“Goddammit, there you go again.”
“It’s like this, Irene,” I told her. “I think you’re lying about being with Raymond between five and seven the day Alison disappeared.”
“I don’t care.”
“The cops don’t believe you, either.”
“I don’t care!”
“But you see, unlike the cops, I don’t think you’re lying to protect Raymond, no ma’am. I think you’re lying to protect yourself.”
Irene didn’t have an answer for that.
“You hated Alison, didn’t you?”
Irene nodded.
“You hated her because she was so much more attractive and so much smarter than you are.”
“She was a bitch.”
“And Raymond wanted her, didn’t he?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“You and Raymond were lovers, weren’t you? And then Alison came along and that changed. Isn’t that why you hated her so much?”
“No! No, I hated her for what she did to Raymond.”
“What did she do to Raymond?”
“She ruined his life.”
“You mean she ruined your life.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.”
“How big are your feet, Irene?”
“Go to hell!” she retorted and strode swiftly from the cafeteria.
I chuckled quietly and made a few notes in the pad I carry, enormously pleased with myself. I had made it up. All of it. Made it up as I went along without thought or consideration, and damned if I didn’t uncover a viable suspect both Teeters and Annie had missed.
“Must be divine inspiration,” I mused.
“Beginning to annoy me,” Ed Teeters said over the telephone.
“Are you running surveillance on Irene Brown?” I asked.
“No.”
“Maybe you should put a team on her for a couple of days.”
“Why?”
“In case she tries to unload some incriminating evidence. A pair of running shoes, for example.”
There was a long pause on the other end, and I could almost hear the wheels turning inside the sheriff’s head. “Thought of that,” he muttered. “Tried to get paper for a search. Judge said no go. Said he doesn’t authorize fishing expeditions. I’m listening,” he said more loudly, and I told him of my conversation with Irene, told him that originally I hadn’t suspected her at all.
“I was trying to get her to open up about Fleck. Usually, you accuse someone of a crime they didn’t commit, and they’ll fall all over themselves trying to prove they’re innocent. I was hoping she’d talk about Fleck. She didn’t.”
“Means nothing,” Teeters concluded.
“I know. But here’s the thing. I pressed her for her shoe size. She wouldn’t tell me. Instead, she kept asking why I needed to know. I wouldn’t say, and that made her angry. Now, she’s going to think about it. She’s going to think about it long and hard. She’s going to realize we have a footprint.”
“Guilty, might try to dispose of the evidence. That the bet?”
“It’s a long shot,” I agreed.
He chortled. “Couldn’t possibly be that easy.”
six
I found Raymond Fleck kneeling in the dirt with a knife in his hand. He was trimming a roll of sod and using the strips he cut to fill a hole next to the sidewalk. Laying sod, digging holes, clearing brush piles: grunt work for a landscaper in North Minneapolis. Apparently it was the only employment he could find.
The knife blade reflected the sun as I approached. Despite the knife, Raymond did not look like Mr. Stranger Danger. He looked small and harmless in his dirty T-shirt and jeans, almost childish. And although he worked every day in the sun, his face had a gray tint you don’t see on a well man.
“Raymond Fleck?” I asked.
His whole body sagged at the question. He dropped the knife atop the sod and wiped his hands on his shirt. “It’s never going to end, is it,” he said in a sad voice. It wasn’t a question. It was a declaration. He was a man resigned to his fate, more pitiful than frightening.
Raymond was calm but watchful. His eyes looked around me, never at me, as if he were expecting someone else to come for him. He assumed I was a cop, but I corrected that assumption right away. In Raymond Fleck’s world, the cops were bad guys. I wanted him to believe I was the Lone Ranger riding to his rescue. So after showing him my ID, I told him I was working for a client who was convinced that Stephen Emerton had killed Alison. Fleck’s demeanor brightened considerably. At last, someone who believed.
“Alison hated her husband,” Raymond said. “She wanted a divorce, but she couldn’t get one because she came from a very strict Catholic family.”
“She told you that?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“When?”
He shook his head.
“Tell me about your relationship,” I urged.
“We loved each other.”
“Did you?”
“I thought we did.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
“Tell me what happened, Ray.” I gave his shoulder a reassuring pat.
“There weren’t any lightning flashes or fireworks or anything like that,” Raymond confided. “It happened slowly. She would touch my hand or look at me without speaking and then look away. I thought it was just my imagination; she couldn’t possibly be interested in a guy like me. Except she was. She told me so at lunch that first time, the first time we went together. She had invited me to lunch. She said she wanted to talk about—I don’t know—some project, only we didn’t talk about work. We talked about … I guess we talked about us. She told me she was unhappy in her marriage, but she didn’t know what to do about it, and I told her I was seeing Irene Brown, but I didn’t really care about her, and then she smiled and squeezed my hand and said at least we had each other, and we began to see each other on the sly. Mostly lunches. A lot of lunches, okay? Nothing came of it. I mean, they weren’t nooners or nothing. We didn’t make love. But the talking, it was almost better than sex. She was so fantastic. I couldn’t wait to see her, couldn’t wait to hear her voice, and when I did I couldn’t take my eyes off her, couldn’t stop listening.”
“Did Alison know about your prison record?”
Raymond shook his head sadly. “It’s not something you talk about,” he admitted.
“But she found out.”
“Yeah, that night.”
“Tell me about that night,” I prompted.
“She told me to park outside her house, and she would meet me after Stephen went to bed. I told her that was a dangerous idea, but she insisted. She said she had to see me. Had to see me,” he repeated as if he could scarcely believe it even now. “So I parked in front of her house, but Stephen saw me and called the police.”
“Stephen did?” I asked, knowing that Alison had made the call; she said so on the tape, and the police report confirmed it.
“Yes, and when they came—well, Alison had to deny she had invited me; she had to protect her marriage and her reputation; she was Catholic, you see. She told Mr. Selmi what happened for the same reason.”
“What did Selmi tell you?”
“He fired me. Had to, I guess. After what happened before.”
“What happened before?”
“People … people around the office, they suspected that Alison and I were having an affair, you know, and that was hard on her—a woman trying to make it in a man’s world, people talking behind her back, I mean. One day people were talking about it, around the coffee machine, I guess. I don’t know. And old-man Selmi overheard and asked Alison, ‘What’s this?’ What could she say? A good Catholic girl. So she said, you know, that I was harassing her, said it to protect herself. I understood that. Anyway, Old-man Selmi decided to have one of his fireside chats with me.”
“What did he say?”
“Said I shouldn’t dip my quill in the company ink well.”
“There’s leadership for you,” I said sarcastically. Raymond didn’t catch it. “What happened next?”