“Maybe. I haven’t looked at them in forever.”
Brady had clients that afternoon, but they arranged to meet her at her house that night in the Highland Park neighborhood, a half mile or so from Lucas’s house.
Out in the parking lot, Lucas said, “Photographs. This could be something.”
Virgil had turned off his phone while they were talking to Brady, and when he turned it back on, he thumbed through three more voicemail transcripts and at the last one, he stopped, and said, “Oh-oh.”
“What?”
“Guy says, ‘I was the guy who called Bud Light last night. I was the one who slept with Doris Grandfelt the day she was killed, who used the rubber with the sperm killer. That was the tip I gave Bud. I’m out driving around for a while and if you don’t call me, I’ll throw this phone down a sewer.’ ”
“Whoa,” Lucas said. “Call him. Put it on speaker.”
—
Virgil called. Aman answered, a baritone with gravel, and Virgil asked, “Who is this?”
“Never mind. Is this Davenport or Flowers?”
“We’re both here,” Lucas said. “How’d you get this number?”
“They posted it on Bud Light’s site. I heard he was murdered and I was watching the site and called as soon as I saw the number.”
“How’d you know that somebody had sex with Doris Grandfelt with a condom?” Virgil asked.
“Because it was me,” the man said. “Also, I read all the stuff about the rape, the stuff that’s online, the investigation files. They said she’d had two sexual contacts and the first guy had used a rubber with a sperm killer. If they got any details on that, you can tell them that I wasnotusing a Trojan which most everybody else did, back then. The ones I used were called Hot Rods and didn’t have a sperm killer, so I bought a sperm killer gel and lubed it up myself. I didn’t want to knock up some hooker. I bet the gel was different than whatever Trojan used.”
Lucas glanced at Virgil and nodded. The guy sounded convincing. On the other hand, that’s what hustlers did: they sounded convincing. “You’re looking for a piece of the five million?” Virgil asked.
“How’d you guess? Also, I’ve always felt a little guilty about not calling the police after I heard about the murder. I was scared. The BCA seemed desperate to hang someone, and I wasn’t going to volunteer for the honor. When I was a kid, I had some trouble with the cops. I might have fit a frame.”
“You need to come in for a full interview,” Lucas said.
“Not yet. I’m still scared.”
“Not gonna get five million from what you’ve told us so far,” Virgil said. “No way that a spermicide clue is gonna get us anywhere.”
“That was just to demonstrate that I’m not bullshitting you. Here’s what you can use: Can you write this down?”
Virgil took out his main cell phone and hit “voice memos,” and said, “Yes. Go ahead.”
“There was guy who was a night bartender at a strip joint on Hennepin Avenue in the early 2000s. I forget the name of the place. I don’t think the name is the same anymore. Everybody called the bartender Inspector Gadget because the guy used to sellthese…mmm…custom dildoes. Anyway, his real name is Roger Jepson. J-e-p-s-o-n. He worked at a bunch of places as a bartender and sometimes as a bouncer, but he wasn’t very good at either thing. He now works in a body shop off Highway 13 in Savage, called Loco’s. Or he did a couple of years ago, when I saw him there, when I took my truck in. Back in the day, he’d set Doris up with customers. I was one of those.”
Virgil: “Jepson was a pimp?”
“Not exactly. He didn’t do anything for Doris except make introductions,” the man said. “I don’t think she paid him anything. Might have rolled him a piece of ass from time to time. Roger was not a looker, wasn’t big with pretty women.”
Lucas: “But you got an introduction?”
“Right. Doris was fun. She’d fuck right back at you,” the man said. “Most hookers, you’d be banging away and they’d be reading their phone over your shoulder.”
“So you patronized working girls…”
“Not street girls. I was careful, always used a rubber and paid them a lot, to get a classier chick. Doris fit all of that: an accountant, fun, she’d do you for five hundred bucks, which was a lot at the time. And with her, it wasn’t just the sex. She’d meet you someplace and dance, and then go back to your place. Like an actual date. I figured that’s what got her killed: she went back to the wrong guy’s place.”
“Did she ever take you to her place, or to her office?”
“No. I never even knew where she worked. Or lived. She told me she was an accountant, but we didn’t talk business. I didn’t know she worked at Bee until I saw the news stories about her getting raped and killed. I don’t think she wanted me to know more personal stuff.”
