by Matt Goldman
Ellegaard bit his upper lip then said, “Let’s just walk the perimeter. See if the thermals pick up anyone. Then call the police.”
Robert Stanley said, “I got two Kevlar vests in case he’s got a gun. That leaves two of us unprotected.”
I said, “Give me your extra vest. I gave mine to the tall blonde.”
“Which one?”
“The pretty one.”
“That could be any one of you fuckers.” Robert Stanley tossed me a vest from his pack.
“Ellegaard’s wearing his. We’re all covered.”
Ellegaard said, “You got a gun, Char?”
She shook her head.
“Ever shoot a pistol before?”
“I grew up on a farm. I shot plenty.”
Ellegaard handed her his Glock. She dropped out the mag and popped it back in. Then we started, moving counterclockwise. Ellegaard kept his thermals on the house the entire trip. It took us forty-five minutes to work our way around to where we’d started. No one saw any sign of life inside the behemoth structure.
“That’s impossible,” said Robert Stanley. “Someone has to be in there.”
Char said, “Maybe there’s an interior room or one in the basement that the thermals can’t penetrate.”
“That’s got to be it,” said Ellegaard.
Someone was thinking of what to say next. Then we heard the whoosh, and something unprecedented happened. Raynard Haas missed.
40
The arrow flew between Char and Robert Stanley. Its fletching brushed the upper arm of Char’s jacket then lodged into the base of a birch tree a yard behind us. Ellegaard yelled, “Get down!”
We scattered into the trees behind the gravel road. Char lay flat on her belly to my left. She said, “He’s on the far side of the lake, based on the angle that arrow stuck in the tree.”
“Char says far side of the lake,” I called to Ellegaard and Robert Stanley.
“He can’t come straight across,” said Stanley from somewhere to my right. “Ice won’t hold him. Eyes on the edges of the lake. Safeties off.”
“Nothing on the thermals,” said Ellegaard. His voice came from the right of Stanley. “I don’t get it.”
I said, “He could be on the far side of the house now.”
“Or he’s back inside,” said Stanley. “The construction could have left a door or window unprotected by the alarm. If anyone would know, it’s the goddamn architect.”
Ellegaard’s rifle went off. In the gunshot’s decay, I heard falling shards of glass followed by a piercing, electronic alarm. Help, in theory, was on the way.
Raynard Haas had miscalculated. He assumed we’d take the bait that he fled north. And almost everyone did. But Haas hadn’t considered the possibility his son, Ben, would mention that The Fiveskins opened for Graham Itasca at Graham’s summer house in Bemidji, a party to celebrate construction crews breaking ground on a Raymond Haas–designed remodel and addition. A party where guests drew on the walls that would soon be knocked down.
That led Ellegaard and me to the same conclusion: Haas had a place to hide. Maybe we wouldn’t have remembered if I hadn’t taken a genuine interest in The Fiveskins and got off topic. I was a fan. That was just dumb luck. So when I saw the signed pieces of Sheetrock in Ben’s bedroom, the existence of Graham Itasca’s summer home rooted deeper in mind.
One thing had bothered me about this case. Lying on my belly in the woods that night, it suddenly made sense.
There was a timing problem. Haas shot an arrow into my shoulder about an hour after Roger Engstrom hired us. An hour wasn’t enough time for Raynard Haas to fake a fingerprint. Either he’d been planning on shooting me for a while or the arrow was prepped and ready for another victim. But that person wasn’t available to get shot, so I got it instead.
I don’t know if the intended victim was Roger or Linnea, but Raynard Haas had planned on framing Kozy for whoever got shot. It made sense. Kozy paid Haley Housh for sex. Kozy was screwing a high school student. His character was shot. He was the perfect patsy.
Haas might have been delusional, but he wasn’t stupid. Outmanned and outgunned, this time he’d run. In order to get away, he’d just have to stick one of us to divert our attention. Even missing human flesh and sticking the arrow into a birch tree had diverted our attention. Maybe he’d already left.
Ellegaard must have been thinking the same thing because he said, “Let’s go around. One rifle and one pistol each direction.”
