First Deadly Conspiracy Box Set

by Roger Stelljes

  “While I was looking over your shoulder I thought I saw a previous page where I could…” Jones’s voice trailed off as he exited the shipping records and moused through menus. He clicked on an icon for a program named Customer Choice. “Here we go,” he said. “This is business intelligence software. This is the kind of stuff I used to make. It should let me search for what we need.”

  Now Hagen was the interested one as Jupiter set up a search, entered the kind of pipe, the letter H in the company name profile, Minnesota and Wisconsin in the state field, and then clicked search. The program quickly turned out thirty-nine hits. “Now we’re cooking with gas,” Jupiter said. “I’m going to see if we can’t narrow this down a little more.”

  • • • • •

  Ray Zorn lived on a quiet corner in a blue two-story with a white picket fence. Zorn was sitting with his wife at a picnic table under the shade of a large maple tree. He was dressed in an old, yellow Munsingwear golf shirt, Bermuda shorts, and dark socks, along with a John Deere ball cap. Prepared for company, a white tray with a pitcher of lemonade and six glasses rested on the table.

  “Hiya, Chief,” Zorn welcomed, waving the group over.

  “Ray.” Mitchell introduced Mac and Lich, who both declined refreshment.

  Mac wasted no time, “Mr. Zorn, David and Dean Mueller worked for you?”

  “Yes they did.”

  “They still work for you?”

  “I don’t think they do.”

  “Don’t think?” Lich queried.

  “Well, they stopped showing up a few weeks ago and I haven’t heard from them since. So if those boys ever show up, it’ll only be for me to tell ‘em not to come back. Must say, though, I’m kind of disappointed in those boys.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I knew their father. Tom Mueller was a friend of mine years ago. Those boys came to me, just out of prison, looking for work. I had my doubts, but I liked their father and thought I’d give them a chance.” Zorn went on to explain that they had been good workers who showed up on time, did whatever he asked, were respectful, caused no problems. “I was surprised when they just stopped showing up. Figured, if they got a better offer somewhere, they’d do me the courtesy of tellin’ me, ya know?”

  “Did they ever have any visitors when they worked for you?”

  “Just their sister. She showed up once, maybe a week or two before the boys up and scooted on me.”

  Mac paused, then asked, “Did the Muellers ever purchase any lumber from you?”

  “I don’t right know,” Zorn replied. “Employees can purchase from us at a pretty good discount, and they may well have done so. I can check if you need.”

  “We do,” Mac said. “You said their sister stopped by. Would that be this woman?” He placed a picture of Monica on the picnic table.

  “That’s her,” Zorn said. “Pretty girl, I always thought.”

  “Have you ever seen this man?” Mac asked, sliding a picture of Smith across the table.

  Zorn stared at the picture, as did Mitchell. Mitchell spoke first.

  “These boys showed me this picture a few minutes ago and it didn’t hit me, but now for some reason it does. I think I’ve seen that guy before. Doesn’t he look familiar to you, Ray?”

  Zorn wrinkled his nose and looked at the picture closer. “You know, I think you’re right there, Pete. He looks familiar. It’s the nose I think. That big knot up there on the bridge is what I remember.”

  “Where did we see him?”

  Zorn stared at the photo for a moment more, and then his eyes lit up, “We saw him at the Derby.”

  “The Derby? What’s the Derby?” Lich asked.

  “Restaurant out on County 81,” Chief Mitchell replied. “A dingy old greasy-spoon you passed on the left as you drove into town. It’s an old highway joint, few booths and a counter. Ray and I like to eat lunch there a time or two a week.”

  “Pete’s right,” Zorn added. “We saw this feller in there. He was in a booth, the back booth I think, with the Mueller boys.” He shook his head. “Good memory, Pete.”

  “When was this?”

  “Not long ago,” Miller said. “Few, maybe three weeks ago.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Zorn added, “probably a few days before the boys up and bailed on me.”

  Mac and Lich shared a look. “That pretty much locks it up,” Lich said.

  “These boys have something to do with that kidnapping in St. Paul?” Miller asked.

