Deadly Stillwater

by Roger Stelljes

  “Those buses must be thirty, maybe forty feet long,” Rock said.

  “If not longer,” Riles responded and then to Burton he said, “They’re going to run the chief and Lyman through the crowds at the Taste and try to lose us.”

  Burton’s voice came over the radio. “We’re flooding the Taste of Minnesota. I want units converging on that location now.”

  “That’ll help,” Rock said, relieved.

  “About fuckin’ time we got after it,” Riles added.

  The bus pulled up to the stop. The chief and Hisle were out of their view now, hidden behind the bus.

  “Do I turn?” Rock asked, anxious.

  “Hold here,” Riles responded coolly. “We have temporarily lost visual,” he reported. “We are blocked by the bus.” They didn’t have enough assets in the area at the right spots. “If they get on, we’ll follow.”

  “Copy that,” Burton answered.

  Twenty seconds later, the bus’s brake lights went off and it pulled east down Kellogg boulevard. There was nobody remaining at the bus stop.

  “Be advised, Flanagan and Hisle are on the bus,” Riley reported.

  Rock turned left and followed.

  Lich accelerated along the path, which had started to smooth out. The sheriff and his deputies followed behind them. The tall grass was halfway up the doors on the Explorer at points as the trail snaked its way towards the tree line. A green metal stake appeared to their left, just as the sheriff said.

  “That’s the property line for the park,” Mac explained. The trees were getting ever closer.

  The tire tracks turned in a slow arc to the left until they ran parallel with the tree-line, now two hundred yards to the right.

  “God, I wish I had the laptop with me,” Mac muttered as he closed his eyes again, pulling up the video in his memory bank. He recalled the van turning to run parallel to the tree line and then abruptly turning right, into the high grass, directly to the woods. Opening his eyes, he saw it, fifty feet ahead, a right turn into the high grass. “Turn right.”

  “I got it, partner. I remember this from yesterday,” Lich said, slowing the Explorer and turning right to follow the fresh tire tracks. “These aren’t too old Mac. A day or two at the most.”

  Mac nodded. The adrenaline was rushing through him now as Lich closed in on the edge of the trees. “Where is it?” Mac said. “Where is it?” He peered at the line of trees, looking for it.

  “What? What are you lookin’ for?”

  “That!” Mac pointed at a tree with orange tape tied around it. “That orange tie. That was on the video. They’re here. They’re here.” He grabbed a flashlight out of the glove compartment and jumped out of the truck before it had even stopped and ran frantically along the tree line, looking for the next sign. Where had they gone in? Mac worked his way down the edge of the tree line to the right of the orange tape. That felt like the right way. The box was wide. It would have been natural to slide it out of the van and walk straight back. The opening needed to be wider to allow them to operate in the dense trees.

  He found it forty feet back from where they were parked, an opening with a jagged path that angled further into the trees. Crouching down, he saw matted-down grass and brush. The trees along the path showed broken branches and scraped bark. The area had been trampled through and recently.

  “In here,” Mac said, following the trampled path into the woods, Lich was right behind, with the sheriff and his men trailing with shovels. “We’re looking for a white PVC pipe,” Mac yelled back. “At most, it’ll be sticking up three or four inches out of the ground.”

  Mac moved another fifty feet ahead and stopped, wiping the perspiration from his brow. He could feel his hair soaking with sweat and his shirt clinging to his body. There were fresh tracks in the ground straight ahead of him; another set branched to the right off of a larger tree. Lich tracked to the right, while Mac moved straight ahead, deeper into the woods. The mosquitoes hovered in vicious swarms. Within fifteen feet of the split they walked into a clearing, maybe twenty by twenty feet. A thick layer of loose branches and leaves covered the forest floor. Mac panned right to left with his flashlight, and the light bounced off of something unnaturally white beneath a camouflaging layer of twigs and branches.

  “There! There it is!” Mac yelled, running and then sliding down to his knees, ripping the debris away from the open pipe.

  “CARRIE! CARRIE! CARRIE FLANAGAN! SHANNON HISLE! WE’RE HERE! WE’RE HERE!” Mac yelled down the pipe. He waved frantically to the deputies. “Get

  those shovels over here! We’ve found them! We found them! He bent down again, mouth to the pipe, shouting, “CARRIE! SHANNON! WE’RE HERE! WE’RE HERE!”

