Alone at night, p.3
Alone at Night, page 3
Without turning around to look at Averill, he said, “Now get started on that list of things I asked you to do.”
* * *
The bad feeling that had begun with being wakened by the ringing phone stayed with Sig as he headed back to the station. Based on what he knew so far, it was way early and all kinds of facts shy of being worth worrying about. But early and shy of facts don’t hold up against a bad feeling in your gut. Which was exactly what Sig had. A bad feeling in his gut.
Not that he had all that much experience with serious crime. He’d been on the Redstone police force for thirty-one years, the last eleven years as chief. The only homicide he’d had in all of that time had been a domestic. A husband slamming his wife’s head against a wall. She was unconscious when Sig showed up, never came to, and Sig had arrested her husband on the spot. He’d gotten a full confession from the husband within an hour of the arrest, and the husband took up residence at Stillwater State Prison within ninety days of the murder. An investigation like that, a fellow doesn’t need to waste time and energy worrying about how his gut feels.
Nothing like what his gut told him he was up against starting tonight.
5
Erin Moser had forgotten her gloves, so she drove toward the township police station with her sweater sleeves pulled out from under her jacket, down over the heels of her hands. The wool against the steering wheel gave her no grip and the wheel kept sliding away from her, keeping her on edge, where she’d been since getting the call from Andrea’s dad.
It wasn’t just the call from Andrea’s dad, coming in the dark, an hour after Erin had fallen into a thin, anxious sleep, that had put her on edge. It was that the call hadn’t surprised her.
“Andrea!” she’d said as soon as the call woke her. Even in the fuzzy instant between sleep and consciousness, Erin knew the call was about Andrea. She knew the call was about Andrea because she’d been on the phone with Andrea only hours before, and the way the call ended had been wrong. The way the call ended had left Erin with a knot in her stomach. The way the call ended had left Erin half expecting a call in the middle of the night.
As Erin drove, she replayed every word of the call in her mind.
“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Not now, Erin. Not on the phone. Maybe tomorrow. We could drive out to the quarry after school and talk.”
“Andrea! Come on. You’re making me nuts. Is it about you and Mike?”
Andrea made a noise that was almost, but not quite, a laugh. “Not about Mike. Definitely not about Mike.”
Erin pushed. “Okay, if it’s not about Mike, is it about…”
“Don’t say it. Not on the phone.”
“Andrea, I can’t stand this. You’ve got to give me a hint.”
A pause. “Oh, shit. It’s that dumb dick Averill.”
“Ignore him. I heard the Sassers are gonna sue the township over what happened to Kim. Can you believe him pulling her over and doing a pat down?”
“Believe that Averill would do something dumb? How hard is that?”
A voice in the background, then Andrea said, “Thank God. He’s gone—hang on—you know that old Mel Carter song we like, ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me’?… it’s coming on KZ, I’m gonna turn the sound up.”
“The song you liked,” Erin said to nobody.
“Can you hear it?” Andrea asked when she came back on the line.
“God, you must have maxed the volume, it’s like I’m there.”
Andrea sang along, sounding like she used to sound, happy and full of energy.
“I can’t believe how retro this song is,” Erin said. “I remember when you started liking this song. It never was about Mike, was it?”
Andrea stopped singing.
“You know what else? Just now, while you were singing? It’s the first time you’ve sounded happy, sounded like yourself since…”
“Don’t say it, Erin.”
“You said you were going to give me a hint about what’s going on. Before Averill showed up.”
“You asked me to give you a hint.”
“You can tell me something.”
A long silence, then, “Erin, this is really serious. Anything I tell you, you’ve got to promise—you’ve got to swear—that you’ll never, not ever tell anyone. And if you do, I’ll say you’re lying and I’ll never talk to you again. I mean it, Erin…”
“You don’t even have to ask. You know I’d never say anything…”
“Okay, all I’ll say right now is that I’ve made a big decision. I mean a really big decision. Oh, wait…”
“What?”
“Somebody’s here. I’ve gotta go.”
“A customer? Did Averill come back? I’ll stay on the line until he goes. I hate it, you being out there all by yourself.”
“Not a customer. Not Averill. I wish it was a customer—even Averill. But it’s not. Gotta go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
And then, a dial tone.
And now, hardly three hours later, Erin Moser was on her way to the Redstone Township Police Department, churning in her mind what she should say about Andrea. She knew what she couldn’t say—couldn’t say because Andrea wouldn’t want her to and couldn’t say because … because, in fact, Erin didn’t know anything. Not for sure. Somebody else might have talked about what they thought was going on, what they’d suspected since summer. But Erin wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t do that because it might not be true. And if it was true, it could be bad for Andrea.
“But what if,” Erin said out loud, “Andrea’s really in trouble?”
Erin’s imagination failed her then. She couldn’t imagine how telling would help Andrea. But she could imagine how telling would hurt—hurt Andrea and a lot of other people, besides.
She couldn’t risk that, not without knowing for sure that telling would help.
6
Walking into the quiet station, past the dispatcher, Sig Sampson’s gut felt worse, not better. There was something in the air with this situation, something that told him what he was up against would likely get a whole lot worse before it got better.
