Stolen Prey

19

The dimensions of the problem were now clear.

Lucas went back to the BCA offices, spoke briefly with Shaffer, who was directing a regional search for Martinez and the third shooter, talking to DEA officials and Mexican Federales, all of whom would love to get their hands on her. Shaffer could plainly see that if he got the bust, he’d be hero of the week; and even if he didn’t, he was getting the credit for breaking her out, and he was taking it.

Lucas no longer cared about her: now it was a matter of locating her, and whatever happened would happen. Most likely, he thought, it’d be a couple highway patrolmen, in their funny blue hats, chasing them down in rural Kansas, after they were spotted at a gas station. Lucas had his differences with various state highway patrols, based on what the Porsche management referred to as “spirited driving,” but conceded that when it came to the chase-and-shoot business, they were pretty good at it.

But: there remained the problem of the thieves who set off the whole episode, and most notably, Sanderson. If Albitis died, Sanderson would be a murderer, Lucas thought. That was not allowed in the state of Minnesota.

When he left Shaffer, he called Del: “I’ll be in my office. Come on up, we’ve got to do some plotting.”

Del showed up a half hour later. He was wearing a double-knit blue blazer, a white shirt with a red polyester necktie, gray slacks, and dress shoes. All of the clothing was slightly too large for him, his thin neck sticking out of the shirt collar like a turtle’s. Taken all together, he looked like a security guard at a movie theater.

“You going to court?”

“Just came back,” he said. He unclipped the necktie and put it in his pocket.

Lucas watched him do that, then said, “Let me see the tie for a minute.”

“Huh?”

“Let me see the tie.”

Del took it out of his pocket and passed it over. Lucas turned and dropped it in his wastebasket. “I’ll buy you a new one,” he said.

Del looked wistfully at the wastebasket and said, “I sorta liked that one.”

“I’m doing this for your own good. You remember Bertha Swenson? You remember what I did for you there?”

“Ahhhh…”

“This is the necktie equivalent of Bertha Swenson. Think about it.”

“She wouldn’t have shot me….”

They plotted:

“We need a way to get Sanderson out in the open. The way I read her, she’s a hippie, a little flaky, probably got dragged into it against her will, but in the end, she winds up whacking Albitis.”

“And you say Albitis is really the only thing we’ve got on the rest of the group?”

“Now that Turicek is dead,” Lucas said. “Sandy says every time there was a big gold sale at one of the dealers we were looking at, Albitis was getting off and on a plane. The DEA has followed the money trail to a supposedly Syrian company, and it was supposedly a Syrian woman who was buying the gold.”

“But you can’t tie Albitis to the Syrian woman-not directly.”

“No, and it doesn’t matter much, if Albitis dies. Actually, we’re probably better off if she dies, because we can build our case, and she won’t be around to deny it.”

“As long as a Syrian woman doesn’t show up.”

“That won’t happen,” Lucas said. “Albitis is the Syrian woman. I know it.”

“Then where’s the gold?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Sanderson’s got it.”

They worked around that question, and Del finally suggested that what they knew wasn’t adding up to much of a court case. “We’ve got Kline getting shot, and Sanderson was looked at, but they could be completely innocent. In fact, we’re the ones who sicced the Mexicans on them.”

“That’s true.”

“We may know they were involved in the theft, somehow, but all they have to do is deny it,” Del said. “If they get a decent lawyer, the lawyer will pin the theft on Turicek and Albitis. I mean, Turicek was apparently some kind of criminal over in Lithuania, and he brings in Albitis-we’re pretty sure of that.”

“Yeah.” Lucas spun around in his chair, looked out at the parking lot. Then, “Kline was involved. But he got shot, and that’s some kind of punishment. Maybe we let him go: work a deal, get Sanderson. She’s a killer, or close to it.”

“How do we cut him out?”

