Stealing the Countess

by David Housewright

  Given Ruland’s previous experience with the company, I was convinced I would receive more cooperation from the man if I explained that I was not working for Midwest Farmers, despite what I told him yesterday on the phone.

  “I represent Paul Duclos, not the Peyroux Foundation and certainly not the insurance company,” I said. “In fact, the less they know of what we’re doing, the better.”

  That caused Ruland to smile. Actually, he never stopped smiling; the wattage just went up and down depending on his reaction to what was spoken.

  “Still, I’m not surprised that you have come to me with this matter, given my reputation,” he said.

  “What reputation?” Heavenly asked.

  The intensity of Ruland’s smile dipped, although not by much. Donatucci was correct; he was grandiose if not downright pompous, and I thought it would be better if I did nothing to contradict his inflated opinion of himself. After all, I was convinced the only reason he agreed to meet with us in the first place was so he could share his exploits, such as they were, with an appreciative audience. Instead of calling him out, I attempted to feed his ego.

  “Mr. Ruland is a highly regarded professional thief,” I said. “Do you mind if I call you a thief?”

  “Not at all.”

  “If I’m not mistaken, he specializes in objets d’art and antiquities.”

  Ruland bowed his head in my direction.

  “Among other things,” he said.

  Heavenly must have caught on to what I was doing, because she reached out a hand and rested it on his forearm.

  “How exciting,” she said.

  “It can be,” Ruland told her.

  “However, sir,” I said, “I am not here because of your reputation.”

  “No?”

  “I’m here because you stayed at the New Queen Anne Victorian Mansion Bed and Breakfast in Bayfield, Wisconsin, three days before the theft of a four-million-dollar Stradivarius violin from the New Queen Anne Victorian Mansion Bed and Breakfast in Bayfield, Wisconsin.”

  “Ahh.”

  “And because of your reputation.”

  Ruland grinned broadly. He was having a wonderful time.

  “I assure you, Mr. McKenzie, my presence in Bayfield was merely a coincidence,” he said.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “Yet they occur every day.”

  Heavenly squeezed his arm.

  “Trevor,” she said. “How did you do it?”

  “But I assure you, Ms. Heavenly, I did not.”

  “My offer for the safe return of the Countess still stands,” I said. “I can have the money delivered in three hours.”

  “My friends, my friends.” Ruland glanced upward and spread his arms as if seeking divine guidance. “How can I make you believe me?”

  Heavenly took hold of his arm again and squeezed.

  “If you didn’t do it,” she said, “can you tell us how it might have been done?”

  Ruland rested his hand on top of Heavenly’s hand.

  “This is all speculation, of course,” he said.

  “Of course,” she told him.

  “I suppose an enterprising young man, upon hearing that the great Maestro Paul Duclos was bringing a priceless musical instrument to Bayfield, might book a room in the same bed-and-breakfast where he was expected to stay in order to … get the lay of the land, you might say. I suppose he might also have made copies of the keys for said bed and breakfast.”

  “Yes, he might have,” I said.

  Ruland sighed deeply.

  “However, upon closer examination the enterprising young man might have decided that making his move in the Queen Anne would have been ill advised,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “There was no way to predict the movements of either the staff or the guests. He could easily have been seen and perhaps identified. There was the possibility that he might also have been trapped in there, as well.”

  “That would have been awful,” Heavenly said.

  Ruland smiled in agreement.

  “Would the enterprising young man have had a Plan B?” I asked.

  “Most certainly.”

  “That would have been…?”

  “Snatch and dash,” Ruland said. “Not terribly elegant, I know, although it does have the virtue of simplicity. Duclos was very casual with his treatment of the Countess, no guards, no safety precautions of any kind. It was possible for the young man to approach him on the street, hit him with a Taser, retrieve the item, and make good his getaway. If executed correctly, he would be thirty miles away before the authorities even knew what happened.”

  “Except when fired, a Taser would litter the street with dozens of confetti-size identification tags that could be used to track the weapon back to the owner of record.”

  “Yes, most certainly—to the owner of record, but not necessarily to the individual who, shall we say, liberated the device.”

  “Yet that’s not what happened.”

  “No. I couldn’t get near him.”

  I, my inner voice said. He’s telling his own story now.

  “The Maestro was usually surrounded by his many adoring fans,” Ruland said. “When he wasn’t, he was always—always accompanied by a woman; I discovered her name was Zofia McLean, and she worked for the Tourism Bureau. That’s when I switched to Plan C.”

  “Plan C?” Heavenly said. “You’re prepared for anything.”

  Ruland squeezed her hand even as she squeezed his arm. I tried not to laugh.

  “Plan C,” he said. “I simply staked out the Maestro’s hotel here in Duluth.”

  “How did you know which was his hotel?” I asked.

  “It was relatively easy to discover where the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra was staying. If that wasn’t enough, while I was loitering in the parking lot I saw the Maestro’s wife drive off alone in her BMW 530i. Renée Marie Peyroux—I recognized her from a photograph on the Peyroux Foundation’s Web site.”

  “When was this?”

