A Hard Ticket Home (4 page)

Authors: David Housewright

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Hard-Boiled, #Private Investigators

BOOK: A Hard Ticket Home

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“Are you all right?” Kirsten asked.

I was so surprised to hear her voice my heart skipped a beat and a voice shouting from the back of my head told me that it had all been a terrible mistake—
of course she loves you.

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought you might …” After a long pause she added, “I knew you would be okay, I was just checking.”

“Thank you for your concern,” I replied stoically. Sure, like I was going to tell
her
I was hurting.

“Mac?”

“Hmm?”

“Mac, you’re not like anyone else I know. All the men I know, they have a-gen-das”—she sounded the word out—“they have plans, they have mission statements. You don’t. No, come to think about it, you do. You do have a mission statement. But yours is so simple and concise. Live well. Be helpful.”

Why are you telling me that?
I asked myself but didn’t say.

“You’re a good guy,” she added. “There aren’t many like you out there.”

“Thank you.”

“Umm, I have to—I have to go, now.”

“Me, too.”

She said, “I’ll talk to you later,” but it sounded like “good-bye.”

And that was the end of that.

I hung up and listened to Maria for a little while longer.

“Screw this,” I announced. I went to the CD player and replaced Maria’s disc with another. A moment later Bonnie Raitt filled my house, asking, “What is this thing called love?”

What indeed?

I poured a third Pig’s Eye—promising myself this would be the last—and settled in with my telephone directories. It’s rarely that easy, but you have to begin somewhere and after seven years maybe Jamie wasn’t hiding very hard. It was seven when I started dialing, eight-fifteen when I finished. Everyone was home—it was Sunday night in Minnesota, after all. There was one honest-to-God Jamie Anne Carlson listed in the Twin Cities, only she was sixteen years old. Her father, a doctor, had given her a phone with the stipulation that she stay the hell off his. There were thirteen ‘J’ Carlsons in the Minneapolis white pages and eight ‘JA’s—including a Jean Autry—but no Jamies. The St. Paul white pages listed six ‘J’s and two ‘JA’s. None of them was the woman I was looking for.

I returned the phone books to their proper place under the junk drawer in my kitchen and moved to what my father used to call “the family room,” just off the dining room. Boz Scaggs followed me, having replaced Bonnie Raitt in the ten-disc CD player.

I fired up my PC and accessed the Web site of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. I found the screen for motor vehicle information and completed the request form, asking for Jamie’s driver’s license information. The request cost four dollars, would take at least twenty-four hours to complete, and left me wondering what to do next.

The concept of the right to privacy is a treasured hallmark of the American way of life, institutionalized early on by the founding fathers in the fourth and fifth amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It’s also a myth. In this era of advanced computer technology, guys like me can examine private information contained in vast databases that most Americans don’t even know exist. Give me a name—just a name—and in seventy-two hours I can learn if the guy’s married, his wife’s maiden name, the names of his children, where they go to school, and if he’s shacking up with some bimbo at the No-Tell Motel. I can obtain financial records including bank account numbers, deposits and balances, insurance policies, medical history going back ten years, employment
histories, credit histories, court judgments, worker’s compensation claims, property records, even high school and college grades. I can learn which credit cards he carries, what magazines he reads, which restaurants he frequents, the charities he supports, the organizations he belongs to, as well as his long-distance and intrastate toll calls. If he’s online I’ll know which Web sites he visits and what chat rooms he hangs out in. I can even find out if he wears a toupee or bought the Mario Lanza CD that was advertised on television. Yet it all seemed like so much work for a guy who broke his promise and was now working on his fourth beer.

Besides, there were two databases that might tell me everything I needed to know in a hurry if I could tap them—the National Crime Information Center and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s Criminal Justice Information System. I used to have a pretty reliable source in the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department who would access this information for me—I paid him fifty, sometimes a hundred bucks a pop. But that was when he was a sergeant making thirty-nine seven a year. Now he’s a newly promoted lieutenant pulling down forty-four five and he’s above it all. Not only that, he threatens if he catches me using someone else in the department he’ll bust my balls—how soon they forget.

I considered several other likely candidates who could help me and settled on Detective Sergeant Robert J. Dunston of the St. Paul Police Department. I called. The phone rang five times before a woman answered, “Hello.”

“Hi, Shel. It’s me.”

“Rushmore.” She’s the only person who gets to call me that. “When are you going to take me away from all this?”

“From all of what? What’s going on?”

