Criminal Enterprise (9 page)

T
OMLIN LOCKED
THE
door to his office, turned out the lights, and retreated into his sanctum. He sat in the dark and stared out the pillbox window at the gray sky beyond.

He’d been stupid. Of course the FBI would trace the parking receipt back. Even a complete moron could have seen it.

He’d been so nervous on that first job. Hadn’t been thinking clearly. He’d snatched up the first piece of paper he could find. He had scanned the receipt for his name and, not finding it, had assumed he was safe. He’d been stupid. And now the FBI was onto him.

Tomlin stood and walked to the dirty window and opened it, letting the cold winter air rush into the room. He stood at the window and stared down through the grime at the alley below.
It’s only a receipt,
he told himself.
Purely circumstantial. You figure out a way to fake a record of that break-in and you’re golden.

Still,
he thought, the fresh air sending a chill across his skin,
if they go back to the Midway job and start asking questions, you’re screwed. What if someone remembers seeing a Jaguar drive off? What if the bank teller remembers your voice?
Tomlin realized he was shivering, the sweat on the back of his neck cold and clammy. He closed the window and sat down in his chair again.

He wanted to run. He had cash and ammunition and a supercharged car. He could bundle Becca and the girls up and drive north, right now, to the Canadian border. Get out of the States and try and disappear into the woods. Or simply ditch the Jag, sell it cheap for quick cash, buy everyone plane tickets somewhere warm. An impromptu vacation, forever. What would Becca say?

Tomlin booted up his computer and opened an Internet window. Typed Carla Windermere’s name into the Google search window and got an FBI page with her picture on it, her stare almost as piercing in pixelated form, and then a bunch of news articles about a previous case.

It had been a big one. Tomlin clicked through to the first article, and then he remembered. Windermere was the cop who took down Terry Harper’s kidnappers, those psycho kids in Detroit. Tomlin remembered reading about her, back when the case broke, almost wishing Harper had stayed kidnapped. Windermere had broken the case, killed the ringleader in a shoot-out, and sent his two partners to jail. And now here she was, working Tomlin’s bank robbery spree.

Tomlin shivered again and read on with a sick fascination. Windermere had been paired with an agent at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Kirk Stevens. It had been Stevens who’d made the big breakthrough, connecting Harper’s kidnappers to a murder a week later in suburban Detroit.

Tomlin sat back in his chair. Kirk Stevens. In the article there was a picture of Windermere and the BCA agent, taken after the big shoot-out in Detroit. Windermere looked proud, almost defiant. Stevens looked tired and sheepish. Tomlin stared at Stevens’s picture and wondered how he recognized the name.

Elliott and Sylvia Danzer,
he thought.
That’s the cop.

The BCA agent had interviewed him a few weeks prior. Called him at home, scared the shit out of him. He was taking another look at the Danzer case, he’d said. Wanted to know if the Danzers had had money trouble. If money could have been a motive for Elliott Danzer’s murder, in Tomlin’s professional opinion.

Tomlin had tried to help him, once he calmed down. Told Stevens he didn’t think so, not from what he’d seen of their finances. The agent had thanked him, said good-bye. The whole call took maybe ten minutes.

Tomlin stared at the picture of Stevens some more.
Strange coincidence,
he decided.
I guess Saint Paul’s not really so big.
He focused on Windermere again. He shivered. Even her picture made him nervous. He clicked the page closed. Then he opened a new search window and Googled Saint Paul auto glass shops, looking for the sketchiest, most cash-starved businesses he could find.

Get Windermere that proof and she’ll back off your ass.
Tomlin picked up his phone and started dialing numbers.

S
TEVENS SPENT
THE
night at the Silver Birch Motel in International Falls. The sheriff’s office in town wasn’t equipped for a detailed crime scene analysis, so Stevens and Waters had returned to town to wait out the arrival of the BCA’s own forensics team in the morning. Stevens had a bowl of soup and a long, hot shower, and then he sat in the motel room and turned on the basketball game and thought about what he’d seen in the woods.

He’d avoided touching the Thunderbird any more than he needed to, not wanting to contaminate the crime scene. But he’d looked through the driver’s-side window a couple more times, just enough to be sure that what he was seeing was a person. Or what was left of a person, anyway.

The body was blackened and bone, barely more than a skeleton and a few tatters of clothing. It sat curled up in the driver’s seat in a kind of fetal position, its sex unknowable, its cause of death anything but certain.

Sylvia Danzer murders her husband,
Stevens thought.
Leaves him to die in Moose Lake. Then she drives north and gets stuck on some lonely logging road in the middle of the forest. Doesn’t try to keep going. Waits in her car to die.

He watched the game without seeing it, thinking about Danzer and the abandoned T-Bird. Wondered what the forensics team would find when they examined the car in the morning. He thought about Sylvia Danzer and her husband, and wondered what had led them to murder.

The motel room was lonely, and Stevens’s thoughts were bleak. He picked up the phone and called Nancy. “Hey, cowboy,” she said, when she answered. “You miss me yet?”

