Deadly Stillwater

“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, 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 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?”