even if I come up dry, computerization isn’t total yet; not by a long sight. We’ve still got a lot of paper trails lying around if you’re old enough to remember where to look. It just takes a really long time, doing it the old-fashioned way. You want me to keep at it?’
‘With all my heart.’ Magozzi turned his back on the evil potato chip bag and headed for the door. ‘By the way, how are they fixed financially? Are they going to go under if this game doesn’t make it to market?’
Tommy looked at him as if he were crazy. ‘Are you kidding? The company did over ten million last year, and it wasn’t the first time. Lowest net worth on any of the partners’ – he pulled a single sheet out from under the potato chip bag and glanced at it – ‘is four million. That’s Annie Belinsky. Woman’s got a clothes budget you wouldn’t believe.’
Magozzi stared at him. ‘They’re rich?’
‘Well, yeah . . .’ A cell phone chirped and Tommy started pawing through the mess of printouts on his desk. ‘Damnit, where’d I’d put that thing?’
‘It’s mine,’ Magozzi said, pulling his cell phone out of his coat pocket. ‘Get me hard copies on whatever you find, will you, Tommy? And while you’re at it, see what you can dig up on Grace MacBride’s permit to carry.’ He flipped open his phone. ‘Magozzi.’
Tommy watched as Magozzi listened to the voice on the other end. The blood suddenly seemed to drain from his face and in the next second, he was running out the door.
20
The town of Calumet, Wisconsin, hadn’t received this much media attention since Elton Gerber’s six- hundred-fifty-seven-pound pumpkin had fallen off the back of his truck on the way to the Great Pumpkin Contest in 1993. But even then, they’d missed the real story.
The TV news had covered it tongue-in-cheek, since the pumpkin had been the only casualty, and not one reporter ever connected that shattered pumpkin with the bullet Elton put in the roof of his mouth two weeks later. The grand prize that year had been $15,000, just enough to cover the balloon payment due on Elton’s farm, and there was no doubt he would have won it. His closest competitor weighed in at a paltry five-hundred-thirty pounds.
Not a tongue-in-cheek story, Sheriff Mike Halloran thought. More like an American tragedy, and the media missed the point. And they were missing it this time, too.
The thump of rotors from somewhere outside barely penetrated his consciousness. He was used to the news helicopters now; used to the vans with their satellite-dish hats cruising the streets of his town, stopping anyone who looked mournful enough or frightened enough to deliver a titillating sound bite; used to the clamor of reporters from the front steps of the building whenever a deputy tried to get outside to his car.
According to the autopsy report, John and Mary Kleinfeldt had died between midnight and one A.M. Monday morning. Less than eight hours later it was a lead story on every channel in Wisconsin, as interchangeable anchor people reported the small-town tragedy of ‘ . . . a God-fearing elderly couple savagely murdered while at their prayers in church.’
There was no mention of the bloody crosses carved into their chests – so far Halloran had managed to keep that little gruesome detail under wraps – but even without it, the story was irresistible to reporters, and mesmerizing to the public. The idea of someone shooting the elderly was bad enough; stage the crime in the supposed sanctuary of a church and you added outrage to the horror, and maybe a little fear. Bad news, great ratings.
Later that morning Deputy Danny Peltier’s death hit the airwaves as a bulletin, less than half an hour after it happened, while Halloran was still standing over the ruin of his body, looking for the poor kid’s freckles, weeping like a girl. By sunset Monday print reporters and TV news crews had increased the population of Calumet by at least a hundred, and now, a full day later, they were all still here.
But they were missing the story, every one of them; missing the tragedy beneath the tragedy, the crime beneath the crime. None of them knew that Danny Peltier, freckled and fresh and heartbreakingly innocent, had died because Sheriff Michael Halloran had forgotten the key to the Kleinfeldts’ front door.
‘Mike?’
Before he looked up, he cleared his face of whatever expression had been there, and raised dispassionate eyes to where Bonar stood in the doorway.
‘Hey, Bonar.’
His old friend walked closer and scowled at him, looking like an angry Jonathan Winters. ‘You look like shit, buddy.’
‘Thanks.’ Halloran set aside one of the tilting towers of paperwork on his desk, pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit up.
Bonar sat down and waved a beefy hand at the smoke wafting toward him across the desk. ‘I could arrest you for smoking in a public building, you know.’
Halloran nodded and took another pull off his cigarette. He hadn’t had one in his office in years, and couldn’t remember the last time smoking had tasted this good. Pleasure enhanced by the illicit nature of the act. No wonder people committed crimes. ‘I’m celebrating. I’ve cracked the case.’
Bonar gave him the once-over, taking in the uniform that looked slept in, the circles under his eyes that were almost as dark as his hair. ‘You don’t look like you’re celebrating. Besides, that is such bullshit.
‘You did not. You told me Father Newberry did it.’
‘That was just wishful thinking, and it was also before I knew the Kleinfeldts had actually reproduced. Minute you told me that I pegged the kid, and you know it. Hated to give up the padre, though. It was so perfect. Crosses carved in the chests, big inheritance for the church . . . I mean, you had to love the old guy as a suspect.’ He leaned forward and poked around the paper clutter on the desk. ‘You got any food in here?’
‘Nope.’
Bonar sighed unhappily and leaned back, lacing his fingers across his expansive belly. His brown uniform shirt gaped between buttons that were hanging on for dear life. ‘So angels came down and told you the kid did it, long after I told you the kid did it, may I point out, but such insight, my friend, is useless. We don’t know who or where the kid is, what he looks like, how old he is . . .’
Halloran smiled a little. This was good. Talking about the case with Bonar, focusing on that and nothing else – it was a straight line he could stand on for as long as it lasted. ‘The kid was born in Atlanta. Thirty-one years ago.’
‘Oh yeah? You had a vision? What?’
‘Tax returns. First ones we had were thirty-some years ago, back when the Kleinfeldts were the Bradfords. They weren’t rich then. Newly married, probably, just starting out, low enough on the income ladder to deduct medical expenses. Big ones for that day and age, their fourth year in Atlanta. I figured maternity expenses.’
Bonar straightened a little in his chair as his interest piqued.
‘So I called county records down there, asked for Baby Bradfords for that year, and there it was. Baby Bradford born to Martin and Emily Bradford, October 23, 1969.’
Bonar seemed to hold his breath for a moment. ‘Wait a minute. The Kleinfeldts were killed on October 23.’
Halloran nodded grimly. ‘Happy birthday, baby.’
‘Damn. DOB, DOD. The kid really
Halloran took a last drag and then dropped his cigarette into an empty Coke can. ‘Too bad you’re not the district attorney. That guy’s a hardnose. Wants fingerprints, witnesses, you know, the kind of forensic evidence we don’t have? The kid didn’t even inherit.’
Bonar shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter. You don’t carve up your parents’ bodies just because you want the money. He had something else going, and we aren’t going to like looking at it.’ He blew his cheeks out in a long sigh, pushed himself wearily out of the chair, and walked over to the window.
Helmut Krueger’s farm was across the road, and he watched a line of Holsteins filing from the pasture toward the barn for evening milking, thinking that maybe he should have been a farmer. Cows hardly ever killed their parents. ‘You run the kid’s name through the computer yet?’
