Deadly Stillwater

by Roger Stelljes

  “Yeah,” Mac added, “and given what we have thus far, we’ll need their resources.”

  Riley’s and Peter’s cell phones chirped, and they walked away from the group. Mac left Rock, and he and Lich walked over toward Hisle’s car.

  “So did her old man piss someone off?” Lich asked.

  “Possibly,” Mac answered. Lyman had made the big time both financially and politically. You do that and you’ve made some people mad, very mad, along the way. He’d made millions on class-action and discrimination cases, fighting businesses for years. On the criminal side, he’d tussled with the police departments around town for years. Yet, given his practice, he was still popular with the local police departments. He often waived his hefty retainer and fees to help the men in blue. Consequently, there would be no “what goes around comes around” feeling that cops might have for many of the lawyers they dealt with. The cops would have Lyman’s back on this one.

  “It could be a nut, or…”

  “Or what?” Lich asked following Mac back toward Hisle’s car.

  “Maybe not a nut,” Mac answered blandly as he walked over to the yellow numbered evidence tags by the keys and cell phone. They were lying on the ground, to the right of Shannon Hisle’s car, strewn toward Western Avenue. The way the keys and phone had spilled suggested that whoever grabbed her had come from the left, and with force. The cell phone was a few feet from the car and the keys a good ten feet from the car, nearly reaching the sidewalk separating the parking lot from Western.

  Mac pivoted to his left and scanned the cars parked to the left of Hisle’s. There was a Ford Focus and Chevy Cavalier, both compact cars. The third was a black Ford F-150, a hefty pickup truck. The pickup was parked with its back end pointing out. Mac walked around the truck to the driver’s side and crouched down. There was little of interest on the asphalt, beyond gravel and litter. It would be collected and analyzed but it was unlikely to be of any help. However, there was a definite fresh footprint in a bare patch of black dirt between the alley and the parking lot. Mac called a crime scene tech over. The print looked fresh and was big, probably size twelve or thirteen, Mac thought. The tread of the impression looked like a hiking boot. “Get a picture of that,” Mac directed, “and dust this side of the truck, especially the back quarter panel, for prints.”

  “What do you have?” Lich asked, walking over.

  “The keys and cell phone landed toward Western, to the right of the rear bumper of the car?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So it looks like whoever took Hisle came from this way, by the truck here. Scooped her up and ran to the van on Western. This is a big truck. You could hide behind it and wait for her. There’s a fresh footprint in that bare spot between the alley and the parking lot. If you line it up, the footprint is coming straight, as if the guy came from right across the alley.” Mac pointed toward the back of the office building on the other side of the alley. “The van was across the alley. They know Hisle’s coming out, one guy hides here, the other drives the van from behind the building, down the alley and pulls up along the curb.”

  Lich picked up on the thought. “Yeah. I see what you’re gettin’ at. Our guy comes from this spot. It’s three cars to Hisle. She comes out; he pops out, scoops her up.”

  “Right. Three cars to here is nothing. He’d be on her in an instant,” Mac replied. “I bet that’s what happened.”

  They stood in silence for a moment, and then Mac asked, “But do they know when she’s coming?”

  “Huh?” Lich asked.

  “How do they know she’s coming? I mean, their timing was pretty good.”

  “Beats me. Guy sits and waits for her.”

  “Yeah, but if the guy is hiding behind the truck here, he can’t wait all afternoon can he?”

  Lich nodded, “I see what you’re saying. They had to have an idea of when she was leaving.”

  “So how do they know?”

  “Maybe she always leaves at 5:00 PM.”

  “Maybe,” Mac answered. “But that could be four fifty-five or five ten, depending on her schedule and what not. This is a good spot, but you wouldn’t want to be exposed for too long here. Somebody might still notice if you were here more than a minute or two. No, you’d want to know exactly when she was coming.”

  Lich’s eyebrows went up. “Someone inside?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Mac replied, already walking toward the back door of the cafe.

