing to me at the time. I had only cared that the shed was empty of any human threat. But as I sat in the snow, trying to decide what to do with the man at my mercy, I had remembered the shed and the tools and the ice auger that was hung on a nail.
Just inside the door, I find a length of nylon rope, about forty feet long, and the tarpaulin cover for the snowmobile. I roll the tarp into a small bundle and wrap the rope around it, tossing the package onto the seat of the snowmobile. Then I return to the shed, where I locate the centerpiece of my plan, an old-fashioned ice auger, a steel rod with a hand crank on one end and a small shovel—six inches wide—on the other. I look at the auger and imagine boring down through at least three feet of ice, punching through to the lake. I examine the blade and wonder, how many holes will I have to drill in the ice to create a mouth big enough to swallow a man?
CHAPTER 8
Minneapolis—Two Days Ago
I arrived back at Hennepin County Medical Center just before 11:00 a.m. to find Officer Fuller still diligently working on the pretty woman in scrubs at the nurse’s station. He again stood at attention as I approached.
“Did our guy escape yet?” I asked.
“Um . . . no, Detective. He’s still unconscious, I think.”
I handed a copy of the signed search warrant to the nurse. “This is a court order saying that I can take possession of the personal items of the man they brought in this morning. Would you be so kind as to go and get those for me?” I smiled my politest smile.
“I’d be happy to,” she said.
“And could you give that copy of the warrant to him when he wakes up?”
She glanced at the warrant, nodded and left.
“Is Orton still intubated?” I asked Fuller.
“Yes, sir . . . I mean, Max.”
The nurse returned with a large paper bag, folded shut at the top, and handed it to me. I asked her for a pair of latex gloves, which I snapped on before opening the bag and pouring the contents onto the countertop. Fireball’s pants had large patches where they had burned through. His shirt and coat were mere remnants of their former state. Only his socks, shoes, and tighty-whities came through the ordeal in one piece. I didn’t need to get my nose close to smell the scent of gasoline coming off the clothes.
Folded into his pants, I found the cell phone that he used to call 911. I laid the phone to the side and emptied the pockets of the pants: a set of keys to a BMW, not the minivan, and a wallet. I opened the wallet: a debit card, a driver’s license, fifty-eight bucks, unused tickets to a Toby Keith concert, and a convenience-store receipt time-stamped earlier that morning.
“He can’t be that stupid,” I said half to myself.
“What?” Fuller asked.
I showed him the receipt. “He kept a receipt showing that he bought gas at the Holiday station on Sixth Avenue. They have cameras all over that place. Unless I miss my guess, we’ll have video of Mr. Orton driving the van that he set on fire.” I shook my head.
A sharp smile crossed the nurse’s face and she said, “Your man doesn’t sound like much of a mastermind.”
That made me grin because Judge Krehbiel had the same reaction when I went to get the search warrant signed. The judge, working on her day off, didn’t seem particularly cheerful when I first entered her chambers. But I watched her eyes brighten as she read down the probable-cause statement. Soon she stopped reading and looked at me.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “Your guy kills a woman, puts her in the back seat of a minivan, drives the van out to a secluded area to destroy the evidence . . .” She paused to connect the remainder of the dots. “Then, he sets fire to the van, catching himself on fire in the process . . . and calls the police.”
“That’s our working theory,” I said.
“A real criminal mastermind you have here,” she said as she signed the warrant.