by Stephen Frey
“Now,” I continue, “just because his van was here last week doesn’t necessarily mean he was here. I understand that. But I can check out your story pretty easily, can’t I? And if it was wrong in any way, you could be in some trouble because you would have knowingly made a false statement to a police officer.” I have no intention of making trouble for this nice lady, but one way or another I will see Henry Steinbach in the next few minutes. “I want you to take me back to his office right now. No, no,” I say quickly when she reaches for her phone. “I don’t want you to call him. I just want you to take me back to his office.”
She stares at me a little longer, then slowly rises from her seat. “Follow me, please.”
She leads me out of the reception area into a quiet corridor. The men and women beyond the open office doors lining the corridor are staring at their computers or have their noses buried in reports and don’t look up. I’m glad. I’m wearing my uniform and I don’t want to create a stir, because I want the element of surprise on my side. I considered wearing civilian clothes today, but I wanted the uniform on me when I came face to face with Steinbach. I wanted all the intimidation it and the badge bring.
Steinbach’s got a typical midwestern executive office. Everything’s big. The office itself, his desk, the sofa, the chairs around the coffee table the sofa sits in front of. And there’s a lot of dark wood in it as well as tasteful prints of wildlife scenes and pictures of him hunting just about everything you could hunt, along with other executives of the firm. I know they’re other Edina Engineering executives he’s hunting with because they’re all wearing Edina Engineering hats in the pictures as they kneel side by side proudly behind their kills, guns resting on their knees.
“Mr. Steinbach.”
“Yes, Mrs. Driscoll,” Steinbach answers in an aggravated tone without looking over from his computer screen, “what is it?”
“Uh, sir?”
“What the devil—Oh, Good Lord.”
When he catches sight of me his face tenses right up. As he rises out of his chair, his eyebrows knit together and his mouth twitches on one side. Yup, I’m damn glad I wore the uniform.
“I’m Sheriff Paul Summers,” I say as I move to where he’s standing to shake hands with him. Then I make myself at home by sitting down in the chair in front of Steinbach’s desk without being asked. “I’m the sheriff of Dakota County, Wisconsin,” I say, pulling out my badge and giving him a good, long look at it. “That’s up north, east of Duluth and Superior,” I say, stowing the badge back in my pocket when he finally takes his eyes off it. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”
He motions for Mrs. Driscoll to leave and to shut the door as she goes. She can’t get out of here fast enough. “What kind of questions, Sheriff?”
“What were you doing up in my county last week? And who were you doing it for?” I’m pretty sure I know who he’s working for but I want to hear him say it.
“That’s confidential.”
“Mr. Steinbach,” I say evenly, “I will get the answers to my questions one way or the other.” I hate to be mean to this guy, because he hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s just trying to do his job and not get screwed in the process, but at this point I don’t care about his feelings. I can’t. Time is of the essence. “If you make things difficult for me, I will—”
“Will you promise to keep our conversation completely confidential, Sheriff?”
“Yes.”
“I mean completely confidential. Will you promise me that no one will know how you got your information?”
“Yes.”
He takes a deep breath, as though he’s trying to figure out if he has any options other than to talk to me. “Look, I’m sure you already have a good idea of who my client is.”
“Lewis Prescott?”
Steinbach nods. “That’s right.”
“Well, what are you doing for him?”
Steinbach stares at me for a long time. I’ve heard how deliberate engineers can be, but this is ridiculous. “How did you find me?” he finally asks.
“Bat McCleary.”
“Who’s—”
“Bat owns the Exxon in Bruner. You filled your car up there last week.”
“But—”
“We checked Bat’s credit card receipts. Your name jumped out at us real fast, since you used your corporate card to pay.”
Steinbach curses under his breath. “I’m a pretty good geological engineer, but I don’t know dirt about covering my tracks, do I?”
He breaks into a chuckle at his own joke. As corny as it is, I laugh right along with him, because I want him to feel as comfortable as he can with me.
“It’s tough to cover your tracks, you know? You think you have,” Steinbach says, “but there’s always a way to slip up.”
