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Maddy walked meekly into the administrative offices of the University of Minnesota Medical School. Her aim was to appear as non-threatening as possible. In the past, serving a subpoena, she had learned that some people would become quite hostile. Better to come in soft.

There was what Maddy believed to be a student working as a receptionist. Maddy guessed her age to be, maybe at most, twenty.

“Hi, um, I was wondering if I could speak to whoever is in charge of record keeping for doctors and professors,” Maddy said to the girl whose name plate identified her as Bonnie.

“Oh, I guess so. That would be Dale, Dale Mathison. May I ask what this is about? He’ll want to know,” she answered.

“Oh, gosh, um, well, I ah, I would prefer to discuss it with him,” Maddy said.

“That’s okay, I know what to tell him to get him out here,” Bonnie said.

Her headset in place, she dialed her boss. “Dale, there’s a woman out here needs to talk to you.”

“I’m busy, what does she want?” Dale replied.

“She won’t say. Dale, she’s a twelve, at least,” Bonnie said then hung up.

“He’ll be right out,” she told Maddy.

Before Maddy could sit down, a balding, pudgy man with bad taste in ties was there.

“May I help you?” he asked Maddy with a huge smile.

“Yes, you can,” Maddy replied, now all business and quite serious.

She stepped forward and handed him a two-page document folded into thirds. He opened and saw the words, Subpoena Duces Tecum as the title. The second page listed the items being subpoenaed.

“What? What is this? A subpoena? You want confidential patient records? I can’t… ”

“No, at least not yet. I’m here on behalf of the attorney representing the young woman accused of murdering Phillip Friedman,” Maddy said.

Dale was caught between staring open-mouthed at Maddy and glancing at the subpoena. The young receptionist had wheeled her chair back as far as the cord of her headset allowed.

“I can’t give you that. I won’t give you…”

“We want any and all threatening correspondence, of any kind, ever sent to Dr. Phillip Friedman. We don’t want medical records although we might in the future.”

“Well, I won’t do it,” Dale tried again.

“Then we’ll haul your ass into court and put you in jail.”

Maddy had a notebook and pen in her hands when she asked, “How do you spell your last name?”

“I’m not sure I’m going to tell…”

“M-a-t-h-i-s,” the receptionist said.

“If you retaliate against her now, I’ll come after you,” Maddy said.

By now Dale’s face was red and Maddy expected steam to come out of his ears. She turned to leave then looked back and said, “One last thing, get rid of the tie and polyester pants. They went out with disco.”

Maddy’s next stop was the corporate office of the Hennepin-Ramsey Medical Clinics. This was the employer of Robbie’s surgeon, Dr. Walter Miller. Here, the woman in charge, Teresa Mills, was used to receiving subpoenas for various things. She read the document request on the subpoena while Maddy waited.

As Teresa read, she told Maddy, “I’ve been expecting you.”

Teresa looked up and said, “I pulled that file a week ago. It’s on my desk. If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, I’ll make copies myself.”

“Sure, no problem,” Maddy said.

Five minutes later Teresa came back with a nine by twelve envelope and handed it to Maddy.

“I’m curious,” Maddy said. “Why did you pull the file? ”

“I expected the police to come after them,” Teresa answered.

“Did they?” Maddy asked.

“Nope, haven’t heard from them.”

“We may have to have you testify just to authenticate these,” Maddy said.

“Cool, just let me know. I’ll need a subpoena to take time off from work and get paid.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks, Teresa.”

Carvelli parked the CTS behind an unmarked St. Paul Police Ford. He could see the head of a man sitting in the Ford’s driver’s seat. Carvelli looked at his watch and thought, right on time . He could also see the man, a St. Paul PD detective sergeant looking in his rear view mirror then start to get out of the car.

The two men met where their cars met. They shook hands and greeted each other. The St. Paul detective was a man Carvelli knew well. His name was John Lucas. By coincidence, or maybe not, he was the husband of Carolyn Lucas, the de facto head of the office staff who worked for Marc’s landlord, Connie Mickelson.

“Thanks for meeting me, John,” Carvelli said.

“No problem, Tony. Got me out of the office,” Lucas replied.