Kline had checked out of the hospital, in a rental wheelchair, and had gone back to his apartment. Lucas and Del arrived at ten o’clock the next morning, Lucas carrying a briefcase full of paper, including the murder book on the Brooks killings, as well as files on Pruess, the Polaris vice president who’d been thrown in the dumpster, on the killing of Rivera, and the shootings of Uno and Dos.

He planned to take the whole mass, as he told Del, sharpen it to a fine point, and shove it up Kline’s ass.

When they arrived at Kline’s apartment building, they could see, from the street, a light on in the bathroom through the new window. They went up and pounded on the door.

Nothing.

They pounded again, and then a weak, nervous answer: “Who is it?”

“Lucas Davenport, BCA. I spoke to you before.”

After a long pause, Kline called back, “How do I know it’s you?”

“You could look out the peephole,” Lucas said.

“But if it’s not really you, as soon as I look out the peephole, you could shoot me again.”

“Ah, for Christ’s sakes, Kline, it’s me,” Lucas said. “Call your building manager and ask her to come up and look.”

There was another long silence, then the peephole darkened, and finally a chain rattled on the inside. Kline, unshaven, white-faced, peeked out, saw Del, looked up and down the hall, and said, “All right.”

He’d been on his feet, and now he settled back, in the wheelchair, and rolled himself backward into the apartment. He’d been watching a morning talk show: a man stood behind a microphone, turned to a stunned-looking young man, and said, “Sean, you are … NOT … the father.” The crowd cheered, or jeered, and Kline clicked it off.

“Trying to keep from going insane,” he mumbled, apparently embarrassed to be caught watching the show. “What do you want?”

“We need to talk to you about this whole case,” Lucas said.

“I talked to a guy in the hospital,” Kline said, “And he told me that one thing I shouldn’t do is talk to the cops. You’re probably recording all of this.”

“We’re not recording it, and we don’t want you to say much anyway. We’re here more to make a presentation,” Lucas said.

“A presentation?”

“Yes. All you have to do is sit there and listen.”

Kline looked from Lucas to Del, and back and forth a couple of times, and then, “I guess I can do that. But I’m not answering any questions.”

“Just listen,” Lucas said.

Kline said to Del, “Nice tie, dude.”

“Hermes,” Del said, in his best French.

The place smelled weird, like hot dogs and sweat, brittle yellowed wallpaper and dry rot, with a little old-bathroom smell thrown in. The couch was covered with newspapers, and when Lucas looked for a place to sit, Kline said, “Throw those papers on the floor,” and Del did that, making a stack and dropping it beside one couch arm.

Lucas took the paper out of his briefcase, put the case between his feet, and started talking:

“Don’t say anything. Don’t argue with me, just listen,” he said. “Now, we know you were involved in this theft from Polaris. There’s no question in our minds about that.”

“Oh, bullshit, you’re-”

“Shut up,” Lucas said. “Just listen to the case.”

Lucas laid it out piece by piece. How ICE had found two back doors into Polaris and had documented them before she took them out. How they had to be done from the inside. How Kline had migrated to Hennepin National, where he’d hooked up with three other people for the theft: Turicek, Sanderson, and eventually, Albitis.

“We can tie you to the other three. We can tie Turicek to Albitis, and Albitis to the gold purchases. We believe we can tie Sanderson to the attack on Albitis-she called nine-one-one on a phone Albitis used to call Turicek, and I recognized her voice on the tape. The tape is being analyzed in our laboratories now, and after we get the forensic voice analysis done, we’ll be able to hook that to Sanderson. So, we’ve got you all in a bundle.”

Kline broke in, shaking his head: “You don’t have me. All you have on me is that I sat in the same office. And I’ll tell you what: banks deal with each other all the time, system to system. I think Ivan found a way into Polaris from our system, picked out an account to loot, and did it. He never told me about it. I think it was him and Albitis, and everything else you’re telling me is bullshit.”

