“I have to go now. Thank you both for everything.”
“Holland,” Phyllis called, stopping me at the door, hugging me. “Remember what I told you.” There were tears in her eyes.
“I’ll remember.”
Dean smiled at me. “Semper fi,” he said, reciting the Marine Corps motto. Always faithful.
nineteen
I announced myself at the reception area of the Kreel County Sheriff’s Department, speaking to the secretary through an intercom on the other side of a bulletproof glass partition. If I was going to have more trouble with the sheriff, I wanted to get to it—I’d be damned if I’d spend the day looking fearfully over my shoulder for irate deputies. A moment later the secretary buzzed me through the door and led me to him.
Sheriff Orman’s office was small and cluttered and dominated by a large canvas hanging behind his desk. It was an oil painting of a magnificent twelve-point whitetailed buck at sunset, the buck looking real enough to move, his reflection shimmering on the lake he was drinking from. In the bottom right corner of the canvas, the name R. ORMAN was painted with an unobtrusive brush.
Orman was sitting behind the desk. He took a good look at my battered face but said nothing. His face wasn’t in much better shape: two days’ stubble, bloodshot eyes, sagging cheeks. But I didn’t say anything, either. Instead, I stood staring across the desk at him, trying to act like a pro boxer just before the bell rings. I wasn’t desperate for a rematch but if he wanted one, I’d be happy to oblige; this time my hands would be free.
“I am a licensed private investigator from the state of Minnesota; I am here looking for a woman named Alison Donnerbauer Emerton who is going under the name Michael Bettich,” I informed him defiantly, explaining my presence and purpose in an out-of-state jurisdiction to the proper authorities just like the handbook suggests, pretending the sheriff and I had never met before.
“Michael is in a coma,” Orman said sadly, looking down at a framed photograph lying flat on his desk blotter—a photograph of Alison. “They took her by helicopter to Duluth General. They have a better-equipped trauma unit up there, better-trained staff. That’s what they tell me.”
“I’m sorry about Michael,” I said and I meant it.
The slight smile that flashed and then disappeared suggested that he believed me. I also think he liked that I used the name Michael and not Alison.
“If there’s anything I can do …” I added.
“Loushine!” he shouted so unexpectedly that I flinched.
“I spoke with the doctor,” Orman told me in a softer voice. “She said whoever administered first aid at the scene probably saved Michael’s life. I’m grateful.
“Loushine!” he shouted again.
“The other day, you didn’t ask who I was or why I was here,” I reminded him.
“I know who you are and why you’re here.”
“Want to tell me?” I asked. “I’m a little confused.”
“Dammit Loushine!”
“Yes,” the deputy said, coming through the door. He looked surprised to see me.
“Gary, this is Holland Taylor,” Sheriff Orman said. “He’s a private investigator from Minnesota. I checked on him. He did ten years for the St. Paul Police Department, four in Homicide. I’ve asked him to consult with us on the Michael Bettich shooting. If he’s willing, you’re to give him full cooperation.”
Loushine clearly wasn’t thrilled with the order. “Sheriff …?” he began.
Orman cut him off roughly. “Is that understood?”
“Yes, Sheriff.” The answer came reluctantly.
Of me Orman asked, “Are you willing, Mr. Taylor?”
“Yes,” I told him without reluctance. The last time a private investigator received such an invitation was never.
“Good.” Orman rose from his chair. “I’m going to Duluth. I’ll check in later.” He brushed past us.
“Wait,” I called to him. “I have questions.”
“Ask Gary,” the sheriff said and hung a left in the corridor, disappearing.
“It makes even less sense as it goes along,” I told Deputy Loushine.
“What’s the matter, Taylor?” he asked. “Haven’t you ever heard an apology before?”
We were walking along the well-lit corridor of the Kreel County Sheriff’s Department building, my Nikes making soft squeaking sounds on the tile.
“What have you got?” I asked him, flexing my new muscle.
“The Buick was stolen,” Loushine said. “It was owned by the chief of the volunteer fire department down in Wascott. He reported it missing the day before the shooting.”
“Where’s Wascott?”
“About forty miles southwest of us,” Loushine said. “We have bulletins out on the car. Also, you were right about the gun. It was an UZI semiautomatic carbine. We dug .41 AEs out of both Michael Bettich and Gretchen Rovick. A MAC fires only .45s or nine millimeters—”
“Chip Thilgen,” I interrupted, just to prove how smart I was.
“Yes,” said Loushine. “We know he made threats toward Michael at The Height Restaurant in Deer Lake about an hour before the shooting. We have several witnesses. Including you.”
“Including me,” I agreed. “What does Thilgen have to say for himself?”
“Nothing yet,” Loushine answered. “We haven’t found him. We have a man on his house; he hasn’t been home. And we checked with his employer. Thilgen has been absent without leave since the shooting.”
“Where does he work?”
“King Boats.”
“He works for King Koehn?” I asked, surprised.
Loushine shrugged. “Why not? Everyone else does. Anyway, we’re checking his family, his friends—actually, he doesn’t have any friends—and we have bulletins out on him, too.”
“What else?”
“Hmm?”
“What else have you got?”
“That’s it.”
I stopped next to a door marked EXIT.
“What do you mean, that’s it?” I said, appalled. “You’ve had this case for almost forty-eight hours.”
Loushine didn’t answer, and I pushed my way through the door.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Taylor,” Loushine told me as he followed behind. “I’m not an experienced investigator. I’ve worked as deputy sheriff for nine years now, and I’ve handled exactly two homicides, both of them slam-dunk domestics. On this case I’ve been following Bobby Orman’s lead, and quite frankly he’s not up to it, either. Man had exactly two years of law-enforcement experience before he was made sheriff—in the Highway Patrol.”
That stopped me again. “Two years? How did he get the job?”
“Appointment. The former sheriff was caught shacking up with a prostitute. The county board wanted someone squeaky-clean and politically palatable. Orman’s father and grandfather had both been sheriff, and people loved them—”
“So they went with the son.”
“There you go.”
“Does he know the job at all?”
“Bobby knows administration; he was the factory manager over at King Boats for a half dozen years after he left the HP—it’s kind of a complicated story. I went to school with Bobby; we played ball together, so I know he didn’t want to be a cop, didn’t want to follow the family tradition. But he did, anyway; joined the Highway Patrol after junior college. His old man was still sheriff, and Bobby could have gotten a job here in Kreel, but he went away; people figured he just didn’t want to work in the old man’s shadow. Two years later the old man dies of a heart attack while pulling an ice fishing shack off the lake; Bobby quits the HP and goes to work for King.
“The county goes through three sheriff’s in the next six years, and each is worse than the one before. People are pissed; the County Board of Commissioners is up against it; half of ’em are up for re-election, right? So they tap Bobby; they want his name. He takes the job. Surprised me. But he’s been okay. Works hard. Goes to a lot of law-enforcement seminars. Takes care of his people.”