Man in the Water, page 14
My gaze moved from my rearview mirror down to my speedometer. I was actually driving the speed limit for a change, yet I tapped my brakes anyway. When I did the deputy moved his vehicle so close that its push bumper nearly banged my rear. The SUV backed off quickly, though. The light bar was turned on and the siren activated.
C’mon, man, my inner voice said. That’s not necessary.
I angled the Mustang onto the shoulder and slowed to a stop. I turned off the engine and rested my hands on top of the steering wheel where they could easily be seen. I thought about my wallet and the laminated card I kept next to my driver’s license proclaiming that I was a proud member of the St. Paul Police Department, “retired,” that I had occasionally used to get out of speeding tickets. Only I suspected this stop had nothing to do with my adherence to the existing traffic laws. Using the side-view mirror, I watched the deputy exit the SUV. There were golden sergeant stripes pinned to the collar of his shirt.
Kinda knew it was him, didn’t you?
The sergeant approached my Mustang on the driver’s side instead of hugging the body on the passenger side, swinging his arms like he was marching in Stillwater’s Lumberjack Days parade. Normally, I would have called that sloppy, except I knew that he knew I wasn’t a threat to him.
When he reached my open window I said, “Good afternoon, Sergeant Holmes. Is there a problem?”
He didn’t seem nonplussed at all that I had guessed his name.
“Speeding,” Holmes said. “Reckless driving. Failure to stop. Open bottle. I don’t see a seat belt.”
I pulled the strap off my chest and let it slide back into place. Holmes sniffed the air.
“Is that marijuana I smell?” he asked.
“Is smoking grass still illegal in Minnesota?”
“It would be if I was king.”
“What are the chances that you’ll let me off with a stern warning?”
Holmes rapped the roof of my car with his knuckles.
“Why don’t you step into my office and we’ll talk about it,” he said.
Homes opened my car door and stood behind it until I slipped out. I walked to his SUV while he walked behind me, probably out of habit. I went to the passenger side and he went to the driver’s side. Once we were both comfortable on the front seat of the SUV Holmes said, “After chatting with Eden Stoll, I checked you out.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“I thought I had heard your name before only I wasn’t sure. Now I remember. You’re the SPPD who recovered all that cash some embezzler siphoned; returned it to the insurance company for fifty cents on the dollar. How much was that, anyway? I heard ten million.”
“Closer to three million and change.”
“Long time ago. What? Ten years? Half the guys thought you had won the lottery at the time, lucky you. The other half thought you sold your shield.”
“Yeah,” I said just to let him know I was listening.
“Don’t care about that, though. Why would I? What I care about—McKenzie, I don’t like it when someone interferes in an ongoing investigation.”
“I was under the impression that the investigation was closed.”
“Is that what Stoll told you?”
I was impressed that Holmes didn’t use any adjectives to describe her. On the other hand, he didn’t use her title, either.
“That’s what Officer Stoll told me,” I said.
“It’s not closed.”
“Was it reopened before or after she told you about the fourth car?”
Holmes didn’t answer my question. Instead, he asked one of his own—“Why are you involved in this?”
I answered, repeating pretty much the same words I had used when I explained myself to E. J. Woods’s friends at the Potzmann-Schultz VFW post. I didn’t tell him that Nevaeh Woods thought her father might have been murdered.
“So, not working for the lawyers or the insurance companies,” Holmes said.
“Just the daughter.”
Holmes watched the cars that automatically slowed down as they passed us.
“I didn’t know about the fourth car,” he said. “If I had, I would have looked into it way back in March.”
“Now that you do know?”
“I did what Stoll did, I had our tech guys check the dash cam and body cam footage taken at the scene by our deputies, even the county’s Water, Parks, and Trails Unit. Unfortunately…”
“It’s all been erased,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Because the case was closed.”
Holmes glared at me.
“Except now the case has been reopened again,” I added. “That’s why you were at the marina just now. That’s why you stopped me.”
“I hate loose ends. They vex me.”
Vex? This is the guy they call No Shit Sherlock?
“Me, too,” I said aloud.
“You think because you were on the job you get to still play cop?” Holmes said. “I could give you a lecture, McKenzie; tell you that it doesn’t work that way. I’m not going to, though. Partly because I know you won’t listen. Mostly because I want you to play cop. The daughter, Nevaeh Woods, she wants to know what happened to her old man. So do I. She thinks you can help. Then help. Only McKenzie…”
“Whatever I find out, you expect me to share.”
“Is that asking too much?”
“Will you be sharing with me?”
“I believe in a quid quo pro relationship.”
“Fair enough.”
To prove that we were both on the same page, and to avoid telling Holmes that I had made the same promise to Officer Eden Stoll, I said, “There was a fight at the Heggstad Marina last night.”
“Not a fight, just a dustup, I heard.”
Who’s his source? Brad Heggstad? Nelson LeMay? Do you think he’ll tell you? Yeah, when the Minnesota Vikings finally win the Super Bowl.
“The two men,” I said aloud. “You should know about them.”
