Stolen Prey (36 page)

Pulled out the “Were coming” scrawl.

Kline looked at the photos, first in fascination, then in revulsion, and finally he turned away and said, “I don’t want to see that shit.”

Del said, “This is what they were going to do to you, dude. You were smart enough to get away, but you might not get away the next time.”

Lucas added, “They’ll get you, unless you get some protection…. If we get that gold back, and make a news story out of it, that’ll take away any reason for them to come after you.”

“What about revenge?” Kline asked. “They’ll still want revenge.”

“Listen, the average life span of these guys, these gangsters, is a couple of years,” Lucas said. “We cover you for a couple of years … we could make that part of a deal. Eventually, they’ll forget about it. It’ll seem pointless, if the money’s gone.”

“I’ve got no idea about the money,” Kline said.

“If you help us out with Sanderson and Albitis, one of them will cough up the money,” Del said. “We think Sanderson took out Albitis because of the gold.”

Kline put his head down, seeming to think about it, reached out and pushed one of the photographs aside, to expose a shot of the dead Brooks children, and said, finally, “I’m innocent. But maybe I can find a way to help you. I’ve got to talk to a lawyer first. I’ll start calling around today, see when I can get one. Maybe this afternoon.”

“You need to move fast,” Lucas said. “I’ll tell you what, if Albitis wakes up, and if she’s willing to cooperate … then our deal with you is off. She gets the protection, you get the thirty years.”

“You can guarantee this deal?” Kline asked.

“You get your attorney, you work through the terms, and we’ll put you with a county attorney to get the deal in writing,” Lucas said.

“I’ll start looking for a guy right now,” Kline said.

Lucas said, “Good.” He started gathering the murder pictures.

Del smoothed down his new silk tie and said, “Let me tell you something, Jake. You’re a smart guy. If you think really hard about this, you’ll realize it’s the best deal you’ll get. It might be the best deal of a lifetime. Don’t fuck it up.”

K
LINE WHINED
and prevaricated and lied some more, wheeling around the apartment, and eventually Lucas and Del picked up the pictures, gave him a last warning about how little time he had to act, and left.

Out on the street, Lucas asked, “Did he buy it?”

Del said, “I don’t know. I can usually tell, but he … I don’t know.”

Lucas said, “I guess we’ll find out this afternoon.” He looked back up at the apartment and caught a flash of movement in the bathroom window.

They walked back down the street and around the corner to the Lexus, and on the way, Lucas called the hospital about Albitis’s condition. The charge nurse said that she was still unconscious, but that the operation the night before had gone well, the bleeding had been less severe than expected, and she was now expected to recover “to some extent.”

“What does that mean?” Lucas asked. “To some extent?”

“Can’t ever tell, with cases like this,” the nurse said. “She could be fine. On the other hand, she could be a wreck. What usually happens is that they lose something, at the start, then they get most of it back. But you just can’t tell in advance.”

U
P IN THE APARTMENT
, Kline stood next to the bathroom window, looking down, and saw the two cops come out of the apartment door and stand talking on the street. Then Davenport looked up at the window, and Kline pulled his head back. A few
seconds later, he peeked from behind the shade and saw them walking away down the street. He couldn’t see them turn the corner, but they didn’t come back, either.

When he was sure they were gone, he went to the bedroom and asked the bed, “Did you hear that?”

The bed said, “Yes. Are you sure they’re gone?”

“They’re gone. The door’s locked.”

Sanderson edged out from under the bed and said, “It smelled like something died under there. You might have mice.”

“I’d be shocked if I didn’t,” Kline said. “So now what?”

“First, I swear to God, I swear to God, I didn’t just attack Edie. She came after me with Daddy’s gun, for Christ’s sakes. I was lucky to get away from her.”

“I believe you—but the cops won’t believe it,” Kline said.

“I still don’t think they have enough to take me to trial,” Sanderson said.

“We need to get lawyers.”

“We can get lawyers, but I swear to God, if you drag me into this, I’ll take you with me,” Sanderson said. “I’ll tell everybody that you knew you were stealing drug money and that you’ve got it all hidden. Then these Mexicans
will
come after you. They
will
chop you to pieces.”

“You don’t have to threaten me,” Kline said.

“Yes, I do,” Sanderson said. “I can see you’re thinking about it, about a way out. I promise you, that’s not the way.”

