Winter of frozen dreams (8 page)

It was mid-morning. Doyle completed administrative work. Nagging in the back of his mind was the material on Linda Millar. Who was she, and what were her papers doing in Barbara Hoffman's possession?

He took a phone call from Ken Buhrow, an attorney in nearby Cambridge. Buhrow had information on Berge's estate that he wanted to volunteer. Doyle jotted down notes.

Buhrow had handled the few legal chores the Berge

family had required, and when Alma Berge died he advised Harry to amend his will, as his mother was the sole beneficiary of his property and his life insurance. For five years Berge did not heed the counsel.

On October 6, 1977, Berge dropped in without an appointment. His mood was jocular and unharried. The acquaintances shared coffee, swapped stories, and moseyed around to business. Harry wanted his will changed.

The A-frame house on U.S. 51 and his life insurance policies were to be left to a woman named Linda Millar. Buhrow politely inquired about her relationship to Berge. Harry Berge said that she was his fiancee. He wanted things to be in proper order for her. Buhrow recommended that Berge wait until the marriage had taken place before instituting the changes. Harry shrugged. The marriage was close to happening. Besides, he wasn't seeking advice, Berge said, friendly but firm.

Buhrow had studied the man across the desk for indication of stress or pressure or anxiety. There was none. His impression was that Berge looked healthier than he had ever remembered him. Though the change requested was straightforward, Buhrow stalled and told Harry the paperwork would take a week to complete. Maybe the extra couple days would allow Harry to reconsider.

Harry Berge returned in one week, signed the documents that pronounced Linda Millar his sole heir, paid cash for the service, and disappeared back into his life.

Doyle thanked Buhrow for the information. But who was Linda Millar? Another massage parlor sweetheart? Maybe Harry Berge wasn't as lonely as his sister had imagined. Yet so far Linda Millar was a ghost.

There were two Linda Millars listed in the Madison phone book. Neither one knew Barbara Hoffman, nor did their social security numbers match the numbers found in Barbaras apartment. Prostitution and drug arrest records were checked for a clue to Millars identity, with no results.

Doyle was frustrated. Harry Berge left everything of value that he owned to an imaginary creature? But Doyle didn't need a ghost; he needed something solid. He had a

dead body in a snowbank and testimony from a fragile witness who helped put the body there and nothing else. Hoffman wasn't cooperating. He couldn't place the body in her apartment, except on Daviess word, which was hearsay. What was needed was hard evidence—something or someone to corroborate Daviess story, and a murder weapon, and another witness, and Berges car and clothes. Then he'd have a case.

Every city-operated parking ramp, every public lot downtown, east and west at the malls had been scoured for Berges vehicle, but no car had been spotted.

Doyle called homicide and reported Buhrow's call to one of the detectives on the case. Lulling, Doyle was told, was in Stoughton, requestioning workers at UniRoyal whom the police had talked with yesterday. Apparently the lieutenant did not regard the information as adequate and wanted to pose his own questions.

Typical of Lulling's style, said a detective. There was derision in his voice. Three days in, and Lulling had seeded the investigation with dissension, which also was typical of his style, thought Doyle.

Lulling may have been unorthodox, and he may have jeopardized the investigation by rushing off to Park Ridge to confront a woman whose poise and intelligence he'd vastly underestimated, and he may have alienated fellow cops because he didn't trust their detective abilities, yet he remained pertinacious. In the morning he laid out a map of the center city and assigned officers to knock on every door of the 500 and 600 blocks of State Street. When they finished, they were to shag their flat feet to Langdon Street, which ran one block closer to the lake and parallel to State, and repeat the procedure. The majority of the tenants would be students, and most would be gone for the holidays, but someone might have had a late exam or missed a travel connection. Foreign students would be around. It was doubtful anyone might have been roaming the streets at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. in the winter, but students have queer habits, Lulling explained.

After a couple days of routine and boring police work and a rereading of the autopsy report and tedious calculation, Chuck Lulling was confident he had reconstructed December 22nd, the last day of Harry Berges life. Until the final minutes the events were absolutely ordinary, which convinced the detective that his scenario was correct.