I revealed everything I knew about Richard Bennett and Mike Boland including the facts that Boland was a Desert Storm veteran receiving therapy in Red Wing and Bennett was an ex-con. Holmes transcribed much of what I said in a notebook.
When he finished, I said, “Your turn.”
“My turn?”
“Did you check E. J.’s phone messages from that Saturday?”
He didn’t reply.
“Quid pro quo?” I asked.
“’Course I checked. Nothing on Saturday. Friday his last phone call was from his wife at three thirty-three P.M. His last text was also from his wife at five fifteen. He wrote, ‘Heading 2 PS now.’ She texted back, ‘Tell everyone I said hi.’ Nothing after that.”
“What about Bizzy’s phone?”
“Are you referring to Mrs. Woods?”
“Yes. Elizabeth. They call her Bizzy, I don’t know why.”
“Under the law, the dead no longer have a legal right to privacy. Being very much alive, Mrs. Woods does. Unless we have just cause, there’s no way a judge allows us to see her phone records. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Whoever she spoke to or texted after five-fifteen, it wasn’t him.”
“Thank you.”
“Bennett and Boland, though—I don’t like coincidences,” Sergeant Holmes said.
“They vex me, too.”
Holmes stared for a half dozen beats.
“Don’t fuck with me, McKenzie,” he said. “I’ll fuck back.”
“Fair enough,” I repeated.
* * *
I returned to my car, not knowing exactly what to think about Sergeant Stephen “No Shit Sherlock” Holmes. I started up the Mustang and drove off. He followed for a half mile before turning off the St. Croix Trail. By then I was in downtown Stillwater.
Once again, I considered my options and decided I had only two at the moment—talk to Rick Bennett or talk to Mike Boland. I already knew that Bennett was on his boat and cruising the river to parts unknown. That left Boland.
I drove to Potzmann-Schultz, parked, and went inside.
“McKenzie,” a voice called to me and suddenly I was in an episode of the TV series Cheers and everybody knew my name. Or at least Jeffrey Tribbett did. He was sitting at the bar. I sat next to him. Marco wasn’t working the stick so I gave my order to a woman who told me to call her Scooter. J. T. nudged me when she stepped away.
“Scooter drove an M60A1 tank in Afghanistan,” he said.
“And they call her Scooter?”
“What should they call her?”
“Ms. Scooter.”
J. T. thought that was funny and repeated the joke to Scooter when she returned with my Summit Ale.
“I like it,” she said before moving away to serve other customers.
I glanced around. None of the other vets I had met previously at Potzmann-Schultz were there.
What? Did you think Boland, Sheila, and the others lived here?
“By the way,” J. T. said. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression about E. J. the other day. Truth is, I liked the man. We were all friends at one time. I was pissed when he left me to start his own business. I had trained him, you know. Taught him everything he knew. Kinda made me think that he owed me something. Only he didn’t. Not really. Gotta admit, the man was the best worker I ever had. Ah, you should tell people things like that when they’re alive, am I right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bizzy, too. Mighta said a few things to her I wish I could take back. If I ever see her again, I will. Woman’s a beauty; guys hittin’ on her only she never hit back from what I saw. A good woman.”
“Did that happen a lot, men hitting on Bizzy?”
“Not a lot but you know how some guys are.”
I flashed on Nelson LeMay.
“Yes, I do,” I said.
“E. J. wasn’t someone to put up with that, though. I never seen him have anything but a smile for Bizzy, but those guys who thought they might have a chance with her, he soon taught them different.”
“You’re saying he was a jealous man?”
“I don’t know if ‘jealous’ is the right word. Just sayin’, E. J.— he didn’t like it when you messed with what was his. His wife. Anything. Everything.”
So, he was a nice guy, yet only to a point? What does that tell you?
“Undetermined,” I said aloud.
“Huh?”
“Mr. Tribbett, let me buy you another beer.”
TEN
Nevaeh Woods received her father’s autopsy report in the mail early Monday morning and called me as promised. She swiveled patiently in a chair behind the desk in her office while I studied it. The door was open, only there was little traffic in the elementary school corridor. It took me a long time to read the entire report; it was twenty pages long and included the Washington County Sheriff’s Office Investigator’s Narrative signed by Sergeant Stephen Holmes. What I discovered was that the Office of Ramsey County Medical Examiner was damn thorough during the autopsy:
DECEDENT: Woods, Earl John
AGE: 62
SEX: Male
RACE: Black
CITY: White Bear Lake
STATE: MN
The ME examined the man’s chest / abdominal cavity, cardiovascular system, musculoskeletal system, respiratory system, liver and biliary system, gastrointestinal system, urinary system, genital system, and on and on, listing systems that I had never even heard of. From what I was able to decipher with my questionable grasp of the language of forensic pathology, E. J. was pretty healthy when he died. On the first page of the autopsy report, the ME noted:
Evidence of therapeutic intervention: None
Evidence of external traumatic injury: None
Evidence of internal injuries: None
The ME even provided a detailed summary of the clothes the man was wearing when he was dragged out of the St. Croix River onto the pier—boots with a faux fur liner, jeans, thermal shirt, heavy down parka with fur-lined hood, leather gloves, and a knit hat—from which the ME concluded that Mr. Woods had not drowned while going for a swim.
