First, Kill the Lawyers, page 13
An airliner passed overhead much too low for comfort. Neither Freddie nor I bothered to look at it. A few minutes later, the police officer exited the house, followed by a plainclothes detective. The detective returned our IDs. The cop stood close enough to listen to the conversation while pretending not to.
“Sergeant Nathan Vanak.” I noticed the detective didn’t show us his ID. “Explain yourselves, please.”
“What do you mean?” Freddie asked.
“You’re not a couple of buffs chasing calls on a police scanner. You’re here for a reason. What is it?”
If you watch a lot of TV, movies, read the books, you might come to the conclusion that police and private investigators don’t get along—that they’re always at loggerheads. That’s not necessarily true. Most PIs used to be cops or worked in some other branch of law enforcement. That’s where they received their training and the 6,000 hours of experience required before they can get a license. As a result, there’s a kind of loose camaraderie between the two groups. I have many friends who carry badges, and, as unlikely as it might seem, so does Freddie. We mostly have a quid pro quo relationship. Help me out and I’ll help you out when the situation allows. Except most of my friends were in St. Paul. I didn’t know Sergeant Vanak.
“Can you tell us about Mr. Siegle?” I asked.
“He’s dead.”
“Ahh, Christ,” Freddie said.
“Now, gentlemen, why don’t you start talking to me?”
There were things I couldn’t tell him, so I started with what I was sure he already knew.
“If you check the log on Mr. Siegle’s cell phone, you’ll know he called us,” I said. “He told us that he was being watched. He told us that a man was walking toward his house. We told him to call 911. Did he?”
“Yes,” Vanak said. “Just in time for the operator to hear the two shots that killed him.”
“What about his wife? Her name’s Linda.”
“She wasn’t home. Did Siegle identify his assailant?”
“No.”
“Why was he being watched?”
“I’m not at liberty—”
It hit me. Freddie, too. We both turned and gazed down the street.
“Dammit,” I said.
Another passenger plane passed over us. Vanak said something, but I couldn’t hear him over the noise of the jet engines.
Freddie and I started moving in the direction of Walter O’Neill’s car. It was parked on the far side of the street about four houses down.
“Dammit,” I repeated.
I began moving quicker. The uniformed cop jumped in front of Freddie and blocked his path. His hand went to his Smith and Wesson again.
“Taylor?” Vanak asked. “What is it?”
By then I was in a dead run. Vanak was chasing. Neighbors watching us seemed alarmed. Some of them slipped inside their homes.
It took me only a few seconds to reach O’Neill’s car, yet the effort caused me to gasp for breath. Either that or the shards of window glass on the pavement reflecting the streetlights that had come on. Vanak was right behind me. We stopped together.
O’Neill was slumped against the driver’s door of his car, a bullet hole in his head.
I leaned down, my hands resting on my knees.
Freddie came up from behind us. I heard him chanting.
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…”
* * *
There are images cached in the back drawer of my memory like YouTube videos, ready to be played with HD clarity at the tap of a button. I knew the sight of Walter O’Neill’s dead body, the spectacle of forensic pathologists and evidence techs examining every centimeter before transferring it to a black vinyl bag, would become one of them. What would be the trigger, though? Richfield? The sight of it, the mere mention of its name? Or would it be the roar of a jet engine like those that screamed past us with maddening frequency? The triggers for the other videos that haunted me … With Amy Lamb, a beautiful young woman I had failed to save, it was silk scarves. With Tom Storey, it was the sight of a black Ford Explorer, of all things.
I tried not to dwell on it. Instead, I listened intently to every word Sergeant Vanak had to say. The media had arrived in force by then. Four local stations were represented by TV vans with garish colors and huge logos. Their cameras were aimed at the house, though, and O’Neill’s car, not at us.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to make a spontaneous confession,” Vanak said. “I’d settle for an excited utterance, anything that can be used in court.”
“Sorry,” I said.
His partner came up. He had been interviewing Freddie on the other side of the street, Freddie leaning against a prowl car with arms folded across his chest while the first police officer we met stared at him intently.
“Black dude won’t answer any questions with or without an attorney,” the detective said. “He said he always leaves it to his partner to talk to the white man’s police department.”
Vanak’s response surprised me. “Do you blame him?” he said.
The detective shrugged.
“Did you threaten him?” Vanak asked. “Tell him we’d bring him up before the Private Detective Board, get his ticket pulled?”
“He said, ‘Good luck with that.’”
“That’s what we like, a cooperative citizenry.”
“What should we do?”
“That’s a good question. Taylor, what should we do?”
“My hands are tied by the rules of attorney-client privilege,” I said.
“Nice try. The rule doesn’t apply to third-party consultants.”
“It does if the communication between an attorney and his private investigator is for the express purpose of creating work product.”
“I have two dead, Taylor, and you’re arguing goddamn semantics?”
“You could call my employer, ask him to give me permission to answer your questions.”
“Who would that be?”
I told him. “Although,” I added, “Cormac Puchner went to Harvard Law School.”
By the way he swore I figured Vanak knew exactly what that meant.
“’Course,” I said, “there’s another option.”
“Yeah.”
“Ask Mr. Siegle’s wife, Linda, why he was fired from Standout Investments Worldwide.”
Vanak started writing in his notebook. “Standout Investments?” he said.
“Ask her if she remembers a girl with tattoos who spoke to her husband at the Twin Cities Jazz Festival.”
Vanak kept writing.
“Ask her if she knows what Siegle and I spoke about the other day.”
Vanak looked up at me, pen poised over the notebook. He knew I was tap-dancing along a very fine line.
“Also, there’s Walter O’Neill,” I said. “He was a professional. A professional private investigator. Which meant he kept detailed notes about what he was doing for his clients, and since he no longer has a presumption of privacy…”
“It would be so much easier if you just answered my questions.”
“If I could, I would. I used to work the job you have now in St. Paul about ten years ago. I know how pissed off you must be.”
“Not as pissed off as I was five minutes ago.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m as upset by all of this as you are.”
“Yeah, but you get the big bucks.”
“Truthfully? I took home more money when I was with the cops. There were the benefits, too.”
“I have your card, Taylor. When I call, you had better answer.”
* * *
Freddie didn’t want to go home just yet. Neither did I. Instead, we drove back to downtown Minneapolis. We didn’t speak to each other except for a brief exchange as we left 35W for the Eleventh Street exit.
“O’Neill was an asshole,” Freddie said.
“Yes, he was.”
“He was married, too, wasn’t he?”
“Divorced.”
“Kids?”
“Two.”
Freddie nodded and said nothing more. I knew he wasn’t thinking of them. He was thinking of his own wife and child.
I parked the car. We entered the Butler Square building and took an elevator to our floor. I unlocked the door to our office, opened it, and turned on the lights. The two of us stood there, looking around as if we had never seen the place before.
My cell phone rang. The caller ID listed Cormac Puchner.
“Goddammit, what do you want?” I said. Then I answered the phone. “Counselor.”
“I just had a very frustrating conversation with a Minneapolis detective named Nathan Vanak. I’m thinking of filing a complaint against him.”
“Okay.”
“He said you gave him my name.”
“Cormac—”
“What part of keeping this off the books don’t you understand?”
“I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
“Hell you didn’t. You know what, never mind about that right now. That’s not important. I can deal with the cops, but the detective, he told me that Clinton Siegle had been shot and killed. Is that true?”
“Why would a man lie about something like that?”
“I’m asking, Taylor.”
“Yes. Siegle was murdered in his home early this evening. Along with a private investigator named Walter O’Neill. He might have been working for the Guernsey family. We don’t know for sure.”
“The Guernsey family? What the hell do they have to do with it?”
I made my way to my desk. Freddie opened the refrigerator and pulled out a couple of Grain Belt beers. He held one up for me, and I nodded. He opened the bottle and set it on my desk.
“What the fuck, Taylor?” Puchner said.
“What do you want to know, Cormac?”
“Everything.”
I told him, including how the Guernseys were connected to four of the five cases. At the end of my briefing, I added—just to be safe—“Siegle told his wife, Linda, why he was fired by Standout and probably what he and I spoke about the other day. She’ll tell Vanak; of course she will. Vanak will also take a hard look at O’Neill’s notes. I didn’t tell him what I was doing for you, but he knows his business. By this time tomorrow, he’ll probably have it figured out.”
“Just as long as it doesn’t come from us, that’s the main thing. It’s not coming from us, is it?”
“Vanak asked you to give me permission to answer his questions, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then?”
“The answer is no.”
“That’s what I told him.”
“Look, it’s late. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. All right?”
“Sure.”
“Good night, Taylor.”
Puchner hung up. I took a long pull of the Grain Belt, wishing it were something stronger.
Freddie moved to the bulletin board and pinned up another index card labeled MURDER and ran a length of red yarn to O’NEILL and SIEGLE.
“This helps Standout Investments, doesn’t it, Siegle’s killing.”
“It removes the possibility of him authenticating the memo that was stolen, if that’s what you mean.”
He tapped the card labeled COWGILL.
“Blackmailer getting killed probably lessens the chance that the selfies the rapist took will see the light of day, too.”
“Unless the cops uncover them. I kinda sorta dropped a hint to Annie Scalasi over lunch, today.”
I thought Freddie might give me a lecture about breaking the rules, but he didn’t. Instead, he drained his beer and stared at the bulletin board some more.
The phone rang again. My first impulse was to reach into the pocket where I carried my cell. Only this time it was our office landline that was ringing. The caller ID read ANONYMOUS, never a good sign. I answered the phone anyway.
“Fredericks and Taylor Private Investigations.”
