The I-94 Murders Page 3

  Angela was all business. “We believe our daughter was assaulted on Wednesday night, and abandoned on I-94, in freezing weather. The police aren’t going to do anything, because she agreed to be blindfolded and tied up naked to the bed before the assault. She doesn’t know who the assailant was, but she knows it wasn’t her partner. We want you to find this horrible man. Do whatever it takes. We will compensate you.”

  After ten minutes of Marcus’s telling me what I should do, I offered, “I have land near Pierz I’d like to build a house on. I’ve drawn up a house plan, but I don’t have the capital to start the project. I know a great builder who happens to be available.” I didn’t bother to tell them Clay Roberts was available as a result of an argument with a homeowner that ended his current project. I could handle Clay—he was an old friend.

  I continued, “If you start this project and deal primarily with Clay, I’ll spend every free moment I have helping your daughter discover who assaulted her. No payments will go through me. While you’ll initially front the building costs, I’ll pay you back, minus my salary, which is $10,000 down, plus the additional compensation Angela feels appropriate for my work.”

  Marcus objected, “That’s ridiculous. We’re supposed to fund your entire house?”

  I asked, “Do you know where Pierz is?”

  Marcus grumbled, “No.”

  “It’s two hours north of here in rural Minnesota, and you can build a nice house for one-third what it would cost here.” A benefit of feeling like I had nothing to lose was that I really didn’t care if I got this job, and that gave me great bargaining power. I explained, “I’ve thought about the possibilities this job could entail, and it may be I can only be paid once for it. There are ethical codes for BCA investigators. You both have serious concerns, so I have to consider the possibility the BCA may become involved. If the BCA asks me to help, I can no longer be on retainer by you. I have to put my BCA work first. To be honest with you, I’m not sure that even this offer will fly with the BCA, but I do know for now, it’s good, and it would encourage me to work unrestrained. When it’s resolved, I’ll explain what I did and you can determine how much I still owe for the house at that time.”

  Angela told me, “If you start immediately, it’s a deal …”

  I HAD DRAWN UP SEVERAL HOUSE plans in my free time since Serena left. Maybe in the back of my mind I knew I’d have to start a new career to be closer to my daughter. I honestly thought it would be much more difficult for me to leave my work, but I felt strangely at peace with this decision. If Serena wasn’t bringing Nora back to me, I’d go to Nora. I just had to resolve this case, first.

  4:25 P.M., FRIDAY, APRIL 14, EDEN PRAIRIE

  CENTURY-OLD MAPLE TREES SHADED the front yard of Angela and Marcus Mayer’s multimillion-dollar rose-brick home. Marcus and Angela sent me to their Eden Prairie home, hidden in a professionally groomed community, near the Bearpath Golf and Country Club. The neighborhood wasn’t advertised. If you were wealthy, you knew about it; if you weren’t, they didn’t want you around.

  Their twenty-one-year-old daughter, Ava, waited for me at the door in a commercially faded, green Eagles jersey, and short, red gym shorts. The moment I saw her, standing with her legs crossed at the ankles (likely because it made her legs look nice, even though it had to be quite uncomfortable), I knew she would be difficult to work with.

  Ava was annoyingly cute, at a little over five feet and a hundred pounds. Her hair was short in the back, with long blonde waves in the front, reminding me of Hermey, the misfit elf who wanted to be a dentist on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Ava had big blue eyes, perfectly groomed dark eyebrows, and her skin had the smoothness of soft vanilla ice cream. She presented as a mopey, spoiled teenager who had just lost her best friend.

  Once inside, Ava wearily sat back on a white Nella Vetrina kitchen chair, which cost more than my first car, explaining her dating strategy. “I wanted to find my very own Christian Grey—of Fifty Shades of Grey. You can’t narrow the field down on Tinder, so I had to go to the Backpage of Craigslist. I filtered through a cornucopia of slime balls before I finally found Alan Volt.”

  My obsessive brain wanted to point out that a cornucopia refers to an abundance of pleasant items, but I let it go.

