Willow Glen Heist

by Alec Peche

  “So what are our options?” Damien asked.

  No one in the room knew who he was addressing the question to and so there was silence.

  “How do we get rid of Mr. Lin and his threats once and for all?” Damien asked rephrasing his question.

  “I say we contact the United States FDA and tell them about Mr. Lin’s corrupt manufacturing,” Ariana said. “It will terminate the bribery payments to your parents account, but it will take the heat off of Hermione.”

  Damien felt like he needed to think about their options and do some more research on Mr. Lin and his corporation. It was going on three in the morning and he was exhausted. He bet all of them looked miserable as they hadn’t removed the grease paint yet and it was smeared on each of their faces.

  Damien stood up to leave the room and said, “John Lee you re secure in Hermione’s bedroom. You can’t escape and I have a video camera and other alarms on this door as I mentioned, you’re on an island and you’re freeze to death before you make ashore if you should try swimming. Let’s all get some sleep and we’ll decide what to do tomorrow on well rested brains.”

  Damian allowed the man use of the bathroom and then locked him up for the remainder of the night. He then went out into the lab and said, “Ladies do you want to sleep here or at home for what remains of the night?”

  “Kiddo, I think we should head home as you need to go to school in a few hours. We may as well go home so you can sleep as late as possible and not have to worry about the commute across the bay to get to school,” Ariana suggested.

  “Damian are you safe by yourself alone with this man?” Hermione asked.

  “Are you doubting my fighting abilities?” he asked as he faked being affronted.

  “Noooo,” Hermione said slowly, “But you’re a genius and you would probably lose a fist fight at school.”

  “You’re probably right which is why I have a series of traps laid out should Mr. Lee try to break out of your bedroom, and don’t worry, I’ll completely change everything so you won’t notice his presence the next time you stay here.”

  “You’re not going to keep him for long?” Ariana asked.

  “I don’t think so. I can’t hold him captive for long as there’s no point in doing that and he’s disrupting my life at the present so I want to take him back to Mill Valley as soon as we have a plan.”

  “Okay,” Ariana said and followed that with a big yawn. “Kiddo, let’s go take the boat home and we’ll sort this out tomorrow.”

  Damian saw them off and then checked on his prisoner. Fifteen minutes later he got a text from Ariana saying they were safely at home.

  He knew he should be exhausted, but his mind wouldn’t let go of what to do about Mr. Lin and he still had the remnants of adrenaline from the kidnapping attempt. In his kitchen he sipped tea while looking out into the fog of the night and thought about the problem at hand. He had an idea that he planned to discuss with Ariana in the morning and with that he again checked his alarms and finally fell asleep in his own bed.

  Chapter 42

  As Michelle had projected, it was a slow and cold ride to the Soo Locks. Her bicycle was quiet and she aided the battery by pedaling as well which served to keep her warm. She knew the police were looking for her but she felt secure with her mode of transportation. She knew they would discover her car at some point and perhaps as early as daybreak. She carried her bike over the soil and onto a concrete road so they would not have tire tracks and know to be on the look-out for a bicycle. Also if they thought she was moving on foot, they knew she wouldn’t reach the border for hours rather than the single hour she expected to take.

  While at work that day, she called the Soo locks to get the boat schedule which they recorded each day as a courtesy to tourists. She was aiming for a ship that was traveling to Thunder Bay with road salt for the coming winter. She especially liked this ship as it would be docking at an oil refinery dock rather than the Port Authority in Canada and thus it was easier to avoid customs.

  In her practice run a few years ago, she lowered the bike and then herself over the side of the lock in the dark, before the lock begin to fill with water to take it to the higher Lake Superior side. Generally speaking people weren’t watching the back of the boat at this time rather they were looking forward to where the ship would sail and watching the water level to judge when they would be able to untie and sail forth.

  She quietly approached the locks, cutting through a cyclone fence. She was in all black and had a dull black tarp over the bike so that nothing shown in the night. She was fortunate that it was the quarter phase of the moon as she might have been seen in a full moon. She was also blessed by heavy fog. Soon she was on the deck of the ship and she rolled her bike and herself underneath a heavy oilcloth cover of ropes on the deck. They would arrive under cover of darkness the next night. In the meantime, Michelle had food, water, and a jar to pee in to make the most of the slow ride to Canada. She just hoped they wouldn’t hit any rough seas or she might end up tossing her stomach contents. Her patience for such a journey was supported by the knowledge that her freedom was at stake.

  She heard crewmen around her at times, but she knew that a ship like the one she was on needed at most four to six crewmen on duty at any one time. Her private nest among the rope coils went undisturbed. She estimated they were an hour out from Thunder Bay and so she began preparing her escape. Unless the weather was in her favor with very heavy fog, she’d have a hard time getting both her bike and herself off the vessel without being detected. During her practice run she made her escape entirely on foot and they had docked a different location in Thunder Bay so this was where she could make mistakes and potentially be seen by people that might want to turn her over to the police. She used to cell phone to see the geography on Google of the dock.

