Blizzard Ball (24 page)

“You’re insane if you think I’m going to play your sick parlor games.”

“Everything’s a game, Morty. Your lottery scheme, my job, the government, the relationships with our wives and girlfriends— everybody is manipulating somebody, trying to improve upon the odds, get what they want. Win. But there’s no accounting for bad luck, and unfortunately, you’ve landed on the Go to Jail square. So, you got to spin. You can play it out here or in the courts, don’t matter to me. Just happy to give a man a sporting chance.”

“I’m not buying your Monopoly game of life psychobabble.”

Morty stood and walked from the park bench back toward the car.

Kirchner was irritated at himself for having gone down this conversational road. He hoped he could quickly ground the situation and reel Morty back in.

“Your partner says hello,” he said, “the one you sent down to Albert Lea to get acquainted with the young Mexican woman who ripped off your lottery tickets.”

Morty abruptly stopped walking.

“Actually, he said more than hello. He was really quite explicit about your dealings, most anxious to cooperate. Oh, and I got a souvenir for you.” Kirchner pulled a white Lottery ball out of his coat pocket, gave it a soft toss in the air, and caught it. “It’s from the Lottery equipment used in the jackpot drawing.”

Kirchner waited, worried that he’d overplayed his hand. The Lottery equipment comment was putting him way out on a limb, as Tyler had not been able to find the source of the alien Lottery ball or attribute it directly to Morty.

Morty turned slowly, walked back towards the bench, and sat down. “Why this way?”

Kirchner opened the pistol’s cylinder. “Crime of chance, punishment by chance, seems fitting.” He shook out all six rounds, reloaded one into the cylinder, and handed the gun to Morty. “Give it a spin. One click and you’re home free.”

Tyler, parked on the road leading into the park, focused his binoculars on Morty. “Feeling lucky, punk?” he said to no one.

Morty stood up from the picnic table, folded his arms over his head with the gun in his hand, and turned in a slow circle, trying to get his bearings. He looked like a man afraid of heights but drawn to the edge by an unnatural urge to jump. Tense and wobbly, he teetered on the precipice. But at the last moment he caught himself.

“Goddammit! Sonofabitch!” he shouted. “If those bumbling Mexicans hadn’t robbed the Cash and Dash, I could have rung the bell.” He spoke openly, as if relieved to find someone who understood him. “Bad luck maybe, but I’m passing it on.” He unfolded his arms and brought the gun down to Kirchner’s face. Morty’s hand trembled as the pistol tracked in a tight little oval.

Kirchner made a move for the gun. Morty pulled the trigger. Kirchner instinctively flinched.

The only report was an empty chamber click. The two men stared at each other. The air was charged with too much tension for either of them to speak.

A horn honked. “Police!” Tyler yelled as he ran down the bank toward the peninsula, closing in on Morty.

With the peninsula’s exit blocked, Morty turned toward the lake. A white blanket of snow covered the expanse. On the distant shore sat a cluster of fish houses and pickup trucks. Stepping out onto the lake, he tested his footing. The snow had crusted hard and crunched underfoot like broken egg shells.

Fifty yards out, he felt the ice begin to sag. Unlike the locals, he had been unaware of an underground pipe spilling waste water and churning the water below him. It was from an illegal septic drain field. The run off agitated and oxygenated the water, which was good for the fish, but prevented solid ice from forming. Water quickly flooded the ice, and Morty felt its bite. He attempted an immediate retreat, but the thin ice gave way and plunged him into the freezing black water. The gun flew out of his hand and skittered across the frozen lake.

The icy water ripped through his body like an electric current. Totally submerged, the cold shock slammed the air out of his chest and paralyzed his breathing. He fought toward the surface and slammed his head into the ice sheet. Disoriented and out of air, he pounded his fists wildly against it. One of his flailing arms found the entry hole. He struggled to the opening and exploded to the surface, gasping violently. The cold air stung his wet face. A deep laceration on his forehead showed as a frozen blood track. Kicking to stay afloat, he attempted to pull himself up on the ice, but lacked a stable grip. He tried to heave his chest up on the ice, but the ice shelf broke off and plunged him back into the water. His muscles stiffened. He felt mentally sluggish and feared an imminent heart attack. And then, as if he were inside Edvard Munch’s Scream, with his eyes frozen wide open, he sent out a desperate plea that was swept up in the wind. “Help me. Please!”

