Think fast.
Everyone tended to forget how fast Keith could think on his feet, how slippery his mind worked, how he could adapt and innovate…
Broker had to stop at a convenience store and check a phone book. He didn’t know where Keith lived. When he had the address he checked it in the
Gentle snow. Kids in colorful mufflers and mittens toting sleds. He turned off Highway 95, onto the back roads.
The house would look great once it was fixed up, but right now, with so much trim missing and patchy from sanding, it had warts.
The key was where Keith said it was, embedded in a wedge of snow under the decorative rim of the garage light. He went up the steps and let himself in. The heat was turned down, cold enough for his breath to cloud.
Two steps into the front hall he looked into the barren living room and…
The footlocker lay on its side on the dull, dusty maple floor.
It had resided in Caren’s closet when they were married.
Every Christmas…
Strewn around the trunk, he saw the set of decorations, minus the loon, he had turned out on a jigsaw the first winter of their marriage. The room was empty, no furniture, so he slid his back down a wall and sat on the floor.
The wooden baubles caught a random moment in Caren’s life. The house was like a blueprint of her hopes. Roomy enough for a big family. Miles of yard to run in. Near the water. Swimming and sailboats and canoes. But also a shambles.
He heaved himself up and went into the kitchen. On the counter, filmed with dust, he saw a perfectly preserved lump of chocolate halved by the neat incision of teeth marks.
The kitchen drawers were tidy but contained no tools. He backtracked to the breezeway and found drawers where the tools were kept. He took a WunderBar and went down the basement stairs. A musty veil of dust hung over the den. A discarded pair of rubber gloves lay on a pile of siding torn out of the wall. The feds hadn’t cleaned up after themselves.
They’d brought the dog in. The dog trained to sniff out money saturated with particles of cocaine. The dog had found the stash.
Like Keith said, under the antelope. A hidden niche was built around an old chimney base.
Empty. So it wasn’t where Keith hid it, and the feds didn’t have it. If they did, they’d be posing with it on TV. And Keith had been exact about one thing-find me a thief.
In a bathroom, off the den, he found a box of Band-Aids and put a square patch over the bruised cheek. Then he sat down on the couch. The stuffed twelve-point white tail and the antelope peered down with glass eyes from the wall over the hole in the paneling. Two armchairs, the couch, a coffee table. A desk that served as a storage platform for Keith’s trophies. Pistol. Skeet. Golf.
Connect the dots. Caren found the money, took it, along with the tape. Had it on the trip north. Did something with it. Hid it. James knew. Then it all happened and-not like James
But proving it? His eyes roved over the musty basement.
Jeff had said this was where Caren set up the camera. Keith must have been brain-dead to bring the bad guys and a suitcase full of money right into his house.
Why would he do that? Caren would have to know…
Caren knew. He knew Caren knew.
Conventional wisdom: The control freak went out of control.
Broker pictured it, working a nervous rhythm with his palm on his thigh. Keith the perfectionist, spurned. So Keith the racist. The drunkard. The dirty cop. Wife beater. Murder-er.
People were pleased to see him go down. Almost like a group of siblings getting back at their tormenting, stronger, smarter older brother. Love and hate tangled tight. “And he did this and he did that and he…”
The only hot-button sin Keith had neglected on his suicidal plunge was drowning puppies.
When he was good, he was very, very good. When he was bad, he did it perfectly.
The wall clock said twenty to twelve. He was going to be late for lunch with J.T. Merryweather. As he let himself out, he debated whether to go in the living room and collect the strewn tree decorations and pack them. Her father had died, but her mother could still be living in Williston and might want them.
But he could not act on the impulse. This was still Keith’s house, and he was very aware of trespass. Broker turned away from the living room, walked out, closed the door behind him, put the house key back where he’d found it.
He got in his truck, fastened his seat belt, turned the key and drove west, toward St. Paul.
43
U.S. 94 formed a moat in front of the cement bastille that was St. Paul Police Headquarters. Broker grabbed an exit and parked in the visitors’ lot.
A beefy cop behind a bullet-proof bubble in the lobby squinted at Broker’s badge and ID, called up to J.T., and pointed to the elevator. Broker knew the way to Homicide.
J.T. Merryweather was a really black man with fine Carib features and pouchy lavender circles under his eyes. He had given up the cigarettes and had put twenty pounds on his hips that he disguised with expensive tailoring. Coming into the Homicide bay, Broker noticed that J.T. was spending twice what he used to on suits and shoe leather. J.T. was a captain now. He had his own alcove and desk.
J.T. spotted Broker and reached for a ringing phone. “Be right with you. I’m up to my ass, putting this new gang task force together.”
Officious. Not making solid eye contact.
A chubby detective waddled by. Broker quipped, “Hey, Reardon, still keeping Sara Lee in the black, huh.”
Expressionless, Reardon said, “Nothin’ personal, Broker, but fuck you.” He shouldered by.
The treatment. Janey had called it right. Keith was a plague carrier. Broker had touched him. The dismissive distance set a boundary, implied in J.T.’s gesture and the THE BIG LAW/251
brush-off from Reardon. And the other Homicide cops in the room-most of whom knew him-barely acknowledged his presence. None of the old horseplay or lurid jokes.
No bitching. Always a bad sign.
