First Deadly Conspiracy Box Set

by Roger Stelljes

Smith smiled and thought of his brief few hours on the river. It felt great. In another week he would be on a boat somewhere, enjoying the sun, cracking open a beer, perhaps a Red Stripe, with Monica lounging on a chair next to him. The fifteen years of prison would seem so far away at that point. Money, a boat, some water, revenge against Flanagan, it couldn’t get any better. After a minute, he put those pleasant thoughts away. There was much work left to be done, and he needed to keep his head in the game.

  Dean, riding in the passenger seat, switched the radio station over to the talk station. It was wall-to-wall kidnapping coverage. The mantra continued—the authorities didn’t have any leads.

  “The FBI and police have to feel like the clock is ticking down on this thing now,” Dean said, taking a sip from a Coke. He pulled his baseball cap down low over his sunglasses-covered eyes and pulled his gloves on tight.

  “Which is what we want,” Smith replied, doing the same. The lead kidnapper turned left onto the safe house’s street. He pulled past the driveway, stopped, and then began to back the van into the driveway while Dean hit the opener.

  • • • • •

  Pat Hall shifted in his bed, the large cast on his broken left femur making it difficult for him to get comfortable. An electrician, he had broken the leg five days ago on a job site, falling off a ladder while running wire. Now he was out on workers’ comp and forced to spend the day watching really bad TV. No wonder people worked during the day, rather than being subjected to sappy soap operas, Dr. this and Dr. that, nine versions of People’s Court with Judge Judy, Rudy, or Hootie. Even the sports on during the day were brutal things like paintball and Jet Ski racing. While both would be fun to do, they were about as much fun to watch as undergoing a root canal without Novocain.

  On top of all that, the air-conditioning in his house was out. He was totally immobilized, watching awful TV, in insufferable July heat. He had sweated through his white muscle T-shirt, and beads of sweat were interspersed with the thin strands of seaweed that were all that remained on his once-full head of brown hair. A hard-working fan in the corner merely circulated the heat and humidity. Thankfully, he was on the main level of his house, and his bedroom was on the north side, under a canopy of elm trees, which kept his room just a smidge cooler. A little breeze to ruffle the curtains of the window would be nice, but there hadn’t been one all day.

  The one saving grace was the lovely Heather Foxx. Hall made sure the TV was never far from Channel 12. A remote was a beautiful thing. His TV was telling him now that a Channel 12 Newsbreak was on the way.

  • • • • •

  “This is Paul Phillips with a Channel 12 Newsbreak. With the latest on the St. Paul kidnappings, we go to Heather Foxx at the St. Paul Department of Public Safety. Heather, what’s the latest?”

  “Paul, as we learned earlier, the FBI and police have received a ransom demand, although we don’t yet have the amount.”

  “What about the laptop recovered earlier?”

  “It contained a video. The police have released a portion of that video, Paul, which we’ll play now.” Foxx waited for the video to start. “What you’re seeing is a portion of the footage the kidnappers left on the laptop. As you can see, it shows a vehicle driving through an isolated rural area. The police are asking all citizens to review the footage and contact the authorities at the number on the screen if they recognize anything about the area the kidnappers are driving through.”

  When the video finished, Phillips jumped back in.

  “We will be playing this video every half hour. Additionally, we will also have it available shortly on the Channel 12 website.”

  “The police are continuing to man the tip line, Paul,” Heather reported. “In addition to reviewing this video footage, the authorities are urging people to be on the lookout for at least three men, using vans, and again, not minivans but larger vans; panel or cargo-style vans.”

  • • • • •

  Hall adjusted again and as he did he looked out his window to the left as the van backed into the rental house across the street. The house had been vacant for the past six months with a For Rent sign in the front yard. The sign disappeared a few weeks ago, maybe longer, Hall thought. He just noticed it missing one day when he came home from work. He’d seen very little activity at the house, other than vans of different colors coming and going for the last couple of days. It was, the more he thought about it, kind of odd behavior.