  Mac nodded.

  “Anything else we can do to help?’

  “It would help to find out if the Muellers bought any lumber from you.”

  “Why would that matter?” Zorn asked, concerned. “I don’t think we did anything wrong.”

  “You didn’t, Mr. Zorn, you didn’t. But trust me,” Lich replied, “it matters for us to know. It just does.”

  • • • • •

  “So that gets us down to three stores with the right letters,” Hagen said.

  “Hanlin’s in Brainerd, Hankley’s in Grantsburg, up in Wisconsin, or Hanburg’s in Wyoming,” Jupiter replied.

  “Damn holiday,” Sally said. “It’ll be a nightmare to try to get hold of these people.” She shook her head.

  “Call Mac,” Riles said. “See what he thinks. Sooner or later we need to bring more resources into this.”

  • • • • •

  “Here we go,” Zorn said as he held up a sheet of paper as they had all crowded into his office at the lumber yard. “Employee purchase form right here. Three weeks ago. They bought heavy plywood, two-by-fours and wood screws.”

  “How about PVC piping?” Mac asked.

  “Nope. Just the wood and the screws. We don’t sell PVC pipe.”

  “But they bought it all about the time Smith met with those boys at the diner,” Lich added.

  Mac nodded, but he was getting anxious. He looked at his watch, which now said 4:10 p.m. Time was running out and, while they were confirming the players, it wasn’t getting them any closer.

  “We know who it is now,” Lich said, pulling Mac to a corner. “We know it’s Brown and the Muellers.”

  “Which is great, we’ve figured out who’s behind it. But where are the girls? We’re no closer to answering that.”

  “Maybe we tell Burton, a few select others, see if we can spread the word quietly.”

  Mac ran that around in his head, thinking about what Dick said, thinking it might be time to broaden their little group in the know. “Maybe…” he started, when his cell phone rang. It was Sally, reporting that Jupiter and Hagen narrowed the source of the pipe. “Okay, so I have Hanlin’s in Brainerd, Hankley’s in Grantsburg, or Hanburg’s in Wyoming, just north of Forest Lake up Interstate 35,” Mac repeated as he wrote down all of the stores on his notepad.

  “What’s with Hanburg’s?” Zorn asked, overhearing Mac.

  Mac pulled the phone away from his ear. He figured anything he said in front of Zorn or Miller was fine. He gave them a quick rundown on the girls being buried alive. Zorn looked sick, probably thinking that wood purchased from his business had been used for that purpose. “There’s PVC piping these guys used. You don’t sell that here. We think it came from one of those three stores.”

  “Two things,” Zorn said, a dead serious, pissed-off look on his face. The small-town friendly demeanor was long gone. “I know Freddy Hanburg out in Wyoming. He owns that store. He’d be sick about this. I’ll call him for you right now.”

  “And I’ll call the Wyoming chief,” Mitchell added.

  “You said there were two things,” Mac said. “What’s the other?”

  “The Mueller kids are from Chisago Lakes. That’s ten miles up the road from Wyoming. You don’t have much time left from what you boys are telling me. If I were you boys, I’d look there first.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Hey! I know her.”

  5:10 p.m.

  Fifty minutes until the ransom call. Wyoming was thi
rty-five miles east from Osseo. With the light holiday traffic, Mac made the drive in a little over twenty minutes, his portable roller pushing what traffic there was over to the slow lane. Hanburg’s hardware sat on the main drag of Wyoming, a quarter mile east of I-35.

  “We’re getting our fill of small towns these last couple of days,” Lich said as Mac skidded to a stop in front of the hardware store. The Chisago County sheriff and Wyoming police chief were waiting in front, along with a man in his mid-fifties, sporting a large beer belly and a flowered shirt that looked like a tent. He had the look of a walrus, with a bushy mustache and two-day old razor stubble.

  Mac and Lich jumped out, showed their credentials, and quickly exchanged introductions. “Ray Zorn told you what we’re here for?” Mac asked Hanburg.