  Carrie held Shannon in her arms. Shannon’s breathing had become more labored, and she was showing no signs of consciousness for the last few minutes. It was just after six now. Carrie didn’t think she had any tears left, but she started to cry one more time.

  Sobbing, she almost didn’t hear it. Then she thought her mind was playing tricks on her. It was there and then it was gone. But then it was there again, muffled, coming from the air pipe, but it was unmistakable. “Carrie! Shannon! Hang on!”

  She scrambled over to the vent and yelled as loud as she could. “HELP! HELP! WE’RE DOWN HERE, WE’RE DOWN HERE! HELP US! HELP US!”

  “I think I heard something,” Mac said, holding up his hand. Everyone froze. He heard the voice, faint beneath the earth. “I hear them! They’re down there! They’re down there! DIG!”

  The deputies dug haphazardly, throwing dirt everywhere. “How far down are they?” the sheriff asked.

  “Four feet, maybe five.” Mac replied. “In a large wood box, two feet high, four feet wide, six feet long, running to the left of the pipe.”

  Four deputies were working furiously in the loose soil. Mac stood up and Lich gave him a big hug, lifting him off the ground. “You son of a bitch. You unbelievable son of bitch.”

  Mac paused to re-gather his wits. “Sheriff, we’re going to need air ambulance out here. Shannon Hisle is a type 1 diabetic. She’s been without insulin for at least two days, probably more. She’s going to be in rough shape. Get an ER doc on that chopper, and I want you to call North Memorial, not Regions in St. Paul.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a long story, but someone is working this from the inside. So if we fly into St. Paul, that could end up bad for the chief and Hisle. You need to do this quietly, Sheriff — keep it off the airwaves.”

  “I understand,” the sheriff replied, reaching for a cell phone instead of a radio.

  “One other thing,” Mac said. “In the center console of my Explorer is a black bag. It has a syringe and insulin in it, bring that back.”

  The sheriff nodded and jogged as quickly as he could out of the woods, Lich in tow.

  “Dick, call Riles,” Mac yelled after them.

  “Where are these guys going?” Heather Foxx’s cameraman said as they followed the pickup truck over the Wabasha Bridge and the Mississippi River below.

  “I think toward the Taste of Minnesota — Harriet Island. The chief and Hisle must be on that bus,” Foxx answered. “This could be really good. Shoot some footage.”

  “What’s up with the ransom?’ Mac asked Lich as he hung up his cell phone.

  “The chief and Hisle are on a bus heading to the Taste of Minnesota. Riles thinks they’re going to try to run the chief and Hisle through the crowd and either do a drop of the money or try to lose the chief and Lyman.”

  “Are they tracking them?”

  “Only with an eyeball,” Lich replied. “They hooked up body mics and tracking in the bags, but now both are compromised.”

  “How?” Mac asked, and Lich explained.

  “We have the girls. Let’s just move in.” Mac griped. “We’ll get Brown and the Muellers later.”

  “That’s what I said,” Dick answered. “But Riley wants that fucking mole, and he figures the best way to get him is t
o catch Brown and the Muellers at the Taste of Minnesota. Burton doesn’t know about the girls, but he senses the danger to the chief and Lyman as well. He’s locking Harriet Island down. He’s got two choppers overhead. He’s flooding the area with agents and cops, the whole nine yards.”

  Thump.

  Mac turned his head.

  The deputy pushed the shovel down again.

  Thump. Thump.

  It was the unmistakable sound of a shovel hitting wood.

  “Clear the top! Find the sides! Find the sides!” Mac yelled frantically. A deputy quickly found one side and Mac jumped down into the pit, kneeled down and noted the screws, one every six inches along the side. He climbed back out and looked to another deputy standing to the side. He climbed back out and looked to another deputy standing to the side. “The top is screwed into this thing. We’re going to need crowbars, tire irons, anything to help pry the top off. Go!”

  The deputy ran out while another retuned with an update. “North Memorial’s chopper is in route, ER doc on board. ETA is less than fifteen minutes.”

