Unidentified Woman #15 (34 page)
Read Unidentified Woman #15 Online
Authors: David Housewright
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I chanted.
I twisted the gun and yanked some more until it came out of El’s hand.
“The hostage is safe,” I said. “The gunman is disarmed. I’m coming out.”
I turned and left the room, left the house.
Shipman was going in while I was coming out. I handed her the Beretta, butt first. She took it without a word.
I continued along the sidewalk and down the concrete steps to the street. Bobby was still standing behind the patrol car, and I walked toward him.
Behind me, the cops were hustling El and Hoover out of the house, their hands cuffed behind their backs. Hoover was resisting. She kept repeating that the police couldn’t arrest her, that she was the victim.
Bobby was smiling when I reached him.
“Took you long enough,” he said.
I removed the forget-me-not that had been pinned to my jacket and gave it to him.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
It was late October with the sun shining bright. I was sitting on the balcony of our condominium, the chair up against the wall as far away from the edge as possible. Nina was leaning against the railing and looking down. Winter had been a long time going—a ball game with the Dodgers in the last week of April had to be rescheduled because of snow, for God’s sake. Which was why we were attempting to stretch the following summer as far as we could.
“Shelby called,” Nina said. “She wants us to stop on the way and get some ice.”
“Okay.”
“It’ll probably be the last barbecue of the year.”
“Could be.”
“Shipman will be there. Are you two going to growl at each other all night?”
“Probably.”
“These terse replies of yours—I don’t feel good about what happened either.”
What happened is that everyone went to prison. It took three county prosecutors seven months to figure out where they were going, for how long, and for what crimes, yet no one was spared. Well, almost no one.
The final trial had just ended. The results were in the morning paper. Emily Hoover’s attorneys had argued that the statements she made over my cell phone were inadmissible, along with her e-mails and a knife found at the home in Highland Park where she had been conducting an open house the evening Oliver Braun was killed—a kitchen knife, by the way, that the Ramsey County medical examiner proved conclusively to be the murder weapon. Fruit of the poisoned tree, the lawyers called it. The trial judge disagreed. The attorneys appealed. The Minnesota Court of Appeals said, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.” Hoover was given a three-hundred-and-six-month jolt in the Minnesota Correctional Facility located in Shakopee.
Meanwhile, each member of the Deer River tribe was convicted of theft crimes and given one year and a day in Lino Lakes. The judge could have stayed the sentences, given the kids probation instead. Apparently he was not in a giving vein that day.
Mitch, Craig, and John Kispert each accepted seven-year sentences in St. Cloud. That was also severe by the standards laid out in the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines, yet a damn sight better than if they had also been convicted of a boatload of other complaints that were subsequently dropped in exchange for the guilty pleas, including conspiracy to commit murder and blackmail.
That left El, who went to trial for killing both Karl Olson and Peter Troop. Her attorney argued that since her actions saved the life of others, including a decorated member of the St. Paul Police Department, she shouldn’t be charged with anything. The argument might have succeeded, too, if El had only done it once. But twice? In the end, she accepted a forty-eight-month sentence for each of two counts of second degree manslaughter, the sentences to be served concurrently, all other charges dropped. That meant she’d be out in thirty-two.
“We can help Fifteen when she’s released from prison, can’t we?” Nina asked.
“Sure,” I said.
Yet El doing time wasn’t what bothered me. It was the woman who didn’t pay for her crimes.
The day after El and Hoover were arrested, I went to see Ramsey County Commissioner Merle Mattson. I told her that neither El nor Troop killed Oliver Braun—it was Emily Hoover. She accepted the information with a shrug.
“I asked this question before,” I told her. “Maybe now you’ll answer it. When the police interviewed you after Oliver was killed, why didn’t you tell them that the two of you were having an affair?”
“I don’t like that word—affair,” Mattson said. “It suggests something deceitful. It suggests cheating. I’m not married, McKenzie. Certainly Oliver wasn’t. There was nothing dishonest about our relationship.”