Kirchner and Tyler watched from the shore. With the water temperature at thirty-four degrees, Morty had maybe five minutes before fatal hypothermia set in. “Stay down,” Kirchner said, as if coaching Morty to end his suffering. But like an angry fish, Morty would not give up the fight. The struggle was causing Kirchner to feel accountable. The plan to force Morty out on the ice had worked well enough. Kirchner and Tyler would disappear. Morty’s car would be found in the parking lot, leaving others to ponder his death as a suicide or accident. But as concept met reality, Kirchner just didn’t have the stomach for it. Not helping a man who wanted to live, struggling to stay alive, was a line he couldn’t cross.

“Shit,” Kirchner growled. He dialed 911 and instructed Tyler to follow him out onto the lake. They got to within twenty feet of Morty and then dropped down onto their stomachs and belly-crawled on the brittle ice until it sagged and flooded under their collective weight. “Hold on!” Kirchner yelled. A snowy wind whipped across the lake, limiting visibility. They snaked to within several feet of Morty floundering in the icy water, but couldn’t quite reach him. Morty was disoriented and confused. His speech was slurred. They shouted encouragement in an attempt to keep him alert until the fire department arrived. Fortunately, his left arm had frozen to the ice, keeping him from going under.

With the arrival of the rescue team, Kirchner and Tyler inched their way off the ice. Tyler picked up the handgun tossed by Morty and put it in his coat pocket. They walked up the hill and were met by a gallery of onlookers. TV boom trucks, nearby residents, and ice fishermen watched the pair retreat from the lake. The local sheriff, squad lights flashing, was busy restricting access to the lake with crime-scene tape. A reporter scrambled toward Kirchner and shoved a TV camera in his face. “Back off,” Kirchner said, batting the intrusion away, and headed toward the car. Kirchner and Tyler sat quietly, exhausted and wet, letting the heater thaw them out. Kirchner could feel his back starting to tighten up and spasm.

The fire rescue team, equipped with a special floating ice sled, quickly hauled Morty out. Barely conscious, he was rushed into the ambulance and wrapped in a heating blanket. His core temperature had dropped below eighty-five degrees. An IV was hurriedly inserted and he was bagged to get some air into his lungs. Morty’s weak pulse faded to a stop. “Stand clear!” rang out as the paddles were applied to Morty’s gelled bare chest. “Come on,” a technician implored, rapping his knuckles on the monitor’s static green line. “Clear!” Again the paddles fired. Morty never made it out of the parking lot.

As the ambulance left the scene, Tyler pulled out the gun he had picked up off the ice and flipped open the cylinder. It was empty. Through sleight-of-hand, Kirchner had palmed the lone round. They remained silent, mulling the implications, aware that their plan had gone terribly wrong. At some point, there would be a lot of questions to answer and they would need to get their story straight, but now was not the time.

Kirchner and Tyler quickly found themselves in the middle of a BCA shit-storm. They informed the higher-ups that they had been tailing Morty as part of the Cash and Dash homicide and lottery investigation. Morty had driven to White Bear Lake, appeared to have been drinking, and took an unexpected stroll out onto the ice, whereupon Kirchner and Tyler had attempted a rescue.

Kirchner made no mention of the not-so-subtle directive he had received from the governor regarding Morty. To be sure, Kirchner’s distaste for Morty had clouded his judgment. But he had arrived at an age where he trusted his instincts, and the hell with the system.

He did, however, regret that Tyler got dragged along on his rogue mission and that the kid’s neck was on the block. Tyler bugged the hell out of him, but he was young and his advanced technical degrees made him a strong investigative asset. Not that the BCA cared. To get at Kirchner and purge the agency of an old school incorrigible, they were willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

He tried to deflect the situation away from Tyler, take responsibility, but internal affairs saw the young analyst as the weak link in the story and piled on. The normally witty Tyler did not hold up well under the interrogation of supervisors with the power to end his career. Stripped of his electronic gadgets, unable to escape to cyber world, he looked insecure and vulnerable. Tyler could have folded, but to the kid’s credit he didn’t snitch out the plan.