Stanley said, “Come on, Shap. You cover directly ahead. I’ll focus on the house.”
I said, “Got it,” then joined Robert Stanley, moving counterclockwise around the lake from our position.
Char crouch-walked over to Ellegaard and they started clockwise toward the house. I led with the Ruger. Robert Stanley followed without taking the thermals away from his eyes. We saw and heard nothing before reaching the house then crept up to its east side and stood against the concrete wall of the walkout basement. My phone buzzed. Char had started a group text. She and Ellegaard had made it to the west side of the house. Spread to the corners. One person per corner. It was Ellegaard’s strategy and a good one. Haas couldn’t escape unseen.
Front corners peek around the front edge of the house at exactly 7:45. Another good strategy so we didn’t accidentally surprise and shoot each other.
In old heist movies, people were always synchronizing their watches. You don’t have to do that with cell phones. I took the northeast corner. Robert Stanley took the southeast corner.
Ellegaard updated BPD. On their way.
Raynard Haas was trapped. If he was in the house. If he’d run north and was looking back at the front of the house, we were exposed.
At exactly 7:45, Ellegaard and I stuck our heads around the front edge of the house. No sign of Haas. We each stepped out a few feet, Ellegaard’s rifle with its night vision scope and my Ruger trained on the house. The four garage doors, service door, and double front doors were shut.
Char: My corner clear.
Ellegaard: Clear.
Stanley: Clear.
Shap: Clear.
There was nothing to do but wait for Bemidji PD.
My gut. My understanding. My horror. They surfaced in such rapid succession I can’t remember which came first. The house belonged to Graham Itasca, Minnesota’s third favorite music icon behind Bob Dylan and Prince. Prince had lived in a compound before leaving us too soon. Dylan lived mostly in Los Angeles. When he visited Minnesota, no one knew where.
But everyone knew Graham Itasca spent from late May to December in Bemidji. First cast of fishing season to last blast of duck hunting season. Summer thunderstorms and fall color. The guy couldn’t live without them. There was a recording studio in the house we’d surrounded. Musicians flew in from Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Nashville, New Orleans. From Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. Talents like Mick Jagger, A Tribe Called Quest, Lana Del Rey. The list was deep. Graham Itasca was world famous. And so were his visitors.
So why wasn’t the entire property fenced? The front side of the house was gated at the road. But we’d just walked straight up to it from behind. That meant Graham Itasca was either foolishly trusting, just plain foolish, or the security panel we’d spied through the big glasses was just the beginning. Pressure sensitive sensors in the ground. Thermal sensors hidden in bushes. Solar-powered wireless cameras mounted in trees. Microphones. A safe room inside. And probably—and this is the part that twisted my stomach—an underground escape route.
I texted the group: Check the other side of the lake with the thermals.
A second passed. Or maybe a minute.
Ellegaard shouted, “Got someone! Back across the lake!”
I heard the pop of Char’s pistol. Then the loud crack of rifle shots. I didn’t know if they were Ellegaard’s or Stanley’s. I ran back down the side of the house toward Robert Stanley. More gunfire. Then police sirens. I could smell the cordite of Stanley’s rifle. But I didn�
�t see Stanley. He must have run after Haas. But why would he? He had a rifle.
I tripped and flew forward. Before I hit the ground, I realized what I’d tripped over.
Robert Stanley.
He was down. I scrambled back toward him on my hands and knees. I reached for my phone but was afraid to turn on the flashlight. Maybe Haas had night vision. Maybe he didn’t. On the chance he didn’t, I couldn’t risk making us visible.
More gunshots. Ellegaard yelled “Man down!” I thought he was referring to Stanley.
“Stanley? Are you hit?”
He didn’t answer.
I reached out and felt the cold ground. I crawled on my right hand until it found him. He was on his back. I ran my hand over his legs. Nothing. Then over his Kevlar insulated torso and felt the arrow. I yelled, “Stanley’s hit!” I woke my phone and used only the light from the screen. The arrow stuck in Robert Stanley’s chest. It had sliced clean through the Kevlar. I brought the phone up toward Robert’s face as Char and Ellegaard arrived with flashlights shining.
