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Mallinger was a quick, assertive driver with even less regard for traffic regulations than I had.
“Have you ever been given a ticket?” I asked her.
“Of course not. I’m a cop.”
Five minutes later we were walking under bright fluorescent lights through the bowels of the Victoria City Center, arms and legs moving in perfect synchronization, to a door labeled RECORDS. Along the way we passed Officer Andy.
“How’s it going?” I asked him.
“I sent off the paint chips to PDQ. My girlfriend said she’d try to expedite the search. We should get a hit right away.”
“Who the hell do you work for, Andy?” Mallinger wanted to know.
Andy looked from me to her like he wasn’t sure.
“Wait here,” Mallinger told me when we reached the door.
I waited.
And waited some more.
Finally, Mallinger reappeared.
“Let’s go,” she said as she brushed past me.
“Where?”
“To see Chief Bohlig.”
“Why?”
“The file on Elizabeth Rogers. It’s missing.”
Chief Bohlig was a tall man, creased like old leather and wearing a thermal shirt that was faded from frequent washings and threadbare along the collar and cuffs. We found him chopping wood in the backyard of his lake home with a double-bladed ax. There was a pile of logs sawed into eighteen-inch lengths on his right. One by one, he split them into halves and quarters and tossed them into an even more impressive pile on his left. He chopped the logs on a thick, wide tree stump. The snow was trampled all around him and wood chips were littered everywhere.
Mallinger asked him why he didn’t hire someone younger to chop his wood.
“I’ve seen it before,” Bohlig said. “Seen it many times, how the soft life takes a man around the neck and slowly strangles him.”
He looked at me.
“What do you think?”
“I never argue with a man who’s holding an ax.”
“Good idea,” he said.
We watched him chop a few more logs. I grew impatient, yet said nothing. It was Mallinger’s play. Finally, she asked, “Chief, what happened to the file on Elizabeth Rogers?”
Bohlig kept chopping as if he hadn’t heard.
“Chief?”
“Why?” Bohlig asked in between swings.
“Josie Bloom is dead. Suicide or murder, we’re not sure yet. We think it’s connected to the Rogers killing.”
“The murder was over thirty years ago.”
“Where’s the file?”
“Gone. Destroyed. When I retired I purged a lot of old case files. I figured you could use the space.”
I couldn’t contain myself any longer.
“The only murder committed in the history of Victoria, Minnesota, and you destroyed the file?”
Bohlig ceased chopping.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I can’t believe you threw away the file,” Mallinger said.
Bohlig continued splitting logs.
“Probably shouldn’t have,” he said. “I didn’t think it was important.”
“Really?” I said. “Some people might think you knew exactly how important it was and that’s why you destroyed it.”
That stopped Bohlig in midswing.
“McKenzie,” Mallinger called.
“McKenzie?” asked Bohlig. “Is that your name? McKenzie, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Enlighten me. What was in the file you didn’t want anyone to see?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why did you destroy it?”
Bohlig didn’t answer.
“You covered it up, didn’t you?”
“You have no right to say that to me.”
“Why? Why did you do it?”
Bohlig continued to chop wood.
“Who killed Elizabeth?”
When he refused to answer, I stepped inside the arch of Bohlig’s swing, like a boxer getting close to an opponent. Bohlig could have split me in half if he had wanted to.
“Who killed Elizabeth?” I repeated.
“It’s in my report.”
“What report?” Mallinger asked. “The report you destroyed?”
Bohlig didn’t answer. Instead, he shoved me out of range. I nearly tripped on a log. Mallinger and I continued to watch him work. After a few moments he stopped and leaned on his ax.
“I don’t know who killed Beth Rogers,” he said without looking at either of us. “The town is better off for my not knowing. Look at it. Look at what it’s become.”
“You sonuvabitch.”
“McKenzie,” Mallinger said. “Enough.”
“You were a cop for forty years,” I told Bohlig, “and the one time you had a chance to get it right, you sold out.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“Then tell us.” I waved at Mallinger. “Give us the benefit of your wisdom.”
Bohlig continued to work on his woodpile.
“It’s in my report,” he said.
We drove back to town in silence. Not a sound emanated from the radio and for a moment I thought Mallinger might have switched it off. I had never heard a police radio so silent. But then we were in crime-free Victoria.
“I looked up to him when I was a kid,” Mallinger said eventually. “I wanted to be a cop partly because of him.”