  She felt the engine slowing but the rim of the ship railing was so high that she couldn’t tell how close they were to shore. With rope she’d found under the canvas cover she fashioned a rope harness so that she could carry the bike down off the boat, she just needed a rope to hang off the edge and slowly ease her path onto a dock. As she hoped, she had both night and heavy fog to hide her appearance. Looking to make sure the coast was clear, she crawled out and looked over the edge to see what was facing her and couldn’t believe her luck. There was a small rowboat laying on his side on the dock. She could be over the edge and rowing away in less than two minutes and with the fog obscuring the front of the boat from the back, hopefully no one would be the wiser.

  Her luck held and shortly she was in a tiny rowboat with her bike’s front tire hanging over the front of it, gently rowing the boat away from the giant ship and to a beach she expected to be in the distance. She just needed to keep her bike battery and her laptop from dipping into the water and all would be good. Oh and hopefully no other vessels on this river would hit her tiny rowboat in the complete darkness.

  An hour later she dragged the boat up on the beach. She carried her bike and used one of the boat paddles to cover up her steps in the sand. She didn’t think the Michigan State trooper could connect these footprints in sand with a missing American woman, but why take chances on anything. Once she was on the road, she followed her GPS to a Walmart Supercenter. If her bike was stolen while she was inside then she’d call for a taxi to take her towards the airport.

  Thirty minutes later armed with a suitcase, duffle, snacks, and a wardrobe, she looked around for her bike and found to her delight that it was stolen. It saved her getting rid of it and she hoped that some thief would get could use of the bike. Shortly, she was the Thunder Bay Airport having book a flight to Calgary via Winnipeg. It all went well, she’d be on the midnight flight to London and then free as a bird in perhaps another eighteen hours. She hoped Ashley was as successful in her travels and she admitted she was looking forward to the adventure ahead now that the dye had been cast and she was on the run.

  Her passport said she was Magdalena Nylund which was a fine Finnish na
me and there was a large Finnish population in Thunder Bay. Michelle had a white blonde wig and given that she’d been living in cold Michigan and her skin hadn’t seen the sun for a while, she thought she probably had the appropriate Nordic features. Once she was beyond Canadian security and customs she took a deep breath. She never used this passport before and felt anxious that it would have all of the embedded security in it. She’d bought it two years ago when she passed through Toronto and had taken her passport picture in the same white blonde wig that she had on now. Hopefully, if the Michigan troopers gave her information to the Canadians, the passport and changes she made to her appearance would get her out of the country unnoticed.

  Nearly twelve hours later and again traveling overnight, Michelle’s airplane landed at London’s Heathrow airport. She managed to get some sleep on the plane and again after clearing through customs and security, she picked up her suitcase and looked for the underground so she could catch a train to the Eurostar station. Once her train finally arrived in France she was going to get off in Wimereux, a small town on western coast, and plant herself in a small hotel with twenty-four guestrooms. She would hang out there while she tried to consolidate her assets. Then she would hop back on the train and head to Turkey. She thought she rent an apartment or house in the town of Izmir and relax beyond the usual reach of the United States.

  Sighing as she sat back in the train seat, she looked back on the last decade. It had been work, first just planning the robbery, then the actual digging while operating a florist shop, then executing Ashley’s meticulous plan for exchanging the currency and safe deposit contents all of that while holding down full time day jobs. They hadn’t had a vacation in all that time despite sitting on a pot of gold. Now, she was about to live for the first time in her life. She could go anywhere, be anyone starting tonight in France. She didn’t speak French but she was anxious to see what random strangers she’d find once she got there. Her new adventure was about to begin!

  Ashley Carrington was making her way on the last leg on a long journey. After Jordan, she flown to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and finally Darwin, Australia. She had located a six month rental in Cullen Bay and planned to just stay in the area once she located a place to live on a more permanent basis. The wet season would start soon in this area which meant she better get used to hot and humid temperatures. Still a nice change from windy and cold Michigan.

  She hoped her younger sister by two minutes had taken her advice and skipped town. They both had explored options over the years of how to escape detection and so she knew that Michele would head north to Canada and then out of the country, but she’d been unable to say where she wanted to go once she left America behind. Once she arrived at her new living space she would unpack and check the twitter account she set up to communicate with her sister and to also see if there had been any news on the Willow Glen Heist.

  There was a Tweet from an avatar she knew to be Michelle that said she was hanging out with the Flyers for the day. Good Ashley though, Michelle had taken her warning to heart and had at least make it to Thunder Bay. The Flyers were their hockey team. Ashley twitted good luck with the Flyers and that she had a good time with the Shamrock Eagles, a local football club. So that was good news that they both were safe outside of the long arm of the United States.

  Ashley then went to work on the bank heist to see if anything was mentioned in the press in California or Michigan, but there was no news. She’d keep checking over the next few days, but she felt relatively safe in the hot corner of the North territory of Australia. Darwin had another one hundred thousand people in it for her to get lost in. She changed her identity three times between departing Michigan and arriving in Darwin. Her story to people she met in Darwin was one of an inheritance and a desire to start over in this part of the world. From what she knew of Australians, they would appreciate her approach. She planned to try all kinds of lessons from surfing to playing the piano, to trying to paint. She planned to set up a dating profile on one of the online dating sites. A year from now, she might still be in Darwin, or she might have moved on.

