I pulled Niki’s recorder out of my pocket and wiggled it for Briggs to see before turning it off. “If you won’t resign, then you leave no alternative. I’m heading down to Murphy’s office.” I stood. “When the dust all settles, just remember that I gave you a way out.”
I turned and walked toward the door.
“Stop!”
Briggs had his eyes closed. His hands squeezed the arms of his chair. I waited. Then he slowly opened his eyes and reached for his keyboard, his fingers trembling as he clicked open his e-mail. He stared at the screen for a moment and began composing.
Briggs typed in spurts, pausing every few seconds to ponder. I suspect he was trying to find a way out of his predicament. The further he got into his resignation letter, the more difficulty he had breathing, at one point closing his eyes and heaving as if he’d just been punched in the gut. After typing for the better part of ten minutes, he turned to me and I could see the tears that clung to the red sags forming under his eyes.
“Please, Max. We can work this out. I have friends. Please don’t do this.”
“You have nothing to offer me, because you have nothing I want. Your friends won’t impress me.”
“But Chief Murphy is weak. I could make you the heir apparent. I can do that.”
“Are you finished with that letter?”
“You could be the chief of police for the City of Minneapolis. Think about it.”
“Let me read it.”
Briggs slowly turned his computer screen to me. I could see that the e-mail was properly addressed to Chief Murphy with a copy to Human Resources. I read it out loud.
Dear Chief Murphy,
I am writing to inform you of my resignation from the Minneapolis Police Department, effective immediately. I know this is sudden, but for personal reasons I must tender my resignation. My reasons for this decision will remain undisclosed, and I will not partake in an exit interview. It has been my honor to serve such a distinguished organization, and I will always cherish my time here. Thank you for all that you have done for me over the years.
Sincerely,
Emil Briggs
When I finished reading it, I turned the screen back to Briggs and said, “Send it.”
“Please, Max, I’m begging you. Please. I’ll give you—”
I slammed my palm on the desk. “I said . . . send it.”
I watched as he directed his cursor to the send tab. He closed his eyes and clicked. The e-mail disappeared from his screen.
I had nothing more to say to Briggs. I stood up and left his office to the sound of a grown man whimpering and sniffling like a child.
Fucking politics.
CHAPTER 25
Up North
How many rocks does it take to keep a body at the bottom of a lake? I should know the answer to this. I’ve been trained on water deaths and handled at least five drowning cases that I can remember. Minneapolis, after all, is the City of Lakes. I try to revisit those trainings, but the knowledge that I’m looking for remains out of reach.
A body will sink if it is less dense than the water around it. I know that. It makes a difference whether the lungs have air in them or water. A drowning victim is more likely to sink than a victim who is killed somewhere else and later thrown into the water. But after a body sinks, the process of decay creates gasses, which will fill up certain cavities and bring the body back to the surface. So the question isn’t how much weight would it take to send a body to the bottom of a lake, but how much weight would it take to keep him there.
In all my trainings, no one has ever answered that question.
I spread out the snowmobile cover at the edge of the lake and climb onto shore. With my foot I push snow to the side, sweeping my leg back and forth until my toe hits on something. Brushing snow away, I find my first rock, about the size of a cantaloupe. I have to hit it with my heel to dislodge it. Then I heave it about twenty feet, landing it in the middle of the snowmobile cover, and go back to sweeping my foot in search of another rock.
What are you doing? Nancy asks.
I know it’s not Nancy—she died two years ago at her sister’s house in Florida—but there’s poetic logic to hearing my doubts animated by the one person who knew me before I became so sure of myself. I probably shouldn’t, but I answer that voice in my head.
“I’m doing what I have to do,” I say out loud.
My foot bumps against another rock, this one a little bigger than the last. I work it out of the frozen ground and weigh it in my hands. “About ten pounds, don’t you think?” I ask that of Nancy, who, I know, is nothing more than a phantom of my conscience, a nagging vestige of my younger, more idealistic self—someone I thought I’d packed away long ago. The quiet must be getting to me. Away from the man and his ranting, my mind wants to pull memories out of the shadows where they’ve been hiding. I attempt to push them back with the sound of my own voice.
“Let’s see . . . ten pounds for this rock and maybe eight for the first one. Eighteen. And how many will I need? Let’s say I match his weight . . . I’m guessing a buck eighty.”
Max, do you hear yourself?
“Yeah, one eighty, I’d say. Now I have eighteen pounds . . . and . . . that means . . .”
You’re not going to go through with this, Max. That’s not who you are.
“You don’t know who I am,” I say. I’m angry and at the same time a little unnerved.
I know you, Max.
“You left twenty years ago,” I say to the air around me. “Hell, I was just a kid when you knew me.” I find another rock, another ten-pounder, and toss it to my small pile.
I didn’t feel like I was a kid when Nancy left, but looking back now, twenty years old seems so young. She moved out the day after Alexander graduated from high school. She’d fulfilled her unspoken promise to take care of me and my brother. With Alexander old enough to set his own course, she kissed us both good-bye and headed for warmer climes. Our father didn’t show up to see her off. By that time, he was absent even when he sat in the same room as we did.
I find my fourth rock, and it is larger than the other three. I contemplate whether to take it. I question if it might cause a jam when I slip it through the hole. I decide that it will work, and I kick at it with my heel.
You can’t kill him. You know that.
“I know no such thing,” I say. I try to dismiss the memory. She knew me as a boy, not as a man. She’s from that part of my past during which I lived in truths of black and white. Now I know that we live in a world of gray. We are the ones in charge of the balancing. We are the reckoners. The only question to be answered is: can one live with the aftermath? The men who killed Jenni had to understand that. They knew the rules. What this man had coming is nothing more than what he should have expected.
And that gives you the right to take his life from him?
I sit down to put my foot against the stubborn rock and push. It lifts out of its home, flat on the bottom, which will make it easier to fit it through the hole in the ice. I pick it up, struggle to my feet, and head toward the lake. “Yes,” I say. “That gives me the right to take his life from him. It gives me all the right I need.”