  Ava looked away with a brief, wistful memory of Alan. “Alan and I sat courtside at the Timberwolves games. He drove a BMW, knew where to get the best expresso, and wore Armani suits. He had some road rage, and did a little cocaine, but he wasn’t an addict. Alan didn’t hesitate to spend money on me and was into some light BDSM.”

  I kept my thoughts to myself—bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism—when love isn’t enough. Backpage was shut down in January of 2017, after data from Consumer Watchdog suggested ninety-nine percent of the income generated from it was from sex trafficking. Backpage wasn’t popular with the younger crowd, so I had to verify, “You were on Backpage?”

  Ava pouted. “For God’s sake, I’m not a prostitute. Alan and I were both looking for a little provocative passion.” She chewed the inside of her cheek and sheepishly admitted, “We didn’t share much. That was part of the intrigue. We’d communicate like characters from a Jason Bourne movie—making urgent demands of each other. He emailed me Wednesday night and told me to go directly to his basement and be prepared to submit, so I did.” Ava grimaced, and waved a dismissing hand at me before I could interrupt. “I know. Stupid—it was just a game.”

  As I watched her speak, I noticed the skin around her lips had been carefully covered with concealer. I asked, “What’s going on with all the makeup around your lips?”

  Ava avoided eye contact. “I’m getting to that.” She swallowed hard. “I remember pulling up to the house, walking through the front door and down the steps, and that’s it. When I regained consciousness, my wrists and ankles were bound to the bed, and I was naked and blindfolded. Loud techno music was playing. It was all about sensory deprivation for Alan. I was to focus completely on anticipation of touch. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. I couldn’t move. Alan and I had done all this before, but before, I’d remembered all I did getting to that point. I knew something wasn’t right.”

  Ava’s eyes filmed over with tears. “I’m such an idiot. Do you have any idea how helpless it feels to be bound, spread-eagle and naked? When I came to, there was a gross angry man grunting on me. He had man boobs. It wasn’t Alan. He smelled like a combination of a factory and ginger. When I yelled for help, he choked me.” She shuddered and tucked her hands into her sleeves, “You should see my body. And I don’t even know exactly what happened to my mouth—it’s just all red and chapped, and stings like hell.” She pulled her feet up on the chair and rested her forehead on her knees.

  I postulated that Ava’s mouth had been burned by a chemical with an anesthetic quality, like chloroform, but not chloroform. It would explain her memory loss. Chloroform didn’t burn. A byproduct of ethanol had a similar effect and burned, but the closest ethanol plants were ninety miles away in Little Falls or Winthrop.

  I considered. “What was the industrial smell like—oil or fiberglass, or wood?”

  Ava raised her head and used the cuffs of her sweatshirt to dry her eyes. She fought back tears as she toughed out the conversation, “More like oil, covered with ginger perfume.” She looked at me pleadingly, “There was nothing I could do.”

  I thought about the variety of auto repair garages, or tool and dye businesses around the metro area. I patiently waited for her to collect some composure before asking, “Anything else?”

  She straightened and untucked her legs again, crossing one over the other as she thought over her answer. Her elevated foot began to bounce rhythmically as she sardonically spat, “He had a small dick.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I continued my line of questioning. “What did he say to you?” Sometimes, the expressions used can help identify a rapist.

  She covered her face with her sleeve-enveloped hands, recalling the trauma, her
manicured nails peeking out from the cuffs. I noted some of the heavy makeup around her mouth left a smudge of putty-colored foundation on the fabric, along with black smudges of mascara. Still holding her hands against her cheeks, she went on, “He called me ignorant and obtuse. Who uses the word obtuse? Then he asked if I had learned my lesson about bondage.” Her expression was caught somewhere between fear and incredulity. Barely audible, she uttered, “I told him I’d learned.”

  I quietly waited for her to continue.

