Deadly Stillwater

by Roger Stelljes

  “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 AM, 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.”

  “ 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 AM. 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 o
ver 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 PM 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 Fourth 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, lowlying 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 AM and into St. Paul by noon. The action would start at 6:00 PM. Hopefully it would be over by 10:00 PM. 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.

  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?”