  Smith peered in the rearview mirror as he slowly backed the van into the garage of the safe house. Once parked, he killed the engine and let the garage door down, not getting out until the door had closed. Once down, he donned a mask to match the ones worn by David and Dean. He climbed out of the van and opened the sliding door for the brothers.

  The safe house was a small, nondescript white 1950s rambler located in a working-class neighborhood a few blocks off of West Seventh Street on St. Paul’s south side. While there were houses on either side and across the street, there was a large wood privacy fence surrounding the back of the property as well as railroad tracks running behind. They’d only been in the house for two days, although it had been rented since June first.

  A stairway in the garage led down to the basement. Smith led the way down as Dean and David, still masked, followed carrying the pixie-sized Hisle. The basement had a small family room, a bedroom, and a full bath. In the bedroom, there were two twin beds with metal frames as well as steel-barred head and footboards. A piece of plywood was screwed into place over the small egress window. A solitary low-watt ceiling light lit the bedroom.

  The two brothers set Hisle down on the bed, and Dean pinned her down. The girl began fighting, perhaps fearing she was going to be raped. But rape wasn’t part of the plan. David pulled the hunting knife attached to his belt and cut the duct tape from her wrists. He then used two pairs of handcuffs to secure each hand to a metal post on the headboard. David then cut the tape around her ankles and manacled each to the footboard. Once the girl was fully secured, Dean pushed off, and she struggled against the cuffs, grunting and pulling to no avail. The men, masks still on, watched the young woman struggle and flail. Smith wanted her to get the last of it out of her system. He wanted and needed her calm. After a few minutes, Hisle began to settle down, exhaustion setting in from fighting her restraints. She wasn’t getting away, and they weren’t doing anything more to her.

  Smith nodded and Dean and David backed away as Smith sat down on the side of the bed and removed the pillow case from her head.

  “Settle down now, Shannon,” Smith said quietly. “We don’t want to harm you. Neither these men nor I is going to rape you or anything like that, so you needn’t worry about those kinds of things.”

  She lay still, but fear showed in her eyes. Smith wanted her calm for what he needed from her. He sat silent for a few moments and let her settle down.

  “I’m going to take the tape off your mouth, okay? But don’t yell,” he said, holding his hand just over her mouth, “If you try to yell, I will have to hurt you. Do you understand? And I really don’t want to do that.”

  Shannon nodded slightly. Smith slowly removed the duct tape, trying not to harm her. She breathed deeply before speaking.

  “What are you going to… do with me?”

  “We have taken you for a specific purpose Shannon. A very specific purpose.”

  “Money? Is it money you want?”

  “ Of course, of course,” Smith answered. “It’s exactly why we chose you, Shannon. Your father has a lot of money, and we want some of it. Now if you play ball with us, and if your dad plays ball…” Smith patted her lightly on her thigh. “Well, everything will work out just fine.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, if you do as we ask, your chances of making it out of this are a whole lot better. If you don’t help us out, well… it certainly could go much worse.”

  “So this is just about money?” she asked.

  “Abso
lutely,” Smith replied, patting her thigh again. “That’s all we’re looking for. If you’re hurt, it makes it harder for us to get paid. So, I assure you, we do not wish to harm you.”

  “How will you convince him you’re not going to harm me?”

  Smith smiled under his mask. The girl was smart, but what would you expect from the daughter of a lawyer — a good lawyer for that matter. “Don’t you spend time thinking about that,” Smith answered. “I don’t have to harm you to make sure your father is motivated to pay what he’s going to have to pay.”

  “How?”

  “Because you’re his little girl and you’re going to help us.”

  The cafe manager was Mike Haines, a balding, soft-spoken man in his late twenties. He placed the original 911 call and did a good job of holding the scene, having all of the patrons and staff stay until the police arrived. Shannon Hisle had worked for him for two years and normally worked Sundays. Pulling the schedules for the past two months confirmed that she’d been schedule for every Sunday until 5:00 PM. Haines said that she liked to work the shift, which was fine by him because it usually wasn’t a busy day and he often had difficulty scheduling staff for it.

