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The offices of Canton, Domingo and Brady, CPAs, were in a small, freestanding yellow stucco building two blocks from the Mississippi, with an Apple/Mac computer repair service on one side and lactation consultants on the other. Before they went in, Virgil checked his backup cell, and found that he’d already had two calls. He read the voicemail transcripts and deleted them.

Lucas: “Crap?”

“Crap.”

“Toldja.”

—

Stephanie Brady had a lot of freckles. A lot.

She was slender and tall with red-brown hair, a thin, long nose, wore a greenish suit; Lucas noticed that she had large hands, like a piano player has in the movies.

“I’ve been trying to forget the murder for twenty years,” she said, when she came to the receptionist’s desk to meet them. “Come on back to our conference room.”

“We saw in the interviews you did at the time of Doris’s murder that the investigators came to you three times, for interviews. They also picked up all of Doris’s possessions,” Lucas said as they took chairs around a circular mahogany table in the conference room. One wall was a bookcase stuffed with tax code volumes that appeared to be unused.

“That’s correct,” she said. “Doris had an expensive wardrobe and they wondered if she’d gotten gifts from guys she’d dated…or if…they were wondering if she’d been paid, you know, to have sex with guys and used the money to buy the stuff.”

“I take it she couldn’t have paid for it with the salaries you guys were on?” Virgil asked.

She shook her head. “No way. Some of those shoes…they’d be way more than we made in a week, and she had lots of them. I tried not to be curious about it, you know, because she said she got financial help from her parents. I suspected that wasn’t true, because she didn’t want to talk about it—but why wouldn’t you talk about it, if you were interested in fashion, and the money came from some innocent place like your parents? The investigators told me later that she didn’t get money from her parents.”

“Did you go out with her? Did you hang out together, go clubbing?” Virgil asked.

“Only once in a while,” Brady said. “We’d go over to First Avenue if there was a rumor that Prince might show up. I was a huge Prince fan, so I’d go with, if she’d heard something.”

“The source of the money—you didn’t inquire or suspect anything about a specific guy?”

“No.” She hesitated, and then, “That’s…why I wondered if she got money from them. There seemed to be several of them. Sometimes she…smelled like sex, if you know what I mean.”

Lucas nodded: “We do.”

“One thing we didn’t do was double-date,” Brady said. “I didn’t date much anyway, I was too busy. I always wanted to be a CPA because they make the big bucks. That takes extra schoolwork and also work experience—a minimum of two thousand hours of work experience—and you have to study for the exam, which is no walk in the park. Anyway, when I wasn’t working, I was usually studying and taking classes, not going out to clubs.”

“Doris wasn’t interested in being a CPA?”

“She said she’d do it later. You know, when she was in her thirties. After she was married.”

Virgil: “Huh.” He looked at Lucas.

“I got nothing,” Lucas said.

“There was one thing, that the original investigators didn’t get, and I don’t think is important, but I thought later, like, years later, that maybe I should have mentioned,” Brady said.

Virgil: “Yeah?”

“I had this old Canon film camera. I think it’s called a Rebel. I only had one lens for it. Anyway, Doris used it more than I did. She liked to look at the pictures and she had a lot of them printed. I’ve still got the photos, in a box, that she took. I looked through them years after she was killed. I didn’t see much of interest, but I do have quite a few photos.”

Virgil said, “We’d like to see them. Maybe they’d show the people she hung out with; or executives she was talking to?”

“Maybe. I haven’t looked at them in forever.”

Brady had clients that afternoon, but they arranged to meet her at her house that night in the Highland Park neighborhood, a half mile or so from Lucas’s house.

Out in the parking lot, Lucas said, “Photographs. This could be something.”

Virgil had turned off his phone while they were talking to Brady, and when he turned it back on, he thumbed through three more voicemail transcripts and at the last one, he stopped, and said, “Oh-oh.”

“What?”

“Guy says, ‘I was the guy who called Bud Light last night. I was the one who slept with Doris Grandfelt the day she was killed, who used the rubber with the sperm killer. That was the tip I gave Bud. I’m out driving around for a while and if you don’t call me, I’ll throw this phone down a sewer.’?”

“Whoa,” Lucas said. “Call him. Put it on speaker.”

—

Virgil called. A man answered, a baritone with gravel, and Virgil asked, “Who is this?”

“Never mind. Is this Davenport or Flowers?”