  Never one to cause trouble, Hall was not the type to call in on his neighbors. But the behavior was just off enough that it was worth a phone call. If nothing else, it would provide a potentially entertaining diversion from the heat and boredom.

  • • • • •

  Lucy’s was a sandwich joint located in the Payne and Arcade area on St. Paul’s working-class east side. A true hole-in-the-wall, the restaurant was a welcome change from the sterile chain sandwich places going in all over town. At Lucy’s, if you were smart, you ordered the Juicy Lucy, which was a hot hoagie sandwich piled high with a mountain of pastrami, completely smothered in melted American cheese, and served on a fresh-baked bun. The sandwich came with homemade pickles and kettle chips so greasy the sheikhs from OPEC were seeking drilling rights. The whole concoction was served on an oversized red-and-white checkered tray.

  Lucy was short for Lucius, a robust black man who’d eaten a few too many of his own sandwiches. Big Lucius worked the register and made the occasional sandwich if his son working the back got too busy. Lucius bullshitted Mac, who twirled a toothpick from side to side in his mouth, awaiting his sandwich order.

  Mac looked at his watch while Lucius chewed the fat. It was 4:15 p.m. The day was ticking away far too fast.

  “You and the boys in a hurry there, Mac?” Lucius asked. Lich, Riley, and Rock were in a booth in the back of the sandwich shop, out of public view.

  “Not so much that, Lucius. It’s just this case, the time is tickin’ away.”

  “Well, let me check on that food for you boys,” Lucius said and then turned to yell at his son in the back. “Where the hell are those Juicy Lucys, boy?”

  As Mac waited for his order, he felt a light tap on his back. He turned to find Heather Foxx smiling at him.

  “Heather Foxx, we meet again.”

  “Thanks for the tip this morning,” she whispered. “I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t get used to it.”

  “Why did you give it to me?” Heather asked, curious. “Typically, you’re loath to help us out.”

  “I helped you because you didn’t swarm us last night like the rest of your media friends,” Mac said.

  “That’s good to know,” the reporter replied. “In any event, maybe I can return the favor at some point.” She pushed a strand of her brown hair back behind her left ear.

  Mac snorted, his inherent distrust of reporters showing through. “It’s not too often you guys do us any favors.”

  • • • • •

  Paddy McRyan took his bottle of water out of the vending machine. Generally, he was morally opposed to paying money for water, but with the heat, a soda just didn’t sound or even feel like it would taste remotely refreshing. Besides, once he polished off the contents, he’d just refill it out of the water fountain. As he took a sip, he saw Bonnie Schmidt, a uniform cop working the tip line, sprinting toward him. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “We’re getting tons of stuff on the tip line, most of which is garbage, but this sounded interesting,” Schmidt said, handing him a note. Paddy took a look at it and walked into the conference room to Burton.

  “This might be worth a look.”

  “What do we have?” Burton asked, as Duffy, Peters, and the mayor approached. The rest of Burton’s team and cops in the room pulled in behind them.

  “A guy in a neighborhood off of West Seventh, down by the old brewery, claims that for the last couple of days there have been vans, our kind of vans, coming and going from a house across the street.”

  “So
?” Burton asked, mixing a cup of coffee.

  “Well, the house is a rental and nobody was at the house for months until a couple of days ago. Now vans are coming and going. Again, our kind of vans.”

  “Let’s go take a look then,” Burton replied, looking at his watch: 4:25 p.m. “Where’s McRyan and the rest of those guys?”

  “They went to get a bite to eat at Juicy Lucy’s,” Paddy answered.

  “That’s over on the east side, right? Payne and Arcade?”

  Paddy nodded. Burton pulled out his cell phone and dialed.

  “Mac? Burton. I need you to check something out.”

  • • • • •

  “Get out! House blown!” the text message read.

  Smith flipped the cell phone closed, looked at his watch—4:28 p.m.—and then to Dean. “We’ve gotta bail,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” Dean said, seeing Smith’s ashen face.

