—
Bob was sitting in Caribou Coffee in the Southdale Mall. He checked his watch and was beginning to wonder if Kay Myers had received his text message about where he was when he saw her walk in.
“There you are,” said Kay and slid into a seat. “Sorry, the techs took longer than expected.”
“What are they saying?”
“Fingerprints on the tape on the windshield. Fingerprints and shoeprints at the edge of the parking garage roof. Apart from that this is a case everybody seems to want. Too many cooks, a lot of mess.”
“You mean Hanson?”
“He’s been here and told people that since he’s the first detective on the scene the case is his until further notice. He’s not even on duty this evening.”
“Then why does he want the case?”
Kay shrugged. “I guess he’s bored, and this seems interesting. Evidently you do too.”
“Me?”
“I went to see the security guard at the parking garage and asked him to show me the footage from the roof. He told me I was the third detective with the same request. And when I sent out a BOLO I was told you’d already done that. That’s a lot of cooks, don’t you think, Bob?”
Bob shrugged. “Time is of the essence. This isn’t some ego trip for me, I just want to increase our chances of catching Gomez before he manages to disappear again. Where is Hanson now?”
“I don’t know, he must’ve gone. But tell me, if this isn’t an ego trip, why didn’t you give Assault everything you had on Gomez?”
“Didn’t I do that?”
“No. Walker got a phone call from a doctor who said you’d been to see him—he was wondering if he needed police protection.”
“Oh, right, the guy who dispenses insulin to Gomez,” said Bob as he raised his cup. “You know what, I guess it just slipped my mind.” He drank, meeting Kay’s eloquent stare over the lip of the cup.
“The question is,” said Kay, “do you know anything else about Gomez that might help us?”
Bob pursed his lips and shook his head.
“Okay, Bob. I asked you for help. What’s your thinking so far?”
Bob smiled at her. He and Kay had started in the Homicide Unit at about the same time. Then as now there were those who believed the doors were held open for people like Kay because she was a woman and she was black, that she reflected the MPD’s aim of having the same ethnic mix as the rest of the city’s population. But Bob had always known that she was a better investigator than he was and that if there was any justice in the world she would go further, a lot further, than him. And yet she always came to him with cases where she was having trouble. She said it was because his head worked in a different way from hers, that sometimes he was able to help her see cases from another and more fruitful angle. Beyond that they had never been especially close colleagues. Maybe because she’d been one of those slightly too serious types who always went home every time Bob and the others went to a bar to celebrate their little triumphs. Maybe because she wasn’t the type to open up and talk about something besides work. So it had been a surprise that after Frankie, when everything started falling to pieces, she was the one who’d been there for him. Covered for him when he didn’t turn up for duty and told Walker they’d arranged it between them. Driven him home from work when he hadn’t managed to sober up completely. But still kept her distance. All she got for it was trouble she didn’t need, it was hard to see it any other way. In the end Bob had figured that Kay Myers was quite simply a better human being than he was.
“Let’s start with the victim,” said Bob as he put down his cup. “Who is it?”
“Cody Karlstad, fifty-three years of age, co-owner of AgriWork, selling everything from combine harvesters and tractors to lawn mowers. No police record, a pillar of the community, coaches his youngest son’s baseball team in his free time. He’s got three kids and a wife who does volunteer work at the Mindekirken, which is—”
“The Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church,” Bob completed the sentence for her.
“Exactly, that’s your people. As you can see, though there are similarities in the method—”
“—there are no obvious similarities in the choice of victims.”
“That’s putting it mildly. Dante is a parasite, Karlstad a pillar of the community.”
Cody Karlstad, Cody Karlstad. Bob knew the name from somewhere, he just couldn’t place it.
“So no suspicion he was connected to gangs or narcotics?”
“None at all,” said Kay.
Bob ran a hand down his tie. “What about weapons?”