“Especially these days,” I agree. I give him a few moments. “Now tell me what you’re doing for Lewis Prescott.”
Steinbach’s expression turns grave. “Sheriff, are you aware that Lewis Prescott owns a lot of land in Dakota County?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not talking about just the land his estate is on. I’m not talking about his part of the ridge overlooking the Boulder River. The ridge all those mansions are built on.” Steinbach takes a deep breath. “Prescott owns a lot more than just that. I’m talking thousands and thousand of acres between the bottom of that ridge and something you all call River Road up there in Dakota County.”
My mind flickers back to the morning Cindy called and begged me to come to the estate to fix a broken pipe. To when I pulled up to the Prescott estate after barreling down 681 and gazed out over that sea of pine trees at the bottom of the ridge. That’s all his. “I know,” I murmur. “So what?”
“So what?” Steinbach asks, both eyebrows raising. “So what? I’ll tell you what, Sheriff. All that land is filled with taconite, which is the stuff they turn into iron. The same stuff they’re mining in the Iron Range up in northern Minnesota as fast as they can. Except that Prescott’s taconite is high grade. The stuff up in northern Minnesota is typically 25 to 30 percent iron ore, but Prescott’s stuff is almost 40 percent. That’s what my work shows, anyway.” Steinbach shakes his head. “Seems like the rich just keep getting richer, doesn’t it?”
He keeps on talking, but I’m not really listening, because this hurricane just hit me out of nowhere. The same way it did the night I figured out who’d murdered Doug Cooper’s thirteen-year-old daughter.
Lew Prescott stands in front of me. After all of these years, I’ve finally made it into his compound. He called me back within three minutes of the call I placed to him after I’d walked out of Henry Steinbach’s office, and he told me to come right over to those three huge mansions I’ve never been allowed into until today.
“What is it?” he asks. “What do you want?”
“Why are you so concerned about the cult in Dakota County? Why are you so worried about reporters’ picking up on that story?”
“I told you,” he snaps. “I don’t want my wife thinking Cindy was tortured. I don’t want them inferring that she was part of the whole mess.”
I shake my head slowly. “That’s not the reason and we both know it. Now tell me the real reason.”
27
THE SNOW WE were supposed to get over the weekend never materialized. Temperatures got cold, down into the single digits last night, but we didn’t get any accumulation. A few flurries Saturday night but that was it. I was glad because I had my heart set on making it to the Twin Cities this morning. If we’d gotten a new blanket of white in the north-country, I might not have seen Doug or been able to startle my new acquaintance Henry Steinbach in his office until the middle of the week. No snow over the weekend, but now the weather people are talking about another big storm that’s supposed to hit us hard tomorrow night or Wednesday morning. It’s amazing, but the big storms don’t end here until late April, some years not until May.
I ended up having a decent discussion w
ith Steinbach after I was able to refocus on what he was saying, after I got over that hurricane that hit me. Turns out Lewis Prescott is a jerk to almost everyone, including business associates, and I think that’s a big reason that Steinbach was so willing to talk to me. He told me Prescott’s been as demanding and arrogant a client as Edina Engineering’s ever had, and that the old codger’s behind on his bills, way behind. I wanted to tell him why I thought Prescott was a slow payer but I didn’t. I kept that to myself. When I stood up to leave, Steinbach seemed disappointed that all I wanted to do was find out about taconite. I think in the back of his mind he was hoping that I was trying to put the old man behind bars. And I’d sure like to, but I didn’t say that.
In ten minutes I learned a lot more about taconite than I really wanted to know, but I appreciated the cost of the education so I listened patiently. Apparently, taconite is a Precambrian sedimentary rock—whatever that means—which is usually made up of about 25 to 30 percent iron ore. That I do understand. I mean, it’s pretty simple. And iron is in a lot of what we use in the world, so taconite equals money. Again, that’s a pretty simple concept. Steinbach told me how most high-grade iron ore had been mined out of the United States by shortly after World War II, so the world turned to taconite as an alternative. It just so happens that there’s a mother lode of it in northern Minnesota, in something called the Iron Range. And, I learned from Steinbach, there’s more of it tucked into a pocket of Dakota County, Wisconsin, just southeast of the Iron Range that’s owned by Lewis Prescott. The most important thing I learned was that taconite isn’t mined by drilling deep into the earth through a hole in the side of a mountain. It’s extracted by blasting the earth’s surface wide open with massive amounts of dynamite. It’s a deafening, dirty mining technique that leaves the landscape looking like a war zone. And somehow Lewis Prescott has all the permits he needs to start blasting away.