“We’re both here,” Lucas said. “How’d you get this number?”

“They posted it on Bud Light’s site. I heard he was murdered and I was watching the site and called as soon as I saw the number.”

“How’d you know that somebody had sex with Doris Grandfelt with a condom?” Virgil asked.

“Because it was me,” the man said. “Also, I read all the stuff about the rape, the stuff that’s online, the investigation files. They said she’d had two sexual contacts and the first guy had used a rubber with a sperm killer. If they got any details on that, you can tell them that I was not using a Trojan which most everybody else did, back then. The ones I used were called Hot Rods and didn’t have a sperm killer, so I bought a sperm killer gel and lubed it up myself. I didn’t want to knock up some hooker. I bet the gel was different than whatever Trojan used.”

Lucas glanced at Virgil and nodded. The guy sounded convincing. On the other hand, that’s what hustlers did: they sounded convincing. “You’re looking for a piece of the five million?” Virgil asked.

“How’d you guess? Also, I’ve always felt a little guilty about not calling the police after I heard about the murder. I was scared. The BCA seemed desperate to hang someone, and I wasn’t going to volunteer for the honor. When I was a kid, I had some trouble with the cops. I might have fit a frame.”

“You need to come in for a full interview,” Lucas said.

“Not yet. I’m still scared.”

“Not gonna get five million from what you’ve told us so far,” Virgil said. “No way that a spermicide clue is gonna get us anywhere.”

“That was just to demonstrate that I’m not bullshitting you. Here’s what you can use: Can you write this down?”

Virgil took out his main cell phone and hit “voice memos,” and said, “Yes. Go ahead.”

“There was guy who was a night bartender at a strip joint on Hennepin Avenue in the early 2000s. I forget the name of the place. I don’t think the name is the same anymore. Everybody called the bartender Inspector Gadget because the guy used to sell these…mmm…custom dildoes. Anyway, his real name is Roger Jepson. J-e-p-s-o-n. He worked at a bunch of places as a bartender and sometimes as a bouncer, but he wasn’t very good at either thing. He now works in a body shop off Highway 13 in Savage, called Loco’s. Or he did a couple of years ago, when I saw him there, when I took my truck in. Back in the day, he’d set Doris up with customers. I was one of those.”

Virgil: “Jepson was a pimp?”

“Not exactly. He didn’t do anything for Doris except make introductions,” the man said. “I don’t think she paid him anything. Might have rolled him a piece of ass from time to time. Roger was not a looker, wasn’t big with pretty women.”

Lucas: “But you got an introduction?”

“Right. Doris was fun. She’d fuck right back at you,” the man said. “Most hookers, you’d be banging away and they’d be reading their phone over your shoulder.”

“So you patronized working girls…”

“Not street girls. I was careful, always used a rubber and paid them a lot, to get a classier chick. Doris fit all of that: an accountant, fun, she’d do you for five hundred bucks, which was a lot at the time. And with her, it wasn’t just the sex. She’d meet you someplace and dance, and then go back to your place. Like an actual date. I figured that’s what got her killed: she went back to the wrong guy’s place.”

“Did she ever take you to her place, or to her office?”

“No. I never even knew where she worked. Or lived. She told me she was an accountant, but we didn’t talk business. I didn’t know she worked at Bee until I saw the news stories about her getting raped and killed. I don’t think she wanted me to know more personal stuff.”

“Somebody murdered Bud Light last night, but we can’t figure out how the killer even knew where he was. Did you talk to anyone about making the call?”

“Not a single person. Not a single fuckin’ person. I’m talking about how I used to go out with hookers. I don’t want anyone to know that. Not now. I’m respectable. Back when I was a kid, it wouldn’t have been so bad if people found out. Now I’m in business. So no: I didn’t talk to anybody. I got no idea where Bud was staying.”

Virgil took a shot: “Where are you right now?”

The man said, “Somewhere in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Or western Wisconsin. Listen, I been reading up on you two guys, on the crime sites. I think you got a chance to catch the killer. If you think I can help you with something else, put up a note on the AnneCashInvestigations true crime site that says, ‘Big Dave, call home’ and I’ll call this number. Also, I’ve recorded this call, in case this info gets you somewhere. I’ll want my cut of the five mil.”

Virgil took another shot: “So your name is David?”