  The deputies worked frantically to dig out the sides of the box enough so they could have leverage to pry up the top of the box. It took a couple of minutes of digging and clearing. The deputy returned with four crowbars and two tire irons.

  Mac and Lich jumped down into the pit to the right side of the box. The remaining deputies surrounded the box. Everyone jammed the crowbars and tire irons in, prying in between the top and side pieces, pushing down with all their strength to pry the top off. At first the screws wouldn’t give, but under continuous pressure, the screws started to come loose, groaning loudly, and the top came off with an ear-shattering pop and was pushed to the left.

  Everyone froze.

  Carrie Flanagan laid on the right and Shannon Hisle the left. Flanagan looked up and shaded her eyes with her left hand. Her hair was matted, and there were dirty tear streaks down her cheeks. Hisle was curled up in a fetal position, unmoving.

  Mac jumped into the box, between the girls, and helped Carrie up. Two of the sheriff’s deputies lifted her out. Mac knelt down to Shannon, checking her pulse and listening to her chest. She was breathing. Her breathing was rapid, and Mac noted her breath smelled almost fruity.

  “Carrie, how long has she been like this?”

  “I don’t kn… kn… know for sure,” Carrie chattered. “She’s been fading in and out for the last couple of hours.”

  “What’s her status?” the sheriff asked.

  “She’s unconscious. Her pulse is rapid and so is her breathing,” Mac replied as he lifted Shannon and handed her up out of the box. He climbed out and took her limp body from the deputies, carrying her as the group made its way out of the woods. Once clear of the trees Mac gently laid Hisle down next to the trucks, lightly slapping her face.

  “Shannon! Shannon! God damn it, you hang on, do you hear me?”

  He head lay against the deputy’s lap.

  The sheriff dropped down a first aid kit next to them. Mac checked her pulse while Lich opened up the box and grabbed the blood pressure monitor.

  “I’ve got her pulse at 120,” Mac said.

  “Blood pressure is low,” Lich reported. “Eighty-one over forty-five.”

  “The black bag!” Mac said. “Get me the Glucose Meter.”

  Dick handed it to Mac and he tested Shannon.

  “What’s it say?” Lich asked.

  “The glucose is high, way high. She needs insulin.”

  Lich reached inside the black bag and handed Mac a needle and small bottle of insulin. Mac pulled the cover off the needle and stuck it into the top of the bottle, drawing out ten units of regular insulin, just as Lyman had instructed. He rolled Shannon onto her side and plunged the needle into her lower abdomen, injecting the drug into her system.

  “Will that snap her out of it?” the sheriff asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mac answered. “The girl’s father told us that if she was in this condition when we found her, this is what she would need. After a minute he stood up, leaving the deputy to monitor Hisle’s pulse. He walked over to Carrie, who sat on the bumper of the Explorer with a bottle of water in her hands. Her face was blank, nearly lifeless.

  “I told Shannon you’d find us,” Carrie said weakly as Mac sat down next to her. “I told her you’d find us,” she repeated as she started to cry again. Mac put his arm around her shoulder and held her.

  “Wait a second,” the deputy said, his hand on Shannon’s wrist and his eyes on his watch, “I think we’re getting a little better here.”

  Hisle’s eyes fluttered and her breathing regulated. Mac kneeled down and put his right hand to her face. “That’s it Shannon, come back to us.”

  “W… w… water,” she said weakly. A deputy quickly handed down a bottle, and Mac put it to her lips, letting her take some small sips.

  Mac looked up. Lich smiled broadly as the sound of a chopper rose in the distance. The sheriff moved away and shot up a flare. Within a minute, the helicopter was touching down, the whoosh of the blades matting down the tall grass. The ER doc, in his hospital blues, was out of the chopper and on Shannon in an instant, checking her eyes and pulse. McRyan gave him the status report.

  “You gave her insulin?” the Doc asked.

  “Her glucose was high,” Mac answered. “So she needed insulin. We gave her ten units.”

  “Good,” the doctor answered as he checked Shannon’s glucose again. “The ten units looks like it was a good start.” He reached into his own box of supplies and pulled out another bottle of insulin and administered another ten units. He then set up an IV. The paramedics put her on a stretcher and transported her over to the chopper. The doctor stood up and came to Carrie, “How are you doing, young lady?”

