Very Bad Men (6 page)

She dropped to one knee to study the photograph on the floor. A young Henry Kormoran, nine or ten years old, posing with his ball and glove. A man with an easy smile standing beside him, probably his father. She had the odd feeling that she had seen this image before today, that she should recognize the name “Henry Kormoran.”

There were four strips of tape on the wall. Two of them had held up this photograph.

“Where's the other picture?” Elizabeth said aloud.

Shan had already gone looking for it. She saw him pull something from between the cushions of the sofa. She got to her feet and looked at it over his shoulder.

It was a five-by-seven print, a reproduction of a painting in oil. A portrait of a woman in her twenties. Dark eyes, tanned skin, long black hair parted in the middle.

“Oh,” she said, drawing the word out.

“Who is she?” Shan asked.

“You don't know?”

“Give me a hint.”

“She's older now. Wears her hair shorter. She's not smiling here, but if she were, you'd see a whole lot of white teeth.”

“Give me another hint.”

Elizabeth nodded toward the silent television. A pair of talking heads shared the screen.

“Stay tuned to CNN and you're bound to see her,” Elizabeth said. “She's been getting lots of coverage lately.”

“Callie Spencer?”

“Callie Spencer. The next junior senator from the state of Michigan. If you believe the polls.”

Shan laid the picture on the sofa cushion. “What does she have to do with Kormoran?”

“You could say he helped launch her political career.”

 

 

THE SKY WAS STILL LIGHT as Elizabeth drove to City Hall. Carter Shan had stayed behind at Kormoran's apartment, looking after the scene until Lillian Eakins came to collect the body.

Elizabeth took a roundabout route, avoiding the streets closed off for the Art Fair. She checked her cell phone as she drove, saw a message from David, but decided it could wait. She called Owen McCaleb, chief of the Ann Arbor police, to let him know she was on her way. He and some of the other detectives from the Investigations Division had already begun to build the file on Henry Kormoran.

That's what a murder investigation comes down to—details in a file, the shaping of a narrative. At City Hall, details were already being gathered: old news articles pulled from the Internet, faxed case files from the authorities in Chippewa County.

They told the story of Henry Kormoran. Elizabeth didn't know every detail, but she had heard it before. It was the story of a seventeen-year-old bank robbery.

On a dreary October morning, five men drove up to the Great Lakes Bank in Sault Sainte Marie in a black SUV. The driver waited outside. The other four went in, gloves and ski masks, duffel bags to hold the loot. Floyd Lambeau, Sutton Bell, Terry Dawtrey, Henry Kormoran. Lambeau was the leader; he had a double-barreled shotgun. The others carried handguns.

They were looking for a big score. It wasn't enough to empty the cash drawers. They wanted what was in the vault. Money from the casinos.

They went in fast and loud, got the customers and tellers down on the floor. Dawtrey, following Lambeau's orders, dragged the bank manager back to open the vault. But it took longer than anyone expected.

Kormoran was watching the doors, and he saw someone coming. His job was to make sure no one entered; if anyone did, he was supposed to force them down to the floor with the others. But he wasn't expecting what he saw: a cop in a gray uniform. Harlan Spencer—the sheriff of Chippewa County.

Spencer's wife had been nagging him to open a certificate of deposit. This was the morning he'd decided to get it done. He parked his unmarked cruiser across the street and saw the driver of the SUV watching him. Something about the driver's demeanor put Spencer on guard. As he approached the vehicle his hand strayed unconsciously to his service weapon, a nine-millimeter Glock.

Before he reached the SUV, it sped away. The driver was never found. He was the only one of the five who got away.

Henry Kormoran panicked. He had the crazy thought that if he ran fast enough he could catch up to the SUV. He left his gun on the floor of the bank vestibule and stepped out into the bleak daylight with his hands raised. Spencer had his Glock drawn now and ordered Kormoran onto the ground.