They were standing on the sidewalk, out of sight of their destination, Capitol Pawn. Parked facing west, they had stepped over two feet of dirty, hard as a brick snow from the street onto the sidewalk. The Minnesota State Capitol Building could be seen two blocks to the east.

“I don’t think you’ll get much out of Rudy. He gets inventoried regularly by our burglary guys and always comes up clean.

“He did a few months at Lino Lakes, oh, probably twenty plus years ago for receiving stolen property. Ever since old Rudy’s been very careful. If something comes in that might even be a little warm, it goes out the back door within minutes. Burglary has even used decoys but Rudy seems to smell them. The stuff is gone before our guys go in. ”

“Yeah, I remember him from back in the day when I was in burglary with the MPD. Even so, let’s go in and see him, anyway,” Carvelli said.

A buzzer went off when they went through the front door. Rudy was with a customer at the bullet proof glass shield covering the counter. If a robber could somehow get the money from behind the counter, Rudy could still trap him in a cage at the front door. No one had bothered to try robbing Rudy in over a decade.

Rudy looked past the customer, a white kid no more than sixteen, and loudly greeted his visitors.

“If it isn’t my old friend Detective Lucas and look who he has with him. The ghost of Christmas past, Anthony Carvelli.”

The instant Rudy said the word detective, his young customer scooped up the items he was pawning. They went into his jeans’ pocket and he scurried down an aisle away from Carvelli and Lucas.

“Hey, Rudy, been a while,” Carvelli said.

“And I haven’t missed you at all, Carvelli,” Rudy said with a smile. “I heard you’re a hotshot private dick now. Good for you.

“Detective,” Rudy said to Lucas, “whatever you want to know or hope to find, I know nothing about it.”

“I think we should get a half dozen cops in here with a search warrant to do an inventory,” Lucas said to Carvelli.

“Go ahead, I can use the money. The last two times they did it, they made a mess, found nothing since I am a poor, honest, humble man. I sued and made a nice piece of change for it.”

“Look at these,” Carvelli said removing the insurance photos from a coat pocket. “Off the record, have you seen any of them?”

Rudy looked over the photos and while admiring them, muttered, “Nice stuff. Good quality.”

“Rudy?” Lucas said. “We’re dealing with a multiple homicide here.”

“Hypothetically,” Rudy said.

“There’s a nice word,” Carvelli replied. “Good choice. Let’s try hypothetically, do any of these pieces look familiar?”

“Hypothetically,” Rudy said again then pushed the photos of the necklace and tennis bracelet at them .

“Assuming some kids, black kids, teenagers, came in with some of this, hypothetically, I’d have to wonder where they got them. Again, hypothetically, if I asked them, they might say they were hanging out by the Speedway gas station on Chatsworth and University. And hypothetically they might have seen someone drive through, toss something in a dumpster out back, then drive away in a hurry.”

“And hypothetically, did they get a look at this person, man, woman, white, black, tall, short anything? What about the car? Anything?” Carvelli asked.

“Nope. Sorry. Too dark, or I’m sure they would, hypothetically have said,” Rudy answered.

“Where’s the jewelry now and don’t give me any of this hypothetically bullshit,” Lucas said.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that. Except, I can honestly say it is not here,” Rudy replied.

Lucas continued to stare at him while Rudy looked back at him. Finally, Lucas asked Carvelli, “Anything else?”

“You know these hypothetical teenagers?” Carvelli asked.

“How could I? It’s all very hypothetical,” Rudy said. “And just between us, never saw them before or since, hypothetically.”

Outside, Carvelli asked Lucas, “You think he was telling the truth?”

“As he knows it. Three black kids found a necklace, the watch and the tennis bracelet and sold them for what they could get. Rudy stiffed them but it was still the best payday of their lives. It’s believable because three kids going to Minneapolis and hitting the right house? Not a chance,” Lucas said.

“But why does a burglar dump the stuff and what happened to the rest of it?”

“Too hot to unload because of the homicide. That’s murder one, life without parole,” Lucas said.

“Yeah, could be. Especially if the perp or perps were pros.

“Well, thanks, John. I’ll tell Carolyn you were very helpful. I have to go see Marc, now.”