Campion shook his head at my assumption. “Paul never left her. He died.” His voice dropped a little lower. “I was there.”
I wasn’t prompting him at all, by this point. There was a story inside him that wanted to come out.
“Paul wasn’t threatened by an old flame, so when I came to visit, I planned to stay for a week,” Campion said. “They’d been living together for three years. Gitte was happy. Paul did something in construction. God, he was a big guy. Maybe six-four, and tough. But a good guy. Thought the world of Gitte and the kid. Their son, Jacob, was two years old.
“Toward the end of the week, I went out drinking with Paul. We went to this bar he liked, a real bucket of blood. I’ve been in some bars in my day, and even so, I was glad to have Paul at my side. We were fine until Gitte’s neighbors came in. These guys- I don’t use this kind of language lightly, but trust me, I’m a wordsmith- these guys were douche bags.”
I smiled to let him know I wasn’t offended.
“Gitte’s neighbors raised pit bulls to fight,” Campion said. “The dogs scared the hell out of Gitte, not just for her sake, but for Jacob’s. She wanted the neighbors to pay their share of a better fence between the two yards, but these guys’ attitude was ‘You want the fence, you pay the whole nickel.’
“Paul was willing to ignore them that afternoon, but they starting getting in his face, making remarks about Gitte. Then it was on. Half the bar jumped into the fight. Me included. I’m not much of a fighter, but Paul was my drinking buddy at the time. Them’s the rules, you know?”
“I know,” I said.
“I got my clock cleaned fairly early, but Paul… I’ve never seen anyone fight quite like that. The thing is, he looked happy. Incandescent.” Campion shook his head, remembering. “It took four cops to subdue him and get him into the squad car. I walked outside after them. They left Paul to sit there while they mopped up the rest of the fight. But as soon as Paul was in the backseat, he put his head down, against the window, and closed his eyes, like all the fight had gone out of him. Like he was at peace.” Campion paused. “The cops didn’t question it either.”
“Question what?” I said.
“He was dead,” Campion said. “When they got to the police station, he didn’t have a pulse. It was one of those rare, undetected heart conditions, the kind that sometimes makes an athlete drop right after a race. Some lawyers called Gitte afterward, talking about a negligence suit against the cops, but it wasn’t the cops’ fault, and she knew it.” Campion sipped a little more beer. “I stayed around another month afterward, with her and the little boy, Jacob. I wanted to help out. But I wasn’t Paul, and Gitte and I weren’t suited for each other. We’d been down that road before. I moved on.” He shook his head. “I’ll never forget that afternoon, though. I remember walking out of the bar after Paul and the cops, and the sun was setting, and I was standing in that dirt parking lot, and Paul just laid his head down and died. I’ve always wanted to write about it, but I’ve never been able to.”
32
At eight-thirty Monday morning, I was waiting outside Christian Kilander’s office. It was my day off, and I’d dressed for it, in old Levi’s and a loose cream-colored shirt that belonged to Shiloh. Seeing me at his door so early, Kilander arched an eyebrow. “To what do I owe this honor?” he said.
“I already owe you a favor,” I told him, “but I need another one. You did law school and your first clerk’s job in Illinois, right?”
“I knew putting my résumé on file was a bad idea,” he said, balancing coffee and his briefcase in the same hand while he unlocked his door.
I followed him inside. “You’ve still got contacts down there, right?” Kilander was a master networker; I doubted he’d let any useful association grow too much moss.
He set his briefcase down on the credenza and his coffee on the desk. “I see where this is going,” he said. “What do you need, and from whom?”
“Vital records, from Rockford,” I said.
“You know those are public,” Kilander said. “You don’t need to pull strings. Just call and ask.”
“Or I could just call Dial-a-Prayer,” I said.
Government records- birth and death certificates, marriage licenses and decrees of divorce, property records, school enrollments- are documents of public record. They also frequently get misfiled. Or names are misspelled. Or the computer is down. It’s best if you can hunt for what you need in person, taking your time and employing all your patience.
If you can’t be there, you need someone who can go the extra mile to help you, someone who recognizes your voice on the phone. If not, you’re condemned to a day of sincere disembodied voices. I’m sorry, sir, I’m sorry, ma’am, we don’t have that information. There’s nothing I can do.
The bottom line: if you want to be able to say you tried, you can call an anonymous clerk. If you really want the information, you find a personal connection.
“All right, kid,” Kilander said. “What are you looking for?”
“Birth, death, school, change-of-name… I’m not sure exactly what I need.”
“So you’re trawling, not spearfishing,” he said. “Okay, I’ll dig up a couple of phone numbers. In fact, I’ll make a few calls, to get you started.” He sat behind his desk, flipped through a Rolodex, spoke without looking up. “Is it casual day over at the detective division?”
“No,” I said. “It’s my day off.”
I staked out an empty conference room and spent the day making follow-up and return phone calls to Rockford. When my cell rang at 4:25 in the afternoon, I was expecting another call from Illinois. That was why I couldn’t place the masculine voice on the other end. “Detective Pribek?”
“Speaking,” I said.
“This is Gray Diaz. I know it’s your day off, but I was wondering if I could have a few moments of your time today. I’d need you to come downtown.”
The BCA. The tests were back.
“That’s fine,” I said slowly. “Where are you? I’m downtown right now.”
Diaz had made himself fairly comfortable in the office of a vacationing prosecutor, Jane O’Malley. He’d spread out his materials on her desk, so that pictures of her two children and her nephews and nieces looked out over the Royce Stewart paperwork.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Please, have a seat.”
O’Malley had good wide armchairs she’d bought herself, low and soft, that guests sank deeply into. I was familiar enough with them to know that they’d be too comfortable to be comfortable, particularly if Diaz continued to stand, thus towering over me. I settled onto the arm of the chair, a half-standing position, instead.
There was a beat while Diaz accepted this. Then he walked over to the window and looked out, although I doubted he was really looking at anything.
“Sarah,” he said, “I haven’t told you anything about myself.” Pause. “I came to work in Blue Earth because my father-in-law is ill. My wife doesn’t want him to have to move, at his age. He’s lived in that town nearly all his life. He’d probably stroke out from the stress of packing everything up and moving out of his farmhouse. You know?”
“I know,” I said.
“I’d much rather be up here, working with you guys, in Hennepin County.” He paused. “If I were, you and I would be colleagues, Sarah. We could have been working cases together.” He turned from the window. “I wish that were the situation here. I wish I didn’t have to meet you under these circumstances.”
“So do I,” I said.
“Because of that,” Diaz said, “because we’re virtually colleagues, I want to give you an opportunity. I’m getting close to the end of my work here.”