Penance (8 page)

I found myself taking short, shallow breaths as I bent to the body, trying hard not to gag; beads of sweat formed on my forehead and my eyes began to water. He was nude except for the bathrobe. From C. C.’s description, I guessed it was Thoreau; his eyes were open, they were brown. There was a single bullet hole just above his right eyebrow but not much blood—a dark, dry ring encircled the hole; a dribble, also dry, followed the contour of Thoreau’s nose to the floor. The back of his head was intact—no exit wound. He had been shot with a small caliber, a .22 maybe. I guessed by the odor he was at least three days dead.

Travel brochures littered the floor around his body, most of them for the Caribbean. One brochure, for Martinique, was wedged under his thigh. Was that where he planned to go with the money?

I did a quick three-sixty. The house was a shambles; it had been systematically destroyed, searched by someone who knew what he was doing. Chair cushions had been ripped open, carpet taken up, light fixtures removed; in the kitchen, food packages had been emptied onto the table and floor. I debated returning to my car for the rubber surgical gloves I keep—where else?—in my glove compartment. I decided against it and hunted slowly through the rubble for something that might have been overlooked, being careful not to touch anything that might hold a print. I found nothing. It was a very professional job and must have taken hours. I went upstairs and found more of the same—even the toilet tank had been torn away from the bathroom wall. In the bedroom, the king-sized mattress had been cut open, the box spring overturned. The contents of Thoreau’s bureau had been strewn around the room.

It was while standing in the bedroom, sweating like a pig, that I heard it: the sound of a car door slamming. I went to the window, tripping on a tripod in my haste. Three squad cars bearing the distinctive blue stripe of the St. Paul Police Department had gathered in the middle of the street. One officer was standing next to his vehicle, looking at the house—I guessed one of Thoreau’s neighbors must have seen me pick his lock and called it in. I cursed and moved away from the window. Again I tripped on the tripod. “Dammit,” I swore, then thought better of it. The tripod was attached to a video camera; apparently it had been set at the foot of the bed. I checked the camera and was amazed to find it contained a tape. I yanked it out and glanced through the window again. The officers were approaching cautiously, hands on their holstered guns. I cursed some more. The last thing I needed was to be caught breaking and entering a house containing a murder victim with ten thousand dollars cash in my pocket—more than enough to buy a couple of guys dead.

The upstairs consisted of a bathroom and two bedrooms. The second bedroom, which had also been carefully explored, had a window that opened up over the backyard. It wasn’t quite as high as my father’s roof. I kicked out the screen, hoping it didn’t make too much noise, and jumped. I hit the ground with both feet, jabbed myself in the eye with the tape, rolled, came up running. I made the alley without anyone shooting at me and did not stop until I hit the street. From there I walked as casually as possible toward the St. Thomas campus, trying hard not to stare at the blue Ford parked at the corner.

I found a restroom in a white brick building—Murray Hall, it was called—and inspected the damage to my eye. There was a slight swelling, hardly noticeable. Good. I didn’t need any distinguishing marks. Next I went searching for the bookstore, which wasn’t where I left it fifteen years earlier, asked directions and was pointed toward a building that hadn’t existed when I was a student. It cost me seventy-nine dollars to disguise myself with a red backpack printed with the university’s logo and a large, used textbook—
A History of Western Civilization.
I put the videotape and my jacket into the bag and slung it over my shoulder. I carried the textbook in my hand and slowly made my way to the campus grill where I sat at a corner table. I opened the book to Chapter Sixteen—“The Inquisition”—sipped a Dr. Pepper and waited for a K-9 unit to sniff me out.

College life swirled around me—it seemed more exciting than it really was. I know many people who would love to relive their school days. Not me. Except for the occasional course taught by the rare enthusiastic professor, I hated college. I spent nearly three years there working toward a business degree before deciding, out of sheer boredom, to transfer to a community college and try for a law-enforcement degree instead.

The grill filled and emptied at approximately fifty-minute intervals with young men and women—children, really, although I wouldn’t have said so when I was their age—most of them taking life too seriously, not really appreciating how serious it can be.

As my heartbeat slowed to normal, I eavesdropped on four young women who encompassed the spectrum of natural hair color: black, blond, brown and red. They were sitting two tables away and talking about presenting a resolution to the All Student Council demanding the adoption of politically correct language on campus—“womyn” instead of “women,” “freshperson” instead of “freshman,” “teenage womyn” instead of “girl.”

Their conversation annoyed me. None of their demands addressed the real problems facing women in today’s society, problems such as being paid only sixty-five cents for every dollar earned by a man, such as inadequate day care for children, such as sexual discrimination, harassment and abuse. None of them addressed the problem of a man with a neat little hole in his forehead not six blocks away. I pushed that last image out of my brain and concentrated on the women, wondering why they seemed so much more attractive than the women with whom I’d gone to college.

I gave it forty-five minutes; then I left the grill and made my way to the library, surprised and pleased by the number of students who actually sat reading within its silent walls. I found a spot near a window that looked out over Cleveland Avenue and watched for the cops. I gave it three hours and two chapters of the text. I could have read more but I was too busy glancing at the door and jumping at every noise. Finally, I took a deep breath, tossed the bag over my shoulder, tucked the book under my arm and strolled back to my car, walking several blocks out of my way to avoid going near Thoreau’s house.

