“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 stunned expression. “The chief and Lyman weren’t on the bus.”
34
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.
Smith picked up the handheld radio and spoke to the van. “You’re doing well, Chief,” Smith said. “Stay on Warner until we get to 10.”
“Who are you?” Flanagan asked a few minutes later, as the van approached the intersection with County 10. “Tell me who the hell you are!”
“I can’t do that yet, Chief,” Smith answered calmly, two hundred yards behind the van. “When I’m satisfied, then we’ll talk about the girls.”
“We’ll talk?” Flanagan growled with angst in his voice. “Who the hell are you?”
“Patience Chief. I want to see you as much as you want to see me,” Smith answered. He savored the thought of finally confronting Flanagan, of finally feeling the satisfaction for which he’d waited for years. But there was business to attend to first. “Turn left on 10. We’re going to Burns Park. There’s a red van waiting for you in the parking lot, and the key for it is in the glove box.”
The two men did as instructed. Smith pulled past them, driving another five hundred yards before making a U-turn.
He wanted this last change of vehicles. The police would go back to the parking ramp soon enough, and surveillance footage would give them the blue minivan and the plate number. Changing into the red van would put them in the wind.
“Mother fucker,” Flanagan said bitterly as he tossed the handheld radio onto the dashboard.
“We know who they are, or at least who this Brown is. You arrested him all those years ago,” Lyman said from the passenger seat. “Why not just tell them? Why not just talk to them like that?”
“Because then they’ll know we’re onto them, that we know who they are,” the chief replied. If we do that, they might assume we know where they are, that we’re closing in. If we do that, they could kill the girls.”
“So we play dumb for now?”
“We give my boys as much time as possible.”
35
“What the hell happened?” Mac asked, still sitting in his Explorer outside the woods.
“Sleight of hand,” Riles explained. “They picked a good spot. We didn’t, hell, couldn’t have an eyeball on them, believe me.” Pat sighed, and Mac could hear the frustration in his voice. “They just picked a good spot. We thought they were on the bus. It’s ten minutes, and the bus gets over to the Taste of Minnesota. It had one stop just before it went over the river on the Robert Street Bridge and nobody got off, only on. Then when it got to the Taste of Minnesota and emptied, the chief and Hisle weren’t there. They never got on that damn bus in the first place.”
Mac closed his eyes. Such a simple thing — never having them get on the bus. It was brilliant, really.