Page 9

9

When they’d been at the park earlier in the day, there’d been a dozen true-crimers; now there were twice as many, standing in a bunch near the corner of a parking lot, with a half-dozen cops mixed in with them.

“They look like movie explorers digging up an Egyptian temple,” Virgil said, as he eased the truck into the parking lot. And it was true. With a few exceptions, the crowd was dressed in vaguely military khaki and one of them was wearing an Aussie hat with an upturned brim on one side. “You think they found the knife?”

“I dunno what I think,” Lucas said. “They’re all the way across the field from the dump site.”

They got out of the Tahoe and walked across the parking lot, where the man with the metal detector saw them coming and held up a transparent plastic bag with a table knife in it. “Found it right here by the edge of the parking lot,” he said.

Virgil took the bag and held it up to the sky so he and Lucas could look at it.

A too-thin woman, who’d filmed them earlier in the day, said, “I’m Dahlia Blair. I was a witness to the discovery and so were a whole bunch of other people, including police officers. By the way, none of us touched the knife. Nothing has touched it except the inside of the evidence bag. If you look at the back of the knife, it says ‘stainless steel,’ but it’s all pitted up, so it’s been here for a while.”

“Like twenty years,” Anne Cash chipped in. She and a half-dozen other true-crimers were making videos.

Lucas, looking at the knife, and its sharp whetted point, muttered to Virgil, “They might have something.”

“Yeah.”

Lucas turned to the man with the metal detector and asked, “Why were you all the way over here?”

Blair began, “We deduced…”

“I want to talk to this guy,” Lucas said, nodding at the guy with the metal detector.

The man grabbed at the spotlight. “We deduced, or deducted…deduced? that the reason there were no vehicle tracks that could be attributed to the killer is that he never drove a vehicle across the grass and that’s why nobody saw him come or go,” he said. “He pulled up to the parking lot, which was, at the time, surrounded by shrubbery, turned off his headlights, and carried the body across the outfield and into the trees. The neighbors here say kids sometimes park here, you know, romancing, so it’s not unusual to have a car stopping in the night. Anyway, since nothing more was showing up around the body scene, I thought I’d scan around the parking lot. I was only at it for fifteen minutes, when this popped up.”

His statement was filmed by everyone who had a camera, then one woman, who’d been at the front of the group with a big Canon, turned and casually walked around the crowd to the back of it, then began stepping away, walking backwards.

Virgil said, “So listen, we…what’s your name?”

Dahlia Blair said, “Bud Light.”

The man said, “Actually, my name is Charles Light.”

“But everybody calls him Bud,” Blair said.

Virgil continued to ignore her. “Okay, Charles, can you show us the exact spot…”

The woman who’d stepped around to the back of the crowd was now twenty-five yards away. She turned, then broke into a trot, heading toward the cars. Nobody noticed for a moment, then another woman shouted, “Jane! Jane! Wait!”

Another woman shouted, “She’s gonna post! Wait, Jane…”

Half of the crowd stampeded after Jane, and Light laughed and said, “They’re gonna have to move fast. Jane can run.”

“How do they post from here?” Virgil asked. “On their phones?”

“Can’t type fast enough on a phone,” Light said. “They’ll all start uploading vid to their iPads while they’re typing up headlines and maybe a short story, then they’ll post through Verizon or AT Virgil kept the evidence bag with the knife, and most of the women had gone to their vehicles to post to their blogs and Substack newsletters, although a few hung close to Lucas and Virgil, and several others trampled through the dump scene with cameras. Then two members of the BCA’s crime scene crew drove up in a Mustang convertible with the top down. When the driver got out of the car, he lingered by the front fender, admiring the mirror shine on the fire-engine red finish. Virgil walked over and said, “The car looks like your wife licked it.”

“She does. I make her lick the entire car before breakfast every morning and then polish it with Q-tips.”

“Good for you, happy to see that toxic masculinity still has a place in the world,” Virgil said. “Here’s the bag.”

