Service Dress Blues (9 page)

“You hit a clean double, baby sister. Don't beat yourself up because it wasn't a home run.”

They reached the upper level and Melissa saw Kuchinski about twenty yards away, pacing back and forth in front of a glass and mahogany display case while he talked in low tones into a mobile phone. His face was purple.

They strolled over. While she waited for Kuchinski to finish his call, Melissa glanced desultorily at the artifacts mounted behind the display case's glass. One drew her eye. It was a facsimile of a handwritten letter. As she examined the sloping, old-fashioned script, she saw that it was written during the Revolutionary War by John Paul Jones, addressed to an agent of the Continental Congress who proposed to buy a merchant vessel that Jones could convert into a warship. Jones' rejection of the proposal was stinging: “I want nothing to do with a ship that will not sail fast; for I mean to go in harm's way.”

“That's why we do this stuff,” Seton said. “If someone comes up with a better way to get kids in their twenties to stand to their posts under fire and run up hills with machine guns shooting at them, we'll use it. Until then, we do it the way we do it.”

“You were reading my mind. At least you didn't tell me to drop down and give you fifty.”

“Stay tuned. The afternoon is young.”

Kuchinski snapped off his mobile phone and shoved it angrily into his shirt pocket.

“Ole?” Melissa guessed.

“Nope. Ole hasn't found time to return my calls since he told me that he didn't know the first damn thing about any text message—although he did verify that the computer Harald left with him is still ensconced in that den/office/political clubhouse of his. But he's been a little bit scarce since then.”

“So who was making you so mad?”

“The assistant DA in Sylvanus County. He's going to amend the charges against Lena to add attempted murder.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means he thinks he's found a motive.”

Chapter 10

Walt Kuchinski didn't like anything about airplanes but he disliked exit rows less than he disliked everything else. On the AirTran flight from Baltimore to Milwaukee that night he and Melissa managed to get seats in one, across the aisle from each other. His long legs stretched out luxuriously in front of him. The battered investigative file from the Outagamie County DA's office lay bristling with Post-It notes on his tray table and the tray table of the seat beside him and the seat itself. Pinched carefully between the thumb and the first two fingers of his left hand was twelve dollars in fives and ones, representing the exact change required for two mini-bottles of Johnny Walker Black. He'd tell the flight attendant not to bother with ice in the cup; the way he felt right now, in fact, he might tell her not to bother with the cup.

He gazed at three overlapping eight-by-ten photographs laid out across the top of the file material in front of him. They showed in panorama the edge of the deck off the clubroom at the Lindstroms' home and six feet or so of the snow bordering it.

“You don't look happy,” Melissa said, pulling out a copy of the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
that she'd picked up on the way to the gate that morning and hadn't gotten a chance to look at yet. “And I guess I don't blame you. That's not exactly a virgin mantle of wedding gown-white snow out of a Hallmark Christmas card, but I sure don't see any boot prints in those pictures.”

“Black and white prints of a monochrome surface in bright sunlight,” he muttered. “You lose a lot of perspective and depth-perception.”

“To the point of not being able to spot a single hint of sole pattern in snow seven inches deep?”

“Might be hard to sell to a jury,” he conceded. “Having an expert come in and yap about it won't be enough. We'll have to go out there and videotape a demonstration.” He stroked his chin with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand as he considered the issue. “Put twenty-five pound weights in a pair of waffle-stompers and drop the things in the snow. Then take a picture of it and see if it looks a lot like this one.”

“Do you really think it will?”

“Depends on who takes it.” Kuchinski grinned slyly. “Our hypothetical intruder's lack of footprints doesn't bother me all that much. I have more of a problem with the timing.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Lindstroms live in the second right-hand house west of a T intersection with County Highway M. Cul de sac at the other end. Lena says she heard the intruder make a noise in the back of the house, and that's why she hustled out of the kitchen. In mid-hustle she stumbles over Ole's body and screams. Carlsen calls nine-one-one because he hears the scream as he's pulling up. There's not enough time for the intruder to make his getaway before Carlsen is there.”

“He didn't notice anyone running by, I take it,” Melissa said.

“You take it correctly.”

“Okay, as long as we're making stuff up, let's hypothesize a smart intruder. He parked his car on the other side of the road, maybe eighty feet up or down the street, where Carlsen wouldn't necessarily have noticed it. When he spots Carlsen on the street he just lies low by the side of the house until Carlsen goes inside. Then he hikes to his car and takes off.”