“I’m in a sleazy motel room,” he told her. “Just your kind of place.”

Nancy laughed. “Maybe you’ll take me there for our anniversary.”

“Roger that. This place is a real winter wonderland. Nothing to do but hide out until thaw.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.” She paused. “Everything all right?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why?”

“There’s a hitch in your voice,” she said. “You’re not getting into any more hero stuff, are you?”

“Hero stuff.” He smiled a little. “Not this time.” He told her about the case. Elliott Danzer in Moose Lake. His wife in the woods. “These people weren’t that much older than us, Nance.”

“I remember when it happened,” Nancy said. “You think the wife did it?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “I guess we find out tomorrow.”

“Find out quick. We all miss you.”

“Sure,” Stevens said. “You probably won’t murder me for a couple more years.”

“If you’re lucky,” she said. “I’d get away with it, too. None of that getting stuck in the woods for this girl.”

“That’s a comfort. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Your daughter has a basketball game at eight, if you think you can make it. Come and meet the new coach.”

“Sure,” Stevens said. “I’ll show him the badge and the gun. Make sure he knows Andrea Stevens should be starting.”

“You big bully. I knew there was a reason I married a cop.”

“Thought it was my stunning physique.” Stevens paused. “I’ll try and make it. Been a while since I caught a game.”

“Make it happen,” said Nancy. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

They told each other good night, and Stevens hung up the phone. He lay back on the bed and listened to the wind howl outside, and he thought about the Danzers some more.

T
HE FORENSICS
TEAM
showed up in the morning. Waters drove the Suburban south this time, took the county road west and met the trail at the southern end. There was a big snowplow waiting at the trailhead, and Waters pulled in to follow with the BCA van behind him, and they formed a slow convoy up into the bush.

They were still a mile or so out when the snowplow had to quit. The driver stopped the truck and leaned out of the cab. “Too narrow,” he told Waters. “Good thing you brought those machines.”

They readied the snowmobiles as the forensics team unloaded the van. There were two of them, a man and a woman, and they climbed on the back of the Ski-Doos with their kits as Waters and Stevens settled in to drive.

The technician gripped Stevens tight as he sped through the forest after Waters. Shouted something in his ear that Stevens didn’t catch. And then they arrived at the fork in the trail and the abandoned Thunderbird, and Stevens helped the technician peel her hands from around his stomach and stood again on unsteady legs, looking in at the car.

He waited with Waters as the techs went to work. Hung back as they opened the driver’s-side door and peered in. He still caught the scent drifting out of the car, noxious and permeating, two years of decay suddenly unsealed to the world. The techs set their jaws and started to work. Stevens watched them and paced to stay warm.

The female tech came back after a half hour or so. “Been there awhile,” she said, grim. “You can forget the autopsies.”

“Autopsies,” Stevens said.

The tech nodded. “We’ll have to ferry them back on the snowmobiles, I guess. No other way to get back here.”

Stevens stared at her. “Them.”

“The front seat and the back.” She cocked her head at him. “There’s two of them in there, Agent. Is that news?”

W
INDERMERE SAT
IN
the passenger seat of Doughty’s Crown Vic, staring out at a patched-up stucco building on a street corner in Phillips. In the driver’s seat, Doughty unwrapped a meatball sub. “Told you this guy was local,” he said.

The building was a gray two-story cube, the paint old and uneven. It looked like it had been a garage once, or a storefront or something, before someone with more ambition than cash converted it into housing. Now it apparently housed Nolan Jackson, a thirty-five-year-old career criminal and alleged bank robber.

The location was good, she had to admit. Phillips was a high-crime neighborhood barely a mile east of Eat Street, and only a couple miles southwest of Prospect Park. Perfect positioning for most of the robberies. “How the hell would a Phillips guy get his hands on Tomlin’s receipt, though?” she asked Doughty.

Doughty took a bite of his meatball sub. Sauce dribbled down his chin, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. “Your guy said he was robbed, didn’t he?”

“He was lying.”

Doughty chewed. “Are you sure?”

Windermere said nothing. This morning, talking to Tomlin, she’d been sure. Now, after looking at Jackson’s file, after stepping back and looking at Tomlin, a boring-ass accountant with a family and an expensive home, she could almost see Doughty’s point. Almost.

“So, what,” she said, “this guy Jackson just breaks into Tomlin’s car for the parking receipt and a handful of quarters? He’s a grand-theft-auto guy looking at a ninety-thousand-dollar Jag, and he’s already inside. Doesn’t he roll with it?”

“Maybe he found the receipt on the street. Picked it out of the trash or something,” said Doughty. “It’s not a case-breaker.” He finished his sub. Checked himself in the rearview mirror. Wiped his chin again, and then turned to Windermere. “You ready?”

