Johannsen, got a bunch of DWIs. I checked William Lane, he shared an address with Todd Williamson in 'eighty- eight and 'eighty-nine…'
'Got him,' Virgil said.
'Yup. Haven't found his parents yet, they left too long ago,' Sandy said.
'Keep looking. How about the grandmother?' Virgil asked.
'Ralph and Helen Lane. Ralph died a long time ago. Helen is still alive, she lives up in Roseville, but I haven't been able to reach her.'
'Give me those addresses.' He propped his notebook in the center of the steering wheel, kept one eye half- cocked toward the highway, took the addresses down.
TEN MINUTES AFTER THAT, Sandy was back. 'The Williamsons are in Arizona. I've got an address but no phone number. I'll try to get one.'
'Good. If you have to, check on neighbors, have them go next door and find out the number.'
'Okay. I'm looking at license photos on Williamson and Lane and they are indeed the same person, though Lane has some facial hair and an earring,' Sandy said.
'E-mail them.'
He got off the phone, stayed on the accelerator, took a call from Davenport as he swung onto I-35E south of the Cities. 'I talked to Sandy. She says you're rolling on this thing.'
'I think so.'
'You got anything for a trial?' Davenport asked. 'Gotta think about trial.'
'Not yet. Gonna have to think of something cute, to get that. Right now, I'm trying to nail down the fact that my guy's a psycho.'
'All right. Stay in touch.'
HE CAME OFF I-35E, cut east across the south end of the Cities on I-494, and then south on Highway 61, the same one that Bob Dylan revisited, heading into Cottage Grove. Off at 80th Street, he called Sandy, who got on MapQuest and took him straight in to Johannsen's place.
Johannsen's son came to the door, wearing rapper jeans with the crotch at knee level, and a T-shirt that was four sizes too big; he had a GameBoy in his hand. His eyes were at half-mast, and the odor of marijuana floated out of the house when he opened the door.
'She's at work,' he said, sullenly.
'Where?'
'Either SuperAmerica or Tom Thumb. She works at both of them,' he said. 'I don't know where she's working today.'
KAREN JOHANNSEN was at the SuperAmerica, throwing expired doughnuts in a dumpster. 'I have some questions about William Lane, who was convicted of assaulting you,' Virgil said, flashing his ID.
'Shoot. That was twenty years ago, almost.' She was a short, broad woman with black hair and watery brown eyes, a pushed-in nose, older-looking than her years.
'I know that,' Virgil said. 'What we're trying to do is, we're trying get a grip on what kind of a guy he is. The assaults…were they heavy-duty, or just sort of…routine domestic fighting?'
'He was trying to kill me,' Johannsen said, matter-of-factly. She waved her hand in front of her face, like a fan. They were too close to the dumpster, which smelled of spoiled bananas and meat, and sour milk. 'He would have, too, if he'd been stronger. The first time, he was hitting me with a chair, and he couldn't get a good swing and I was running around, so he never did hit me square. The neighbors called the cops. There was a car in the neighborhood, and they got there in time. But he would have killed me.'
'What set it off?' Virgil asked.
'Basically, we were drinking, and started arguing,' she said. 'I was working and he wasn't and I told him he was a worthless piece of shit who couldn't even pay the rent, and he punched my arm and I hit him with my purse, and knocked him down, and he just went off…completely out of control.'
'What about the second time?' Virgil asked. 'When he went to jail?'
'That time, he choked the shit out of me,' she said. Her hand went to her neck, as she remembered. 'He came home, drunk. I was asleep, he woke me up and wanted, you know, and I didn't want to. He started screaming at me, and I wised off, and he jumped on me and choked me. He had some friends with him, out in the living room, and they heard the fight…One of his friends pulled me off, and then I wasn't breathing so good, so the girlfriend of the friend called the cops, and they called an ambulance and they started me breathing again.'
'That was all for the two of you?'
'Yeah. When he was in jail, I moved. Changed my address and got an unlisted phone…but I saw him anyway. We had some of the same friends. But we were all done, and he didn't come around anymore,' Johannsen said. 'Good thing, too. He would have killed me, sooner or later.'
'Did he ever mention his parents?' Virgil asked.
'Said his mom was killed in a car wreck,' she said. 'Didn't say who his dad was.'
'What about his adoptive parents…some people named Williamson?'
She shook her head. 'Oh…I thought they were his foster-care people, or something. They adopted him?'
'Yes. When he was a baby.'
'Jeez-I didn't know that,' she said. 'That makes it worse.'
'Worse.'
'Yeah. I met them two or three times, I guess, going over there with Bill. We used to go over there for beer- he had a key. But. They were like, total assholes.'
'Yeah?'
'Yeah. Like they believed in slavery,' she said. 'They used to tell him about how much he owed them-in money. Bill ran away when he was fourteen; he was living on the street when I met him. He ran away because they wanted him to work in their store all the time. They called it earning his keep, but most kids who are thirteen or fourteen don't have to work sixty hours a week. That's what they wanted. No kidding-they were assholes.'
'Did Bill ever call himself Todd Williamson?'
She shook her head: 'Nope. He was Lane to all of us guys-the people he hung around with.'
'Good guy, bad guy?' Virgil asked. 'I mean, when he was sober?'
'Not bad, when he was sober,' Johannsen said. She looked at her thumb; it had frosting on it, and she wiped it on the dumpster. 'Bad when he was drunk. But that was twenty years ago. He was a teenager. You work in this store, you realize that a lot of teenagers are assholes, and a lot of them change when they get older.'
'Think Bill would change?'
She shrugged. 'I don't know. He was like a dog that you beat for ten years. Not the dog's fault if he goes crazy.'
SANDY CALLED. 'I got the grandmother. She's home. I told her to stay there.'
'Call her back, tell her I'll be there in half an hour,' Virgil said.
HE SAID GOOD-BYE to Johannsen and headed north, twenty minutes to an inner-ring suburban neighborhood, green lawns, cracked driveways, older ranch-style and split-level homes, two long-haired teenagers doing intricate and athletic bike tricks.
Helen Lane, Williamson's natural grandmother, was alone in her living room, watching television when Virgil pulled into the driveway. She came to the door, kept the screen locked: 'I don't know where Todd is. I don't want to know. He was in jail for a while. Did he do something else?
'Did he give you a hard time?' Virgil asked.
'He'd steal money from me. He'd sneak into the house and steal,' she said.
'How'd he find out you were his grandmother?' Virgil asked.
'He was smart. Got his brains from my daughter,' she said. 'I guess the Williamsons had a paper, maybe his birth certificate.'
'Did he ever figure out who his real father was?'
She frowned and said, 'None of us knew who it was. I don't think Maggie knew, for sure. She was running wild.'
'You never knew?'
'No…and after she died, there was no way to find out. Sure as heck weren't no men coming around to ask about it.'