“Why keep it a secret?”
“Have you ever been in love?”
I flashed on the face of Shelby Dunston, which was inexplicable, and then Nina’s, and finally Jillian DeMarais, of all people.
“Frequently,” I said.
“I haven’t.”
The look in her eye, the catch in her voice, the use of contraction—trying to make you believe she was actually in love with the kid?
my inner voice asked.
“Partly, we kept it a secret because of my job,” Mattson said. “I didn’t know how my constituents would take it. Or the party. Yet mostly we kept the relationship to ourselves because I just didn’t want to face questions from my family, my friends. Their smirks. I didn’t want the headache. It was better this way for him, too. Young men don’t respond well to teasing, and given the disparity in our ages, he would have been teased.
“Besides, I knew it wouldn’t last. Ms. Elbers, young women like her—stiff competition, Mr. McKenzie. It was only a matter of time before Oliver outgrew me. Until then … I wanted to keep it pure. I wanted to keep it simple. I wanted to remember our love in the years to come as being pure and simple.
“You know what, though? Call the police. I don’t care anymore. Call the media. Shout it from the rooftops. I might think differently about it tomorrow. Today—today, I’m proud to have been in love with Oliver. I’m thankful that he loved me.”
“Bullshit.”
The word jolted her. It was meant to.
“If you really meant what you’re saying, Commissioner, you would have told the cops the truth the moment you learned Oliver had been killed. You would have told them that you were being blackmailed and why. You would have told them that Oliver had taken a gun and gone to see Emily Hoover in order to protect you. But you didn’t love him enough to even acknowledge his sacrifice.”
“McKenzie—”
“You’re a public servant. You were a sheriff’s deputy. Yet you did nothing to put his killer away. Tell me again how much you cared.”
“Don’t talk to me like that. I have a reputation for being an honest woman, an honest politician. I didn’t want voters to remember me for this. I didn’t even know the handbags were stolen. How could I? I thought I was getting a deal.”
I had nothing more to say. Neither had anyone else. Because of the way the trials played out, Commissioner Mattson’s name was never mentioned. It annoyed me that she never paid for her sins. But then, I didn’t pay for mine either.
“I’m thinking of getting involved in politics,” I said.
Nina thought that was hysterical.
“No, I mean it,” I said. “Start small. Find someone to support in the race for Ramsey County commissioner.”
“You don’t live in Ramsey County anymore.”
“A minor detail.”
“I think it would have been better if we hadn’t been involved in any of this.”
“Then Emily Hoover might have gotten away with murder. The Deer River tribe would still be out there shoplifting, Mitch and Craig still selling what they stole. Kispert would be running his burglary ring and helping Hoover blackmail their customers. El—she might be dead instead of safe and sound in a cozy women’s prison. I’m sorry they went to prison, El and the kids, but sweetie, they all crossed the line.”
“Is that what it comes down to? Which side of the line you’re on?”
“Almost always.”
“But we crossed the line, too, didn’t we?” Nina said, meaning
you crossed the line.
“We all kept secrets. We all did good things for bad reasons and bad things for good reasons. We all screwed up.”
“Yes.”
She paused for a moment and then asked, “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes.”
Yet we didn’t leave. Instead, I kept sitting in the chair and Nina kept leaning on the railing and looking out at the city sprawling beneath her.
“There were no good guys in any of this, were there?” she said.
“Just us.”
“Us? What makes you think we’re the good guys?”
“We’re the ones going to a barbecue with our friends on a Saturday afternoon.”
DAVID HOUSEWRIGHT
has worked as a journalist, an advertising copywriter and creative director, and a writing instructor. He has won the Edgar Award and is a three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can sign up for email updates
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ALSO BY
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CONTENTS
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN
#15. Copyright © 2015 by David Housewright. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photographs: skyline © Greg Lundgren /
www.greglundgrenphotography.com
; snow-covered park © Adam Gryko / Shutterstock
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-04965-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-5063-7 (e-book)