Penance (13 page)

“Don’t mind the mess,” she said, probably out of habit because the place was immaculate. It reminded me of a showroom in a furniture store.

“I bought it two years ago. I’ll have to sell it when I become governor and move into the mansion. Would you care for a drink?” C. C. asked as we stepped into the living room. “I have some beer.”

“No, thank you.”

“We have time.”

“No, thank you.”

She hesitated, then came to me, moving close. The perfume was lilac, her breath peppermint.

“You better change your clothes,” I told her.

I made myself comfortable in an overstuffed chair. I’m a patient man. I could have sat there all day, sat there until the snow came and went, sat there until the Minnesota Vikings actually won a Super Bowl or until hell froze over, whichever came first. I found myself smiling. This is what I do for a living and despite C. C.’s lies, I was having a good time.

C. C. surprised me by acting just as relaxed when she returned to the living room wearing sneakers, faded blue jeans and a white sweatshirt with U
NIVERSITY
OF M
INNESOTA
written in maroon and gold across the chest. Her hair was pulled back and tucked under the collar of a well-worn bomber jacket. I could see her in the University of St. Thomas grill discussing sex discrimination with the other underclassmen, no problem—although I doubted she would take the discussion seriously. She sat in a chair across from me, her legs folded under her, and pulled a pack of Virginia Slims from her pocket. She lit one, blew a cloud of smoke into the air above her head and then waved it away with her hand. She took another puff and coughed slightly. She was not a smoker, just an errant child breaking the rules, daring someone to catch her. I was fascinated. Carol Catherine Monroe was the least preoccupied person I had ever met.

I surprised myself by asking a stupid question: “Has anyone ever told you you should be a model?”

“When I was young,” she answered. “People told me I should model the way they tell boys who are tall that they should play basketball.” She took another drag of the cigarette. “You think I’m beautiful. That’s okay, everyone does. Especially women, women more than men. When I was a kid, all my friends were guys. They weren’t boyfriends, they were pals; I played hoops with them and baseball and even hockey sometimes. They let me play because I was a good athlete. Only the other girls didn’t see it that way. They saw the way I looked and convinced themselves I was out to steal their boyfriends. I wasn’t and I said so. It didn’t make any difference. I would get off the school bus and it would start—girls hollering names at me, girls I didn’t even know. I had my hair pulled out, I was hit in the face, I had green food coloring thrown in my hair, I was beat up … I had to change high schools three times.”

She took another pull from the cigarette, filling her lungs with smoke, exhaling slowly. “It’s not easy being me. If I wasn’t such a strong person I would have had a nervous breakdown.”

Jeezus, now she had me feeling sorry for her and I didn’t want to feel sorry for her, so I said, “I believe sooner or later we all get exactly what we deserve.”

She choked on the cigarette smoke. “You think I deserve this? I thought you were on my side.”

“To the extent that I think you are innocent of murder I am on your side. As for the rest of it … You’re a careless woman, Carol Catherine. Bad things happen to people who are careless.”

C. C. crushed her cigarette to death in an ashtray I thought was a candy dish. “You think I’m a slut.”

“I didn’t say …”

“You think I’m a slut because of what I did with Dennis Thoreau. You think I’m a whore. Well, I’m not,” she said, her voice risihg with indignation. “What do you know? You think a woman who’s young and attractive, who looks sexy”—she emphasized the word—”she’s always trying to turn herself on. Right? Well, I’m not. Yeah, I get a lot of offers; you know the kind I mean. You wouldn’t believe the offers I get. They make me sick. I dated Dennis because he was kind to me and considerate, because he made me laugh. Okay, maybe it was a stupid thing to do, making that tape. And maybe Dennis wasn’t as nice a guy as I thought he was. But I’m just like everybody else. I don’t always do what’s in my best interest.”

She leaned back in her chair, waiting to see how I would take it, waiting to see if her explanation satisfied me, softened me, perhaps. She reminded me of Amy Lamb, a woman nearly fifteen years her junior and equally mature. I flashed to a newspaper headline—G
OVERNOR
M
ONROE
—and shuddered.

“I don’t know what you can help and what you can’t,” I told her firmly. “I only know this: There are some mistakes that are never forgiven, for which there is no redemption, no absolution. Only penance. So, choose your sins carefully. They’ll be with you always.”

“Who cares?” she said.

At 11:45 I was sitting at a small table beneath a white canvas with a splash of black paint reaching diagonally from one corner to the other. The typed card attached to the frame read: P
ATH TO
I
NFINITY,
$135.00. I ignored the painting, pretending to be engrossed in a copy of
The Cities Reporter
as I watched the door, a café mocha growing cold in front of me. I reached under my blue sports coat and touched the spot where my Beretta would have been if I was still carrying. I took my hand away with only a little uneasiness.

There were six other customers in L
ONI’S COFFEEHOUSE ESPRESSO CAPPUCCINO MOCHA
W
ATCH FOR LIVE MUSIC AND READINGS.
Two couples sitting boy-girl-boy-girl surrounded a small table in the center of the room and conspired quietly; a young woman sat alone near the far wall, nursing a lime Torani and reading a John Sandford thriller; a professor graded blue books at the table next to mine. The professor gave me a running commentary under his breath as he attacked the papers with his red pen. It went like this: “
G-R-E-E-C-E
, not
G-R-E-A-S-E
, holy mackerel …
I
before
E
except after
C
, my God, can’t any of these kids spell? … You’re beautiful, honey, but unfortunately you’re also as dumb as a brick … I’d flunk you out, my friend, but I’m afraid you’ll take my class again … I’ll be damned, someone actually read the material…” Meanwhile, the lunch hour crowd swelled, mostly students from the campus across the street. They were loud and undisciplined and dressed as poorly as they could afford and I wished I was one of them; they behaved like they didn’t have a care in the world.

