Criminal Enterprise (20 page)

D
RAGAN DROVE
FAST
,
away from the mall. “Take the Interstate,” Tomlin told him. Dragan nodded, wrenched the wheel. Pointed the Camry at the highway.

Tricia grabbed Tomlin’s arm. “What the hell are you doing?”

Tomlin shook her off, the adrenaline humming. Looked outside his window for police cruisers, any sign of trouble.
“Shit,”
Tricia said.

They made the Interstate on-ramp, headed south to I-94. Circled downtown Minneapolis to the Washington Avenue exit and drove, slower now, into the Warehouse District. Tomlin turned the radio to the AM news station. The first reports were starting to come in. “A daring armored car heist in northeast Minneapolis leaves at least two dead,” the reporter said, breathless. “Witnesses report three masked gunmen in a gold Toyota Camry.”

Dragan swore. “We’re made.”

Tomlin shook his head. “The car’s made. We can ditch it.”

They pulled into the lot. Dragan parked between his Civic and Tomlin’s Jaguar. Tricia dragged two of the duffel bags to the pavement. Unzipped one of them. “Holy shit,” she said.

Tomlin peered in. Saw bricks of cash, solid, a pile of them.
Four bags just like this,
he thought.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He looked at the money. Saw the guard staggering back from the gunshot. His heart was a jackhammer inside his chest.

Beside him, Tricia squealed. Held up two bricks of cash and wrapped her arms around Dragan. Kissed him, sloppy. Dragan grinned at her, at the money. Kissed her neck and cupped her ass in his hands. Tomlin caught Dragan’s eye. “Take two bags,” he said. “I’ll take the other two. We’ll drive back to Saint Paul and divvy it up there.”

Dragan kissed Tricia again. “What about the police?”

“What about them?”

“We killed people back there,” said Dragan. “They’ll be looking for us.”

“We’ll hole up somewhere,” Tomlin told him. “The Timberline Motel in Frogtown. You know it?”

Tricia looked up. “I know it.”

Tomlin looked around the parking lot, looked down at the rifle in his hands, the cash. Felt suddenly and absolutely invincible.
Let Stevens and Windermere come and get me,
he thought.
I’m not scared.

“Be there in an hour,” he told Dragan and Tricia. “The police find us there, I’ll kill them all, too.”

W
INDERMERE HIT
the pavement as soon as Doughty parked at the crime scene.
Let him sulk,
she thought, wading through the crowd.
This is bigger than his little grudge.

The heist had gone down at a crumbling mini-mall, and the parking lot was a sideshow—the place crawling with cops, news reporters, hangers-on. Windermere pushed through to the police barricade, ducked under, and made her way to the first body on the pavement.

A guard. A heavyset guy in a blue company jacket, three or four bloody holes through it. He hadn’t drawn his sidearm.

“Witness says this guy was in back of the truck with a shotgun.” Windermere looked up, saw a rookie uniform smiling at her, face flushed with excitement. “Your boy walked up with an assault rifle, put a burst through him. The body dropped out when the driver drove off.”

Windermere looked around the parking lot. Automobile carnage everywhere. She could trace a path through the lot to the exit, a trail of crushed bumpers and smashed taillights: the panicked armored truck driver’s wake. She looked back at the rookie. “Where’s the truck now?”

The cop gestured out of the lot. “Down the road a ways,” he said. “Guy drove for a bit, realized he was safe. Pulled over and hid, but we found him.”

“He okay?”

“Shaken up, but he’s fine.” The cop smiled again. “Guess the guy with the rifle jumped in back with him, tried to kill him. Probably could have, if he’d tried hard enough. That bulletproof glass isn’t exactly tough shit against assault rifles.”

Windermere looked across the lot to the second body, this guy younger, another guard. This guy had managed to pull his piece from his holster, at least. The cop followed her eyes. “Second bad guy had a shotgun. Fired a warning shot, scared that guard into dropping the money.”

“You sure it was a guy?”

The cop shrugged. “Doesn’t exactly seem like women’s work.”

“You’d be surprised. How’d this guy get it?”

“What I hear, it was the guy with the assault rifle again. He emptied the armored truck”—the cop pointed—“over there. Then he ran back, helped his friends throw the cash in the little Toyota, and before he left, he took a moment to kill the second guard.”

Windermere followed the cop’s gaze. “Guy was making a move or something?”

“Not from what I heard.” The cop shrugged again. “Sounded like it was straight murder. Kind of a dick move.”

A dick move
.
One way to put it. An impulse kill.
Windermere thanked the cop and walked across the lot to where Doughty stood, talking to a plainclothes city cop. “It’s our guys again,” she told them. “Getting worse.”

Doughty scowled. “No sign of the Camry.”

“Of course not.”

“This truck makes the rounds to all the check-cashing places, paycheck-advance stores in the Northeast,” Doughty said. “Guy in the store thinks there could have been a million bucks in the back, easy.”

“Shit,” said Windermere. “They could disappear with that money.”