Lucas shook a finger at him: “Not bullshit. I think we can make a powerful case. But you’re right about one thing-our case against you is the weakest. We don’t care about Turicek, because he’s dead. So it comes down to you and Albitis and Sanderson. We’ve decided to settle for two out of the three. We’re going to give somebody partial immunity, in return for testimony against the other two.”

“Partial immunity,” Kline scoffed. “That’s worth a lot. Go to prison and get killed for being an informer … get banged by a bunch of faggot convicts … that’s an attractive deal.”

Del said, “Listen, Jake, you know what happened here. The Brookses, David Rivera, the cop from Mexico, Pruess, the VP from Polaris … we’re not going to come after you for stealing a little money. We’re coming after you for multiple murder. You and the others touched this off. How old are you? Close to thirty? You’ll be sixty years old, under Minnesota law, before you’d have your first chance to see the outside again.”

“But I’m innocent,” Kline said.

“Oh, bullshit, Jake,” Lucas said. Then, into a moment of deadlocked silence, “But there’s something else. And I brought some stuff to show you.”

“I need to talk to a lawyer.”

“You do, but for now, listen another two minutes,” Lucas said. “Have you been watching television? All the news reports about these Mexican gangsters?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it.”

“I’ll tell you what-they don’t have the gold. We’re lying about that, hoping to confuse things.”

“So they can’t go back,” Kline said. “The killers. That’s cruel. Funny, but cruel.”

“Sooner or later, the truth is going to come out,” Lucas said. “When it comes out, these gangsters are going to say to themselves, ‘Jacob Kline and Kristina Sanderson and Edie Albitis have our twenty-two million dollars.’ They’re going to come after you. They’re going to want their money. You understand?”

“I understand what you’re saying, I’m not sure I believe it. There seems to be a lot of bullshit going on here.”

“So look at this,” Lucas said. “Does this look like bullshit?”

He reached down between his feet, got the color prints of the murder scenes, the Brookses, Rivera lying in a puddle of blood, the Mexican guys shot on the couch and in the middle of the parking lot, Pruess folded like an old banana in the dumpster, and then lying on the street partially unwrapped, one butchered hand sticking out on the blacktop.

Lucas pushed out a close-up of a finger joint. “This belonged to Patrick Brooks. Cut them off one at a time. Used them to write a message on the wall.”

Pulled out the “Were coming” scrawl.

Kline looked at the photos, first in fascination, then in revulsion, and finally he turned away and said, “I don’t want to see that shit.”

Del said, “This is what they were going to do to you, dude. You were smart enough to get away, but you might not get away the next time.”

Lucas added, “They’ll get you, unless you get some protection…. If we get that gold back, and make a news story out of it, that’ll take away any reason for them to come after you.”

“What about revenge?” Kline asked. “They’ll still want revenge.”

“Listen, the average life span of these guys, these gangsters, is a couple of years,” Lucas said. “We cover you for a couple of years … we could make that part of a deal. Eventually, they’ll forget about it. It’ll seem pointless, if the money’s gone.”

“I’ve got no idea about the money,” Kline said.

“If you help us out with Sanderson and Albitis, one of them will cough up the money,” Del said. “We think Sanderson took out Albitis because of the gold.”

Kline put his head down, seeming to think about it, reached out and pushed one of the photographs aside, to expose a shot of the dead Brooks children, and said, finally, “I’m innocent. But maybe I can find a way to help you. I’ve got to talk to a lawyer first. I’ll start calling around today, see when I can get one. Maybe this afternoon.”

“You need to move fast,” Lucas said. “I’ll tell you what, if Albitis wakes up, and if she’s willing to cooperate … then our deal with you is off. She gets the protection, you get the thirty years.”

“You can guarantee this deal?” Kline asked.

“You get your attorney, you work through the terms, and we’ll put you with a county attorney to get the deal in writing,” Lucas said.

“I’ll start looking for a guy right now,” Kline said.

Lucas said, “Good.” He started gathering the murder pictures.

