Deadly Stillwater

Smith picked up the handheld radio and spoke to the van. “You’re doing well, Chief,” Smith said. “Stay on Warner until we get to 10.”

“Who are you?” Flanagan asked a few minutes later, as the van approached the intersection with County 10. “Tell me who the hell you are!”

“I can’t do that yet, Chief,” Smith answered calmly, two hundred yards behind the van. “When I’m satisfied, then we’ll talk about the girls.”

“We’ll talk?” Flanagan growled with angst in his voice. “Who the hell are you?”

“Patience Chief. I want to see you as much as you want to see me,” Smith answered. He savored the thought of finally confronting Flanagan, of finally feeling the satisfaction for which he’d waited for years. But there was business to attend to first. “Turn left on 10. We’re going to Burns Park. There’s a red van waiting for you in the parking lot, and the key for it is in the glove box.”

The two men did as instructed. Smith pulled past them, driving another five hundred yards before making a U-turn.

He wanted this last change of vehicles. The police would go back to the parking ramp soon enough, and surveillance footage would give them the blue minivan and the plate number. Changing into the red van would put them in the wind.

“Mother fucker,” Flanagan said bitterly as he tossed the handheld radio onto the dashboard.

“We know who they are, or at least who this Brown is. You arrested him all those years ago,” Lyman said from the passenger seat. “Why not just tell them? Why not just talk to them like that?”

“Because then they’ll know we’re onto them, that we know who they are,” the chief replied. If we do that, they might assume we know where they are, that we’re closing in. If we do that, they could kill the girls.”

“So we play dumb for now?”

“We give my boys as much time as possible.”

35 “ I know you found the girls.”

“What the hell happened?” Mac asked, still sitting in his Explorer outside the woods.

“Sleight of hand,” Riles explained. “They picked a good spot. We didn’t, hell, couldn’t have an eyeball on them, believe me.” Pat sighed, and Mac could hear the frustration in his voice. “They just picked a good spot. We thought they were on the bus. It’s ten minutes, and the bus gets over to the Taste of Minnesota. It had one stop just before it went over the river on the Robert Street Bridge and nobody got off, only on. Then when it got to the Taste of Minnesota and emptied, the chief and Hisle weren’t there. They never got on that damn bus in the first place.”

Mac closed his eyes. Such a simple thing – never having them get on the bus. It was brilliant, really.

“Where are you now?”

“We’re driving hack to HQ. We have a surveillance video from the garage attendant that we’ll have the techs take a closer look at.”

“What do you see on it?’

“The chief and Lyman leaving in a blue Dodge Sport minivan about a minute after the bus pulled away from the bus stop. We’ve got a plate and a broadcast out. We’re pulling over any and all blue Dodge Sport minivans. Nothing as of yet, but we’re pulling everything over.”

Mac pinched the bridge of his nose. They had made a trade. They had the girls, but the chief and Lyman were out of reach. While they had a plate for the van, the window of time to find the chief and Hisle before they changed vehicles would be small, if not already closed. “Pat, Brown, and the Muellers had to know you’d be tailing the bus, and that’s when the chief and Lyman weren’t on it, that you would double back to the bus stop. They have to know the surveillance footage from the parking ramp will give you the plate for the van.”

“They’ll be ready, won’t they,” Riles said. It was an answer, not a question.

“They’ve been ready for everything else,” Mac answered. “There’ll be a switch at some out-of-the-way place. I’ll bet a month’s pay you’ll find it abandoned somewhere.”

Riles sighed and then said, “No bet.”

Then there was the mole. Mac hadn’t spent much time thinking about that for the past couple of hours. But now they needed to pursue that angle full-bore, and they had little to go on.

“Who’s the mole?” Mac asked.

“Hell if I know. You have any theories on who it might be?” Riles fired back. “I mean, beyond someone in the department with a connection to Brown or the Muellers?”

“How about the FBI? How about Duffy?” Mac asked, already grasping at straws.

“Or the mayor,” Lich added. “I wouldn’t put anything past him. Not the way he’s operated the last couple of days.”

“No way,” Riles answered. “I know Duffy and the chief don’t exchange Christmas cards, but I find it hard to believe he would do this. What’s the upside in that? And the mayor isn’t smart enough to pull this off. And besides, what evidence do we have?”

“Nothing, other than they were both around yesterday when the call from Stewart Avenue came in,” Mac answered.

“As were thirty or forty other people. What? Are we going to haul them all in?” Riles said skeptically.

“You have any better ideas?”