The man said, “No. And guess what? I’m not big. Now I’m going to throw this particular phone down a sewer. Don’t ask me to call unless you’re serious—these things cost twenty bucks apiece.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Virgil said. “You think it’s possible that Jepson killed her?”

“Nah. Not from what I read in those files, all that stabby shit. He was a pretty mellow guy. I think it was real, too, the mellow. Everybody said so.”

“Why wouldn’t he have called us?”

“Same reason I didn’t. Doris’s murder was a big deal. I believe everybody who knew her or slept with her was running for cover. She had professional people as customers. Who wants to get his name in the paper as a john? Or as a pimp? Or a rape and murder suspect?”

“Why do you say ‘rape’ like you knew she was raped?”

“Because that’s what the cop files say, and the newspapers said, back when she was killed. That she was raped and stabbed. Listen, Doris didn’t have many customers. If Roger hooked her up with someone and she got murdered by a crazy guy that very night…and this killer sounds like a maniac…then Roger would know who he was. I believe he would have called you. If he didn’t, he probably didn’t hook her up with anyone. She probably went somewhere private with someone, got raped and murdered. That second sex guy, the guy with the DNA…he’s the guy you’re looking for.”

—

Then he was gone, a light blinking out. Virgil looked at his phone for a few seconds, said, “Damnit,” and redialed. Nothing.

“Down the sewer pipe,” Lucas said.

Virgil tried once more, got nothing. “What do you think?”

“We need to talk to Jepson.”

“Loco’s body shop…” Virgil punched it into his phone. “Well, it still exists. We can be there in half an hour. If you want the thrill of lights and a siren, we could cut three minutes off that.”

“You’re a fuckin’ drama queen, you know that? Everybody says so. No lights, no sirens, just…peace and quiet. But hurry a little.”

“You think this is real.”

“It feels that way,” Lucas said. “It feels like we got something.”

—

Loco’s Body he sounded doubtful. Virgil’s Tahoe was ten years too young for Loco’s.

“Is Roger Jepson around?” Virgil asked.

The man asked, “Who’s askin’?” while the second man glanced at the guy who was working on the pickup, who’d paused in his work to look at Lucas and Virgil.

Lucas said, “I’m a U.S. Marshal, my partner’s with the state BCA…”

Virgil asked the man at the pickup, “Are you Roger?”

The man nodded and said, “I guess. U.S. Marshals? I haven’t done nothing.”

“We don’t think you have, but we do need to talk,” Virgil said. He looked around, then added, “Privately.”

Jepson shrugged and said, “I guess we could go in the office. There’s no place to sit…”

“That’s okay,” Lucas said.

Jepson tore a half dozen blue paper towels off a roll that sat on one of the red tool carts, used them to wipe his hands, and said, “This way.”

He was a bulky man with a sandpapered face, pasty white, like a prison guard who worked too many night shifts. He walked past them, threw the towels in a trash can, walked to a man-door at the edge of the building. The office smelled the same way as the shop, of diesel fuel with an overtone of hot dogs. A short grimy counter held a rack of tire advertisements, a cash register, and a microwave.

Jepson went behind the counter, leaned on it, and asked, ‘What’s up?”

—

They told him what was up, and he said, “I was afraid that’s what it was. One of her clients ratted me out? Wanted that five million?”

“You don’t seem too upset,” Virgil said.

“I don’t even know if what I was doing was a crime—I’d say, ‘Bill seems like a nice guy’ and Doris would say, ‘I’ll check him out.’ She’d check him out and maybe the guy gets laid and gives her a gift,” Jepson said. “Did I commit a crime? If I did, doesn’t it fall under the statue of limitations?”

“That does, if it was a crime, and I’m not sure it was,” Lucas said. “But murder doesn’t fall under the statute of limitations, if you were an accomplice.”

“I wasn’t. I didn’t have anything to do with her business,” Jepson said. “When she got to feeling grateful, from time to time, she’d stop over to my place. I appreciated that.”

Virgil held up his hands: “We don’t think you had anything to do with the murder, Roger. Not at this point anyway. We do think it’s possible that you know the killer, even if you don’t know that he’s the killer.”

“Okay. One big problem, though. These guys, I’d get to know them across the bar. Dick, Joe, Mike, whatever, I didn’t know their last names,” Jepson said. “It was twenty years ago, guys. I didn’t know them that well.”

“How many customers did she have?” Lucas asked.

