“What then?” Mac pushed, leaving his chair and taking a knee at the coffee table, looking at Ron’s diagram.
“I saw two men get out of the van on the left and get into the front seats of the van on the right.”
“What did they look like?”
“Big guys, easily over six feet. Big arms, shoulders, pretty defined,” Ron said, running his hands over his pecs and arms. “They’d done some weightlifting, I’d say, based on the way they carried themselves.”
“What did they look like?”
“Hard to say,” Ron said. “They wore baseball caps and sunglasses. I’d say black hair. They had darker complexions, maybe what looked like dark razor stubble.”
“That’s two men. Did you see anyone else?” Mac asked, looking up from the diagram.
“I didn’t.”
“Charlie’s told you what’s going on, right?” Mac asked. “You know about the kidnappings we’re working?”
“Yes.”
“So did you see these men transfer a girl between the vans?”
Ron shook his head. “I saw them moving something between the vans, but I couldn’t make out what it was. It happened very fast, and the vans were kind of angled away from me,” he said, pointing to the diagram. “I could tell they transferred something between the vans, something that took two people. But I couldn’t see what and, at that time, I didn’t know about the kidnappings, so I didn’t really have any context for it.”
“Are the two men the only people you saw?”
“Yes and no. There was someone who jumped from the one van to the other, but other than seeing the blur of him jumping, I didn’t see anything else. I only really saw the two I described to you.”
Mac shared a look with Lich. Ron was on the level. “Anything else?” Mac asked.
“Yeah,” Ron answered. “There was one other thing about the big guys.”
“Which is what?” Mac asked.
“Did you ever see Forrest Gump?”
“The movie?” Mac asked, puzzled. “‘Stupid is as stupid does.’ ‘Life’s like a box of chocolates.’”
Ron nodded.
“Sure, what about it?”
“Remember the part where Forrest finds out he has a son? Then he goes and sits down in front of the television with the little boy? The way they’re sitting exactly the same, tilting their heads to the left at the same time as they watch TV. You realize they’re father and son. Brothers do the same type of things.”
“So you’re saying…”
“If I didn’t know better, I think they might have been brothers.”
“Brothers?” Mac asked, interested.
“Yeah. The way they walked, the way they swung their arms, along with height and physical appearance. It was very much alike, very similar. And then, the kicker was that before they both got into the van, they each crooked or rolled their neck to the left, like a nervous tic.”
“Let me get this straight,” Lich said skeptically, “you got all this watching them for a couple of seconds?”
“I know I saw them for just a few seconds,” Ron answered, nodding, “but the neck roll, the gait, you know, it just… registered with me that they looked like brothers.”
“You think just brothers?” Mac asked, buying what Ron was selling. “How about this… could they be twins?”
Ron closed his eyes and stroked his bearded chin, trying to remember. “Maybe. It’s possible, I mean there were definite similarities between the two based on how they looked and walked. They were the same size. Complexion was the same.” He looked away for a few seconds and then nodded his head, “I think it’s entirely possible, but again, that’s based on just a few quick seconds.”
“So what happened after you saw them get into the van?”
“They pulled out and turned to their right, my left, went down the alley, and that’s the last I saw of them.”
“What did you do next?’
“I went back to eating my sandwich and then…”
“The van blew,” Lich said.
“That’s right,” Ron said, mimicking the explosion with his hands. “Then I hear sirens, so I bailed.”
“You what?”
“I bailed.”
“You fuckin’ bailed?” Mac was incredulous. “You see this and you fuckin’ bail?”
“There’s a reason for that,” Charlie interjected. “He has orders from me to avoid contact with the police at all costs.”
“Why?”
“It’s why I didn’t want Gerdtz and Subject here,” he answered. “Ron scouts for us. He’s unknown to my competition as well as the police. I want to keep it that way,” Charlie said. “I don’t want the authorities thinking I’m looking at moving into that area. I don’t want the police thinking I’m eyeing people up for a hit, because I’m not.”
“So why scout it?” Lich asked.
“I’m not interested in new territory. I am keenly interested in how they operate, what their strength is, what the quality of their shit is,” Charlie responded. “Minneapolis is rehabilitating Lake Street and the surrounding neighborhoods, pouring in tons of money, public and private. I mean, take a look at what they did to the old Sears building. It’s magnificent. Hell, I’ve got some money in the businesses going up. But with all that investment, the city will not stand for open drug-dealing down there. Those crews are eventually going to get pushed out. They gotta go somewhere, and every time turf gets shut down around the city, the guys who lose the turf come up to the north side and try to set up shop. I want to know what my people might be facing.”
“In other words, you want to know in advance who might need to be popped, eh?” Lich said bluntly. “I mean, we’re just talkin’ here, right?”
The drug lord shrugged his shoulders. “You don’t have to kill someone to make them go away,” Charlie said. “I prefer my people talk business without stickin’ a gun in someone’s face. I get a read on someone before they come up here, then my people will know what’s coming and how best to handle it. You end up with less trouble this way. There’s crews that have come up here, moved into my area, and after a little talk, have gone to work for me. There were others that,” Charlie shrugged, “didn’t make the cut.”
