“I assume you know who’s running this investigation,” he said.
Mac stared straight ahead and nodded.
“Good. I don’t want any problems,” the mayor added and then walked away. Mac glanced to his right and caught Burton’s eye. The FBI man approached.
“How you doing?” Burton asked. “I know you and the chief are close.”
“I’m fine, ready to go.”
“Listen, don’t worry about your mayor. I want. No wait. Make that, I need you guys working this. They’re coming after cops and the people most important to them,” Burton said and then added darkly. “These bastards are going down for that.”
Mac nodded his approval.
The phone rang.
The chief went to the phone and exhaled, letting it ring twice before answering.
“Flanagan.”
“We have your daughter,” a now-familiar disguised voice on the other end replied. Everyone was huddled around a speaker phone, the chief on the regular line. Burton motioned with his hands to try to string out the call.
The chief knew how this would play.
“How do I know you have her? I want to speak with her.”
There was a click, and then a nervous and slightly muffled voice played on a recording.
“Daddy. I… I… I’m okay. I haven’t… been hurt. Please do as these men say and I won’t be harmed. I love you.” The tape cut off. There was no question that it was Carrie Flanagan’s voice.
The mechanical-sounding voice came back.
“I trust that answers your question.”
“Do you have Shannon Hisle as well? Is she still alive?”
“She is. Hisle was the appetizer and your daughter is the main course.”
“You son of a bitch, you harm her and I’ll…” the chief growled into the phone, but the look on his face was calm, almost placid. He was doing what he could to keep the call going.
“Do as we say, and that won’t be a problem.”
“What is it that you want? You want money? You want me? You want Hisle? What is it you want, you mother fucker?”
“Money,” the voice answered flatly.
“How much? What’s it gonna take to get my little girl back? How much to buy you off you goddamn son of a bitch?”
“We’ll be in touch.” The line went dead.
The chief slammed the receiver into the cradle and violently swept the phone off his desk into the wall, turning his back to everyone. Hisle, the only man in the room who truly knew what he was going through, immediately went to him and put an arm around his shoulder.
Mac turned to the agent working the laptop.
“It’s a landline from a payphone in Ellsworth. Ellsworth, Wisconsin.”
“Call the Ellsworth cops. Call them now!” Burton ordered. The FBI tech did as instructed. “Where’s Ellsworth?”
“It’s about forty-five minutes, maybe an hour southeast of here,” Mac answered, knowing generally where the town was. He walked over to the desk where double Frank started unfolding a Minnesota-Wisconsin roadmap, looking for the exact location. Another FBI man was calling the Ellsworth police department. Problem was, they had no idea who they were looking for, what they were driving, anything.
As everyone tried to contact Ellsworth, Mac didn’t feel like waiting. He grabbed Lich by the arm.
“We’re going down to Ellsworth.”
Smith drove north out of Ellsworth and worked his way up to River Falls, where he pulled into an empty elementary school parking lot and removed the false license plates. A half-hour later he returned to the Park amp; Ride, where Monica was waiting. Ten minutes later the two were back at the safe house.
“Are things ready to go?” Smith asked Dean.
“The girls are ready. They’ll be out for eighteen to twenty hours, so we have plenty of time.”
“Equipment and materials?”
Dean opened the back door of the van, and Smith inspected the contents.
“As you can see, we’re good to go,” Dean noted confidently.
“Good,” Smith replied. “Let’s bring them up and get going out to the farm then. I want to be sure to finish before the storms roll in.”
Unlike Clearwater, which was right off the highway, Ellsworth could only be reached by a circuitous route east on Interstate 94 into Wisconsin and then south on State Highway 63. Mac and Lich worked their way to the abandoned gas station, where a patrol car and sedan were parked with two cops casually sitting on the hood, one in uniform, one with a tie, both smoking. They’d kept it low-key, no lights or crime tape. There was no reason to wake everyone up and draw a crowd.
Mac pulled up and he and Lich jumped out. A forensics team pulled in behind them and started unloading, pulling on rubber gloves, and assembling their gear. The cop with the tie and a sweat-soaked shirt jumped off the hood.
“My name’s Kleist, chief here in Ellsworth,” he said. Kleist was a short, squat man with a nose far too large for his face. “Haven’t touched a thing,” he reported, wiping his brow with a red handkerchief. “Heck, there hasn’t hardly been anyone passing by since we got here.”
“What did you find when you got here?” Lich asked.
“Not much,” Kleist replied, rubbing a finger hard along the side of his nose. “Phone was on the hook. But,” he waved them away from the phone toward a back exit onto the street, which traversed through a patch of bare ground and dirt, “if you look close enough, there appears to be some fresh tire tracks, I’d say car width, maybe a sedan of some type that those guys,” the chief pointed to the forensics team, “might be able to do something with.”
Mac and Lich peered down to the tracks. They were narrow, fresh and definitely from a car. Lich waved forensics over.
“Let’s get pictures, maybe even a mold,” he ordered. A forensics tech nodded and started snapping images.
“So they’re using vans and cars, eh?” Mac asked.
“Looks like it,” Lich answered. “Just another little wrinkle.”
Mac nodded.
“He didn’t just drive here and stumble onto this place either. He scouted it.” Mac motioned to the station. “This isn’t a bad spot really. The park looks almost abandoned, just a few homes around with little traffic, foot or car. Make a quick call, hang up, leave, and nobody sees a thing.”
They walked back over to Kleist, who’d returned to the hood of his sedan. “Chief, has anyone gone door- knocking?” Lich asked.
The chief thumbed at the other cop.
“He knocked on all the doors before you fellows got here. Only one person was home, and he didn’t see anything, said he was watching the Twins game. I’ve got another one of my men surveying the perimeter of the park and the nearby streets to see if a pedestrian saw anything.”
“I know the answer to this question,” Mac said. “I don’t suppose there’s any surveillance cameras, anything like that around here is there?”
Kleist smiled apologetically and shook his head.
“Nope. Don’t have the budget for it or the need really. Big night for us might be a fight at the bar, a little speeding or drunk driving, a domestic.”
“So if a guy makes a call here,” Mac waved around the area, “and then wanted to leave town, how would he do it?”