I’m almost to Bruner when my cell phone rings. It’s Doug, my accountant friend. “Hi there.”
“Paul?”
Doug doesn’t sound like himself. “Yeah, it’s me. What’s wrong?”
“Are you sure this stuff you gave me is authentic?”
I never thought about that. I never considered the possibility that Cindy might have paid some cheap, unethical accountant to create numbers out of thin air because she hated her father so much. Of course, I never would have thought she’d recruit Caleb Jenkins and his crew to make like they were harassing her on 681 that snowy afternoon, either. “Yes, I’m positive.” The incident on 681 was one thing, but forging documents would be quite another. I don’t think her penchant for drama could reach those heights. I don’t think she could have hated her father that much.
“Well, based on the numbers you gave me, Paul, I’d say Prescott Trading only has a few weeks left before the banks take it over. Unless, of course, something incredible happens.”
Doug’s words echo in my mind as I speed past my house. Only a few weeks left before the banks take it over. They sound almost exactly like the words penned in longhand on the memo in the box Chelsea handed me. I didn’t give Doug that memo, just the numbers. I didn’t want him influenced by what Jack had written to Prescott. I wanted his unbiased opinion. “How incredible?”
“Fifty million of cash at least,” Doug answers, “based on the blood pouring off these pages spread out on my desk. If Prescott puts fifty million of cash into this company, I think he buys himself another six months from the banks.” He hums to himself for a few seconds. He always does that when he’s thinking hard. “That might even buy Prescott out of the whole mess if oil gets to triple digits a barrel by July or August. If it doesn’t, he’ll need to put more money in by the fall.” Doug chuckles harshly. “Jesus, they really screwed up on that oil bet. This company’s a hundred years old and a couple of stupid bets on oil could bring it down. It’s really a shame.”
I don’t know how the hell Doug figured everything out and came to his conclusions so fast, and I’m not going to ask. I don’t care how he did it, just that he did and that I have complete faith in his analysis. “I’ll call you later, Doug,” I say, racing past the entrance to the Campbell estate on my left. “Thanks for your help.”
As soon as I hang up with Doug, I call Edina Engineering and ask for Henry Steinbach. It’s Mrs. Driscoll and she doesn’t sound happy when she hears who the caller is. I can’t blame her; I caused her some stress today. I’m on hold for a while and I’m worried that he’s going to start dodging me again, but, just as I pull up to the stop light at Main Street, he answers.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Mr. Steinbach.”
“Look, Sheriff, I can’t be talking to you all the—”
“Just one more question,” I say, checking both ways before going right. “That’s it, I promise.”
He hesitates. “All right, one more answer. Maybe,” he adds, “depending on the question.”
“What’s all that taconite Lewis Prescott controls worth? What would a mining company be willing to pay for that tract of land now that he’s got all the permits and licenses he needs to start dynamiting?”
“It’s impossible to—”
“Ballpark. That’s all I want. Just your best guess.”
“Well, based on all the tests we’ve done,” Steinbach answers, his voice dropping way down, “on the low side, a hundred million, and on the high side two hundred.”
The pieces of the puzzle are falling neatly into place. “Thanks,” I say, pulling into Bat’s Exxon station. “Thanks a lot.”
Bat’s out of the office to greet me at the pump before I’m even out of the Cherokee. Jesus, it’s freezing. It’s at least ten degrees colder up here than it was in the Twin Cities. But Bat still hasn’t traded in his grimy Milwaukee Brewers baseball cap for a ski hat.
“Howdy, Sheriff.”
“Hey. Fill it up, will you?”
