“The older couple said it came out of the alley,” Rock answered. “We’re not entirely sure, but we’re thinking it was parked behind the office building.” He pointed across the alley and to their left. “From there, they would be able to see her come out the back door and take her.”
“How many people?”
“Driver, guy to take her,” Riles answered, counting on his fingers.
“Maybe another guy in the van,” Lich added.
“Why do you think not just two?” Mac asked Lich.
“The older couple thinks he threw her into the van. I’m thinking there might have been someone in there to take or catch her. We don’t know for sure, just speculatin’.”
“Any surveillance cameras or anything?”
“Nada,” Rock replied. “Nothing outside. Hell, nothing inside the cafe.”
“We’re askin’ the cafe people,” Lich asked.
“Was there anyone unusual inside or outside today, last few days, anything like that,” Mac added.
“Not that anyone can recall,” Rock answered. “It was busy early in the afternoon with the post-church crowd. However, after that rush, the staff says there were just regulars sitting around reading, having coffee. Pretty mellow.”
“In other words,” Mac said, summing up, “we got shit.”
“Hell, we ain’t even got that,” Lich replied, looking down, shaking his head.
The group stood in silence for a minute before Mac asked, “Where is the chief?”
“In a sad irony, already at Hisle’s,” answered their captain, Marion Peters, as he ducked under the crime scene tape and joined the group. “The chief was out there for Hisle’s annual barbeque when the call came in.”
“I assume they haven’t heard from the kidnappers yet?”
“No,” Peters answered.
“Are we on the phone?”
“Yeah, both landline and cell,” Peters replied. “I’ve been setting that up. We’re watching the phone at her place. We have someone at his law firm watching the phone. But we expect he’ll get the call at home, and we have people and the chief out there.”
“What about the Feds?” Rock asked. “Will they be coming in?”
Peters shrugged. “At some point they will. Kidnapping is one of their gigs. Hisle’s a prominent guy, politically connected, so the bureau will be involved at some point and somehow.”
“We don’t know that they took her over state lines,” Lich replied.
“True. But again, we’re talking Lyman here. He’ll probably want them in and the chief will accede to his wishes, they being friends and all.”
“Yeah,” Mac added, “and given what we have thus far, we’ll need their resources.”
Riley’s and Peter’s cell phones chirped, and they walked away from the group. Mac left Rock, and he and Lich walked over toward Hisle’s car.
“So did her old man piss someone off?” Lich asked.
“Possibly,” Mac answered. Lyman had made the big time both financially and politically. You do that and you’ve made some people mad, very mad, along the way. He’d made millions on class-action and discrimination cases, fighting businesses for years. On the criminal side, he’d tussled with the police departments around town for years. Yet, given his practice, he was still popular with the local police departments. He often waived his hefty retainer and fees to help the men in blue. Consequently, there would be no “what goes around comes around” feeling that cops might have for many of the lawyers they dealt with. The cops would have Lyman’s back on this one.
“It could be a nut, or…”
“Or what?” Lich asked following Mac back toward Hisle’s car.
“Maybe not a nut,” Mac answered blandly as he walked over to the yellow numbered evidence tags by the keys and cell phone. They were lying on the ground, to the right of Shannon Hisle’s car, strewn toward Western Avenue. The way the keys and phone had spilled suggested that whoever grabbed her had come from the left, and with force. The cell phone was a few feet from the car and the keys a good ten feet from the car, nearly reaching the sidewalk separating the parking lot from Western.
Mac pivoted to his left and scanned the cars parked to the left of Hisle’s. There was a Ford Focus and Chevy Cavalier, both compact cars. The third was a black Ford F-150, a hefty pickup truck. The pickup was parked with its back end pointing out. Mac walked around the truck to the driver’s side and crouched down. There was little of interest on the asphalt, beyond gravel and litter. It would be collected and analyzed but it was unlikely to be of any help. However, there was a definite fresh footprint in a bare patch of black dirt between the alley and the parking lot. Mac called a crime scene tech over. The print looked fresh and was big, probably size twelve or thirteen, Mac thought. The tread of the impression looked like a hiking boot. “Get a picture of that,” Mac directed, “and dust this side of the truck, especially the back quarter panel, for prints.”
“What do you have?” Lich asked, walking over.
“The keys and cell phone landed toward Western, to the right of the rear bumper of the car?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So it looks like whoever took Hisle came from this way, by the truck here. Scooped her up and ran to the van on Western. This is a big truck. You could hide behind it and wait for her. There’s a fresh footprint in that bare spot between the alley and the parking lot. If you line it up, the footprint is coming straight, as if the guy came from right across the alley.” Mac pointed toward the back of the office building on the other side of the alley. “The van was across the alley. They know Hisle’s coming out, one guy hides here, the other drives the van from behind the building, down the alley and pulls up along the curb.”
Lich picked up on the thought. “Yeah. I see what you’re gettin’ at. Our guy comes from this spot. It’s three cars to Hisle. She comes out; he pops out, scoops her up.”
“Right. Three cars to here is nothing. He’d be on her in an instant,” Mac replied. “I bet that’s what happened.”
They stood in silence for a moment, and then Mac asked, “But do they know when she’s coming?”
“Huh?” Lich asked.
“How do they know she’s coming? I mean, their timing was pretty good.”
“Beats me. Guy sits and waits for her.”
“Yeah, but if the guy is hiding behind the truck here, he can’t wait all afternoon can he?”
Lich nodded, “I see what you’re saying. They had to have an idea of when she was leaving.”
“So how do they know?”
“Maybe she always leaves at 5:00 PM.”
“Maybe,” Mac answered. “But that could be four fifty-five or five ten, depending on her schedule and what not. This is a good spot, but you wouldn’t want to be exposed for too long here. Somebody might still notice if you were here more than a minute or two. No, you’d want to know exactly when she was coming.”
Lich’s eyebrows went up. “Someone inside?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Mac replied, already walking toward the back door of the cafe.
Smith peered in the rearview mirror as he slowly backed the van into the garage of the safe house. Once parked, he killed the engine and let the garage door down, not getting out until the door had closed. Once down, he donned a mask to match the ones worn by David and Dean. He climbed out of the van and opened the sliding door for the brothers.
The safe house was a small, nondescript white 1950s rambler located in a working-class neighborhood a few blocks off of West Seventh Street on St. Paul’s south side. While there were houses on either side and across the street, there was a large wood privacy fence surrounding the back of the property as well as railroad tracks running behind. They’d only been in the house for two days, although it had been rented since June first.
A stairway in the garage led down to the basement. Smith led the way down as Dean and David, still masked, followed carrying the pixie-sized Hisle. The basement had a small family room, a bedroom, and a full bath. In the bedroom, there were two twin beds with metal frames as well as steel-barred head and footboards. A piece of plywood was screwed into place over the small egress window. A solitary low-watt ceiling light lit the bedroom.