  “He did,” Hanburg answered over his shoulder as he opened the front door to the store. “I’ll do anything I can to help you boys.” Hanburg’s was an old-school hardware store. Inside the door was an island checkout area with registers on either side. To the right was a more open area for lawn mowers, tillers, and snow blowers. The back of the store was a maze of metal shelves. It reminded Mac, oddly, of the hardware store at Fat Charlie’s place in North Minneapolis.

  “Can you take a look at these photos? Tell us if any of these people were in your store recently?” Mac asked as they walked to Hanburg’s office in the back.

  Hanburg took a look, but shook his head. “I couldn’t tell ya. But I’ve made calls to all my guys, and they’re on their way here. Maybe they can be more helpful to you.”

  “When will they be here?” Lich asked impatiently. “We’re on a tight clock.”

  “I know you are,” Hanburg replied. “I told them to hurry, not optional if they wanted to remain employed. They’re good fellas who work for me. They’re hustlin’ in. It’s rough you know, it’s…”

  “…a holiday,” Mac interrupted, frustrated. “That’s been an issue all day.”

  Hanburg sat in his metal desk chair, pulled up to the computer, and started working the keyboard and mouse. “You boys got a picture of the piping? There are different kinds. I want to look for the right ones.”

  Mac pulled three still photos out of his folder and handed them over.

  Hanburg looked at the sticker. “That looks like one we sell. Let me run a search here. What do you think, back a month or two?”

  “At the most,” Mac answered, walking around behind Hanburg and sitting on a corner of the desk. Within a minute, the store owner had a report up on his screen. It showed purchases of the PVC pipe over the past two months, providing dates, amounts purchased, and payment methods. There were more than fifty purchases, many of them bulk sales to local building and plumbing contractors.

  “How many are in cash?” Mac asked.

  Hanburg narrowed the search more. “I’ve got five that paid in cash.”

  • • • • •

  With Mac and Lich now on the PVC pipe, Sally, Jupiter, and Hagen searched for any connection between Smith or the Muellers and anyone from a list of cops provided by Double Frank and Paddy the day before.

  “We’re not finding anything,” Jupiter admitted.

  “Not even a sniff,” Hagen added.

  “Let’s take a look at the FBI people working the case,” Sally said.

  “You want me searching FBI personnel files?” Hagen asked, concern in his voice. Jupiter flipped up an eyebrow as well.

  Sally didn’t hesitate. “Do it.”

  • • • • •

  Carrie kept talking, about anything and everything, her family, friends, boyfriend, job hopes, aspirations, school, everything. She talked about her whole life, as if she wanted to relive it one last time, which she knew she might be doing. Talking about it let her make a mental escape, if only temporarily. It put her mind in a place outside the box, a place where there was light and sun, and she could move wherever and however she wanted to.

  Shannon wasn’t carrying along with the conversation.

  She was barely conscious.

  Carrie held her tight, trying to keep her awake. She talked to her, rubbed her arms and legs, doing anything she could to keep Shannon conscious and comfortable. Carrie was trying to buy as much time as possible, praying somebody would get to them soon.

  Over the last hour, Carrie kept talking, about TV shows, her favorite music, and even about politics, a first for her, just to show how few topics were left to comment on. Then she started talking about Jessica Alba. “I mean, that girl is so beautiful. I can’t imagine what she does to keep her body looking that good, can you?”

  Shannon didn’t respond.

  Carrie shook her shoulder, “Shannon, doesn’t Jessica Alba have a great body?”

  Shannon mumbled incoherently.

  “Shannon! Shannon! Wake up, honey! Wake up!” Carrie babbled on for a few minutes before she realized it was no use. Shannon had warned that this could happen. Her body was shutting down. Time was running out.

  • • • • •

  Gail Carlson pulled into the gas station across the street from Hanburg’s hardware. She’d heard the call come through on the Wyoming police band, a call for the chief, asking him to meet two St. Paul police detectives at Hanburg’s. Carlson called Foxx on her way out the door, telling her that her hunch may have paid off.