  Ava succumbed to her restless foot. She stood and padded in stocking feet over to the kitchen island, disinterestedly rearranging the bright-colored, ceramic fruits resting on a multicolored platter, likely collected during worldly travels. She gestured with what I was sure was a hundred-dollar apple, “Then he calmly gave me directions, like we were friends. He said he would free one of my hands, and I should count to two hundred before I removed my mask. He said the keys were in Alan’s BMW—told me to drive it on Interstate 94 West, past the Maple Grove restaurants, park it on the side of the road, and hitchhike home. I did as I was told.” She smacked the apple down hard enough to break it.

  I recalled, “There was a wind chill warning on Wednesday night.”

  “I don’t really remember the weather. I was in a haze. Mom said a very nice woman dropped me off—but I don’t even remember what she looked like.” Ava studied me to see how I’d respond, “My mom said there was blood on my shoes.”

  5:45 P.M., FRIDAY, APRIL 14, EDINA

  AS WE DROVE TO ALAN VOLT’S HOME, I was bothered by the thought: Where was Alan when all of this occurred? After all, Ava didn’t see or hear Alan the entire time. I was pleased to see a security camera underneath the eave facing both the porch and the garage. The front door was partially open and loud electronic dance music was thrumming from the basement. When no one answered the door, we followed the music into the basement. A white, fold-up table was set up on the concrete basement floor. Sexual play toys were lined up on a silver rolling tray, like a surgical procedure instrument tray. The tray’s contents included what I deduced were nipple clamps, a cloth whip, a crisp black leather belt, a blue permanent marker, and two champagne glasses.

  The gray mask Ava described lay on the bed, along with cushioned leather handcuffs, similar to the kind used in mental institutions to restrain unruly clients. Ava’s face paled at the mere site of the empty, innocuous bed, leaving no doubt in my mind she had been assaulted there. From that point forward, a flat emptiness settled into her eyes, unnervingly similar to the ghost that haunted Serena before we parted.

  Ava turned away and whispered, “There’s a pair of metal handcuffs and a black permanent marker missing. Alan and I drew on each other’s bodies, in places where it wasn’t noticeable with clothes—better than tattoos, right?” Her attempt at lightheartedness fell flat.

  I did a quick walk through the rest of house, which was decorated with metal and glass furniture and Salvador Dali art. It had all of the warmth of a Chipotle restaurant. Alan’s computer tower was gone, which was terribly disappointing. His security system ran entirely through the tower, rendering his state-of-the-art cameras worthless.

  We retraced Ava’s footsteps to the unfinished garage. Ava gasped at the reddish-brown splatter on the floor; there was little question for me that the splatter was blood. She closed her eyes for a moment and shared, “It was like this when I left. I remember, but it just didn’t register until now.”

  “You were probably in shock.” I felt badly for this traumatized young woman, who was now standing in a blood-soiled room. I lightly touched her shoulder and guided her to where I’d been standing. “I have one more question, and then I’ll get you out of here.”

  I bent down and pointed to a curiously unstained rectangular shape on the concrete garage floor, the size of a half sheet of paper. It had to have been removed after the blood misted the floor. I drew an outline over it and turned to Ava, “What was sitting right here?”

  Ava began vigorously rubbing at the makeup stains on her cuffs, “There was a piece of paper on the floor. Without thinking, I picked it up and threw it in the garbage before I left.” Ava was incredulous, “The floor’s full of blood, but I had to pick up that piece of garbage?” She retrieved the note from the tin garbage can. Confused, Ava pointed toward the can, “Alan’s clothes are in the garbage can. I saw them when I put the note in there, but I didn’t give it any thought at the time.”

  I held the paper at the corners, the backside of which was smeared with blood and seeping through the page. The note read:

  Alan Volt kept blaming Ava M. for allowing his denigration of an identity that I see as caring. In just this act, he used her need to submit to the altruistic care stewards of good honor give with everlasting subjective love. He had to save his guiltless pics in a file anyone networking can now find. So it’s time for all pigs needing to hurt girls to die. / Culhwch

  I held the edge of the note carefully and would place it in a plastic bag when I returned to my car. The writer was educated, but either struggled with mental illness, or was trying to send a deeper message. I’d revisit this after I had returned Ava safely home.

