‘You know, I never got that.’ Gino was eyeing a bakery bag sitting on the dispatch counter. ‘If a crow always gets someplace faster, why didn’t they just follow the crows when they were building the roads?’ His stomach growled noisily, making Sampson smile.
‘Too many lakes, too many swamps. Roads up here twist like crazy going around them. Half the time even the locals need a compass to know which way they’re going. Grab that bag, will you, Detective? Sounds like we all missed lunch.’
Gino actually put his hand over his heart, a gesture only food could inspire.
Ten minutes later Sampson was powering the big county SUV down a narrow, curving road with ten-foot snowbanks towering on either side. Sheriff Rikker was next to him, clutching her pocketbook as if it were an airbag; Magozzi and Gino were in the backseat, which was just the way Gino liked it. Way he figured, the people in the front would get it first when they ran smack-dab into one of those snowbanks. He leaned forward and breathed jelly bismarck into the front seat.
‘This is supposed to be a road? What happens if we meet a car going the other way?’
‘Plenty of room.’ Sampson braked hard just before a sharp curve and they fishtailed for a second. ‘Looks narrower than it is because the snow’s so high.’
Gino snorted, not believing that for a minute. To a pair of eyes used to a six-lane city freeway, it looked like they were driving down the white throat of some enormous monster.
‘And it’s a good road,’ Sampson added. ‘Gross-weight standards up for eighteen-wheelers, what with all the shipping they do out of here.’
‘You’re telling me we could meet a semi on this cow path?’
‘Probably not on a Sunday.’
‘Seems like a pretty out-of-the-way location for a business. You’d think they’d locate on a major road, instead of back here in the toolies. Anybody want to split the last bismarck?’
Ten minutes later the road uncoiled a little and Magozzi and Gino could see a tall cyclone fence that stretched as far as they could see in either direction. It was even more interesting when they got closer.
Magozzi nudged Gino with his elbow. ‘Look at the top of that fence.’
Gino leaned over his partner and peered out the window. ‘Huh? What are those thingamajigees?’
‘Looks like the cameras Grace has mounted all around her place.’
‘Oh, great. A whole corporation as paranoid as Grace MacBride. What the hell do they make here, Sheriff?’
Iris was staring out at the fence and the cameras mounted every twenty feet or so, mystified by all the security. ‘As far as I know, organic products. Food, cosmetics, things like that. I’ve ordered a few things from their website.’
‘Looks more like a military installation, if you ask me. Or maybe a prison… Jesus, look at that.’ They were pulling up to an enormous pair of gates with a brick guardhouse on the left. A small woman in boots and a big parka exited the little building and headed for the car. ‘That woman’s carrying, Leo.’
‘I see that.’
‘They’ve got their own security force.’ Sampson rolled down his window. ‘All of them have permits to carry.’
The female guard pushed back the hood on her parka and bent toward the car window, looking past Sampson as if he weren’t there. ‘Sheriff Rikker?’
‘That’s right.’
The woman grinned. ‘Congratulations on the election, Sheriff. Great pleasure to meet you.’
Magozzi thought Iris looked a little flummoxed by the greeting. Or maybe it was the congratulations.
‘Thank you very much.’
‘And will you vouch for your passengers?’
‘Yes, this is Lieutenant Sampson -’
‘Aw, come on, Liz,’ Sampson interrupted. ‘Don’t give me a hard time. The two guys in the back are Minneapolis PD, and they won’t give you their weapons, either. I’ll let you frisk me, though, if you want.’
‘Tempting, but I’ll pass. Straight to the office,’ she reminded him.
‘I know the drill.’ He closed the window, waited while one of the electronic gates swung open, then pulled through.
Gino was puzzled. ‘I don’t get it. They knew we were coming, they could see it was a county car, and they stopped us anyway.’
‘They stop everybody. Drives me nuts, but they’re pretty strict about it. Except for Liz. I think she does it just to piss me off.’
‘So every time you get an emergency call out here you’ve got to stop while they check the car? That’s just plain crazy.’
‘Well, the thing is, we never get called out here. Not one call as long as I’ve been on the job, and that’s fifteen years. Only reason I’m a familiar face is that I’ve got a friend who lives here in the residential neighborhood around the back of the complex.’
As they drove inside the gates, all that could be seen in any direction were woods and fields, all buried under snow. ‘What complex?’
‘Over the next hill.’
And indeed it was. A cluster of modern buildings with a courtyard and landscaped parking lot. It looked like a dozen other corporate complexes that grew like weeds all over the Minneapolis suburbs. Except this one was out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a ten-foot-high cyclone fence with armed guards at the gate. It wasn’t the first time Magozzi had seen elaborate corporate security, but this seemed a little over the top for a place that made jelly and face powder. So did the metal detector and second armed guard at the building entrance.
A woman Sampson introduced as Maggie Holland was waiting for them in a large office just off the lobby. She could have been anywhere from forty-five to sixty-five years old – Magozzi was finding it harder and harder to tell these days – but it was an age span that made him a little uneasy, probably because a lot of women in that group were long past the time when they expected anything extraordinary from men. Fractured fairy tales, he thought. We all take the rap for that.
Ms Holland greeted them all cordially enough, but made a particular fuss over the new sheriff, just as the guard at the gate had. Iris Rikker apparently had a fan club out here she didn’t know about.
After the pleasantries, she slipped straight into no-nonsense mode. ‘Julie Albright will not go with you.’
Gino nodded. ‘That’s what she told our detective on the phone. We might need your help talking her into it.’
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly do that. She’s much safer here than she would be with you. Perfectly safe, in fact.’
Gino got a little impatient when he still had a long drive to make it to Angela’s spaghetti. ‘Listen, we saw the security you’ve got out here, and let me tell you, a fence, a couple of guards, and a metal detector might put a damper on corporate espionage or whatever the hell you’re worried about, but it’s not going to stop a man like Kurt Weinbeck. He already killed a man to get to her. Your little fence isn’t even going to slow him down.’
‘There’s a little more to it than a fence and a couple of guards, Detective Rolseth.’ Ms Holland pressed a button on her desk computer and a portion of a wall parted to reveal an enormous computer screen. She pressed a few more keys and a mosaic of live video feeds appeared.
Magozzi recognized the guardhouse at the entrance, the parking lot, and the lobby they’d just passed through, but there were at least twenty other views displayed, some outside, some showing various offices and labs he assumed were somewhere in this building. He examined them all carefully.
‘This screen is displaying views from all the security cameras in what we call Quadrant One. Bitterroot is divided into twenty quadrants, all monitored with cameras and motion detectors and analyzed in real time by our security staff in the media room, twenty-four hours a day. It’s based on the surveillance the casinos in Las Vegas use.’
‘Impressive. How many cameras?’
‘Hundreds of them. But we can’t possibly monitor every square inch of a thousand-acre compound, so we had a local software company integrate the motion detectors and the cameras. Now when something moves out of camera view, the detectors direct the nearest camera to adjust the view to follow it.’
Gino was jabbing Magozzi with his elbow, jerking his head toward the screen, but Magozzi had already seen it:
