“Yeah,” said Broker.
“Hate this thing,” said J.T. He reached across the table and placed his palm, flat down, on Broker’s nervously tapping fingers. “Quit that. Here, eat your food. It’s getting cold.”
44
The snow sifted down, fine as salt, and turned to vapor when it touched the shiny black interstate. After saying good-bye to J.T., Broker drove north, then west, on the freeway loop that belted the Cities. Exile in a cabin with his baby had strengthened a weak spot in his personality. He had been forced to learn patience.
Patience suggested: Go deeper.
So he drove and thought. He’d written Caren off as a frustrated country club Republican. Wrong.
He’d thought that Keith, buried under a landslide of federal charges, would come clean about Caren, describe a messy confrontation on the icy rocks. But Keith had taunted him, and the eavesdropping feds, about the missing bodies of his alleged victims. Taking credit.
He massaged the dull ache seizing up in his left shoulder.
Didn’t bounce as well as he used to. Why stage a fight and
Why was he wearing her ring? What was that sermon about the Russian cross?
The early afternoon traffic was almost lulling; tires turned like prayer wheels. He fell into the shifting rhythms, cruising through the northern suburbs on U.S. 694: New Brighton, Fridley, Brooklyn Center. At the 94 interchange he turned south through Minneapolis, jogged east to 35 and took it to the bottom leg of the loop, turning east on 494 in Richfield.
Broker thinking, thinking, tapping his right hand on the wheel. Trying to decipher Keith. The broad shadow of a commercial jetliner drifted over the freeway, flaps down, on approach to Minneapolis-St. Paul International. Broker drove through the sweeping shadow, looking for the trap-door that descended down into Keith’s mad thoughts.
He saw Keith’s mind as a labyrinth of austere stonework.
Like a Gothic cathedral, it had tortured figures imprisoned in stained glass, relentlessly vertical buttresses. Gargoyles.
God and Satan. Right and wrong. No middle ground to take up the slack.
The road turned north, curving around St. Paul. He left the freeway at Highway 5 and took the road to Stillwater.
Didn’t tell J.T. what happened in the cell. Would he tell Jeff?
He pulled into his motel, parked and walked into the lobby. The desk clerk handed him two messages. Jeff had called. The second note was from the Washington County Jail. He went to his room and called the jail.
A deputy had called Cook County and received this number. He told Broker that Keith Angland would not be receiving visitors other than his attorney. The assault earned him a move to lockdown status. Did Broker want to press charges?
No charges. The deputy thanked him and hung up. There would be no more communication with Keith. Before calling Jeff, Broker took off his coat, lay down on the bed and stared at the uniform pattern of holes in the ceiling tiles. Nothing emerged Rorschach-like from their monotony.
He heaved off the bed and reached for the telephone on the desk. Jeff would have to wait. This was between him and Keith.
“How’s Kit?” he asked when Jeff was on the line.
“Coming down with a cold. What happened?”
“Keith baited me, practically admitted to the murders of Caren and Gorski and dared everyone within earshot to prove he did it. Then he accused me of having an affair with Caren and jumped me. It took two deputies and Garrison to wrestle him down and cuff him.”
“How are you?”
“Sore. I’m getting too old to grapple with psychos.”
“That bad, huh?”
Not lying. Omission. “He’s wearing her wedding ring on his frostbitten little finger. They took off the first joint. It’s pretty gruesome.”
Jeff said, “Garrison did some follow-up after talking to you.
Two Duluth agents picked up the Subaru this morning. They filled me in on their theory about how the Russians made their approach to Keith. Didn’t know his mom was Russian.”
“Yeah. Garrison walked me through it. And I gave him the letters. But we’ll never see James, they’re too taken with themselves and their big case.”
“Maybe,” said Jeff. “Maybe not.”
“How’s that?”
“You’ve got a sympathizer out there. Got a call with a message specifically for you, to use at your discretion. Looks like the feds might trip on their trench coats. That fake bomb with the tongue in it? Widely reported in the press to be the property of a missing FBI informant. That tongue?”
“What about it?”
“It’s a woman’s tongue.”
“What?”
“No kidding. A person called me, who shall remain anonymous because I gave my word-but they could work in the state crime lab-they heard it from somebody in the Hennepin County coroner’s office, who got it straight from a big mouth at the FBI lab at Quantico. The feds ran DNA tests on the tongue and guess what-it had two of these DNA markers-amelogenin markers, I think they’re called.
Males only have one. They mislabeled the report and put it out.”
Broker touched his bruised cheek where Keith had hit him.
“That could play hell with their case.”
“You bet. My anonymous caller also said the tongue was pickled with formaldehyde, like they use in a medical school.
The feds probably have a hundred agents checking med schools for missing tongues.”
“Being real thorough about it, too, I’ll bet.”
“There you go. The caller also suggested this is the kind of bone Layne Wanger at the St. Paul paper might like to chew on.”
“So, it’s a gift,” said Broker.
“Spend it wisely,” said Jeff. “What do you want to do?”
“Depends. Is Kit holding up?”
“Sure. She’s graduated from Pooh to the hard stuff. Sally had her watching
Broker smiled, keeping it in separate compartments. “Okay, then I’d like to poke around a few more days. See if I can turn up something on James.”
45
The ebony marble art deco gallery of the St. Paul City Hall reminded Broker of the set for an old Flash Gordon serial.
Any minute he expected Ming the Merciless to rise up out of the floor mosaic on a dais surrounded by fakey smoke and overweight spear carriers. What did rise on a dais in the dark, pillared concourse, and did in fact rotate, was