  “I don’t know for sure, but we’re blown,” Smith said, running for the back door. “The police have the safe house. They’re on their way.”

  “H… h… how?” Dean Stammered. “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Smith answered, in the garage now, at the far van. “I don’t even know what the police have. All I know is, I got the text message and the house is blown.” He jumped into a van. “Stay on your cell. I’m going left and you go right. I’m going to go south on 35E, you go north and take it from there.”

  The garage door opened and Smith pulled out and turned hard left, tires squealing. Dean followed and turned right.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Gloves.”

  Mac parked behind the detached garage in the alley behind a well-kept blue rambler with white trim. The owner of the home, and the man who called in, was Patrick Hall. Others would be joining the party shortly, but for now Burton was holding them back several blocks, letting Mac and the rest in first to get the lay of the land. Riley and Mac called from the Explorer, and Hall picked up on the second ring. The homeowner was in bed with a broken leg, but directed them to a spare key underneath the bottom of his “piece-of-shit” air conditioner.

  Riles found the key in a little black magnetized key box. The detectives let themselves in the back door and entered the kitchen. They noticed the heat immediately.

  “Now I know why he called the AC a piece of shit,” Riley noted.

  Mac called out to announce their presence, and they heard an “in here” from the front of the house. There they found Hall, lying in bed, a cast encasing the entire length of his left leg. To say the man looked uncomfortable was an understatement.

  “Man, you have got to get your air-conditioning fixed,” Mac said, noting both Hall’s sweaty appearance and the impact of the heat on his own body after just a few minutes in the house.

  “I hear ya,” the man answered. “I really need a new one, but with me laid up and all, we’re trying to watch what we spend.”

  “Try Craig’s List. You could get a window unit for cheap at least.”

  Riles got down to business. “So what’s the deal with this house across the street?”

  “Like I said to the gal on that tip line, these guys have been around, okay, I’d say the last four or five days, I guess. My wife said they started showing up the day I got hurt. I broke this leg of mine five days ago and got back home three days ago. I haven’t been out of the bed much since.”

  “So you’ve been watching these guys across the street then?” Mac asked, casually pulling the curtain back to sneak a peek out the window.

  “I wouldn’t say watching,” Hall said, shaking his head. “I’d say I’ve noticed them coming and going in vans is all.”

  “How often?” Riles asked, walking over to the other side of the window. The house was across the street and to the right, a single-story home similar to Hall’s in a neighborhood of similar homes. It was gray, with faded burgundy trim and shutters and a high wood privacy fence around the backyard.

  “Hard to say really,” Hall answered, “other than often enough that I noticed them coming and going is all.”

  Mac turned to Hall and away from the window, “You said you’ve noticed them. What have you noticed?”

  “Such as?” Hall asked.

  “Men? Women? Height? Weight? What did they look like?”

  “I never really got a good look at anyone,” Hall replied.

  “How come?” Mac asked, confused.

  “I figured you guys were going to ask that,” the man replied, wiping his forehead with a towel and taking a drink of water. “These guys were coming with vans, backing them into the garage and closing the door. Or, they open the door and leave. Nobody ever walked around outside that I can recall. At least not that I ever saw.”

  “You never saw them at all?”

  “Not really.”

  “Detective McRyan asked whether they were men or women?” Riles asked.

  “Men, I’d say.”

  “Did you ever notice what they were wearing?” Mac inquired.

  “Baseball caps for the most part. Dark shirts usually. Sunglasses and…”

  Hall paused and Mac looked back at him. “And what?”

  The man closed his eyes for a minute. “There was something else now that I think of it. I saw, or I remember seeing, once or twice, and I just thought it was odd since it’s been so hot.” Hall sat still, his head back against the pillow, closing his eyes. After a few seconds, a smile spread across his face, “Gloves. They wore gloves.”

  “Gloves?” Riles asked.

  “Yeah, when they drove the vans, they had gloves on. You know, black leather gloves, like you might wear in the winter.”