Doughty nodded. “If they’re not already gone.”

“I’ll send a car to Henderson’s apartment. She shows up, we’ll nab them.”

Doughty scowled again. “I’ll do it,” he said, walking back to the Crown Vic. Windermere watched him go.
I hope it’s that easy,
she thought.
These guys have a knack for pulling vanishing acts.

O
N WEDNESDAY
MORNING
,
Stevens pushed Carter Tomlin from his mind long enough to bring the Danzer case to Tim Lesley, the SAC of Investigations in Saint Paul. Lesley read Stevens’s report, then Paula Franklin’s. When he was finished, he looked at Stevens over his wire-rimmed glasses. “Some kind of kidnapping gone wrong, you’re saying.”

Stevens nodded. “There’s no evidence Sylvia Danzer had ever met David Samson before in her life, let alone that she had any reason to conspire with him to kill her husband.”

“Guy murders the husband and takes the wife on a joyride.” Lesley frowned. “God knows what he did to the poor woman before the grand finale.”

“Or how she managed to get the knife from him.”

“Or how long he had her before he got himself stuck in the woods. Christ.” Lesley shook his head and looked down at the reports one more time. Then he closed them, firm, and looked at Stevens again. “This is enough for me, Agent Stevens. Good work.”

Stevens called Paula Franklin to fill her in. “Case is closed,” he told her. “Thanks for everything.”

“Pleasure’s mine,” Franklin replied. “You talk to the families yet?”

“Next on my list.”

“Go for it,” she said. “Was good working with you.”

Stevens called Sylvia Danzer’s sister next. She sounded like she’d been waiting by the phone. “She didn’t kill him,” she said, after Stevens gave her the rundown.

Stevens paused. “Samson?”

“Elliott. Her husband. Those goddamn tabloids made up a pack of lies.”

“Sure,” Stevens said.

“You talk to the papers, you make sure they get the real story, will you?”

Stevens told her he would. Asked if there was anyone else he could call. “I’m all that’s left,” the woman said, sighing. “They didn’t have any children, and Dad died last year.”

“I’m sorry,” Stevens told her.

“He swore this would happen, sooner or later. Wish he could have been around to see it.”

“Me too,” Stevens said. “It’s a hell of a thing.”

“Make sure those newspapers print a correction, you understand?”

“I will.” Stevens hung up the phone. He looked around his cubicle and out at the BCA office. Then he turned to his computer and started to search for Elliott Danzer’s next of kin.

—

B
Y MID-MORNING,
Stevens was exhausted. Elliott Danzer’s mother had cried. His father had thanked Stevens, gruff and gravel-throated. Stevens accepted the man’s thanks, and promised to pass along any more news. Then he hung up the phone and stared at his screensaver and wondered why he wasn’t more excited.

These were the phone calls, Stevens knew, that made cold casework worthwhile. The dusty puzzle came together and the picture panned out, revealing the human element on the margins, the people left behind. This was the reward, and Stevens—proud of the closure as he was—wasn’t quite feeling the same thrill. Mostly, he figured, it was Tomlin’s fault.

The man was hiding something major. The cocky, world-beating, master-of-the-universe type whom Stevens had befriended was gone. In his place was the hollow man who’d shown up at the basketball game last night. Hard-edged and brittle, suspicious and unresponsive, shifty-eyed. He was guilty of something, and it was probably bank robbery. But Stevens didn’t have any proof. Hell, he didn’t even have jurisdiction. Could do nothing but sit on his hands like some useless desk jockey and read about the case in the papers.

Or watch it on the news, as things turned out. Stevens had just ended a quickie interview with the crime reporter at the
Star Tribune
—Tim Lesley’s idea—when the Minneapolis police dispatcher reported a 211, an armored car robbery in the Northeast. A gold Camry. He hurried into the break room, switched on the old TV set, and watched as the first action news reporter arrived at the scene.

He watched the news report, an audacious armed robbery that left two guards dead, and he felt another shock when Windermere showed up in the background. She looked pumped up now, more like the tough cop he’d known, walking onto the crime scene like she owned it. He watched her for a few minutes, and then the camera panned away, and he walked back to his desk, feeling like the kid who stayed home from the dance.

—

S
TEVENS HEARD VOICES
by the stairs. Hung up the phone as Special Agent Nick Singer walked into BCA, talking to a woman Stevens had never seen before. A cop, he decided, watching Singer usher her to his desk. A plainclothes cop, her sidearm in a shoulder holster, the outline just visible beneath her jacket.

“No, I know,” she was saying. “These guys are just being stingy with the warrant. Real pricks. I was hoping one of you BCA guys could lean on them a little.”

Singer pulled an extra chair over for her. “What’s the warrant for, anyway?”

“Some shitty robbery.” The woman shrugged. “Guy got his guns took, an AR-15, a shotgun, and two pistols. He’s been badgering me about it for months.”

Singer nodded. “Uh-huh.”

Stevens snuck another glance at the woman.
An AR-15,
he thought.
Same weapon as Windermere’s suspect used.

