Penance (14 page)

“
This is Scalasi. What? You don’t keep office hours anymore?”

“
It’s twelve-fifteen. Mr. Taylor, you have to call me. I know who killed both John Brown and Dennis Thoreau.”

“
This is Heather Schrotenboer. Could we get together and …”

I practically broke my hand snatching up the telephone and pounding out Amy’s number, not even listening to the last message. The phone rang four times and was answered by a machine—everybody has a machine these days. The voice it used was Amy’s, clear and confident.

“Call me,” I told the machine. “Call me right now.”

I hung up the phone and stared at it. It didn’t ring. It didn’t ring for nearly fifteen minutes, so I dialed Amy’s number again and was greeted by the machine again. I stared at the phone some more.

I called C. C.’s campaign headquarters.

“I’m sorry, Miss Lamb has gone for the day,” Louise told me. “She had a very painful headache. You get a lot of those in the course of a political campaign. This is my seventh.”

“Seventh headache or seventh campaign?”

“I don’t under …”

“I need Amy’s home address.”

Louise hesitated before telling me, “I’m afraid we don’t give out that information.”

“This is very important.”

“I’m sorry …”

I hung up, waited two beats, picked up the receiver and punched directory assistance.

“What city, please?”

“I don’t know, it could be St. Paul or Minneapolis. I need the number for Amy Lamb. It would be a new listing.”

I heard the keys of a terminal before directory assistance told me, “There is no listing for Lamb, Amy. However, there are three listings for Lamb, first initial ‘
A
.’ Two in Minneapolis and one in St. Paul.”

“Give me all three.”

“I’m sorry, sir, our policy is to give out a maximum of two numbers.”

“Give me the Minneapolis listings.”

Neither of them matched Amy’s number. I repunched 411, reaching a different operator, and asked for Lamb, first initial A in St. Paul. The number on the recording she played for me matched.

I called again, this time punching
O.
I told the operator that Amy’s phone was not being answered. “Perhaps I have the wrong number. Is that Amy Lamb on Lexington Avenue?”

“No, sir. The number you dialed is on Fratzke Avenue.”

“Thank you.”

I called right back, getting a male operator this time.

“Is that Amy Lamb at two-four-five-seven Fratzke?”

“No, sir. Nine-eight-eight.”

Nine-eight-eight Fratzke Avenue was one half of a small, well-kept duplex shaded by a maple tree on one side and a majestic pine on the other. It sat back from the street on a small hill. Six steps reached up from the boulevard to a long, narrow, concrete path that divided the front yard neatly in two, stopping at a tiny porch with two front doors. I was pounding frantically on Amy’s door, wondering if I should pick the lock, when I heard a voice behind me. It belonged to a woman no longer young, with thinning silver hair and stooped shoulders.

“You want somethin’?”

“I’m trying to locate Amy Lamb.”

“If she ain’t answerin’, she ain’t at home.”

“My name is Holland Taylor. Amy called me from her place of business …”

“She works for that slut, C. C. Monroe,” the woman informed me. She tried to spit but couldn’t work up enough phlegm.

“I know,” I said, choosing not to debate C. C.’s questionable morals just then. “Amy said she was going home, she said she was very ill. I called several times and there was no answer. I’m worried about her …”

“She was here when I left.”

“When was that?”

“About noon, after my soap.”

“What time did you get back?”

“I done my shopping; I was back by oh, 1:30.”

I glanced at my watch. It was 4:15.

“Was she here when you returned?”

“I don’t spy on my tenants,” the old woman told me abruptly.

“Of course not. But perhaps you heard her moving about, heard her television.”

“No, usually I do,” the woman answered quietly, genuinely puzzled.

“Do you have a key to Miss Lamb’s …?”

“’Course I have a key,” the woman said impatiently. “I own the place, don’t I?”

“Would you …?”

“I ain’t lettin’ you in there alone.”

“Come with me. I just want to make sure she’s all right, I won’t touch anything.”

“Damn straight you won’t touch anything,” she said. She went into her apartment after first ordering me to “Wait there.” She took her own sweet time about it. Finally she reappeared, said, “C’mon then,” and unlocked Amy’s door. I pushed past her into the living room.

The old woman screamed with more energy than I thought she could possibly muster. She screamed as I led her out of Amy’s house and into her own. She screamed as I sat her down on a threadbare sofa and she screamed as I dialed 911 on her black rotary telephone. I was tempted to slap her across the face, but that only works in the movies.

I left the duplex and moved the length of the sidewalk, sitting on the steps overlooking the boulevard. She didn’t stop screaming until well after the police arrived. I didn’t blame her.

THIRTEEN

O
FFICER JAMES CURTIS
of the St. Paul Police Department’s Northwest Team, riding alone without sirens or lights, screeched his unit to a stop directly in front of me. It took him about fifteen steps to move from the driver’s door to where I sat. The effort left him breathless.

“’S been a long time, Taylor,” he said between short-winded puffs. His right hand rested on the butt of his holstered Glock 17.

“Too long,” I assured him.

“You call it in?”

I nodded.

Curtis glanced backward at his unit, gave it some thought, then returned to it, opening the rear passenger door.

“You mind?”

I shook my head no and left my perch. When I reached the open door Curtis said, “Do me a favor.”

I didn’t have to ask what the favor was. I assumed the position and he searched me thoroughly without comment. After he finished I slid into the car and he locked me in. Without a backward glance, Curtis went to the house, hesitating on the porch, deciding between doors. He picked the one the screaming woman was behind. A few minutes later the woman was quiet and Curtis had returned to the porch. He took a deep breath and went inside Amy’s apartment. He was pale when he came out thirty seconds later, pale except for his eyes. They were red with anger and sorrow. He returned to the squad and radioed Homicide for assistance. Except he didn’t use the appropriate code number. Amy Lamb wasn’t a number to him. When he finished he flung the hand mike away and sat there rubbing his eyes.

