“That,” Kerm added, “and there may have been people being protected. Allegiances change over time. There are so many instances where a crime is solved after a couple break up and the scorned girlfriend calls to turn in the guy who she’s been providing an alibi for, sometimes for years.”
“Melissa Smith had broken up with Ken while he was in Korea,” Floyd said. “I wonder if she’d been seeing someone else. If she was, and Ken found out about it, he might’ve gone on the warpath.”
“What if it was Aaron?” Kerm asked.
“Well,” Floyd said, “that would explain a lot of things. Ken might have taken it out on both Melissa and Aaron. If Ken found out that last night, he might have beat up Aaron and the attack on Melissa would make more sense.”
“I don’t buy it,” Kerm said. “Aaron and Kathy Tucker were an item.”
“You’re being naïve. Teen-aged guys and girls are in constant turmoil — dating one person this week and the next week dating a different one. There can be lots of hard feelings and best friends can quickly become worst enemies. We get calls to the high school a couple times a month about some guy mad because his ex-girlfriend is dating one of his buddies.”
“I guess I’ll talk to Kathy Tucker again,” Floyd said. “She seems to be at the center of all the circles I draw.”
Tones for a fire call sounded on Kerm’s radio. “I guess it’s time to get back on the road.” The dispatcher called the Pine City volunteer fire department for a barn fire in Chengwatana Township near the opposite corner of Pine County. “It’ll take me more than half an hour to get there at a-hundred-miles-an-hour. I hope someone else is closer.”
“I hope the firemen are closer,” Floyd said.
CHAPTER 22
Floyd was sitting in his office when Pam Ryan came in early for the day shift. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.
“Someone left me another note in the middle of the night,” he said, getting up with his coffee cup. “I need another cup of coffee.”
“I ran a background check on Kathy Tucker’s friend,” Pam said as they walked out of the bullpen. “His name is Walter Flaherty and he’s been through the jail turnstile a couple times. No violent crimes, just shoplifting, burglary, and petty theft. He’s been in and out of most of the county jails around the Twin Cities. It seems that winter was a bigger problem for him than the summer. Kathy told me that they shared a problem with alcohol, so I’m guessing that’s he was a vagrant in Minneapolis who used the jails for a warm bed and a breakfast.”
Pam poured coffee for both of them and took a sip. “Yuck! This is even worse than usual,” she said after spitting into the sink. “It must be left over from the afternoon shift?”
“I made it a couple hours ago,” Floyd said, looking sheepish. “There weren’t any directions so I put in twelve scoops of coffee to make twelve cups of coffee.”
“Twelve scoops? I usually use four scoops to a pot if I want it extra strong.” Pam dumped the remaining coffee into the sink and measured fresh ground coffee for a new pot.
“Kathy Tucker’s friend, Walt, has been working as a janitor and handyman at the Hinckley Methodist Church,” she said as she measured out water. “I spoke with the pastor and he said Walt’s been a good worker and they have an agreement that keeps him on the wagon. One of the parishioners puts Walt up in an apartment over her garage. He lives on his own. It sounds like Kathy is his only friend in town. Walt looks a little grizzled and that puts people off. The funny thing is that the church has been providing new clothes and they bought him an electric razor, but Walt seems to prefer his grizzled look.”
“I don’t recall any recent problems with petty theft around Hinckley,” Floyd said as they returned to the bullpen, “so I assume Walt is keeping his nose clean. Maybe he was only stealing to buy booze. With a regular job, a place to sleep, and no booze, he doesn’t need the cash. Or maybe Kathy Tucker is his support group and together they keep each other on the wagon.”
“Any news from the BCA,” Pam asked.
“Laurie Lone Eagle left a message yesterday afternoon,” Floyd said. “They raised some prints off the first note and the envelope and they put them into AFIS. We should hear back today if they found a match. They also had results from the rope. There were traces of both human and deer blood on it. They said the blood is old and degraded, but they might be able to test for DNA if we ever want to attempt a match. The most interesting thing is that the blood type on the rope matches the blood on Ken Solstad’s shoes. That’s not the same as a DNA match, but it’s likely they’re the same considering the picture.”
“That was quick,” Pam said.
“Laurie said she was going to pull in an IOU to get the envelope and rope examined. The response was so quick I wonder if she has compromising pictures of someone,” Floyd said, grinning.
“What should we do today?” Pam asked.
“You should get some work done,” the Sheriff’s bass voice came from the hallway. He walked into the bullpen with an unlit cigar clenched between his teeth and a coffee cup in his hand. His dark hair was in the same slicked-back cut he’d worn for forty years.
“You’re in early, John,” Floyd said.
“You can’t all spend your time chasing ghosts in an old picture,” Sheriff John Sepanen said as he poured himself a cup of fresh coffee. “There are modern crimes to investigate.”
“Someone left another note on my door in the middle of the night,” Floyd said. “This one said, ‘Let him rest in peace.’ Someone doesn’t want this case examined.”
“In every case we investigate there is someone who doesn’t want us snooping around,” the sheriff said. He took a sip of coffee and looked surprised. “This isn’t half bad! We should give a commendation to whoever made this pot and make them the official coffee brewer.”
“I think someone from the night shift made it,” Pam blurted out, not wanting permanent coffee duty.
“Let’s not make this Ken Solstad thing the only case we’re working on,” Sepanen said, looking directly at Floyd.
“Actually,” Floyd said, “the focus is on determining what happened to Aaron Roberts and why he disappeared. I’m convinced that he’s dead.”
“He’s not dead until we have a body,” Sepanen said. “When we have a body, we have a murder investigation. The department did a missing person’s investigation at the time and came up empty. I don’t need everyone in the department repeating that investigation now because we found a murky picture that might be Aaron Roberts on the night he might’ve disappeared.”
“We found the place the picture was taken,” Pam said. “The man who owns the property found a rope next to the tree in the picture and the BCA found human blood on the rope.”
“The rope was found right after the Roberts kid was missed? I don’t remember anything about a rope,” Sepanen asked.
“No,” Floyd replied. “We identified the site where the picture of Aaron Roberts was taken. When we questioned the property owner he remembered finding a rope by the tree. He went to his storage shed and gave it to us.”
“The guy found this rope right after the Roberts kid was kidnapped and stored it in his shed until now?”
“He didn’t find it until spring, and he’s not absolutely sure it was the year that Aaron Roberts disappeared. That’s why we had the BCA test it. I thought that if there was human blood on it, we might have a link to the Roberts disappearance.”
“Please tell me,” the sheriff said, “we didn’t pay taxpayer money to do DNA testing on a rope that might have been used to tie up a missing man that might’ve been found six months after the crime and stored in a shed for maybe fifteen years.”