Penance (6 page)

Behind the door was a small office, a temporary affair decorated with a government-gray metal desk and chairs and a dozen or more boxes and stacks of campaign posters and stickers. “Ms. Senske said to wait here,” the young receptionist informed me and left.

I waited alone for fifteen minutes, searching the office to pass the time. There was nothing personal in it, no photographs, no mementos. Finally, the woman entered the room, startling me.

“Mr. Taylor, I’m Marion Senske,” she said, closing the door behind her. Her manner was brusque, bordering on open hostility. I didn’t mind. I make my living visiting other people’s lives. I visit them at the worst possible times, when they are strung out on fear and doubt. I don’t expect good manners.

“Miss Monroe will join us in a moment.”

“Thank you,” I said, without being sure what I was thankful for.

“May I see your identification, please?”

She examined it like she was searching for some telltale sign of counterfeiting, actually holding it up to the light. “How long have you been a private investigator?” she asked, tapping the laminated card on her thumb. She had no intention of returning it.

“Four years,” I admitted. She didn’t applaud. “Would it help that I was a police officer for ten years?”

“In St. Paul?”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me a moment,” Marion said and withdrew from the office with my business ID. She returned ten minutes later and handed back my property.

“I verified your credentials with my friend in the police department,” she said. “Apparently, you’re well thought of.”

“By whom?”

“Lieutenant Anne Scalasi,” she replied, emphasizing
lieutenant.

“Anne Scalasi?” I repeated, trying hard to mask my absolute astonishment. I don’t think I did a very good job of it. Marion double-clutched before settling into her chair.

“What are you doing here?” she asked after a brief pause.

“I’m looking for a man named Joseph Sherman.”

“Who’s Joseph Sherman?”

“Murder suspect.”

Marion leaned toward me. “Who did he kill?”

“I think he killed a man named John Brown.”

“Never heard of him.”

“‘John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in his grave’?” I recited. Marion was not amused.

“What has this to do with us?”

“Has Sherman contacted Miss Monroe?”

“Certainly not.”

“Mind if I ask her that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Tough,” I said.

Marion sprang to her feet. I flinched, gripping the arm of the chair, feeling like the spectators around the lion cage who take a step backward whenever a big cat approaches the bars—safe but stupid.

“Carol Catherine Monroe is a gubernatorial candidate,” Marion intoned carefully, as if the words could conjure a magic spell.

“I can ask her in private or I can ask her in public,” I said.

“You still haven’t told me what Sherman has to do with us,” Marion said, reclaiming her seat if not her composure.

“If Joseph Sherman had not killed Terrance Friedlander, C. C. Monroe might still be working for the Department of Transportation.”

“Oh God, now I remember,” Marion muttered to herself, then said aloud, “If Sirhan Sirhan had not killed Bobby Kennedy, Richard Nixon might be working for the Department of Transportation. Now, for the last time, what has this to do with us?”

“Damned if I know,” I admitted, recalling the receptionist’s reaction to Sherman’s name.

Marion Senske settled back into her chair and brushed the tiny hairs above her upper lip with an index finger, studying me like a chess player regarding an unexpected move. “Lieutenant Scalasi didn’t send you, did she?”

“We haven’t spoken recently,” I replied carefully.

Marion nodded her head and smiled. “I understand,” she said.

That made one of us.

I was going to ask a question—as soon as I could think of a good one—but the office door beat me to it. It flew open, followed by the sound of a half dozen voices and a woman I recognized as the former anchor of a local TV news program whose ratings and career went south a few years back.

“Excuse me, Marion,” she announced. “You wanted to see C. C.’s closing remarks for tonight’s debate as soon as I finished writing them.”

Marion took the sheet of paper the woman offered and read it quickly. “This is too long. She only has two minutes.”

“C. C. can read this in two minutes.”

“She’s not supposed to read it. She’s supposed to be speaking from the heart. Excuse me, Mr. Taylor,” Marion said and hustled out of the office into the hubbub beyond, the former anchor following closely behind. After a moment I followed them to the door and looked out. C. C. Monroe was reading from the paper, Marion and the anchor timing her with wrist-watches. I closed the door and returned to my chair.

