by Greg Sisk
“In fact, Mel, just before you joined the Eden Prairie police force—about a year-and-a-half ago—rival gang members pulled into this driveway and sprayed the house with bullets. No was one hurt that time.”
“Isn’t this the place that Alex Kramer of the ATF talked about, where the feds experienced their biggest embarrassment in this state in years?”
“You remember right, Mel. That infamous ATF raid was conducted on this very house. Informants had told their federal law enforcement handlers that M.P. and his gang were setting up a cache of illegal weapons out here in Eden Prairie. So they all showed up one day, kicked down the door, and turned everything inside out. The ATF came up empty. Either there were never any weapons out here or they’d been moved before the feds could get here.”
Garth gestured back to the body. “When the first responders arrived thirty minutes ago, it was obvious M.P. was dead. Looks like he was hit squarely in the face. Must have been a high-caliber weapon, as it darn near blew his head off.
“M.P.’s buddies thought the shot came from over there.” Garth pointed toward a wooded hill about two hundred yards to the southwest, across the street. “One of M.P.’s crew even boasted to a patrol cop they’d fought back by emptying a couple of magazines in that direction. Patrol officers are canvassing the area to see if there’s anything over there, beyond bullet holes in trees.”
Mel then glanced at the maroon Jaguar XF with alloy wheels and a trunk spoiler. “I’d guess M.P. was hit just before getting into his car. Nice ride,” she said admiringly. “With these accessories, this car must have set him back at least a hundred grand.”
From his crouching position next to the body, Burton looked up and stared thoughtfully at the car for several moments. Then he stood up and looked up and down the driveway. He swung to his left and examined the house. Then he walked back down the yard, slowly scanning the driveway yet again.
Burton returned back to where Garth was standing near the body and car. He asked, “Do you notice anything unusual about this scene? Like something out of the past?”
Garth surveyed the area, looking all around. “Not really, boss. What’s grabbed your attention?”
“I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’m having one of those déjà vu moments. I just feel like I’ve been here before.”
“Well, maybe you have been,” suggested Garth. “This isn’t the first time the Eden Prairie cops have been called to this location.”
“No, no, that’s not it,” said Burton. “I certainly knew about M.P. and his presence in Eden Prairie. But I’ve never been asked to investigate him. I know I’ve never been here before.”
After a pause, he muttered to himself, “But it certainly feels like I have been here.”
Burton stood silently for a long time, continuing to look over the yard, gaze back at the house, and contemplate the long driveway.
He felt that something important lay just outside of his range of vision.
Then it came to him.
“I know, I know,” he said excitedly. “Doesn’t this driveway and even this house look an awful lot like the Klein scene? Same Tudor style of house. Same long and winding driveway down toward the street.”
“Yeah, yeah,” acknowledged Garth. “I see what you’re saying. But it’s not really the same. This driveway curves to the right instead of to the left like the Klein driveway did.
“And, as you well know, Ed, I got up close and personal with that gigantic oak tree in the Klein yard. The big tree in this yard isn’t an oak. It’s an elm, I think. And this style of house isn’t that unusual. There must be dozens —”
“This is Eden Prairie,” interrupted Burton. “Murders out here are rare. And to have two high-profile, carefully executed killings in just twelve months. What are the chances of that?”
“It’s just one of those coincidences you dislike so much, Ed. Random chance. And besides, it’s not like there’s anything in common between these two cases. Klein turned out to be a bad guy, no doubt about it. He tried to kill his own wife and ended up killing his boy. But there was never any hint that he and his wife were involved in other criminal activity. By contrast, this M.P. was thoroughly criminal. And this definitely was a gang hit. On top of that, the murder weapons weren’t even the same. Klein used a car bomb. One look at M.P.’s body here, and you know it was a gunshot—probably a high-powered rifle shot—to the head.”
“Something doesn’t feel right to me,” insisted Burton. “Two murders. Two assassinations. In a single year. In Eden Prairie! That’s too strange.”
“Strange things do happen. Eden Prairie isn’t so isolated from the criminal element that troubles the rest of the Twin Cities, whatever people out here like to think.”
Burton looked over at the body, lying next to the Jaguar sports car. “Do you remember the color of the Klein car, you know, the one destroyed by the bomb?”
“It was pretty much all black by the time I saw it, boss,” said Garth in an attempt at gallows humor. Seeing that Burton wasn’t smiling, she continued on a more sober note, “Yes, I do remember. It was red.”
“Just like M.P.’s car,” observed Burton.
“Hardly,” countered Garth. “This is a high-end Jaguar, a genuine sports car. Klein had a Honda coupe, which only looked like a sports car.”
“Both red,” noted Burton.
“Well, Klein’s Honda had been painted fire-engine red. This Jaguar is more, well, dark burgundy in color.”
“Burgundy is still red,” insisted Burton.
“You’re reaching for parallels, Ed,” responded Garth. “And what’s the point anyway?”
Burton didn’t answer. Other than deepening his frown, he made no move and uttered no sound for several long minutes.
“Say,” as he finally spoke, “wasn’t the Klein house also on Dunnell Drive? What are the chances of both of these killings happening on the same street?”
