Dearly Departed (24 page)

“Good.” Orman rose from his chair. “I’m going to Duluth. I’ll check in later.” He brushed past us.

“Wait,” I called to him. “I have questions.”

“Ask Gary,” the sheriff said and hung a left in the corridor, disappearing.

“It makes even less sense as it goes along,” I told Deputy Loushine.

“What’s the matter, Taylor?” he asked. “Haven’t you ever heard an apology before?”

W
e were walking along the well-lit corridor of the Kreel County Sheriff’s Department building, my Nikes making soft squeaking sounds on the tile.

“What have you got?” I asked him, flexing my new muscle.

“The Buick was stolen,” Loushine said. “It was owned by the chief of the volunteer fire department down in Wascott. He reported it missing the day before the shooting.”

“Where’s Wascott?”

“About forty miles southwest of us,” Loushine said. “We have bulletins out on the car. Also, you were right about the gun. It was an UZI semiautomatic carbine. We dug .41 AEs out of both Michael Bettich and Gretchen Rovick. A MAC fires only .45s or nine millimeters—”

“Chip Thilgen,” I interrupted, just to prove how smart I was.

“Yes,” said Loushine. “We know he made threats toward Michael at The Height Restaurant in Deer Lake about an hour before the shooting. We have several witnesses. Including you.”

“Including me,” I agreed. “What does Thilgen have to say for himself?”

“Nothing yet,” Loushine answered. “We haven’t found him. We have a man on his house; he hasn’t been home. And we checked with his employer. Thilgen has been absent without leave since the shooting.”

“Where does he work?”

“King Boats.”

“He works for King Koehn?” I asked, surprised.

Loushine shrugged. “Why not? Everyone else does. Anyway, we’re checking his family, his friends—actually, he doesn’t have any friends—and we have bulletins out on him, too.”

“What else?”

“Hmm?”

“What else have you got?”

“That’s it.”

I stopped next to a door marked
EXIT.

“What do you mean, that’s it?” I said, appalled. “You’ve had this case for almost forty-eight hours.”

Loushine didn’t answer, and I pushed my way through the door.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Taylor,” Loushine told me as he followed behind. “I’m not an experienced investigator. I’ve worked as deputy sheriff for nine years now, and I’ve handled exactly two homicides, both of them slam-dunk domestics. On this case I’ve been following Bobby Orman’s lead, and quite frankly he’s not up to it, either. Man had exactly two years of law-enforcement experience before he was made sheriff—in the Highway Patrol.”

That stopped me again. “Two years? How did he get the job?”

“Appointment. The former sheriff was caught shacking up with a prostitute. The county board wanted someone squeaky-clean and politically palatable. Orman’s father and grandfather had both been sheriff, and people loved them—”

“So they went with the son.”

“There you go.”

“Does he know the job at all?”

“Bobby knows administration; he was the factory manager over at King Boats for a half dozen years after he left the HP—it’s kind of a complicated story. I went to school with Bobby; we played ball together, so I know he didn’t want to be a cop, didn’t want to follow the family tradition. But he did, anyway; joined the Highway Patrol after junior college. His old man was still sheriff, and Bobby could have gotten a job here in Kreel, but he went away; people figured he just didn’t want to work in the old man’s shadow. Two years later the old man dies of a heart attack while pulling an ice fishing shack off the lake; Bobby quits the HP and goes to work for King.

“The county goes through three sheriff’s in the next six years, and each is worse than the one before. People are pissed; the County Board of Commissioners is up against it; half of ’em are up for re-election, right? So they tap Bobby; they want his name. He takes the job. Surprised me. But he’s been okay. Works hard. Goes to a lot of law-enforcement seminars. Takes care of his people.”

“How long has he been sheriff?” I asked.

“Couple years.”

“Turn it over to the Department of Criminal Investigation,” I suggested bluntly. The DCI was the Wisconsin equivalent of Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a statewide investigatory unit created to lend aid to local police departments that didn’t have the resources to handle major cases.

“That’s what I said,” Loushine told me. “But Bobby doesn’t want to give it up, and neither does the county attorney.”

“Where is the county attorney?” I asked.

“Vacation in San Francisco.”

I gave Loushine another stare.

He shrugged. “What can I say? Man likes his job; he wants to be re-elected next year.”

My stare intensified. “Unbelievable.”

“It’s a sorry situation,” Loushine admitted, and I sighed dramatically. But the truth was, I couldn’t have been more delighted. Giving a police department
guidance
during an active criminal investigation? A free hand to do whatever I want, all with the department’s support? That’s like a PI’s most forbidden fantasy come true.

“Okay,” I said and continued walking.

“Okay,” Loushine echoed, falling in step with me. “Where are we going?”

“What do you know about Alison Donnerbauer Emerton?” I asked in reply as we crossed the street and headed for the Saginau Medical Center.

“Never heard of her,” he said. “You mentioned the name the day of the shooting. Who is she?”

“I assume Gretchen Rovick is still in the hospital?”

“Yes,” Loushine replied, then added, “Who is Alison Donnerbauer Emerton?”

“Deputy Rovick’s best friend.”

W
e cornered the woman doctor at the Saginau Medical Center. I asked her if she had any updated information concerning Michael Bettich’s condition.

