Back to thefire idea—crude, but workable, she thought. The whole Lake of the Isles neighborhood was older, with a high percentage of wooden houses. A gallon of gasoline in a glass jug, a rag for a fuse, and she’d have her fire. If there were any noise to accompany the fire, if it was immediately obvious that the fire was arson, then anyone seen running would be suspect. If a cop stopped her to check her ID, then she’d have two murders to commit.
Would it be possible to spot an empty house? How would you do that?
She turned to Zillow, the real estate website, and began looking at homes in the Lake of the Isles neighborhood. There were many candidates for sale, almost all of them with photos attached.
She quickly found two that appeared to be empty—where the owners had already moved out. Switching to Street View on Google Maps, she saw they looked satisfactorily old and wooden. They’d burn like a circus tent.
—
About the actualapproach: push a doorbell, and when Grandfelt answered, what? Shoot her? What if it wasn’t Grandfelt who answered? What if, like more and more people, she had cameras covering her property? What if the neighbors did?
Fisk leaned back in her office chair and ran the approach through her mind, visualizing every step, all the possible booby traps along the way.
And concluded that everything she’d just researched amounted to a fantasy. Too many cops. Too many cameras. Too much exposure—two separate crimes, an arson and a murder? Nonsense.
—
Thinking about it,thinking about what she, herself, did in the evenings…She’d go out, sometimes with Timothy, but most of the time without him. She’d run out to a supermarket, she’d play tennis, she’d go to the Mall of America.
Why wouldn’t Grandfelt do the same thing? Would she come home from work, lock herself up, or go out with her husband, if she had one? Or would she go somewhere on her own?
She would do that, at least sometimes, Fisk thought. And that was her vulnerability—moving from her car to wherever she was going, and then walking back to the car.
Fisk had already noted the on-street parking around Grandfelt’s house. She could wait for her on the street, from a point across from the access alley that ran behind the houses.
From there, unless something had changed, she should be able to see Grandfelt backing out of her garage, from where she’d have to drive past Fisk’s parked car. Fisk would be able to see if anyone was in the car with her. If she was alone, Fisk could follow her…
All very loose, very random. If she’d had to prosecute a case based on what she was thinking, she wouldn’t know how to do it, not unless the killer was actually caught in the act. There would be no intricate planning. There would just be the hit.
Risky, but there was no way to avoid risk. Doing nothing was risky, and the risk was getting more serious every day.
She got out of her chair, walked around the house, and finally out to the garage. The man who was buying Timothy’s tools hadn’t taken them with him—he’d be back later in the week to pick them up. She opened one of the drawers on Timothy’s rolling tool chest and her eye immediately fell on a fifteen-inch combination wrench.
She picked it up and hefted it: excellent. She flashed back to the night she’d killed the law student. Same thing, but with a better heft to it.
Now, Grandfelt would have to cooperate.
She had no real idea of what Grandfelt looked like, but she’d seen something on that website…
She went to Anne Cash’s website and found a series of videos ofGrandfelt and her lawyers being interviewed on network morning shows, and on CNN. She watched four videos, until she was sure she could spot the woman.
All right, she had that. Next question: When?
She looked at the wrench sitting on her desk. Not that night; she was too tired from the day. Tomorrow?
—
The next night,having had twenty-four hours to plan, she went into the kitchen for vinyl gloves, got the wrench and her car keys and walked out to her Mercedes SUV, bought to match the SL550.
The trip across the Mississippi took twenty minutes. There was still light in the sky when she cruised past Grandfelt’s place, where she felt a quiver of house envy. Her own house, on the most prestigious street in St. Paul, was extremely nice. Grandfelt’s house was absurd, though she wouldn’t have minded living there. If it wasn’t exactly at the pinnacle of the Twin Cities housing heap, it was close.
Having spotted the house, and the alley that led to Grandfelt’s garage, she circled the block one last time and squeezed into a parking place a half block down from the alley.
And waited, and waited.
And that night, Grandfelt stayed put. Fisk went home at ten o’clock, frustrated, and with an ache in her back from having sat in the car too long.
19