Robert Stanley looked at me. He blinked. He made no sound. He opened his mouth, but only a bubble of blood escaped his lips. Then Robert Stanley found the strength to shut his eyes so he could die like he’d lived. With dignity.
41
Neither Ellegaard nor I would leave Robert Stanley’s body. Bemidji police arrived. Char walked them through what happened.
When we were cadets, the grisly Minneapolis Police sergeant made the two of us his favorites. That didn’t mean he showed us kindness. Far from it. He said we had the potential to be the best cops in the class. He showed us no leniency. In our physical training, intellectual training, or emotional training.
Robert Stanley said the emotional training was most important. So much of the other police work could be learned in books or at the gun range or on the driving course. We took classes on interrogation and community policing and evidence gathering. But the emotional part of the job could only be learned in the physical presence of victims.
One Sunday Robert Stanley called us at our homes around 4:00 A.M. He said it wasn’t mandatory, but he highly suggested we join him at a crime scene in south Minneapolis. Ellie picked me up and we arrived unshaven and half asleep. Robert Stanley waited for us in the driveway of a small home, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles pushing away the darkness. It wasn’t his case. He didn’t have to be there. He dragged himself out of bed for our benefit.
He led us into the home. Three victims lay dead in the kitchen. A woman and man had each suffered gunshots to the chest. There was blood everywhere. A second man died from a single, self-inflicted gunshot. He had stood with his back to the refrigerator, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
Much of what used to be inside the man’s head had sprayed out the back and onto the refrigerator. That’s what Robert Stanley showed us. Not the man. Not the brains. But the children’s artwork on the refrigerator.
“This bullshit,” he said, “the blood, the bodies, how it all went down, that shit’s in the past. We’ll piece it together ’cause that’s part of our job. But now the thing that really matters is the fate of whoever drew that dog. Or that flower. Or that house.”
I could barely make out the crayon drawings under the blood and gray matter. Then Robert Stanley led us into a bedroom where two children had slept. Social Services had taken them away. Their beds were unmade and dresser drawers askew from clothes being hastily removed.
“Now we’ll go downtown,” said Robert Stanley. “Meet these kids. Then you’ll know what it means to be a cop.”
Nearly two decades later, Ellie and I stayed with Robert Stanley until the county coroner slid him into the back of the truck.
In the next hour, we’d come to understand Raynard Haas was also dead. Ballistic reports indicated that Stanley shot Haas in the thigh, just before or after Haas launched the fatal arrow. Two of Ellegaard’s rifle shots dropped Haas. One lodged in Hass’s rib cage, puncturing a lung, and one found the back of his head, which killed him. The bald little man in the funny blue glasses had finally turned to run.
My guess was right. A secret tunnel ran underneath the pond. It connected Graham Itasca’s safe room to a camouflaged hatch in the very copse behind which we’d first gathered. Haas knew our plan because he saw and heard the entire thing. The woods behind his house had more security devices than Disneyland.
Haas launched his first arrow from the house-side of the lake to draw us forward, then ran inside and traveled via tunnel to where we’d just come from. It was a clean getaway plan if Robert Stanley hadn’t looked back across the pond through the thermals. Or, more specifically, if I hadn’t asked Robert Stanley to do so.
* * *
Three days after Bemidji and two days before Robert Stanley’s funeral, I walked into Linnea Engstrom’s hospital room at Abbott Northwestern. Jameson’s insistence on medevacking her down to Minneapolis turned out to be the right one. The doctors there amputated half her ring finger on her left hand and a worthless toe on her left foot. That was it. She’d been conscious for over forty-eight hours and had suffered no brain damage. Or, as I’d later tell people, no “additional” brain damage. I visited with Anne’s permission. Mel Rosenthal insisted on being present, but I don’t know if her concern was for Linnea or me.
Mylar balloons, stuffed animals, flowers, cards, and banners filled Linnea’s room. They weren’t all get-well messages. Some wished Linnea a happy birthday. The former runaway turned eighteen that day. Wrapped gifts littered the room.