  The veteran reporter jumped into her black Jeep Cherokee and raced from Minneapolis up to Wyoming, a half hour to the north. Now she slumped down in her driver’s seat, looking up at her rearview mirror, watching the police cars and a black Ford Explorer parked in front of the store. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Foxx.

  “Where you at, Gail?” Foxx asked without preamble.

  “Across the street from Hanburg’s hardware. I’m looking at two patrol cars and a black Ford Explorer.”

  “I’ll bet that’s Mac McRyan, that’s what he drives,” Foxx exclaimed, with just a touch of glee in her voice. “Can you see anything else?”

  “No, but people are starting to arrive, so they must be on to something. So what are they on to?” Carlson asked. “You want to let me in on it?”

  Foxx related her experiences from the night before.

  “So something’s going on up here,” Carlson said agreeably.

  “Yeah, I just don’t know what.”

  • • • • •

  The employees of Hanburg’s hardware started filing in. Mac and Lich were talking to them back in Hanburg’s office, showing the photos. It was going nowhere. Nobody recognized any of the pictures. There were some comments about people being vaguely familiar, but nobody said, “Yeah, I’ve seen Dean or David or Monica Reynolds or Smith Brown in here recently.”

  “Fuck me,” Mac said, leaning over the desk.

  “What next?” Lich said. We’ve got what?” He looked at his watch. “Twenty-five minutes until the call?”

  Mac looked at the floor, “We put out the description. Brown and the Muellers are probably hanging around for the money drop. Maybe we pick them up that way.” He said it without much conviction. Mac didn’t believe it was going to be that simple.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Lich replied. “At least give it to our people. People we know we can trust. We still keep it close to the vest, but at the same time, we’ve got eyes out looking.”

  “Do it,” Mac replied. “Call Riles. We should start driving back that direction anyway.”

  Lich pulled out his cell phone and started dialing and walked down a back hallway, away from Mac.

  “No go, huh?” Hanburg asked sympathetically.

  “Long-shot to begin with,” Mac replied, exhaling loudly as he collapsed into a folding chair. He felt like they were close. If only they had more time, they might have pulled this off.

  “Hey! I know her,” a voice belted out from the front of the store.

  “Who said that? Who said that?” Mac said, flying out of Hanburg’s office into the front of the store.

  “I did,” said a short, heavyset man who
was a dead ringer for Larry the Cable Guy. “My name’s Todd Crawford.”

  “How do you recognize her?”

  “That’s Monica Mueller, and those are her brothers Dean and David. I went to high school with them back in the day.”

  “That’s great, Todd,” Mac answered. “But were any of them in here recently?”

  Todd nodded. “Monica was about two, maybe three or so weeks ago.”

  “How do you know it was her?”

  “Oh it was her. I went to high school with her. I was a couple of years behind, but everyone knew who Monica was. She was a looker back then. She still is now, for that matter.”

  “Did she recognize you?”

  “I doubt it,” Crawford responded with a laugh. “She didn’t have much time for my kind back in high school.”

  “Which was what?”

  “Burnout, smoking, in the back forty,” Crawford said, and then added smiling, “Of course, Detective, that was back then. Now I’m a fine, upstanding family man.”

  Mac ignored the jocularity and asked, “Recall what she bought?”

  Crawford nodded, “Sure. Pipe—PVC pipe, I think—and a long extension ladder. Odd things for a woman to buy, generally—it’s probably why I noticed her to begin with. It was a Saturday. It was real busy here in the store, people everywhere. I was working my register on one side of the counter and she went to one on the other side. She’s a smaller gal, and she was carrying this big piece of PVC pipe, and she asked for somebody to get the extension ladder for her, so that’s what drew my attention at first.”

  “How’d you recognize her? Was it obviously her?” Mac wanted to make sure Crawford was on the level.

  Crawford shook his head. “Not at first. She had on a visor and sunglasses, so I didn’t recognize her right away. But she took her sunglasses off, put them up on top of the visor, you know, like golfers do?”

  Mac knew what he meant. He did it himself when he played, usually when he putted.