The St. Paul Conspiracy

by Roger Stelljes

  What Jupiter had done since he sold his business was explore what could be done with computers and video. He had started another small business that developed programs to convert video into numerous uses, but it didn’t eat up a lot of his time. So, to keep busy, he also worked freelance for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, helping when computer and video skills were needed. Now was such a case.

  Mac looked at his watch, 3:40 a.m. “Jupiter’s going to love this,” he said as he dialed him up. Jupiter answered on the third ring.

  “Whoever this is,” a sleep-slurred voice said, “it better be good.”

  “Still wearing Tough Skins?”

  Silence on the other end for a moment. “Mac?”

  “Jupe, I need a big favor. I need it right now, and I think you can help me.”

  “With what?”

  “Identifying a serial killer.”

  The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) was located on Maryland Avenue, just north of downtown St. Paul. Jupiter, who lived half an hour away, arrived to find Mac and Riles waiting in the lobby with coffee and a bag of donuts. A smallish man with messy, blondish hair and round glasses, he looked like the computer geek he was.

  “This’ll challenge all of your skills, Jupe,” Mac said.

  “Hmpf,” Jupe snorted. “We’ll see about that,” he replied cockily as he unlocked the door into a computer and video lab. Jupe slung a bag off of his shoulder.

  “What’s in there?” Riles asked, pointing at the bag.

  “Some of my own equipment. From what you said on the phone, we might need to independently upgrade the state’s equipment to flesh this out.” He gave a knowing wink.

  Mac handed Jupiter the DVD, and Jupiter put it into his computer drive. He pulled the image up and watched the key section a few times. He kept playing it back and forth.

  “Well. It’s awfully grainy, but I might be able to clean it up some.”

  “How quickly, Jupe?”

  “It’ll take some time.”

  “How much?” Mac pressed.

  “Not sure, buddy. Gimme me six, maybe eight hours, and we’ll have a better idea. It’s very grainy, and it is from a long, long, long way away. As I look at it, you can only really make out the right side of the plate.”

  They looked at the video. Jupiter pointed, “See, there’s a little shading there. I don’t think you’ll get the left side of the plate. But I might be able to get something off the right side.”

  “Thanks, Jupe,” Mac said yawning.

  “You boys are free to sack out here,” Jupe pointed to some cots stacked in a corner.

  “Thanks, man, I owe ya.”

  “You kidding, Mac? I live for this shit.”

  Jupiter sat down and started to go to work. Mac and Riles looked at one another and their watches-5:25 a.m. They lifted down a couple cots from the corner.

  “The state, always providing plush accommodations,” Riles muttered.

  Mac woke up startled, momentarily trying to get his bearings. “Oh, yeah, I’m at the BCA,” he groaned, yawning and scratching his head. He looked at his watch 12:05 p.m. Holy cow, he’d slept awhile. He woke up to find the computer screen showing a program running but no Jupiter. Pat was still sleeping, and Mac let him keep going. Sleep had been hard to come by for Riles as of late.

  Just then Jupe came back in, carrying a tray of coffee and some sandwiches. Mac grabbed one of each, and Jupe quietly explained how he had been breaking down the frame that had the best view of the van’s plate. He had then been working the area of the picture where they could see the license plate. He was refining the picture, trying to get the most out of the pixels. The last picture showed the plate, and Jupe had been right. They would only be able to see the right side of the plate, which was usually numbers. Right now it was still very blurry, three black, squarish blobs on the screen.

  “The program I’m running it through now should clean it up as good as I can do anyway,” which was probably as good as anyone could do. “Should take another twenty minutes or so.”

  Mac took a bite of his sandwich and looked the picture over. Riley started to come alive, rolling off the cot, smelling the coffee and sandwiches. “Anything?” he asked anxiously.

  “Not yet,” Mac replied.

  “We’ll know soon,” Jupe added.

  They talked for twenty minutes. Jupe was interested in the Daniels case, and Mac gave him the run down. Jupe asked about women, and Mac gave him the scoop on Sally.

  “She sounds like a nice gal,” Jupe said.

  “Yeah, she is.”

  They talked a little longer about nothing in particular. Finally Jupe said, “Let’s see what we have.” Jupiter maneuvered the mouse and opened a program, and there it was.

  It was still a little fuzzy, but it wasn’t numbers. They had letters, and they were clear enough to Mac, “F-M-G.”

  “That’s odd” Riles said, “These are reversed.”

  Mac looked a little closer. He was right; the numbers should be on the left side, “Looks like maybe we can make out a number there.”

  “What is it?” Jupe said, squinting at the picture.

  “It’s a five or a six I think,” Riles said, also squinting.

  Mac took a closer look at the upper right-hand corner of the picture. Along the top of the license plate, above the letters, was what looked like a grainy circle with a house or, wait, the angling of the roof? Mac pointed to it, “Riles, what you make of this?”

  Riles looked, moving his head closer and squinting at the screen, “Those ain’t pine trees.”

  “Yeah, looks like a barn and a farm scene,” Mac replied, and added, “and the letters are on the right side.”