Linnea sat up in bed, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She put on a new sweater, baby-blue angora, a gift from Anne, she said. She forced her head through the tight neck hole. Her hair frizzed into a mess. She took a sip of something from a lidded plastic cup with a bendy straw, then looked at me with clear, gray eyes and said, “Thank you.”
I said, “For what?”
“Saving my life. If you and Mr. Ellegaard hadn’t found me…” She shrugged.
“Don’t thank us yet. You may have wished we hadn’t.”
Mel said, “Nils.”
“I’d like you to tell me the whole story.”
Linnea said, “Aunt Mel said you figured it out.”
“Not all of it. Do you know where Miguel is?”
She nodded then hung her head. “Guy Storstrand’s family has a hunting cabin right near the border. I didn’t tell Guy I was going to hide out there, because I already asked him to lie a lot for me. And I knew where they hid the key, so that’s where I went.
“When it was time to meet Miguel, I hiked a few miles through the woods to the spot. Miguel was so close to me. We literally spoke to each other. It was like he was across the street. He was standing right there. He started to run toward me, then he disappeared. It was night so I couldn’t see but he had this big umbrella that—”
“A giant Mylar umbrella? Like your dad used?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Keep going.”
“I could hear the umbrella, you know, like the shiny stuff getting scrunched up. I could barely see though. Then I heard Miguel splashing. It was awful. I tried to crawl out to him, but I couldn’t. The ice was mush. I don’t know how much time went by.” She cried and squeaked. “Maybe a minute. Then it was quiet. And he was gone.”
She sobbed and sniffled and sobbed some more. I ran out of patience.
“Have you told the police?”
She shook her head. “They’re coming this afternoon.”
“How about Joaquin?”
She shook her head again.
“This is the first I’m hearing it,” said Mel, whose adorable cheeks had turned gray.
I said, “Is that true, Linnea?”
She nodded. “You’re the first two people to know.”
Mel said, “Linnea, why didn’t you tell your mom about the W-18?”
“My mom? Are you kidding? She wouldn’t have done anything. She bought my dad’s bullshit all the way.”
I said, “Your dad put you in a terrible situation, transporting his drugs to the Cities, transporting the cash back. But once you realized what you were doing, you played along with it. You skimmed a little W-18 and sold it to Winnie Haas. You became part of it.”
Linnea scowled. “So what? I had to get away. I fucking hate my parents. I don’t care that my dad’s dead.”
Mel said, “Linnea, you don’t mean that.”
Linnea slid off the bed and walked to the mirror above the sink. She fussed with her hair. The bandage on her left stub of a ring finger got caught. She used her right hand to free it. She left her hair disheveled but more to her taste.
I said, “After you disappeared, you called your dad and told him you stole the money, didn’t you?” She leaned on the sink and said nothing. “You thought you were in the clear. You thought you were untouchable. You had over a hundred grand. You had Guy Storstrand helping you. Winnie Haas hid you. She hid you so well Ben didn’t even know you were in the house. You were off to help Miguel then start a new life far away from Minnesota. So you told your dad you stole his money, just to rub it in and be a little shit.”
Linnea Engstrom looked back up and glared at me.
“He said you wouldn’t get away with it. He told you he was going to hire me to find you. Then you told Joaquin Maeda, hoping he could intimidate me into backing off.”
“So what? So what if I did?”
“You didn’t think it through. That’s what got people killed.”
Linnea shook her head with hate.
“Don’t fucking get mad at me. Because once your dad told Raynard you knew about the W-18, Raynard was exposed. Your dad wasn’t the brightest man. He probably told Raynard not to worry. Roger was about to hire me. But the last thing Raynard wanted was for you to be found. Alive anyway. So Raynard waited outside the Saint Paul Hotel then followed Ellegaard and me as we walked to the cave. That’s when the first arrow flew.
“Raynard knew he couldn’t trust your dad. So Roger had to be next. And of all the places your dad might go, he went to Winnie’s. Raynard went around back and scaled the deck. He broke in and overheard what they were talking about, which was you and W-18. That was all he needed to hear. Winnie couldn’t live either.”
