{"id":4419,"date":"2026-01-04T00:24:46","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/gone-to-dust-goldman-matt\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T00:24:46","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:24:46","slug":"gone-to-dust-goldman-matt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/gone-to-dust-goldman-matt\/","title":{"rendered":"Gone to Dust – Goldman, Matt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n
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\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span>1<\/span><\/p>\n

Minneapolis had a brown Christmas. It happens, sometimes. Store owners complain about not selling sleds, skis, and shovels, but no one else seems to mind. We know what\u2019s coming. And just after midnight on January 4 it did, falling wet and heavy. Eighteen inches on an earth frozen stiff by a clear, cold December.<\/p>\n

I decided to give myself a snow day and stayed under the comforter to dream in the gray light, but the dreams never came or maybe they did and fizzled out unremembered. Then I woke at the crack of 8:55 to a buzzing nightstand accompanied by a medley of plows scraping streets, snow throwers whining under stress, and tires spinning themselves to nowhere.<\/p>\n

I answered my cell. \u201cHello.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201cShap? You available?\u201d It was Ellegaard.<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessionally or romantically?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSheesh, Shap. This is serious. East side of Edina near Arden Park. We caught something\u2026\u201d He paused. I could tell he was shaken. \u201c\u2026 something sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellegaard didn\u2019t swear or drink. He wasn\u2019t an alcoholic or Mormon or twelve so he had no excuse. \u201cWhat happened?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDang it, Shap, just get over here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anders Ellegaard and I attended the Minneapolis Police Academy together. A week after getting our badges, the mayor, fending off a Republican challenger, made a show of cutting costs. Last hired, first fired. While the other layoffees sat on their pimply ones playing video games until the rehiring, Ellegaard and I got industrious. I went to work for a private-detective firm and started accruing hours toward my license. Ellegaard found a police job across France Avenue in the regal suburb of Edina, where the cops worked the most white-collar job you can while wearing a blue collar. Neither of us put on a Minneapolis police officer\u2019s uniform again.<\/p>\n

Edina PD spent most of its time camped out at the bottom of a hill on 50th writing speeding tickets to Mercedes and BMWs. The revenue helped pay for consultants when a real crime came Edina\u2019s way and apparently one had\u2014the Edina police hadn\u2019t worked a murder in over a decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need you, Shap,\u201d said Ellegaard. \u201cNow.\u201d<\/p>\n

I owned a shitbox one-bedroom near 54th and Drew. A divorce settlement left me with enough money to pay cash for it. The house was more expensive than it looked\u2014good schools and restaurants within walking distance inflated the neighbor<\/span>hood\u2019s property values. Every week I received at least one offer to buy it, always from a builder. People saw great value in my home, as long as they could wipe it off its foundation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019d take me ten minutes to walk to Ellegaard on the east side of Arden Park or an hour to shovel the driveway so I could back my aged Volvo out of the garage and get it stuck in the unplowed alley. \u201cI\u2019ll walk over,\u201d I said. \u201cSave me an acai berry croissant or whatever you Edina hard-asses are eating these days.\u201d<\/p>\n

I downed two cups of coffee, threw on a jacket, and laced up my Sorels. I opened my front door. A foot and a half of the heavy stuff pressed against the storm door. I wedged it open just enough to slip outside. It was thirty degrees. Compared to the last few weeks of subzero fuckery, it felt like summer. The plows had only scraped the main thoroughfares, leaving most Minneapolis streets rutted and sloppy. I trudged west on the snow-covered sidewalk then hit a stretch some do-gooder had cleared to justify the grand he\u2019d spent on his snowblower. Then I was Ernest Shackleton again until I reached the Edina border where the suburb\u2019s streets glistened wet and clean thanks to a battalion of overnight plows.<\/p>\n

I turned right on Minnehaha Boulevard which hugged the east edge of Arden Park. A massive house on a hill rose to my right. A sign in the yard read VOTE NO SIDEWALKS FOR<\/span>\u2014snow covered the remainder of the sign.<\/p>\n

On my left, Parks & Rec had already plowed the hockey and free-skating rinks. Shouts and screams and skates and sticks and pucks slapping boards. All comfortable and familiar. Memories of skating with pretty girls with ropey braids and swollen sweaters. It was a youth well spent. I might\u2019ve become <\/span>nostalgic if I hadn\u2019t seen the flashing police cherries two blocks away through the leafless oaks and maples.<\/p>\n

