Criminal Enterprise, page 8
“It’s definitely my receipt,” he told her, pretending to study the note. “I would have parked there that day.”
“You work downtown?”
“Worked. I opened my own shop in the fall.” He held up the paper. “Moved across to Lowertown. Park on the street.”
“Uh-huh.” She leaned forward again. “So, okay, listen. This is your receipt. How did it get into a Midway bank robbery?”
Tomlin shook his head. “No idea.”
“Your car wasn’t broken into at any point last summer?”
He started to tell her no. Then he stopped. Nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it was. That same parking garage, too. Funny thing.”
Windermere gave it a beat. “Funny thing,” she said finally. “You filed a police report?”
“They didn’t take much,” he said, thinking fast. “Just the change from my glove box. I figured they must have been addicts or something.”
“And the receipt was in there, too.”
“Must have been,” he said. “The worst part was trying to fix that damn window. Cost nearly a grand at the end of the day.”
Windermere nodded again. “You got it fixed where?”
Tomlin pretended to think. “One of those shops,” he said, frowning. “Those auto glass shops. I don’t remember which one.”
“You keep a receipt or anything?”
He shrugged. “I can check.”
“Do that.” She smiled at him again. “It would really help me out.”
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, standing. “Do you have a card?”
She stood quickly, digging in her wallet as they walked back out to the landing. She handed him a business card. “Call me anytime. We get that receipt, we cross you off our list of names.”
“I thought you didn’t have suspects.”
She stopped on the front steps and smiled back at him. “We don’t, Mr. Tomlin. Not yet.”
Then she turned away, and Tomlin watched her walk down to her sedan and climb behind the wheel. She shot him a half wave from the driver’s seat and then pulled away from the curb, and Tomlin exhaled as she disappeared down the street.
Becca was just coming into the living room with a tray full of coffee mugs when he walked in from the landing. “Where did she go?” she said, frowning.
Tomlin shrugged. “She left.”
“Oh.” Becca put down her tray. “Well, what did she want?”
He glanced out the window, toward the empty spot where Windermere had parked her sedan. “Something about a bank robbery,” he said. “A misunderstanding.” He turned away from the window and walked to the stairs.
“Don’t you want your coffee?”
Tomlin didn’t look back. “I’m going to be late for work,” he told her, as he climbed the stairs. Stopped halfway up to lean against the wall and steady his thoughts, the FBI agent’s piercing stare still burning into his eyes like a sunspot.
27
WINDERMERE PARKED the Crown Vic off Summit Avenue and sat back in the seat. She grinned at herself in the rearview mirror. Carter Tomlin, she thought. You are so made.
He was a rich man. Had a beautiful wife. Kids, too, and a cute yellow dog, judging from the pictures on the mantle. Your everyday American success story, pretty much. He even looked like an accountant, for God’s sake: attractive, kind of boring. Harmless.
Still, the guy was so guilty he reeked. Same build as the bank robber from Midway and Prospect Park. Same icy blue eyes as the psycho from Eat Street. He’d squirmed and flushed as they talked, tried and failed to play innocent, fed her some bullshit story about his car getting robbed.
Didn’t happen.
The way he’d latched on to that story, clung to it like a lifeline, she’d known he was her guy. Gave her some vague excuse, no details. Promised to get her a receipt they both knew he didn’t have.
Windermere sat in the Crown Vic, staring out at the snowy street. What a neighborhood. Old mansions and vast lawns and European cars in the driveways. What a neighborhood.
Tomlin had changed jobs. Moved across to Lowertown. Cheaper rents. Cheaper parking. Maybe money was tight. The mortgage on a house like his wouldn’t come cheap. Maybe he had to rob banks to survive.
Harris and Doughty wouldn’t buy it, she knew. Doughty, especially. And from the looks of things, Harris sided with the senior man—though whether the operative word was senior or man was still up for debate. Either way, they’d see the receipt as circumstantial, which it was. They wouldn’t know Tomlin, wouldn’t have seen him. If they saw him, they would know he was guilty.
Windermere watched as a big Mercedes-Benz cruised by, an unhappy woman at the wheel, a couple of angry kids in the back. Good luck getting Doughty to agree to come out here, she thought. He’s like a dog with a bone with that southern Minneapolis angle.
Still, she had to try.
Windermere pulled out her cell phone and called her partner. “You just about done over there?” he said, when he came on the line. “Could use your help back at home base.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Listen, I have news.”
“So do I. You’re headed back?”
“Tomlin’s an accountant,” she said. “He’s guilty as sin. Tried to feed me some line about his car being robbed, but he was sweating like an athlete the whole time. He’s lying. I know it.”
Doughty grunted. “How soon can you be here?”
“He’s our guy, Bob,” she said. “You don’t believe me, but this guy bleeds guilty. Come out to his place and you’ll see it.”
“He’s not our guy,” Doughty said.
Windermere started to reply. Then she stopped.
“I have something better, Agent Windermere.” She could hear the smile in his voice now, smug. “One of my Minneapolis PD contacts threw me a lead. Southern Minneapolis, just like I’ve been saying. Fits the profile to a T.”
“Your profile,” said Windermere.
“Our profile,” said Doughty. “This guy’s a career criminal. Some lowlife out in Phillips. Been throwing money around lately, bragging about a bank job. I looked him up in the database, found B and E’s, assaults, grand theft auto. He’s a pro. And he lives within driving range of every heist we’ve tracked.”
Doughty paused, let it sink in. “This is our guy, Agent Windermere. Now come on back to base and we can take this guy down. I’ve already cleared it with Harris.”
Windermere said nothing.
Doughty cleared his throat. “You there, Agent Windermere?”
Goddamn, how she wanted to wipe the smile from his face. “I’m here, Bob,” she said, and sighed. She shifted into drive and pulled away from the curb, watching Tomlin’s house disappear in the rearview mirror. “I’m headed back now. Give me a half hour or so.”
28
TOMLIN 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.
29
STEVENS 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.
30
THE 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?”
31
WINDERMERE 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?”