A voice I didn’t recognize said, “Which one are you?”
“Taylor.”
“You were there tonight. You know what can happen, don’t you?”
“Who is this?”
“Walk away, Taylor. You and your partner. Walk away or start looking over your shoulders, because one day I’ll be there.”
“Do you promise? I ask because of the hundreds of people who have threatened us over the years, only one actually meant it. ’Course, he’s dead now. Hello? Hello?”
I hung up the phone and told my partner what was said.
“Who does that?” Freddie said. “Calls a man and threatens his life? You want to do somebody you just do ’em. Why the fuck give ’im a warning that you’re coming?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Whoever it is, he knows who we are and what we’re doing. Who knows who we are and what we’re doing?”
“Besides the people who hired us?”
“Maybe I should call Sara and have her sweep the office again.”
“Something else. He doesn’t think we’re a threat to him. At least not yet.”
“But if we keep going…”
“What do you mean, if?”
“I’ll tell you this, Taylor. No one’s gonna do me like they did O’Neill.”
I believed him.
“If I die, I ain’t dyin’ alone.”
I believed that, too.
Freddie rubbed his face with both hands like a man who was tired yet knew he wasn’t going to bed anytime soon. When he finished, he moved to the safe, worked the combination, and yanked the door open. He reached in and retrieved a nine-millimeter Beretta semiautomatic handgun and a loose magazine. He held them up to me. I took them from his hands and set them on my desk.
He pulled out his own gun and went through the ritual of loading it.
“You gonna call Dave Helin and the others or should I?” he asked.
“And tell them what?”
“That we want more money.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I left the apartment early, already regretting the sleep I didn’t get. I had parked on the street instead of in the lot out back because I thought it was safer. Amanda Wedemeyer was standing at the curb in front of the building dressed in her soccer uniform, an equipment bag slung over her shoulder. Claire hovered nearby.
“You’re embarrassing me,” Amanda said.
Claire didn’t respond.
Amanda saw me and called my name. “Tell her, Taylor,” she said. “Tell Mom I’m not a child anymore.”
“You’re my child,” Claire said.
“None of the other kids have their mothers waiting for the school bus with them.”
“I don’t care about the other kids.”
“Taylor, tell her.”
“Did it ever occur to you, Mandy, that your mother loves you more than her life and wants to spend every moment she can with you?”
My answer surprised both women. To be honest, it surprised me, too.
“When I was your age, the only time I went to school on a Saturday was when I was in trouble,” I said.
“Daylong soccer camp,” Claire said.
“Were you in trouble a lot?” Amanda asked.
“It seemed so at the time.”
By then the yellow school bus had arrived and opened its folding door. I stood facing the street and watched while Amanda did something I didn’t expect considering the circumstances. She hugged and kissed her mother before scampering up the steps. The door closed and the bus pulled away. Claire waved at it.
“You’re a good mother,” I said.
“No, but I’m trying. Lord knows.”
“Listen, I don’t want to alarm you, but—”
“Alarm me?”
“If you happen to see someone hanging around who shouldn’t be here, I want you to call me or call the police, whoever’s closer.”
“What do you mean, hanging around?”
“Standing on the street corner, sitting in a parked car, driving up and down the street, around the block…”
“Is this about the private investigator that was killed in Minneapolis?” Claire asked. “I read in the paper—”
“Not necessarily.”
“Did you know him?”
“I knew him.”
“Was he a friend?”
“Just keep your eyes open, okay? If you see someone who makes you feel uneasy, then feel uneasy. Don’t try to talk yourself out of it. We have instincts for a reason. Trust them. If you see anyone—”
“Like those two men?”
“What men?”
I spun away from the street toward the sidewalk. Two men were approaching from different angles, both wearing jeans and sports coats. They wore sports coats for the same reason that I did. To hide their guns. I reached for mine.
The closest man beat me to the draw. Instead of a gun, though, he swept open the bottom quarter of his coat to reveal a gold badge that resembled a warrior’s shield fixed to his belt. It gleamed in the morning sun.
“St. Paul PD,” he said.
I brought my hand out from under my coat and showed him that it was empty.
“Taylor,” he said.
It wasn’t a question, yet I answered it anyway. “Yes.”
“I’m Sergeant Tony Weiss,” he said. “My partner, Sergeant Thomas Manske.”
The two policemen flanked me just the way they had been trained.
Weiss lowered his head toward Claire and touched his right eyebrow in a kind of salute.
“Ma’am,” he said.
“I need to get some shopping done before Mandy comes home.” Claire squeezed my arm. “Be careful.”
“It’s the life I chose,” I said.
She moved cautiously around the two detectives and made her way to her car parked in the lot behind the apartment building. Weiss touched his eyebrow again as she passed.
“I have half a pot of coffee upstairs if you’re interested,” I said.
Weiss glanced at his partner.
“I could stand a cup,” Manske said.
* * *
