Criminal Enterprise, page 18
More screaming now. Tomlin advanced on the van. Heard the BOOM as Tricia unloaded the shotgun. Heard plate glass shatter. Glanced over and saw the second guard drop the cash bag. Tricia shouted something, and the guard fell to his knees as she wrenched the bag away.
The van shifted into gear and jolted forward, its big engine roaring. Collided hard with a hatchback, bounced off, and kept going. Tomlin fired another burst and ran after the van, jumped into the rear compartment as it crashed through the lot.
“Stop the fucking van.”
The driver ignored him, safe in his bulletproof compartment. Tomlin looked out the rear of the van, saw Dragan helping Tricia with the first duffel bag. He steadied himself against the sidewall and examined the van’s contents as the driver accelerated.
Three more duffel bags, each identical to the first. Tomlin grabbed them and threw each one down to the pavement. Looked around the rest of the compartment and saw nothing he wanted. The driver was at the end of the parking lot now, barreling toward the road. Tomlin staggered to the rear of the van. Hesitated, looking down at the blurry pavement below. Then he jumped. Hit the pavement hard, fell to his knees and rolled, feeling grit on his hands, on his knees. He picked himself up and shouldered the rifle. The armored truck sped away.
People weren’t screaming anymore. Tomlin looked around and saw bystanders cowering behind parked cars. Heard the sirens in the distance. He brushed off his pants and started back to the first bag of cash where he’d thrown it.
Dragan drove the Camry to him, braked hard, the tires squealing. Tomlin threw the duffel bag into the trunk. Ran to the second, then the third bag, and threw them both in behind. Was about to climb in the car himself when he noticed Tricia’s guard in front of the cash-advance store. He paused. “Get in!” Tricia shouted. “We have to go!”
The guard looked dazed, unsteady. He locked eyes with Tomlin. Tomlin raised the assault rifle. Tricia shouted something else. The sirens got closer. Tomlin could feel the blood pounding in his ears. Then it all seemed to mute. He could almost hear the guard breathing.
The guard didn’t run. He stood, waiting, his eyes locked on Tomlin’s. Your life is over, Tomlin thought. Are you scared?
He pulled the trigger, and the guard went down.
75
DOUGHTY PULLED the Crown Vic into the apartment complex and parked in front of the first of three high-rise buildings. Windermere surveyed the parking lot for gold Camrys. A long shot, or maybe not; Tricia Henderson hadn’t registered any Toyota with the DMV, but Windermere wasn’t about to assume that her little armed robber did anything legal.
If Henderson parked the car here, though, she wasn’t leaving it in the open. Everything in sight was a rust-bucket American job, a Japanese SUV, or some anonymous heap buried under the snow. Doughty killed the engine, and Windermere reached for the door handle. “Wait,” Doughty said. Windermere waited. Looked at him. “Let’s play this my way,” he said.
Windermere frowned. “Sure. Okay.”
“You jumped all over Bernstein and Schneider. This time, you follow. Understand?”
Windermere stared at him. Then she shrugged and climbed out of the car. “Fine, Bob. Whatever you say.”
They walked to the front door, and Doughty buzzed the building manager. The man came to the front door in fuzzy bunny slippers, scratching his head. “FBI,” Doughty told him. “We’re looking for Tricia Henderson.”
The guy stared at him. “Tricia Henderson,” Doughty said again.
“Unit 612,” said Windermere. She felt Doughty’s eyes on her, ignored him. Focused on the manager.
The guy nodded. “The pretty girl.”
“Pink hair?”
“The pretty girl. I remember.” He led them to a graffiti-stained, grinding elevator, and they rode up six long stories. “Six-twelve,” the manager said. “Down the hall.”
They walked down the hall to Henderson’s door. Windermere knocked, called out the girl’s name. Someone down the hall peered out from her own doorway, met Windermere’s eyes, and disappeared, quickly. Windermere glanced at Doughty. “Show him the warrant.”
Doughty looked at her sideways. “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”
First thing in the morning, Windermere had set to work convincing Agent Harris that Tricia Henderson was a person of interest. Harris hadn’t taken much convincing. He’d dug up a judge, who’d faxed in a search-and-seizure warrant, and now Windermere watched as the manager read the thing through, disgust written plain on his face. When he’d finished, he sighed and pulled out a key ring. “Whatever.”
Windermere drew her sidearm as the manager unlocked the door and stepped back. She glanced at Doughty, who gestured “go ahead.”
Thought you wanted to lead, she thought, gripping her pistol tighter and pushing open the door. The whole place was dark, and Windermere hesitated before reaching in and feeling for the light switch. Flipped the switch and peered in at a messy studio suite, a kitchenette, and an unmade futon bed. The apartment was empty. Tricia Henderson wasn’t home.
—
AN HOUR OR SO LATER, they were standing beside the Crown Vic again, having found little more than Tricia Henderson’s dirty laundry upstairs. If the girl was involved, she kept the evidence hidden.
Windermere glanced at Doughty over the roof of the sedan. “You think the building manager will tip her off we were here?”
Doughty stared back at the apartment. “Probably.”
“Maybe he thinks aiding and abetting will get him in her pants.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”
Windermere sighed and opened her passenger door. “You want to stick around? Wait till she comes back?”
“No,” Doughty said.
She looked at him again. “You’re sulking,” she said. “I didn’t let you lead?”
He shook his head. “It’s fine.”
“I don’t get it. What’s your beef?”
“No beef.” Doughty slid into the driver’s seat. “Guess we’re staking her out.”
Windermere climbed in beside him and was about to say something else when the radio crackled in between them. Minneapolis police dispatch on the scanner, 211 in progress, an armed robbery. An armored car under fire in the northeast, near Central and Broadway. Windermere glanced at Doughty. “Could be our guys.”
Doughty shook his head. “We don’t know that.”
“Shots fired,” the dispatcher reported. “Multiple victims.”
“That’s them,” said Windermere. “Swear to God. I can feel it.”
“Could be anyone, Agent Windermere. We’re not leaving this stakeout.”
The radio crackled again. “Witnesses report automatic weaponry and a gold late-model Toyota Camry seen fleeing the scene.”
Windermere spun at Doughty. “Late-model gold Camry. What the fuck did I tell you?”
“God damn it.” Doughty slammed his hand on the steering wheel. Peeled out of the parking lot and hauled ass, siren blaring, down I-94. He said nothing more to Windermere, kept his dark eyes focused on the road and his mouth a thin line the whole ride into Minneapolis.
76
DRAGAN 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.”
77
WINDERMERE 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.
78
ON 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.
—
BY 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.
—
STEVENS 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.”
