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Melton wasn’t sure she should be alone, but Cooper took a painkiller and then asked Melton to leave. When the other woman was gone, she sank back into the pillows and...
She recalled it all, in widescreen with a billion color combinations, the bodies on the Persian carpet, the attack by Heath, all over again, all mixed up, over and over...
—
The jail washorrifying; not the conditions, the fact that he’d been in it. Heath was released hours after what he considered to be a self-defense fight with Margaret Cooper, rather than an attack on her. His two attorneys, who’d begun asking him for payment, had gone to the county attorney to challenge any charges against him, and had gotten a conditional release without bail.
As the assistant county attorney had seen it, there was a question about whether Margaret Cooper had simply gotten to her feet before shouting at Heath, or had lurched toward him, thereby initiating the fight, or had even attacked Heath. The broken glass that had cut her could creditably be excused as an accident intended by neither party, and the fall to the floor might have been the result of the two becoming tangled up.
And the assistant county attorney had used his ability to hold Heath for a bail hearing the next day, to get him to sign a waiver of any intent to sue for false arrest. Heath signed and was released: the jail was not a happy place for a man of his stature.
He was prepared on leaving to hide his face from reporters andTV cameras, but there weren’t any. They either hadn’t realized that he was being released, or, worse, he simply wasn’t a big enough deal.
The attorneys, who he now considered to be little better than greedy scum, had given him a bill that detailed sixteen hours of work on his behalf, including travel time to his house, to the federal magistrate’s court, to his house again, and to the jail.
The bill was for $3,200. They pressed him for a check, reminded him without any subtlety at all that he would likely need them again, and he’d given them the money.
At home, he’d fallen into a fugue similar to Cooper’s, full of imagined pasts and futures, with an emphasis on disaster, rather than more pleasant outcomes. What could he do about an investigation into the charities? He was now off the board of Heart/Twin Cities, and when he’d asked the attorneys about the legality of his dismissal, they’d suggested that they were the wrong attorneys to ask—he needed someone with more involvement in the operations of tax-free foundations.
In other words, he might need the help of additional greedy scum. Of course, if he were indicted for problems with the charities, they’d be happy to help at that point. If he paid up front.
Lying on his bed, miserable, the pasts and futures flicking through his exhausted mind, he could think of one thing he could do: flee. Sell the house, sell everything, and get down to Antigua. If he were that far away, and the charges against him were confusing enough, if the evidence wasn’t totally convincing, would St. Paul or the state of Minnesota come after him? They let killers walk free all the time...
Heath rolled over, face-down in the pillows, briefly—very briefly—considered suicide before rejecting the idea, and began toweep. That went on for a few minutes, then he pulled himself together, wiped his eyes on the pillowcase, and went down to the kitchen to poke around in the cupboard.
Sea-salt crinkle potato chips? Excellent.
Maybe stream a little porn.
Get his mind off things.
27
Sandy found two Donald Hesses in Minneapolis: one was fifty-eight and the other was twenty-eight. The younger didn’t show up as a junior, and the two didn’t look much alike, so they might not be related.
Sandy maintained a dozen Facebook accounts, went out looking for the right Donald Hess and found him: found a hundred photos taken over at least four or five years. The most recent showed him in boxing togs and posed like a blond Nazi fighter from the World War II era, including a flattop haircut brushed up and held hedge-like with a shiny hair cream.
He lived on Field Avenue, not far off West Seventh Street, a five-minute drive from the Silver Star.
Sandy said, “I looked up the time of sunset. It’s like five minutes after six, but it doesn’t get dark for a while after that. If he’s goingafter Cooper, and he wants it dark, I think it’d be after the boxing class.”
“See if you can find Facebook pages for a Carol-Ann Lee and Roger Smith,” Virgil said, checking the names in his notebook. The Wiz had mentioned that they worked with Hess in the boxing classes. “Probably from St. Paul or close by.”
There were lots of Carol Lees, including several in Minnesota, most of whom were clustered around the Twin Cities, and hundreds of Roger Smiths, so they gave up on Smith. There were only two Carol-Ann Lees in Minnesota, and only one posed in boxing gear. Sandy downloaded an image of her driver’s license.
“Why would you talk to her?” Sandy asked. “You know Hess is the one.”
“We’re pretty sure, but not positive,” Lucas said. “We also think the killer could well be going after Cooper tonight. If we’re watching Hess and it turns out to be somebody else, we could have a tragedy. Better to know as much as we can about him.”
“Ah. Okay. But—every person you talk to is another one who might warn Hess.”
“That’s why threats are so useful,” Virgil said.
Sandy was working her way through Lee’s Facebook page. “Says here...” she tapped the screen, “...she works at the Wabasha Credit Union on Wabasha Street.”
Lucas looked at Virgil: “What do you think?”
“Sure. Let’s talk to her.”