Garth shrugged.
Burton then asked, “How close by is the Klein house?”
“Not very close. A couple of miles at least.” Garth pulled out her iPhone and pulled up a map of Eden Prairie. “Yeah. This house is on the west side of Eden Lake. Dunnell Drive is interrupted when it reaches the lake. On the east side of Eden Lake, Dunnell picks up again and runs all the way east into Bloomington on the other side of Highway 169. The Klein house is way over there on the east edge of Eden Prairie.”
Things started to click into place for Burton. “What’s the address here?” he asked in a tight voice.
Looking up to the porch of the house and then flipping open her notebook, Garth said, “3132 Dunnell Drive.”
“What was the address of the Klein house?”
“I’ve hardly got it committed to memory,” protested Garth. Burton threw her an annoyed look. “Okay, okay,” she said. Garth walked over to their car, called dispatch, and asked them to look up the Klein address.
After a moment, she shouted back, “3732 Dunnell Drive.”
“It can’t be,” whispered Burton, as his stomach lurched. Then speaking more loudly as he came over to where Garth remained at the car, he said, “That’s identical to this address, except for the second number.”
“You know, you’re right,” Garth said, shaking her head. “I do have to admit that’s kind of odd. Yet another coincidence.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all,” replied Burton. “I’m starting to think it is something much worse. I’m thinking there’s been a terrible, terrible mistake. A fatal mistake.”
Burton pulled out a pad of paper from his pocket and jotted several series of numbers on it. He showed it to Garth. “Think about it, Mel. Suppose you write down the number ‘1’ with a short line slanting to the left that is added at the top of the longer vertical line. And suppose you write it in a sloppy, hurried manner. Then
you pass the handwritten note on to someone else, who writes the number down yet again, and then passes it to still someone else. See how the handwritten ‘1’ slides into a ‘7’?”
“I suppose. But what are you getting—” Garth halted. Burton could see the lights turning on in her eyes. “Now, wait a minute. Surely, you’re not suggesting this is all an accident?”
“Not an accident,” replied Burton. “There’s nothing accidental about either of these killings. But perhaps someone got the wrong address.”
Burton’s radio crackled to life. “Lieutenant Burton,” came the voice of one of the patrol officers exploring the wooded area southeast of the house. “M.P.’s idiot followers told us they shot off their guns in this direction after M.P. was shot. Well, they managed to hit somebody. We’ve got a blood trail, which stands out pretty well in the snow. We haven’t followed it very far. But we found a rifle that someone had ditched into the bushes.”
Garth ducked into the car to answer a call from police dispatch. She turned back to Burton. “Ed, one of the neighbors down the street says, looking out his window, he sees a strange man hiding in his back yard. The caller says that it looks like the man is badly hurt.”
• • •
A nurse from the station on the seventh floor at the Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina, Minnesota walked over to Lieutenant Ed Burton, who was waiting outside the suspect’s hospital room with another police officer from Edina. “The doctor says you can talk to him now. He’d lost a lot of blood, but he’s had a transfusion. And the bullet wound to his leg wasn’t that difficult to treat. He’s going to be just fine. The doctor says there’s no medical reason to deny you access to his hospital room.”
Officer Garth came down the hospital corridor. “Ed, we just got a call from the chief. He says the fingerprints came back to a Toby Boreo, formerly of New Jersey. Turns out the FBI has been looking for him since the 1980s. They say he’s an old Mafia hit-man who used to be known as ‘The Rocket.’ I guess he was pretty fast with a gun. He’s still wanted on several federal charges of interstate murder-for-hire. The fingerprint check must have alerted someone in D.C. The chief already got a call from the FBI asking where we’re holding him.”
“Oh, no,” said Burton, thinking he had done enough bidding for the feds to last him a lifetime. “I’m not going down that road again. We’re in charge here.”
Burton glanced over at the Edina police officer who had joined him in keeping watch over the suspect’s hospital room. Burton said to his fellow suburban cop, “This guy shot someone in Eden Prairie. We caught him, dead to rights, in Eden Prairie. He’s in my custody. And, at least for now, that’s where he’s going to stay.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” said the Edina officer. “As far as I’m concerned, you can play this game however you think best.”
I thought I’d already played this game, thought Burton. I played it all the way through to the end. Now it’s looking like the last play is going to be overturned on further review by the referee and the whole thing is going into overtime.
• • •
Burton opened the door to the hospital room, went in, and stood at the foot of the bed.
“Hey, it’s about time you cops showed up,” said the gray-haired, clean-shaven man. He tried to wave his hand, but it was securely fastened by cuffs to the metal frame of the hospital bed. “I was just going for a walk this morning, minding my own business, and out of nowhere I got hit by a bullet. I hope you’re going to catch whoever did this to me.”
“You can drop the act, fella,” responded Burton. “We’ve already confirmed that the identification in your wallet is fake—good fakes, though. And we’ve run your fingerprints. Mr. Toby Boreo.”
The slightly built elderly man simply shrugged.