Jepson stuck a finger in one ear and wriggled it, thinking. “Maybe…three or four at any one time. Maybe not four…Some would drop out, some she wouldn’t go back to. In the time I was talking to her, maybe for two years or so, probably a dozen.”

“Why would they drop out?” Virgil asked. “Do you think one of them might have come back at her?”

Jepson shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Look: she wasn’t a hooker. She wasn’t like a professional. She was like a college girl who took money for sex, but she expected to enjoy herself. Maybe some of these guys expected more…you know, advanced sex. She wasn’t going to do anal, she wasn’t going to get spanked, no water sports. Anything north of a blow job, she wasn’t going to do.”

Lucas: “Did you ever see any of her customers later…I mean, like years later? Or recently? Any kind of hint of who they might be, or where we might find one?”

Jepson smiled across the counter: “You trying to get me whacked?”

“So you did?”

“Yeah, sorta. Not in person, though. And not recently. A few years back, one of the guys was running for something. A political job of some kind. Not the U.S. Congress, or anything big. Bigger than dogcatcher, though. I can’t remember what it was, but I saw his face on TV, and it popped into my head that he was one of them.”

Virgil: “Did he get elected?”

Jepson made a tent out of his hands and covered his nose and mouth, looked down at the floor. “You know,” he said after a minute, “I think he might have. Let me…” He rubbed his nose, then said, “Stan. Stanley, that was his name, and he was a Democrat. If you’re a Democrat running in Hennepin County, or around Hennepin County, you probably got elected.”

“A Democrat named Stan.”

“And he drank rum Cokes. He called them rum Cokes. Republicans don’t do that. They call them Cuba libres.”

“How old was he when he was going out with Doris?”

“Maybe…thirty, give or take.”

Lucas: “So he’d be maybe fifty, now. Give or take.”

“That’d be about right,” Jepson agreed.

They talked for a while longer, then Jepson asked, “If this turns into anything, do I get a piece of that five million reward?”

“Not up to us,” Lucas said. “But we will keep track of your name.”

“So I have one last embarrassing question,” Virgil said. “We were told that you sold custom dildoes…what was all that about?”

Jepson laughed. “Man, the guy who ratted me out really did know me, didn’t he?”

“I guess so,” Virgil said. “Anyway…”

“You ever hear of these chicks back in the early rock ’n’ roll days, called the Plaster Casters?”

Lucas: “Sure. They get to the rock stars, and you know, they’d do whatever they needed to do to get an erection, and then they’d make a plaster mold of the guy’s dick. I guess they got quite a collection…”

“Bunch of them, yeah, Jimi Hendrix, I think,” Jepson said. “So we had this entrepreneurial chick here in the Cities did the same thing with all kinds of celebrities—sports guys, rockers, movie stars, whoever she could get. Then, she’d make silicone casts with a vibrator inside. She’d sell them through us guys on the Hennepin strip, bartenders. You know, you’d get the Vikings quarterback…”

“We get the picture,” Lucas said. “Did the caster make any money at it?”

“I guess,” Jepson said. “I sold probably ten or twenty of them for fifty bucks up to a hundred, depending on who the model was—sort of a novelty, you know? I sold almost all of them to guys, not women. She’d take half. I wasn’t the only one selling them. I believe she must have sold hundreds of them.”

“Keeping Minneapolis classy, huh?” Lucas said.

—

On the way back to the car, Lucas said, “Forget about the dildoes. We got the tail of something here. We need to do a little political research, find this Stan guy.”

“You know who’d probably know off the top of his head? Henderson’s weasel…”

“Mitford.”

“Yeah, bet he’d know.”

“I’ll call him now,” Lucas said, as they got into the truck. Virgil looked out the side window at Loco’s and said, “I’ll be right back.”

Jepson was walking back into the body shop and Virgil got out and caught him, took him aside and they talked for a minute, then he turned around and walked back to the truck.

Lucas was on the phone with Mitford, said, “Thanks,” and clicked off. “He didn’t have a name, but said he’d check around. A pol or former pol or wannabe pol named Stanley. Can’t be that many.”

“We’re operating,” Virgil said.

“What’d you tell Jepson?”

“I suggested he call up one of the true-crimers and stake a claim to the money. Or a share of it. Tell them what he had.”

Lucas scratched the back of his neck, thought about it, smiled his wolverine smile and said, “Okay. Shit storm. That could work for us. The BCA won’t be pleased, but then, I don’t work for the BCA.”