“No. He just knocked me down and I was getting up and I remember the shoes and the little bubble thing on the side . . .” She stopped and frowned. “I didn’t tell the other officers about the bubble thing.”
“What kind of bubble thing?”
“Those transparent bubble things, where you can look inside the shoe soles?”
“Yeah. I know. Do you go down to St. Paul Center much?”
“Sometimes,” she said.
“If you’ve got the time, walk over this afternoon and look at the shoes, see if there’s anything like it. Okay?”
“Sure. Jeez, I didn’t think . . .”
Lucas took out his badge case, extracted a business card, and handed it to her. “Call me and let me know.”
They talked for another ten minutes, but there was nothing more. Lucas made a few final notes on a steno pad and tossed the pad and the investigation notebook back in his briefcase.
“You scared me,” Ruiz said as Lucas closed the case.
“I want to catch this guy,” Lucas said. “I figured there might be something you wouldn’t remember unless you walked through it again.”
“I’ll have nightmares.”
“Maybe not. Even the worst ones fade after a while. I won’t apologize, considering the situation.”
“I know.” She plucked at the seam of her skirt. “It’s just . . .”
“Yeah, I know. Listen, I’ve got to make a call, okay?”
“Sure.” She walked back to a stool next to a loom and sat on it, her hands resting between her legs. She was subdued, almost depressed. Lucas watched her as he dialed the information operator, got the number for St. Anne’s College, hung up, and redialed the new number.
“Think about something else entirely,” he said to her across the room.
“I try, but I can’t,” she said. “I just keep going over it in my head. My God, he was right in here . . .”
Lucas held up a hand to stop her for a moment. “Psychology department . . . . Thanks . . . . Sister Mary Joseph . . . . Tell her Detective Lieutenant Lucas Davenport . . .” He glanced at Carla again. She was staring fixedly out the window.
“Hello? Lucas?”
“Elle, I’ve got to talk to you.”
“About the maddog?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I was halfway expecting you to call. When do you want to come?”
“I’m in St. Paul now. I’ve got to be over in Minneapolis for a meeting at four, I was hoping you could squeeze me in now.”
“If you come right this minute, we can walk down to the ice-cream store. I’ve got a faculty meeting in forty-five minutes.”
“I’ll see you in front of Fat Albert Hall in ten minutes.”
Lucas dropped the phone back on the hook.
“You going to be okay?” he asked as he headed for the door. “I was a little rough . . .”
“Yes.” She continued to stare out the window and he paused with his hand on the bolt.
“Will you check downtown for me? About those shoes?”
“Sure.” She sighed and turned toward him. “I’ve got to get out of here. If you can wait a minute, I’ll get my purse. You can walk me out of the building.”
She was ready in a moment and they rode the old elevator down to the first floor. The elevator operator had plugged a set of headphones into his boombox, but the sound of heavy metal leaked out around the edges.
“That shit can sterilize you,” Lucas said. The operator didn’t respond, his head continuing to bob with the pounding beat of the music.
“This elevator guy . . .” Lucas said when they got off the elevator. There was a question in his voice.
“No chance,” Carla said. “Randy’s so burned out that he can barely find the right floors. He could never organize an actual attack on somebody.”
“All right.” He held the door for her and she stepped out on the sidewalk.
“It’s nice to be out,” she said. “The sunshine feels great.” Lucas’ car was parked a block toward Town Center and they strolled together along the sidewalk.
“Listen,” she said when he stopped beside the Porsche. “I get over to Minneapolis once a week or so. I show in a gallery over there. If I stopped in some morning, could you let me know how things are going? I’d call first.”
“Sure. I’m in the basement of the old City Hall. You just leave your car—”
“I know where you are,” she said. “I’ll see you. And I’ll call you this afternoon, about the shoes.”
She walked off down the sidewalk and Lucas got in the car and started it. He watched her through the windshield for a moment and she looked back and smiled.
“Hmph,” he grunted. He rolled down the street until he was beside her, pulled over, and rolled down the passenger-side window.
“Forget something?” she asked, leaning over the window.
“What kind of music do you listen to?”
“What?” She seemed confused.
“Do you like rock?”
“Sure.”
“Want to go see Aerosmith tomorrow night? With me? Get you out of your apartment?”
“Oh. Well. Okay. What time?” She wasn’t smiling but she was definitely interested.
“Pick you up at six. We’ll get something to eat.”
“Sure,” she said. “See you.” She waved and stepped back from the car. Lucas made an illegal U-turn and headed back toward the Interstate. As he pulled away, he glanced in his rearview mirror and saw her looking after him. It was silly, but he thought he felt their eyes touch.
Sister Mary Joseph had grown up as Elle Kruger on the near north side of Minneapolis, a block from the house where Lucas was born. They started grade school the same autumn, their mothers walking them down the cracked sidewalks together, past the tall green hedges and through the red brick arches of St. Agnes Elementary. Elle still ran through Lucas’ dreams. She was a lovely slender blonde girl, the most popular kid in the class with both the pupils and the teachers, the fastest runner on the playground. At the blackboard, she regularly thrashed the class in multiplication races. Lucas usually finished second. In the spelldowns, it was Lucas who won, Elle who finished second.
Lucas left St. Agnes halfway through fifth grade, after the death of his father. He and his mother moved down to the south side and Lucas started at public school. Later, at a hockey tournament, he was warming up, swinging down the ice, and he stopped on the opponents’ side of the rink to adjust his skates. She was there in the crowd, with a group of girls from Holy Spirit High. She had not seen him, or not recognized him in his hockey gear. He stood transfixed, appalled.
It had been six years. Other girls, gawky as she had been beautiful, had blossomed. Elle had not. Her face was pitted and scarred by acne. Her cheeks, her forehead, her chin were crossed with fiery red lines of infection. The small part of her face free of scarring was as coarse as sandpaper from attempts at treatment.
Lucas skated away, around the rink toward the home bench, Elle’s face bobbing in his mind. A few minutes later, the players for the two teams were introduced and he skated out to center ice, his name booming from the public-address system, unable not to look, and found her grave eyes following him.
After the match he was clumping toward the tunnel to the locker rooms when he saw her standing on the other side of the barricade. When their eyes met her hand came up and fluttered at him and he stopped and reached across the barrier and took her hand and said, “Can you wait for me? Twenty minutes, outside?”
“Yes.”
He drove her home after a tour of southern and western Minneapolis. They talked as they had when they were children, laughing in the dark car. At her house, she hopped out and ran up to the porch. The light came on, and her father stepped out.
“Dad, do you remember Lucas Davenport, he used to live down the street?”
“Sure, how are you, son?” her father said. There was a sad edge to his voice. He asked Lucas in and he sat for another half-hour, talking to Elle’s parents, before he left.
As he walked out to the curb, she called him from her bedroom window on the second floor of the house, her head backlit against the flowered wallpaper.