“Yeah, she is. You gonna stop over?”
“That would be best,” Virgil said. He added, “Hey. We talked to Fisk’s father. Thank you. Good stuff. She’s a serial killer, and more than we even know yet.”
“Great balls of fire. You’re sure?”
“Yeah, we are,” Lucas said. “Get the suits together, maybe tomorrow, we’ll lay it out for everybody.”
“You want Russ Belen?” Belen was the Ramsey County Attorney, and Fisk’s boss.
“I don’t know. Ask Rose Marie or Ralphy.” Rose Marie Roux was the Minnesota commissioner of public safety; Ralph Moore was the BCA director.
“I will do that. You go talk to Grandfelt.”
—
A tall blackman wearing an earbud met them at Grandfelt’s front door. He was wearing a blue suit, the jacket open so he could get at the cross-draw pistol on his left hip. Lucas held up his ID and the man said, “I’m Jim Nelson, with Wright Security. Let me call Miz Grandfelt.”
He stepped back from the door and a bit to one side, where he could call to Grandfelt while he could still keep an eye on Lucas and Virgil. They heard Grandfelt call back, “Let them in,” and he waved them in.
Grandfelt, Lucas thought, did not look good. She’d lost weight since the murder of her companion, skin sagging around her eyes and jowls. “Any news at all?”
“We need to sit and talk…” Lucas said, glancing at Nelson, “…privately.”
Nelson smiled and said, “Well, that was impolite.”
“No offense.”
“None taken. I’ll go out on the porch.” To Grandfelt: “Stewart’s outside, in back.”
She nodded, “Okay. Thank you.” She even sounded older. To Virgil, she said, “I was shocked to hear about the fire at your farm. Is everybody okay?”
“Everybody is now…my fiancée and her son got second-degree burns, but…they’ll be fine.”
“Wonderful,” Grandfelt said.
Nelson was outside, pulling the door closed behind himself. The three of them sat in the overstuffed living room and Lucas said, “Lara, we have some things to tell you, but you can’t pass them on. You know…you have to keep your mouth shut.”
“I can do that,” Grandfelt said. “Do you know who killed Doris?”
“We think we do,” Lucas said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have any single piece of hard evidence. Everything we have is circumstantial, but it’s strong. The person we’re looking at, a woman, is a lawyer and a county prosecutor who we think didn’t only kill Doris, but is a serial killer. We think she killed Marcia as well, and her husband, and probably set Virgil’s stable on fire. It’s possible she killed her own mother, and there was another curious death involving a young girl…when they both were young. If she killed that girl, she’s been murdering people since she was in high school.”
“My God. Who is it?”
“Her name is Amanda Fisk. She was an employee at Bee when Doris was killed. We believe the man who had sex with Doris is the man that Fisk married a few months later, and probably murdered a couple of weeks ago.”
They outlined the case against Fisk, and the problems with a possible indictment and prosecution. At the end, Grandfelt shook her head and asked, “I believe you…I think. But I’m not sure I believe you beyond a reasonable doubt. What do you think the chances of a conviction might be?”
Lucas tipped a finger at her. “Hard to tell. Maybe we’ll find some more evidence: this has all come together in the last couple of days,”he said. “Tomorrow, we should know if her husband was the one who had sex with Doris. That would be significant because it would provide us with a serious motive—jealousy. Not only that, she lied to Virgil about her relationship with Carlson. She said she only began dating him after Doris’s murder, and we have reason to believe that he actually began dating her much earlier than that.”
“Does she have any money?” Grandfelt asked.
Virgil: “She does. She lives in a mansion—I think you’d call it a mansion—on Summit Avenue in St. Paul. Carlson was a successful surgeon for at least thirty years, so there is money around.”
“Then if she’s taken to trial, andI’mconvinced beyond a reasonable doubt, even if she’s found not guilty, I’ll sue her for wrongful death,” Grandfelt said. “Then all we need is a preponderance of evidence, and I think we’d get that, from what you’ve told me.”
“And that would satisfy you?” Lucas asked.
She had to think, then said, “Yes. I wanted to know who killed Doris and why, and I want to know who killed my Marcia and why, and I want that person punished. You are almost there. If you get all the way there, if you indict her, even if you don’t get a conviction, I’ll be satisfied, and I will go after her myself with a civil suit. I’ll take her job, her savings, her houses, and her cars. She’ll be living in a basement and riding in buses.”