The crime scene guy held the bag up, then passed it to his companion, who pressed the plastic around the knife, squinting at it. After a minute he said, “What you have here is your basic Oneida cafeteria- or restaurant-grade stainless steel table knife. I will tell you more after I look at it through some glass, but it appears to have been crudely sharpened, possibly on a red rock. Or a brick. I can see little red grains in some of the sharpening grooves, and blood would have leached out a long time ago, so it’s not blood. Whoever did it sharpened the edge fairly well, but mostly put a point on it. It fits our description of the murder weapon.”

“So…it was intended as a stabbing weapon?” Virgil asked.

“Looks like, but it could cut, too.”

Dahlia Blair, armed with her camera and microphone, had been standing behind Bud Light, twenty-five feet away, shooting over Light’s shoulder. Lucas only noticed her when she broke away from the bushes, heading for the cars.

“We’ve been busted again,” he said.

The crime scene guy with the bag said, “What?”

“You’re gonna be in a movie,” Lucas said.

Virgil wandered away, working his phone as Lucas explained about the true-crimers, and when Virgil came back, he looked around for cameras and microphones, then said quietly to Lucas, “Bee Accounting has a cafeteria. It ain’t much, but that’s what I got.”

“We should go there,” Lucas said. “It’ll at least get us out of this shit show.”

—

They drove separately to the Bee building, found street parking, and when they were both on the street, Lucas looked around, then said, “Your big mouth is gonna get you in trouble, Virgie.”

“What? What’d I say?”

“For one thing, you referred to that fuckin’ nickel as a fuckin’ nickel, on camera. And then that Blair woman was hiding behind Light with her camera and microphone when you were talking to the crime scene guy. You know, about having his wife lick the car and making her polish it with Q-tips, how it’s a good thing there was still toxic masculinity in the world.”

“Aw, that won’t…”

Lucas interrupted. “You really do live out in the sticks, don’t you? You ever hear of social media?”

“You say cruder stuff than that…”

“Not on camera,” Lucas said. “Listen: these people are dangerous, if a guy wants to keep a job.”

“Fuck it. I’m gonna quit anyway,” Virgil said.

“Don’t do that. You’re too good at this.”

—

Bee Accounting was located in a remodeled early-twentieth-century warehouse, complete with worn limestone grotesques carved into the building’s frieze. As they walked up to it, Lucas said, “Red brick. With tiny red grains.”

“You plucked that observation right out of my brain.”

The lobby was guarded by a friendly older man who sat behind a wooden counter to one side of a locked glass door that led into the interior. He was watching a Twins game on a computer.

Lucas and Virgil showed him their IDs and asked to speak to whomever was in charge of the cafeteria. The man, who was wearing a silver metal name tag that read “Terry,” suggested that they speak first to the office manager, whom he paged. “You gonna bust somebody?” he asked, after making the call.

“Probably not,” Lucas said. “That today’s Twins game?”

“Yup. Not looking good.”

“Better that I’m not watching it, then,” Virgil said.

“Same with me, but I can’t help myself,” Terry said. “Six-zip in the third.”

“Damn Yankees…”

—

A woman pushed through the glass door, round-faced, middle-aged, sharp-eyed, with a pair of reading glasses hanging from a gold chain around her neck. “Officers?”

Lucas introduced them and she said, “You’re the two who caught Judge Sand’s killer. I saw you on television.”

“We did,” Virgil said.

“I hope we haven’t killed anyone here?” She said it with a smile, but there was a question mark in her voice.

“We’re looking into the Doris Grandfelt killing,” Lucas said.

“Oh-em-gee,” she said. “I read about the reward. Five million dollars?”

“Yes. Something’s come up. We’d like to talk to whoever supervises your cafeteria.”

“Well, okay…That’s up on two.”

They followed behind her through a room with three glass-faced offices and perhaps twenty thigh-high gray cubicles with people—five-to-one women—looking at computer terminals. She took them to an elevator, and they rode up one floor. As they did, the woman, who said her name was Hester Sweeney, asked what they were looking for.

Virgil said, “A table knife was found near the crime scene. We’re interested in the silverware you use in the cafeteria.”

She asked, “A metal knife?”