Kline wheeled himself around the apartment, ran both hands through his long oily hair. “Christ, I go around telling everybody that I don’t care how it comes out. I’m cool. I’m cold. Now, they’re talking about prison…. You know what I found
out? I don’t want to go to prison. I mean, I
really
don’t want to go to prison.”

“Davenport’s just mean,” Sanderson said. “Mean and smart. But we’re as smart as he is, and we’ve got more to work with. We just have to fix things so he can’t get us.”

“What about Edie?” Kline asked. “What if she wakes up and says, ‘Kristina hit me’?”

“Then I’ll have to deal with that then. But I don’t think she will. Anything she says brings it back to her. Anything she says gets her deeper in trouble. Right now, she could say that she was buying gold for a Syrian buyer, some guy trying to get his fortune out of the country. She didn’t know who he was … nothing illegal with any of that.”

Kline said, “For Christ’s sakes, Kris, nobody’s gonna believe that.”

“They don’t have to,” Sanderson said. “All we need is for them to not have enough to put us on trial. Or not enough to convict us, if they do put us on trial.”

“We need to get lawyers,” Kline said.

“But what we really need to do, you and me, is sit down and figure out how we can get out of this mess. We’re smart. Let’s use it.”

Kline cocked his head and said, “You don’t sound like a hippie anymore.”

“And you don’t sound like a cynical depressive,” Sanderson said. “We’ve changed. We’ve become criminals.”

W
hen Lucas looked at his phone on the way back to the office, a note popped up on his calendar software: Cast, tomorrow, 9 am.

The cast was coming off. Hallelujah.

Kline called Lucas after lunch and said, “I’ve got an appointment with an attorney this afternoon. He said there’s no possibility that we can talk to you before tomorrow morning. Don’t do anything before then.”

“I can’t promise,” Lucas said. “Whatever happens, happens.”

“Please, don’t do anything. I gotta talk to the lawyer.”

“Who is it?”

“His name is Jay Keisler. I got a recommendation from a friend.”

“I don’t know him,” Lucas said. “But you tell him, there isn’t much time.”

“I’ll tell him,” Kline promised. “Please don’t do anything.”

Lucas clicked off and called an attorney named Annie Wolf, who had once been a prosecutor and was still big in the Bar Association, and asked about Jay Keisler.

“Yeah, used to be an Anoka County public defender,” she said. “Has a general-law practice in Minneapolis. Does some criminal and personal injury.”

“Good trial lawyer?” Lucas asked.

“As a trial lawyer, on a scale of one to ten, I’d give him about a seven.”

“Not the sharpest arrow in the quiver, huh?”

“It’s not that—it’s that he looks like a fourteen-year-old Albert Einstein, with this fright-wig hair,” Wolf said. “He’s just no damn good with juries. I understand that he is
excellent
in pretrial negotiation, and trial prep. Excellent with insurance companies, where nobody wants to go to trial. When they
do
go to trial, he has an associate, Don Pew, who’ll usually handle it. Pew looks and acts like Jimmy Stewart. Between the two of them, they get the job done.”

“So, if we’re trying to work a deal, get a guy to turn state’s evidence in return for a reduced charge…”

“That’s how Jay made his living for a decade or so. He’s done hundreds of them. Be ready for him.”

“Thanks, Annie.”

S
ATISFIED THAT
he’d stampeded Kline, but a little worried about Kline’s choice of attorney, Lucas called the Ramsey County attorney they’d be working with and told him about Keisler.

“Not the best news, but not the worst,” the prosecutor said. “He’ll wring every inch out of us … but in the end, he’ll deal.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Lucas said. “You’ll be around tomorrow?”

“All day. Give me a call.”

Lucas checked with Shaffer, learned that there was nothing new with Martínez or the last shooter, but Shaffer said, “The hunt’s gone viral. Everybody in the country’s looking for her. You see the thing about Brooks, the last hour or so?”

“No…”

Lucas was standing in the doorway of Shaffer’s office, and Shaffer leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. Lucas had never seen him do that before; had never seen him look quite as pleased with himself.

“Sunnie will now be owned by Brooks’s brother, Stan. Stan was the final disaster inheritor in Brooks’s will. You know, one of those provisions that lawyers put into wills in case the whole family dies in a plane crash?”