  “What in the hell are you guys talking about?” Jupe asked.

  Riles and Mac smiled at each other and then looked at Jupe, uttering in unison, “Wisconsin.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “This one looks interesting.”

  Riley called in the partial plate number while Mac drove well over the speed limit back to the station, his flasher and siren parting traffic like the Red Sea. Jupe had come through big time. They finally had a break. Mac could hear the excitement in Riles’s voice as he called into Rockford. Mac also heard the obligatory, “You gotta be shitin’ me,” rejoinder shouted through the phone.

  “God, I hope that plate matches up,” Riles said when he hung up. “Rock’s already starting a computer search.”

  Mac and Riles walked into the conference room with Rock and the rest of the detail waiting with an extra bounce in their manner. They had a break, and everyone was ready to go. They practically wanted to reach through the computer monitors to grab the information. The printer was spitting out reams of paper.

  “Rock, what’ve you got going here?” Riles asked.

  “Report, Wisconsin Econoline vans with F-M-G and a five or six,” Rock replied, “We’ll make copies and start working through them.”

  The printer burped out the last piece of paper. A detail guy grabbed the paper out of the printer and sprinted out of the room. He was back within five minutes with a stack of reports.

  They got started working through the reports, and Lich chuckled out loud.

  “What?” asked Rockford.

  “Mac.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s got a horseshoe up his ass.”

  “Thank God,” Riles added.

  Mac cringed. “We haven’t found anything yet, boys.”

  “It’s there. I can feel it,” Riles replied.

  “Cases are like anything else. Sometimes you get hot,” Mac mused. It was pure luck that he’d looked up at the video camera and noticed it pointed out at the street. It was pure luck that the camera was pointed at the perfect angle. It was pure luck Jupiter could get a partial plate. “I’m seriously considering getting on a plane to Vegas.”

  “You should at least go out to Mystic Lake Casino,” Rockford added. Mystic Lake Casino was an Indian casino i
n Prior Lake, a southwest suburb of the Twin Cities.

  Mac started working through his report. Rock had printed all records for vehicles with F-M-G and either a five or six and Ford Econoline vans. That brought them fifty-three records, which everyone started reading through. Each record contained information such as date of birth, height, weight, eye color, address, occupation, income and employer among other things.

  The reading was tedious. There were a couple of possibilities yelled out, with everyone turning to the specific record. One was an address in Prescott, and another in Grantsburg, both in western Wisconsin. The vans were both lighter colored. One was registered to a woman. They were close enough that they were put into the possible pile.

  One of the guys ran across the street to Wang’s for take out. Gut bomb Chinese food-nothing better. They emptied out the pop machine to wash it all down. The conference table was full of empty white boxes and soda cans. The coffee machine was started, and a few scattered white Styrofoam cups littered the table. It was not a good diet mix. Everyone was belching, and more than one person asked about Tums.

  Then they had a real hit.

  Riles shouted, “Forty-six looks interesting.”

  Everyone started flipping pages. Mac was on record forty-four at the time, turned the page and read out loud, “Forty-six. Dirk Knapp. Age twenty-nine. Resides in Hudson, Wisconsin. Has a 1997 Ford Econoline Van registered in his name.”

  “What’s he do?” someone yelled, not yet to the page.

  Mac scrolled down the page with his index finger. Bingo. “He’s employed as a driver by Quick Cleaners on University Avenue,” Mac answered. He grinned.

  That got everyone’s attention. Quick Cleaners was a large dry cleaning shop and did a huge volume of clothing and uniform dry cleaning. It would not be uncommon to see a Q Cleaner van anywhere in St. Paul and especially on University. In fact their main location was on University.

  There was a buzz in the room. This was a good possibility. Everyone broke into conversation, people fighting to speak over one another. Mac sat back and took it all in. It was the sound of guys who, after working a case for a couple of months with no success, finally saw a ray of light. They had a lead, and excitement simply took over. Any semblance of order was momentarily lost.

  Finally, Riles jumped in, “Hey, shut the fuck up. We have some others to go through here, so let’s settle down,” then to Mac, “Anything else?”

  “Was in the Marines, medically discharged in 2000. No criminal record.”

  “Medical discharge? Anything on that in the record?” someone asked.

  “Not that I see,” Mac replied, shaking his head.

  “Okay, make a note of that,” Riley ordered. “If we need to, we’ll see if we can get those records. How many more do we have to go through?”

  “Seven.”

  “Okay. Let’s get through them. Then we’ll get back to Knapp.”

  Of the seven remaining records, there was one other mildly interesting candidate from Elk Mound, but nothing as close to what they thought they should be looking for as Knapp. Consequently everyone in the room was keyed up to take a closer look at Dirk Knapp. It was 7:45 p.m., and everyone felt like it was 7:45 a.m. with a full night’s rest under their belt.

  Rockford said what was on everyone’s mind, “Road trip to Hudson anyone?”

