Jodi Compton - Sympathy Between Humans

I knew Christian Kilander both as a county prosecutor and a regular player in pickup basketball games. We’d always been friendly but never close, and he’d surprised me when he’d broken ranks with the system we both served to warn me that I was the primary suspect in the Royce Stewart investigation. Immediately after Gen’s warning phone call, I’d wanted to seek him out, ask if he’d heard anything. I hadn’t done so because the last thing I needed was for anyone, even Kilander, to know that I was concerned about the Royce Stewart case.

Maybe I wasn’t being honest with myself, either. I hadn’t sought Kilander’s help for another, simpler reason. Since our meeting beside the fountain last December, we hadn’t spoken, except briefly as part of an investigation. When we crossed paths downtown, he only nodded where he would have greeted me before, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was avoiding a tainted colleague in the same way that a fastidious man would avoid a mud puddle on the sidewalk.

Now Kilander’s companion turned slightly, looking west, and I realized I’d seen him before. He was six feet, with brown hair graying at the temples, somewhere in his mid-thirties. Then I knew: unless I was very mistaken, he was the man I’d seen watching me from behind the wheel of his car, when I was doing my prostitution-decoy operation.

Then the light changed, and I was pushed ahead with the end-of-day traffic. In my rearview mirror, Kilander and his new colleague crossed their intersection, and I lost sight of them.

Back at mydesk, I was writing up a quick report when the phone rang.

“I have some news for you,” Begans said.

“Okay,” I told him. “Shoot.”

“Well, Bob knew where Hugh Hennessy’s cabin was, and then we had some business up there anyway, kids target-shooting where they’re not supposed to. We drove up and knocked on the door.”

“And?” Begans seemed to want to be asked.

“There’s nobody there. Nobody’s been there for a while. Locked up tight. The water’s shut off.”

“No kidding?” But I’d been coming to suspect it: that Hugh Hennessy, not Aidan, was the real X in the equation.

“Yes. Is that what you needed to know?” Begans asked.

“It is,” I told him, shifting the receiver to my other ear; my left was sore from having the phone pressed to it. “I appreciate how quickly you got to it. Wish Bob a happy retirement for me.”

Begans chuckled. “Oh, he’ll hate it. In three weeks he’ll be so sick of fishing he’ll be here asking for his old job back.”

After we’d hung up, I thought about what I’d learned. Aidan Hennessy, I’d reflected, wasn’t Hennepin County ’s problem. But if Hugh Hennessy, a county resident, was missing, that sure as hell was our business, wasn’t it?

I could easily get the Hennessys’ address, but going to the house wouldn’t be productive. I didn’t believe that Hugh was there, simply refusing to be a part of the search for his missing son. The boy, Liam, had told me that Hugh wasn’t there, and he’d done so without me identifying myself, which meant that He’s out of town was the answer the Hennessy children were giving all callers.

Did the kids really believe Hugh was at his cabin? Or were they lying?

The key person here was Marlinchen. She was the only person in the equation who’d sought help. For that very reason, paradoxically, I wasn’t going to call Marlinchen Hennessy again today, nor visit the house. Lawyers, at least in the courtroom, never ask a question they don’t know the answer to. It was a useful tenet in interview situations overall. I needed to know at least some of the answers before I confronted Marlinchen. If not, she could feed me any story she liked, and I wouldn’t know the difference.

Then I realized something else. My left ear was still hurting, and it wasn’t the outer shell, sore from having a receiver pressed against it. This was more of a throb, deeper, in the ear canal itself. It was actually fairly painful.

I’m not real happy with the way your left ear looks, Cisco had said. Oh, great. Who’d have predicted this guy would be a real, competent physician?

I’d have to write my report on Cisco soon. I wasn’t going to feel sorry for him. I didn’t know how he’d gotten into whatever desperate situation made him see patients in a public high-rise, but he was clearly a highly intelligent person. He was smart enough to know that if he wanted to break the law, he’d go to jail like anyone else.

Still, I wondered how long a sentence he’d get.

Two days later,the pain in my ear was worse, but I kept it in abeyance with aspirin. The cold had passed, I told myself, so this would pass too. I tried to ignore the fact that Cisco had suggested otherwise, warning that I might need an antibiotic prescription.

Stop worrying about his goddamned advice, I thought. This will go away on its own, most things do. Doctors can’t admit that, because if they did, they’d be out of a job.

But the day after that, my ear was refusing to be ignored. The aspirin I’d taken had worn off in the night, and when I woke, my eardrum pulsed like a second, painful heartbeat. I lifted myself to a sitting position very slowly. I didn’t want to cause even the smallest rise in blood pressure that might make the throbbing worse.

When I was ready, I went to the bathroom. My face was a study in contrast, pale with spots of high, febrile color. I swallowed the last three aspirin and pitched the bottle into the trash. Come on, this is probably the worst of it. One more day and you’ll turn a corner, I told myself.

I took a fifteen-minute shower with the door and window tightly closed, inhaling steam. After that, and a cup of tea and two slices of toast, the aspirin started to kick in. I felt marginally better, good enough to get dressed and go out.

I supposesome people would think it strange that someone with a blistering earache and a fever wouldn’t call in sick, but in fact, I went in early. I didn’t want to sit around the house with nothing to think about but how much my ear hurt and how long it might take to heal if I kept refusing to see a doctor. I wanted the distraction of work, and if my shift was still hours away, then Hugh Hennessy could easily fill those hours.

“Sarah.” Tyesha looked up in mild surprise from her desk. “I was just about to call you. Prewitt wanted you to come in a little early today. Not this early, though. Around three-thirty, he said.”

“That’s fine.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my good ear. “Did he say why?”

Tyesha shook her head. “Sorry, he didn’t.”

No one else commented on my presence downtown at midday. I didn’t socialize, just drank tea and looked at the official data on Hugh Hennessy. He had never been arrested locally, nor sued. He did have a moving violation from two years ago, an illegal U-turn, and had mailed in the fine without incident. Nothing there.

911 Recap, where they can look up calls dating back for years, was my last stop, and required an in-person visit.

The Hennessys lived in the western reaches of Hennepin County, on the shore of the big lake, Minnetonka. Nice work if you can get it, as Deputy Begans would have said. Much of outlying Hennepin County had become built up and suburban, but there was still quiet, privacy, land, and history to be bought on the shores of Lake Minnetonka. Some of the county’s richest citizens lived on its inlets and bays.

Even as I gave the clerk the Hennessys’ address, I was thinking it wouldn’t yield anything. I believed there was probably something wrong at the Hennessy home, but I doubted it was the kind of wrong that sent the police out to their quiet lakeside address. It would be, instead, a quiet, simmering distress that even the neighbors didn’t know about.