Right now he was running the video in slow motion through the section of the film with the girls and materials being removed from the back of the van. At this point, he was breaking the video down by the second. Taking the full screen, he split it into quarters and then enlarged each quarter, looking for the tiniest detail.
Shawn stumbled to the coffee, pouring a cup. He yawned and scratched the back of his head. “Nothing, I take it?”
“Bupkus.” Jupe maneuvered the mouse and started in the upper left corner, enlarging it and scanning it. Now the plan was that if something drew his interest, he would break down the quarter into four more quarters and so on and so on. If need be, he could take a frame, run it through a different piece of software and enlarge an object that looked like a speck of dust on the regular monitor.
Jupiter scanned the enlarged quarter, running the video forward a second at a time. Shawn pulled a chair back up next to him and watched as well. The two viewed the upper left-hand corner for five minutes, but nothing jumped out at them.
“Let’s go to the upper right,” Jupe said, clicking and hitting play. The video displayed the back of the head of one of the kidnappers, who was wearing what looked like a wool ski mask. The kidnapper was leaning down to pick up a piece of PVC piping, then turning to his right, with his back to the camera, he took the piece out of the van.
“Hmmm,” Jupe murmured. He ran it back and forth, frame by frame, again and again and then stopped. “Look at that.”
“What?” Shawn asked.
“Look, as he turns right with the pipe,” Jupe said. “He turns to his right and takes it out of the van.”
“Yeah, and?”
Jones rewound a couple of frames, and then pushed play again. The kidnapper leaned down, picked up the pipe, and turned right. The pipe passed the rear window. “Right there,” Jupe pointed. “Look at that reflection in the rear window. Something is sticking out of the top of the pipe. It’s only there for an instant but I think we might have a receipt.” He ran the video back a few frames and started it again.
“I think you’re right,” Shawn said as he looked closer at the screen. “It’s a little fuzzy, and it looks like maybe only part is sticking out of it.”
“Yeah it’s fuzzy, but I have just the thing that will allow us to get more out of this,” Jupe answered, moving the mouse around again, this time opening up a new program.
• • • • •
Mac pulled up to Old Files to find four people and a North St. Paul squad car parked and waiting. Two cops leaned against the cruiser. Mac jumped out and introduced himself to the patrolmen, a younger one named Ball and an older one named Woodcock.
“Have you been inside yet?” Mac asked.
“No. We were waiting on you,” Ball answered.
“It’s my understanding that this guy is being inflexible. I also don’t have a search warrant. I may need you to back me when I get in this guy’s grill.”
“This relates to the Flanagan thing?” Woodcock asked.
“It does.”
“Our chief said we extend whatever assistance you need. We’ll back your play, whatever it is.”
“Let’s go then.”
The group walked inside to find the security guard waiting at the front desk. Mac showed his shield. “We need to get more people back to the storage area.”
“This is North St. Paul, not St. Paul,” the guard answered with attitude. “You don’t have jurisdiction here.”
“Fine. As you can see, these two officers here are North St. Paul Police.”
“We’d like you to give access to Detective McRyan and the rest of his crew here. They need access regarding an important investigation.”
“Does he have a search warrant?”
“He does not,” Woodcock replied. “Nevertheless, he and the rest of these folks need to get back there.”
“Can’t do it,” the guard replied. “Against the rules. Only one person can be back there at a time. You get a search warrant and I’ll comply.”
Mac blew up.
“Listen, shithead. We don’t have time for that. I and these other people will be going back there whether you like it or not. You stand in my way, you’re going to end up in handcuffs.”
The guard looked to the North St. Paul officers. “Are you going to let him get away with this?”
“Yes,” Woodcock answered plainly. “I’d suggest you let the man pass.”
Mac walked by the front desk, waving the others to follow, which they did.
“Where are we going, by the way?” Mac asked, now that he was past the front desk.
“The storage rooms you need are fifty-eight through sixty in the way back,” an attorney named Neumann replied.
“There are three rooms?”
“Yeah.”
“Cripes,” Mac groaned.
“What can I say,” Neumann said, shrugging his shoulders. “Lyman’s had a lot of work over the years.”
The storage rooms themselves were ten feet wide, fifteen or so feet deep. Each room contained a wall of white boxes. Lyman Hisle had practiced law for over thirty years, and at least the first twenty to twenty-five years of practice records waited here.
Mac looked at the four people from Hisle’s firm and suddenly felt like Chief Brody in Jaws. Except that, instead of saying, “You’re going to need a bigger boat,” he was thinking, “We’re going to need a bigger crew.” He looked to Neumann. “How many more people can you get down here?”
“Let me call Summer. I bet she’ll be able to get us more people,” he replied.
“Do that,” Mac answered and then opened his own cell phone and dialed. It was early, but the voice he was looking for answered on the second ring. “Shamus, I need you to get as many old hands as possible over to Old Files on Highway 36.”
“More cops?” Neumann asked Mac, a concerned look on his face.
“Retired ones.”
