On the other side, in a move that the state didn’t immediately discover, Gray sent an investigator north to poke around Don Schmidt’s former home and grave site. Schmidt’s mutilated body, unfortunately for Fisk, was a serious danger, when combined with her father’s statement to Lucas and Virgil that Schmidt may have abused her as a child.
Gray’s investigator talked to the few people who remembered Schmidt—his original landlord had died—and then, tracking down a rumor heard by the landlord’s son, found a retired Chicago deputy sheriff that the BCA hadn’t managed to uncover.
The deputy remembered Schmidt quite clearly. He’d been a member of a low-rent biker gang that called themselves the North Woods Mercs…
“For mercenaries,” the deputy said.
“Yeah, I got that,” the investigator said.
“The thing is, there was a rumor that Don was diddling the daughter of the gang leader, Rufus Bends. The kid was about…twelve, I guess. You could talk to her, she’s around, must be in her twenties, now. When Don took off—until the BCA dug up his body, we assumed he’d took off—we thought it was because Rufus said he was going to cut off his head and his cock and put his head on a stick with the cock in his mouth. Uh, penis.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” the investigator said.
Gray passed the interview to Fisk. They’d hold it close as long as possible, but they’d eventually have to cough up the information to Roller, as part of the discovery process.
“What do you think the odds are?” Fisk asked him then.
“Of an acquittal? I hate to guess. It’s bad luck.”
“Come on, Earl. I’m a prosecutor. I’m thinking less than fifty-fifty for a conviction, now that we got the biker.”
Gray nodded: “That’s about right. Less than fifty-fifty. Not a lot less.”
—
Lucas called Rollerthat week and said, “I need to get into Fisk’s house.”
“What for?”
“I want to make a movie.”
“About what?”
“You’ll see. You’re invited.”
A week later, they served the warrant on Fisk. One of Roller’s assistants had called Fisk to warn her of what was coming, because they didn’t want to kick the door. They were met by Gray, while Fisk stood in the background. The dogs ran around their feet, yipping.
They gave the warrant to Gray, who passed it to Fisk, who asked, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Making a movie,” Lucas said.
Lucas led the way up the stairs, carrying a small mover’s box, normally used for books, followed by a BCA cameraman, then by Roller, Virgil, Gray, and Fisk.
Lucas walked down the hall to the master bedroom and across the bedroom to the windows leading onto the balcony. He opened the windows, stepped out on the balcony, and knelt. When the cameraman was in position, Lucas opened the box, revealing three dozen rubber Chuckit! balls, in three different sizes, all brand new. The dogs could smell them, and went berserk, running around the bedroom like furry balls in a pachinko machine.
Lucas: “Ready?”
Cameraman: “Rolling.” He wasn’t actually rolling, of course, because he was shooting video, not film, but cameramen still said “rolling.”
Lucas released the three dozen balls, one at a time, down the slanted roof toward the rain gutter. By the time they hit the gutter, they were moving too fast to drop into it—they went shooting off into space, as Timothy Carlson had.
“You got that?” Lucas asked the cameraman.
“In the can,” he said. It wasn’t in any kind of can, of course, because it was on a memory card, unlike film, which would be in a can, but cameramen still said that.
Virgil looked at Fisk and asked, “You’re telling us that the dogs rolled two balls into the gutter, so that your husband had to lean over the balcony to get them out?”
Gray: “Don’t answer that.”
