The Man From Lagos Read online

  The chief met with both the brothers upstairs, in her office. Again, she wanted to show them that this was just a regular conversation. She felt her office would keep the temperature down and show trust. After about forty-five minutes of laying out what she knew of the case, she pleaded with them that there was enough killing going on and that they should let her handle this one. She also surprised them with details about Marcus and Angie that they didn’t think anyone other than close family members would know. She told them that there is no evidence that the Mason Boys had anything to do with this and that they were close to making an arrest. She said that if they promised not to retaliate and leave it up to her, she would make sure that their mother would be the first to know once they had someone in custody. Both men glanced at each other like they couldn’t believe that a full-on police chief would bring them in to give them an update about their brother’s murder and also offer to keep them informed on how the case was progressing.

  They didn’t know Chief Brown, but they recognized the extra decorations on her uniform. The chief shared that a call was made to their mother earlier that day to offer her condolences, and she promised the woman that the police department would find who killed her son and bring that person to justice. The brothers didn’t say much during any of this. They just couldn’t believe that this wasn’t a joke or a trap.

  Ikee was first to speak.

  “So, we are not in trouble?”

  “No, absolutely not!” she added matter-of-factly.

  The brothers glanced at each other, tongue-tied.

  “Now, I need you both to promise me that you will not do anything stupid to end up back in front of me, okay?”

  They both nodded unable to speak. They still thought it was a joke or a trick, but kept going with what they were hearing. The chief stood up and opened the door to her office, motioning for both of them to leave. They both seemed to have legs of stone. At last, one brother stood up and then the other. They followed the chief’s directions with increasing urgency. At the door, a uniformed officer rode down the elevator with them. Not a word was spoken during the short ride down. The officer thanked them for coming as he held the front door for them.

  For her part, the chief knew this unorthodox move would give her some chips to cash in one day with those two. They would never forget what just happened. They knew that if they did mess up and did something to piss off the chief, they might be spending a long time inside a county building.

  As for the other side of the equation—the Mason Boys—she didn’t need them at the moment. They weren’t the ones responsible for killing Marcus Smalls, and all they had to do was keep their heads down for a bit. The chief was keeping an eye on them as they needed to be taken down when the time was right. Their gun sales gave them a share of responsibility for the crime in this city. It was one of the things Peters had in the back of his head—when he came back to work, they needed to hammer out a clearer plan to take down the whole gang.

  *

  Peters encountered traffic coming out of Minneapolis. The DOT had completed its construction projects so I-94-E was now open for normal traffic. Getting to Woodbury from Minneapolis would be easy.

  The rain was coming down hard as his car merged onto I-94-E. He couldn’t be late today. Not for this. He wouldn’t hurt Sarah that way. Yet all he saw were endless brake lights. Cars slowly inched their way on the highway. Flashing lights glittered in his rearview mirror, far away but getting closer.

  Damn. This is not happening to me today! He swore. Why were people so bad at driving in the rain? Stupid people thinking they could still drive the speed limit with all this water on the roads. The first cruiser with its lights on passed him on the left as cars pulled off on either side of the road. The cruisers parted traffic like Moses through the Red Sea. As the cars on the road got back into formation again, another set of lights came up behind him. It wasn’t thirty seconds before the second cruiser was upon him. It must be an emergency that would pull two squad cars to the same location. As he was trying to think of why, or whether he could risk using his police credentials to hurry through—unlikely—an ambulance was next to pass. Then a fire truck.

  He was close enough now to see them exit on I-494-S and then he saw all the emergency vehicles go across the bridge taking them back on I-494-N. Must be a bad accident, and possibly along Sarah’s route. He prayed that she was past the accident. This was a huge day for both of them, and she didn’t need the stress.

  Peters finally exited off I-94-W onto I-494-S. As he finally made his way to the top of the exit ramp, he noticed that cars were backed up on both sides of the highway. Cars going south were inching their way forward, while the cars going north were stopped. He then saw a tow truck driving on the shoulder heading north.

  Peters always carried his radio with him, and now it crackled.

  “50-21 Adam, what is your location?”

  Peters’s heart stopped. He was off duty today. There would be no reason for him to get a call from dispatch unless something was wrong, something personal. His mind then went to all the emergency vehicles that passed him heading north.

  “Oh, Sarah, oh, Sarah…” he kept saying to himself. He couldn’t make himself reach for the radio.

  “50-21 Adam, what is your 10-20? Please respond.”

  He ignored the call and immediately dialed Sarah’s cell phone. It went to voicemail. “You have reached Sarah Peters, I’m not able to receive your call at the moment, please leave a detailed message and I’ll return your call as soon as I possibly can.”

  He only got voicemail if she was busy with a client or in an important meeting. Any other time, she would pick up. They were always happy to talk to each other. Even if it was for a quick, “I just wanted to say I love you.”

  It can’t be, it just can’t be…

  Peters didn’t even notice his tears. He still hadn’t answered the dispatcher’s call. He tried Sarah’s number again. This time it didn’t go to voicemail.

  “Peters, is this you?” came an unfamiliar voice.

