Cold Winter Rain (7 page)

I took out one of Grubbs’ cards and gave it to her.  “Call Grubbs, uh, Captain Grubbs.  I think he’ll vouch for me.”

She took the card and studied it for a second, then looked up at me and nodded.  “Would you mind waiting outside for just a moment?”

“
No, I don’t mind.”  I walked out into the exterior office and heard the bolt turn after the door closed.

Two minutes later the door opened, and Coach Kronenberg motioned me in.

“All right,” she said.  “You are who you say you are.  I’ll be glad to do whatever I can to help find Kris.  All the young women who play soccer for me are like family.”

“
Why did you lock me out of the office while you called?”

The coach smiled a little.  “My father was a police officer in Chicago for twenty-five years.  I can spot a concealed pistol from half a block.  And I didn’t want you to hear me call Captain Grubbs, either.  I can be pretty blunt.”

“No need to apologize.”

“
I wasn’t apologizing.”  A small lift of the eyebrows.  A challenge?  “So you’re looking for Kris Kramer,” she said.  “What did Don Kramer tell you?”

That was an interesting question.  I was, however technically, still a member of the Alabama bar.  Under United States law, attorney-client privilege does not die with the client.

During the Whitewater investigation, the Office of the Independent Counsel tried to obtain copies of the files of James Hamilton, Esq., the lawyer who had represented Vincent W. Foster, Jr.  Foster was Deputy White House Counsel, a close confidant of President William Jefferson Clinton and his wife, later Senator and Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton -- some said especially of the wife -- and he had been found shot dead on the mall near the Washington Monument.

Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was, therefore, somewhat interested in Vincent Foster.

Foster’s lawyer objected to the subpoena.

Considering that objection, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the attorney-client privilege “weakens” after the client’s death, and ordered Hamilton to turn over his files.

Hamilton appealed the issue to the United States Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court reversed the lower court and held, 6-3, that “[i]t has been generally . . . accepted, for well over a century, that the attorney-client privilege survives the death of the client in a case such as this.”

The fact that a lawyer was consulted, however, is not privileged, even while the client is alive, and I had already told the coach that I'd been hired to find Kris Kramer.

“Don Kramer traveled to my office in Gulf Shores on Saturday and hired me to look for Kris.  I’m a lawyer, but looking for missing persons is -- uhh -- something I do.”  I didn’t see any point in telling her my office was in the back of a bar.

Kronenberg walked back to the desk at the end of the room underneath the window and stuck her feet into a pair of blue thongs.  Then she opened a desk drawer and clipped on a small black leather fanny pack.

“Let’s not talk here.  I’m seeing soccer balls in my sleep, these days.  Would you like to get a cup of coffee?”

“
All right,” I said.  “I’ll follow you, Coach.”

On the second floor of the student union building, the coffee shop commanded a view of the dormitory quadrangle through huge double-hung windows.  For some reason the shop was named The Basement.

I ordered a medium regular coffee.  The coach ordered a tall skinny latté, and we settled in at a small table beneath one of the windows.

Coach Kronenberg poured a blue packet of Equal into her latte, stirred, then looked up at me.  “Well, Mr. Slate.  I don’t know what you know and what you don’t know,” she said.  “So why don’t you start?”

“
I don’t know much.”  I told her about Kramer’s visit to Gulf Shores and about the early morning phone call from Grubbs and identifying Kramer’s body.  I left out the part about the rain falling into his unseeing eyes.

Sally Kronenberg didn’t say a word while I spoke.  Her eyes stayed locked on mine.

When I finished, she picked up her latté and took a sip.  “Coffee here is good,” she said. “‘One hundred per cent Columbian,’ like the sign says.”

“
Yeah.  Not bad.  I read somewhere it’s the roast, though, not the beans.”

“
I wouldn’t know.  I just drink the stuff.  So.  What do you want to know?”

“
What kind of girl is Kris Kramer?”