The police gathered outside a gargantuan architectural mongrel bred of colonial, Cape Cod, and Tudor, all capped off with an English country\u2013style roof of steam-bent cedar shingles that rounded at the edges like mushroom caps. The place looked like a painting you\u2019d see in an art gallery at the mall. A massive red oak, probably older than the state of Minnesota, umbrellaed the front yard, hundreds of dead brown leaves still clinging to its branches in the January air. The wide driveway was clear and dry, evidence of hot water tubes snaking beneath. That\u2019s where Ellegaard waited for me.<\/p>\n

He told the uniforms to let me through the yellow tape. Whole families stood outside and craned their necks. The watercoolers would be abuzz the next day in the executive wings of Target, UnitedHealthcare, Cargill, and General Mills. A KARE 11 news van pulled up. They\u2019re the station that cares. Or so it said on the back of their news team parkas.<\/p>\n

Ellegaard looked like a Boy Scout, only he\u2019d traded in his kerchief and merit badges for a Brooks Brothers suit. He was a six-foot-three, blue-eyed blond who either shaved twice a day or didn\u2019t shave at all\u2014I couldn\u2019t tell which. He had hair like an anchorman on the six o\u2019clock news, and I wanted to slap him for it. \u201cChief McGinnis,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019d like you to meet Nils Shapiro.\u201d<\/p>\n

I pegged the Edina Chief of Police for early-sixties. Craig McGinnis stood six foot five and had the build of a decathlete. He had a full head of silver hair, wore a charcoal suit and a red cashmere scarf. I hoped the scarf was a Christmas present he <\/span>felt obligated to display rather than an affectation. If it were the latter, he and I were going to have a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cNils Shapiro,\u201d he said. Shaking my hand like it was the love-tester machine at Bennigan\u2019s. \u201cThat\u2019s an unusual name.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, but only Swedes and Jews know it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll bet,\u201d he said. He smiled. \u201cDetective Ellegaard says you\u2019re the best private investigator in Minnesota. Said you cracked the Duluth murders but didn\u2019t get credit for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t need a lot of attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like that in a man. Even more in a woman.\u201d He laughed at his joke but the laughter didn\u2019t last. I guessed whatever was in that house wasn\u2019t going to let him experience much joy for a while. He looked at me and mustered the toughest expression he had in him. \u201cConsultants who work for Edina PD don\u2019t talk to the press. They don\u2019t talk to Minneapolis PD. They don\u2019t talk to the Feds. They don\u2019t talk to their wives, their girlfriends, post on the Internet. They don\u2019t communicate outside of Edina PD. Period. And even though you\u2019re an independent contractor, if you break our chain of command, you\u2019re gone. Understood?\u201d I nodded. \u201cHow much do you charge?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFive hundred a day plus expenses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cExpensive, but I suppose you\u2019re going to tell me I get what I pay for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I don\u2019t know about that. But the more I charge the less my employer tends to waste my time.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGinnis looked to Ellegaard for assurance. Ellegaard gave him a nod.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll right,\u201d McGinnis said. \u201cTake him inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellegaard led me up the walk toward a pair of double front <\/span>doors. \u201cWe\u2019re not going in this way,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I want you to see something.\u201d He put on a latex glove and knocked on a massive slab of oak. A voice from inside told him it was okay to open it, and Ellegaard did with a gentle nudge.<\/p>\n

I looked inside. A thick coating of grayish dust blanketed the foyer. It didn\u2019t look like natural dirt, and any normal human being would have cleaned it up. \u201cSomeone murder the maid?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t joke,\u201d said Ellegaard. \u201cThat dirt is why you\u2019re here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAny idea what that shit is?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe consensus at the moment is it looks like what you\u2019d find inside a vacuum cleaner bag\u2014you know, when it\u2019s full and you have to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I felt it, the lightness, the excitement, as if I\u2019d discovered a sealed box in my basement I\u2019d never noticed before. I\u2019d felt it in Duluth. I\u2019d felt it on my first date with Micaela. I\u2019d felt it as a boy the first time I heard Nirvana\u2019s \u201cLithium.\u201d And I knew I was about to experience something significant well before I knew what that thing was or whether it would be good or bad.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe M.E. is upstairs in the master suite with the body,\u201d said Ellegaard. \u201cOther than that, CSU has stayed outside. They\u2019re afraid they\u2019ll make matters worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow could they make matters worse?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat dirt or dust or whatever it is, it\u2019s all over the house. It continues up the stairs and down a hall and into the master suite and leads right up to the body, which is\u00a0\u2026 Well, you\u2019ll see. CSU isn\u2019t quite sure what to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I looked over my shoulder and saw the CSU team standing <\/span>outside their van, sipping coffee and looking uncomfortable and unsure. Each one of them probably had the same expression at prom. \u201cWhat are you saying, Ellie? The crime scene\u2019s so contaminated they\u2019re afraid they\u2019ll uncontaminate it which will, in effect, further contaminate it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t call me Ellie,\u201d he said. \u201cThat nickname didn\u2019t come with me to Edina. I don\u2019t want it to start now. And yeah, something like that. We don\u2019t even know how to begin on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

