“And a smile,” I added.
I hung up and began slapping the search warrant together, typing what facts I knew into the probable-cause statement. As search warrants go, this one was easy. The items to be searched? The clothing, cell phone, and other possessions of the man found next to a burning van which housed a dead body.
I finished the warrant application, stood, and looked around the room, even though I knew that I was alone. Then I sat back down and logged into the Computer Assisted Police Resource System, what we call Cappers, and typed the name Raymond Kroll. Cappers lit up with dozens of entries for Mr. Kroll. I scrolled down until I found the first-degree assault case matching the file Boady brought to me.
Kroll hit a man with a patio brick in a bar fight. I held my breath as I opened the link to see if Kroll had given any statement to the arresting officer—a squad video or body-cam capture—anything that might have his voice. I only needed a few words from him and I would know if he was one of the men plotting my wife’s death. My heart sank when I saw no recordings in the file. I didn’t expect to find anything. Had there been a recording, it should have been in the attorney’s file that I had at home. But it was worth a shot.
Next, I logged into the Minnesota Court Information System to see what had happened to the case. The file was short. The case hadn’t made it as far as the omnibus hearing before Kroll turned up dead in St. Paul. I had read all about his untimely demise when I was doing my Internet research last night. Kroll’s body was found on the bank of the Mississippi River with a bullet in his brain. They never found the shooter. I sent the court record to the printer so I could add it to my collection.
I went back to Cappers and scrolled through other cases involving Mr. Kroll, hoping to find one with audio. Case after case, Raymond Kroll faced his accusers with ruddy silence, a well-trained dog. I was down to the petty misdemeanor speeding cases when the rattling of the outer door interrupted my reading. I walked to the printer and stacked my reports together, folding them in half. A moment later, Niki stepped through the second door and into the office, her nose and ears red from the cold. I leaned awkwardly against the copier, aware that my posture looked far from natural.
“What’s with the bat-cave bit,” she said as she turned on the lights. With the low morning sun rolling through the windows, I hadn’t noticed that I left the lights off. I slipped the reports into my pocket as Niki made her way over to the cubicle that we shared.
“I’m just getting ready to take a search warrant over to the Government Center,” I said. “Fireball’s still unconscious, so I couldn’t get a statement.”
“Who’s Raymond Kroll?” Niki had an eye on my computer screen as she laid her coat over the back of her chair.
“Ray Kroll? He’s . . . um . . . he’s a guy.”
Niki looked at me with the narrowed eyes of a parent trying to discern a child’s shenanigans. “You printing something?” she asked.
“The search warrant.”
“This search warrant?” she said, holding up the already completed application I had laid on my desk.
I walked to my computer, blocking her view as I closed the screen with Ray Kroll’s reports on it. I typed the name Dennis Orton into an Internet search.
“Are you okay, Max? You seem a bit—”
“I’m fine. Just . . . there was a lot of noise in the neighborhood last night. Fireworks and stuff. I didn’t get much sleep. What did you find out at the scene?”
“Well, the ME says that the woman in the back seat of the van is dead.”
“Impressive. I was on the fence about that one.”
“Preliminary exam suggests strangulation. Her hyoid bone and larynx both appeared disfigured. Autopsy will be back after lunch.”
“Was she dead before the fire?”
“Probably. The ME saw no signs of burning in the throat.” Niki pulled up a DL photo of Pippa Stafford. She was pretty, blond, blue eyes, thirty-one, with a big smile and dimples. Niki compared the DL photo to a shot she took at the scene. “Could be her,” she said. “Is Fireball who we think he is?”
I found a picture of Dennis Orton with a young, pretty blond on his arm—Pippa Stafford. They were at some political function, and Orton had his sleeve rolled up enough to expose the compass tattoo. I turned the screen toward Niki. “Here’s our boy.” I pointed at his wrist. “I saw that tattoo on Fireball.”
“And that’s probably our victim standing by her man?”
“Happier times, I guess. Did Crime Scene find anything of value?”
“Not yet. They hauled the van to the impound warehouse. It was too damned cold to do much at the scene. Did you run a history on Orton?”
“I was just about to.”
“What about Ms. Stafford?”
“Been busy.”
She glanced at my thin warrant application, a document that could have been typed in ten minutes. “Looking up Ray Kroll?”
I stood up. “I have to get this search warrant signed before the judge leaves.” The look on Niki’s face told me that she saw through my bullshit. She always could.
“Max, what’s going on? Why are you acting so—”
“I gotta run.”
I didn’t wait for a response. Rushing out of the office, I was happy to get a door between us. She saw past my subterfuge—my ink, as she would say. It was one of her favorite expressions. It referred to the cuttlefish and how it could spray a cloud of ink into the water to distract and confuse a predator.
I left Homicide, disappearing behind my cloud of ink, but she knew I was up to something. It was like working with a psychic. I would need to come up with a plan to keep her out of my way, at least where it concerned Jenni’s case.
CHAPTER 7
Up North
I get about halfway across the frozen lake, retracing my steps back to the cabin where the chase began, when I pause to catch my breath. My lungs feel heavy, thick. I can hear my breath wheeze as I exhale. I am less than a quarter mile away from the man. I can no longer see or hear him, but I assume he’s still yelling his head off, hoping that his cry finds some wandering hiker. I’d be yelling if I were in his place.