“Bobby’s in one of his moods again. Right now he’s upstairs lecturing the girls because they didn’t turn on the porch light.”

“Put him on the phone.”

A few moments later Bobby was telling me what he told his two daughters.

“How many times do I need to say it? Keep the front door locked, keep the back door locked, turn on the lights. How many women need to be raped, how many need to be killed before they catch on? Do they need to see pictures, ’cause I have pictures.”

“Crime scene photos? You’re going to show crime scene photos to an eight- and ten-year-old girl?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“Bob, you’re losing it.”

“Am I?” He took a deep breath. “Maybe I am.” Slow exhale. “It was awful. The worst I ever caught. What he did to her.” His voice dropped several octaves like he was afraid someone would overhear him. “Mac, he removed one of her breasts with a steak knife, the other he peeled the way you would fillet a fish. Cigarette burns all over her body, a knife protruding from her vagina. He tied her to the bedposts with twine and sealed her mouth with duct tape … .”

I closed my eyes at the horror of it. Sometimes I didn’t miss police work at all.

“I never saw one that bad before, not even in training,” Bobby added.

“Who was she?”

“Katherine Katzmark. Know her?”

“Name sounds familiar.”

“She was an entrepreneur. Rich. Owned a catering service and a chain of kitchenware stores that sold imported place settings, cutlery and that sort of thing—you know, Worldware—and something else, I don’t remember. By this time tomorrow I’ll know everything about her.”

I didn’t doubt him for a moment. Bobby was an extremely thorough investigator.

He added, “I only came home for a few hours of sleep,” in case I
thought he was sloughing off—the first twenty-four hours in a murder investigation are crucial.

“High profile case,” I volunteered.

“Tell me about it, the media is already …” He paused, sighed some more. “You try not to take it home with you, you know? But I pull into the driveway and the light’s not on.”

“I know.”

He paused for a moment and then asked, “What did you want, anyway?”

“I was going to beg a favor but I’m embarrassed now, what with your other troubles.”

“But not
too
embarrassed.”

Of course not. I told him the reason I called and he recited the department line concerning the unauthorized use of criminal records along with a lecture centering around the fact that he was far too busy to do my
favors
for me. I agreed with him and apologized.

“Ahh, screw it, I’ll call you tomorrow morning.”

“Bobby?” I asked before he hung up.

“Yeah?”

“Could you pull Merci Cole, too?”

“Sure. Why not? It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

I then asked him to put his wife back on the phone.

“Rushmore?”

“What the hell, Shelby. You and the girls can’t be bothered to lock doors and turn on lights … ?”

Bobby Dunston’s call caught me just as I was stepping out of the shower. I was dripping water all over my bedroom carpet when he told me, “I pulled the information you wanted.”

“Thank you.”

“Why don’t you come downtown about twelve-thirty and I’ll give it to you. You can buy me lunch.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“You can do a favor for me, too.”

“Sure.”

He hung up before I could ask him what favor.

Jerry Jeff Walker was on the CD player, singing about getting off that L.A. freeway without getting killed. I hummed along while I drank my coffee and read the newspapers.

Both the St. Paul
Pioneer Press
and the Minneapolis
Star-Tribune
were filled with stories about the brutal slaying of Katherine Katzmark. They emphasized that she had been an attractive woman. They remarked on the three businesses she had owned. They also made mention of the fact that she was the only female among the eight founding members of the Northern Lights Entrepreneur’s Club, a growing organization of young businesspeople that was challenging The Brotherhood—as the Twin Cities’ more senior movers and shakers were known—for political and economic dominance. It was just-the-facts-ma’am reporting, but there was an interesting if not insidious edge to it that disturbed me. The papers seemed to suggest that Katherine had been raped, tortured, and murdered
because
of her looks, her three businesses, and her involvement in the club—that her brutal death was punishment for having the audacity to shine in a male-dominated world.

Or maybe it was just me.

Without thinking, I reached for the phone. I was going to call Kirsten to ask if she had the same take on the articles as I did but then I remembered—we don’t have a relationship anymore. I cursed softly and returned the receiver to its cradle.

I was surrounded by eight large windows arranged in a semicircle in the breakfast nook that I had added to the house, each window overlooking my backyard. The yard was nearly a hundred feet deep and at the back of it was a small pond with a fountain in the center that my father had installed—I had told him we could pay someone to build it for us, but he was a guy who liked to do things himself. In the pond I could see five baby ducks frolicking under the watchful protection of their parents.