  “When she got off at 5:00, was it always right at 5:00, or could it be earlier or later?” Mac asked.

  “She might leave a little early on occasion, maybe at 4:45 or so, but usually she would leave right around 5:00 PM.”

  “What does she have to do when it’s time to leave?” Lich followed up. Haines ran a hand over his balding head.

  “Close out her tables, which are usually just three or four at that point. Make sure her transactions balance, tip the bartender, and that’s pretty much it,” Haines explained.

  “How long would it take her to do all that?” Mac asked.

  “On a Sunday, not long. Five, ten minutes tops.”

  “Where does she do that, settle up?”

  If we’re busy, it would usually be in my office in the back. But on Sundays we’re a little more informal, and I don’t mind if they sit at the bar and drink a soda while they’re doing it. Most of our wait staff does that, and Shannon did it this afternoon.”

  “So what happens is, she sits at the bar, closes everything out, and that’s it?” Mac said, moving toward the bar.

  “Yeah, pretty much,” Haines replied.

  Mac sat on the bar stool, his back to the bar, looking out over the restaurant. He looked to his right, where a small hallway led to the back door, the patio, and then the parking lot where Hisle was abducted. He looked back out into the restaurant, where there were sixteen tables in four rows. To Mac’s left a row of tables sat along the front windows of the restaurant. There were two rows down the center and then a row along the wall to his right. He looked at the back door again.

  “How many people in the restaurant about the time Hisle left?” Mac asked.

  Haines tilted his head, squinted, and pondered for a minute, “I’d say we had maybe four or five tables going at that point.”

  “How about in the half hour before she left?”

  “Give me a minute,” Haines said. “I can go through the receipts and get a count.”

  “What are you thinking?” Riles asked after Haines walked off for the receipts.

  “They had someone on the inside.”

  “How do you figure?” Rock asked, puzzled.

  “She leaves at 5:00 PM or thereabouts on Sundays, right?”

  “Yeah, that gives them a time to be ready.”

  “Fine,” Mac replied, “But let’s assume for a second that our guy is waiting behind that truck for Shannon to leave. He can’t just sit there for five or ten minutes with a mask on and not risk drawing some attention.”

  Riley picked up on the thread.

  “So they know when she’s generally going to leave, but they need to know when she’s heading out so as to be ready.”

  “Right,” Mac said. “Somebody sits in here, eyes the situation, and calls out when she’s getting ready to go.”

  “And this person knows when Shannon is getting ready to go, since she sits up at the bar, having a soda and closing out her tables,” Rock added.

  “Probably because the inside person has been in here on Sundays, watching the pattern and knew when she was getting ready to roll,” Mac finished.

  Just then, Haines came back.

  “In the half hour before Shannon left we had eight tables active.”

  “How many closed out between 4:30 and 5:00 PM? Lich asked.

  Haines reviewed them quickly, “I have four closing out in that time period.”

  “Which is the latest?”

  Haines flipped through the four that closed, looking for the time along the top of the white receipt, “Last one was at 4:52 PM. Shannon closed it out.”

  “How’d the person pay?” Riley asked before the others could spit it out, all thinking the same thing and knowing the answer.

  “Cash.”

  Not a surprise. A credit card would have made it easier, Mac thought.

  “How much was the tab?”

  “$18.76,” Haines replied. “A few iced teas and a sandwich.”

  “Which table?” Mac asked.

  “Four.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Over by the front door.”

  They all walked over to the table. It was empty, except for the ceramic sugar holder and the glass salt and pepper shakers in the middle. Mac stood on the side that backed up to the front door. He could take in the entire restaurant, including the bar and the hallway to the back door.

  “Mr. Haines, do you recall who was sitting here?”