“Still critical, last I heard,” she said.

“What do you think her chances are?” I asked. I wanted the doctor to promise that Alison would be all right. But she was unwilling to commit herself. I changed the subject.

“How’s Deputy Rovick?” I asked.

“She’ll be fine,” the doctor responded. “She should be on crutches in a few days and walking normally in ten more. The wound was superficial.”

“Where is she?” Loushine asked.

“Second floor. Two-oh-two.”

“Can we see her?” the deputy added.

“Be my guest.”

We started toward the elevators.

“By the way,” the doctor stopped us. She looked me in the eye and said, “It was you who administered first aid to Michael, right?”

I confirmed her suspicion.

“You saved her life,” the doctor said and patted my arm. “For a while, anyway.”

I was proud of the compliment, but the way the doctor phrased it sent an uncomfortable surge of electricity through my entire body.

W
e found Gretchen sitting up in bed, reading the latest mystery by Nevada Barr. Her leg was elevated under the covers, which were rolled to her waist, revealing a teal nightgown trimmed with lace that I found particularly alluring. Apparently Loushine agreed.

The way his eyes kept finding Gretchen’s ample chest, you just knew this was a side of his colleague that he had never seen before.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Fine,” she answered cautiously before turning to Loushine. “What’s he doing here?”

Loushine explained.

“No way!” Gretchen protested.

Loushine shrugged. “Sheriff’s orders.”

Gretchen returned her gaze to me. “But he could be responsible.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“There are people who wanted Alison found,” she insisted. “You found her for them.”

“Alison?” Loushine asked.

I silenced him with an upraised hand. “Why did they want her found?” I asked Gretchen.

“Because …” Her voice was high and excited, but something stopped her. After a few moments of reflection, she said, “No, you’re right. They’re probably all angry enough to kill her, but my understanding is that the people she left in the Twin Cities needed her alive; they wanted to prove that she was alive and that they had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

I had come to the same conclusion the day before and revisited it several times since then. Nevertheless, it was comforting to hear it from someone else. Part of the reason I had returned to Kreel County was to prove that I had nothing to do with the assault on Michael Bettich—mostly to myself.

“Tell me about Alison,” I told Gretchen.

“Who the hell is Alison?” Loushine asked again.

Gretchen sucked in her breath and started talking with the exhale, talking so low that Loushine and I had to move to the foot of the bed to hear her. From where I stood, everything she told him was the truth—except maybe why Alison had left the Twin Cities in the first place. She seemed as unsure about that as I was.

Gretchen told us that Alison simply appeared on her doorstep late one night eight months ago with a battered suitcase and a fascinating if not altogether heroic tale. She was seeking asylum and anonymity, and Gretchen agreed to provide both. The deputy was delighted that her friend had come to her, and if Alison now insisted on being known as Michael Bettich, that was just swell as far as Gretchen was concerned—although she did confess that her police-officer mentality had compelled her to take a keen interest in the goings-on in Dakota County, Minnesota, until she was satisfied that her friend was not fleeing criminal charges.

Michael soon settled in and began building a new life for herself. Her brilliant mind impressed King Koehn so much that he gave her a job overseeing his investments after their first meeting; the fact that she was also pretty probably didn’t hurt, either—King liked pretty. And after dating around for several months, Michael settled on Sheriff Bobby Orman, moving in with him two months ago.

When Gretchen had finished, Loushine shook his head. “Nobody tells me anything,” he muttered.

“It didn’t bother you that Alison had left so many people in the Twin Cities holding the dirty end of the stick?” I asked Gretchen.

“The way Alison explained it to me, they all deserved it.”

“Probably did,” I agreed. Gretchen responded to my remark with a weak smile—she wasn’t sure about her friend, I concluded. After all this time helping to protect Alison, she still wasn’t sure. Hell, neither was I.

I smiled myself and removed a small notebook from my pocket and flipped it open. I read the names that I had written there the night before while sitting at Phyllis Bernelle’s kitchen table. “Who in Kreel County had motive to kill Michael?”

“You ask that like she’s dead,” Gretchen protested. “Michael is
not
dead. Stop talking like she is.”

Gretchen was right. From the beginning, I had been treating the case like a homicide investigation, when in fact there had not been a homicide—and saying so was like putting Alison’s photograph on the cover of
Sports Illustrated:
It was a jinx and lessened her chances for survival.

I rephrased the question. “Who wanted to hurt her?”

“Nobody,” Gretchen insisted.

“Nobody?!” I shouted, then checked myself. “Nobody,” I repeated in a softer voice, waving my notebook. “I’ve been in town for only a couple of hours, and I can name at least six suspects. How ’bout you?” I asked, turning toward Loushine.

“I only have one. Thilgen.”

Chip Thilgen looked good, I admitted; his was the first name on my list. But it bothered me that the car used in the shooting had been stolen out of town the day before Alison was shot. If the crime had been premeditated—as the theft would seem to indicate—it seemed damned unlikely that Thilgen would have announced his hatred for Michael one hour before shooting her. And if it wasn’t premeditated, why did he steal the car?

“Sure, there’s Thilgen,” I said. “But how ’bout Ingrid?”

Loushine demonstrated his lack of experience when he shook his head at the suggestion, eliminating the owner of The Height out of hand.