Carrie reached to the flashlight to shut it off.
“Leave the light on for now,” Shannon said. “I like being able to see.”
“Okay,” Carrie answered and then started the Dictaphone again.
“A little information about your new home,” the voice said. “It is five feet underground. You are in a reinforced plywood box from which you have no hope of escaping, so it would be unwise for you to waste your time and energy doing so. Also, you are in an isolated spot, so yelling is pointless.”
Carrie stopped the tape.
“I guess you can save your breath,” Shannon said. “They’ve probably got us buried in the middle of nowhere.”
Carrie nodded and started the Dictaphone again.
“So how long have you been down there, you’re wondering? We gave you a sedative. It knocked you out for what I expect would be eighteen hours, give or take. By the time you’re hearing this tape it will be mid-afternoon on July third.”
Carrie showed Shannon her watch, confirming that it was 2:10.
“How long will you be in your current abode, you ask? If all goes according to plan, you will be out of that box by tomorrow evening, maybe even in time to see some fireworks. I do apologize for your current accommodations. While I’m sure they are most uncomfortable and frightening for you, they were nevertheless necessary to provide proper motivation for your fathers. This is also why there is no food or water inside. If your fathers follow our instructions to the letter, you’ll be back with them soon enough. If not?” the voice paused.
“Let’s just say that there will be no getting out.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Any problems getting down?”
Dean pulled the van into the parking lot of the diner across the street from the Bayside Marina in Hudson. Smith climbed out and looked back.
“We should be up there in about forty-five minutes,” he said.
“See you there,” David replied.
Smith slid the door closed and walked away a changed man. Gone were the work clothes of two hours ago. Now, the kidnapper was a skipper in boating wear with flip-flops, a Brewers baseball cap, flowery Speedo swim trunks, a white cotton golf shirt open at the collar, and black mirrored wraparound sunglasses. He hoisted a black nylon carry-on bag over his shoulder as he walked across the street and through rows of luxury cars and high-end SUVs in the marina parking lot. Beyond the parking lot, he came to the massive, ten-foot-wide, graying wood pier jutting out into the dark waters of the St. Croix River.
The Bayside Marina had four rows of boat slips. His destination was the last row of slips to the north, a guest slip on the outside at the far end of the dock. In the guest slip floated their white thirty-two-foot offshore express cruiser. They’d stolen the boat from a marina along the river in Davenport, Iowa, six weeks earlier. After they applied a new customized paint job of blue and red stripes, they launched the boat in Lake City and spent a great day boating up the river and to the slip in Hudson.
Monica was onboard already. She came up from the cabin dressed in white jean shorts over her one-piece black Speedo swimsuit, accessorized with wide black sunglasses and a white Nike tennis cap. Without saying a word, she tossed the boat keys to Smith.
Smith put the key in the ignition and smiled as the boat roared to life. Monica cast off the ropes, first for the bow and then the stern. Once she was back on board, Smith slowly backed out of the slip and, when the bow was clear, turned right and headed for the river.
He loved the water. Smith had grown up on the water in Garrison, Minnesota, a small town located two hours due north of the Twin Cities. It sat on the west side of Lake Mille Lacs, one of the largest of the state’s ten thousand lakes. His dad ran a charter fishing service on the lake. From age sixteen through his college summers, Smith had driven his dad’s boats and became an accomplished skipper. Though he’d spent fifteen years in prison, the skill that came back to him quickest was operating a boat. He’d felt the excitement of a young child when they launched the boat in Lake Pepin down at Lake City. He couldn’t wait to get on the water and drive the boat, feel the rocking of the waves, the sun beating on and weathering his face, the cool splashes of water spraying him as they took on the large waves of Lake Pepin, working their way up the mighty Mississippi and then turning north at the mouth of the St. Croix River in Hastings. When Smith was in prison, lying on his bed with his eyes closed and mind cleared, he remembered boating, rolling over the waves of Lake Mille Lacs or through the chop of the St. Croix on a weekend, just what he was doing the day before the arrest.
Smith slowly navigated the minefield of speedboats and houseboats in the small bay separating Hudson and the marina from the St. Croix River proper. Once through the bay, he turned to the right and passed under a rusting steel train bridge and suddenly he was out into the wide section of the St. Croix that ran from Hudson to Stillwater, five miles north on the Minnesota side. In open water, with space to maneuver, Smith pushed the throttle down and opened up the boat, slicing through the waves like a snowplow through fresh snow. Monica approached with a bottle of water for him. He took a sip and smiled.
“You love this, don’t you?” Monica said.
“There’s nothing better,” he replied, taking another drink. “After we’re done with this, you and I are going to get a boat like this and spend a lot of time on it.”
Monica smiled and leaned up to kiss him on the lips. “I can’t wait.”
Five minutes north of Hudson, Smith steered to the west side of the river and then sped past a massive window plant in Bayport. Such a waste of beautiful river shoreline, Smith thought. The industrial plant’s two-hundred-foot-high smokestack and chain-link fencing mixed oddly with the gorgeous foliage and exposed rock of the shoreline and river bluff. However, while the use of the land was a waste, it would prove beneficial for him.
