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“My office, as soon as you can get here.”
Thirty minutes later I was standing in the cubbyhole G. K.’s law firm deemed appropriate to her status as a newly minted associate and looking out the window. G. K. had a spectacular view of the office tower directly across the street.
“Do you think she’s telling the truth?” G. K. asked.
She was sitting behind her cluttered desk, staring at her hands folded on a file directly in front of her. She was as surprised as I had been when I told her that Priscilla St. Ana had confessed to three murders, and like me, she was unsure what to make of it.
“It sounded like the truth when Cilia was telling it,” I said. “Now I’m not so sure. If it is the truth, Jefferson’s death would certainly fit her MO. She drugs him and then lets him die slowly—this time of blood loss instead of carbon monoxide poisoning. Anyway, we’ll know for sure in a day or so. I asked the county coroner to test Jefferson’s blood for GHB.”
“You did what?”
“I asked the coroner—”
“McKenzie.” G. K. shook her head violently. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . because . . . because I’m in charge here.”
“No one said you weren’t.”
“You have to ask me before you do things like that. What if—Listen, McKenzie. I think we should ignore her. Forget Priscilla St. Ana even exists.”
“Why would we do that? She’s a suspect. She’s even more of a suspect than most suspects.”
“It makes the case too complicated.”
“Not if we find the GHB.”
“No. Forget it. There’s an easier way of getting Merodie off.”
“Such as?”
G. K. unfolded her hands and picked up the folder. I took it from her outstretched fingers. The top page read:
Case #06-058939
Richard Scott Nye
Table of Contents
Gross Misdemeanor Domestic Assault
The file contained all the information gathered by the cops after Merodie had beaten on Nye with a Lady Thumper softball bat and he had broken her jaw—and more. Someone had done a judgment search on Nye, producing two sheets of computer paper filled with misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors, and felonies. According to the report Nye had a lifetime of arrests—yet few convictions—for arson, assault, possession, and disorderly conduct, plus two counts of sexual assault, both dismissed. God knows what he did as a juvenile, because the State of Minnesota wouldn’t say. It was the last few lines of type that most interested me, however. They indicated that the Anoka County Criminal Investigation Division had arrested Nye for possession with intent to distribute nearly a pound of methamphetamine. He pled out and was sentenced to sixty months in prison, but the sentence was stayed on the recommendation of Anoka County Attorney David Tuseman. Instead, Nye was made to serve five days shy of a full year in the Aonka County Correctional Facility—jail, not prison—pay a five-thousand-dollar fine, undergo chemical dependency treatment, and remain law-abiding for a period of five years upon his release.
“He cut a deal,” I said. Just what kind of deal the report didn’t say.
Beneath the computer sheets I found still another case file, this one detailing Nye’s meth bust. I paged through it quickly while G. K. waited until I came across a photocopy of the search warrant the sheriff’s department used. The warrant had been issued based on information provided by an unnamed source that “has been proven to be true and correct”—or so a sheriff’s deputy testified to the judge. However, they CIA’d the informant, giving him or her a “cooperative individual agreement”—the informant’s name, sex, and age were not listed on the search warrant, nor were they revealed in court. There was no way for Nye to know with certainty who the informant was, but he could have guessed, couldn’t he? After all, Vonnie Lou Lowman knew that Merodie had dimed him out. I was sure Nye could figure it out, too. Especially since—I compared the dates of the two reports against each other to be sure—the warrant was issued just two days after he put Merodie in the hospital.
“I tried to get this information earlier,” I said. “I was told that Nye’s files were in the custody of the county attorney. How did you get them?”
G. K. shrugged at me.
“Rollie Briggs?”
G. K. shrugged some more.
I tried to return the files, but G. K. refused to take them.
“What?” I asked her.
“Look again,” she said.
I glanced through the folder a second time. “What am I looking for?”
“You tell me.”
“C’mon, G. K. We haven’t got time for this.”
“There’s an old saying. ‘God is in the details.’ ”
“God is in a lot of things.”
“Nye’s physical description.”
I found it under the heading
Defendant’s Driver License Record
“He’s blond,” I said.