“
You’re hoping I will tell you I suspect she does drugs or is into kinky sex or something.”

“
I just need to know the facts.”

She cocked her head to one side.  “Just the facts, ma’am.”

“Something like that.”

She shook her head enough to make the hair on the sides of her face swing past her cheeks.  “If a missing girl was into drugs or bad boys, it would make it easier to start looking for her, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose so.  There would be a place to start, the end of the thread to start pulling.”

She was silent for a moment, sipping her coffee, a slightly faraway look in her eyes.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “Kris is one of the best girls I’ve ever coached.  Incredible work ethic.  Smart.  Steady.  No drugs.  No bad boys.  No boys at all as far as I know.”

“No boys?”

“
No girls either.”  She took another small sip of her latte.  A tiny bit of foam clung to her lower lip.  “Not all female athletes are lesbians, Mr. Slate.”

I had a sip of my own coffee, now almost cool enough to drink.  “I may be a redneck,” I said.  “But even I know that.”

“Umm.” She made a little motion with her head that could have been agreement or affirmation or a neurological twitch.

“
Did Kris seem particularly religious?”

She shook her head slowly.  “No, I wouldn’t say so.  We have an FCA -- Fellowship of Christian Athletes -- chapter here, and some of my girls participate, but I don’t recall that Kris did.  Of course, we are a church-affiliated school, so perhaps more of the athletes here are observant than, say, would be the case at a state university.”

“Which church?”

“
Episcopal.”

“
Not Catholic?”

“
No.  I suppose you’ve met Kris’s mother.  I understand that she is quite devout.  But Kris didn’t seem to be.  More like her father, I guess.”

We sat without speaking.  Through the big old windows of the student union building, I could see students moving about the campus with a purpose.  To ward off the damp and chill of the Alabama winter, many wore technical outer gear that would have sufficed for a Himalayan expedition.

Into the silence, the coach said, “I think you should talk with Kris’s roommate.”

“
So do I.  The chief – excuse me, the director of campus security – didn’t think it was necessary, though.”

“
I wouldn’t want to get into any trouble with the police, Mr. Slate.  But if you were back in my office in, say, thirty minutes, and Kris’s roommate just happened to be there too, I couldn’t stop you from talking, could I?”

She smiled, stood, and stretched.  “This cold weather makes me want to be in front of a fire on a blanket.  See you around, Slate.”

Akilah Ziyenge was just under six feet tall.  Her hair was in braids, and she spoke with a British accent.  We talked in the assistant women’s soccer coach’s office.

“How long were you and Kris roommates?” I asked her.

“
Just this year.  Kris was a freshman.  I’m a junior.  Coach K likes to have the younger girls room with the older players.  And we’re both goalkeepers.”

“
You’re both tall.”

She smiled.  “Yeah.  Right position for us.”

“Do you know Kris well?”

“
We share a suite – separate bedrooms.  But I consider us roommates.  I know her pretty well.”

“
Where did you last see her?”

“
In the suite.  She came earlier that day to pick up some things.  She was with her mother, and I thought she was going home for the weekend.”

“
What day was that?”

“
Thursday.”

“
Okay.  Was that unusual?  For Kris to come by with her mother?”

“
I don’t know.  I’d seen her mother here before, but it wasn’t common.  Not sure her mother had ever just come by to pick her up.  I saw her Dad more often.  He’s a soccer fan, you know, really into sports.  He was always hanging around.  Sometimes came by to watch practice.”

“
Did Kris get along well with her mother?”

Akilah nodded slowly.  “As far as I know.  I mean, I don’t know of any big arguments they had or anything.  Yeah, they weren’t much alike in a way, but they got along.”

“But then Kris came back that night?”

“
After she left with her mother?  No.  Like I said, she took books and her laptop and some clothes like she was going home for the weekend.”

“
Do you remember anything special Kris said or did while she was there?  Anything she and her mother were talking about?”