Opening the door to his office, his worst fears solidified. Erin Moser sat in a corner chair, huddled in her parka. Sig’s best hope before he’d walked into his office was that Andrea was with Erin. Erin’s presence put that hope in an early grave.
More than her presence, it was how Erin looked that worried Sig. How you’d expect Erin would look in a deal like this was scared. Scared and something else you’d see with teenagers when they got involved in something more dramatic than what their daily lives offered. They’d be a little wired to be at the center of something big. Wired until the drama got real and pain set in.
How Erin looked wasn’t like that. How Erin looked was defensive, tight.
He sat down in the chair behind his desk without taking his jacket off. So it was the two of them, sitting there in heavy winter coats at two o’clock in the morning.
Erin caught Sig’s look, then started slowly pulling the zipper up and down on her jacket.
“Averill said Andrea was on the phone when he did a security check around eleven-thirty. You talked to Andrea tonight, Erin?”
Erin didn’t stop pulling on the zipper, but she nodded. “It was me on the phone when Averill was at the One-Stop.”
His throat tightened. “Andrea said Averill was there?”
“What Andrea said was, ‘Oh, shit. It’s that dumb dick Averill.’”
Sig let it pass. “That’s all? You didn’t hear them talk to each other?”
“I said to Andrea, ‘Ignore him.’ Then I heard someone talking in the background. All Andrea said after that was, ‘Thank God. He’s gone.’”
He could imagine the scene. Andrea on the store phone next to the pop coolers on the back wall. Averill coming in through the front door, asking Andrea if everything was all right. Andrea not even taking the phone away from her ear, just waving Averill off.
For the first time since the ringing phone had wakened him, Sig drew an easier breath.
“We’re trying to figure out where Andrea might have gone, Erin. She say anything to you that helps us out here?”
Erin took time, then shook her head. Not looking at Sig.
“She didn’t say anything that made you think she had plans after work?”
Erin didn’t say anything, but she looked like she was thinking about Sig’s question. He gave her time, watching her mind work by keeping his eyes on her face. After what must have been a minute, he repeated the question, his voice soft but with more emphasis.
“Erin, did Andrea say anything about where she might have gone?”
Erin sat up straighter and stopped playing with her zipper. She was a smart kid and she knew that Sig Sampson thought she was holding back. She had to say something. Something, but not too much. Nothing about the person coming in not being a customer. She tells Sig that, and everybody Andrea ever knew goes on the rack.
“Right before she hung up, a couple of minutes after Averill was there, she said someone was coming in, she had to go.”
“Did she say if it was Averill coming back?”
Erin shook her head. “I asked if it was Averill coming back, and she said no. Then she hung up.”
“Erin. Do you remember the exact time Andrea said someone was coming in, when she said she had to go?”
Erin thought back. Remembering the radio. “I could hear the radio at the One-Stop. KZLT. There was a song, a Mel Carter song, ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me,’ I think the title is. That was on just before Andrea hung up. You could check their play list.”
“You could hear that, on the phone?”
“Andrea loved that song. It came on while we were talking, and she turned the volume way up. And she was singing along…”
“That was what—within five minutes of when Averill left?”
“Maybe less. Maybe a minute or two.”
Sig nodded. He could match Averill’s patrol log against KZLT’s play list to get a handle on when Andrea had said someone was coming in to the One-Stop. Having Erin provide a time meant Averill had a backup to his account, giving Sig a bit more peace of mind about Averill.
“That’s helpful. Did she say anything about where she might be going after work—I mean, maybe not saying anything specific, but just something that now, when you think about it, might mean she didn’t plan on going home tonight?”
Erin weighed a response. “The one thing she said was that she’d see me tomorrow—I mean, today. Before that, we talked about going for a ride out to the quarry after school.”
Sig kept his eyes on Erin’s face. He’d seen Erin Moser around town since she’d been a toddler. A smart kid from the first, getting smarter by the minute. Andrea, she was a bright kid, a beauty, but Erin had something else. A seriousness, a cynicism behind a big brain that meant she was a force to be reckoned with, even at seventeen.
Sig didn’t have any reason to doubt what Erin had told him. What he felt certain of, his eyes still on her face, was that she wasn’t telling him anywhere near everything she knew.
“That’s it? Nothing that made you think maybe she had plans after work?”
Erin didn’t hesitate before she said, “No. Nothing about going anywhere after work. Just about after school today.”
Sig noted how quickly Erin had answered the question. A pattern was emerging. What Sig thought was happening with Erin was that she hesitated answering when she was holding back.
“How’d Andrea seem to you, Erin? Anything bothering her? I don’t mean just what she said tonight. I mean lately. Any problems that might be bothering her?”
Another hesitation. This time longer than before.
Erin shrugged, but she didn’t look at Sig. “I don’t know. She was tired. She’s been working way too much. Plus school, dance line, stuff like that.” She shrugged again, but didn’t say anything more.
So, Sig thought, something was bothering Andrea. He considered pushing, but didn’t think pushing would work with a kid like Erin. What he thought was the best way to handle Erin was to let her decide when she wanted to talk.