“I don’t know about that,” the lawyer started. “There’s privileged information in there…”
Mac cut him off. “There’s no time to argue about this. They’re not going to do anything other than help. They’re retired detectives. They’ll know what’s important.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“We’ve got eight hours.”
Carrie awoke and lifted her head, only to hit the roof on the box. Reality immediately set back in. She turned on the flashlight and shined it on her watch: 8:03 a.m. They’d been in the box for somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-six hours now. No water or food for all that time, if not more, and Carrie could feel the weakness in her body, the dryness in her mouth as she moved her tongue around, trying to moisten things. She turned the light to Shannon, who started to stir. Shannon looked weak and groggy. Carrie shook her arm to bring her back.
“Shannon, wake up, honey.”
Shannon didn’t move right away. Carrie shook her arm harder.
“Shannon, wake up! Wake up, honey!”
Shannon slowly started to awaken. “Where are we?” she said weakly.
Carrie turned on the flashlight and shined it around the box. Shannon was groggy, but her eyes opened wider and looked around and she started to realize and remember where she was at. She rubbed her eyes.
“Wake up, sunshine.”
Shannon managed a weak smile and whispered. “Nice try.”
“Hey, I always try to operate as if the glass is half-full,” Carrie answered, rubbing Shannon’s arms.
“Then you must be the most optimistic person to walk the earth,” Shannon retorted, more awake now.
“We’re still alive,” Carrie proclaimed. “And as long as we’re alive, we’ve got hope.”
“They better come soon then,” Shannon responded.
Carrie held the light closer to Hisle. “Getting worse?”
Shannon nodded as she pulled her legs up to her chest. “I don’t know how long I can go on like this.”
Carrie knew that Shannon needed to stay awake. “Tell me about
your diabetes.”
“What do you want to know?” Shannon asked weakly.
“Tell me everything you can. We’ve got time to pass. Nobody in my family has ever had diabetes. I think I had one friend who had it, but it didn’t seem like too big of a deal. My sense is that you have a worse kind.”
“I probably do,” Hisle replied. “There are two types of diabetes, type 1 and 2.”
“Is one worse than the other?”
“Yes. Type 2 is the most common form, and most people who have diabetes have it.”
“If you have type 2, what happens?”
“With type 2, your body produces some insulin, but either it isn’t enough or the body doesn’t recognize the insulin and doesn’t use it right. Over time, if the body doesn’t have enough insulin or doesn’t use insulin properly, then glucose…”
“Sugar?”
“Right. When the body doesn’t use the insulin properly, glucose can’t get into the body’s cells and instead builds up in the blood. If that happens for long enough, the cells won’t function properly. Over time, if not taken care of, a person will get dehydrated and fatigued, and you can be more prone to infection. This could take weeks or months before those problems will manifest themselves. Sometimes people go a long time without even knowing they have that kind of diabetes.”
“That’s probably what my friend had then,” Carrie said.
“Probably,” Shannon answered, but then got quiet, “That’s not the kind I have.”
“You have type 1 then?”
Shannon nodded.
“What makes type 1 worse?”
“With type 1, my immune system has destroyed my insulin-producing cells in my pancreas so that my body doesn’t have the insulin hormone. That means glucose won’t move into my cells and instead, it builds up in my blood and I get high blood glucose.”
“So you need to inject insulin then, right?”
“Yes. I need to take insulin. Like I mentioned before, I take, or I should take, insulin every time I eat.”
“How long have you had type 1?”
“About five years. Generally, I’m really good about taking my insulin, but there are times where I’ve forgotten to bring it with me and of course the time I didn’t take it intentionally for a few days and got really sick. I’ve been thinking of going on an insulin pump but I didn’t like the idea of having this little machine attached to my body all day. However, right now I’m really wishing I’d gone to the pump.”
“If your body starts to get out of whack what will happen?”
“My body will start to break down. Eventually, I’ll get confused and start to shake. I’ll probably have issues breathing, rapid breathing.”
“And maybe lose consciousness?”
“At some point,” Shannon said, her voice down to a whisper, “if it gets really bad, I could go into a coma.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Let’s just try to keep talking. The longer I can stay conscious the better.”
• • • • •
The review of documents at the off-site storage was slow and plodding. It wasn’t that people weren’t trying or they didn’t have enough people. They were and they did as Shamus brought the cavalry. It was simply a slow process. While there was a portable Wi-Fi point set up, the work took a lot of manual labor just to get the information into a place where it could be used. The group had to work through the archived files, pulling out the red-ropes, digging through pleadings, correspondence, memorandums, and depositions to find names and other key data. It was a massive and manic excavation of information.
Once the group mined the data out of the files, the information was placed, via laptop and over the Internet, into a program that Hagen had quickly created over at Hisle’s office. The program was cross-referenced into the police and FBI databases that had been created for purposes of cross-referencing Hisle’s and Flanagan’s work on criminal matters. Hagen was now cross-referencing the information the group was finding with those FBI and police databases. Scheifelbein was doing his best to mask it at HQ and to keep the Feds from noticing.