“
No.  Nothing they said.”  She shook her head.  “No.”

“
Something else?”

“
Not really.”

“
All right.  Was Kris seeing anybody special, any guys or anything, that you knew about?”

“
No, not Kris.  She told me her Dad wanted her to concentrate on school and soccer this first year.  She really tried to put her head down and work hard.  She said her Dad told her if she didn’t do that at least this year, she’d never know what she could do.

“
I mean, it’s not like, she’s not a toad, though, you know?  We hang around a little with some of the guys on the men’s team, but nothing serious like that was going on.”

“
And you’d know, right?”

“
Right.”  Akilah nodded a few more times than necessary, as though she’d made up her mind about something.  “You said was there anything else that day.”

“
Yes.”

“
There was.  I don’t know why and I don’t know what it means, but she gave me something to hold for her.”

Her backpack was on the floor beside her chair.  She unzipped one of the outside compartments, pulled out a small object and held it out to me.

I held out my palm, and she placed it there.  Her fingers were long and strong, the nails short but red-lacquered.  The object was a USB keychain memory device.  “Do you know what’s on it?”

“
No clue.  But. . . .”

“
What?”

“
Kris told me when she gave me the memory stick that she wanted me to keep it safe and that she’d trust me to know if I needed to let someone else see it.”  She smiled a little, one corner of her mouth going up, blinking back a tear.

“
Did Kris mention the memory stick to you earlier, when her mother was there?”

She thought a minute, then shook her head.  “No.”

She brushed a hand across her eyes.  “Mr. Slate, do you think anything bad has happened to Kris?  I wasn’t too worried at first, but now I’m starting to feel really bad.  Her dad getting shot . . . Do you think whatever is on the memory stick has anything to do with Kris disappearing?  Or with her Dad?”

My gut told me yes.  “Did you look at it?”

She shook her head.  “I tried after Kris didn’t come back on Sunday night or Monday.  But I couldn’t open anything.  It looked like the files might be encrypted.”

I told her she’d done the right thing.

“Yeah,” she said.  “I think so too.  Coach K likes you, and, you know, Coach K knows about police and stuff.”  She stood up.  “Well, I’ve got a lab.  Bye, now.”  And just like that, she was out the door and gone.

When I went to look for Coach Kronenberg, her office door was locked, and the building suddenly seemed very empty.

I let myself out.

CHAPTER NINE

Wednesday January 25

I hadn’t brought funeral clothing to Birmingham.  The blue blazer and gray slacks I’d worn the day before were the best I could do, along with the white shirt I’d sent to the hotel laundry.

Light rain had returned for Kramer’s funeral.  My clothing didn’t matter.  It was a season for raincoats.

I had been to only one other burial service at Elmwood Cemetery, for one of Anna’s aunts on her mother’s side.  I asked for directions from the hotel concierge because I wanted to be there early and watch the other mourners arrive.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle by the time I found the main gates, but the cemetery’s oaks still dripped water.

Don Kramer was buried within sight of the final resting place of Paul “Bear” Bryant and within earshot of the grave of the black jazz musician Sun Ra.  Death treats all of us as equals, even in Birmingham, Alabama.

Graveside workers from the funeral home and the cemetery were at the gravesite before I arrived.  I stood a discreet distance away, hands folded in front.

Soon automobiles began easing through the gates.  Directed by cemetery officials, they rolled to the side of one of the cemetery paths, part of the labyrinth that wound through the acres of burial grounds, and stopped, their engines tick-ticking in the cold damp air.

Members of the bar, the judiciary, government officials, businessmen filed past me, some nodding.  I remained at the edge of the crowd, not far from some of the parked cars, but I spotted a former Birmingham mayor and two former governors.

At precisely ten o’clock, the black hearse drew up, followed by a couple of limousines and the private automobiles of family members. 