  “Vaguely. Black hair, flowery blouse. She was here for a while, reading a book.”

  “Was she ever on a cell phone?”

  “I think she was from time to time.”

  “Have you seen her in here before?”

  “Yeah, a few times.”

  “Over the years? Last couple of months? What?” Mac asked.

  “Probably more recent,” Haines replied.

  “Do you recall when she left today?”

  “Not exactly when.”

  “Do you think it was before or after Shannon left?”

  “I really can’t recall. I do know she wasn’t here when the patrol car arrived. She wasn’t here when I asked everyone to stay. She was gone by then.”

  “You think she went out the front door?” Lich asked.

  “I don’t recall her going out the back.”

  “We need forensics to work this table over,” Mac said.

  “I’ll go get them,” Lich said and left the group.

  “Your entire staff has to remember this woman as best they can,” Riley told Haines. “We need a name, full description, anything and everything they can think of. Call anyone in who has worked Sundays for the last month. We’ll get a sketch artist down here as well.”

  “Why?” Haines asked.

  Because,” Mac replied, “this person may have sat right here and let the kidnappers know when Shannon bailed.”

  Riley’s cell phone went off again.

  “Riley,” he answered. He nodded his head a few times. “Where?” He took out a notepad and started writing. “Okay… thanks.”

  “What’s up?” Rock asked.

  “We might have the van.”

  “Where?”

  “River Falls.”

  3

  “ Who’s the guy?”

  River Falls, Wisconsin, was a sleepy community half an hour from downtown St. Paul, fifteen miles into western Wisconsin. Mac pulled up to the crime scene tape in front of a bland industrial park. Mac, Dick, Riles, and Rock all filed out of the Explorer and walked up to the officer on guard standing in the opening between two one-story buildings and flashed their shields. The officer took a quick look at their badges and waved them through. Behind the building on the left, they found a burned-out van, a Ford Econoline Cargo. It was white, or at least used to be before it was torched. It was now massively
disfigured with the frame and body distorted by the extreme heat of the fire. The van now listed to the right over the slag of melted tires. As they walked around it, Mac noted a distinguishing feature: a dent that ran for two feet just behind the bottom of the driver’s side door.

  A stocky man in his mid-fifties approached, a large dip of tobacco in his lower right front lip.

  “You guys from St. Paul?” he asked. Everyone nodded. “Paul Fletcher, chief here in River Falls.”

  “Thanks, Chief,” Riles replied and then introduced everyone. “How’d the call come in?”

  Fletcher pulled a little black notebook out of his chest pocket, “Call came in to us around 5:45 PM. The woman over there made the call,” Fletcher pointed to an older lady holding a small terrier, “heard an explosion. She walked around to the back of the building here and found the van in flames.”

  “Did she see anyone, any other vehicles pulling away, anything like that?”

  “Says no,” Fletcher answered, spitting tobacco to the ground. “She was just walking along the street with her little dog and then heard the boom.”

  “How long for you to get here, Chief?” Riles asked.

  “We got here about five minutes later, and the fire department just after that to put it out,” Fletcher said, spitting again off to the side. “It was blown up intentionally. There’s part of some sort of detonator in there and what might have been part of a plastic milk carton. The van has a Minnesota plate. And then we started hearing the radio traffic out of St. Paul about the kidnapping and to keep a look out for a white van, maybe dented. We thought this might be of interest.”

  “Not much left of her,” Lich said.

  “Nope,” Fletcher replied, spitting again. “They did a pretty good job blowin’ ’er up.”

  “I don’t imagine we’ll be able to get any prints or anything out of it,” Rock said.

  “I seriously doubt it,” Fletcher replied. “The blast and fire probably took care of all that. Then us pourin’ that water on it.” Fletcher scratched his head. “Well shit, there probably isn’t much left. Once we realized what might be going on, we left ’er alone. But at that point…” He squinted and shook his head. “It was probably too late.”