Mac immediately recognized how difficult the process would be. He immediately arranged for the Wi-Fi hookup and organized the operation as best he could. He had people work in teams, matching an attorney from Lyman’s firm with groups of the retired cops. The groups worked through the documents, the lawyers explaining where the parties, families, and witnesses could be found in the various legal documents. The cops would read through the information and determine what to enter into Hagen’s program.
Riley called Mac from Lyman’s office to report that nothing had turned up as of yet, not even a nibble. He was sounding skeptical. “I don’t know, Mac, we’re not finding anything. How much you got left?”
“We’ve just started out here,” Mac answered. “We’re maybe fifteen to twenty percent into the files. It’ll take a while to get through it. There are hundreds of boxes in these three storage units. I mean, if you have a better idea I’m all ears.”
Riles sighed. “I don’t. It’s just that the clock is ticking.”
“I hear ya,” Mac answered as he looked out a window. The sun was now bright in the sky, and a look at his watch told him it was 9:56 a.m. “We’ve got eight hours. Something will pop.” He didn’t know if that was confidence or hope, but he didn’t have a choice. They had started down this path, and they had to see it through. “What’s going on at HQ?”
“Nothing like what we’re doing,” Riles answered. “Burton seems focused on the ransom and preparing for the phone call. Although…”
“What?”
“He did ask Peters about what we were doing.”
“What did the captain say?”
“He covered. Said we were on the safe house still. Peters thought it might be a good idea for us to make an appearance.”
“I hate to break away from this.”
“It’s what cell phones are for. Burton has called a meeting for eleven thirty. Peters said we should be there. We keep doing what we’re doing, but…”
“We keep people from wondering where we are.”
• • • • •
While Shawn McRyan watched anxiously, Jupiter Jones opened a computer program he developed to get as much out of pictures as possible. He set it to enhance the best frame of the reflection in the van’s rear window. The program worked slowly, but soon a new window popped up on the screen.
“Is it done?” Shawn asked.
“Let’s look.” Jupiter scrolled over the part of the picture with the reflection. The enhancement revealed a white receipt. On the screen, the label ran lower right to upper left and you could make out three letters reflected backward in the glass.
“So we have an H, then a small a and n,” Shawn said.
“And part of another letter,” Jupe added, pointing to a straight vertical line. “What has a straight line, lower case letters?”
Shawn grabbed a scratch pad, quickly writing down the alphabet, “We got b, h, k, l, or t.”
“What about d?”
“I don’t think so,” Shawn replied shaking his head and pointing to the screen at the gap between the n and the next letter. “The gap between the n and the next letter isn’t wide enough for a d, so it has to be one of the other letters.”
“Okay, so we have the PVC pipe, which is manufactured by Ampipe,” Jupiter said. “Now we have part of a receipt that’s likely from the store where they bought it.”
“Maybe,” Shawn said. “They could have taken this out of the scrap heap for all we know.”
“I doubt it,” Jupe answered. “The pipe looks newer. There aren’t scratches and the white color is bright, not yellowed or dirty. And we have a receipt sticking out of it. That wouldn’t be the case if you pulled it out of the scrap heap.”
“You could be right,” Shawn remarked, putting his face closer to the screen.
“Well, one way to find out is to see if we can get a hold of someone at t
his manufacturer and see who sells this stuff in Minnesota,” Jupiter answered, printing off a copy of the picture. “I’ve taken it this far. We need Mac or someone else to get us to that manufacturer.”
Shawn sighed. “And today is a holiday.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“If I didn’t know any better I’d say he’s up to something.”
11:03 a.m.
Heather Foxx looked in her compact mirror, finishing a last bit of work on her eyelashes in the cool air-conditioning of her television truck. She turned and looked through the windshield. Things were starting to percolate around the police department. In these times of a twenty-four-hour news cycle, the story had gone national quickly, especially since it was the Fourth of July. All the heavy hitters were hanging around—FOX, CNN, MSNBC, and the networks. Rather than simply doing puff pieces about parades and fireworks, there was hard news to cover.
Given the potential exposure, Heather went back to her compact to check her makeup again. She wanted things perfect. You never knew who might be watching. As she applied just a touch more lipstick, her thoughts turned back to last night. What had Burton been doing? It could have been an old friend, a late night beer and a chance to reconnect, but that didn’t feel right. The conversation hadn’t seemed confrontational, but it didn’t appear overly friendly either, not like two old buddies sharing a beer and swapping stores. It looked like a colder conversation, a business one. Could it be someone involved with the investigation? Perhaps, but then why meet up in Forest Lake? Why not at the hotel or somewhere closer in town? Why drive miles out to a far-flung suburb? It was odd.
And what exactly should she be doing with this information? She didn’t share it with anyone. What was there to share, after all? John Burton had a conversation in a bar with another man: alert the media.
She could ask Burton about it, although he’d proven a difficult person to reach, keeping himself in the background and allowing the local FBI office and St. Paul Police to be front-and-center. She’d thought of approaching him in the bar. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d done something like that. For some reason, she held back. Intuition, instinct, whatever it was, told her not to do it. The whole event was strange, but without any context, it didn’t seem to mean much. But it did give her an idea.
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