Mac nodded and gestured to the scout. “And Ron here let’s you know what you’ll be up against.”
“That’s right,” Ron said. He sat back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other and lighting a cigar, talking as if Charlie’s place was his private office. “I spend a week or two roaming around, making some buys, sizing up the crews, evaluating how they operate, and getting a sense of how they’ll tool up if they moved here.”
“I get all that,” Mac answered. “But still, you see those two vans, one blows up and these kidnappings are all over the news and yet you don’t…”
“I didn’t know about the kidnappings,” Ron answered. “Not until tonight.”
“How is that possible?” Lich asked. “It’s been all over the news.”
“When I go undercover, I go undercover,” Ron replied, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m walking around twenty-four seven doing the junkie thing. I watch these crews until late into the night; sleep in a vacant house, under a bridge or overpass, looking all the part of a junkie. I’m not watching the news, reading a paper, monitoring the Internet. A junkie doesn’t do that, so I don’t. I’m a junkie when I’m scouting, the only difference being I don’t use what I buy.”
“No cell phone?” Lich asked.
“Nope,” Mac answered before Ron, knowing the answer. “Police could be listening to cell phones.”
“Correct,” Charlie added. “Cell phones and the drug business do not mix.”
“So how is it then,” Mac asked, “that Ron comes to us now?”
“I put word out after our meeting the other night for our people to keep their eyes open. Word went out face-to-face. It’s old fashioned I know, but safe. My guys are out driving around, talking to our crews and spreading the word that way.
Because of that, word didn’t get to Ron until after dark tonight. And when it did, he immediately said he needed to see me. Once he told me what he’s just told you, I made the call.”
Mac looked at his watch, now 4:10 a.m., and yawned. The hours were catching up to him. He looked back at Ron, relaxing back in the chair, smoking his cigar. If it weren’t for the clothes, you’d think the only thing missing was a snifter of brandy.
“So Ron, where’d you go to school?”
Ron smiled. “I suppose I blew my cover, huh? I was in the Army out of high school. After I got out, I used the GI Bill to pay for college. I was a business major at Minnesota State—Mankato. After I graduated, I went to work for Charlie in his real estate business.”
“How’d you end up as a scout then?”
“I had the Army background, and Charlie asked me to put it to use. It’s a little dangerous, mind you, but kind of fun as well. Lets me feel like I’m working recon again.”
“You don’t have a problem with the drug trade?” Mac asked, interested.
“Maybe a little, but I get an adrenaline rush from doing it,” Ron said, and then smiled. “Plus, I get hazard pay for this, which is more than I get paid for real estate work.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I wonder what that is?”
Mac yawned and then put the cup of coffee to his mouth. He stared at the whiteboard, jotting down notes or questions every so often. He added the information they got from Fat Charlie’s in red.
Two men, large, over six feet, dark hair, and muscular. Brothers? Perhaps twins?
If they were twin brothers, that might make it a little easier. He ordered Hagen to figure that little nugget into his search criteria.
He glanced at his watch, 5:02 a.m. A quick glance out an east-facing window showed just a small cord of the sun peeking over the horizon.
The whiteboard was getting full. He had more pieces to work with now, although he still wasn’t sure what the puzzle really looked like. It was like you needed an answer key. Perhaps somewhere in all the paper and electronic data, they would find it.
“What are you thinking?” Sally asked, putting her arm lightly on his lower back.
“That if we can find just one solid piece, the dominos will fall. We just need one little thing,” he said optimistically. “One good name or a little connection between names and it will all come together.”
Of course, any optimism he felt dissipated when he turned around. The more they dug into the civil files of Lyman’s firm, the harder it all became. The sheer volume of what they were looking at would have been daunting if they had a week, let alone twelve hours. Class-action cases involved thousands of names, and that was just the plaintiffs. Then there were all of the witnesses, family members, and experts on Lyman’s side of the cases, not to mention the defendants, experts, and executives on the defense side. Then there were the sexual harassment, discrimination, and personal-injury type cases, with thousands more names involved. And it wasn’t enough just to have a name. This was Minnesota. By its very nature, any class-action case involved multiple Johnsons, Petersons, Andersons, Swansons, or Ericksons. Consequently, you needed a date of birth, address or addresses, occupations, social security numbers, and any other piece of information to specifically identify and ultimately find these people. To harvest the names, the attorneys, paralegals, and secretaries were going through the computer and paper files one by one. In the paper files alone, it required scanning the correspondence and pleadings, not to mention trying to speed-read two-hundred-page deposition transcripts for people not mentioned elsewhere in the correspondence or pleadings files. There was no analysis taking place. They were simply pulling names and entering them into a database that Hagen had created. If something popped on a name, they would then go deep into the file.
Hagen was talking to Scheifelbein at police headquarters, his head crooked sideways, cradling the phone as his fingers pounded at lightning speed across the keyboard. Scheifelbein was tapping into the various FBI Systems. Mac walked over to take a look, and Hagen pulled the phone away from his ear.