“Sometimes, Erin, you think of things when you don’t expect to. You leave here, you’re driving home, and you think of something, you call me. Anytime, day or night, you think of something, you call.”
Erin nodded, then started to play with the zipper on her jacket again. “That’s it? I can go now?”
Sig stood, giving Erin a slap on her back. “That’s it for now. We’re both tired. Go home and get some sleep. Just remember. You think of something, you call. Okay?”
* * *
Sig stood stock-still for minutes after Erin left. Considering whether to press on until morning or go home and try to get some sleep. At one point, he started to pull his jacket off. Then the dispatcher stuck her head in the office and gave him a message from Averill. Tom Fiske wouldn’t be available until tomorrow morning. So there was no chance of their having the surveillance tape before then.
That pretty much decided Sig. He pulled his jacket back on. When he’d need energy was in another four, five hours. After daylight, when people were around that needed to be talked to. There wasn’t all that much he could do now, and it wouldn’t do anybody any good if he was pooped when he needed to be in high gear.
So he left the station, giving a wave to the dispatcher, saying he’d be back at seven, and headed home.
7
Home. There was an idea for you. It hadn’t been home since his wife had died three years earlier. He never really settled in there anymore, and sleep on a normal night could be tough to come by. Tonight was going to be tricky. Sig figured he’d take his shoes off, turn on the TV in the den, and crank the recliner back. The strategy was to convince his brain he didn’t want to sleep. Then he’d have a shot at drifting off.
It happened just like that. Except after being asleep for less than an hour, two words pierced his consciousness and woke him with a start. He pushed the recliner lever and sat straight up.
Case Theory.
The words rattled in his brain, like a pinball spinning crazily through a maze. Sig stood, shaking his leg, which had gone numb in his sleep.
Case Theory.
Sig walked from the den, lit only by the light of the TV screen, toward the kitchen to make coffee. His leg and his memory started to come back to life as he walked. The words began to come into focus, taking him back through the years to a dreary hotel conference room in St. Paul.
What he remembered was sitting at a table, alongside maybe thirty other law enforcers from all over Minnesota, facing a lectern. A three-ring binder open in front of him to a tab divider labeled “Techniques of Criminal Investigation.”
At the lectern, a deadly dull guy in a blue suit read each of the words under the topic in the three-ring binder. An overhead projector replicated the binder’s words behind the lectern.
What Sig remembered thinking in that St. Paul conference room was that nothing he’d been told in the two-day, in-service training session had anything to do with law enforcement in Redstone Township. Looking around him at the other attendees, most of them from rural Minnesota communities, he’d guessed they felt pretty much the same. Several were sleeping, a couple were doodling, all of them from time to time exchanged glances that expressed indifference or disdain.
But now, those two words, spoken by the guy in the blue suit, on the page in the three-ring binder, and projected on the screen behind the lectern, came back to Sig with force.
Case Theory.
The words had force because Sig knew case theory was what he hadn’t been paying attention to since getting Averill Hess’s call hours earlier. And not having a case theory was part of what was keeping Sig’s gut tight.
While the coffee perked, Sig sat down at the kitchen table. He picked up a pen that sat in a jar along with a bottle opener, a six-inch ruler, and God knew what else in the bottom of the jar. Then he turned over a utility bill envelope and started to consider all the options about what might have happened to Andrea Bergstad.
The theories that came to mind began with a benign statement of possibility. Like, somebody Andrea knew. In seconds, Sig’s imagination took him from benign to malignant. A prank gone wrong. A carload of teenage boys—drunk?—driving by the One-Stop, seeing Andrea inside, illuminated, alone.
Hey, it’s Andrea Bergstad …
She alone?
The car stops, idling while they watch the station from the road.
Man, wouldn’t you like to …
Let’s get her!
Laughter. Someone socks the kid who says it on his arm.
Just take her for a ride, the kid says, sounding more serious.
Put her in the backseat, another kids says.
Take turns with her in the backseat, someone else says …
Sig shook his head hard and rubbed his face to wipe the image from his mind. If it was a prank, it had to have gone wrong in the same way Sig imagined it. Because if it hadn’t gone wrong, Andrea would be home by now.
Sig got up from the kitchen table and walked over to the wall phone.
“I’m guessing you’re not asleep,” he said when Bob Bergstad picked up. “You hear from Andrea yet?”
He got the answer he expected. “And Mike,” Sig said. “You reach him?”
It would have to be checked, of course, but what Bob told Sig pretty much put Mike in the clear. First off, Bob reached Mike at his college dorm, which was a good six-hour drive from Redstone. If phone records verified that Mike had called Andrea before she left for work, from his dorm, there was no way Mike could have driven to Redstone and back to his dorm between the time he’d called Andrea and the time Bob reached him at the dorm. Even without the phone records, Mike said he’d played cards with three guys at the dorm from the time he’d gotten off the phone with Andrea until an hour before Bob called. That would be easy to check.
The answer Bob gave to Sig’s next question was also what Sig was expecting.
