I was found there by my brother, Alexander, and a friend by the name of Boady Sanden—at least he’d been a friend back then. They managed to drag me out through a side gate, with no security guard being the wiser. That night had become a solemn memory, but that memory—that friendship with Boady—went up in flames, the way tinder is supposed to, I guess. We were a pairing that should never have been, a homicide detective and a defense attorney. Other cops told me that it was unnatural. I probably should have listened.
As I contemplated the start of another year without Jenni—my fifth now—I held no thought of Boady Sanden. I had planned to spend that New Year’s Eve sitting alone in a house that hadn’t changed its mood since the day she died, watching black-and-white movies until sleep took me. That plan fell away with a ringing of a door bell. I wasn’t expecting company; and when I answered the door, I saw Boady Sanden standing before me, his back braced against the cut of the frigid wind. It was all I could do not to punch him in the face.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
Images of our friendship passed between us like a train speeding by. There had been some good times. But then I remembered the day our friendship ended.
Two months ago, I’d been testifying in a case for which I was the lead investigator and Boady the defense attorney. It wasn’t our first time playing that game, although it had been several years since I had to face one of his tough cross-examinations. But that day, Sanden blindsided me. He brought out a reprimand I’d received for digging into my wife’s death, an act forbidden of a detective like myself. Sanden, my friend, accused me of playing loose with my investigation, of worrying more about Jenni’s death than about his client’s case. He paraded that reprimand in front of the jury, telling them that I had lost my mind from grief and had not done a proper job.
Boady Sanden torched our friendship in defense of a worthless piece of garbage, and in doing so committed, what was for me, an unforgivable sin.
“Five minutes of your time,” he said. “That’s all. After that, I’ll leave and never bother you again. Just five minutes.”
I was about to shut the door in his face when I saw the briefcase in his hand and the serious look in his eye. Against my better judgment, I let him in.
More words went unspoken in our brief meeting than were actually said. He had something that he needed to give to me, an olive branch, or maybe this was his way of clearing his conscience. When he left, I held in my hand a criminal file with the name Ray Kroll written on the tab—a stolen file that I was never supposed to possess. Inside that file was a CD that Boady said I should listen to, a CD that might hold the secret to Jenni’s death.
After Boady left, I played the recording and felt my world tilt.
Hello?
Yeah, it’s me.
The boss said you’d be calling. What’s up?
We have a job. I need you to lift a car. Keep it clean. No fingerprints. No DNA. Wear gloves.
I know what I’m doing.
We have to deal with someone right away.
Send a message?
No. Extreme prejudice. Hit-and-run.
Great. Another drop of blood and we do all the work.
This is serious. It’s a cop’s wife.
A what?
You heard me. She stumbled onto something she shouldn’t have. If we don’t move fast, we’ll all be fucked. I don’t like this any more than you do.
When?
Today. 3:00.
Where?
Hennepin County Medical Center. There’s a parking garage on the corner of Eighth and Chicago. Meet me on the top floor. I’ll fill you in there. I’m not sure if they have cameras at the entrance, so cover your face when you drive in.
The voices belonged to two men. The first to talk answered the phone with a thick “hello” and was likely the one who recorded the call because his voice, deep and throaty, came through more clearly than the other. He spoke with that kind of permanent slur that I’ve heard in men who spend their lives around bars, his words dragging like he’d just woken up.
The boss said you’d be calling, he said. This man had a boss; he was an employee—a henchman. He understood that he was expected to follow orders, even if it meant killing a woman that he apparently didn’t know.
It’s a cop’s wife.
A what?
I could hear an edge of surprise, maybe even concern in his voice. The Henchman didn’t know Jenni. He didn’t know the target.
The second man’s voice was a little harder to hear, like he was talking through wax paper. Despite the bad connection, I could make out the professional tone, the steady calm of someone who handled stress well, someone who could plan a murder and not trip on his words. This man, the Planner, came across more clipped and trimmed than the Henchman. Educated, I would say. Concise. No chitchat. There was something about his voice that struck me as familiar, not like an old friend or relative, but familiar as though maybe we had met once—chatted at some point in our lives. That was probably just wishful thinking.
The Planner knew who I was. He knew that Jenni was a cop’s wife. When I heard those words the first time, my breath knotted up in my chest. It had been my fault, just as I believed. Jenni died because she was my wife. She died because of my actions, because of my sins. They were going to kill a cop’s wife to get even with the cop. I had suspected that for some time, and the Planner’s words now confirmed it . . . at least that’s what I thought.
But then he continued. She stumbled onto something she shouldn’t have.
I missed that line the first time that I listened to the recording. After he said they were going to kill a cop’s wife, the next words fell behind a thick hum of rage. It wasn’t until I played it a second time that I heard the reason for Jenni’s death, and it made no sense to me. Who would want to kill a hospital social worker? She did nothing but help people. I must have heard it wrong. I played it again, and I heard it again: She stumbled onto something she shouldn’t have.
I stopped the CD and backed away from my laptop as though it had turned venomous. It had never occurred to me that Jenni died because of something she did or something she knew, no more than it would occur to me that the sun might, one day, set in the east. I was supposed to be the target. I was supposed to be the reason. I was a homicide detective. I was the one who had enemies. Not her.
I couldn’t stop pacing. I couldn’t sit down. I went to the front door and opened it again, letting another wave of frigid air slap me in the face. I left the door open until my eyelashes began to frost over and stick together. When I closed the door, my head was quiet, and the world no longer spun backward.
I returned to my laptop and played the CD again and again, writing down every word they said, listening for accents and sounds in the background. After listening to it for the tenth time, the words held no sway over my blood pressure and I saw the CD for what it was—a gift. All these years, I’d been looking down when I should have been looking up. I had discovered more about Jenni’s death in one hour, on that bone-chilling New Year’s Eve, than I had learned over four and a half years of digging.
I closed my laptop and looked down at the pad of paper in front of me, my eyes focusing on one line: The boss said you’d be calling. I turned to a blank page and wrote three words: Boss, Planner, and Henchman.
CHAPTER 3