“Annie, Annie, Annie,” I repeated softly as I searched the ceiling. “What are you up to?”

None of us had been particularly pleased when Anne Scalasi came to the Homicide unit; each of us had different reasons why. One guy didn’t like it because she was a woman—well, actually, a couple of guys. Another detective took umbrage that she was an outsider, that she was coming from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension; he thought promotions should come from inside the department. Me? I wondered—aloud, I’m afraid—how anyone without street experience could be worth a damn in a murder investigation. I think I also said something derogatory about Angela Lansbury, but memory fails.

The day she arrived, even before she had time to set photos of the husband and kids on her desk, Tommy Thompson had dropped a file in front of her. It was the Micka case. “See what you can do with that,” Thompson told her.

“Sure,” she’d answered. Most of the detectives snickered behind their hands. I was pissed. Elizabeth Micka was a floater we’d discovered in the Mississippi six months earlier; we couldn’t clear the case and it annoyed me no end.

The facts were these: Elizabeth Micka was twenty-four years old. Her body was discovered on the St. Paul side of the Mississippi River by a couple of kids playing hooky from school. She was wearing a bra, cutoff jeans and two cement blocks attached to her body with wire. The ME claimed she had died of strangulation.

Elizabeth had last been seen cutting grass by neighbors late on a Saturday afternoon—she was housesitting for her parents, who were on a six-week vacation in Europe; one couple remembered she waved at them from the inside of the attached garage when she put the lawn mower away. We searched the house four times, videotaped every inch. There was no sign of forced entry, no struggle. We found the white shirt her neighbors remembered she’d been wearing. It was draped over a chair in her bedroom. And we found about one hundred grains of sand behind her bedroom door.

Anne had studied these facts and all the others we had gathered, including transcripts of every conversation we had with the nearly two hundred people we interviewed. She studied them for three days. Then she announced, “It’s the lifeguard.”

“What lifeguard?” I asked.

“The lifeguard you interviewed.”

“I didn’t question any lifeguard,” I insisted.

Anne checked her notes. “Seventeen-year-old neighbor, lives five houses down, works as a lifeguard in the summer at Lake Josephine, likes to pump iron.”

I recall being angry. “What’s his motive?”

“Elizabeth used to baby-sit him when he was a kid.”

“That’s a motive?”

“Unrequited love, detective. That’s the motive.”

I don’t recall what I said then, but I don’t think the words “Good job” passed my lips.

Anne broke it down for me. “Elizabeth,” she said, “was strangled. Manual strangulation is a very personal method of killing someone. And the killer did not want the body found. Both facts indicate the killer not only knew Elizabeth, he had some personal attachment to her. Now, add these facts to the equation: The killer was not very sophisticated, otherwise he probably would have known that the gases that emanate from a decaying corpse would force the body to the surface of the river even with two concrete blocks attached to it. But he was organized—the blocks, the wire, getting the body down to the river. He was strong. And he wasn’t afraid of water. In fact, I’d bet water was a natural element to him. After all, he could have buried her. Most people, that’s their first choice.”

I thought it over, tried to find a flaw, couldn’t, decided to dismiss her anyway. “You’ve got it all worked out,” I said contemptuously. Then I saw it. “The sand. The goddamn sand!”

“I wonder if he saved anyone from drowning that day,” Anne said.

“Let’s ask him.”

We did. Anne, with her sympathetic smile and a demeanor to rival any grade-school counselor, held the kid’s hand and brushed the hair out of his eyes and asked simple questions until he spilled his guts. The kid confessed (had been wanting to confess for six months it seemed) that he had been infatuated with Elizabeth ever since she was his baby-sitter. While riding his ten-speed home from the beach, he passed the Micka house. He was surprised to see Elizabeth mowing the grass; she had moved out years earlier. He decided to say hello, remembered that Elizabeth’s parents were in Europe and changed his plans. While she was in the backyard, he slipped through the open garage into the house and made his way to her bedroom. He waited. She came into the bedroom, removed her blouse in preparation for a shower, draped it over the chair, saw him and screamed. He tried to make her stop, clutched her throat. It was all a terrible mistake.

