A Carnival of Killing (17 page)

Such a possibility was both exciting and scary. Would I really have the guts to tie the knot officially? Maybe. Would she? Who knows?

And if we did tie the knot, would I go along with a honeymoon on Martha’s Vineyard if that’s what she really wanted? No way. Hawaii would be a lot more fun if Martha had her heart set on an island honeymoon.

The snow was the heavy, wet variety that stuck to everything. By the time I gave Martha her tenth and final goodbye kiss while standing outside the door to the parking lot, the trees, shrubs, and cars had been coated with at least two inches of prime snowball material. I resisted the temptation to scoop up a handful, scrunch it into a sphere and fire it at Martha’s back as she slogged toward Sara’s Subaru. When she reached the car, I waved and turned to go indoors. A solid whack between the shoulder blades told me that Martha had been unable to squelch the same devilish desire before getting into the car.

After a long session of brushing and scraping, I got the windows and lights of my Civic sufficiently uncovered to make the trip downtown. Thanks to the Weather Bureau’s forewarning, the plows had been out and the streets were in what Minnesotans call “good winter driving conditions,” with the emphasis always on “winter.” My biggest problem was keeping the windshield clear because the heavy, wet flakes glued themselves to the glass.

Martha had agreed to keep me posted on the progress of the Subaru at regular intervals, and her first call came moments after I shook the snow off my storm coat and hung it on the rack in the newsroom. They were on I-35 north, creeping along in heavy, slow-moving traffic.

I’d no sooner wished Martha better luck and hung up than the phone rang again. When I picked it up, I heard the dreaded voice of Morrie.

“The Russians have got their radar aimed at my building and they’re bombarding me with snow,” he said. “You’ve got to write about it and stop them.”

“It’s snowing everywhere, not just on your building,” I said. “The storm is all over the state.”

“That’s their trick. They want to make you think it’s everywhere, but it’s aimed at me and my dog.” Morrie owned a nondescript white dust mop of a pooch that he sometimes took downtown on a leash.

“Your best bet is to stay indoors and be as quiet as you can until the snow goes away,” I said. “If you keep trying to stop it, the Russians will keep sending more.”

“You mean I should just sit in my apartment all day?”

“I mean stay there without talking to anyone until the snow stops. You might even go to bed with a nice glass of wine.”

“Oh, I never drink alcohol,” Morrie said. “But I will go back to bed.”

Thank God he doesn’t drink alcohol, I thought as I hung up. I couldn’t imagine what phantoms a drunken Morrie would conjure up.

At last I had time to call Brownie. After nine rings, I heard, “Homicidebrown.”

“Dailydispatchmitchell,” I said. “Anything new on Klondike Kate?”

“As a matter of fact, there is,” Brownie said. “The lab has reported a positive match on the fetus’s DNA.”

“Oh, my god, who?” I yelled loud enough to cause every reporter in the newsroom to look my way.

“The chief will announce that at a 10:00 o’clock media briefing here in the station. Have a good day, Mitch.”

“You could have given me a heads-up,” I said into the dead phone, making no effort not to sound whiny.

Who’s Your Daddy?

Al and I arrived at the station ten minutes early, only to find the room already jammed with TV cameras and reporters bearing microphones. As always, Trish Valentine was right up front.

I wriggled through the mob and pushed in beside her. “Hey, Trish, did you spend the night here or what?” I asked.

“Are you implying that I slept with somebody here?” she replied.

“I didn’t say that. I’m just wondering how early you have to get here in order to latch onto the best spot, front and center.”

“My cameraman and I took off as soon as we heard about the briefing. I think we’ve been here about twenty minutes, long enough that my feet are starting to hurt.” She was wearing boots with heels high enough to add a couple of inches to her height.

“Those heels must be a pain. Why not wear something more practical?”

“When you’re as short as I am, you need a boost. I guess a tall person like you wouldn’t understand.”

“Well, I’m sure the chief will be happy to see you in the front row anyway.”

Trish’s reply was cut short when Police Chief Casey O’Malley, Ramsey County Attorney Howard Albert and Homicide Detective Curtis Brown entered the room.

The chief stepped forward and looked sternly over our heads while waiting for the babble to stop.