  Chapter 11

  My Sarah

  Hennepin County’s chief medical examiner called Lawana Brown after Sarah’s autopsy. Normally, the next of kin got the report, but Chief Brown had asked her the night of Sarah’s death to oversee the autopsy and report back only to her. Normally Bisi Simmons let her staff of twelve do the autopsies so she could deal with administrative work and meetings with families, but the chief wanted the full details of how Sarah died before anything was released to anyone. Also, Peters had made a nuisance of himself. He’d knelt next to the examination table, sobbing ever since he arrived that Friday afternoon.

  Dr. Simmons had promised him personally that she would be the one handling Sarah’s physical examination and that she would call him when finished. He still hadn’t been able to leave. It took a call to the chief to come to the coroner’s office to speak with him, and that’s how Lawana Brown had ended up informally in charge. The witness reports from the accident also flagged the case as sensitive—even suspicious.

  “We need to find out if it was an accident or if it was deliberate,” the chief had told her.

  Chief Brown had driven Peters home that Friday night. He was in no condition to be behind the wheel himself; and it soon became clear that neither should he be left alone. She stayed with him all night and finally left the next morning, after he had stopped waking up every couple of hours, sobbing out his wife’s name. She’d caught a few hours of shallow sleep in the La-Z-Boy that was next to the couch Peters had folded himself onto as soon as they got inside his house. He cried, he talked, he screamed, and he threatened to kill anyone and everyone responsible for taking his Sarah from him. He told her before he finally fell asleep from exhaustion that her death wasn’t an accident. Someone had killed her. Chief Brown was willing to entertain the idea, but she wasn’t ready to take Peters’ grieving, almost-delirious word for it yet. When he was finally out, the chief looked around for his service weapo
n. She found it in his office in an over-the-shoulder leather bag he always carried around. She grabbed it along with the extra clips and locked it in her glove box along with her own weapon. She didn’t want him harming himself or acquiring her weapon while she was asleep in the chair next to him. Whether he might have another weapon in the house, she had no idea, but she had done what she could.

  At around six a.m. the next day, Peters was still sound asleep on the couch. She ended up leaving him a note on the kitchen counter: Peters, I’m so sorry. Words cannot express my deep sorrow for your loss. Please call me when you feel up to it. We will get who did this, I promise. —LB

  *

  The autopsy and its related examinations had taken all weekend.

  The look on Dr. Simmons’s face gave the chief pause. Something was wrong. Autopsies were normally routine examinations.

  “Lay it on me,” the chief said. An in-person meeting meant bad news.

  It took Bisi a moment to speak. Her eyes were red like she had been crying. She was always calm and professional, but not today. The chief grabbed her arm and calmly asked her again what was so important. Bisi still couldn’t speak but just held out a brown manila folder. The chief took it and flipped it open to the autopsy report.

  She put her hand to her mouth with her free hand and murmured, “Oh my God, no.”

  Bisi finally spoke. “You gonna tell him?”

  Chief Brown didn’t respond. She knew that she might have to lock Peters up in a padded cell just to tell him that, indeed, Sarah had been pregnant.

  “I’m not telling him, so you have to,” said Bisi. “I don’t want him anywhere near this place when he finds out, please.”

  The chief found a seat. She knew this changed everything. Whether or not the investigation ever turned up the vehicle that hit her and the person who was driving it, Peters would for sure leave the special assignment posting to her office. He would try to solve this himself and wouldn’t care who got in his way. He would call in all his markers and wouldn’t stop until this person or people were in the ground. Peters wouldn’t care if he tore the city apart in the process.

  She couldn’t afford a loose cannon in her city. The mayor wouldn’t stand for it; the caseload would grow, and Chief Brown would lose her secret weapon. Therefore, she wouldn’t stand for it either. Peters could disappear into the wind, if needed, if he thought he had to. So, she would have to handle this very delicately.

  Chapter 12

  Not Worth Living

  Peters hadn’t gotten out of bed for two days. He couldn’t remember when he left the couch and went up to the bed he had shared with Sarah. Except for the demands of his bladder, he stayed in bed. The blinds held in the darkness and quiet. He heard his phone ring countless times, most likely from friends and colleagues, until the battery finally died. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. His Sarah was gone and he couldn’t fathom a life without her.

  Life wasn’t fair. She was the kindest, most thoughtful person he had ever known. Everyone loved Sarah. How would he tell her sisters? He was glad her parents were not alive. He wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing his own devastation reflected in them. He would find out who did this if it was the last thing he did in his life. Someone would have to pay. He was going to hurt anyone or everyone who took her away. But first, somehow, he had to get out of bed and get himself together.

  Sarah would never approve of him feeling sorry for himself.

  Peters remembered her always saying, “So, what are you going to do about it?” whenever he faced a decision or a problem. She would listen, and she was honest in her feedback. But always, it came back to the question of what he planned to do. Sometimes he’d ask her to take off her law robe before they started talking; she would just laugh and say that she couldn’t. She was pragmatic, through and through.

  So, whatever he planned to do, it had to start with him getting out of bed.