The mallards had arrived in the early spring at just about the time my father died and had somehow discovered the pond despite the fir trees that shaded it. Soon after, the five ducklings appeared. I told my father about the ducks while he lay in a hospital bed and he made me
promise to take care of them. He was a guy who took care of things, of people. If you needed a ditch dug, a roof shingled, furniture moved; if you needed a few bucks or a shoulder to cry on; if you needed a volunteer, you called my dad. I learned from him.

I began by feeding the ducks from a distance, but eventually they took dried corn out of my hand. I called the adults Hepburn and Tracy. The kids I named Bobby, Shelby, Victoria, and Katie after the Dunston family and Maureen after my mother. They seemed quite content in my backyard and I dreaded the day they would all fly south for the winter. I asked a friend at the Department of Natural Resources about it and he told me if they survived the trip the ducks would probably return in the spring to establish new nests.

“In a few years you could be up to your butt in mallards,” he said.

That was fine with me. I liked the ducks. One of the things I liked most about them: They mated for life.

The St. Paul Police Department is located across from the Tastee Bread Company in downtown St. Paul, I-94 cutting a valley between them. I parked neatly in the visitors section of the asphalt lot after dodging a half dozen vans and panel trucks that were parked any which way the drivers pleased. The trucks were emblazoned with the logos and call letters of local TV and radio stations. Reporters for the stations as well as the two Twin Cities daily newspapers and assorted weeklies milled together in the foyer, standing apart from the officers who came and went, while they waited for someone in authority to make a statement. Most of the officers viewed the reporters with derision if not outright contempt. I recognized some of the cops from my eleven years on the force. Some of them recognized me.

They were friendly enough. They slapped my back and shook my hand and joked about the times we shared and how bad things were getting in
the department and how lucky I was to have left when I did and said we should all get together and raise some hell. Only I knew nothing would come of it. I was no longer a member of the fraternity. I had quit. Pulled the pin and walked away. I might have gone back if someone invited me, only no one did. So, I stood by myself in the foyer, waiting for Bobby. It was the curse of the self-employed—or unemployed, as the case might be. Working alone you often become lonely. There’s no one with whom to discuss last night’s Twins game or politics or even the weather.

“I feel like a kibitzer,” I told Bobby later as we left the building, walking south on Minnesota Street.

“You are a kibitzer,” he said abruptly.

“Thank you for understanding.”

“What do you want me to tell you? That you’re an integral member of the St. Paul Police Department? You’re not.”

There was anger in his voice and since I was reasonably sure I hadn’t put it there, I asked, “What’s going on?”

Bobby threw a glance over his shoulder at the TV vans.

“In about ten minutes, Deputy Chief Tommy Thompson is going to blow my investigation to hell and gone.”

“How?”

“He’s going to tell the media that Katherine Katzmark’s boyfriend is our only suspect.”

“Is he your only suspect?”

“So far.”

“Are you going to arrest him?”

“Hell, no! Right now there’s plenty of evidence to prove that he was in Kansas City when the murder took place and absolutely none to prove that he wasn’t. He’s the one who discovered the body. He’s the one who called 911. He’s cooperating. He’s answering questions. But once he hears what Thompson has to say, you just know he’s gonna lawyer-up and then I won’t get jack from him.

“Bastard Thompson—he wants his fifteen minutes of fame so bad. I begged him, Mac. I actually begged him not to mention the boyfriend. ‘But we have to give the media something,’ he says. Yeah, right. Something that’ll get him on the evening news before the chief comes back and takes over.”

“Where is the chief?”

“Fishing. In Florida.”

“Lucky him,” I said.

“You know what this means, don’t you? From now on I’ll be expected to prove that the boyfriend killed Katherine. Forget developing other leads or investigating other suspects, just get the boyfriend.”

“Maybe he did it.”

“What do we know? We know that Katherine was a white, upper-class female who was killed in one of the safest neighborhoods in the Twin Cities, so right away we figure she was killed by someone she knew.”

I had the distinct impression that he was talking more to himself than he was to me.

“We know that in spite of everything the bastard did to her, the ME says she was strangled—manual strangulation—which means the killer probably had a strong personal attachment to her.

“We know that the killer was unafraid of discovery. He did nothing quickly. He spent hours in that house, which indicates that he knew something of her habits. What’s more, everything he used came from Katherine’s kitchen—the twine, duct tape, steak knife—he knew it was available to him before he arrived.”

Bobby was on a roll now.

“And we know the way he hacked her body, the way he displayed it, concealing nothing—he wanted people to see what he had done to her. That indicates rage. A crime of passion. And yeah, all that would seem to indicate the boyfriend.”