“While you were sedated as the docs fixed your leg, we tested you for gunshot residue on your hands and clothes. Positive. And we found the rifle you ditched after you got shot. You spilled blood all over the rifle too, which we’ll have no difficulty confirming with a DNA match. So we got you cold for the murder of Maik . . .” Burton struggled with the last name. “Pnommavongsay.”
The man chuckled. “That’s a mouthful, ain’t it?” He sighed and said, more to himself than to Burton, “You should never get mixed up with Laotian gangbangers. I had to learn that the hard way.”
“I think we have everything we could ever want to tie you to this morning’s killing,” Burton said.
As Burton read him his rights, Boreo said nothing, but kept smiling.
Then Burton changed course. “Now I want to ask you instead about another killing, the Klein boy.”
The grin remained plastered on Boreo’s face, but Burton thought he saw the smile slip just a little.
Boreo responded: “Don’t know nuthin’ ’bout that.”
“Oh, come on, Boreo. You know we got you for this shooting. The FBI’s coming for you. And you know, you’ll probably get the death penalty. Even a city cop like me knows there’s a federal death penalty for murder-for-hire.”
“So they’re going put a needle in my arm, is that what you’re saying?” sneered Boreo. “You think that’s going to scare me? I’m seventy-five years old. Not gonna live forever.”
“No, honestly, I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just saying that you’re already going down on the M.P. shooting. So, then, it doesn’t matter whether you admit to the Klein bombing too.”
“Don’t know nuthin’ ’bout that.”
Burton persisted. “The poor kid’s family deserves to know what happened.”
Boreo shrugged again.
“His father’s sitting in prison for the rest of his life.”
Boreo repeated: “I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout that.”
Garth pounded on the glass window to the room. When Burton looked back, she gestured to him to come out.
When Burton stepped back into the hall, she said, “Chief called again. A Special Agent Darren McCormack of the FBI is at Eden Prairie headquarters asking about this Boreo guy. The chief is stalling him, but he doesn’t promise he can keep it up for too long. Looks like the feds are going to get this case too.”
Burton replied, “Well, not yet, anyway. Tell the chief to hold them off as long as he can. I’m doing the best I can here. But I’m getting nowhere. I should have realized right away you can’t appeal to the morality of a guy who left that behind decades ago. I’ll have to try another tack.”
Burton went back into the hospital room. “The FBI’s asking after you. The word is they’ve been trying to find you for years, that you were a true professional, quite the worthy adversary for the FBI.”
Boreo smiled and nodded.
“You’re a legend, I guess.”
“Don’t I know it!”
“It’s funny. They call you ‘The Rocket,’ or at least they did back in the days of the crime families on the east coast. I’m told that’s because you were known to be fast and true as a missile when you took someone out.”
Boreo continued to smirk.
“But this time, you couldn’t even hit the right guy at first, could you? Hey, you couldn’t even put a bomb on the right car. ‘The Rocket’? Seems like you really should have been known as ‘The Clown.’”
The smile dropped, and Boreo’s eyes flashed angrily. Then he leaned back in the hospital bed and put his hands behind his head.
“Clever, clever,” said Boreo. “I see what you’re doing, cop. First you question my morals. Now you question my manhood. You hope I’ll lose my temper and talk.”
“Well,” Burton responded. “I guess that proves you are a professional. Nothing gets past you. But you still ended up as a genuine clown in the end.”
Boreo smiled and said, “You’ll have to do better than that, cop.”
Burton again was interrupted
by a knock on the window of the room. Outside the room, Garth was holding up and pointing to her cell phone.
As Burton stepped out into the hall, Garth told him, “The chief says to expect the FBI here in about an hour. He’s making them go through the formality of making an official request from Washington, D.C. But that’s the best he can do. He can’t stall them any longer than that.”
When Burton returned to the hospital room, he dragged a chair over near the bed. He was tempted to check to be sure the cuffs attached to the man’s wrist and metal frame were secure, but then decided that would contradict the more friendly and candid approach he now wanted to take with the suspect. So, without further ado, he simply sat down right next to Boreo.
“I’m going to be straight with you, Boreo. This is the last chance I’ll have to talk with you. In about an hour, the feds will be here. They’re going to take you into custody.”
Boreo shrugged again.
“So, to use language that an old wiseguy like you may better understand, ‘I want to make you an offer you can’t refuse’ . . . or at least one that you shouldn’t refuse.”
Boreo rolled his eyes at this reference to The Godfather, but he afforded a quick chuckle.
“Once the feds take you into custody, my guess is they’ll put you away so far deep inside some maximum security prison way out in the middle of nowhere you’ll essentially have disappeared from the face of the earth. Oh, yes, they’ll have to let you talk to a lawyer once in a while. But they’ll get a gag order from a judge preventing your lawyer from talking to the press or anyone else until your trial. And then once you’ve been convicted, back you’ll go into the dungeon until your execution.”
“Still trying to scare me, huh, cop?” said Boreo with contempt.
“No, no. Hear me out. I’m just setting the stage here, making sure you understand the background. You see, you’re an embarrassment to the feds. You’ve been on the lam for some thirty years. They’ve never been able to catch you. Even now, they’ll just hate it that it was a suburban cop like me that got lucky and nabbed you. So now you’ve gone and killed a young boy—”