  Hudson, twenty miles east of St. Paul just across the St. Croix River and into Wisconsin. The Wisconsin counterpart to Stillwater, Hudson, was a quaint town, with a main street and old brick-front stores and shops. In the summer, the private marinas filled with river pleasure boats. The shoreline was dotted with numerous restaurants and bars with docks so that people could stop in while boating and have dinner and drinks. Now that it was November, the river, docks and restaurants were quiet. Knapp’s address put his home just north of Hudson, resting along Wisconsin State Highway 35.

  They made a convoy to Hudson. All that was missing was, “This is the Rubber Duck and a 10-4, good buddy.” Eight detectives made the trek out. More had wanted to come, but Riles held them off, wanting to get a look at Knapp’s place before half the St. Paul Police Department camped outside his front door. At 9:30 p.m., they all stopped in the parking lot of an Italian restaurant on the north side of town. A call ahead to Hudson was made and the police chief met them in the parking lot. “Whatever you boys need, let me know. We’re glad to help.” He gave them a rundown of the road ahead and where Knapp’s place was.

  Riles, Mac, Lich, and Rockford left the others at the restaurant and cruised Knapp’s place, which was another half mile up the road on 35.

  Knapp’s house sat on the west side, one hundred yards back from the road. There was a bright yard light that illuminated an old white, two-story, clapboard farmhouse, two out buildings and a large red barn. A faint light peered through the front picture window. In addition to the van, Knapp also had a 1999 Grand Am registered in his name. They saw neither vehicle. It looked as if nobody was home.

  They slowly drove by, taking a look. There were few trees obstructing the view, and recently harvested farmland surrounded the home. Farm equipment was noticeably absent. There were no homes nearby on that side of the road.

  “Should be pretty easy to see him coming and going,” Rock remarked.

  “If we can find a place to sit and watch. We can’t exactly sit at the end of the driveway unnoticed,” Mac replied.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Riles added.

  A housing development was springing up a quarter mile up the road on the right side, opposite Knapp’s place. Riles drove down to the development and turned right. Three homes were under construction on the right side of the street. Between the second and third was a vacant lot that eventually would hold a home. It was a pile of dirt for the time being. Riley turned the van around, and they pulled along the curb. They could see through the vacant lot to Knapp’s place.

  “Here’s one spot,” Rockford stated.

  It turned out that for now it was the only one that they could find to watch Knapp’s place without drawing attention. They drove by the farmhouse one more time then went back to the others waiting at the restaurant. Riley gave the orders for the night. Two would wait at the restaurant and watch from the south, while the other two would take up the spot in the housing development. Riles ordered Mac, Lich, and Rock home.

  “What about you, Riles?” Rock asked.

  “I’m going home too, I’m exhausted.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “The military haircut, the spit-shined shoes.”

  Beep, beep, beep. Mac reached over and turned off the alarm. He sat up and yawned and took a closer look at the clock, 6:30 a.m. Riles had sent him home at 10:30 p.m. He’d called Sally on the way home, and she had him come over. Five minutes after hitting the sack, he was asleep. Never a deep sleeper or someone who required anymore than four or five hours, Mac crashed hard and slept soundly. Several hours of sleep left him feeling refreshed.

  He swung his feet out of bed, rubbed his eyes and yawned. He got up, scratched his ass as he went over and looked out the window. A gust of wind rattled the pane, and the leaves skipped down the street. It was overcast, another typical cloudy, windy, chilly November day.

  The shower was running. He wondered if Sally was feeling as refreshed as he was. Mac headed for the shower to find out.

  Two hours later, he checked his watch as he pulled up to the Grand Brew. He wanted his usual double latte to start the day, even if he was starting much later than usual. Mac was one for routines, and this was one of them.

  As he walked inside the coffee shop, he had a smile on his face as he thought about the last two hours. Sally had indeed been refreshed. While she gave him the obligatory, “Men are animals,” when he jumped into her shower, they had quickly moved to the bed.

  Later, as they dressed, Mac filled her in on Knapp.

  “What are you guys going to do?

  “We’ll follow him and see what develops. We can’t eve
n be sure that this is the guy.” Mac took a bite of his toast and, with a half-full mouth, said, “But it feels right.”

  Sally sipped her juice. “How come?”

  “Just does. Instinct, intuition, gut. Whatever it is, this is the break the case needed.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Sally said as she bit into her toast. “You guys thinking about a search warrant?”

  “I’m thinking our case on this guy is a little thin. But I imagine we’ll be talking about it” Mac replied. “Before we get that far, we have to see the van first.” He took a sip of his juice. “Another thing that concerns me about going for a search at this point is that he’s been so good at leaving nothing behind for evidence. He probably has that van clean as a whistle. If we go for the warrant, find nothing, then where does that leave us?”

  “I see your point,” Sally replied. “So you follow?”

  “Yeah. If he sticks to his pattern, maybe we catch him in the act or something.”

  Twenty minutes later, Mac pulled the door open to the Grand Brew and headed inside. He ordered his usual, paid his usual and headed out.

  Sally got into her office just before 9:00 a.m., turned on her computer and picked up her phone to check voicemails. Only three messages, which was a pleasant surprise. She punched in her computer password and heard a knock on the door. Oh oh. She turned to see Helen.