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“I can always tell when you’re upset.”
“Why would I be upset?”
“Beats me.”
“You’re sick, Taylor,” she informed me. “Sending a dozen long-stemmed roses to a woman on the a
“I thought it was a kindly enough gesture,” I replied in my defense. “Telling a dear friend who’s down that someone cared.”
“Oh, then that explains the card,” she said.
“The card?”
“The unsigned card. ‘Oh, baby, oh, baby, oh, baby, thank you for last night and all the nights that came before.’ Remember?”
“I was joking about you going to the baseball game with me on such short notice,” I protested.
“Yeah, right. My oldest—who isn’t too thrilled that I divorced her father in the first place—signed for the flowers. She read the card. She wanted to know if it was a message from my lover.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her the truth. It was from a sick friend.”
“Did she believe you?”
“Only when I told her the sick friend’s name.”
I ignored the insult and insisted that I was only trying to be considerate.
“Since when?”
“It’s the new me. A man for the mille
“What do you want, Taylor?”
I held my thumb and forefinger in front of my eye and squinted through the quarter inch that separated them. “An itty, bitty favor.”
A
Lieutenant A
She began life as an elementary schoolteacher in Anoka, a fact the magazine found particularly ironic. Just for the giggles she decided to join the local Ride-Along program and went patrolling with Anoka County deputies. That was all it took. She was hooked. A
I remember when she arrived. We gave her the cold shoulder, my colleagues and I, calling her “Miss Betty” behind her back—Miss Betty being the name of the woman who taught Romper Room on TV. One day she leaned across my desk, smiled her dazzling smile, and a
I told her I knew that.
“And now you know that I know it,” she told me. “I know a lot of other things, too. So, you want to catch bad guys with me or what?”
We caught a lot of them together.
“Do you know the Dakota County sheriff?” I now asked.
“Yes. Ed Teeters. Nice man.”
“Nice enough to let a PI snoop around one of his investigations?”
A
“Alison Do
“Good luck,” she said. “I worked the case …”
I don’t know why I was surprised. Solving unsolvable murders is, after all, A
“Teeters asked me if I could give him a fresh perspective. I couldn’t,” she admitted.
She opened a lower desk drawer and took out a huge family photo album—her murder book, a grisly, gory, gruesome account of every homicide investigation she had ever worked, the investigations presented in chronological order with the most recent in front. Each account contained before-and-after photographs of the victim, a detailed description of the killing, a synopsis of the investigation, and final disposition of the case. Homicides that were solved had a blue tab; those that remained unsolved had a red tab. There were only a few red tabs, and most of these were near the front. A
“Theories?” I asked.
A
“Who?”
A
“Based on what? The tape?”
“No, his MO. He was convicted of rape eight years ago; what he did was knock on the woman’s door in broad daylight. When she answered, he pointed a gun at her, shoved her in, raped her, left.”
“Does one conviction constitute an MO?”
“He was convicted for one, but the arresting officers figured him for a half dozen others they couldn’t get positive IDs on. Victims wouldn’t come forward.”
“Why take Alison with him?”
“The one time he was convicted, he stayed in the house for five hours. Made himself lunch between attacks. This time he didn’t have five hours to enjoy himself; the husband was on his way home.”
“If he did it for revenge, why not simply kill her and leave?”
“Where’s the sport in that?”
She had a point. Still, did she have anything that made it more than a theory?
“He’s free, isn’t he?”
“I asked a stupid question.” I admitted.
A
“Would you?”
A