Because UniRoyal had intended to close for the long Christmas weekend, the second shift was given half a workday on December 22nd. Berge had left home for his job at 2:50 p.m.

"You could set your watch by him pulling out of his driveway/ 7 a neighbor had told Lulling.

Berge punched in at 2:59 and punched out at 7:00. The plant held its annual Christmas party, which the second shift joined in progress. A buffet was served. Foreman Tom Bemis remembered seeing Berge in the food line "around 7:30." Other co-workers confirmed Bemis s recollection.

Larry Aaberg encouraged Berge to attend the post-party festivities at the U-Name-It Tavern, but Berge declined with a sheepish smile. He had a date in Madison. After a hasty meal Berge departed.

No one recalled Berges presence at the company fete after about 8:00, and no one saw him at the U-Name-It later. Lulling surmised that Berge drove straight home. When officers examined Berges house on December 26th, they found his dirty work clothes on the bed. The evening newspaper was folded as the paperboy had tucked it and lay unread on the dining room table along with two pieces of mail, unopened, addressed to "Occupant." The watchful neighbor had attended a church function that evening, so when Berge left for Madison was unknown. But considering that the autopsy reports indicated Berge had died within one to one-and-a-half hours after ingesting a large meal, he could not have dallied at home for very long.

Lulling duplicated Berges itinerary for that fatal night. The detective meticulously timed every stage of the journey. He walked from the time clock to the parking lot,

which took two minutes. The drive to Berges home covered eight-tenths of a mile and took three minutes. Once inside, he undressed, washed up, brushed his teeth, and put on fresh clothes. At a leisurely pace this took no more than fifteen minutes. The trek from Stoughton to Madison was eighteen and two-tenths miles, which Lulling drove at the speed limit, and took thirty minutes, including parking in the Lake Street ramp. The entire procedure took fifty minutes, which meant that Harry Berge was at Hoffmans apartment by 9:00 easily. The timing coincided with the autopsy findings.

These computations pleased Lulling immensely. The time scheme, combined with the autopsy data, provided a plausible framework for the murder.

For three days Chuck had worked at the case almost every waking hour. Finally he had a theory as to what had transpired.

Berge had arrived at Barbara Hoffmans apartment before 9:00 p.m. He and Hoffman argued, maybe over Jerry Davies, maybe over this mysterious Linda Millar. The scratch on Berges neck indicated that the hostility flared into actual violence. Maybe Berge foisted himself on her; maybe he threatened her. Barbara clawed to get away.

Undeterred, angry, and hurt, Berge stalked her. Berge approached, and Barbara kicked him in the balls as hard as she could. Berge doubled over, groaned, then groped for her.

She was the only woman he'd ever dated, and he was losing her. The adoration he felt for her turned quickly to bitterness. Maybe he shouted. They were in the kitchen. Barbara grabbed the frying pan from over the stove and cracked his skull once, twice, a third time before she could control her rage. Berge dropped unconscious.

Blood poured from Berges head. Barbara rushed to the bathroom, gathered towels, and administered first aid, but to no avail. Berge was dead. In her panic and fear she'd killed him.

Berge was nothing to her except a trick, a lonely old man who bought her nice gifts. Moreover, Barbara

realized, Berge was nothing to anyone, trapped as he'd been in his solitary existence. She knew of his isolation. She counted on his disappearance going relatively unnoticed.

She stripped his clothes, cleaned her apartment of his blood, and waited until the deepest part of night to dispose of his body. She wrapped the body in a bedsheet and dragged it down three flights of stairs—which accounted for the abrasions on the hips, legs, and lower back, which the pathologist said were postmortem inflictions.

Once outside she buried the body next to the Dump-ster, against the fence where the snow had been plowed. Then she returned momentarily with Berges car. But rigor mortis had set in, and Berges body was awkward. She couldn't wedge it into the trunk. Barbara needed help.

The following day she enlisted Daviess aid. Aware of his sensibilities, she was also aware of his malleability. If anything went awry, she could control Davies, or so she had guessed. Once Berge was buried on a secluded country lane, chances were slim that he'd be discovered before the spring thaw.

The speculations needed refinement, but the outline was feasible and fit what the police had learned. It sounded horrid and too true: a misplaced love, an argument, desperation, a woman's fury.