  “I think better,” Mac answered when the young woman said nothing. “She seems okay, physically at least.” They all knew that her injuries would be psychological.

  The doctor looked Carrie in the eye and said, “How about you come with us, okay?”

  Carrie looked at Mac, who smiled and nodded. “You go. I’ll see you at the hospital later.”

  Gail Carlson sat on the county road, a quarter mile away from the farmhouse. It had been nearly a half hour since the police went up to the house. She’d driven down the road a little further, inching closer, but neither the Suburbans nor McRyan’s Explorer were around the farmhouse now. She heard it first, and then saw a North Memorial helicopter, flying low and fast from the south and passing right over the farmhouse. It passed out of her sight, but almost immediately the sound of its rotors changed to one she knew from experience meant that it was landing. Carlson figured it meant one thing. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Heather Foxx.

  “I think McRyan might have found the girls.”

  “Where?”

  Carlson related her current position in Marine on St. Croix. “So where are you at right now?”

  “Following two other cops. We just pulled up to the Taste of Minnesota. The cops are all over a bus that Flanagan and Hisle jumped onto.”

  “So do you want to go with the story? That they found the girls?”

  Foxx heard the question, but was looking at Pat Riley and Bobby Rockford racing back to the pickup and blowing out of the parking lot, siren blaring. Something was amiss. “Not yet Gail. Something’s not right here.”

  Lich smiled around a fresh cigar in his mouth as he handed one to Mac. “God damn it Mac, we found them. Man did you pull a rabbit out of the hat with this one!”

  Mac smiled, reaching out to take the cigar, but he paused when he saw the time on his watch. “We’re not quite done yet, my friend,” he said. “Six twenty-one: they should be at the Taste of Minnesota any minute.”

  Mac’s cell phone chirped. It was Riley. “Do you have the chief? What? Wait. Slow down. Say that again. How in the hell can that happen?”

  “What? What’s wrong?” Lich asked, his smile gone.

  Mac looked at him with a stunne
d expression. “The chief and Lyman weren’t on the bus.”

  34

  “ So we play dumb for now?”

  Smith followed well back of the minivan driven by Flanagan and Hisle on Shepard Road. The street ducked under the Robert Street Bridge and became Warner Road, with the Mississippi River running parallel on the immediate right. Smith, as well as Flanagan and Hisle, were free and clear of the FBI and police.

  As Hisle and Flanagan had waited with the crowd at the bus stop, there was virtually no way for anyone following them to see them as the bus pulled up. Smith and Monica had scouted the location for a month, watching from various positions and angles, anticipating what the police would do. They had discussed contingencies with Burton and ways that he could control the situation from his end.

  The Fourth of July holiday was the key. The arena, convention center, and the skyway that connected the arena to the parking garage would have provided surveillance stations on a normal day. But the skyway and the convention center were closed for the holiday. The only unobstructed view of the bus stop was at the Holiday Inn, where Monica had in fact been watching a white pickup truck parked in the left hand turn lane on West Seventh. The pickup had to be the cops, sitting pat in the turn lane with the hazard lights on through several green lights. Of course, the passenger using binoculars was a dead giveaway as well. Had the truck turned left at just the right time, maybe, just maybe, the police would have seen Flanagan and Hisle slip back ten feet and down into the RiverCentre ramp while everyone else climbed onto the bus.

  Once Flanagan and Hisle were inside the parking ramp, they went down one level to a waiting blue minivan. One minute later, while the police were tailing the bus, the police chief and the lawyer were exiting onto Eagle Street, far below Kellogg Avenue and the bus stop.

  When they exited the ramp, Smith, and only smith, was waiting on the side of southbound Eagle. He watched Hisle and Flanagan approach in his rearview mirror. A dashboard camera in the minivan provided David, who was waiting on the boat, with a live video feed of Hisle and Flanagan as they drove the van. David in turn provided updates to Smith as he followed. The police scanner sat in his passenger seat. It had been quiet, with no sign that the police had yet realized they’d lost them. That wouldn’t last long.