The Ten-Mile Trials (26 page)

For a frozen minute, we all stared at each other in silence. It occurred to me that everybody in both groups was probably thinking, ‘How soon will these people go away?'

TWELVE

‘
I
can't believe,' the chief said Monday morning, ‘that only two people died in that mess.'

‘Two more unknown individuals,' I said, ‘of apparent Russo-Serbian ethnicity, that nobody seems to be looking for.'

‘Illegal aliens who caused untold pain and suffering the whole time they were here,' he said. ‘I'm supposed to feel bad about them?'

‘Nope. Legal or not, they pretty much got what they deserved, I guess.'

‘But what?'

‘I hate the fact that we still don't know who they were.'

‘We will soon. We'll squeeze the locals till we find out.'

‘I don't know. The gang they were working with in the Twin Cities – and the ones in Phoenix – had such an elaborate set-up, and now they all seem to be gone without trace.'

‘What about the first man, the one they killed in the garage? Isn't BCA finding any matches for him?'

‘Not so far,' I said. ‘All we've got is the Mass card – for somebody who died somewhere in the Ukraine, that he must have cared about but was afraid to admit even knowing. How's that for a clue?'

‘Outstanding. Before you ask for any more sympathy, can we talk about procedures?'

‘Sure.' I sat back. Crossed my legs and straightened the crease in my pants. ‘We broke up a drug ring, retrieved a great deal of stolen property, and rescued an experienced officer whose life was in danger. What don't you like?'

He shook his head sadly. ‘See, before we even start to talk, you're on the defensive. Why can't you just listen a minute?'

‘Because I know what you're going to say. We messed up a couple of vehicles that we don't have the money to replace, the chase was too long and too dangerous, we tore up city property and frightened a lot of innocent bystanders, and why the hell was my whole detective division out in it anyway?'

‘Very good.' He almost smiled. ‘Why were you all out there?'

‘I've been over and over it in my mind. And I swear to you, Chief— Look, I know it doesn't sound like it's by the book, but if you take it one step at a time, at any point in the day we were only doing what we're supposed to do, and I don't see how we could have done it any other way.'

Frank has large, slightly protuberant blue eyes, and he fixed me now with that searching stare that over the years has elicited so much unwilling honesty. Forget water-boarding, sit in front of McCafferty's eyes for a while. I gazed back with utmost sincerity for a minute, and then recrossed my legs and said, ‘Except that Rosie got out of the car after I told her not to.'

He nodded and waited. I said, ‘But really, what would you do if you were in front of a store and heard “Officer needs assistance”? You'd go and try to help, right? So I really can't fault her for that.'

‘What about letting herself get disarmed?'

‘Now as to that, if you decide to hold a hearing on this, Gary will testify that she was ambushed. The bad guys were all talking on cell phones, the first two drivers warned the men in the Escalade about the officer shooting in front of the store, and, being total gorillas, that last pair must have decided to take her along for a bargaining chip if they got cornered. But Rosie was doing a good job of firing from cover until that guy jumped out from behind the truck and grabbed her. And Gary tried to go to her aid, though he was too far away. But after that, Chief, you'd have been proud if you'd seen how that kid performed, he was solid as a rock.'

‘Uh-huh. You and Kevin both give the Krogstads way too much credit, just because they're baby-faced. Gary's been a cop six years, why shouldn't he know how to shoot?'

‘He knows how to take a hit, too. He's got a crazy dent in his rib cage from where that bullet hit his vest. It damn near knocked him down, but he kept shooting.'

‘I still don't understand how that Escalade driver could have been under water for so long and then come up shooting.'

‘He wasn't. I'm pretty sure that what happened was the Escalade went into the water unevenly, so it was sitting higher on the driver's side. Rosie said he wasn't wearing a seat belt – doesn't that figure? – so as soon as the driver's air bag started to deflate he just floated up out of the water.'

‘Yeah. New safety tip,' the chief said, rocking his big chair back, punishing the springs, ‘don't wear your seat belt if you're going to drive your vehicle into large bodies of water.' He slammed some pens into a mug. ‘Jesus! How the hell did he get the gun, though? What did you say it was?'