Kormoran turned and ran. His raised hands saved him. Spencer was reluctant to shoot an unarmed man in the back. Instead he returned to his cruiser, started it up, jacked it out into the middle of the street with its lights flashing, and called for backup on his radio.

Floyd Lambeau was the next one out of the bank, holding his shotgun one-handed and dragging a teller with him, his forearm tight across her throat. He looked up and down the street as if he expected to see the black SUV tear around the corner at any moment. When it didn't, he headed for the nearest car, a compact Ford whose driver couldn't move forward because of the sheriff's cruiser but couldn't move back because of the cars behind him.

Standing behind the driver's door of the cruiser, Spencer called out to Lambeau, telling him to drop the gun. At the same moment, the teller got hold of Lambeau's thumb and bent it back. He howled and she twisted away from him, and when he brought the barrel of the shotgun up, Spencer shot him in the heart with the Glock.

By the time Terry Dawtrey and Sutton Bell came out, Spencer had moved the teller and the driver of the Ford out of the open and into a shop down the block. Lambeau's body lay in the street. Back at his cruiser, shielding himself behind the driver's door, Spencer heard the wail of sirens in the distance. He wondered if help would reach him in time. It seemed unlikely.

And here was Terry Dawtrey, with a revolver pressed against the temple of the bank manager. And Sutton Bell standing behind them, a black duffel bag weighing at his left side.

Spencer told them calmly that they'd come to the end of the line. Dawtrey laughed and said they would take the cruiser. He would blast the bank manager if Spencer didn't turn over the keys.

Spencer told him it wasn't going to happen. Dawtrey repeated his demands as if he were speaking to a slow child. He drew back the hammer of the revolver, and Spencer, his Glock steady, willed the bank manager to make a move. But the manager was made of less stern stuff than the teller. His eyes pleaded and Spencer knew he wasn't going to be any use.

A shot rang out, louder than the sirens. The bank manager pitched forward and Terry Dawtrey was on his knees, left hand pressed against his thigh, blood seeping through the faded denim of his jeans. It took a second for Spencer to understand what had happened: Sutton Bell, realizing that things had gotten out of control, had turned his gun on Dawtrey. Now Bell held his arms up to surrender. His revolver, still smoking, tumbled from his fingers and fell to the ground. Spencer came out from behind the door of the cruiser, and the bank manager ran toward him, obscuring his view of Dawtrey. Spencer pushed the manager aside and saw the muzzle of Dawtrey's gun.

Dawtrey's first bullet sliced through the sleeve of Spencer's uniform. The second struck his left shoulder and turned him around. The third slammed into his spine.

There were three more shots, but none of them found their target. The recoil sent them high, and by then Harlan Spencer lay sprawled in the street. He stayed conscious long enough to feel the hands of one of his deputies turning him over gently onto his back. Long enough to see another deputy tackle Terry Dawtrey as Dawtrey reached for Sutton Bell's revolver. Long enough to know that he couldn't feel any sensation in his arms or his legs.

It took months of therapy for Spencer to regain the use of his right arm and hand. His left arm never came back fully. His legs never came back at all.

His daughter, twenty-three, dropped out of law school at the University of Michigan to help take care of him, then returned to graduate at the top of her class. Callie Spencer spent seven years in the Washtenaw County prosecutor's office, handling the worst domestic violence cases. When she decided to run for the Michigan House of Representatives, she had an unbeatable résumé: advocate for battered women and abused children, daughter of a hero cop.

She served two terms in the Michigan House and a third was hers if she wanted it, but then the venerable John Casterbridge announced his retirement from the United States Senate. And after a tough primary, it looked as if Callie Spencer was on track to replace him.

 

 

ELIZABETH PARKED at City Hall and walked around to the front steps. As soon as she passed into the lobby she saw a figure rising from a bench. Dressed in white linen, as if he'd just stepped off a sailboat.

“David,” she said.

His copper hair was curly in the summer heat. He wore the hint of a grin, but there was something grave about him too. “I know you'd rather I didn't come here,” he said.