“We’re here this morning to announce that we have determined the identity of the father of the late Lee-Ann Nordquist’s unborn baby,” O’Malley said when all was quiet. “As you know, we took DNA samples from a several men in this effort. We have been rewarded with a positive match, and we’re now searching for the man in question.”

The chief paused, which he knew would play well on the TV sound bites, and held the silence until I was ready to scream, “For God’s sake, tell us who!”

“The man we are seeking is named Ted Carlson, age thirty-three, who lives in Roseville and works downtown in the Winter Carnival office as liaison for the Vulcans,” O’Malley said. Again he paused for effect.

After a collective gasp of amazement from his audience, O’Malley continued, “Mr. Carlson is married, but has been known to be quite friendly with several women connected with the Winter Carnival, including the late Ms. Lee-Ann Nordquist. Mr. Carlson is also known to have been wearing a Vulcan costume on the night of Ms. Nordquist’s murder. He also is known to have been in the Crowne Plaza Hotel, again wearing a Vulcan costume, on the night of the attack on Ms. Toni Erickson.

“We attempted to reach Mr. Carlson for questioning this morning, but were told that he left his office immediately upon learning from a reporter that we had received the DNA test results. We have issued an APB on Mr. Carlson, and we ask that you folks inform the public that we are looking for him. We’re e-mailing a photo obtained from the Winter Carnival office to all media outlets. Now, are there any questions?”

O’Malley looked expectantly at Trish, and she didn’t fail him. “Who was the reporter and why did he warn Carlson?” she asked.

“The reporter will remain unidentified,” the chief said. “When this person learned of the new development, he, or she, called Mr. Carlson for a comment, not knowing that he was, shall we say, intimately involved. I wouldn’t categorize it as a warning.”

After a couple of more questions, the trio called a halt and retreated, leaving the media mob to disperse. Large, wet snowflakes were still falling and sticking to every available surface when Al and I hit the sidewalk.

“Looks like it’s up to our ankles so far,” I said.

“Think it’ll get chest high?” Al asked.

“We’ll never bust through if it does,” I said.

“That girl really got around,” Jayne Halvorson said as we sat sipping our ginger ale in Herbie’s after the Monday night AA meeting. “Screwing one guy regularly and getting pregnant by another one. Anybody you’ve talked to mention any other boyfriends in the picture?”

I said I hadn’t heard of any, but that at least one of this year’s Vulcan Krewe had been hoping to get into her bloomers.

“Bet he’s damn glad he didn’t score right now,” Jayne said.

“If he had, she might still be alive,” I said. “He was beaten to the draw in O’Halloran’s that night by the guy who killed her.”

“Such slender threads our lives hang on. How often are we at the mercy of other people’s decisions?”

“Too often. Right now Martha is at the mercy of her boss’s decision to send her to Duluth. They had a hell of a ride up there through the snow and could have had a serious accident.”

“Even a minor accident could be serious in this kind of weather.” The snow was still falling and the accumulation reported in the Twin Cities on the 5:00 p.m. news was ten inches. Farther north, the totals were higher, with Duluth reporting fourteen inches, accompanied by winds gusting up to thirty-five miles per hour.

“Martha could be stuck up there for the rest of the winter,” I said. “She wasn’t even sure they could start jury selection tomorrow because some of the prospective jurors lived out of town, up along the north shore.”

Jayne took a swallow of her drink and said, “I take it things are going okay with you two.”

“Okay and then some,” I said. “Martha even mentioned the word honeymoon last Friday.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Scared. For two reasons. One is the thought of actually taking those vows. The other is that she wants the honeymoon to be on Martha’s Vineyard.”

“You’ve got to get over the first reason. I don’t know what to say about the second one.”

“I can probably talk her out of the Vineyard. The question is can I talk myself into saying the vows.”

“I’m betting that you can.” She drained the glass and pushed back her chair. “And now I have to go home and make sure my two girls have talked themselves into doing their homework.”

I slip-slid through a foot of snow on the sidewalk for three blocks to the serenity of my building, all the while thinking about Martha’s out-of-the-blue remark about a honeymoon. I felt like I was teetering at the brink of a precipice, about to topple either into or out of a commitment demanding lifelong fidelity. This seemed even more treacherous than the slippery stuff under my feet.