  Chapter 43

  Damian woke up later than usual the next morning but without still short of six hours of sleep. He checked on his prisoner who also appeared to be awake. He was examining the room and the daylight filtering through Hermione’s infinite window. He watched the guy touch it as though expecting it to be a window that opened to the outside and he seemed disappoint to learn it was a plasma screen. Damian put his robe on, grabbed his bottle of pepper juice and traveled downstairs to speak with his prisoner.

  Thanks to the camera in the room, he could see that the guy was away from the door, still secured to the bed. He knocked and then opened the door.

  “There’s nothing but rock outside that fake window. The screen imitates what’s outside so you’ll note that it’s just another foggy day in the bay.”

  “How long are you going to keep me here?” John Lee asked.

  “Look, holding you prisoner is screwing up my life of freedom, so I’ll take you back to Mill Valley as soon as today or tomorrow. We need to make plans and so your release depends on those plans. You will not be harmed as that is not who I am. I just need to secure Hermione’s safety and decide what to do with your nutcase of a boss and you. What’s your suggestion?”

  John Lee looked taken aback with Damian’s question. He couldn’t believe the guy was asking him what he wanted to do. These Americans were tricky people as they didn’t always behave in the manner he expected. They were a lot more casual in their ways and that always confused him.

  When John Lee provided no answer to Damian, he asked, “Do you work for Mr. Lin’s company or are you independent? What exactly are you - a private investigator? That’s what it says you are when I Google you.”

  “Yes I’m a private investigator and no I’m not employee of Mr. Lin’s. He hired me privately to take care of the problem that Hannah’s parents created for him almost two years ago. It took some time to unravel where the deposits were going from Mr. Lin. Once I traced the family to California, we made a plan to capture them.”

  “What were you going to do with them once you had the family?” Damian asked.

  “There was confusion as to what we would do. Then we finally settled on flying them out of the country to Malaysia.”

  “So what happened to that plan?”

  “Mr. Lin would send his private plane with his own security to take them out of the United States once we had them secured. The plane took off once we raided their house and removed the parents.”

  “So what happened? Did they escape before the plane arrived?” Damian asked.

  “Yes they escaped about eight hours after we kidnapped them and we haven’t located them since. We put an outlook inside the house thinking they would come for the girl, but they must have known she evaded capture and somehow ended up with you and the woman. Mr. Lin’s plane has long ago returned to Kuala Lumpur.

  “So, did Mr. Lin threaten you? Something like don’t come home without this family and oh by the way you’ll never work here again if you fail me.”

  John Lee looked up and at Damian when he offered his suspicions as to Mr. Lin’s threats. Finally, he said “You must be a mind reader sir as he said something very similar to me.”

  “When I looked for news of you on the Net, threatening a teenager and her family seemed pretty far removed from your usual work. So how else has he threatened you? Do you have family that are with reach of this man. Has he scared you as to their safety?”

  Again John Lee marveled that this stranger could guess so many of his secret dealings with Mr. Lin.

  “Mr. Lee I’m a very smart man and therefore I can guess at some of Mr. Lin’s tactics, but I’ve also worked with my share of bullies in the past and your Mr. Lin sounds like one.”

  “I regret the day I answered his phone call and met him in his office,” John Lee. “Now I must see this job to its conclusion.”

  “Why? What
’s his hold over you?”

  “My parents.”

  “Does he have your parents in custody?”

  “Yes, they are but simple farmers from the island of Langkawi growing rice. For the past six months or since Hannah parents escaped my custody, he’s held my parents in a compound of his in Kuala Lumpur.”

  “Can’t you tell the authorities there?”

  “Mr. Lin is connected to an important government leader and therefore I would be shut down before I ever reached my parents.”

  “So we need a plan to expose Mr. Lin and rescue your parents in order for you to leave Hermione alone. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “When is your next scheduled conversation with Mr. Lin?”

  There was silence in the room for a while John Lee thought about his answer. The man was a stranger, but he had an interesting array of weapons and he knew more Mr. Lin then he would have thought possible. He felt that potentially turning a child over to Mr. Lin was as lowering to his level of self-respect as doing nothing to get his parents released. Mr. Lin had wanted him to execute the family, but he’d been firm about that. He’d capture them and turn them over Mr. Lin, but that was as far as he would go. He’d been in a quandary as to what to do. His parents were being taken care of at the moment but they didn’t understand while they were being held captive and they worried about their crops rotting in the ground. John felt like the worse son imaginable.

  “It’s tomorrow. He knew I needed time to recover from the latest interaction with that spicy concoction you make before I could start tailing the kid again.”

  “How do you talk with him? Does he call your cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of report was he expecting from you during the call tomorrow?”

  Mr. Lee looked puzzled by Damian’s question and so he added, “Does he ask you question about your search? Does he allow you to speak with your parents?”