The kid pleaded to man-one. The judge gave him fifty-four months and some psych time at the security hospital in St. Peter. I apologized to Detective Sergeant Anne Scalasi—a difficult thing for me, but man, she was impressive—and offered to buy her a steak dinner. Only Anne doesn’t eat red meat and turned me down. I got her drunk instead.

Marion Senske returned to the room. “Sorry for the delay,” she told me, circling to the far side of the desk. “You were saying that Anne Scalasi
did not
send you to me.”

“Now that I have had time to reflect on it, I believe she did,” I decided.

Marion smiled, actually smiled, if only briefly. “It would seem Lieutenant Scalasi has extremely well-developed political instincts,” she volunteered. “Well-developed, indeed. She appraises the situation, recognizes the risks of personal involvement, then seeks to minimize them by moving in the most discreet manner possible. Yes, good instincts. Perhaps we can work together one day.”

Have you ever felt like you were invited for drinks while everyone else was staying for dinner?

“Lady, I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about,” I told her.

Marion studied me again. I began to feel like a laboratory rat. I promised myself I would give her a slow count to ten, then I was gone. I reached seven when she asked, “Are you discreet?”

“Yes. It’s a job requisite.”

She studied me some more. This time I got up to nine before she said, “I discovered long ago that the odds of a secret becoming known increase exponentially with the number of people who share it. Three people already share this one.”

“That’s it, I’m out of here,” I announced and pushed myself upright.

“Tell him,” a warm voice spoke behind me. I turned in my chair to see C. C. Monroe’s radiant smile. She stood with her back against the closed door, wearing an oversized black-and-cream sweater with a roll neck and padded shoulders. Her skirt was black and pleated; it swished when she moved toward me. I liked it a lot. When a reporter asked C. C. early in her career why she didn’t wear the traditional navy blue suit of Minnesota politicians, she answered, “I wasn’t aware I was supposed to. I didn’t take political science in college.”

“I am not convinced it would be prudent to tell him anything just yet,” Marion Senske said.

“He’s here to help,” C. C. replied. “You are here to help aren’t you, Mr. …”

“Holland Taylor,” I said, extending my hand. She shook it without hesitation. “It is a great pleasure to meet you,” I told her. I’m always gracious to prospective clients; it’s only after they hire me that I become surly.

“I am Carol Catherine Monroe,” she said, proud of the fact. “Please sit, Holland.”

I sat.

“We could use your help and if you give me your word that nothing you hear will go beyond these walls, I will tell you why.”

“You have my word,” I told her.

“Oh God,” Marion moaned from behind the desk.

Carol Catherine Monroe had been going nowhere fast until the day Terrance Friedlander was killed. She told me so herself, told me frankly while sitting across from me, our knees occasionally touching.

“The truth is, I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Friedlander,” she confessed.

Friedlander was much loved in his district. The kids who played on his bantam hockey team called him “Mr. Terry.” To everyone else he was just plain “Terry.” He had won seven consecutive elections to the House by increasingly larger margins and it was said that whoever ran against him was a damn fool. Well, C. C. Monroe was not a damn fool. But she was bored silly shuffling papers for the DOT. She had been doing it for two years, since passing the bar. So she volunteered to oppose Friedlander, hoping that after the election the political contacts she’d make would help her move out of the Department of Transportation and into a more meaningful office, like the Pollution Control Agency or attorney general’s office. Since no other candidates were forthcoming, the party leaders shook her hand, patted her head, whispered “Good luck,” and got the hell out of there.

Then Friedlander was killed.

C. C. had not really wanted to go to the House of Representatives, had had no idea what she would do when she got there. Yet once she arrived she discovered, or so she said, “there was so much to be done, so much that I could do. I think it was good that I wasn’t a real politician, that I wasn’t beholden to special interests. I could see the possibilities.”

She had also seen that she needed help. So C. C. enlisted the aid of Marion Senske, a private-practice attorney well known for her feminist activities who had lectured C. C.’s law class years before. Under Marion’s tutelage, C. C. soon became a star of the local women’s movement, preaching Marion’s doctrine that “Women are not to be dismissed or taken lightly anymore. They have power. They can make an impact.”