A short and narrow channel ran just to the north of the plant. While the window plant may have used the channel at one time, it was now largely abandoned. It would be of use tomorrow.
He had already looked at the channel from land, walked the abandoned dock they would briefly use tomorrow, and even observed the odd fishing boat on the channel. Looking over charts at the local library, he learned that the channel was ten to fifteen feet deep if you stayed in the middle as it wound its way to the old dock. But until now, he hadn’t seen it from the water. From the river, the opening was plenty wide, he thought upon inspection. He could see how he would have to maneuver the boat out of the channel. And, while he couldn’t see the dock from the river, he knew it was there.
Satisfied with his short recon mission, he turned away from the channel and slowly accelerated back out into the open waters of the river. In another five minutes he was approaching Stillwater.
As Smith passed the town, with its parks, restaurants, and marinas, he approached Stillwater’s defining feature, the lift bridge. Built in 1931, the bridge spanned one thousand feet across the St. Croix River, carrying a two-lane highway connecting Minnesota to Wisconsin on fixed arched steel trusses over concrete slabs. On the half hour, a middle section with towers and cables lifted to allow larger boats to pass through.
Smith took a sip from his water bottle as the boat passed underneath the bridge and moved further north, Stillwater falling away behind them. The river gradually narrowed and shallowed, requiring a slower pace and more attentive navigation. Smith eased back on the throttle, falling in a hundred yards behind a flat-bottomed houseboat, probably better known as a party barge. Several people lounged on the upper deck, sunning themselves and drinking cocktails. He followed the houseboat until it made a gentle right toward one of the long, narrow, sandy islands that occasionally split the river. This island, the second they’d come upon, was filling with boats and tents, people preparing for the revelry of tomorrow’s holiday.
Past the second island, the boat traffic diminished significantly. As the river curved to the left around a high rock escarpment jutting out into the riv
er, the railroad bridge came into view. Sitting two hundred feet above the river, cutting an impressive figure against the deep blue sky, the bridge spanned the expanse of the river from Wisconsin to Minnesota. The bridge served as a marker for Smith’s destination. As they approached the bridge, the river cut through a deep canyon. At the base of the steep walls on either side of the river lay isolated sand bars and beaches, one of which was Smith’s destination.
Slowly, Smith steered the boat to the Wisconsin side, toward a small patch of beach in a narrow channel set well back from the main body of the river. For years, this had been his favorite spot on the river. The last time he boated before the arrest, before prison, was an overnight camping trip in this very spot with his wife and daughter—their last family outing together.
Carefully, Smith navigated to the end of the small channel, not wanting to beach the deep V-hulled boat on the zigzagging sandbars hidden just beneath the dark water’s surface. Two hundred yards out from the shore, he swung the boat far out to the left and then, after another hundred feet or so, slowly veered back right. Fifty yards away, he looked to his depth finder, waiting for and then finding the deeper water, an odd drop-off to fifteen feet, which allowed him to turn left and go straight toward the shoreline. The whole maneuver took five minutes. He beached the boat fifteen yards short, the front two-thirds of the boat resting on the soft sand but the rear third in deeper water that would allow him to back off the sandbar with a single reverse thrust of the motors.
Dean and David emerged from the woods and walked out into the water. Monica jumped onto the bow and tossed two ropes with stakes on the ends to her brothers.
“Any problems getting down here?” Smith asked David.
“Nope, took a few minutes, just to make sure it was solid, but once we did that,” David smiled, “it was a piece of cake.”
“Well show me,” Smith ordered. “After that, I want to head back to St. Paul.”
Chapter Eighteen
“That’s worth a look then.”
The video hit the men hard, with Hisle’s bottom lip trembling when he saw Shannon lying in the box just before the cover was put on. The chief’s eyes closed and his head dropped when the video showed the box buried, with only their air pipes showing.
After watching the video, both men had hard questions for Burton. He had few answers.
“We have to get the ransom ready.”
“Does that mean the investigation is over?” the chief asked. “That we’re going to sit around and wait for the next call?”
“No. We’re not stopping.” Burton explained releasing parts of the video to law enforcement and the public. “We may get a break with the video’s release, and we’re still working through files and might catch a break there as well. We’re not stopping. But…”
“It is what it is,” the chief said.
Burton nodded.
“Chief, we need to be ready.”
Before the chief left with Burton, he pulled his boys aside. He was gaunt and ghost-white, as if his summer tan had faded in less than one day’s time. Dark circles had formed under his eyes, and salt and pepper stubble aged his face. His body seemed frail, looking like a listing coat rack for his clothes. But the intensity was there in his eyes, and his deep gravelly voice was commanding as always.
“I’ve heard the story from the FBI, but not from my people. Tell me, no bullshit.”
Mac didn’t bullshit him. “The FBI isn’t lying. We’re nowhere.”