In the medical examiner’s opinion:
The decedent died as a result of drowning with hypothermia as an associated significant condition. A complete autopsy examination showed no evidence of trauma and toxicology studies did not show acute drug or alcohol intoxication. Police investigation did not show evidence of foul play or obvious signs of an accidental mishap. A full review of the circumstances of the case and appropriate consultation do not support intent to harm oneself. The manner of death is therefore classified as accident-homicide-suicide-undetermined.
None of this surprised me; Maryanne Altavilla had told me what I would find in the autopsy report nearly two months ago. Except two details caught my eye and held it.
The first:
Date and time of death: Found March 25, 2023 (1130 hours)
This was the legal time of death, the time when the body was discovered by Nina and myself; the time that was listed on the death certificate. However, while noting the nearly negligible decomposition of the body, bloating, skin slippage, and other factors associated with drowning in an icy cold river, the ME suggested
The victim drowned from 1–16 hours before his body was discovered.
This was the estimated time of death.
One to sixteen hours, my inner voice said. The timing would certainly fit Elizabeth Woods’s story. She said she had arrived at the marina a half hour before she started looking for her husband and that was a half hour before Nina and you arrived. ’Course, the estimate could easily be made to fit a lot of other scenarios, too. Sixteen hours meant E. J. could have been in the water as early as seven thirty P.M. the night before Nina first found him.
Nevaeh must have caught something in my manner.
“What?” she asked.
“Just thinking.”
“Tell me.”
“Do you know where your father was the night before he died? It would have been a Friday night.”
“He was at the VFW.”
“Potzmann-Schultz?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“When we did Dad’s celebration of life there, a couple of people told me how shocked they were when they heard that he had died; how they had been eating barbecue ribs with him just the evening before. They said he had seemed so happy and full of life.”
Funny how no one ever says things like that about you when you’re alive.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay? What does that mean?”
“It means I now know that your father was eating baby back ribs the night before he died.”
“McKenzie…”
“I also know that the medical examiner found no evidence whatsoever to suggest that your father was killed and I have found no evidence to prove that the ME was mistaken.”
Nevaeh leaned back in her chair and turned her head so she could look out of the window. A couple hundred kids aged kindergarten through fifth grade were running around an asphalt playground adjacent to the Kingfield Middle School located more or less in the center of Minneapolis. She smiled slightly as she watched them, only there was a touch of sadness to it.
“School lets out on Thursday,” she said. “So many of these kids will have nowhere else to go then; no free meals; parents working. I’ve long thought year-round school would be a good idea. In England, the school year runs from early September to late July with plenty of breaks. We should do that. Our school year was established two hundred years ago to appease the damn farmers. Is that still a thing we need to do? How ’bout we think of the kids for a change?”
“How long have you been teaching?” I asked.
“I’ve been at Kingfield for six years now; assistant principal for a year and a half.”
“You started right after your father fired you then.”
“That’s when I started teaching here. I used to teach—wait. Who told you that?”
“A woman named Marilyn.”
“Marilyn? Marilyn Staples? At E. J. Woods Tree Care Services, sure. I love her. When did you see Marilyn?”
“Last week.”
“She told you that Dad fired me?”
“Is it true?”
“Yes, it’s true. He came over to my apartment one day with a check. Severance pay. You believe it? He said I was done making sacrifices for him. He said he knew my first love was teaching and it was time I went back to teaching instead of dedicating my life to his needs. He said I was fired.
“McKenzie, I was so angry. Those two—Bizzy was standing beside him at the time. Those two didn’t know anything about running a company. Well, that’s not entirely true. They were very good at taking care of customers; good at taking care of business. Simple bookkeeping, though, managing cash flow, paying taxes, paying employees, renting equipment, my God, paying their electric bills, buying health insurance—it messed with them. They were still living solely off of Dad’s army pension because even though they had plenty of work, they couldn’t seem to make the business pay. That’s when I stepped in—me and my bachelor’s degree in education.
“I put my career on hold because I wanted to help them. I did, too. I got their finances under control and found people who could run an office and they started making serious money and five years later they fired me. Just like that. I told them they’d be bankrupt by the end of the year and not to come crawling back to me for help. Only they did quite well without me. Better even. Which was irritating. Then they bought me a new car. A hybrid. Bastards.”
Nevaeh started laughing after that. I couldn’t help but join her.
“Yeah, they sound pretty ruthless,” I said.
“You could argue that Dad was doing what he thought was best for me. Probably he was right. Only I missed it. I missed working with him every day. Our relationship—ah, you don’t need to hear that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Dad was in the army when he married Mom, when I was born. We followed him around from base to base until I was old enough to go to school and then Mom insisted that we, that she and I, stay in one place. So, she moved us back to St. Paul where she was from; where Dad was from.
“Growing up, McKenzie—it was like they were preparing me for the worst. We often talked about what Dad did for a living; how he served his country. We talked about the danger. We talked about the possibility that one day he might not come home. Only we never talked about the possibility that Mom, that she…”