“Barry’s getting me access to the database you already have, plus Social Security, IRS, INS, NCIC, and even state and federal penal systems.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Mac said crossly, more worried about the appearance of a felon accessing social security numbers than of Hagen actually trying anything.
Hagen shot him a dirty look back. “I’m out of the can in six months. I’m not gonna fuck that up.” He turned back to the task at hand. “In about an hour, I’ll have this thing running so we can run every name we get through the system. If these guys have a connection to anyone on the chief’s list, we’ll find it.” The computer magician turned back to his monitor and frantically typed while simultaneously carrying on a conversation with Scheifelbein. Hagen looked like a pig in shit as he worked away, cigarette burning in an ashtray and three coffee cups littering his work area.
Mac walked back to the whiteboard. The phone call was coming at 6:00 p.m. so they had a little more than twelve hours. He worked the board over, making notations, drawing arrows between items, jotting down questions and theories, circling, checking, and underlining items. As he ran out of space, he used sticky notes, attaching them to the sides and then adding an easel for more space.
He put the markers down on the board’s tray and stood for ten minutes, his eyes fixed on the whiteboard, soaking in all the information and letting it marinate in his mind. Sooner or later it would all come into focus, or at least he kept telling himself that. If it didn’t they would have to rely on Burton’s plan when it came time to pay the ransom.
He was deep in thought when a voice bellowed from the hallway. “Mac!”
He turned to see Summer Plantagenate rushing into the room, pointing her cell phone at him, an agitated look on her face.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“It’s the off-site storage,” the willowy blonde replied. “We’re having some issues with access.”
“What?” Mac replied exasperated. “Why? I mean, don’t you have a pass code or something? Aren’t those places on a key-coded system?”
“We do and it is. The issue is that the security guy working won’t let anymore than one person to get back to the files,” Summer answered, shaking her head. “At that rate…”
“…We’ll be screwed,” Mac finished.
“Can we get a hold of the owner, a supervisor, something like that?”
“During normal business hours perhaps, but we’re not yet to normal work hours and on top of that it’s a holiday.”
“How about getting a home number?”
“Our people asked. The guard wasn’t helpful.”
“Where the heck is this place?”
“Highway 36 up in North St. Paul. Our people are up there waiting, wondering what to do.”
“Tell them to stay there, I’ll take care of it,” Mac replied, grabbing his holster off the conference table.
“How?”
“I’ll figure it out when I get there. It might involve my gun.” He stormed out of the conference room and flipped open his cell phone.
• • • • •
Smith was up at the crack of dawn, placing a call to Burton, who reported that there was nothing new from overnight. The police were still parked at the safe house, but otherwise, all was quiet.
He looked back at the tent, thinking he probably should still be sleeping, since the day was going to be long. But it wasn’t possible. He’d waited fifteen years for this day. So he left Monica to sleep. Dean and David were asleep in a separate tent, fifty feet away.
He grabbed three logs and put them in a tepee formation, crunched up some newspaper and started a camp fire. Reaching inside a knapsack, he pulled out a small stainless steel coffee pot, coffee, and bottled water. He loaded it up and set it on the fire. The coffee and water slowly started to percolate.
Sitting in a blue canvas lawn chair, Smith took in the humid Fou
rth of July morning, the sun rising up behind him, lighting the trees and cliffs on the west side of the river. Along the far side of the river, two men trolled in a fishing boat, up early hoping to hook a lunker.
The campsite was on a small patch of sandy, low-lying shore, surrounded by a thick forest of trees and brush. Cliffs and steep bluffs rose at alternating heights well above the beach as far as you could see in either direction. The boat sat moored in the water, the bow fifty feet out from shore with two anchors securing it. The body of the St. Croix River flowed two hundred yards in the distance.
Dean and David would take the boat later in the morning and move down to the slip in Hudson. Smith and Monica would be on the road by 9:00 a.m. and into St. Paul by noon. The action would start at 6:00 p.m. Hopefully it would be over by 10:00 p.m. By sunrise tomorrow, they’d be driving east through Ontario on their way to Nova Scotia and, from there, they were on a boat heading for the Caribbean.
The coffee was ready, and Smith poured himself a cup. Rustling to his left told him that David was up, and the smell of coffee drew the big man over. He poured a quick cup and took a sip.
“That hits the spot.”
“Couldn’t sleep?” Smith asked.
“I slept enough.” David took another drink. “Any word from Burton?”
“I called him just a bit ago. Things are quiet. Police are sitting on the safe house, but there’s nothing new going on in their investigation. It’s in a holding pattern.”
• • • • •
Jupiter Jones yawned as he walked back into the room, a hot cup of coffee in one hand and a full coffee pot in the other. He sat back down and stared at the large computer monitor. Shawn McRyan had crashed out on the sofa for a couple of hours, but he was starting to stir now thanks to the aroma of fresh coffee.
Throughout the night, Jupe watched the video from the kidnappers over and over, looking for anything that might give them a read on the kidnappers or where the girls were buried. His perceptive eyes had failed him thus far.
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