“Where’s your iPad?”
“Back seat.”
Lucas unbuckled, turned in his seat, groped around, and got the iPad. Virgil gave him a password and by the time he signed on, the obituary had come in. He read through it, as Virgil waited impatiently, saying, “What’s it say, what’s it say?”
“He fell off his roof and killed himself,” Lucas said.
“Fell off his roof? When?”
“Lemme see…Uh, not long ago.” Lucas did some mental calculations and then, “If this is right, about three days after we announced the reward.”
“Man. That gives me a little buzz,” Virgil said. “A suicide?”
“The obituary says he fell while trying to recover a dog’s ball from a roof gutter. I don’t think suicides usually set it up that way.”
“Still, that’s an interesting accident after twenty years of no accidents,” Virgil said.
“It does have the smell of bullshit,” Lucas said. “But where’s the bullshit coming from? We need to find out what happened.”
“Call the ME. Find out if there was an autopsy.”
“I got a dollar says there wasn’t…”
“No bet.”
Lucas called the Ramsey County Medical Examiner, and after he’d identified himself, got switched to an investigator, Darren Trask, who’d handled the Carlson death.
“No autopsy was needed,” the investigator said. “There was a witness who was there at the time he fell. His wife.”
“What happened, exactly?” Lucas asked.
“I went over there, the body was still at the scene, on the patio at the back of the house. One of his dogs—he had two—had rolled two rubber play balls, Chuckit!s, under a balcony railing down a slanting roof into a gutter,” Trask said. “The wife said the gutter had given them problems in the past, clogging up. When it overflowed, it stained the siding on the house, so Carlson wanted to get the balls out, with all the rain we’ve been having. The Chuckit!s came with a plastic throwing arm that has a cup at one end…”
Virgil jumped in: “I have one, I know about Chuckit!s….”
“Who is that?” the investigator asked.
“Virgil Flowers, he’s working with me,” Lucas said.
“Hey, Virgie,” Trask said. “How you doin’?”
“Hey, Darren. So then what happened with Carlson?” Virgil asked.
“Okay, so you know about Chuckit! balls. Anyway, Carlson couldn’t reach the gutter, and instead of getting a ladder or something—this was pretty high up, second story on a big house, a mansion, really—he taped the throwing arm to a mop handle and leaned way over the balcony railing to try to get the ball in the throwing arm’s cup. His wife said he was leaning over the railing, balanced on it, with the mop handle in one hand, and holding on to the railing with his other hand. She said she warned him not to do that, but he did anyway. His hand broke loose and over he went, headfirst. His wife was seriously screwed up about it.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. He was killed instantly, his skull was cracked wide open, both arms broken, neck and back broken.”
“Do you have any tissue samples?”
“No, we don’t. No autopsy,” Trask said. “He was brought here, and the ME reviewed my notes and signed off on the death. Body was moved to a funeral home, I think, I wasn’t here for that.”
“Well…okay.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Part of an ongoing investigation,” Lucas said.