Riley added details, but the result was the same. The chief shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose as he looked down to the floor. “I can’t lose my baby girl,” their leader said quietly. He looked each of his boys in the eye. “You need to find her. I don’t care what it takes or what you have to do. You find her.” He pushed his hand through his disheveled white hair and slowly walked out of the room.
“Ideas?” Riles said into the silence.
Lich said what they were all thinking: “We need a break.”
“And,” Rock growled, “the bastards haven’t given us one yet.”
“Look,” Mac said emphatically, “we, meaning us, need to make something happen instead of waiting around. Burton’s working the ransom angle now. That gives us some room to work our own gig outside of what the FBI’s running.”
“The mayor won’t like that,” Lich said in a warning tone.
“Burton’s been pretty decent. I don’t like sticking a knife in his back,” Rock added.
“Fuck the mayor,” Mac railed. “I’m done waiting for that spineless gasbag. As for Burton, I have no desire to cut him out. If something turns up, we can go to Burton and bring him in.”
“Agreed,” Riles said. “But Mac, you can’t be talking to the mayor that way, no matter how big a political half-wit he is. You’ll be working third shift in the jail before you know it.”
Mac didn’t particularly care at the moment, but knew Riles was right. “I hear ya,” he said, sighing, and then added, “but like I said, with the G-men working the ransom and the mayor licking Burton’s boots, maybe we start making some moves of our own.”
“What moves? How? Where? With what?” Lich said, tearing the top off a pack of Big Red gum. “You have to have a place to start.”
“Then let’s start with the video,” Mac answered. “I’ll go through that with Dick.” He nodded at Riley. “You and Rock check on the laptop, where was it bought. Someone was supposed to be looking into it, but with all the commotion, who knows? Those are the things we can look at now. After that, the four of us should get out of here for a bit. If we’re going to start operating, I don’t want to discuss it around here.” Everyone nodded in agreement, and Riley and Rockford left to run the numbers on the laptop left by the kidnappers.
Mac went back into the conference room and sat down with a department-issued laptop and watched the video again. Lich stood to one side and Paddy was on the other. Mac played the video back and forth, freezing and rewinding in the hopes of picking something, anything, out. He paid particular attention to the view out the front of the vehicle, searching for any buildings, a chimney, snowmobile signs, anything that might give them a lead on the girls’ location.
St. Paul cops and FBI agents joined them, quietly watching, praying, willing a clue out of the video. All they wanted was a little shred to give them a lead, something to track, a way to find the girls. After a half hour of running it to the end several times, Mac sat back in his chair, sighed, and asked, “Anyone recognize anything? See anything? Have any ideas?” Silence or barely audible no’s were all he heard. All he’d accomplished was to burn the video into the hard drive of his brain.
As everyone started to drift away, Mac pulled out his cell phone, walked to a corner of the room and, with his back to everyone, dialed Jupiter. Jupiter Jones was a friend from his university days. Named after the main character from the children’s Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators series, Jupiter was a computer and video genius. He had already made one fortune and was working on another with a computer video business. He occasionally worked freelance with the department, as he had with Mac’s big case last winter, and also with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. He answered on the first ring.
“Jones.”
“It’s Mac. I need your help, and I need it now.”
“The kidnappings?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anything for you and the chief, you know that.”
“We have a video I need you to look at. I’m going to have my nephew, a uniform cop named Shawn McRyan, drop it off. I need you to break this thing down and see if you can wring anything out of it that we can use to identify these guys. Even the tiniest thing would help.” Mac explained what he was looking for and how fast he needed it. “We got shit and we’re on a tight clock.”
“How tight?”
“Less than thirty hours tight.”
Jupe whistled on the other end. “I’ll be at my house in twenty minutes.”
“It’s done,” Shawn answered. He grabbed his partner and left the conference room.
Mac stood up and stretched, realizing that he’d been paying such close attention to the video that he hadn’t noticed just how many men were milling around the room, doing nothing. With the call from the kidnappers about the ransom and video, it was as if the investigation had come to a standstill. Detectives and bureau agents continued to work through Hisle’s and the chief’s files down the hall, but nothing was coming of it. A few people were being kept under surveillance, but based on what he’d heard about them, they were nothing more than dead ends and easy overtime. Burton was working on the ransom, but nobody was in charge of the room. Everyone was just sitting around, waiting for the next call from the kidnappers. Riley and Rock walked back in.
“We’ve tracked the computer down to a Best Buy in Milwaukee,” Riles said. “It was purchased a month ago, with cash.”
“What a surprise,” Lich answered with disgust.
“But maybe we get something off the surveillance camera,” Mac rejoined hopefully. “We just need a piece, a good picture, something to work off. All we need is a solid ID and we’d be off and running.”
“We’ll see,” Riles said. “The FBI field office sent someone over there to see if there is any surveillance video, anything we might be able to use. If there’s anything they’ll send it right up.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Mac said quietly. “There are way too many people hanging around, plus the mayor and Duffy, and I don’t trust either of them right about now. How about a booth at Lucy’s?”
• • • • •
First Deadly Conspiracy Box Set Page 57