“I like that, but it means our intruder has to travel something like, hell, I don't know, square of the hypotenuse, call it maybe a hundred-eighty feet from the Lindstroms' house to this parked car we just conjured up. He has to get this trip done in the three or four minutes before the hard-working Sylvanus County constabulary has a deputy on the scene. Now, that deputy might not be Sherlock Holmes, but I think he would've noticed a car high-tailing it down the Lindstroms' street or along County M while he was on his way, and his report says he didn't.”

“I guess the timing is a problem, at that,” Melissa sighed. “I can understand why you're a bit glum.”

“Oh, that's not what has me down. That problem is just a day at the office. What's bumming me is I'm wondering whether I can keep on representing Midshipman Lindstrom.”

“Why couldn't you? I thought we made some real progress today.”

“We did.”
That's the problem.

“If Ole can corroborate anything that we heard today, that might get the kid off the hook all by itself.”

“That's true.”
It might put Lena in the slammer for about seven years, too.

“Then what's the problem?”

“Can't get into it, I'm afraid.”

A beverage cart sandwiched between two flight attendants came in between them, interrupting the conversation. Ninety-three briskly efficient seconds later Kuchinski was thoroughly supplied with undiluted scotch and the cart had moved on. Looking back over at Melissa, he saw her frowning as she studied her newspaper. Her right fist, resting on the tray table, was balled and squeezed tight. He took this as an infallible sign of irritation.

He was right.

“You're not honked off at me, are you?” he asked.

“What?” She looked up abruptly. “Oh, no. Of course not. I am quietly furious with Vernoica Gephardt.”

She handed him the front section of the paper, folded to
No Quarter
, the political gossip column on the upper half of the second page. Kuchinski couldn't remember ever reading anything in this column that he didn't already know, but there's a first time for everything. He guessed, correctly, that the third paragraph was what had aggravated Melissa:

“I don't know about jumping on a wedge,” Kuchinski said thoughtfully. “Seems like that could be an uncomfortable proposition.”

“That is a particularly unhappy metaphor.”

“But that's not what you're upset about, I'm guessing.”

“No. An announcement ‘within the next two to three weeks' would put her uncomfortably close to the end of the domestic abuse conference she has set up.”

“That's the one she's talked you into doing a cameo at so you can do some dirty work for her?”

“Yes. Helping her finesse a delicate problem is one thing. Being used as a political pawn is something else.”

“I've been knee-deep in the campaigns of half the people on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. If you're gonna be hatin' on politics, break it to me gently.”

“‘Hate' is way too harsh,” Melissa answered. “To me politics is like smoking. It doesn't appeal to me personally, but I'm not a prig about it. I don't mind if other people do it, and if someone wants to do it around me I generally say okay. I just don't want to be involved in it without being asked.”

“Well, I'd say you have a right to be upset, then. Because it looks to me like you are getting a lungful of second-hand politics.”

***

Rep was surprised. The rule of thumb in Milwaukee is that hookers start west of the river, and he was just east of it.

“Hi, tiger. Want some action?”

The young woman who posed this query pronounced “action” “
ACK
-
shawn
.” He looked up from his cheeseburger and got a second surprise. The lass could have passed for a Renaissance madonna if Renaissance madonnas had gone around flourishing unlit cigarettes—and for a moment Rep had the mischievous thought as he took her in that that might not have been such a terrible idea. Her lustrous blond hair spilled out from under the hood of a white parka that had been built for looks rather than warmth and that did little to conceal the appealing aspects of a slender, well-rounded body. She was only five-four or so, but the poise of her runway-ready stance, combined with violet eyes that seemed to be laughing at him, made her seem taller.

Rep glanced at his watch: six-fifty-five local time, making it almost eight o'clock in the east. He couldn't know that Melissa and Kuchinski were deep in conversation, but he knew they were airborne.

“I have to pick my wife up at the airport in about an hour-and-a-half,” he said.

“You're Rep Pennyworth, the lawyer, right?”

“Yes.”

“I'm Laurel Fox.”

Right. “Ack-shawn.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

She acknowledged that with a smirk as she raised her mobile phone and punched a speed dial button.

