Deadly Stillwater

“Connection of some kind,” Hagen answered, running his cursor over the screen, clicking on and reading various links. “Smith Brown, who was…” Hagen looked away from the computer to a binder-clipped packet of papers, flipping through it until he found Smith’s name, “…a DEA agent that Chief Flanagan put in prison fifteen or sixteen years ago, and a David Mueller, who occupied the neighboring cell at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.”

“Who’s Mueller?”

The computer whiz scrolled down the screen and whistled, “Son of Thomas Oliver Mueller, who Hisle sued back in the early ‘90s. It must have been a good case, because Hisle got himself a $3.4 million verdict.”

“Where are these guys now?”

Hagen clicked through several programs and brought up the federal prison system records, accessing the records for Leavenworth. After a minute he found the records, and they both whistled. “Brown finished his sentence six months ago, and Mueller has been out for nine months.”

“What are their current addresses?” Sally asked, pulling up a chair and grabbing a notepad.

“Brown has one in Chicago, and Mueller,” Hagen clicked on a different link, “Mueller has an address in Osseo.” Osseo was a small northwestern suburb of Minneapolis. “Is this worth a look?” Hagen asked, turning his gaze to Sally, who was furiously jotting notes down on a legal pad.

“Keep digging and I’ll ask Mac,” she said as she took out her cell phone.

“You have Hagen in this?” the chief asked. “How’d you swing that?”

Riles shrugged. “Warden at the workhouse is a friend of mine. All I had to mention was this involved you, and it wasn’t a problem. Anyway, Hagen’s got this computer program set up and is cross-referencing your list with Lyman’s. So if there’s a connection to be made, he’ll find it.”

Mac’s cell phone went off and he looked at the caller ID. “It’s Sally,” he said as he stepped into the hallway to take the call.

“So how many people are in on this?” the chief asked.

Riles chuckled. “Mac had Shamus call the cavalry. He recruited a whole boatload of retired guys to this off-site storage place. They’re out there, going through boxes of Hisle’s old files. They’re using laptops and putting what they find into this program that Hagen created. Apparently, the program is constantly searching the records for a match.”

“What’s he searching?”

“Social Security, IRS, INS, NCIC, federal and state prison systems, maybe more. Whatever we could access here, Hagen is accessing from the firm.”

“Here’s where you might have to provide some cover, Chief,” Peters added. “Our guy Scheifelbein has been providing Hagen access to this information and masking the access, hiding it from everyone else, so he might need a little chief-like protection if and when this comes to light.”

“Done,” the chief replied.

Peters nodded. Then Mac burst back into the room and looked to the chief. “Do you recall a guy you put away named Smith Brown?”

The chief looked down in thought for a moment and then looked up. “Yeah. DEA agent. That’s years ago, fifteen or twenty. He was holding back bricks of coke from busts here and putting it on the street. He had some gambling debts or something like that. I pinched a bookie, who fed me Brown for a reduction in his sentence, as I recall. It was at one of those times when drug enforcement was big with the first Bush administration and the U.S. attorney wanted to make a statement.”

“And you were heavily involved, right?”

“I busted him. You know how I feel about dirty cops.”

“So what do they have?” Lich asked. “What connects him with Hisle?”

“He was in a cell next to a guy named David Mueller, who was also in the pen for a federal drug charge,” Mac answered, reading from his notepad. “David Mueller was the son of Thomas Mueller. Thomas Mueller owned a trucking company that Lyman sued for sexual harassment. Lyman hit the jackpot with a $3.4 million verdict from a jury.”

“That’ll piss a guy off,” Lich said.

“Well, Thomas Mueller can’t be pissed anymore,” Mac said. “He committed suicide within a year or two of the verdict. The case killed his business. His wife left him, and his two sons were in prison for drug dealing, apparently trying to make money to help the old man save the trucking company. There’s a newspaper article Sally found from up in Chisago Lakes, where Mueller Lived. The article quoted his daughter Monica as saying between his sons being in jail, the loss of the business, and losing his wife, he simply couldn’t go on. And there’s one other thing.”

“Which is?” Flanagan asked.

“Mueller had two sons, both, it turns out, in Leavenworth. The other Mueller is named Dean. And there’s one other thing about the brothers. They’re…”

“Twins,” Lich finished. “They’re not just brothers, but twins, aren’t they?”

“Identical, in fact,” Mac answered. “They’re both six-three and about two hundred forty pounds, with dark hair, according to their prison records.”

“Damn,” Lich said. “Fuckin’ Fat Charlie actually came through for us,” he said, shaking his head.