“What happened that night?”
“Don’t you guys talk to each other?” Kathy asked as she twisted in her chair and tucked a leg under herself. “I told Floyd Swenson everything I remembered. Six of us went out drinking and I got drunk. I don’t remember much of what happened until the next day when the cops came to tell me Kenny was dead and asked if I knew what happened to Aaron.”
“Start at the beginning of the night, and talk me through all the things you can remember.”
Kathy sighed and stared at the stucco house across the alley. “Aaron picked me up and said we were driving Ken and Melissa to the bar. We met Mike and Betsy there, and we drank a lot. At some point Mike and Betsy left and the next thing I remember is waking up at home.”
“You glossed over breaking up with Aaron.”
Kathy stared at her iced tea. “Yeah, we broke up. It wasn’t the highlight of the evening.”
“Didn’t you think it might have some bearing on his disappearance?”
“Not really,” Kathy shrugged. “People break up all the time and they move on with their lives.”
“It was pretty bad, huh?” Without a response, Pam added, “The first one is always the worst.” She let the comment dangle.
“I guess.”
When Kathy didn’t expand on her comment, Pam asked, “Did Aaron say anything about what he was going to do or where he was going?”
“I don’t think so. I must’ve zoned out after he said we were done.”
“Tell me about what happened with Ken and Melissa in the car while you were arguing with Aaron.”
“I don’t know. Like I said, I was drunk and bummed out. Aaron and I were talking outside his car. The conversation inside the car was like listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher; you know, there were sounds but you can’t make out any of the words. Maybe Ken and Melissa were fighting. I’m not sure. They’d been edgy all night. Ken was trying to pick a fight and Melissa didn’t want to be with him.”
“Ken raped Melissa in the backseat while you and Aaron were standing outside the car. She also said Ken was really mad at Aaron and after they dumped her at home, Ken punched and kicked Aaron then threw him in the backseat. She said you rode with Ken in the front seat.”
“I don’t remember anything about that,” Kathy said, her face betraying no sadness. “I’m sorry to waste your time.”
“Why did Aaron break up with you?”
Kathy swirled the glass, clinking the ice against the side. “I wanted to get married and he wasn’t ready.”
The answer seemed plausible to Pam, but not heartfelt. “Why did Kenny beat up Aaron?”
“I don’t remember Aaron getting beaten up.”
“Why did you ride home in the front seat with Ken after you dropped off Melissa?”
“I told you, I don’t even remember dropping Melissa off. I don’t even know how I got home that night.”
“I know how painful this is,” Pam said. “I’ve been through messy breakups and I know how much it hurts.”
“I’ve been over it for a long time.” Kathy’s voice was flat, like she’d lost the ability to express emotion over the breakup.
“I’ve never gotten over the first one, at least not entirely.” Pam paused and then asked, “Is Walt someone special in your life?”
“Walt’s not special,” Kathy said, her voice without emotion. “He’s just a friend. I do a lot with the church and he’s there a lot.” She paused, then added, “We’re in AA together.”
Pam handed Kathy a business card. “Please call me if you remember anything else. We’ve got something in common — I was burned by my first love too.”
“I bet you weren’t stupid enough to think that crawling into a bottle was a solution.”
“That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t emotionally strung out. A lot of people are suicidal after a breakup. Did you ever consider hurting yourself?”
Kathy took a deep breath and blew it out as she looked at the sky. “When you get deep into a bottle and there doesn’t seem to be any future, a lot of stupid ideas go through your head.”
“Do you think that Aaron might’ve hurt himself?”
Kathy shook her head. “Aaron had moved on. It was me who was messed up.”
“Aaron had a new girlfriend?”
Kathy shook her head. “He just moved on with his life.”
CHAPTER 19
The drive to St. Paul cleared Floyd’s head and once he hit I-694 the morning traffic provided enough stimulation to keep him awake. He wove through the mid-morning I-94 traffic and turned off at the Maryland Avenue exit. A few blocks from the highway a group of Asian boys stepped in front of his brown police car and leered at him with contempt. The drooping shorts hanging to their knees, the expensive athletic shirts with a team logo he didn’t recognize, and their half-backward-facing caps amused him. They crossed slowly in front of him studying the car. The last one in line gave him what was meant to be an intimidating stare. Floyd rolled his eyes. In return he got flipped the bird.
“What a bunch of idiots,” he said to himself. “They think they’re tough until the day they meet someone who really is tough.”
He turned on Arcade and drove to Wheelock Parkway where he wound through a neighborhood of prosperous homes on what had once been the outskirts of St. Paul along Phalen Lake. The homes weren’t large, by twenty-first-century standards, but had been posh and stately during prohibition, when most had been built. At the time, many of them had been owned by mobsters and bootleggers who had migrated to St. Paul because of the local policy of not arresting criminals who moved there to spend their stolen cash, as long as they didn’t break any local laws.
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension building was a newer brick building on the border between a shopping area and a middle-class neighborhood. At the reception desk Floyd paged Laurie Lone Eagle, his former trainee when she’d been with the Pine County Sheriff’s Department in her first law enforcement job. She was now an agent with the BCA specializing in the investigation of child abductions. In addition to her regular duties she served as an informal liaison with Pine County.
“What’s up, Floyd?” Laurie asked, shaking his hand. Her straight black hair was cut short and she wore conservative plum-colored wool slacks and an ivory silk blouse that complimented her Native American skin tone. Her stylish outfit made the badge clipped to her waistband and the pistol on her hip seem incongruous.
“The BCA must pay better than the sheriff’s department,” Floyd joked. “We can’t afford pretty clothes like this.”
“If you spent your money on clothes instead of courting some attractive widow at all the restaurants in Pine County, you could afford more.”
“Someone blabbed about my dinner dates?” Floyd asked, as a blush crept up his neck.
Laurie shook her head. “There are no secrets in Pine County and I still have friends up there. Now, what can I do for you?”
“Someone left a note at my house,” Floyd said, holding up the plastic evidence bag with the envelope and note. “I was hoping that your lab techs could raise a print we could trace.” Holding up two other bags, he went on, “And we have this rope that may have been used to tie up a man who’s been missing for a few years. Also, I have a pair of tennis shoes that appear to have some blood spatter on them.”
Laurie turned the bag in her hand and inspected the rope. “You’re thinking the rusty stains on this rope may be blood?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Floyd replied.
“What’s the link to the shoes?”
“They belonged to a guy who died. It would be really interesting to know if the blood on these match the rope,” Floyd said.
“Do you have anything we can use for a DNA comparison?”