The Cold Nowhere

51

‘So what are the ground rules, Chief?’ Stride asked.

They stood at the back of the church. K-2 wore a black fedora and a heavy brown trench coat over his suit. His dress shoes were wet with snow. His ears jutted out from the side of his head, and the ends were pink from the cold. At the other end of the aisle, Leonard Keck sat in the front pew with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand.

‘I told him that we wouldn’t use anything he says in a prosecution against him,’ K-2 said. ‘Hence the private meeting.’

‘That ties my hands.’

‘Just be glad he didn’t bring along his lawyer, Jon.’

Stride ran his hands back through his hair. ‘What if he confesses to murder?’

‘He won’t.’

‘If he stonewalls, the deal’s off.’

‘He knows that. It cost me a hundred dollar bottle of scotch to get him here, so you owe me big.’

‘I doubt it was that easy.’

K-2 shrugged and scratched his ear. ‘Yeah, I had to threaten to call the City Council, the US Attorney, and the chair of the state Republican Party. He knows he may lose his Council seat when this gets out, but there are always second acts in politics. Particularly in Duluth. Besides, he’s rich. He can still buy all the influence he wants.’

‘You know what he’s going to tell us?’

‘Most of it.’

‘How bad is it?’

‘Bad enough, but mostly stupid. Stupid screws up more investigations than anything else. You know that.’

Stride nodded. People lied to the police the way that they lied to their doctors. They felt embarrassed. They felt guilty. They didn’t want to admit doing something foolish. He’d wasted weeks of time and watched criminals go free because of lies that had nothing to do with the real crimes.

He gestured to Serena and the two of them joined Lenny at the front of the church. The car dealer sat with his legs apart and his knees bent. Steam rose from the white coffee cup. He stared up at the altar, a frown on his face.

‘Feels odd, huh, being in a place like this,’ Lenny said. ‘Talking about sins.’

‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’ Stride asked.

‘Nah, get it over with. If the Catholics are right about purgatory, I’m screwed anyway.’

He could hear the slur of the scotch in Lenny’s voice.

‘You said you didn’t arrange for Rebekah’s murder,’ Stride said. ‘Convince me.’

Lenny’s face twitched. He sipped his coffee. ‘What do you guys want? It’s not like I can prove it. All I can tell you is, I didn’t have a motive in the world to kill Rebekah. We were rich. We were happy. She was there with me when I didn’t have money, and she was there with me when I did. It’s not like I had some mistress waiting in the wings to take her place. I never got married again, because there was no one else in the world for me except her.’ He glanced between Stride and Serena. ‘You two, you’re lucky. You found each other after Stride lost his wife. I never had the same experience, and believe me, it’s not for lack of women trying to convince me otherwise.’

‘Tell us about the last trip you took,’ Serena said. ‘Who knew you were leaving town to go to the Keys?’

Lenny shrugged. ‘Who didn’t? Everybody at the dealership knew. Most of the politicos. I’m sure Rebekah told dozens of people. We weren’t trying to hide it. Hell, I told K-2, so he could arrange some extra drive-bys while we were gone. Would I do that if I was planning to stage some kind of phony robbery? Get serious.’

‘Exactly what happened on the trip?’

‘Nothing happened,’ Lenny said. ‘It was the usual convention stuff. Boring speeches and a lot of parties, booze, and shrimp. We were having a ball until Rebekah started spewing out bad lobster from both ends. She decided to go home early. I offered to go with her, but she insisted I stay and finish out the convention. I got a limo to take her back to Miami, and she flew home. By the time she got to Minneapolis, she felt good enough to drive our car back to Duluth. She made it home around midnight. That’s when she got shot.’

‘Who knew she was coming back early?’

‘Nobody except me and a few people at the convention, unless she talked to some of her friends. You’ve got her phone records, you tell me. She called me while she was driving home to say she was okay. That was the last time I spoke to her.’

‘When did you get back?’ Stride asked.

‘A day later. I got a limo to drive me home from MSP.’

‘Weren’t you concerned when you couldn’t reach Rebekah?’

Lenny shrugged. ‘I was busy with the convention. I tried a couple times and got the machine. No big deal. I figured she was doing one of her social or charity things. Or she was shopping.’