“He wouldn’t be the first killer to”—I quoted the air—“‘discover’ the body.”

“Except he was in Kansas City for a convention. He flew down there Thursday morning and we know he flew back early Sunday afternoon. In between …” Bobby shrugged. “Kansas City is four hundred fifty miles away. That’s a lot of hard driving there and back in the amount of time he had.”

“Unless he flew.”

“Doesn’t matter. Fly or rent a car, he’d still need a credit card—after nine-eleven no one’s accepting cash. We’re checking. So far nothing. But we’re still looking. In the meantime, I sent Jeannie down to KC to interview hotel employees and any conventioneers she can find, check his alibi.”

“Who’s Jeannie?”

“My new partner. You haven’t met her yet. You’ll like her. Young. Beautiful. Smart as hell.”

Bobby stopped walking. I was two steps past before I realized it and turned toward him. He was pointing a finger at me.

“I’ll tell you one thing—I don’t care what Thompson tells the media. I will not play favorites. I’m not going to arrest just any dumb moke to clear the case. I’m going to get the right person for it and I’m gonna put him away forever.”

I draped my arm over his shoulders and led him across 10th Street. I tried to recall my first impression of Bobby Dunston and failed. I couldn’t remember how or when we met—probably school. It seemed we were always in the same class together, always played on the same baseball teams and hockey teams. We even went to the same college—the University of Minnesota—each selecting the school independently, not at all surprised to learn the other had made the same choice.

“We’ve sure come a helluva long way since we played ball at Dunning Field,” I told him.

“Naw,” he said. “It just seems long.”

We continued walking together in silence. Finally, I asked, “Where are we going?”

Donahue’s hadn’t changed much since the early 1950s when the purple neon sign above the door blinked HOME COOKING. The sign was still there although the neon had long since burned out. So were the original booths and tables, just as worn with age and use as the sign. The walls were adorned with a series of Chinese landscapes that seemed as out of place now as they had fifteen years ago when I was introduced to the restaurant. I was still on probabation and Colin Gernes, my supervising officer, sat me down at the counter and announced, “Got a rook here, Liz.”

Liz was a big-busted woman of indeterminate age, dressed in a black and white uniform. “Fresh meat,” she said contemptuously. Five minutes later she slid a platter of sliced roast beef served with mashed potatoes and gravy in front of me.

“This one’s on the house, Rook, with some advice,” she said. “Find another line of work while you still can.”

“Too late,” Gernes told her. “He busted a suspect for B and E this morning and he liked it. He’s a thirty-year man for sure.”

I learned later that Liz had a husband who put in twenty-six years with the cops before he was killed in the line of duty by a seventeen-year-old coke-head. You’d think she wouldn’t want anything to do with cops after that, but she did. She took her husband’s pension and insurance and bought Donahue’s, where she dispensed good food, hearty laughter, caustic advice, and simple wisdom to the men and women who worked at the St. Paul Police Department three blocks away. That and a strong shoulder to cry on. When her huge heart finally burst at the age of seventy-two, they fired exactly seventy-two shots over her grave. Four hundred active and retired officers attended her funeral. No governor, no mayor, no councilman, no police chief was allowed to speak a word.

“I haven’t been here in years,” I said when we found a booth under a faded print showing a dozen Chinese peasants trapping a tiger beneath the Great Wall. I didn’t know they had tigers in China. The restaurant was half full. Most of the cops had stopped coming after Liz passed. I read the menu the waitress gave me. I don’t know why. I already knew what I was going to order. “Hot roast beef with mashed potatoes.”

After the waitress took our orders, Bobby told me that there was no paper on Carlson, Jamie Anne—she hadn’t ever been arrested for anything, not even a traffic summons. He had run the name through DMV. The only match was sixteen and brunette and living in Minneapolis—the doctor’s daughter, I presumed.

“What about Merci Cole?” I asked.

Bobby gave me a folded sheet of paper.

“My, my, my.”

Merci had a long list of prostitution gripes, one DWI, a couple of dis cons and one Class A felony—possession with intent. She did eighteen months at Shakopee and was released six weeks ago. Her last known address was on Avon near University Avenue in St. Paul, a neighborhood with abysmal property values.

I refolded the sheet and stuffed it in my pocket.

“I appreciate this, Bobby.”

“No problem. You can do me a favor, though.”

“Sure.”

“I’d like to use your lake home … .”

“Of course.”

“When this is done …”