Deadly Stillwater (2 page)

The boys were Detectives Pat Riley, Riley’s partner, Bobby Rockford, and Mac’s own partner, Richard Lich. When St. Paul Police Chief Charles Flanagan needed results – when the shit hit the fan – he turned to his Boys. Lyman Hisle was as high profile as it got in the Twin Cities, and his daughter had been abducted in broad daylight. Not to mention, Hisle was a close personal friend of Charlie Flanagan. Needless to say, the chief needed his best cops on the case.

They were a motley crew.

Pat “Riles” Riley was a sizeable man, well over six feet tall and two hundred pounds. The veteran detective had dark eyes, a heavy Nixonian five o’clock shadow, and a thick mane of black hair, which he combed back. A sharp dresser, Riles looked like a mobster in his pinstripe suits, perfectly pressed shirts, and stylish ties. Loud, boisterous, and loyal, Riles was like a brother to Mac, having served with Mac’s father, Simon, when he first became a detective years ago.

Bobby “Rock” Rockford was even larger than Riley. He was black, dark black, with his eyes deeply embedded in his large, shaved head. When he smiled, he showed a gap between his two front teeth. He’d been a college defensive tackle and wasn’t averse to getting physical when the circumstances warranted. Rock, given his size, appearance, and growl, could be downright frightening. Mac had watched him scare a guy into shitting his pants once.

Then there was “Dick Lick.”

Richard Lich was short, squat, and balding with a bushy porn star mustache in constant need of trimming. Twice divorced, he spent plenty of time lamenting his perpetually dire financial circumstances. He blamed both ex-wives not only for his financial difficulties, but also for his inability to fix his wardrobe. Perhaps the worst dresser ever to carry a shield, Dick donned a pitiful series of old soiled suits, all some shade of brown, whether it be gravy brown, dirt brown or shit brown. He topped each ensemble off with scuffed shoes, faded shirts, chewed-on cigars, and in the winter, either a black or brown fedora. While Riles and Rock scared the hell out of people, Lich was comic relief, a true piece of work. But he was a piece of work that people tended to underestimate. Few realized that he was a damn fine detective. Possessed with a quick wit and an easy manner, he was a perfect partner for Mac, smoothing out his younger partner’s abrasive edges.

With Mac as the catalyst, the boys had earned their reputation on the PTA case. Their work had brought down a small band of retired CIA agents and their corporate employer, PTA, a St. Paul military and intelligence contractor. PTA and its various players were behind the murders of an investigative reporter, a U.S. senator and the company CFO, while trying to cover up illegal arms deals. Since that case, the chief often had the four of them work cases together as an unofficial special investigative unit.

As Mac approached the boys, Lich called out, “Nice outfit.”

Mac still wore his boating gear: tan cargo shorts, navy blue Polo golf shirt, and leather sandals – all of which was at odds with the badge hanging around his neck. His blonde hair stood up just a bit more than usual, wind-blown from a day on the river.

“You’re the last person who should give fashion advice,” was Mac’s ready response. Lich had matched his shit-brown slacks with a faded orange golf shirt, untucked and fully open at the collar. Mac turned to Riley.

“What the hell happened? Are we sure this was a kidnapping?”

Riley exhaled, running his hand through his large mane of black hair.

“Let me run it down, and you tell me what you think.” Riles walked to the back of the Prius. “Shannon Hisle got off work at 5:00. She walked out the back door. Her car is this Prius. It looks like when she reached the back of her car somebody grabbed her. The positioning of her keys and phone on the pavement away from her car at least suggest that.”

“And then what happened?”

“We think whoever grabbed her jumped into a white van that pulled away and turned right on Selby. From there…” Riley’s voice trailed off.

Rock jumped in, rubbing a hand across his shaved head, “Our witnesses… well… kind of….”

“Suck,” Lich finished.

“Suck, like they didn’t see anything?” Mac asked.

“Regular Havercamps,” Riles replied, never one to pass up a Caddyshack moment. He pointed across and to the south along Western Avenue. “An old couple was walking along the sidewalk down there, maybe a hundred yards away, and they think they saw a guy dressed in black pick her up and throw her into the van.”

“Think?” Mac asked.

“Older couple, in their seventies, maybe early eighties, vision is a bit of an issue.”

“Anything about the van?”

“White. It comes out of the alley, and turns right. The guy in black throws her in and off they go,” Riles said.

“Anything else?”

“Another witness, female,” Riles turned and pointed to the southwest corner of Selby and Western, “was waiting on that corner, facing north, about ready to cross the street when she thought she heard a scream. She turned around and saw the van slow and then quickly pull away, turn right and go east on Selby.”

“So then what happened?”

“Confusion really,” Lich said. “The elderly couple came walking up and spoke with the woman on the corner, asking, you know, ‘did you see that?’ They’re not sure what they all saw, so they walk across the street into the parking lot and see keys and a cell phone lying on the ground. They go inside the café and explain what they saw. The café workers come outside, see that Hisle’s car is still in the lot, and call 911.”

“How long did all that take?”

“Three or four minutes at best, maybe more,” Lich replied. “Nobody saw it all happen, just bits and pieces.”

“So anyway, a squad gets here maybe a minute or two later,” Rock added. “They ask some questions, get basically what we’re talking about now, and make the call.”

“So before we even have an alert out about a white van, it’s what?” Mac asked.

Lich shook his head, skeptical, voicing what everyone else was thinking.

“At best, eight to ten minutes, probably more.”

“Maaaaaan,” Mac groaned. “That’s a lot of time to get away before we even
start
looking. Did we get anything on the van? Plate, make, model, anything?”

“No plate, white van. It looked like a typical delivery or repair van, panel type, no lettering, maybe slightly dented behind the driver side door, but that’s it.”

“Nothing striking that would draw attention,” Lich added.

“Where did the van come from?” Mac asked.

“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 café.”

“We’re askin’ the café 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.”