“You’ve been charged on a five-count complaint with assault in the first degree, assault in the second degree, assault in the third degree, and two counts of assault in the fifth degree. The maximum penalty for the top count is up to twenty years in prison and a fine of up to thirty thousand dollars. Do you understand the charges against you, or would you like to have the charges read aloud in open court today?”
“I understand. I don’t want no charges read.”
It was the same slow, rusty voice from the phone call; I was sure of it. I played the phone call on my digital recorder and listened to the recording of the Henchman.
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.
“It’s him,” I said, turning to Niki. “No doubt it’s him. He’s the Henchman. It’s . . .”
Niki’s eyes showed horror, not excitement. Her mouth hung open on its hinge, and the rose of her cheeks had fallen pale.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I know that voice,” she said in a cold whisper.
“I know. It’s Raymond Kroll.”
“Not him—the other man. I know his voice.”
“The Planner? Are you sure?”
She nodded. “So do you.”
“I do?”
“Reece Whitton.”
I couldn’t move. I stopped breathing. Words and thoughts flung around my head like leaves in a twister. Reece Whitton? That wasn’t possible. It made no sense.
“It’s Reece,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”
I remembered, the first time I heard the recording. Something in the Planner’s voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I spoke to him just yesterday, but it didn’t hit me. Why would it? It never occurred to me to look within my own circle for the men responsible. But now I heard it. I played the recording again and listened as Reece Whitton planned my wife’s murder.
My world took on a spectral shift once I connected Reece’s voice to the recording, as though I could now see wavelengths of light that had been hidden to my eyes. Things started to come together in a crush.
“Whitton was the investigator at the hospital,” I said. “He would have gotten the call about the girl at HCMC.”
“That’s why there was no supplemental report in the file.”
“And the photos taken by the responding officer . . .”
“Whitton has access to the Cappers system,” Niki said. “He’s the one who deleted the pictures. He wanted to erase any evidence that Zoya went to the hospital that day.”
“But why? Who was Zoya to Whitton? And why kill Jenni?” My thoughts hummed and pinged with such ferocity that it made me dizzy. Whitton, Kroll, Jenni, Farrah, Zoya—where was the connection? A cop, a thug, a social worker, an interpreter and . . . Zoya.
“Slow down,” Niki said. “Let’s walk through this.”
I took a deep breath. “OK, let’s review. There’s at least three of them: the Boss, the Planner, and the Henchman. The two guys on the recording are the Planner and the Henchman.”
“Whitton and Kroll.”
I nod my head, still disbelieving that Whitton could have been involved, even though I heard it with my own ears. “The third person is the Boss. On the recording, Kroll says ‘The boss said you’d be calling.’ That means there’s a third person.”
“So Whitton went to HCMC on the morning of Jenni’s death,” Niki said, her eyes fixed on something far away as she worked it through. “He didn’t send a detective; he went himself.”
“He must have known about Zoya being thrown through the window before he got the call?”
“Makes sense, but how?”
“And when he gets there, Zoya sees him and shuts down—what did Farrah say?”
“She clammed up when the investigator walked in.”
“Zoya recognized Whitton,” Niki said.
“But Jenni called Ms. McKinney back. She wanted to set up another meeting for that afternoon, at three thirty.”
“She would have called Whitton too,” Niki said in a soft, sad voice, almost to herself. “Whitton would have known that Zoya was talking again.”
“That’s when he put this plan together.”
My fingers tapped lightly on the desk, my outward appearance as calm as the ripples in a brook. In my head, however, I fought to see and hear. A scalding red rage drowned out my vision, and in my ears, I couldn’t hear past my own thoughts: I’m going to kill him. I will beat the life out of Reece Whitton. I will track him down and rip him apart with my bare hands and stomp the scraps of his skin and bones into the snow.
“Max?” I felt Niki’s hand on my arm.
“Huh?”
“I asked you a question.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘What are you going to do now?’”
“You know where Whitton lives?”
“Max, that’s not—”
I hit my words harder the second time. “I said, ‘Do you know where Whitton lives?’”
“In Kenwood.”
“Give me the address.” I started stacking the files together: Zoya’s, Jane Doe’s, everything. There’d be no trace of any of this left behind.
“I’m going with you.”
“No, Niki, you’re not. Your part ends here.” I shove the files into my briefcase, papers stacked helter-skelter, sticking out through the mouth of the case. “If anyone ever asks you, you don’t know where I went. You don’t know anything. You can’t go where I need to go.”
“But—”
“Niki!” I barked like a man yelling at a beloved dog to stop it from running into traffic. It hurt me to do it. “I’m going alone.”
Niki sat back in her chair, the hurt of my words apparent on her face. It was time for our trail to split into diverging paths. She had to know that I couldn’t involve her in what would happen next.
I stood up as a million wishes and regrets swirled in my head. She was my only friend, the last to leave my side. And the time had come to push her away as well.
I turned to leave, feeling certain that I would never see Niki again.
CHAPTER 27
Whitton lived in Kenwood, a neighborhood on the southern edge of Minneapolis, where the houses ran on the more expensive side. His two-story Tudor stood on a fine corner lot overlooking Lake of the Isles. Not the kind of place one might afford on a civil servant’s pay. My guess was that Reece came into some side money along the way.