“Then Alison invited me over to her place; told me she wanted to explain why she said what she did. But Stephen called the cops. See, when the cops came that night, they checked my record, and Alison found out about—Anyway, that’s why she turned on me. God, how long am I going to have to pay for that? One mistake, one lousy mistake …”
Raymond began to sob at the injustice of it all. I was grateful for the chance to step away, to pretend to give him some privacy. How long would he have to pay for raping a woman? At least as long as she did, I hoped. I’d read the report; I knew what he had done to her. How he rang her doorbell, and when she answered, he punched her in the face with the barrel of a gun and knocked her down and tied a gag over her mouth and raped her for five long hours, removing the gag only when he wanted her to wet his dick. Raymond had been arrested soon afterward, and when it became clear that the victim would testify, he pleaded down to second-degree criminal sexual conduct. He was sentenced to twenty-one months and served fourteen—it was his first conviction. And while in prison Raymond finished his education; several job interviews were waiting when he got out. He was fine. The woman still hasn’t recovered.
During the first few years after the attack, she was paralyzed with fear, actually carrying two knives with her when she moved through her apartment. She sold her home; she couldn’t live there anymore. Her TV was never off because she didn’t want anyone to know if she was awake or asleep. Her lights were never off, either. She slept with them on—not just one or two, but all of them—averaging about three to four hours’ sleep a night. She would get anxiety attacks driving home from work, panicking at every stoplight, desperate to reach her apartment before sundown. She never went out after dark. Never. Instead, she had holed up in her apartment with its reinforced doors and half-dozen locks and furniture arranged so that it was impossible to walk in a straight line, furniture with bells attached that rang when you bumped into it.
She found support from a small group of women who had also been raped. That had helped. And eventually time worked its magic, and she began to heal; she started to put that terrible day behind her. She started to go out. She started socializing again, although she still viewed each man she met as a potential threat. Then Alison disappeared, and Raymond Fleck’s photograph became a regular feature on TV and in the newspapers, and she was right back where she started.
And Raymond? Raymond got treatment. Raymond learned how to control his anger. In an effort to deflect accusations that he had killed Alison, he agreed to a newspaper interview. In the interview he talked about the therapy he underwent, the Transitional Sex Offender Program, and how it had made a new man of him. The reporter was very sympathetic and pointed out that the average rapist is charged with three or more sex crimes. But not Raymond. Raymond was cured. The system had worked. Praise the Lord.
Raymond was still weeping when I went back to him and put my hand on his shoulder. I was unmoved by his tears. I know a guy, whenever his contact lenses become dry, he forces himself to cry to rewet them; that’s how much I believe in tears.
“It’s okay, Ray, it’s all right,” I told him. What was it the political adviser said? “Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
Raymond rested his hand on mine for a moment and then brushed away his tears.
“What happened between you and Alison after you were fired?” I asked him.
“Nothing.”
“You didn’t tell Alison you were going to get her?”
“No, of course not.”
“She received harassing phone calls.”
“Not from me,” Raymond insisted.
“The police pulled your telephone records. You called her several times at her home, at her office.”
“I called her only a couple times. I had to—you know—talk to her, but she always hung up.”
“You called her twenty-two times,” I reminded him.
“No, I didn’t,” he insisted. “I only called her a couple times. Three times, four times.”
“The records say twenty-two.”
“The records are wrong.”
“Could anyone else have called her from your phone?”
“No.”
“Irene Brown?”
“Why would she call?”
“I don’t know, why would she?”
Raymond didn’t answer.
“You were seeing her when Alison came along,” I told him.
“Yeah,” Raymond confirmed.
“And you started seeing each other again after Alison had you fired.”
“Irene was very kind to me; I didn’t know how good I had it.”
“Irene hated Alison,” I told him.
“No, she didn’t.”
“That’s what she said.”
“You spoke to her?”
“I have a question for you, Ray. When Irene volunteered to provide you with an alibi for the time that Alison disappeared, when she said she was going to protect you from the police, did it ever occur to you that she was actually providing an alibi for herself, that she was protecting herself?”
“What is this? You said Emerton did it. Why are you accusing Irene?”
“I didn’t say Irene—”
“You’re accusing Irene! You’re trying to get me to rat out Irene!”
“You have to consider—”
“Get away from me! I don’t have to talk to you, you’re not a cop. You just get away from me. Go on!”
Raymond scooped up the sod knife and threatened me with it. Oh, I was tempted, God knows. But I liked how this investigation was turning out, and I didn’t want to endanger it by breaking every bone in Raymond Fleck’s face.
“Some other time, Ray,” I told him as I walked away.
seven
“Only in Minnesota.”
I shook my head and stood dumbfounded outside the large and handsome split-level office building before me, home of the Metropolitan Mosquito Control District.
“Only in Minnesota,” I repeated.
Only in Minnesota, a state well-known for its ability to marshal together whatever resources were necessary to solve the least of our problems, would the legislature budget over ten million hard-earned tax dollars to kill mosquitoes. I am as opposed to the evil insect as the next fellow. But ten million bucks? Seventy-five full-time employees? A shiny new office building? Cars and trucks and helicopters? Say it ain’t so, Joe. But it is. Some well-meaning quality-of-life researchers discovered that on any given summer evening, the average Minnesotan is assaulted by four to five mosquitoes per five minutes. Upon hearing this news, our normally fractious state politicians rose as one: Forget the economy! Forget the environment! Forget the declining educational system! All work at the state capitol ceased until a bureaucracy was created— the seven-county Metropolitan Mosquito Control District—for the sole purpose of reducing mosquito attacks to only two bites per five minutes. Good Lord, how they must have celebrated that piece of legislation. Then they had the temerity to level the Midway Car Wash on University Avenue in St. Paul (where I worked as a kid) to make room for the damn thing. Is it any wonder that I was one cranky pup by the time a bored receptionist pointed me toward Stephen Emerton’s office?
I stood beside Emerton’s open door for a few moments, playing mental tricks to improve my disposition before I started questioning him. Anger and frustration creates a tense atmosphere, and a witness, sensing those emotions, will tighten up and shut up. It’s a problem I’ve grappled with most of my career. It’s the reason why Anne Scalasi conducted most of our interrogations while I stood in the background, looking surly.
“Mr. Emerton?” I finally asked, rapping softly on the open door and addressing the man inside.
“Aww, man!” he said, tossing a pencil on a map spread out on his desktop. “Not again!”
“Sir?”
“You’re a cop, ain’tcha?”
“Private investigator,” I replied and showed him my photostat.