Sherlock Holmes met me at the door with a meow and a request to have his ears scratched. I knew which way he’d want me to fall. He’s always liked Martha best.

Tuesday was my day off for the week, and Martha called while I was putting peanut butter on my toast much later than usual. The snow had stopped in both St. Paul and Duluth, but she said the prospect of starting the trial was dim. Several members of the jury pool had called the clerk of court to say the roads were blocked and they couldn’t get to the courthouse. If the roads weren’t cleared by noon, which was doubtful because the total snowfall around Duluth was twenty-one inches, the start of jury selection would be postponed until Wednesday.

“So what are you going to do up there all day?” I asked.

“Luckily, I packed an extra book,” Martha said.

“It better be the size of
War and Peace
. You could be stuck there until after Groundhog Day.”

“How much snow would a groundhog hog if a groundhog could hog snow?”

“You’d better give up and catch a plane for home. It sounds like your mind has already gone south.”

“Just a variation on the old woodchuck theme. Anyhow, I’ll talk to you later, sweetie. Sara’s ready to go downstairs for a mid-morning doughnut.”

I spent the rest of the morning cleaning up the apartment and running some clothes through the washer and dryer in the basement. Martha called back at about 12:30 with news that jury selection had been postponed until Wednesday morning. I professed a profound lack of astonishment. We talked for half an hour without either of us mentioning the word honeymoon before she had me lift Sherlock to the phone so she could instruct him to continue keeping me warm. We made our usual kissy sounds and hung up.

“What do you think about a honeymoon?” I asked Sherlock Holmes.

He cocked his head slightly, turned around and strolled into the bedroom. Was there feline symbolism in that response?

At 5:00 p.m., I turned on the TV and flipped to Channel 4 in hope of seeing Trish Valentine reporting live about the snowstorm. Sure enough, she was at the airport interviewing some of the hundreds of passengers still waiting for flights delayed by the weather. She looked fetching in form-fitting black ski pants and another form-fitting sweater, this one featuring various shades of red.

Back at the studio, the perpetually-smiling anchorman, Todd Gilmore, announced that St. Paul police had issued a warrant for the arrest of Ted Carlson, who was still missing and considered to be a fugitive from justice. Carlson’s picture was shown for fifteen seconds while Gilmore asked residents to watch for him. Police believed Carlson was still in the city because of the difficulty of traveling in the storm. I thought it would be amusing if Trish inadvertently tapped him on the shoulder and asked him for an interview while reporting live from the airport mob scene.

Al called during the next commercial and asked if I’d like to help dispose of a substantial portion of Carol’s meatloaf at dinnertime. I jumped on this invitation quicker than a coyote pouncing on a drowsy field mouse. If there was a list of the world’s ten worst cooks, I would be near the top, and I had been contemplating a supper consisting of two nuked hotdogs slathered with mustard and wrapped in slices of bread. A chance to feast on Carol’s meatloaf was definitely worth plowing through the snow.

After a magnificent meatloaf and mashed potatoes dinner, capped with a slice of hot apple crisp, Al suggested a ritual that we perform at various stages of pursuing a story. This ritual consists of sitting at the computer and culling photos that we were sure wouldn’t ever be printed or needed for the files. Because the Klondike Kate murder story was nearing its denouement, pending the arrest and arraignment of Ted Carlson, Al figured he could clear some space on his hard drive by deleting most of the shots pertaining to that story and storing the survivors on a CD.

We started with shots of Lee-Ann Nordquist’s body lying in John Robertson Junior’s driveway and slowly worked our way toward the Monday press briefing about Carlson’s paternity. We were flipping through the dozens of photos Al had shot at the Vulcan Victory Dance when something caught his eye.

“That’s different,” he said. We were looking at a shot that included a trio of Vulcans toasting their triumph over King Boreas. It had been taken near the end of the evening, a few minutes before Toni Erickson’s blood-curdling scream sent everyone scrambling for the ballroom exits.

“What’s different?” I asked.

“On the left side, behind those guys. See that Vulcan with his back to us? He’s wearing red boots. All the Vulcans I’ve ever seen wear black boots.”