  “Eight o’clock Thursday evening. My plan had remained essentially the same. I knew Duclos would remain in Bayfield the night of the concert. No doubt he would enjoy the Queen Anne’s bountiful breakfast Friday morning before departing to Duluth. That made his estimated time of arrival somewhere between ten thirty A.M. and noon. I worked out where I would be waiting in the parking lot, a blind spot invisible to the security cameras. When he parked his car I would have approached, an appreciative fan greeting the great musician, Tasered him, acquired the violin, made my escape along prearranged routes, and immediately contacted the go-between. With luck, I would have had my money and been on my way, with no evidence connecting me to the theft, before the authorities had time to react. Unfortunately, the Countess Borromeo was stolen in Bayfield, apparently by someone utilizing my original scheme. It’s all quite frustrating.”

  “You were working with a go-between?”

  “McKenzie, only a fool would steal a priceless work of art without first having a plan for disposing of it, although I must admit”—he turned his attention back to Heavenly—“that I was negligent in that regard early in my career. Serving two-thirds of a sixty-month sentence at the Nebraska Correctional Center in Omaha taught me the error of my ways. I understand you also have reason to dislike Vincent Donatucci.”

  “He wants to put me in prison, too,” Heavenly said.

  “I can think of no greater crime.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “Donatucci seemed like such a harmless old man when I met him, too.”

  “Tell me more about the go-between,” I said.

  “Nothing to tell,” Ruland said. “My instructions were to make a call immediately after taking possession of the Stradivarius. I would have been told where to take it and whom to pass it to. Since I did not take possession…”

  “You’re saying you never met the go-between and don’t know who it is.”

  “Whoever planned the heist broke it down into
components. My part was to acquire the merchandise and hand it off. The go-between was charged with spiriting it away.”

  “Who planned it?”

  “Someone else who knew my reputation. I was contacted … let’s see, it would have been nine days before the Maestro was scheduled to perform.”

  Five days after the concert was announced, my inner voice reminded me.

  “How was this accomplished?” I asked aloud.

  “By cell phone.”

  “Someone called you?”

  “Not exactly. I received a cheap flip phone in the mail with instructions to call the number that was stored in its memory. I did. A voice—it was electronically altered—offered me $50,000 to steal the violin, payable in cash when I passed it on.”

  “Do you still have the phone?”

  “No, I … burned it, as they say. After I made my call.”

  “Your call?”

  “I soon as I heard the news about the Countess on the radio, I dialed the number and told the man who answered that I didn’t have the item; that someone had beaten me to it. I then destroyed the phone and tossed it into the lake. Why wouldn’t I? We no longer had anything to talk about unless it was expenses. He was out a lousy flip phone, but I had spent considerably more scouting Bayfield and the Queen Anne. Oh, well. Best-laid plans.”

  “Do you recall the phone number?”

  “Only the first three digits—215.”

  Heavenly removed her hand from Ruland’s forearm; he was clearly disappointed by the gesture.

  “I am sorry I could not be more of a service to you, Ms. Heavenly,” he said.

  “Me, too,” she said.

  I returned Ruland’s bag of mini-donuts and linen napkin; he held them both as if they were part of a single package.

  “Now what?” Heavenly asked.

  “May I interest you in—” Ruland said.

  “I was talking to him.” Heavenly leaned forward on the bench, even though it caused her discomfort, and looked at me. “McKenzie, now what?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Perhaps you would—” Ruland said.

  “Shhh.”

  Apparently, Ruland knew when he was no longer wanted. He stood and pivoted toward us. He was still smiling.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you both,” he said. “Should you ever return to Duluth, I insist that you look me up.”

  Neither of us answered. We just stared ahead, both lost in our own thoughts.

  Ruland turned again and started walking along the pier back to Canal Park, swinging his linen napkin and bag of mini-donuts as if he didn’t have a care in the world. I stood and watched him go. Heavenly grunted slightly as she forced herself to stand. We began moving in the same direction as the thief.

  “Some people have a highly inflated opinion of themselves,” Heavenly said.

  “You mean besides us?”

  “Seriously, McKenzie. Now what?”

  “I know you’ve heard me say this before, but—the time has come to talk of many things…”

  Ahead of us, Ruland had just reached the end of the pier where it emptied out onto the park.

  I never heard the shots that caused his body to twist unnaturally; that caused his arms to flail upward and out, the bag of mini-donuts flying from his grasp; that caused him to fall backward onto the concrete.

  Heavenly and I paused as our brains made sense of what we had just seen.

  The tourists nearest Ruland must not have heard the shots either, because some of them, obviously concerned for the well-being of a complete stranger, moved toward his body, while others simply stood by and watched.

  There was a scream.

  Followed by another.

  I began to run forward. To this day I don’t know why. There was nothing I could do to help Ruland. I didn’t even have a gun; Chief Neville had confiscated my SIG Sauer, and Maryanne Altavilla’s Ruger was still packed in my satchel at the hotel. I guess the mechanism in my head that controlled fight or flight was locked on fight.

  Tourists began to run, too—away from the body. Two people—a man and a woman who didn’t run—stood over Ruland while they glanced this way and that; searching for something that would explain the blood that was pooling beneath him. At the same time, men materialized from strategic locations throughout the park. Four of them. No, six. All armed, all carrying their guns with both hands as they closed on Ruland. The man and woman saw them coming and stepped away, fear etched on their faces.