SEVEN

F
OR A LONG TIME
I could not drive the streets of St. Paul without a heaviness in my stomach. They all seemed to lead to landmarks of death. “Hey, that building over there, that’s where we found Harley who had his penis cut off and stuffed into his mouth by his homosexual lover, and that park we just passed, Sally was found raped and murdered over there, right under the monkey bars …”

That changed during the years after I left the department; gradually time had removed the stink of death from my clothes, my hair, my nostrils, my brain. The faces of the killers, the dealers, the pimps, the pros, the gang-bangers and their victims, all those wonderful people who filled my life with such happy memories, faded like the World Series ticket stubs I thought might be a collector’s item someday.

Then I killed four men and it all came back. The cops, the county attorney and a review board called it self-defense and I wasn’t about to argue with them. But I haven’t had more than a few consecutive nights of uninterrupted sleep since.

And I stopped carrying a gun, vowing that I would never kill another human being again.

“Goddamn it!” I screamed at the traffic on Rice Street. I did not want to deal with this. I was tired of taking dead people home with me. I preferred the simple life now, a life apart from the suffering of others. Chasing credit card thieves suited me fine. Sifting for secrets in someone’s trash, conducting surveillance on suspected embezzlers, running skip traces with my computer—that’s what I wanted to do.

Only, Death seems to follow me. And try as I might, I cannot shake him.

I parked directly in front of C. C. Monroe’s campaign headquarters and walked inside, making as much noise as possible. Marion Senske didn’t want anyone to know I was working for her? Well, screw that! Unfortunately, only one person seemed interested in my act—the receptionist. Everyone else was talking earnestly in small groups of three or four. The receptionist said Ms. Senske was expecting me, please have a seat; Representative Monroe and Ms. Senske were in conference and would see me presently.

I glanced toward the office in back. The door was slightly ajar and I could see a sliver of light.

The telephone rang and the young woman answered it, making notes on a pink message pad as she spoke. When she had finished with the first caller, the phone rang again and then a third time. She asked the second caller, “Could you hold, please?” and switched to the third line before the second caller could reply. I slipped away and headed toward the office. As I approached, I heard voices. They belonged to C. C. Monroe and Marion Senske. The two of them spoke as if no one in the world could hear them. I paused outside and listened.

“Look at your clothes! How dare you wear clothes like that?” Marion wanted to know.

“What’s wrong with my outfit?”

“Nothing if you’re a nightclub singer.”

“The media love what I wear,” C. C. said in her own defense.

“The media don’t vote,” Marion reminded her. “Dammit, Carol Catherine. We had this discussion last week after you frosted your hair …”

“And you made me change it back,” C. C. whined. “I only wanted to see how it looked; I never had it done before.”

Marion’s voice dropped a few octaves. She spoke slowly. “We’ve discussed this a hundred times during the past six years, Carol Catherine, and you just don’t seem to get it. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve served in the House or how many elections you’ve won. There are people out there who won’t vote for you simply because you’re a woman. There are people who won’t vote for you because you’re young. There are people who won’t vote for you because you’re not married, because you don’t have a family. And now here you are reinforcing their greatest fears, showing off your legs, showing off your chest, dressing like some chippy.”

“What’s a chippy?”

“Carol Catherine!” Marion was shouting now. “Look. We don’t have time for this. We have to be at the studio in thirty minutes. That’s barely enough time to take you home and change.”

“I don’t want to change,” the younger woman whined some more.

“I don’t give a shit what you want!” Marion screamed.

I decided I’d heard enough and walked into the room.

“Taylor,” Marion said, obviously startled by my presence. C. C. didn’t say anything. She turned to me and smiled, bringing a hand to her bare throat. She was wearing a black, one-button tuxedo jacket with a satin-trimmed collar that was fitted to show off her narrow waist; a short black skirt with a wide satin stripe; black nylons patterned with flowers; black heels and nothing else that I could see and believe me, I looked hard. Marion was right; it probably was inappropriate for a gubernatorial candidate. But it certainly won my vote.

“Did you get the tape?” Marion demanded to know after she caught her breath.

“We need to talk about that.”

“Did you get the tape?” she repeated.

“Not so you’d notice.”

“What does he want, more money?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“We haven’t got time,” Marion announced. “Meet us here after the debate.”

“This won’t wait,” I said.

“It’ll have to.”

“I insist,” I told Marion.

“No,
I
insist!” she shouted in reply. “I am in charge here, make no mistake!” And with that declaration, she pulled C. C. by the hand from the room like an unwilling child.

“Aww, Marion,” C. C. whined.

“Let’s go, dammit!” Marion barked. Three people—two men and the former female anchor—disengaged from their huddles and met her at the door. Marion shouted a few instructions to the receptionist and herded the gubernatorial candidate and her entourage outside to the black Buick Regal parked directly in front of the doors. Conan held the car doors open, then shut them all after everyone slid in. He rounded the car, squeezed behind the wheel and drove off while the receptionist and I watched.

“Ms. Senske said I was supposed to take care of you,” the receptionist informed me.

In my younger days while chasing the women at St. Thomas, I probably would have made something of that remark. But I was well past that. I call it maturity. Others call it old age. “Let’s get something to eat,” I said.

She hesitated, then said, “I’m not allowed to leave the phones unattended.”

“Isn’t there someone who can relieve you?” She inspected me cautiously for a moment. I added, “There’s a Vietnamese restaurant just down the street.”

She didn’t reply.

“It’s a public place and I promise to keep my hands in my pockets.”

She weighed the invitation a moment longer, then called, “Louise!” An older woman answered from across the room. “Could you catch the phones?” the receptionist asked. “I’m going to get something to eat.”

“Of course, dear.”

“I’ll be back before the debate begins.”

“No problem, dear,” Louise said, but from her expression I guessed there must be at least one. She looked at me like she was sighting down the barrel of a rifle.