“I hate this job,” he said.

An elderly man with silver hair, who probably thought he had seen it all, stood in the center of his yard two houses down and pretended to rake leaves while he watched the small army of officers, technicians, wagon men and medical examiners that descended on 988 Fratzke Avenue. He reminded me of my father, who hadn’t raked a leaf since his eldest son turned nine years old, but would get angry just the same when my brothers and I frolicked in the piles we made and scattered the leaves across the lawn. The old man seemed particularly interested in a slender woman with short-cropped hair who was directing the activities.

Anne Scalasi loved this shit; the almost gleeful way she described the habits and behavioral characteristics of killers, you’d think she was talking about former boyfriends.

Anne used to be an elementary school teacher. For giggles, she’d joined a Ride-A-Long and gone patrolling with Anoka County deputies. She was hooked the moment she first heard the siren from inside the car; hooked like a largemouth on a Bass-oreno. She immediately quit her day job and became a nighttime dispatcher in a suburban police department. During the day she went to school, first junior college, then the academy—she was top of her class at both.

And she married a cop.

Eventually, Anne became the suburban department’s first female officer and still later, its first female detective. She soon caught the attention of the state attorney general’s office, which hired her as an investigator, only they didn’t give her much to do. She decided her employment was merely an affirmative action ploy and accepted a position with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

The BCA liked her so much they sent her to the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico, Virginia, where she was specially trained to investigate mass murders and serial rape killings. Once again she scored first in her class and the FBI wanted to keep her. Instead, she returned to the BCA under the stipulation that the bureau would loan her to any local department that might require her expertise. The BCA agreed, then refused to allow her to work any case where it did not declare jurisdiction. So she joined the St. Paul Police Department, which was happy to accept her terms.

Now she commanded the unit, replacing the man who had hired her, taking the job many people thought I would eventually hold.

Anne ignored my presence while she examined the scene and interviewed the old woman. Finally, at her bidding, Curtis led me to where she was standing with McGaney and Casper. Casper was speaking earnestly, trying to impress the boss, using his hands and saying, “The most brutal murders are domestics, okay? When you get five, six gunshots like we have here, you’re talking husband-wife, girlfriend-boyfriend, boyfriend-boyfriend, am I right?”

Anne said, “Probably.”

Casper grinned at McGaney like he thought he deserved some ice cream and cake. McGaney rolled his eyes and shook his head.

Anne smiled at me when I approached. She had a smile that could melt snow; certainly it melted the resolve of many a stubborn suspect—it was her most endearing feature and I felt like slapping it off her face.

“I’ve seen highway workers move faster than you guys,” I told them.

“We didn’t keep you waiting, did we, Taylor?” McGaney asked.

“Screw you.”

“Touchy,” Casper said, then added, “I heard the shrink kicked you off the couch.”

It occurred to me how much Casper’s personality would benefit from a few well-placed blows to the face; make him a better human being. I formed a fist, prepared to drive my top two knuckles through Casper’s fat, flat nose, but Anne pulled my arm down.

“What’s with you?” she wanted to know.

I pulled away. “Whaddya think?”

“You’re taking this way too seriously,” McGaney warned.

“Think so?” I asked him. Yet I knew he was right. I used to be able to do it, look at death without letting my feelings get in the way—a policeman detached, making bad jokes to relieve the horror. Somewhere along the way I lost the knack. Still, I should have known better. As a homicide cop I was nearly perfect. I was better than Anne Scalasi. Better than anyone. For as long as I’d been able to do it.

“What are you doing here?” Anne demanded.

I answered her with short, curt sentences. “Amy Lamb called me. She left a message on my machine. She said she knew who killed both John Brown
and
Dennis Thoreau.”

Casper’s jaw dropped, actually dropped; McGaney’s pen hung suspended in midair above the notebook; Anne’s smile took on an ugly symmetry, frozen as it was on her face. She stared at me, as did the others. The traffic moved past us on Fratzke, sounding like surf in the distance. No one spoke, not until McGaney mumbled, “What do you know about Dennis Thoreau?”

“Only what I read in the newspapers.”

“A neighbor reported seeing a man picking Thoreau’s lock,”

Casper reported. “How ’bout that, Taylor? You wouldn’t pick a lock illegally, would you?”

“Not if I thought someone was watching.”

I looked at Anne Scalasi, our eyes fixed in a kind of death struggle: The first one to blink loses. Without prompting I announced, “I met Amy Lamb yesterday while investigating John Brown’s murder. You remember John Brown?”

Anne did not respond, did not turn from my gaze.

“This morning she called me,” I repeated. “She left a message on my machine. She said she knew who killed both Brown and Dennis Thoreau. I have the cassette if you want to hear it.”

She didn’t say if she did or didn’t.

“I tried to reach her by telephone. I called her several times. There was no answer. I left a message on her machine. You probably heard it. I drove over. You questioned the old woman. You know the rest.”

McGaney transcribed my remarks into a small notebook. “Where did she work?” he asked as he wrote.

“She answered the phones at C. C. Monroe’s campaign headquarters.”

Anne Scalasi looked away. Her gaze fell on the front door of the duplex, on the wagon men leaning against a trundle waiting for forensics to finish so they could wheel Amy down to the ambulance. She muttered something I couldn’t make out, took my arm and led me toward the street. I had never seen her this agitated. Apparently, neither had McGaney and Casper. After taking a half dozen steps, Anne turned back to them.

“Find out how well the landlady knew the victim. Find out if she spent much time in the victim’s house. Find out if she can tell us if anything is missing—VCR, TV, whatever. Especially look for personal objects that might be missing.”