  I had Ava guide me to the location she drove Alan’s car. She had pulled over on a busy stretch of Interstate 94, just north of the Maple Grove shops. She remembered pulling over by a sign that read “ST. CLOUD 47 MILES.” I’ve seen that sign a hundred times, and it always seemed like St. Cloud couldn’t be that close to the suburbs of Minneapolis. Alan’s car wasn’t there, so I contacted a Minnesota State Patrol officer and asked where abandoned cars were towed from this location.

  I dropped Ava off at Caribou Coffee and told her to call her mother to pick her up, then called Angela to confirm she would come for her daughter. Ava didn’t look well, and I didn’t want to put her through what I suspected I’d find in the trunk of Alan’s car, once I’d located it.

  A Maple Grove police officer was waiting for me at Chase Towing. Our breath steamed in the cold air as we made our way across the tar parking lot, through the rows of cars, to Alan’s gray BMW. A mist of rusty red speckled the bumper. Because of the recent warm-up in the last twenty-four hours, we were able to catch a rancid scent from the trunk. I reached through the driver’s side door and popped the trunk open. Inside, Alan Volt’s lifeless, naked body was frozen into the fetal position. I don’t believe these were the shades of grey Ava had in mind. The ragged, bright red bullet hole in the side of his head looked like a busted paintball.

  A series of two-inch lines were cut down the side of Alan’s body. There was little blood in the cuts, suggesting Alan’s heart was no longer pumping when they were made. I have an obsession with memorizing numbers, and the lines were cut in a manner similar to how a child would count off an amount, so I quickly encoded the lines as numbers into my memory.

  I called Maurice Strock at the BCA and explained how Ava Mayer had come to me for help and, in the process, I’d discovered a dead body. Without serious deliberation, I made a major ethical decision. I was already retained by the Mayers, and now my supervisor had just declared me the lead investigator on this same case. In the moment, it made sense. I could work the case as an investigator, and in my off hours, work for the Mayers helping to keep Ava safe. Helping Ava with her trauma could give me better insight into alleviating Serena’s pain.

  Investigator Maddy Moore’s midnight blue, unmarked Crown Victoria quickly cruised onto the scene and she waved me over to join her. Maddy was in her early forties and had shoulder-length brunette hair that curled up, as my dad would say, like feathers on a duck’s ass, in the back. The style seemed outdated, but who was I to say? She was an avid runner, with pleasant, round, facial features. Maddy was comfortably dressed in dark, designer jeans and a deep-purple, pullover sweater.

  Maddy had risen fast in the BCA, but after being caught having an affair with one of BCA administrators, she was demoted back to investigator status. He kept his status. The personal consequences became even more
severe for her, as it first cost Maddy her marriage and, after a long battle, she also recently lost custody of her only child, a son, to her ex-husband. I liked Maddy, even if she always seemed to be spoiling for a fight. I just wasn’t in the mindset to deal with her cantankerous nature today.

  The scent of her perfume greeted me first when I opened the car door, and before my brain could filter my thoughts, I asked, “What fragrance are you wearing?”

  Her first words to me were delivered with a snarl, “You and I will never have sex. We will confine our conversations to work. I’m tired of having to hint at this to every damn guy I’ve been around since my divorce. If you are sincerely interested in my perfume, which my guess is you aren’t, it’s Bvlgari.”

  Sufficiently chastised, I simply said, “Okay.”

  Maddy realized, by my deadpan response, that I wasn’t coming on to her. Embarrassed, she rolled down her window to let some fresh air in. “I wasn’t at work when I was contacted. And for God’s sake,” she glared at me, “it’s not like I’m that much older than you. If a man is fifteen years older, people think nothing of it.”

  Unsure how to respond, I got to the details of the case. After I told her all I knew, and we processed the scene at the impound lot, Maddy then followed me to Alan Volt’s home, where we spent the rest of the evening.