A Carnival of Killing (8 page)

“You’re sure it’s not loaded?” Al asked.

“Of course it’s not loaded,” Fitzpatrick said. “I know better than to bring a loaded gun in here.”

“Show me,” Al said.

Fitzpatrick pushed out the cylinder so we could see that it was empty.

“How about if I take the gun and go with you to the editorial page editor?” Al asked. “I think Frank might allow that, being as how I work here and he sees me every day.” Frank, who was delighted to be taken off the hook, nodded in vigorous affirmative.

The three of us rode up the elevator to the fourth floor. When we got there, I headed for my desk, and Al walked Sean Fitzpatrick through the newsroom to the editorial page office after getting everyone’s attention by yelling, “Armed and dangerous gunslinger on the floor.”

On my desk was a note to call Ted Carlson and a scrap of paper informing me that the ME would release the autopsy report on Lee-Ann Nordquist at 9:00 a.m. On my voice mail was a message from Kitty Catalano saying she thought my Sunday story on our ride with the Vulcans was “really super.”

Ted Carlson could jolly well wait in line. I’d phone Kitty later to hear first-hand, possibly at lunch, how really super she thought my story was, but my first call had to be to Detective Curtis Brown.

He picked up after only three rings. “Homicidebrown.”

“Dailydispatchmitchell. What’s new on the late Klondike Kate?”

“The autopsy report,” Brownie said. “Didn’t you get the word?”

“I did. But there must be more than that. Surely your detectives have not been sloughing off over the weekend.”

“You can tell the taxpayers that we’ve been working very hard on this case. However, we haven’t turned up much beyond a shitload of Vulcans as possible persons of interest, which is still off the record by the way. I’m hoping you can help reduce the number from your contacts with the Vulcan menagerie. Good story and pix, by the way.”

“Thanks from both me and Al,” I said. “I’m sure you already know the names of three members of this year’s Krewe who were in O’Halloran’s.”

“I do,” Brownie said. “It’s the possible fourth one we haven’t come up with. Either the woman who thought she saw four Vulcans was seeing double from too many drinks or there was a ringer in the group.”

“If there was a ringer, it could have been a guy named Ted Carlson.”

“The Vulcans’ manager?”

“That’s the one. Have you questioned him?”

“No. What makes you think I should?”

“He talked to us at Klondike Kate’s Friday night, dressed up in his Vulcan suit from three years ago. He let slip that he was at the Queen of the Snows dance Wednesday night, also in costume. He said he didn’t go with the bunch to O’Halloran’s, but people have been known to lie.”

“Not to a reporter,” Brownie said, feigning utter shock.

“Even to a reporter,” I said.

“Thanks for the lead, Mitch. I’ll have a little chat with Mr. Carlson. Have a good day.” Brownie was gone before I could ask another question. I put down the phone realizing that I’d received nothing useful in exchange for my tidbit of intelligence. I could only hope that the ME’s report was more than routine.

The ME’s report was presented to a milling cluster of Twin Cities newspaper, television and radio reporters, along with their associated photographers and cameramen, by Police Chief Casey O’Malley. The report began with the customary facts about the cause of death, which in this case was strangulation. No surprise there.

This mundane beginning was followed by the equally stunning revelation that marks on the victim’s neck indicated the use of some sort of rope as a garrote. This drew an appropriate silent response.

Next came the word that the victim’s coat, hat, and scarf had been found in O’Halloran’s cloakroom, which meant she’d been taken outside in below-zero weather without them. I raised my hand at this, and was told to hold my question until the chief was finished.

The time of death was estimated at between 11:00 p.m. and midnight. This was the time a witness had reported seeing her leaving through the backdoor, which led to an adjacent parking ramp, with a male companion. The fact that the companion was dressed in a Vulcan costume was not mentioned by the chief.

“Tests showed that the alcohol level in the victim’s blood was .10,” the chief continued. “This, of course, is above the level of legal intoxication, which is .08.”

Next we were told that the victim showed signs of “vaginal bruising” but that no semen was found. If rape had been attempted, the act was not completed. Finally, the chief called for questions.

Again my hand shot up. “Does the fact that she wasn’t wearing her coat indicate that she was killed immediately after leaving the building?” I asked.

