“No, we’re up north right now, I’m working on my cabin,” Davenport said. “His phone isn’t listed anywhere, either. He keeps changing them, buying burners. I’ll be back home tomorrow and I’ll fire up my database and get a number to you.”
“Nobody has access to the database down here?”
“No. It’s on a hard drive at my house and it’s encrypted,” Davenport said.
“Get back to me as soon as you can,” Virgil said. “If people are right about the medicine thing, these guys will kill the tigers. Might already have done it, and if they haven’t, they’ll do it soon.”
“I’d go back tonight and look it up, but by the time I got home, it’d be too late to do anything,” Davenport said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
–
At zoo headquarters, the media had shown up in their vans and were setting up for the press conference. Virgil hung back, but watched Landseer, the zoo director, go through the routine-there was no information on the tigers, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was all over the case, they hoped to have the tigers back soon, etc.
Duncan took his turn under the lights, said that the attorney general had promised to prosecute the thieves to the fullest extent of the law. Duncan read a list of felonies that the perpetrators had already committed and said that upon conviction, those crimes would lead to thirty-six years in prison.
He added that since there was no market for tiger parts in Minnesota, interstate commerce was probably involved in the theft, and that Amur tigers were on the federal endangered species list. Those were federal offenses, and the FBI was sending agents to help with the case and federal charges were pending.
Landseer finished by saying, “I appeal to the people who have these animals: for the sake of the tigers and for your own sake, tell us where they are. Return them to us. If you do not, I believe you will spend the rest of your lives regretting your crime.”
Not bad, Virgil thought.
Landseer and Duncan had barely finished their statements when the TV people started tearing down lights and hurrying back to their vans, not typical behavior, in Virgil’s experience; they usually asked questions so each reporter could get his or her face on screen.
He wandered over to a cameraman he knew and asked, “What’s the rush?”
“We’re going to a crime-scene house around the block,” the cameraman said. “You wanna be on TV, I’m sure the talent would be happy to have you.”
“Nah.”
He walked back to the house where the tigers had been taken: Beatrice Sawyer was there with the BCA crime-scene truck. The neighbors, Virgil thought, had spotted the truck and had called the TV stations. The vans were setting up a block down the street, held back by two Apple Valley cops.
Sawyer was around at the back of the house, looking at the door. “Where did all the TV come from?” she asked.
“Press conference at the zoo-the zoo’s on the other side of the fence.”
She looked down the street at the truck, then back to Virgil. “Glad I’m not Virgil,” she said.
–
Neighborhood rubberneckers were out in force, standing on their lawns, watching the crime-scene crew moving back and forth between the van and the house. The real estate agent, whose name was Vance and who was too old and balding for his gelled hair, showed up, towed through the police lines by one of the Apple Valley cops.
Three couples had looked at the house over the past two months, he said, and he would find it hard to believe that any of them were involved in the tiger theft. “They’re all middle-aged, middle-income, pre-approved people, FICO scores in the seven and eight hundreds,” he said. “We did have an open house two weeks ago, and maybe fifteen people came, but we didn’t take names on those.”
Vance didn’t have much more. Virgil took his card and turned him over to an Apple Valley cop to escort outside the blocked-off area. He was inside the garage talking to Sawyer about the spot on the concrete, which she also thought was blood, when the cop came back with a kid.
“Kid needs to talk to you,” the cop said.
“What’s up?” Virgil asked.
The boy was maybe sixteen or seventeen, thin, had been through a couple of episodes of acne, and was carrying a skateboard. He looked at Bea, then back to Virgil, and said, “Uh, this is kinda private.”
Virgil said, “All right, let’s go outside.”
They walked around to the side of the garage and the kid said, “You can’t tell any of the people this… the neighbors.”
“Well, whattaya got?” Virgil asked.
“Last night I was up at my girlfriend’s house…” The kid nodded up the street. “We were, you know, up in her bedroom, fooling around. Her parents were down in Missouri taking her sister to college, and they weren’t supposed to get home until today. They got home last night instead. Like really late.”
“Caught you,” Virgil said.
“Nah… It sounds stupid, but I went out her window and snuck through some backyards before I went out to the street. When I went out, I saw a van coming out of this garage.”
“What kind of a van?” Virgil asked.
“A white one. Like a panel van, like bands have, with those white windows that you can’t see inside of. Pretty big van, but it could get in the garage, even with the door down. When I saw the door coming up, I kinda hid, I thought it was the Schmidts coming out and I didn’t want them to see me. They don’t like me ’cause I’m a skater, and they’re kinda narcs, you know? They’re friends with my girlfriend’s parents and they’d rat me out. They’d know where I was coming from.”
Virgil had learned from Vance, the real estate agent, that the owners of the house were named Schmidt. “You know what time this was?”
“I called my girlfriend when I got home to tell her that everything was chill and to find out if everything was chill with her. I saw on my phone that it was a little after two o’clock.”
They talked about the van some more. The kid wasn’t sure about it, but thought the van might be a Chevrolet. “I don’t know why I think that, but I do,” he said. The kid had one additional interesting fact: when the van came out of the garage, the garage door light didn’t go on. Lights always come on when a garage door goes up or down, he said.
They walked around the corner of the garage and Virgil looked up at the door-lift mechanism, which showed a white plastic cover over what should be a lightbulb. He hit the wall switch and the garage door started down, but the light didn’t come on. He stopped the door and ran it back up. Still no light. Bea Sawyer had watched him do that and said, “Somebody unscrewed the bulb?”
“I think so,” Virgil said.
“We’ll check the whole thing,” she said. “That’s a good find.”
–
Virgil and the teenager went back outside, where Virgil slapped the kid on the back and said, “You did really good. You’ve got a sharp eye and some balls to come over and tell me this. Maybe you oughta be a cop.”
The kid brightened. “You think?”
“Why not? Take a test or something, see if you got the aptitude. Talk to your school counselor, see what he thinks,” Virgil said.
“That guy’s a dick,” the kid said. “He already told me I’ll be washing dishes the rest of my life.”
“Fuck him,” Virgil said. “I hate people who tell kids things like that. You do the best you can and forget about him.”
“Okay… but listen, don’t tell anybody about, you know, sneaking out of my girlfriend’s house.”
“You’re good with me,” Virgil said.
–
When the kid was gone, escorted back through the police lines by the Apple Valley cops, Virgil called Duncan, who was caught in traffic halfway back to St. Paul. “We’re looking for a white van, blocked-out white windows, larger than standard, maybe a Chevy, no other information. The thieves could have had their own, but we need to get Sandy calling all the local rental places.”