Myers and Bob watched O’Rourke as he stomped over toward the car and his men emerged from the tower.
“Bob, Bob, you make friends wherever you go,” sighed Myers.
—
They stopped outside the open door of the sixth-floor apartment. Bob saw that the lock had been broken open, probably using a small battering ram.
“I’ll go talk to the neighbors,” said Myers.
“Okay,” said Bob as he stepped carefully over the threshold.He would primarily be looking for things that could be used to put out a BOLO or lead to a quick arrest, but out of habit he kept close to the walls to reduce the risk of contaminating any technical evidence. His first thought was that the apartment reminded him of another place that had the same atmosphere of melancholy, maybe the apartment of some lonely woman where one night he and she had tried to make each other feel a little less lonely. This particular apartment was one room with the kitchen area nearest the door, a couch which Bob assumed had originally been over by the window but which had been pulled out farther into the room. Of course, it might have been SWAT making sure no one was hiding beneath it, but he doubted that. Water was dripping from the red tablecloth hanging over the table, and that was most definitely SWAT’s work. You throw stun grenades into a room containing people you want to neutralize but not actually harm because the flash of light is so bright that for five seconds that person can’t see a thing, and the noise is so loud they can’t hear either, and that destroys their sense of balance. In the course of those few seconds the perpetrator will probably be immobilized, on the floor and handcuffed. But what sometimes happened—as Bob noted here from the tablecloth—was that the heat developed could easily ignite flammable materials. A few years back an elderly couple had died from smoke inhalation following a narcotics raid in which stun grenades had been used. The whole unit had been disciplined, not least because it turned out the raid had been based on false information. People had lost their jobs.
Bob cursed silently and scanned the room. Myers was right, he didn’t have a lot of friends, especially not in the MPD. So why did he do stuff like this? Why call in SWAT? Why act like he had a search warrant? Did hewantto get fired? Was that it?
Bob crossed to the window. The drapes were taped to the walls on each side. In the opening between them he looked down at the cordoned-off area in front of Tower 3. He sniffed at one of thedrapes. The acrid smell of gun smoke. There was a chair between the couch and the window, and Bob saw that there were scratch marks on top of the chairback. Bob checked the angle, tried to re-create the shooter’s position if he used the chairback as a rest, and concluded he must have been on the couch, possibly on his knees.
He walked to the kitchen cabinet, pulled on the thin latex gloves he always kept in his inside pocket, and opened the cabinet door. The contents didn’t tell him much apart from the fact that the tenant had a preference for food from south of the border. Rice, tortillas, empty bottles of Mexican beer. There was a can of brown beans in the refrigerator, a dried-up pepper and an onion. He lifted a trash can with a pedal-operated lid, placed it on the counter and quickly sifted through the contents. Paper towel, beer bottle caps, a couple of empty food cans, a carton of apple juice, a blackened banana skin, two empty bottles of chili sauce. Bob picked up something lying in the bottom of the trash can and held it up to the light. It was an open box with a label attached:Insulin. Tomás Gomez. One injection morning and evening. Dr. Jakob Egeland.Bob looked inside the box. It had evidently contained several injector pens, but now there was only one left, and that had been used. He opened the refrigerator again, checked all the drawers to make sure he hadn’t overlooked anything.
As he was putting the trash can down he noticed, in the spot where it had been standing, something just visible sticking up between the floorboards. He used a knife from the kitchen drawer to flip out what turned out to be a business card from someone called Mike Lunde, Town Taxidermy. For just a moment—as though he’d killed off the last of his brain cells—he couldn’t recall what a taxidermist was. Then he remembered an article he’d read in theStar Tribune,something about a creative new taxidermist group in Minneapolis. They stuffed dead animals. Bob put the business card in his pocket and walked over to the closet. A few shirts and a hoodie hanging inside. Behind them were severalflattened cardboard boxes, the type you use when moving. Bob went through the drawers in the closet. Three pairs of underpants, some T-shirts, socks. As he was closing the door he noticed something black behind the cardboard boxes and he moved them to one side. A long, narrow case was propped up against the rear wall. He lifted it out without touching its handle.
It was a rifle case.
He opened it. Empty.
At that moment Kay Myers appeared in the doorway. She nodded in the direction of the rifle case.
“I hope that means we’ve raided the right place?”
“I haven’t found any weapon or ammunition, but people don’t make a habit of collecting empty rifle cases.”
“I’m asking because if the neighbors are to be believed then our so-called Tomás Gomez is not regarded as the violent type.”
“So-called?” Bob leaned the case against the wall and took a picture of it with his phone.
“That’s the name he gave to the landlord here, Mr….” She flipped through her notebook. “Gregory Dupont. But we can’t find any reference to a Tomás Gomez with the details he gave Dupont so either it’s a false name or he’s an illegal immigrant.”
“And, of course, Dupont didn’t check?”
“He says Gomez paid his three months’ deposit in cash and as far as he was concerned he could be a Martian.”
“Right.” Bob peeled the label off the pack of insulin and put it in his coat pocket. “Anything else?”
Kay flipped through her notebook. “The neighbors on both sides say they know practically nothing about him, other than that he’s quiet and doesn’t say much. No one’s had more than the time of day out of him. The neighbors say he’s never given any cause for complaint, but one thinks he might have had a cat. Pets aren’t allowed.”
Bob gave a short laugh. “Job?”
“If he had one they don’t know what it was. It’s not the kind of thing people ask each other around here. But he went out in the mornings and came back in the afternoon, so maybe. Neighbor on the right side thinks he might have had some contact with a Mrs. White, two floors up.”
“Shall we have a word with her?”
“Thought we might. But I got a description, so wait while I first give it to the patrol car down there in case he suddenly decides to come back.”
“He won’t do that,” said Bob and held up the used insulin pens.
“What’s that?”
“Insulin. He’s diabetic. He needs these shots daily and you keep them in the refrigerator, but there are none there now. He’s taken them with him.”
—