We walked away from the front doors and into the garage, where a dozen paper yard bags sat filled with leaves awaiting pickup in the spring. We entered the house through the garage service door. Ellie hadn\u2019t oversold it\u2014the dusty dirt was everywhere. Gray and fluffy. In the mudroom. In the kitchen. Ellegaard put sanitary shoe covers over his loafers. I took off my boots and put the sanitaries over my socks.<\/p>\n

We headed upstairs, looking down on the living room that featured a grand piano. Of course it did. This was the kind of neighborhood where every parent makes their kid take piano lessons but no parent wants their kid to be a musician.<\/p>\n

If the fluffy gray stuff hadn\u2019t blanketed the master suite, it would have been immaculate. A king-sized four-poster of the Shaker persuasion was the main attraction centered between nightstands and wall sconces. Framed photographs of children, from babies to preteens, sat on the nightstands and floating shelves. A chaise longue took up space, but not enough. The room was so big you had to be in shape to get from one piece of furniture to the next. A wall of windows offered a view of the acre-sized backyard bordered by the Minnehaha Creek, now frozen and covered in snow. You could sit in a cushioned window <\/span>seat if it was too exhausting to stand while looking out at all that beauty.<\/p>\n

Only the mummy-shaped pile of dust on the bed seemed to be at odds with the interior decorator\u2019s grand vision. A thermometer stuck out of it at an odd angle, and the M.E. stood over it. Julie Swenson. She usually worked on Minneapolis bodies. I\u2019d met her a few times at the Hennepin County morgue. She had long gray hair and eyes with a hint of blue. I guessed she was over fifty. I usually stuck to south of forty like myself, but something about the honesty of her hair tempted me to fall in love with her. Maybe I\u2019d tell her one night in the cold room when she wasn\u2019t holding the bone cutter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s the body,\u201d said Ellie, pointing to the sarcophagus of dust with the thermometer sticking out of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo shit,\u201d I said, turning away from the look I knew Ellie was giving me. \u201cHey, Julie. You moonlighting in Edina?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am while their M.E. is in Fiji. Pleasure seeing you here in the hamlet, Nils.\u201d Her eyes didn\u2019t mean it though, and I ditched my plans for romance in the cold room.<\/p>\n

Julie Swenson pulled the thermometer from the dust-covered body. She tapped her fingers on an iPad then estimated the time of death between 11:30 P.M.<\/span> and midnight.<\/p>\n

A uniform led a neighbor into the bedroom. \u201cThis is Beth Lindquist from around the corner on Bruce Place,\u201d said the officer. \u201cShe can ID the body.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I can,\u201d said Beth, small and timid. She sniffled. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know\u2026\u201d She had shoulder-length dark hair, a slender frame, slightly stooped shoulders, and a neck that appeared too thin to hold up her head. I guessed Beth was in her midforties, but she seemed ten years older than that, as if she\u2019d modeled <\/span>her image on a woman in her mother\u2019s generation. No one, I guessed, had ever called Beth Lindquist a firecracker, but plenty of people had called her ma\u2019am. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I can handle seeing\u2014\u201d Beth stopped and, for the first time since entering the room, noticed the dust-covered body on the bed. She shuddered.<\/p>\n

Ellie stepped toward her. \u201cMrs. Lindquist, I\u2019m Detective Ellegaard. I know this is difficult. But we\u2019d greatly appreciate your help, so please, take as much time as you need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beth Lindquist nodded, shut her eyes and inhaled slowly. She held the breath then exhaled\u2014a move she learned in yoga, no doubt. Then she nodded. Goddamn Ellegaard. His power on women was like a microwave\u2019s on a marshmallow\u2014too bad he\u2019d married young.<\/p>\n

Beth moved forward in small steps like she was a hundred and two. Julie Swenson brushed away some dust and exposed the gray face of a woman with eyes closed. Wisps of blond hair looked especially yellow next to her colorless skin. Beth Lindquist screamed, dropped to her bony knees, and whimpered, \u201cPoor Maggie. Poor, poor soul.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Book Preview \u00a0 1 Minneapolis had a brown Christmas. It happens, sometimes. Store owners complain about not selling sleds, skis, and shovels, but no one else seems to mind. We know what\u2019s coming. And just after midnight on January 4 it did, falling wet and heavy. Eighteen inches on an earth frozen stiff by a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[281],"class_list":["post-4419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-matt-goldman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}