  Peters ventured downstairs. The house was pitch dark even though it was light outside. Had he shut every curtain and shade in the house? It fit—he wanted to shut the world out. But now he needed to go out into that world and find Sarah’s killer. First, he had to get something to eat and clean up all the bottles that he’d emptied that Friday night. The house was a mess. Sarah would be upset with it looking like this.

  He first checked the front door as the doorbell had rung multiple times while he was upstairs. The stoop was piled with deliveries: flowers, cards, food that he was sure wasn’t edible after two days outside. There were also some personal notes from his neighbors on the welcome mat. It took Peters about fifteen minutes to bring everything inside.

  There were so many flowers that he didn’t know what to do with them all. They didn’t have enough vases in the house to put all of them in. Peters just left them on the center island. He didn’t bother with the cards. He’ll get to them later, when he could handle all the awkward and stilted expressions of sympathy.

  He went back upstairs and showered and shaved without looking in the mirror. He refused to meet his own eyes. When he came back down, his phone battery had regained enough life for him to check messages. Twenty-three messages. He would have had more if his voicemail hadn’t run out of space. Peters sat down in his office, cradled his head in his hands, and listened to the messages on speaker. He was listening for one particular message which came after all the good wishes from a lot of people who knew Sarah.

  The one that mattered was the one from his friend Joe Danby at the Department of Transportation. Joe was letting him know that he’d been able to pull the highway footage. Joe stated that this was a YEO pull—your eyes only. Peters was sure the chief would have also requested this information through normal channels, but Joe had agreed that Peters should be the first to see any footage of Sarah’s car from the time she got into camera range. Some municipalities also had stoplight cameras, and he was going to look for those recordings also. Peters dialed up Joe to let him know he was on his way.

  *

  The Regional Transportation Management Center was located in St. Paul off John Ireland Boulevard. Peters knew that the fastest route to Joe was I-694 to I-35-E to the Regional Center. He wasn’t ready to go anywhere near I-694 today. He would take the long way around: I-610 to I-252 to I-94-E.

  Peters locked up the house and went through the front door—the rental his insurance company delivered was parked in his driveway. They had left the keys under the front mat as he had instructed them to do when he was lucid enough to call them about his damaged Santa Fe. Peters pulled out of the driveway, destination St. Paul. He still couldn’t get himself to drive Sarah’s Subaru. The chief had a staff member drive it back to his house from the coroner’s office that Friday where he left it.

  As he merged onto I-252, he pulled out his phone and started listening to the rest of his voicemails. Six remained. The first brought him to tears, as it was from Sarah’s sister Kalista. She said she wanted to come to Minnesota to see her and help plan the funeral if he wouldn’t mind. Kalista lived in Colorado Springs with her husband and three kids, making a decent living since she’d put her science degree to use running a dispensary.

  He would get back to her later—he was not ready for any funeral plans at the moment, but he’d need the help. The next three messages were from the chief. First asking if he was okay and for him to call her back. The next set of messages asked him to call her back right away. She had some developments in the case.

  What could she have so soon? He would call her after he met with Joe.

  *

  He found parking close to the building and entered through the main doors. Joe was waiting for him in the lobby. Joe had helped him on a few cases, and he was easy to work with because he never asked Peters for any official request forms or reasons.

  Joe and Peters took the elevator up to the eighth-floor office. As a regional center director, Joe had access to every camera in the whole state. The Regional Transportation Management Center was connected to every street camera
out there. Staff managed traffic patterns and provided information to law enforcement, EMS, and fire departments. They could give real-time information to those services before they were even en route. Peters always thought people would be surprised, even a little uneasy, at what these cameras had access to and what they could see. If you were eating a granola bar at the stoplight, the camera could read the wrapper and tell you how many calories were in it.

  The first thing Joe did was to shut his office blinds to cut the glare, and then they both took a seat at his desk before two large monitors. Joe queued up the footage and Peters was able to spot his Santa Fe as it moved on I-610. Sarah, of course, was moving with traffic and not speeding. She got onto Highway 10-E and merged onto I-35-W.

  That’s when Peters spotted it behind her.

  “There! The gray Chrysler trailing her!” He was on the edge of his seat. “I knew there was something about those guys.”

  Joe didn’t say anything. But Joe spotted it too: it had been trailing Sarah since she got onto I-610 from the house. He just paused the highway footage and confirmed on the other screen for Peters that he’d been right: the same vehicle had been sitting a few cars back trailing her on a lot of other clips. These guys were good, Peters saw. They moved in and out of lanes to mimic normal driving behaviors. No one would have known that these guys were a tail.

  Back on the highway footage, the Chrysler got closer when Sarah merged onto I-694. The rain was coming down hard but the traffic cameras had infrared lenses. The scene was clear and bright—a very good return on the state’s investment in high-end cameras. The Chrysler took its position behind Sarah as they got closer to the Highway 36 exit ramps. They made their move when Sarah changed lanes to the left to avoid the oncoming cars entering from Highway 36 onto I-694-E. As soon as she made the move over, she was tapped just slightly from behind. To an untrained eye, it looked like an innocent traffic mistake. But it leveraged her change in speed and direction to send her completely out of control.