They strapped on Kevlar vests as they started toward the gray building. A car passed them, an Oldsmobile with a couple of rowdy kids inside. The driver honked the horn and the kids inside laughed, and Windermere shivered. She felt for her Glock in its holster and looked at Doughty. “We have tactical support here, right?”

Doughty nodded. “One block over. We say the word and they’re with us.” He stepped to the door, drew himself up, and knocked. Three times, and loud. No one answered.

Doughty knocked again. “Nolan Jackson,” he said. “Federal agents. Open this door.”

A door slammed somewhere around the back of the building. Doughty looked at Windermere. “Back door,” he said. “Check it out.”

Windermere nodded and hurried along the side of the house. Made the corner just in time to see someone hop a fence and start running. She gave chase.
“Stop! FBI!”

The guy shouted something over his shoulder, kept running. She chased him fifteen or twenty yards. Then she slowed.
He’s just a kid,
she realized.
Twelve or thirteen at most.
She let the kid go. Turned back to the house just in time for the shooting to start.

Two shots, from the front of the house. Then another. A window shattered. Windermere ran, swearing, drawing her Glock from its holster. She heard another shot, like a firecracker—
POP
—and then she reached the end of the alley and turned toward the front steps. Looked up at the front stoop and swore again, louder.

The front door was open. Doughty was gone.

W
INDERMERE STARED
AT
the empty front stoop. “Doughty,” she said.
“Damn it.”

Two more shots from inside the house. Another window shattered. She heard Doughty shout something. Couldn’t make it out.

Windermere pulled out her radio. Called in for tactical. Then she ducked her head and peered into the house, waiting for the shot that would put her on her ass. “Doughty,” she called. “Where the hell are you?”

Another shot, like an exclamation mark. Then Doughty:
“Kitchen.”

“How many are there?”

“Just one, I think.” He sounded desperate. “He’s got me pinned down, though.”

Shit.

Windermere crept through the doorway. The house was dark. A TV played infomercials off to her right. Dead ahead was the hallway, and at the end of it, light. Windermere pressed her back to the wall and crept forward. Outside, the tactical van squealed to a stop. Sirens and doors slamming. The cavalry a couple seconds away.

“In here.” Doughty’s voice, from the back of the house. From the light.

Windermere moved slow, working her way down the hall. About halfway and she saw movement at the end, a gun. A moment later, Jackson opened fire.

Windermere ducked into a side room. Waited until the shooting stopped. Then she leaned out again and peered down the hallway. No sign of Jackson. No sign of the gun. “Nolan,” she said. “Let’s just calm down a second.”

“Fuck you.”

Three more shots. Windermere ducked back again. “You hear those sirens?” she called out. “Those are for you, Nolan. In a second this place will be crawling with SWAT.”

Silence from the kitchen. Dust hung in the air.

“I kill you both, I can still make it out of here.” Jackson’s voice was ragged, on edge. All false bravado and fear masked as anger.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “You kill two FBI agents, the whole country comes after you. You give up right now and it gets a lot easier.”

Another pause. She could hear him moving around the kitchen. “FBI,” he said. “What the hell do you want?”

Windermere started to answer. Doughty beat her to it. “Bank robbery, Nolan. It’s a federal crime.”

Jackson swore. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, shit.”

“‘Oh, shit’ is right. You screwed up, buddy.”

Windermere crept out of the side room, started down the hall to the kitchen again.
Something doesn’t jibe here,
she thought. She heard movement behind her. Turned to see the tactical squad in the doorway, masks and machine guns. Made eye contact with the team leader, motioned to the kitchen. The team leader nodded, turned back to his men. Sent a squad of them around the back of the house.

Windermere watched them through those yawning front windows. Then she turned back toward the kitchen. “Doughty,” she called. “Tactical’s here. Stand down and we’ll let them sort it out.”

“Motherfuck,”
Jackson said.

Doughty laughed. “That’s right, buddy. You’re toast.”

“Doughty.”

“One bank, you cocksucker. I never even—”

BOOM.

Windermere ran down the hallway. Burst into the kitchen, gun raised. Found Doughty standing upright by the fridge, breathing hard. Jackson on his back on dirty linoleum, a bloody hole in his chest. Windermere ran to the suspect, kicked his pistol away. Knelt beside him and looked up at Doughty. “I said tactical had it,” she said. “What the hell, Bob?”

Sounds from the hallway. Jackboots on hardwood. The back door shattered open, and the tactical team burst into the kitchen, machine guns at the ready. Took in Doughty and Windermere and Jackson on the floor.

Windermere stared at Doughty. Doughty shrugged. “Had a shot,” he said. “Had to take it.”

Windermere shook her head. Looked at Jackson. He was a lanky guy, hard-edged and lean. He looked up at Windermere, his blue eyes open wide, his breathing ragged. “We’re all right,” Doughty told the tactical team. “Everything’s under control.”

Windermere watched as Jackson’s breathing faltered. Watched those blue eyes go glassy.
Everything’s fine, Bob,
she thought.
Just perfect. Except you just killed your big goddamn suspect.