  Mac and Riles exchanged a quick look. He was maybe onto something. The kidnappers had yet to leave a print behind, and black leather gloves this time of year were unusual. Plus, two other witnesses to the abductions mentioned gloves in their descriptions. Some people liked to wear gloves when they drove, but not many.

  “Was it one guy wearing gloves or more than one?” Mac asked.

  “Not totally sure. I mean, I couldn’t tell one from the other. I do know that I noticed gloves more than once.”

  “So these guys wore dark shirts, hats, and gloves. Anything else?” Mac pressed.

  “Not really. At least nothing I recall right now.”

  “Just vans?” Riles asked, tacking a different direction.

  “Yeah, for the most part. I might have seen a car once, parked in the driveway overnight, but other than that, pretty much just vans.”

  Mac looked back from the window. “What kind of vans?”

  “Those panel kinds of vans.”

  “Get any license plates?”

  “No,” Hall answered, shaking his head.

  “How about just what states the plates were from?”

  Hall shook his head again.

  “Always the same vans?” Mac asked, pushing.

  Hall thought about that one for a moment. “You know, now that you mention it, I don’t think so. There were different ones, colors, makes, models. Not a bunch, but it wasn’t always the same two either. There was some variety to them.”

  Mac sat down in a chair in the corner of the room and started jotting down some notes. Riles continued.

  “You mentioned a car. What kind of car?”

  “White. I think it was a Taurus,” Hall thought a little more. “Yeah, a Ford Taurus.”

  “Get a license number?”

  “No,” Hall answered. “I didn’t really think anything of it except for those Heather Foxx reports on Channel 12. She was talking about vans being used in those kidnappings, and I noticed these guys coming and going.”

  “How about now?” Mac asked. “Are they there now?”

  “I don’t think so,” Hall replied, shaking his head. “They’ve been gone a bit.”

  “How long?” Riley asked.

  “Oh, maybe half hour, a little more. They left around the time I called in. My wife told me they left anyway. I didn’t
see it when they did. My wife said she saw them leave when she came into the bathroom and helped me off the potty.”

  Mac looked Mr. Hall over. He was a working man, an electrician, in his mid to upper fifties. The house was neat and orderly, nothing suggested the guy was a kook or anything. The yard around the home was neat, with flower beds and well-trimmed hedges. There were pictures of family around and what appeared to be a grandchild or two. All in all, Hall seemed on the level.

  “You need anything?” Mac asked Hall.

  “I could use a fresh glass of water,” he replied. “It’s a little hard for me to get to the kitchen at the moment.

  “I imagine it is,” Mac said smiling. “We’ll be right back.” Mac led Riles toward the kitchen.

  “So what do you think?” Riles asked as Mac opened the freezer and grabbed ice cubes.

  “I think this guy is on the level. Could be our guys,” Mac said.

  “Maybe,” Riles added. “Vans, different ones, and wearing…”

  “Gloves,” Mac finished for him, turning on the tap water. “Witnesses mentioned that yesterday. These guys have been careful all along. We never found any prints off those vans, partly because they blew them up, but also, I bet, because they were wearing gloves. And according to Hall, these guys are wearing gloves. It’s starting to add up.”

  “You don’t suppose the girls are over there, do you? Buried in the backyard?” Riles asked.

  “No. I mean we can go check there in a minute, but unless that video was a huge ruse, no, they’re somewhere else.”

  “If these are our guys, then why use this house?”

  Mac walked into the living room and peeked through the curtains. “Safe house, maybe. An hour ago we were talking about how they were centrally located, running up to Clearwater one night, Ellsworth the next, then to Duluth. They’d need a central spot to operate from. Maybe this is it.” Mac let the curtains fall closed and walked the fresh glass of water to the bedroom for Hall. Once Hall was taken care of, Mac came back to Riley. “Let’s walk across the street.”

  Mac and Riles exited Hall’s house out the back door. Riles quickly walked back to the Explorer, instructing Lich and Rock to slowly pull around the house and to the street, just in case they needed backup.