“I can’t do that yet, Chief,” Smith answered calmly, two hundred yards behind the van. “When I’m satisfied, then we’ll talk about the girls.”
“We’ll talk?” Flanagan growled with angst in his voice. “Who the hell are you?”
“Patience Chief. I want to see you as much as you want to see me,” Smith answered. He savored the thought of finally confronting Flanagan, of finally feeling the satisfaction for which he’d waited for years. But there was business to attend to first. “Turn left on 10. We’re going to Burns Park. There’s a red van waiting for you in the parking lot, and the key for it is in the glove box.”
The two men did as instructed. Smith pulled past them, driving another five hundred yards before making a U-turn.
He wanted this last change of vehicles. The police would go back to the parking ramp soon enough, and surveillance footage would give them the blue minivan and the plate number. Changing into the red van would put them in the wind.
“Mother fucker,” Flanagan said bitterly as he tossed the handheld radio onto the dashboard.
“We know who they are, or at least who this Brown is. You arrested him all those years ago,” Lyman said from the passenger seat. “Why not just tell them? Why not just talk to them like that?”
“Because then they’ll know we’re onto them, that we know who they are,” the chief replied. If we do that, they might assume we know where they are, that we’re closing in. If we do that, they could kill the girls.”
“So we play dumb for now?”
“We give my boys as much time as possible.”
35
“What the hell happened?” Mac asked, still sitting in his Explorer outside the woods.
“Sleight of hand,” Riles explained. “They picked a good spot. We didn’t, hell, couldn’t have an eyeball on them, believe me.” Pat sighed, and Mac could hear the frustration in his voice. “They just picked a good spot. We thought they were on the bus. It’s ten minutes, and the bus gets over to the Taste of Minnesota. It had one stop just before it went over the river on the Robert Street Bridge and nobody got off, only on. Then when it got to the Taste of Minnesota and emptied, the chief and Hisle weren’t there. They never got on that damn bus in the first place.”
Mac closed his eyes. Such a simple thing — never having them get on the bus. It was brilliant, really.
“Where are you now?”
“We’re driving hack to HQ. We have a surveillance video from the garage attendant that we’ll have the techs take a closer look at.”
“What do you see on it?’
“The chief and Lyman leaving in a blue Dodge Sport minivan about a minute after the bus pulled away from the bus stop. We’ve got a plate and a broadcast out. We’re pulling over any and all blue Dodge Sport minivans. Nothing as of yet, but we’re pulling everything over.”
Mac pinched the bridge of his nose. They had made a trade. They had the girls, but the chief and Lyman were out of reach. While they had a plate for the van, the window of time to find the chief and Hisle before they changed vehicles would be small, if not already closed. “Pat, Brown, and the Muellers had to know you’d be tailing the bus, and that’s when the chief and Lyman weren’t on it, that you would double back to the bus stop. They have to know the surveillance footage from the parking ramp will give you the plate for the van.”
“They’ll be ready, won’t they,” Riles said. It was an answer, not a question.
“They’ve been ready for everything else,” Mac answered. “There’ll be a switch at some out-of-the-way place. I’ll bet a month’s pay you’ll find it abandoned somewhere.”
Riles sighed and then said, “No bet.”
Then there was the mole. Mac hadn’t spent much time thinking about that for the past couple of hours. But now they needed to pursue that angle full-bore, and they had little to go on.
“Who’s the mole?” Mac asked.
“Hell if I know. You have any theories on who it might be?” Riles fired back. “I mean, beyond someone in the department with a connection to Brown or the Muellers?”
“How about the FBI? How about Duffy?” Mac asked, already grasping at straws.
“Or the mayor,” Lich added. “I wouldn’t put anything past him. Not the way he’s operated the last couple of days.”
“No way,” Riles answered. “I know Duffy and the chief don’t exchange Christmas cards, but I find it hard to believe he would do this. What’s the upside in that? And the mayor isn’t smart enough to pull this off. And besides, what evidence do we have?”
“Nothing, other than they were both around yesterday when the call from Stewart Avenue came in,” Mac answered.
“As were thirty or forty other people. What? Are we going to haul them all in?” Riles said skeptically.
“You have any better ideas?”
Riles got quiet on the other end. “I don’t. I gotta talk to Peters about it. What are you doing?”
“We’re lying in wait out here for now,” Mac answered. “Who knows, Brown and the Muellers could show. Where’s Peters?”
“He’s already back at HQ with Burton and his crew, working the broadcast on the van. It’s the only lead we got.”
“Get back there and talk to Peters, see what he thinks. The clock is ticking, and we need to make a move.” Mac hung up, but his phone beeped at him. Sally.
Heather Foxx trailed Rockford and Riley for two hours. She had watched as Riley, Rockford, Peters, and the FBI taped up the parking garage as a crime scene, everyone tight-lipped and grim. Now they seemed to be heading back to police headquarters. It certainly looked like they’d lost Hisle and Flanagan. She thought about the call from Carlson. The medical chopper was in and out fast, but she still had no confirmation that the girls had been found. The police weren’t talking about it at all. Gail Carlson was the only media on the scene at North Memorial, which was in lock down mode. None of the stations had that story yet.
If the girls had been found, it didn’t seem to make anyone happy. It was as if McRyan wasn’t letting everyone, or anyone for that matter, in on the rescue. She doubted he’d be keeping that from Riley and Rockford. Those two were McRyan’s guys, along with Lich. But then why was McRyan driving from St. Paul, to Osseo, to Wyoming and now Marine on St. Croix? Perhaps the kidnappers called in the location of the girls. But if that were the case, she probably would have heard something. It was time to find out what the hell was going on.
“I’ll be back,” she told the cameraman as they parked two rows behind Rockford’s truck in the police parking lot.
“You don’t want me to come with?”
“No, and don’t shoot anything either. This will be off the record.”
Heather hopped out of the car and walked toward Riley and Rockford. She’d never really spoken to the veteran detectives, other than to say hello. As she approached, Riley was pacing back and forth, talking on a cell phone and Rockford was leaning against the truck. Rock saw Heather first, said something to Riley who turned around. She caught his eye as he hung up the phone. It was time to take a chance.
“I know you found the girls,” she blurted.
Riley and Rock tried to remain neutral, but Rock twitched, just enough to tell Heather she was right. “I know you found them, detectives,” she said. No notepad, no camera, just her making a statement. “I had someone monitoring the police bands up around Forest Lake and heard about the call at Hanburg’s Hardware. I’ve had a reporter following McRyan since. She saw a medical chopper come in over some farm up by Marine on St. Croix. It wasn’t there long, and McRyan was running around with Washington County sheriff’s deputies.”