“That’s a possibility,” said Chief O’Malley.

I followed up. “How about inside the building? Could she have been dead when the witness saw her leave with the man?” That brought a burst of verbal response from the crowd and I heard Trish Valentine say, “Gross!”

“That’s also a possibility,” the chief said. More groans from the masses.

“Can you identify the witness who saw her leave?” the Channel 5 reporter asked.

“The witness will not be identified at this time,” Chief O’Malley said.

“Do you think the fact that the victim was legally drunk had anything to do with her death?” Trish Valentine asked.

“It may’ve been a factor,” the chief said. “The witness who saw her leave stated that she was leaning heavily on her companion.”

“What happened to her car?” asked the man holding a Channel 7 microphone. “Was she driving that night?”

“She was not driving,” Chief O’Malley replied. “She lived in an apartment downtown and walked to both the dance and the party in O’Halloran’s. Her car was found in her designated space in the building’s parking ramp.”

The chief answered a couple more questions, and when no more queries were forthcoming he said, “Oh, there is one more thing. The victim was approximately three months pregnant.”

Well, didn’t that start the questions and answers flying? No, the police didn’t know who the father was. Yes, the fetus’s DNA would be analyzed. No, neither the victim’s parents nor any of her friends who police had questioned knew who she’d been seeing. Yes, the police were calling for the father to come forward voluntarily.

When the hubbub had ended and Al and I were back on the sidewalk, where the temperature was a balmy five below, I saw a woman ahead of us wearing a long lavender coat and a fashionable red cap. “Kitty!” I yelled.

Kitty Catalano stopped and turned around. “Oh, hi,” she said. She forced a smile and offered each of us a black-gloved hand for shaking.

“Thanks for the phone call,” I said. “I planned to get back to you later. Were you at the autopsy report?”

“Yes, I was,” she said. “We’re all terribly interested in finding out anything we can about poor Lee-Ann. Isn’t it awful that she was pregnant?”

“It is,” I said. “Two lives wasted instead of one. I don’t suppose you have any idea who she might have been seeing?”

“None. Like I told you, I really didn’t know her all that well. Apparently Toni and Esperanza weren’t able to help the police, either, and I think they were her two best friends in the world.”

“Can you think of anybody else she was close to?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know. Maybe Hillary Howard. She’s another Klondike Kate.”

“Could you have her call me?” I asked.

“Sure,” Kitty said. “A bunch of us are having lunch to discuss what we can do for Lee-Ann’s family. I’ll talk to Hillary then, if that’s okay.”

“That’s fine,” I said. There went the prospect of brightening my day by lunching with a beautiful woman.

Oh, well, I thought, things could be worse. And I’d no sooner sat down at my desk than they got worse. The phone rang, I answered and the doleful voice said, “This is Morrie.”

Every newspaper has a timewaster like Morrie, who called to talk nonsense when a reporter was digging into something important. Our Morrie was a dumpy, disheveled, middle-aged man who walked around downtown with a little shaggy white dog on a leash. Usually he phoned to complain about the Russians watching him on radar. Sometimes the calls were about someone named Robinson, who Morrie claimed was trying to kill him. For some reason, the little kook usually asked for me.

This call had to do with Robinson. “If you put something in the paper, Robinson would be scared and leave me alone,” Morrie said.

“Get a pencil and paper, I know just the person you need to talk to,” I said, flipping through the scribbled scraps of paper on my desk. “Call this number.” I gave him the number and extension of the Minneapolis Enquirer Capitol Bureau. Let John Robertson, Jr., deal with the Robinson dilemma.

It was mid-afternoon when Hillary Howard called. Dave Jerome, our editorial cartoonist, was sitting on that tiny uncluttered area at one corner of my desk telling me about his morning conversation with Sean Fitzpatrick when I got the call.

“It’s a good thing that Al was the one carrying the gun,” Dave said. “If that redneck bastard had come in with a gun in his hand I’d have been under the drawing table having a heart attack.”

“I got the impression that Sean didn’t care much for your cartoon,” I said.

“Some people don’t understand that cartoonists exaggerate things for effect. And gun nuts in particular don’t have any sense of humor.”

“Sean certainly didn’t get a bang out of your AK-47.”