“Sure thing. You doing okay?” he asks as he slides the nozzle into the truck.
I catch his eye. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “The meeting tonight. You know, over at the church. You okay with all that?”
“What meeting?”
The nozzle clicks loudly and stops pumping for some reason. “The one Davy Johnson called,” he answers, resetting it so gas starts flowing again. “The one Mrs. Erickson’s telling everybody about.”
One of Bat’s sons comes out of the office. I start to wave but he turns around as soon as he sees me. “What’s the meeting about?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“No.”
“You won’t shoot the messenger, will you?”
“No.”
Bat pulls his cap down tight over his scalp, as tight as he can get it. “Davy, Chugger, and Frank want you out.” He spits. “They don’t think you’re doing enough to find out who killed Cindy Prescott and Darrow Clements.”
So that meeting in the storage room of Cam Riley’s hardware store was about my morals, not my skills. It wasn’t my imagination at all when I thought Davy was scared on the ride to the Prescott estate. He was terrified. “What do you think, Bat?”
He pulls the nozzle out of the truck. “I think you’re a good man, Paul, but I think you may have some conflicts, based on what I’ve heard over the last day or two. I hate to say that.”
I hand Bat fifty bucks for the gas. “We all have conflicts,” I remind him in a steely voice.
He nods. “Yeah, but some are bigger than others.”
I’m about to get into the Cherokee when I feel his hand on my shoulder.
“Sheriff?”
I don’t feel very good about Bat right now. He’s always been a local I could count on no matter what, but it seems like even he’s deserting me now. “Yeah?”
“I don’t know if this is important or not, but Bill Campbell was up here this morning.”
I turn back around. “Again?”
Bat looks up Main Street toward the precinct. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, to
o.”
“Did he come in here? Is that how you know?”
“No. One of my boys said he saw old Bill out east on Route 7 this morning real early. Near where Gus and Trudy died. He said it looked like Campbell was talking to a cop, and it looked like one of your guys, based on the uniform. But he couldn’t tell which one it was and he didn’t see a police car. I guess they were all back off the road a bit and behind the cars.”
It feels like I’ve just been kicked in the gut, like the wind has suddenly been knocked out of me.
I need to talk to Sara right away.
The meeting Davy Johnson called for tonight has me mad, really mad. Madder than I’ve been in a long time. Even madder than I was at Lewis Prescott the night he wouldn’t let me into his home and laughed about it with the guard at the gate. I can’t believe Davy went behind my back like this, I can’t believe he’s this much of a traitor, especially after what I said to him on our way out to the Prescott estate the other day. I thought I’d gotten to him, I thought I’d dug down to his sense of honor. Apparently I was wrong. He called this town meeting to have me cut loose without even telling me. It’s a shock, I have to admit.
I can’t believe Mrs. Erickson, either. I can’t believe the way she’s putting news of the meeting out on her network and obviously editorializing about it during her broadcasts. I know we haven’t seen eye to eye since I got to Bruner four years ago, but this kind of disloyalty is unforgivable. If I’m still standing when it’s all said and done, if I still have a job when I’ve brought the murderer to justice, Davy Johnson and Mrs. Erickson won’t be members of the Dakota County Police Force any longer. And if Cam and the rest of the town council won’t support me on that, they’ll have my resignation and Vivian and I will start new somewhere else. Maybe flipping burgers wouldn’t be so bad after all, and maybe I’ll go back to L.A. to do it. The cold and gloom of these Wisconsin winters may finally be getting to me. Sunny and warm year-round is starting to sound very good.
The fact that one of my guys was talking to Bill Campbell this morning is driving me crazy, too. My gut tells me it was Davy—and my heart hopes it was. Of course, I’m still wearing that big, broad-brimmed paranoia hat, so at this point I’m suspicious of everyone. Not lost on me is the possibility that Bat could be involved in all of this, too. I really feel like it’s me against the world at this point, and that’s a terrible, terrible feeling. Never knowing if someone’s around the next corner aiming at you wears you down quickly. Even if it’s just insults and accusations they’re shooting.