Del smoothed down his new silk tie and said, “Let me tell you something, Jake. You’re a smart guy. If you think really hard about this, you’ll realize it’s the best deal you’ll get. It might be the best deal of a lifetime. Don’t fuck it up.”

Kline whined and prevaricated and lied some more, wheeling around the apartment, and eventually Lucas and Del picked up the pictures, gave him a last warning about how little time he had to act, and left.

Out on the street, Lucas asked, “Did he buy it?”

Del said, “I don’t know. I can usually tell, but he … I don’t know.”

Lucas said, “I guess we’ll find out this afternoon.” He looked back up at the apartment and caught a flash of movement in the bathroom window.

They walked back down the street and around the corner to the Lexus, and on the way, Lucas called the hospital about Albitis’s condition. The charge nurse said that she was still unconscious, but that the operation the night before had gone well, the bleeding had been less severe than expected, and she was now expected to recover “to some extent.”

“What does that mean?” Lucas asked. “To some extent?”

“Can’t ever tell, with cases like this,” the nurse said. “She could be fine. On the other hand, she could be a wreck. What usually happens is that they lose something, at the start, then they get most of it back. But you just can’t tell in advance.”

Up in the apartment, Kline stood next to the bathroom window, looking down, and saw the two cops come out of the apartment door and stand talking on the street. Then Davenport looked up at the window, and Kline pulled his head back. A few seconds later, he peeked from behind the shade and saw them walking away down the street. He couldn’t see them turn the corner, but they didn’t come back, either.

When he was sure they were gone, he went to the bedroom and asked the bed, “Did you hear that?”

The bed said, “Yes. Are you sure they’re gone?”

“They’re gone. The door’s locked.”

Sanderson edged out from under the bed and said, “It smelled like something died under there. You might have mice.”

“I’d be shocked if I didn’t,” Kline said. “So now what?”

“First, I swear to God, I swear to God, I didn’t just attack Edie. She came after me with Daddy’s gun, for Christ’s sakes. I was lucky to get away from her.”

“I believe you-but the cops won’t believe it,” Kline said.

“I still don’t think they have enough to take me to trial,” Sanderson said.

“We need to get lawyers.”

“We can get lawyers, but I swear to God, if you drag me into this, I’ll take you with me,” Sanderson said. “I’ll tell everybody that you knew you were stealing drug money and that you’ve got it all hidden. Then these Mexicans will come after you. They will chop you to pieces.”

“You don’t have to threaten me,” Kline said.

“Yes, I do,” Sanderson said. “I can see you’re thinking about it, about a way out. I promise you, that’s not the way.”

Kline wheeled himself around the apartment, ran both hands through his long oily hair. “Christ, I go around telling everybody that I don’t care how it comes out. I’m cool. I’m cold. Now, they’re talking about prison…. You know what I found out? I don’t want to go to prison. I mean, I really don’t want to go to prison.”

“Davenport’s just mean,” Sanderson said. “Mean and smart. But we’re as smart as he is, and we’ve got more to work with. We just have to fix things so he can’t get us.”

“What about Edie?” Kline asked. “What if she wakes up and says, ‘Kristina hit me’?”

“Then I’ll have to deal with that then. But I don’t think she will. Anything she says brings it back to her. Anything she says gets her deeper in trouble. Right now, she could say that she was buying gold for a Syrian buyer, some guy trying to get his fortune out of the country. She didn’t know who he was … nothing illegal with any of that.”

Kline said, “For Christ’s sakes, Kris, nobody’s gonna believe that.”

“They don’t have to,” Sanderson said. “All we need is for them to not have enough to put us on trial. Or not enough to convict us, if they do put us on trial.”

“We need to get lawyers,” Kline said.

“But what we really need to do, you and me, is sit down and figure out how we can get out of this mess. We’re smart. Let’s use it.”

Kline cocked his head and said, “You don’t sound like a hippie anymore.”

“And you don’t sound like a cynical depressive,” Sanderson said. “We’ve changed. We’ve become criminals.”