“I’m just glad his little show-and-tell gun wasn’t loaded or he might have shot off more than his mouth.” When my phone rang, Dave waved goodbye and slid off the desk.

Like all of the women chosen to be Klondike Kate, Hillary had a strong voice. It was so strong, in fact, that I was obliged to hold the receiver an inch away from my ear when she spoke. We exchanged greetings, and I expressed my sympathy for the loss of her friend before I asked Hillary if she had any knowledge of Lee-Ann’s love life.

“I knew Lee was seeing some guy she really liked,” Hillary said. “But she never mentioned his name.”

“Did she tell you anything about him?” I asked.

“Not much. He must have been pretty good in bed because she was always full of piss and vinegar after she’d been with him. She never actually said it, but I got the impression that the reason their relationship was such a big secret was because the guy was married.”

“Did you know she was pregnant?”

“No. I don’t think anybody did.”

“Not even the boyfriend?”

“Who knows? Maybe she told him and he decided to kill her.”

“That’s possible,” I said. “It wouldn’t be the first time a married man knocked off a knocked-up mistress.”

“That’s a pretty crude way of putting it,” Hillary said.

“I’m noted for being crude. It goes with the job. Do you know anything else at all about this guy?”

“No, I don’t think so. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. You’ve given me a little something I didn’t have before.”

We exchanged goodbyes, and I put down the phone.

“Man, who was that?” asked Bob Anderson, the reporter at the desk beside mine. “Was she talking through a megaphone?”

“She doesn’t need one,” I said. “She’s one of the Klondike Kates.” Bob, who had pursued the story of Lee-Ann’s murder while I was riding with the Vulcans on Friday, nodded in understanding.

I added what Hillary had told me to my Lee-Ann Nordquist computer file and was thinking about calling it a day when the phone rang again.

“It’s Hillary,” said the booming voice. “I just thought of something else.”

“I’m all ears,” I said, holding the phone an inch away from the left one.

“I’m pretty sure the secret boyfriend was a Vulcan.”

Monday Musings

On Monday nights I usually went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting a few blocks from my apartment building. After each meeting, I had a ginger ale in a Grand Avenue establishment called Herbie’s Bar & Grill with a fellow alcoholic named Jayne Halvorson. We both found it therapeutic to sit drinking in a bar without ordering alcohol.

Martha had no problem with these après meeting tête-à-têtes because Jayne had neither the time for nor the interest in becoming a romantic rival. She’s about ten years older than I am, and was supporting and raising two teenage daughters all alone because her uncontrollable drinking prompted her husband to disappear before she gave herself to AA. She was always a great listener and sometimes a sage adviser.

On this particular Monday, I needed to vent about the Lee-Ann Nordquist murder.

“So, what do you know so far?” Jayne asked.

“I know that two other Klondike Kates were with Lee-Ann at O’Halloran’s, and one of them says she saw three Vulcans there and the other one is sure she saw four. I know the Krewe names of three men who were in O’Halloran’s that night, but the carnival brass won’t release their real names until after the carnival ends.

“A witness that the cops won’t identify saw Lee-Ann go out the back door with a Vulcan. She was leaning heavily on him, which could either have been because she was drunk, which she definitely was, or dead, which I think she probably was. Her hat and coat were left inside O’Halloran’s, which tells me that she most likely was killed inside the building.

“She was three months pregnant, but nobody, including her two best friends, knew she was pregnant or knows who the father might be. Another one of her friends told me that Lee-Ann was seeing a man who is possibly married and is probably a Vulcan. This guy could be the prime suspect if the cops can find out who he is. But even Brownie isn’t telling me anything I can print, so where do I go from here when my city editor hollers for a story tomorrow morning?”

“Seems to me you need to talk to those three Vulcans that you know were in O’Halloran’s,” Jayne said.

“Wish me luck with that. The whole Krewe moved away from me like an Amish family shunning a backslider when I started asking what they’d seen that night. If I knew the real names of those three turkeys, I could camp on their doorsteps, but I’m S-O-L on that until after Saturday night’s big battle with Boreas. Plus, I promised Brownie I wouldn’t wreck the carnival by writing about the Vulcan factor before the fun is over.”