“I found him,” she said into the phone. “Not Ole, the lawyer. He's at Safe House on Front Street.…Sure, I'll put him on.” She tendered the phone to Rep. “Gary needs to talk. He's about to have kittens, so pretty please.”

Rep took the phone.

“What's up?”

“Carlsen. Sorry to bother you. Really. But I need, like, a super favor.”

Rep suddenly knew what it meant to hear someone sweat. The cool, bantering tone was gone. A sense of urgency verging on panic permeated Carlsen's voice.

“What do you need?”

“It'll make more sense face to face. I'm on my way right now. Can you give me five minutes?”

“Sure. It'll give me an excuse to have some dessert.”

Returning the phone to Fox, Rep gestured toward the chair on the other side of his table. She sat down and shrugged her parka off. A waitress appeared almost instantly.

“What would you like?”

“An ashtray.” Fox looked dubiously at the waitress' frown. “And coffee, I guess.”

“The smoking area is outside, twenty feet north of the door. I'll get your coffee.”

“I'm not supposed to let you out of my sight until he gets here,” Fox said to Rep as the waitress strode away. “I don't suppose you'd like to wait outside?”

“No.”

Fox sighed theatrically and buried the cigarette in her right hand.

“This is gonna cost him,” she muttered. “When did he say he was going to get here?”

“Five minutes.”

“In the over/under, I want the over.”

“No bet.”

He should have taken her up on the wager. Carlsen appeared four minutes and twenty-seven seconds later. His bearing in person matched his voice over the phone. Something had dialed his coast-cool persona down about two clicks. There was a jerkiness in his movements, and his lips were almost white.

“I can't find Ole,” he told Rep.

“If he's not at his home, I don't know where he'd be.”

“In half-an-hour he's supposed to be meeting with Vernoica Gephardt—and he absolutely must not do that.”

“Okay, if you say so, but I don't see how I can help.”

“Let me call him on your phone. I think he's ducking my calls. When he sees my number on his screen he just doesn't answer. If he sees your number, maybe he will.”

“Sorry. I don't have any idea what his issues with you are, but I can't help you fake out my own client.”

“You don't understand,” Carlsen said, bending forward and reaching out almost desperately toward Rep. “It's Lena. She's been arrested. Again.”

“What for?”

“Bail jumping. One of the conditions of her release on bail was that she not leave Sylvanus County.”

“And the cops caught her leaving?”

“No. They caught her coming back. About an hour ago.”

Rep took his phone out and thumbed Ole Lindstrom's number into it. Six rings took him to a voice-mail prompt.

“Rep Pennyworth,” he said after the beep. “Calling a little after seven in the evening. I have something important to talk about with you, concerning Lena. Please call me back as soon as you can.” He recited his number and ended the call.

“You can have my seat while you wait,” Fox said to Carlsen. “I'll be outside freezing my fanny off and polluting my lungs. On second thought, give me your keys and I'll kill myself in the warmth of that gas-guzzling road-hog you drive.”

“I have a better idea,” Carlsen said. Glancing at the check the waitress had left on the table, he carelessly tossed down more than enough currency to cover the charges and a decent tip. “Gephardt's office is at UWM, and that's at least ten minutes from here. If we head over there right now we might be able to intercept him in person in case he doesn't call back.”

“Good luck,” Rep said, staying firmly in his chair.

“Keys, tiger,” Fox said, producing an impressive crack as she snapped her fingers. “Laurel needs a fix.”

With a shrug worthy of a Yiddish expletive Carlsen dug a key ring out of the left pocket of his ski jacket and tossed it to Fox, who was already halfway to the door and had her cigarette once again fully deployed.

“I need you to come along so I can talk to Ole right away in case he calls you back,” Carlsen said to Rep.

“If Ole calls me back I'll tell him about Lena and let him know you want to talk to him,” Rep said, shaking his head. “I'm picking my wife up at the airport at eight-thirty. By the time we got to UWM, I wouldn't have more than ten or fifteen minutes there before I'd have to leave anyway.”

“The airport is only a twenty-minute hop from downtown Milwaukee.”

“I always drive at the posted speed limit so that I can help conserve America's vital natural resources.”

Carlsen opened his mouth, but whatever came out was lost in an ululating howl that sliced effortlessly through the modest door separating the Safe House Restaurant from the outside world. Eyes snapping wide open, Carlsen dashed for the door. Rep followed at the more sedate pace appropriate to nibbling on a cheeseburger as he moved.