Unidentified Woman #15 Read Online Free

She didn’t scream for her mother or a doctor or a policeman or a superhero from the Marvel universe. She didn’t demand assistance or rail at her attackers or promise retribution. Instead, she accepted it all as if it was the natural order of things. As if she believed the world was a place where sooner or later they threw you off the back of a speeding pickup truck.”
    “Bobby, why am I here? Why are you telling me all this? You haven’t discussed an open case with me in years, not since I quit the cops.”
    “I might need a favor.”

 
    TWO
    Nina and I never argued when we were just sleeping together. There was the occasional spirited discussion concerning subjects like music and restaurant food and the use of the shootout to settle regular-season hockey games. For the most part, though, we got along extremely well—to the point where we would watch other couples bickering and shake our heads in bafflement. What is wrong with these people? we’d ask ourselves. Then we decided to live together and everything changed. Behavior that was inconsequential before suddenly became monumentally important. We started pointing fingers at each other, declaring this is right, this is wrong, this is good, this is bad, our declarations based solely on personal preference. I quietly told friends that maybe we didn’t belong together after all, only to learn that she had told them the same thing.
    Bobby Dunston said to relax, said we were just going through a period of adjustment. We had both lived more or less alone for most of the past two decades, answering to no one, he reminded us, and we were set in our ways. Bobby’s wife, Shelby, on the other hand, decided to intervene—mostly on Nina’s behalf, which was aggravating. I had known her since college and was convinced that if I had been the one to spill a drink on her dress instead of Bobby, it’d be the two of us bickering.
    Our disagreements became acute when we started looking for a home. Nina lived in the out-of-the-way northeast St. Paul suburb of Mahtomedi, and we certainly weren’t going to move there. I had a house in much more convenient Falcon Heights, complete with a backyard pond that attracted all kinds of wildlife—ducks, wild turkey, the occasional deer. Yet that didn’t work for Nina, don’t ask me why. It soon became apparent that, given our conflicting demands, there wasn’t a suitable house, town house, condominium, apartment, or loft anywhere in all of the greater St. Paul area.
    Finally Nina told me she’d found a place, loaded me into her Lexus, and drove west. I told her this was unacceptable when we crossed the Mississippi River.
    “I will not live in Minneapolis,” I announced.
    Nina kept driving until she pulled up to an eight-floor glass and brick structure built to resemble a 1930s warehouse nestled between the northeast corner of downtown Minneapolis and the river. There was a convenience store, liquor store, pizza joint, and coffeehouse on the ground floor. Plus, it was within easy walking distance to several jazz clubs, restaurants, Orchestra Hall, a bunch of theaters including the Guthrie, the train, the Nicollet Mall, and the stadiums where the Vikings, Twins, and Timberwolves played ball—facts that Nina happily shared with me.
    “Sweetie, we’re just wasting time,” I said.
    “It won’t hurt to look,” she said.
    She must have arranged our visit ahead of time, because she guided me past the security desk without a word to the guards, over to a bank of elevators, and eventually to a seventh-floor condominium that she unlocked with a card key attached to a plastic tag that bore the name of the building.
    “This isn’t going to work,” I told her.
    I walked through the doorway. The entire north wall of the condo was made of tinted floor-to-ceiling glass with a dramatic view of the Mississippi River. If that wasn’t enough, there was a sliding glass door built into the wall that led to a balcony. I might have said,