“Stainless steel…”

“Huh. Well, I’ll introduce you to Marlys, who runs the lunchroom and the dining room. We have separate facilities for the regular employees and the executives. The only real silverware would be in the executive dining room, but I don’t know how long that’s been the case.”

Lucas: “How long have you worked here?”

“Six years. Marlys has been here a little longer. I don’t think there are many people left, who were here when Doris was killed. It’s famous around here, of course, the killing is.”

She took them to a lunchroom, a plain tile-floored open room with plastic-topped square tables, four orange or blue plastic molded chairs for each table, windows that looked at the former warehouse across the street. A line of coolers stood against one wall, with a plastic-topped counter that held baskets of plastic knives, forks and spoons, straws, napkins, along with packs of ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and salt and pepper. Three people were sitting at separate tables, eating sandwiches or soup, reading their phones and ignoring each other.

Marlys Jackson was a short Black woman, pretty and busy, her head in one of the coolers, a clipboard in her hand, the type who’d be doing four things at once. She was wearing black jeans with a deep-red blouse and had rings on six of her ten fingers.

When Sweeney introduced them, Jackson put her fists on her hips and said with a Texas accent, “I’ll help any way I can, but we wouldn’t have any silverware left from way back then. Let’s go talk to Philip. He was here when Miz Grandfelt was killed.”

Philip Wall was a dishwasher, a thin shaky white man with a gray ponytail and tattoos on his skinny forearms. He wore a transparent throw-away plastic apron and had a pack of Marlboros sitting on a sterilizing cabinet.

With Sweeney and Jackson listening in, he told Lucas and Virgil that the lunchroom never had anything but self-serve food—sandwiches, yogurt, drinks, granola bars, candy—with a few other items that could be heated in a couple of microwaves. “It’s all been plastic throw-away utensils since I been here, except executive dining,” he said. “I think the silverware was changed about, shoot, I dunno, maybe ten years ago? Same brand, Oneida stainless, different design.”

“You don’t have any of the old stuff around?”

Wall scratched the back of his head, thinking, then said, “You know…we might still have the picnic stuff.”

“What’s that?” Lucas asked.

“A long time ago, we used to have office picnics. The execs would take employees who’d done good work out to one of the parks,” Wall said. “They’d, you know, play volleyball and croquet, or whatever, and they’d take food along and silverware, instead of plastic, because, you know, it was supposed to be kind of fancy, and they were executives. They had these big old wooden picnic baskets.”

“You still have them?” Virgil asked.

“There used to be some in the old basement storage room, unless they got thrown away.”

Lucas turned to Sweeney. “Can we go look?”

They could.

On the way to the basement, Lucas asked if any of the picnic excursions went to Shawnee Park.

“I don’t know about that. I ain’t an executive,” Wall said.

The basement was a concrete hole under the building, with red- rusted steel beams and a lot of pipe and electrical conduits; it smelled of damp but seemed dry enough. Wall led the way to a metal door, pulled it open. The room behind the door was lined with wooden shelves, showing grime and cobwebs. “There you go,” he said.

A half-dozen woven-wood picnic baskets were stacked on the shelves. Wall pulled one of them off. The basket had folding handles, both broken. Wall pushed them back, pulled open the top of the basket. Inside was a plastic box full of miscellaneous stainless silverware. He took the box out, opened it, and Lucas poked through it, found a knife, held it up.

Virgil took out his phone, called up a photo of the knife found in the park.

“Ah, boy,” he said. “They’re identical.”

—

Sweeney led the way back up a flight of stairs to the main lobby, made a call on her phone as she walked, talked for a few seconds, listened for a few more, and as they came into the lobby said, “Cory Donner would like to speak with you. He’s the CEO.”

Lucas was carrying the box of silverware, and said, “Sure.”

Donner’s office was on the fourth and top floor. The office was obviously designed for work with an efficient, not overly large desk, a long side table stacked with paper and manuals, a wall of books, a wall of filing cabinets, and two modest windows overlooking a lifeless intersection.

Donner stood when they came in, nodded at Sweeney, and shook hands with Lucas and Virgil. He was as tall as the two cops, but stooped, balding, with quick dark eyes. A suit jacket hung from a wall hook, and he was tieless, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.