“Guy come down from the Twin Cities, told my victim he wanted to buy a handgun. Victim asked to see a permit and got his head nearly caved.” She looked at Singer. “You think you can help me? Only take a few minutes.”

Stevens stood and crossed the office to Singer’s desk. “You said this guy came down from the Twin Cities?” he asked the woman. “What’s he driving?”

Singer looked up and frowned. “Stevens, hey.”

The woman shook her head. “Too dark to tell. Some kind of truck, an SUV. Dark-colored.”

“Dark-colored.” Becca Tomlin drove a blue Lincoln Navigator. “Navy blue, maybe?”

She shrugged. “‘Dark-colored,’ the guy said. It was night.”

An AR-15. A dark SUV down from the Twin Cities. Could be relevant. Could be he was grasping at straws. “Your guy describe the assailant?”

“Tall, I guess. Thin. Probably in his mid-forties. Brown hair.”

“Eyes?”

“Two of ’em. Blue.” The cop thought of something and laughed. “My guy didn’t want to tell me he’d noticed. Thought I’d figure he was a fairy.”

Singer cleared his throat. “Stevens, this is Investigator Russell with Hastings PD. You two got something in common?”

“Armored truck got robbed in Minneapolis this morning,” Stevens said. “Two guards shot with an AR-15.”

Russell frowned. “Lots of those guns around.”

“Same weapon was used in a bank robbery in southern Minneapolis a couple weeks back. Suspect was tall, wore a ski mask. Blue eyes.”

“Same guy,” said Russell. “Both times.”

“Exactly,” said Stevens. “Robbery in Prospect Park, a couple months back. Suspect matches your description. Brought a pistol. Before Christmas, he was robbing banks unarmed. You said you got an e-mail from your suspect?”

“An alias. Roger Brill.”

“Came from the Twin Cities.”

She shrugged. “So he said. I’m trying to swing a warrant for this guy’s street address. Internet company’s being assholes, and so is the judge.” Russell looked at him again. “Look, what’s your big interest here? I just want an address on that e-mail and get out of here.”

“No big interest,” said Stevens. “I’m just playing a hunch. Let’s see if we can get you that warrant.”

T
OMLIN MET DRAGAN
and Tricia at the motel, a shitty no-tell affair surrounded by fast-food restaurants and low-lying warehouses. The desk clerk barely looked up from his TV as he checked Tomlin into a room in the back of the building.

The TV was set to the news. The news showed continuous coverage of the armored car robbery. As Tomlin paid the clerk, he caught a glimpse of Carla Windermere in the background, snooping around the parking lot. The reporter showed a picture of the two guards he’d killed. Then they showed a grainy picture of Tricia with blond hair. “Tricia Henderson,” the caption read. “Person of interest.”

Shit.
Obviously, the Minneapolis lowlife, Jackson, was no longer a factor. Somehow, Windermere had Tricia. And if she had Tricia, she would have Tomlin soon enough.

Tomlin took the key from the clerk and drove around to the back of the motel. He watched Tricia climb from the Civic, laughing about something with Dragan, and he wondered how she’d react when she found out she’d been made.
Not my problem,
he decided. He picked up his cell phone and called Becca at home. “What’s up, honey?” She sounded surprised. “Everything okay?”

So the police hadn’t come to her yet. “Everything’s fine,” Tomlin said. “Just thinking about you. Everything okay at home base?”

“Snickers got loose,” she said. “The neighbor chased him down for me. Found him in the Hargreaveses’ backyard.”

“That damned dog.”

“Madeleine has dance class,” she said. “After school. Can you pick her up on your way home?”

Tomlin looked out at Tricia again. She caught his eye, looked away. “Dance class,” he said.
We’ll be fugitives by then.

“She’s done at six, and honey, it would make my life so much easier. Heather has some Spirit Club thing, and I don’t know how I’ll juggle both.”

Windermere would be following up on Tricia right now. It wouldn’t take long before she made the connection. It was time to skip town. “Let’s go somewhere,” he said. “A vacation. Right now.”

Becca laughed. “What, like tomorrow?”

“Like tonight,” he said. “Maddy can skip dance class. We’ll just hop a plane, anywhere you want. Pick the girls up and we’ll go.”

“And go where?” She laughed again. “Carter—”

“I don’t start work for a week and a half,” he said. “The timing’s perfect. Why not?”

“This is crazy, Carter.”

“Spontaneous.”

“Spontaneous.” She laughed again. “Okay. A vacation. Let’s just do it.”

“Great. I’ll see you soon.” Tomlin ended the call and stepped out of the Jaguar. Pushed open the motel door. Inside was a sketchy little room with pockmarked balsa-wood furniture and two rumpled double beds. Tomlin turned to Tricia. “You want to turn on the news.”

Tricia frowned. “Why?”

Tomlin found the remote for the TV, and flipped to a news channel. “Your picture is all over it,” he told her. “Your name, too. Give it a couple of hours and we’ll all three be made.”