‘Can you think of any reason why someone would have wanted her dead?’ Serena asked.

‘Rebekah? No way. Was she tough? Sure. Did she have a bitchy side if you crossed her? Absolutely. I mean, hell, she was a rich Jewish housewife, what do you expect? But nobody had any reason to kill her. I’m telling you, some bastards thought we were gone, they broke in to rob me blind, and Rebekah showed up at the wrong time. That’s what happened. If I came home with her, I’d be dead, too.’

‘Okay,’ Stride said. ‘Let’s talk about the ring.’

Lenny glanced at the front of the church, where K-2 stood with his arms crossed across his scrawny chest. The car dealer tugged on the waistband of his tracksuit. ‘What about it?’

‘You knew it was missing. Why didn’t you tell us about it?’

‘I told you, I thought I did.’

‘You’re lying. You never filed an insurance claim.’

‘It must have slipped my mind. Hell, my wife was dead. You think I was worried about insurance money?’

Stride zipped up his leather jacket. ‘We’re done, Lenny. My next stop is at the News-Tribune to find a reporter to write the story.’

‘Lenny!’ K-2 called from the front of the church. ‘I already told you how this has to go. If you’ve got something to say, you better say it.’

Lenny squeezed his fists together. ‘All right! Yeah, all right, I didn’t tell you about the ring. I just wanted the whole thing to go away.’

‘Were there other items of jewelry missing?’ Stride asked.

‘Yeah, some big earrings. A couple bracelets and necklaces. Expensive stuff, but it’s not like I could describe it. I knew I’d given her things that weren’t in the stash you recovered.’

‘What about cash?’ Stride asked. ‘We found about five thousand dollars in cash at Fong’s apartment. Back then, you said that was all of it. Was that a lie?’

‘There was more,’ Lenny admitted. ‘A lot more.’

‘How much?’

‘Upwards of fifty thousand dollars,’ he said.

Stride exhaled in disgust. ‘Unbelievable.’

‘Why did you have that kind of cash in your house?’ Serena asked.

‘Let’s just say that in my business there are some transactions that are best handled in cash, okay?’

‘Bribes,’ Serena said.

‘Incentives. Bonuses. The fact is, if I told you people how much money was really taken back then, you’d have started asking questions that I didn’t want to answer. My political career would have been over before it started, and the IRS would have started nosing around, too.’

Stride shook his head. ‘So instead, you said nothing. You knew there had to be accomplices in your wife’s murder, and you gave them a free pass.’

‘Rebekah was dead and nothing was going to bring her back!’ Lenny retorted. ‘She would have told me to do exactly what I did. She would have said I was crazy to screw it up just to put a couple thugs behind bars.’

K-2 strolled down the church aisle toward the three of them. ‘This is all under the cone of silence, Lenny, but don’t think I’m going to forget it. If your act isn’t clean right now, you better clean it up fast. Is that crystal clear, my friend?’

‘I hear you,’ Lenny muttered. ‘Are we done? Can I go now?’

He started to get up, but Serena put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Not so fast, Mr. Keck.’

‘What? What else do you want? I’ve told you everything.’

‘We still have a problem.’

Lenny looked plaintively at K-2. ‘This is nuts. Come on, Kyle, get me out of here.’

The chief studied his friend’s face. ‘Why don’t you hear the lady out?’

Lenny scowled and laced his hands together in his lap. ‘Fine. What’s the problem?’

‘If Fong was involved in the burglary, then the split’s wrong,’ Serena said.

‘Huh?’

‘We found five thousand dollars,’ Serena explained. ‘If they stole fifty, Fong should have had a lot more money in that box. Particularly if he had the gun and did the job himself. Where’s the rest of it?’

‘What are you asking me for? Maybe he stashed some of it somewhere else. He had a girlfriend, right? He probably gave it to her. Or maybe he was just a patsy and somebody framed him.’

‘If Fong was a patsy — if he was really innocent — then we have an even bigger problem,’ Stride told him.

Lenny squirmed in the pew. He looked at K-2 for rescue again, but the chief’s face was stone. ‘What do you mean? I don’t get it.’

‘Why frame someone if the police are going to keep looking for accomplices?’ Stride asked.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Lenny said.

‘If this was a setup, then someone planted five thousand dollars in Fong’s house for us to find,’ Stride said, leaning in close to the car dealer’s face. ‘Why bother? They had to know we’d keep looking for the rest of the money. And the jewelry, too. What could they gain by framing Fong if you were going to turn around and tell us that we’d only recovered a fraction of what was stolen?’

‘Unless they knew you wouldn’t say a word,’ Serena said.

Lenny chewed his lip. His tanned face turned red.

‘What about it, Lenny?’ K-2 asked. ‘Did you forget something during our little chat?’

‘This is over,’ Lenny said. ‘I’m leaving.’

‘You leave and our deal’s off,’ K-2 told him. ‘I start an investigation tomorrow into every business transaction you’ve conducted in the last ten years.’

‘Is that the problem?’ Serena asked. ‘Was the heist masterminded by someone who knew all about your incentives program? Did they threaten to expose everything if you didn’t keep your mouth shut?’

‘It had nothing to do with money,’ Lenny snapped.

‘Then what was it?’

Lenny put his hands on top of his head and yanked at his messy hair. ‘I can’t believe this.’

‘You might as well tell us,’ K-2 said. ‘It’s all coming out. You can’t run from it.’

‘I was launching my first political campaign! My wife had just been murdered! You think I wanted shit like this in the papers? You think I wanted everyone to know? I would have been humiliated. Ruined.’

They waited. The silence was excruciating. Lenny looked like a guilty little boy.

‘Look, here’s the thing. Rebekah wasn’t exactly interested in sex the way I was. Understand? So when I got rich I figured I deserved to get some of what I was missing.’

‘Prostitutes,’ Stride said.

‘They were more like escorts. High-class, expensive. When Rebekah was away, sometimes I’d arrange to have some fun, okay? They were young, beautiful college girls, and they would do anything I wanted. What guy could say no to that?’

‘Except somebody found out about it,’ Serena concluded.

‘Yeah, somebody set me up. They had photos from a motel I’d visited. Very explicit, very embarrassing photos. Serious fetish stuff. The pictures were waiting for me when I got home from the Keys and found Rebekah. Bad enough to have my wife lying there dead, but then to know I’d be a fucking laughing stock, too? They said if I talked to you guys about what was taken, the pictures would go to the press. I didn’t know why they cared until I heard about the search at Fong’s place. Then I figured … I figured it was a cover-up.’

‘Lenny, you let an innocent man take the fall?’ K-2 demanded. ‘You just sat on your hands while we put him in prison?’

‘Innocent, hell. Come on, Kyle, he was an ex-con. A low-life crook. You found loot from other burglaries at his place, too, right?’

‘He was convicted of murder, Mr. Keck,’ Serena said. ‘It was a murder he almost certainly didn’t commit. Were you really okay with the idea that the people who killed your wife were still out there? That they never paid for what they did?’

‘I didn’t have a choice,’ Lenny said. ‘Don’t you get it? I had my whole reputation to think about.’

Stride shook his head. ‘Tell us about the girls,’ he said. ‘You said they were college girls.’

‘Yeah, very pretty, very smart. That was part of the attraction. They weren’t low-life street girls.’

‘Did you ever take them to your house?’

Lenny nodded. ‘Sometimes.’

‘So they could have seen you enter your alarm code,’ he said.

‘I–I suppose so.’

‘We need names,’ Stride told him.

‘You think I had their real names? They didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask.’

‘How did you find them?’ Stride asked. ‘Who set it up?’

‘There was — there was one girl. A business major. I spoke at her class, and she came up and talked to me afterwards. We went for coffee, and — I don’t know, I made a pass at her. She said if that’s what I wanted, fine, but it wasn’t free. She gave me a price, and I said sure, why not. That’s how it started. When I wanted more, she introduced me to other girls who were willing to do the same thing.’

‘Who was the girl?’ Serena asked.

‘She wouldn’t have been part of a plot like this. Not her.’

Stride squatted in front of him. ‘Who?’