Deadly Stillwater

Just before 7:00 AM, Mac, Lich, Riles, Rock, and Burton slid into a large booth at the Cleveland Grille. Going to the Grille was like going into a time warp back to the late 1960s or early 1970s. It had old mustard and orange vinyl booths, a speckled tile floor, and very Brady striped wallpaper. It also served the best and most filling breakfast around. Everyone was exhausted and needed to fuel up. The Cleveland would do the trick.

Mac loved the place, the food, and the old atmosphere. Lich loved the place because his girl Dot worked his table. Lich and Dot hooked up at the same time as Mac and Sally last winter during the PTA case. Dot was a treat: a wonderfully warm, salt-and-pepper-haired waitress in her late forties who wore a uniform two sizes too small to show off her ample topside. Lich, of course, loved it. He came in each morning, she doted on him, and he’d pat her on the ass. Mac loved her to death and often wondered whether, if the two got married, if he’d have to call her Dot Lick.

“The usual, Hon?” she asked Mac, setting her right hand on his shoulder.

“You bet.” The usual was the CG breakfast burrito; chock full of eggs, sausage, hash browns, peppers, cheese, and salsa. “Get everyone the same,” he directed. “Trust me,” he said, looking to Burton. “You’ll love it. It’ll fill you up, and you’ll thank me for it later.”

While they waited for their food, they began the postmortem on the raid. No evidence of the girls was found at the Northfield house and alibis were checking out. Wiskowski Sr. was still of interest, but it was dying by the minute. Everyone knew, in their hearts and heads, that he was a dead end.

“I thought it was Wiskowski,” Mac groaned, sipping at a large glass of ice water. “I can’t believe how wrong I was about him. It all fit, right down to the house out in the country.”

“It wasn’t just you. We were all wrong,” Burton said. “I thought it was Wiskowski, too. I’d have bet my pension on it.”

“Someone explain the car in Ellsworth to me then,” Riles asked rubbing his eyes. “Were we wrong on that too?”

“If Wiskowski is not involved in this, but one of his cars ends up involved, is it a setup then?” Lich asked.

“These guys have been so careful. And then to get caught with an actual license plate by some old man sitting on a park bench?” Burton said. “I was surprised they would have screwed up like that.”

Dot appeared with five CG Burritos. She added two extra pots of coffee. Hunger took over for a few minutes as everyone inhaled the first few bites of food.

As the initial assault on the burritos slowed, Mac snorted.

“I bet it was a setup. God, the more I think about that car in Ellsworth, the more it seems like it was.”

“What has you so sure now?”

“The driver of the car, whoever it was, sat there for a while, perhaps five minutes according to our witness in Ellsworth,” Mac answered, leaning back against the back of his booth and crossing his arms.

Burton nodded, picking at his plate.

“Why wait around when you want to make the call quick and be done?”

“Right. Why sit at the phone for five minutes, if not more, before making the call, unless…”

“Unless you want to be seen,” Riles finished, scratching the deep stubble on the right side of his face. “Cripes, these guys have thought of everything.”

“So whoever this guy is,” Riles continued, “he sits at the phone until our witness shows up. Once our guy is certain he’s been seen, he makes the call and then leaves.”

“We find the witness, get the plate, start down the Wiskowski path, and lose all this time,” Rock added.

“Well, if it was a setup, they got exactly what they wanted,” Lich said.

“Right, we’re spending all our time looking at Wiskowski and not in the right place,” Burton said, shaking his head. “Shit.”

“It certainly would fit these bastards,” Mac noted. “They wanted to push us in another direction, even if for just a short period of time. All the while, they continue doing what they’re doing and we fall farther behind.”

“It makes sense, when you think about how these guys have operated,” Burton added.

“Maybe we should have seen it sooner,” Mac said, stuffing a fork full of food into his mouth.

“You mean, besides the car angle?” Rock asked, adding some toast to his large helping of butter.

“Yeah. Maybe we should have seen it in the motive,” Mac said.

“How so?” Burton asked.

“The kidnappers have operated as if ransom is their motivation, with a personal element added in. For Wiskowski, maybe, that whole equation doesn’t work. He’s got more money than he could ever spend, so ransom doesn’t make sense, but he’s got motive up the wazoo personally. If he wanted revenge for his son, he could’ve just killed the chief and Lyman. Why go through all this bullshit and phone calls, switching vans, and the whole nine yards?” Mac let it hang in the air for a moment. “We didn’t see it because we’ve been working around the clock to find the girls. It was the first thing that looked good to us. A lot of the parts fit – just not all of them. But you know what really scares me?”