‘An AK-47. Didn't it come in with the car?'

‘No, it's gone. It must be in the river.'

‘I suppose he had it in one of those luggage bins in the back. It's lucky he hadn't dug it out yet when Bo broke through that glass. He just hunkered down there, I guess, behind one of the seats, and bided his time. I think if he'd waited till we were all up on the shore he might have got into the water and floated away – we were all too damn wasted to follow him. But he decided to kill us all and take one of our cars.'

‘I can't imagine why he thought he could do that.'

‘Rosie said she saw his face when he first floated out of the water, and she thinks he was kind of irrational by then. She was talking a little bit loony herself for a while after we pulled her out of the water. She took a helluva beating rolling around in there during the chase.'

‘I thought they had her tied up.'

‘Yeah, her hands – to the headrest support on the back seat. You can imagine what it did to her shoulders.'

‘She still in the hospital?'

‘Getting out tomorrow, I think. In a body cast. Not exactly what she had in mind for a reunion with Bo—'

‘Ah, that's on again, huh?'

‘Well, you can't stay mad at a white knight after he comes on his Harley and saves you from the villains.'

‘He had no business being there at all.'

‘I know. But he did do a helluva job, Chief. And Winnie – you ought to see the way that woman runs into a river. Jesus!'

‘That right? Maybe we should have her teach the course, huh? Let's see, probably call it “How to Pass the Ten-Mile Trials We're Never Going to Run Again”.'

‘Yeah.' The conversation was turning ugly, so I hurried right along. ‘Anyway, where was I? The bad-suit guy couldn't have been more than a few feet away when Bo reached in through that broken hole in the glass and opened the door. He must have ducked down behind a seat, I guess, Winnie said she never saw him – but of course she wasn't looking for anything but how to get Rosie out of there.'

‘And the passenger? How did you know he was dead?'

‘Rosie said he made one terrible noise, she looked around and saw he was impaled on a signpost.'

‘The guys on the retrieval crew were seriously grossed out when they pulled that mess out of the river Saturday. But I said, “I'm not paying divers to go down and retrieve a body that's going to come up with the car anyway – just get on with it”.'

The chief sat back and sighed. ‘He was quite a sight to behold, I admit.'

‘You went out there?'

‘I had to see it with my own eyes. I knew I was going to be taking heat about it for a long time, so I thought I better be sure of my facts.'

‘Yeah, well.' I picked some lint off my jacket. ‘You think you'd be taking any less heat if we let those bad guys drive away with Rosie Doyle in the car?'

‘Oh, don't be ridiculous!' He slammed a number of items around on his desk. I sat still and watched the dust motes jump in a ray of afternoon sunshine. When he spoke again his voice was under tight control but not friendly at all. ‘Of course we have to go to an officer's assistance when she requires it. But a dozen or so cars chasing a high-powered SUV for ten miles through the heart of town at speeds well beyond any expectation of safety? Not to mention goose parts and feathers flying around, a goddamn motorbike joining the chase for Christ's sake, and then a gun battle near a popular recreation area! We certainly have to ask some hard questions about the planning that led to all of that.'

One of the paper stacks he had smacked into a pile slid off on to the floor. He took his time picking it up, and when he placed it neatly back on top of its pile the skin on his cheeks was dark red. ‘I've scheduled the Critical Incident Debriefing for tomorrow night at seven, and I expect to see everybody there.' After a couple of seconds he vented a sigh that seemed to let the steam out of his anger and leave only sorrow behind. ‘Everybody who's walking, that is. Vince Greeley won't be up and around for quite a while.'

‘I know. He took a bad hit.'

‘You seen him yet?'

‘Yesterday. He couldn't talk much, he was in and out of the pain meds.'

‘Dirty buggers ambushed him too, didn't they?

‘Yeah. The armed robbery call was a fake.'

‘What, they spotted the surveillance team?'