At exactly noon by the large electric clock above the stainless-steel espresso machine, C. C. entered, clutching her purse to her chest like it was a life preserver. She found an empty table toward the back and sat facing the counter. When Loni asked her pleasure, C. C. stared at her so intently that the woman took two steps backward; she served C. C.’s cappuccino at arm’s length. A few of the college kids gave C. C. a don’t-I-know-you? glance but no one approached her.

By 1:30 the coffeehouse was nearly deserted again, except for me, C. C. and the young woman drinking the Torani, who glanced at the clock, muttered, “Uh-oh,” quickly gathered her belongings and left in a rush. That Sandford, he’s a spellbinder.

At 1:45 I rapped my knuckles on the counter, startling C. C. “You win some, you lose some and some get rained out,” I told her.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s an old baseball maxim. It means there’s no game today.”

“Why not?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t understand.”

Careful, Taylor, I told myself. Don’t give yourself away.

I smiled at the woman and told her to go back to the capitol, told her to put the money in a safe place, told her to contact me if the blackmailer called again. A short time later, sitting in my car, watching C. C.’s Nissan disappear down Cleveland Avenue, I asked myself a question aloud that I had been asking silently several times while downing Loni’s café mochas one after another: “Who was operating the camera, C. C.?”

TWELVE

I
T WAS PUSHING
three in the afternoon when I unlocked my office door, copies of the
StarTribune
and
Pioneer Press
tucked under my arm. The red light on my answering machine was blinking furiously; the numerical display said I had five messages. They could wait, I decided. I couldn’t. I made a beeline for the building’s facilities—after two and a half hours in a coffeeshop my back teeth were floating. I took the newspapers with me.

The local news section of each publication was devoted almost entirely to articles on the debate—the references to C. C.’s performance were nearly as complimentary as the photograph the
Trib
ran under the headline: T
EARFUL
M
ONROE
S
CORES
B
IG.
She also had a photograph in the metro section of the
Pioneer Press
, although much smaller and not quite as flattering. It ran next to a story about a high school senior who was suing his school for violating his rights by refusing to allow him to wear to class a T-shirt advertising the products of a national beer company. School officials claimed the T-shirt breached its policies against promoting drugs, tobacco and alcohol. The student’s parents said they would support their child, “no matter what it takes.” The Minnesota chapter of the ACLU said it also would support the student, noting that the school’s position “is a blatant First Amendment violation.”

On the other side of the page was a much smaller story reporting that the SAT and ACT scores of Minnesota high school seniors were falling like stones with experts blaming a lack of discipline at home and the “unwillingness of most students to make the sacrifices necessary to maintain a higher level of learning.” No parents were quoted supporting their children in their ignorance; the ACLU did not comment.

The stories on the deaths of John Brown and Dennis Thoreau were difficult to find, tucked as they were in the back pages. According to the article about Brown, the cops were looking for Joseph Sherman, an ex-convict who had allegedly accompanied Brown when he left the halfway house. The article on Thoreau suggested that his slaying might have been drug related, that whoever killed him might have searched his residence for drugs.

After I returned to my office, I poured myself a Summit Ale from the stock I keep in my small refrigerator. I took a long pull from the brown bottle and sat behind my desk in an old swivel chair Laura’s father had given me. We still talk now and again, Laura’s father and I. During the services for his daughter and grandchild he did not shed so much as a single tear, telling the mourners, “It was God’s will.” I decided he was one callous sonuvabitch and wanted nothing more to do with him until about a year later when his wife informed me that he’d quit the church. Apparently, he had as much trouble accepting God’s will as I did.

I took another drink of the dark liquid and thus fortified, dialed Anne Scalasi’s extension at the St. Paul cop shop—I figured she had a lot of explaining to do. The phone rang four times before I heard the telltale “click” that meant the call was being transferred to another extension. It rang twice more and was answered by a voice that quickly mumbled, “Homicide, McGaney.”

“McGaney, this is Taylor. I’m looking for Lieutenant Scalasi.”

“Taylor, I was just thinking of you.”

“Why’s that?”

“I just received a phone call from your friend Heather Schrotenboer.”

“Really?”

“She wanted to confess.”

“Confess to what?”

“Confess that she wasn’t with you Saturday night, that you forced her to provide you with an alibi.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You guys have a lovers’ quarrel?”

“Something like that.”

“Tsk, tsk.”

“So, why haven’t you arrested me?”

“I know you didn’t do it.”

“Then why did you arrest me the first time?”

“Your good friend Lieutenant Scalasi is not available at this time, would you care to leave a message?”

“Yes, but I don’t think you’d deliver it.”

“Temper, temp …”

I hung up the phone before he got to the second syllable. “Annie, Annie,” I mumbled. “What the hell …”

I swiveled around and looked at that part of downtown Minneapolis I could see through my window. It wasn’t too late, I told myself. I could still walk away from this. I pulled the roll of bills Marion Senske had given me from my pocket. Nine Ben Franklins. Two days’ work plus expenses. I tucked them back in my pocket. Screw it, I decided. Life’s too short for this crap—clients who lie to me, who sing me sad songs to keep my loyalty … Screw it. I’m outta here. Then I remembered the answering machine. I hit the replay bar; the tape rewound and delivered the five messages:

“
Mr. Taylor? This is Amy Lamb. Ahh, it’s ahh, eight-forty-five. I need to talk to you. It’s really important. But I, I can’t … I’m going home. I can’t … Call me at this number.”

She recited her home phone number. She sounded extremely anxious.

“
Ahh, this is Amy again, Amy Lamb. I’m at home now. Please call me. Please, Mr. Taylor.”