Yet as Lulling listened to his own conjecture, serious doubts that Berges death was a crime of passion, a spontaneous and angry flash of violence, needled him. Something more lay under the surface, something they had scratched yet not uncovered. The terse interview with Hoffman in Park Ridge had convinced him of her supreme self-control. The woman was cold, tough, and Lulling wondered what seethed beneath that hard exterior.

What could a fifty-two-year-old forklift operator from Stoughton have said to rile her so? Now it was Lulling's guess that the whole scene was premeditated and arranged. Berge was not beaten in self-defense. He was battered repeatedly after it had been clear that he wasn't going to move, that he wasn't going to threaten. But if it

was premeditated, why choose a third-floor apartment on a street in the center of Madison? There had to have been more convenient places to commit murder.

Chuck Lulling was puzzled. What they needed was more police work as well as a little hard evidence to hang a theory on.

19

The dashboard lights of the Oldsmobile Cutlass illumined a melancholy face whose ruddy complexion seemed to glow in the semidarkness of the car. Al Mackey concentrated on his driving.

A black arrow shone on a yellow background, warning of a sharp turn in the road. The Olds slowed. The headlights beamed on a narrow ribbon of blacktop winding between banks of snow and telephone poles sleeted with ice, past dairy farms and frozen cornfields. Two hours of driving and the scenery hadn't changed. Al Mackey was as fatuous as when he'd started the trip, as when he'd consented to it, which could be traced back to an evening at Jans Health Spa when he first met Barbara Hoffman, which was precipitated by . . .

Why replay the past? It never changed.

The Oldsmobile Al Mackey drove had been owned by Harry Berge. He was smuggling a dead mans car across the Wisconsin countryside in the quiet of the night, returning it to the city of the alleged crime, driving the back roads and county trunks to avoid detection, for if he was stopped by a state trooper, or if he skidded on ice and buried the Olds in a ditch of snow, it would mean grave trouble. Accessory after the fact was not an immodest charge. He would be suspended or disbarred from practicing law. He would be arrested and put in jail.

It was preposterous, yet this was all he could do to help Barbara. Certainly he was incapable of properly defending her in a court of law. If manslaughter or second-

degree murder were the charges, she would need the best, and he had a recommendation. Then, when she was settled with a new lawyer, he'd depart on a vacation, visit family in California, and ponder the possibility of permanently escaping the cold, the walls of snow that bordered the roadside, the icy bridges, the frosty winds.

Al Mackey was being used, and he submitted to it willingly. He wasn't complaining. But he needed to get away. Perhaps the climate in California would sober him. Perhaps he didn't want to be sober.

Al Mackey managed to negotiate the back roads from Park Ridge to Madison without incident. He parked Harry Berge's Oldsmobile behind the Quality Courts Inn on Madison's east side and called Barbara from a pay phone. She drove out with his car, and they drove back to State Street, hoping that the chill of a winters night would protect them.

20

Although Linda Millar remained a mystery, information about Barbara Hoffman accumulated. A tenant at 638 State Street told detectives that Barbara had frequent male visitors. Because she forbade shoes to sully her apartment, it was obvious when she entertained, for footwear would be parked on a mat outside her door. Rubber-soled work boots, expensive leather brogans, tennis sneakers—always men's shoes—were present in the late-night hours when the observant neighbor returned from his waiter's job.

At midnight one night, while staggering down the cavernous hallway after a postwork celebration, he tripped over a man curled up on the tile floor in front of apartment 306. The man snored blissfully, a tweed jacket draped over him like a blanket.

Another tenant reported being awakened by a ruckus in the early morning about two months previously. The woman unlatched her door to complain and spied an el-

derly gentleman in the corridor, attired in a sport coat and slacks, banging desperately for admission to Barbaras residence. He was hunchbacked, with gray hair and skinny arms that seemed to rattle in the sleeves of his sport coat as he pounded on the door. After minutes of this futility he slumped to the floor, a heap of tailored clothes and wrinkled flesh, and he whimpered. The startled woman thought of calling the police. She shut her door, waited, and when she looked out again the pitiful person had disappeared.