‘I guess.' I wished we could leave it at that, but I knew tomorrow night's critical incident debriefing would surely reveal what Andy had learned from the pawnshop manager while he was bringing him in – that the bad-suit guys had spotted Rosie and Winnie during their tail Thursday night, and seen Rosie Friday morning during the ride-around I had so cleverly suggested. So now poor Vince, usually so cheery and talkative, was clinging silently to life at the end of an IV drip, and would be a long time getting his strength back. He took two slugs from a .357 Magnum – one in the iliac artery and one in the femoral – and would have bled to death on the floor of the pawnshop if either Hanenburger or the ambulance driver had been a few seconds slower.

No question, we had piled up a less than perfect score in skulking. But we were doing a lot better on straightforward investigation of the enablers who made the burglaries work so well. We saw digging the truth out of the locals as the best way to reclaim McCafferty's approval, so we were coming down hard on them.

‘Half-crazy immigrants sneaking in from brutal places,' Frank said, ‘have got to be stopped, but you can understand how they got that way. But supposedly respectable merchants who've lived here their whole lives and enjoyed all the good things we have, now they think it's cute to start robbing their neighbors? They're a disgrace.' It was all black and white for once, he said, no shades of gray here. ‘Find everything you can pin on them, and I will personally see they get what they deserve.'

Which suited us fine, but we still had to figure out who did what.

‘Let's get everybody together and divide up the chores,' I said, and we held a meeting – like old times, people and property crimes together – at mid-morning around the big table in front of Ray's office. Not a very big meeting; if we were short-handed before, we were a skeleton crew now. The Krogstads had mustering-out chores to complete and a lot of paperwork for the uniforms and squads they'd be going back to, so we let them get on with that. We put the few who were never involved in the case, Clint Maddox and a couple of Kevin's investigators, in charge of answering all the calls that came in for the next two days. Kevin brought along Chris and Julie and two other detectives. Ray had Andy and Winnie.

‘You want to go top down or bottom up on the locals?' Kevin said. ‘Start with naughty boys or rotten papas?'

‘I think we should start with the most insecure ones,' Julie Rider said.

‘How do we know who that is?' Ray said.

‘The two boys who were tied up in the back of the ABC Moving van,' Julie said. ‘I bet they worked on their story all weekend.'

‘Hey, that's right.' Kevin showed all his big white teeth in a delighted laugh. ‘Arnie Aarsvold and Tony Knowles. They do have some “splainin” to do, don't they?'

I said, ‘Are they out of the hospital yet?'

‘They were never in,' Julie said. ‘They said they weren't hurt, and the arresting officers had plenty to do, so . . . they just unwrapped them and let them go.'

‘You mean they're just . . . out and about?'

‘In school, I think,' Julie said, ‘trying to look like good, studious boys.'

So that was how we played it – started with the boys and worked our way back to the dads. We didn't have far to go, because as soon as those two fathers heard their boys were being questioned by the police, they were downtown like a shot insisting we let them talk.

We made them wait until Tuesday. We wanted the boys' whole story on DVD first, two accounts obtained separately but surprisingly consistent. We made each father watch some of it, their firstborn sons explaining carefully which perfidies their fathers had taught them, and which they had added to the deal themselves, with the help of the crude immigrants who were so much smarter than they looked.

The boys had chosen to see the burglars as figures of fun – they called them ‘the Slobovians'. The Slobovians had impenetrable accents, bad teeth, and terrible clothes – you could hardly take them seriously. They always struck when the houses were empty, so nobody ever got hurt. Well, Ricky Anderson, but he wasn't supposed to be there and he knew he had to keep his mouth shut if he wanted to protect his supply. So there was no real harm done. And for quite a while the deal had been terrific, bringing them more money, better dope, and the jazzy excitement of beating the system.

It had all turned to crap on them now. They wanted to reboot their lives, have their own clean rooms, easy Sundays, secure futures with the college admissions they had almost, but not quite, secured for themselves. ‘All those years of making good grades,' Tony Knowles said, ‘I guess that's all going to go away now, huh?'