She didn't deny it. “Is everything all right?”

“Did you get my message?”

“I haven't had time to listen to it.”

He picked up an envelope from the bench. “There's something you ought to read.”

“Can it wait?” she said. “I really need to get upstairs.”

He already had the envelope open. He handed her a manuscript.

“Read the first line,” he said.

She started to say, “David—” but then she saw the words on the page.

 

 

“David, where did you get this?”

“I'll tell you,” he said, “but you'd better read the last line too.”

She flipped to the end.

 

O
ver the last two decades, fields of houses have grown up around the edges of Ann Arbor, filling in the white spaces on the map. Their streets are laid out in straight lines and arcs, and the houses follow a few simple models, with small variations in color and architectural detail.

The Bells lived in a place with white vinyl siding and an ornament over the garage door that looked like the keystone of an arch. When Elizabeth arrived, the patrol car she'd requested was already parked out front. One of the two uniformed officers stepped out to greet her—a brawny kid named Fielder.

“All quiet?” she asked him.

“Yup,” he said. “Bell's not home. Or his wife. His daughter's in there with the nanny. She's a trip, the nanny. Tried to read my palm.”

The nanny turned out to be a bejeweled woman with wispy hair. She met Elizabeth at the door and led her back to a family room where an eightyear-old girl sat on the floor drawing with colored markers on a pad of newsprint.

The girl looked up at Elizabeth and grinned shyly. The perfect specimen of a happy child: tow-headed, blue-eyed, angelic.

Elizabeth waved to her, wiggling her fingers, and the girl returned the wave and went back to her drawing.

“I'm not sensing any danger,” the nanny said in a low voice.

Elizabeth answered in the same tone. “Is that right?”

The nanny led her to a corner away from the girl.

“I don't want to teach you your business, dear,” the nanny said, “but usually I have strong intuitions, and I'm not picking up anything.”

“Do you know where Mr. Bell is right now?”

“I'm afraid I don't. I tried to reach him when that young man, Mr. Findley—”

“Officer Fielder.”

“—when he told me you were concerned for Sutton's safety. I tried Sutton at work, but they said he left early. At five.”

“Where does Mr. Bell work?” Elizabeth asked.

“At a clinic in town,” the nanny said. “He's a nurse practitioner. That's why I'm not worried. He's a healer now.” She paused to emphasize her point. “He's had violence in his life, but that was in his past. His future is peaceful.”

“What about his wife?” Elizabeth asked.

“Rosalie's future is peaceful too. They're intertwined, you see.”

“I meant, where does she work?”

The nanny's eyes twinkled as if the misunderstanding amused her. “She sells cosmetics at Macy's at the mall. They close at nine, so I expect her home any minute.”

“Does she have a cell phone?”

“They both have them, but they're not shackled to them. I think that's healthy—”

Elizabeth interrupted her. “Could you give me their numbers?”

The woman put a gentle hand on Elizabeth's shoulder. “I can if you like, dear, but I've already left messages for both of them. You can spend your energy trying to find them, but if you'll just wait I think they'll come to you.”

In a rattle of jewelry, the nanny headed off to get the numbers. Elizabeth drifted over to the girl, who was working intently on her drawing. Jagged pine trees in green. A house with a peaked roof. A smiling man holding something that could have been a lollipop or a flower or a microphone.

Elizabeth thought the man must be Sutton Bell, but before she could ask she heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. Then raised voices and footsteps approaching. The nanny trailed after a well-dressed woman with fine clear skin.

“Now, Rosalie—” the nanny said.

“What's going on?” said Rosalie Bell to Elizabeth. “Is Sutton all right?”

An edge of panic in her voice. Elizabeth stepped close and spoke to her calmly.

“I need to find him. Do you know where he is?”

“He's working tonight.”

“I tried him at work—” the nanny began, but Elizabeth raised a hand to quiet her.