Six of Kramer’s law partners served as pallbearers; I recognized Bill Woolf, a head taller than most of the men.

The funeral director efficiently seated the family, and the service began.  From my position on a slight rise a little apart from the crowd, the mourners’ backs, a mass of dark suits, raincoats, a few umbrellas, seemed to absorb the weak daylight. 

A former president of the American Bar Association, the silver-haired named partner of a big downtown Birmingham firm, gave the eulogy.  From what I could hear, he told the mourners that he and Kramer had been enemies in the courtroom but comrades at the bar.

Bill Woolf spoke briefly, most of his words, directed, it seemed, to the family, and inaudible to me.

Kramer’s priest read the burial service and closed with a prayer.  A cemetery worker touched a switch on the chrome-plated frame holding the bronze casket, and it began descending smoothly into the grave.

Some of the mourners near me began drifting toward their cars.  Close family sat, still as statues, in the portable chairs set up by the funeral home.

A breeze flapped the cornices of the burial tent.  The priest stood over Susan Kramer, offering soft words to her and the family.  At last, he nodded and moved to the other side of the tent to speak to some of the people from the law firm who had lingered.

The family members stood.  The funeral director spoke to Susan Kramer, taking her hand in both of his.

Some of the workers rolled away the green carpet, uncovered a pile of earth.  Shovels appeared, and they began to fill in the grave.

Paul Kramer suddenly moved away from his mother and toward one of the workers.  He said a word or two to the man, who nodded slowly and stepped back.

The man’s shovel was now in the boy’s hand.  Paul Kramer filled and emptied the shovel with an economy of movement I would not have expected, lightly tossing the earth into his father’s grave.  Although I was too far away to see clearly, his face appeared wet in the uncertain light.

“Slate?”  Leon Grubbs stood a pace away on my right.  I had not seen him earlier.

“
Captain.”

“
Sad funeral,” Grubbs said.

“
I’ve never seen a happy one.  Pretty soon after the death, don’t you think?”

“
Maybe.  I got the coroner’s office moving.  Autopsy occurred early in the morning after the family was notified.  Wake was last night.  Mass early this morning.  Next day burial.  Part of the culture in the Jewish and Islamic traditions, though not necessarily the Catholic.”  He shrugged.  “Anyway, I think you know more about all this than you’ve told me so far.”

“
Maybe I know less than you think.”

“
Right.  Since it’s you, that possibility occurred to me as well.”  He shook his head.  “If you know anything, you need to share it.  Understood?”

I nodded.  “I understand.”

Grubbs turned and started walking toward his car, then turned back to face me.  “Slate,” he said.

“
Yeah?”  I traced his steps, and we stood two feet apart.

“
I’m going to give you some free information so you don’t waste your time,” Grubbs said.  “Kramer had not arranged a meeting with any kidnappers, at least not to pay a ransom.  We’ve reviewed all his bank and brokerage accounts.  Nothing.  No cash withdrawals, no wires, no unusual transactions at all.”

“
All right,” I said.  “Thanks.  At least I don’t have to ask Mrs. Kramer about that.”

Grubbs nodded.  “Another reason to tell you now.  Besides, reporters are calling my office so often I had to put an administrative assistant on press duty full time.  A morning press conference at which I have nothing to report has become a part of my day since the day after Kris Kramer was reported missing.  Her father’s death will increase the number of reporters in my briefing room exponentially.  Some of these facts will be in my statement to the press pool tomorrow morning.  You heard it here first.

“See you around, Slate.”

It was almost noon.  Don Kramer’s burial service was over, the family getting into the limousines, the cars lined up in single file, exhausts making steam clouds in the cool damp air.

I  needed to return to lower Alabama, to the boat and the bar for more clothes and to take down more systems for a longer absence.

I had time to get back to the hotel for lunch and to pick up the files Kramer gave me, then I had one more appointment on the Southside of Birmingham before I drove to the airport.