False Mermaid

He had tailed the redhead into this building a few times. The very last time, he’d followed her across the square. When she stopped to sit on a bench, he’d fallen back, used the time to pick a handful of flowers from one of the beds along the stream. A wrinkled old broad on a nearby bench pulled a face at him, like the park was her personal garden or something. He didn’t care. He’d watched the redhead take a note from her purse. She stared at it for a minute, then she stuffed it in her pocket and started walking toward the Sturgis Building again. He’d caught up to her as she was waiting for the light. He thought about leaving the flowers somewhere she would find them. She’d be surprised, maybe even touched by the gesture. That’s the way she was; he’d seen it plenty of times. He wouldn’t leave a note or anything—that would be too much. When she walked into the coffee shop he stopped outside to observe through the glass, watching how her lips moved silently as she chatted with the girl at the counter, how her body swayed slightly as she waited.

He was going to head up to the fourth floor—he knew from the last time that’s where she was headed. He’d leave the flowers for her there. He thought he’d timed it just right, but the coffee-shop line was faster than he’d anticipated, and she stepped onto the elevator just before the doors closed. She saw that the fourth-floor button was lit up, so he punched number five, glowing with embarrassment, pretending he’d made a mistake. Then she’d glanced at the flowers, and briefly at him. His knees had begun to tremble. Open your mouth, said the voice in his ears. For some reason, the voice always sounded like his father. She likes the flowers—just open your mouth and say something, dickweed. But all at once he felt the elevator sway on its cables, and knew that if he opened his mouth, he would throw up. He couldn’t make a sound.

And so she’d stepped off on the fourth floor, leaving him standing there like a douchebag with the stupid flowers. He’d watched her plant a kiss on a bearded guy in dark glasses who met her off the elevator. Then she handed over the coffee, guiding beardy’s fingers to the cup like he was blind or something. All at once the realization dawned—the fucking guy was blind. So was that how it worked when they did it? Did she have to show him where to put his hands then?

When the elevator doors finally closed, he’d slumped against the wall, eaten alive with humiliation and jealousy, feeling sicker and more feverish as the box ascended to the fifth floor, where he got off and headed up to the roof to try and cool down. The next person getting on the elevator had found a heap of wilting flowers on the floor.

Now Truman glanced back through the coffee-shop window at the brunette, and knew it was beginning again, that same bad feeling he used to get when the old man would start in on him. Once that feeling overtook him, he couldn’t hold it together much longer. Everything was about to fly apart again, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

11

After leaving the Blue Coyote, Nora drove up the hill out of Lowertown, maneuvering through two-way traffic on Fourth Street, considering what she’d just learned about her sister. Tríona had gone back to work without telling anyone in the family. Was that what she meant when she said she’d lied and deceived people? The man Tríona worked for had fallen down an elevator shaft the very same day she was killed. Could it just be coincidence? What if it was Tríona and not Peter who had some connection to the parking garage?

Nora pulled into a parking spot in front of the Saint Paul Central Library. After plugging the meter, she crossed the plaza to the building’s main entrance. She had always admired the building’s classical design—the regular arched windows, white marble balustrades and terraces. The ancient Romans would have felt at home. But she was here because this place formed another inexplicable piece of the puzzle: when Tríona’s car turned up, the police found a parking ticket in her glove compartment, a citation for an expired meter in front of the Central Library. The ticket was stamped with a date and time, which placed her here less than twelve hours before she was killed. The police had canvassed the library and the area around it, and found only one witness who would swear he’d seen Tríona at the library that day. His name was Harry Shaughnessy, and he belonged to that flock of gray men who made a daily, circular migration from the homeless camps along the river to the library, then to the Dorothy Day Center for a hot meal at noon, and then back to the library or on to Listening House or the Union Gospel Mission, where the bottomless cup of coffee came with a side order of Jesus Saves.