  I was frightened, too, yet I kept moving forward until he loomed up in front of me—a large man carrying a large gun.

  I was fifteen yards away from Ruland’s body when I stopped running.

  The six men didn’t stop, though.

  My fight-or-flight mechanism swung abruptly to flight.

  I quickly looked for an escape route. There was none unless I wanted to fling myself over the side of the pier. And then what? Swim for it? To Canada?

  The large man reached into his pocket as he approached. He pulled out a thin black wallet.

  Heavenly appeared at my side.

  She slipped her Colt .380 auto out from under her sling and steadied it on her target with her good hand, standing sideways, sighting as if she were fighting a duel and someone was shouting, “Ready, aim…”

  I reached out, covered her hand with mine, and pushed the gun down until it was pointed at the concrete.

  The large man halted on the far side of Ruland’s body and held up his ID.

  “FBI,” he said.

  * * *

  Special Agent in Charge Reid Beatty was not happy. I knew because he kept telling everyone, “I am not happy, I am not happy, I am not goddamn happy.” My only consolation was that he appeared to be less happy with his associates than he was with me. Specifically, he wanted to know how a half-dozen FBI agents assigned to conduct around-the-clock surveillance on Trevor Ruland could, one, let him get killed and, two, allow the killer to escape unseen.

  One of his agents had an explanation.

  “We were assigned to observe Ruland to see if he’d lead us to the violin,” the agent said. “We weren’t tasked with guarding him. That’s a completely different procedure.”

  I believe he was transferred to Camden, New Jersey, the very next morning.

  Heavenly and I were taken into custody immediately following the shooting and handed over to the Violent Crimes Unit of the Major Crimes Bureau of the Investigative Division of the Duluth Police Department. The cops weren’t happy either, but they seemed to be directing their annoyance at the FBI for conducting an operation in their city without even the courtesy of a consultation.

  It was the Duluth cops that scoured Canal Park for witnesses—inexplicably, there were none—and confiscated the footage from various security cameras, which also left them without suspects. And it was the Duluth PD’s Crime Scene Unit that determined that Ruland had been shot twice; they recovered a perfectly intact .243 Winchester slug weighing 100 grains, originally designed as “a varmint round.”

  “How is it possible for someone to shoot a hunting rifle in Canal Park in the middle of the afternoon during tourist season without anyone noticing?” the special agent in charge also wanted to know.

  A second agent suggested that the shooter might have hidden himself inside the trunk of a vehicle like the Beltway Snipers had done way back in ’02. I think he ended up in Camden as well.

  Meanwhile, Heavenly and I were ensconced in separate interrogation rooms at the St. Louis County Jail, a building located so deep in the forest on the far side of the city that I wondered if the locals were deliberately trying to keep it hidden. The Duluth cops didn’t ask any questions about the shooting, though. I was under the impression that they were waiting to learn if the Justice Department was going to make a federal case out of it.

  I sat quietly in a metal chair at a metal table. I had not been shackled; my wrist hadn’t been cuffed to the steel ring welded to the table, so I folded my arms and rested my chin aga
inst my chest. I deliberately avoided looking at my reflection in the mirror because I didn’t care for the face of the man who looked back.

  Are you responsible for Ruland’s death? my inner voice asked.

  I didn’t think so, but what had I told him earlier? I don’t believe in coincidences?

  Eventually, Special Agent Beatty entered the room. He paced back and forth while telling me that he was a member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team and worked out of the bureau’s Milwaukee Field Division.

  “I know all about you, McKenzie,” he said. “I know you’re attempting to buy back the Stradivarius violin for $250,000. We had both you and Ruland under surveillance. If you had given him the money and he had given you the Countess Borromeo, we would have arrested you both.”

  “What put you onto him?” I asked.

  “We knew Ruland had a record. We knew he stayed at the Queen Anne prior to the theft. His credit card records indicated that he had paid to have two keys copied while he was staying there. Tell me, did Ruland contact you or did you contact him?”

  “I contacted him.”

  “Why?”

  “I knew he had a record and that he stayed at the Queen Anne prior to the theft. I didn’t know about the keys, though. Charging them to his credit card was kinda dumb.”

  “Ruland was kinda dumb.”

  “I wish I had been nicer to him, though.”

  “Talk to me, McKenzie.”

  “First, I’d like to make a deal.”

  Beatty stopped pacing and stared at me for a few beats.

  “What kind of deal?”

  “I’ll tell you everything I know from beginning to end.”

  “In exchange for what? We know that you didn’t shoot Ruland.”

  “My associate—”

  “Heavenly Petryk aka Caroline Kaminsky—”

  “Who pointed a handgun at a federal officer—”

  “Who could be charged with assaulting a federal officer—”

  “No charges. Not from you, the city, county, or state. She walks away clean. Seriously, Agent Beatty, you’d play hell getting a conviction anyway.”

  “That’s special agent to you. You’re acting a little prematurely, aren’t you, McKenzie? No one’s been charged with a crime yet.”