“When I read about the reward, I worried that the murder would come back to haunt us,” Donner said. “We’ve had several people try to push past our lobby, so they could ‘investigate’ the company.”

“Did Hester tell you what we found?” Lucas asked.

“She said something about silverware—that you’d found the murder weapon and it matches some of ours.”

“Some of your silverware way back when, not the current stuff,” Virgil said. “When the murder occurred, we interviewed some people here. The BCA did.”

“I know, I was one of them,” Donner said. “I volunteered for a DNA test. The investigators did it, but nobody ever told me what they found out. Nothing, I guess. I did have a solid alibi for the time of the murder. Tell me what’s happened now, to restart it all.”

Lucas and Virgil took turns filling him in, and when they were done, he asked, “You’re not certain that what you have is the actual murder weapon?”

“No, but unless somebody deliberately planted it, it looks likely,” Virgil said. “I wouldn’t put it past some of the treasure hunters we’re dealing with, but how would they know the style of your silverware from more than twenty years ago, and then find a corroded knife that matches it, and have time to actually plant it?”

“Yes, that would be improbable,” Donner said. He scratched a cheek, thinking about it. “I’ll talk to my board about this, but I can tell you right now that we’ll give you anything you want, cooperate any way we can.” He hesitated again, then added, “That would be our general policy, but our attorneys might not completely agree. They might want some technical legal stuff done…Whatever, if they have a problem, I’ll get them in touch with you or whoever you say.”

They thanked him, and Virgil asked, “How many people had DNA tests done?”

“I’m not sure. One of the BCA investigators told me that they were asking for the tests from people who they had some reason to suspect, even if it was slight. He said that they were more interested in Doris’s club activity than in her…her relationships in the company, since she didn’t seem involved with anyone here. You know, sexually.”

Lucas: “Was Doris pretty? Lively? Would she have caught the eye of guys working here?”

Donner shook his head, gave them a wry smile. “She was quite pretty, a blonde, athletic. You know.” He glanced at Sweeney. “Boobs. If she was never going to be Miss America, she was attractive. But. There’s a big ‘but’ here…that’s a but with one ‘t.’?”

Lucas: “That would be?”

“In the early 2000s, mmm, probably about the time she started working with us, we had quite the little sex scandal here. We had a married couple working for us, and there was a sexual problem involving our then CEO, Dick McCann. McCann, I think it’s fair to say, was predatory. I was very junior at the time, not yet a partner, but everybody heard…”

“He jumped somebody’s wife?”

“Uh, no. At the time, he might have gotten away with that,” Donner said. “A wife. What he did was, to use your phrase, he jumped somebody’s husband.”

“Was Doris involved?” Virgil asked.

“Oh, no, no, but there was a terrific shock when this all started coming out. There was even a brawl down on the first floor, involving the wife and McCann. For several years after that, there was no hanky-panky at Bee Accounting. The partners at the time made it very explicit that if we had people getting friendly, they’d quickly be getting friendly at some other company. They told us that they would send us packing if we misbehaved, even if the misbehavior was consensual.”

“Sounds a little harsh,” Virgil said.

“Reputation is extremely important in this business,” Donner said. “Clients want sober, industrious, cautious people working on their taxes and payrolls.”

They talked for a few more minutes, and Donner told them they were welcome to take the silverware with them, for inspection by the BCA’s crime lab.

—

On the way back down to the lobby, Sweeney said, “I hope we can hold all this confidentially, you know, like Cory said, the reputation…”

In the lobby, Lucas and Virgil stopped to put on their sunglasses and check with Terry the door guard on the Twins game—now seven-zip in the sixth. “We’re toast,” Terry said.

As they told Sweeney, they wouldn’t be talking about what they found, but when Lucas and Virgil walked out through the front door, they were caught by Anne Cash and two other women, who were pointing cameras at them. When they were sure they had them both on video, the three women all panned their cameras over to the Bee Accounting sign above the door.

Cash called, “That’s right. We followed you. What’d you find out, Marshal? What’s in the box under your arm?”

Virgil: “Ah, fuck me.”

Lucas: “You did it again .”