Kirchner and his sidekick’s account didn’t pass the stink test, not with the BCA’s superintendent, not with the media. The St. Paul Pioneer Press suggested that the BCA officers who had Morty under surveillance were either complicit in the beleaguered Lottery director’s death or totally incompetent for allowing it to happen on their watch. They reminded the public this was the same bumbling agency, along with the disinterested St. Paul Police, that had failed to produce a suspect in the slaying of the Cash and Dash owner.

The latter comment bothered Kirchner the most. It would be easy enough to offer up the two dead Mexicans who had robbed the store as the murderers. Case closed. But Kirchner believed, at a gut level, Alita’s claim that her cousins did not kill the convenience store operator.

Zip’s mom moved back into her house after three days. She waited another week to call the police to report her son missing. Her report did not gather much attention until a body showed up at the morgue matching the description she provided. The prints of Eli ”Zip” Cooper, on file with the BCA, further confirmed the identity of the career criminal. The body had been found in a Dumpster behind a Vietnamese restaurant on University Avenue. The victim died of a single stab wound from an instrument inserted through an opening near the collarbone that had penetrated to the heart.

Tyler picked up on the report. The grieving mother said her son had gone looking for a convenience store clerk who cheated her out of winning lottery tickets. The mother was now afraid the clerk would retaliate against her and wanted police protection. Tyler called the report to Kirchner’s attention. They decided to take a drive out to interview Mrs. Cooper. Kirchner and Tyler were both glad to escape the BCA’s internal heat and the pending decision as to whether they would be suspended or fired outright.

On the way over to the eastside home, Kirchner studied the medical examiner’s report. The victim was heavily tattooed, rough prison variety, and had a significant scar high on his forehead. An old wound. Kirchner checked the mug shot attached to the file.

He felt his pulse quicken. The victim’s hair was long and hung in his face, but there was a hint of a forehead scar. He checked the rap sheet on Eli Cooper. This guy had been practically in plain sight for the past six years. Could he have missed his wife’s killer because of a hairdo? Probably a long shot, but he made a note to visit the Examiner’s office for a firsthand look at Eli Cooper.

Mrs. Cooper’s tired bungalow was the epitome of deferred maintenance. Window shutters were either missing or hung at odd angles from rusted brackets. The house had not seen a coat of paint in the last twenty years. The gutters bowed from ice dams, signaling plenty of trouble to come with the first thaw. A musty, putrid smell of dead mice greeted Kirchner and Tyler as Mrs. Cooper ushered them in.

The revelation that someone else besides Jamal Madhta and his wife worked at the Cash and Dash caught Kirchner off guard. He knew they had missed something fundamental. He thought back to the store signage. “Cash and Dash, Open 24 hours,” he said out loud.

“We checked it out.” Tyler said, talking past Mrs. Cooper.

“Unless they were total insomniacs, it would take at least three people to keep the place open.” Shoddy investigative work, Kirchner thought to himself, shaking his head.

Jamal’s wife had been subjected to only a cursory interview. Her English was poor and communication was difficult. She admitted to working occasionally at the store. This was corroborated by a couple of man-on-the-street interviews. Upon claiming her husband’s body, she had it cremated, took the ashes, and left the country.

Kirchner asked Mrs. Cooper if they could look around the house, as it might help them in the investigation into her son’s death.

Zip’s bedroom looked like a teenage hangout from the eighties. Wrinkled Metallica rock posters hung from the wall, a pot-weighing scale sat on the dusty dresser, Hot Wheel street rods were lined up on a window sill, and a samurai sword stood unsheathed in the corner. The closet door was secured with a latch and padlock. Kirchner asked Mrs. Cooper if she had the key.

“I don’t know. This is all so confusing,” Mrs. Cooper said, hanging back at the doorway. “My son was a good boy. I raised him without a father. It’s hard in this neighborhood.”

“I am sure you did the best you could, Mrs. Cooper, and I am sorry for your loss,” Kirchner said as he touched her arm, “but we really need all the help we can get to ensure your safety and bring some closure to Eli’s passing.”

“He hid the key. I am not supposed to know where it’s at,” she said, and reached up to a molding ledge above the door. She handed Kirchner the key and thumped away down the hall.

As he opened the closet door, Tyler produced two pairs of protective gloves from his pocket and handed one to Kirchner. They would call in a BCA mobile lab to officially inventory the items, but not before they picked through the closet. The articles included high-heeled shoes, dresses, panty hose, Barbie dolls, and piles of Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogues. “Fetish?” Kirchner said.