“I know about those,” Lucas said. “I got one.”

“Anyway, he’s also on the company board of directors,” Shaffer said. “He got the board to offer a hundred-thousand-dollar reward for anyone who
spots
Martínez.
Anyone who spots her.
Don’t even have to convict her. Just call the cops on her. It’s like a nationwide Easter-egg hunt with a hundred-thousand-dollar egg. Plus, everybody’s talking about all that gold they think she has.”

“Easter egg with a Mac-10,” Lucas said. “Hope nobody gets killed.”

Shaffer pulled his feet down. “Well, yeah…”

“I wonder if this Stan had anything to do with setting up the fake Bois Brule account? Seems to me that there are going to be a lot of claims on Sunnie. Maybe it’d be better not to get too enthusiastic about Stan’s reward offer.”

Shaffer rubbed his chin. “You could be right.”

“We’re still going with the press conference tomorrow? Ten o’clock?” Lucas asked.

“Still scheduled,” Shaffer said.

“My daughter Letty works part-time as an intern at Channel Three,” Lucas said. “She said Ralph Richter is coming over. He’s
going to do his media-asshole thing on us. Don’t worry about it, and don’t let him get under your skin. That’s just his gig, you know? Playing the tough guy.”

Shaffer suddenly looked worried again.

His job there done, and not feeling at all guilty, Lucas went back to his own office.

L
OOSE ENDS
: He called Virgil Flowers.

“What’s taking so long?” he asked.

“I gotta tell you,” Virgil said. “I think I’ve got them spotted. I’m talking to Richie. He’s got a deputy with a big fucking pair of binoculars and a radio, hiding out in an oat field, watching the farm. We think your robbers work out of the place, but there’re ten other people out there. Something’s up. Could be a big meth operation. We’re tracking people coming out of there, running their plates, all kinds of different places, Missouri, Colorado, lot of drug busts. Richie’s all excited. When we know something, I’ll call you.”

“I want to be there when you take my two,” Lucas said.

“I’ll call you. I gotta say, we don’t know how horse shit ties into meth, but we’re researching it.”

W
HILE
L
UCAS
was calling around, Martínez and Tres lay low. Tres’s face wasn’t on television, so Martínez gave him two hundred dollars and a shopping list and sent him out for food. When he came back, he said that a Xerox picture of her was on a bulletin board at the supermarket.

“They have put out a reward,” Martínez said. She felt a little
like a fool for confiding in a child. “One hundred thousand dollars for anyone who finds us.”

“So, we hide. I one time, with Dos, hid for ten days in an attic, fifty degrees every day, we could smell our skin cooking up there, it’s so hot. Better than getting shot, you know?”

One way or another, she thought, they had a good chance of making it across the border. If she could make it to El Paso, she could make the last mile. The problem was that Davenport had told everybody that she had the gold … and that Big Voice had heard about it.

“You have the gold safe?” Big Voice asked.

“No. We don’t have any gold at all,” she’d said. She explained Davenport, how he was trying to keep her nailed down.

“Very clever,” Big Voice said. Then, with disappointment plain in his big voice, he said, “You have no gold at all?”

And in that, she sensed doubt.

The next time he talked to her, he mentioned that the “powers” had heard that she had the gold and had been upset when they heard that she denied it.

“We have never seen the gold. I can let you talk to Tres—”

“Tres is a child,” the Big Voice said. “You could hide the gold from him.”

“If I had the gold, I would not come back to you,” she said. “If I had the gold, I would disappear. But I am coming back to you.”

“That is a point in your favor,” the Big Voice said. “When will you come?”

T
HE “POWERS”
wanted the gold. They weren’t sure about her. They were looking for somebody to blame for its loss.

This would not, she thought, end well for her.

She saw the tape again, of Davenport talking about the gold.

It was his fault, she thought.

He was squeezing her, squeezing her. Squeezing her to death.

W
HILE
L
UCAS
called around, and Martínez watched the television, Sanderson was in her car, doing her frantic escape-and-evasion routine, worried that she was being tracked. Eventually, she decided that if anyone was following her, they were just too smart for her, and she drove around to a half dozen Walmart and Target stores, where she bought small flattened cardboard shipping boxes and packaging tape. Scared to death of fingerprints and DNA, she bought two extra boxes at each store, and touched only the top and bottom boxes in the stack.