They slowly drove by, taking a look. There were few trees obstructing the view, and recently harvested farmland surrounded the home. Farm equipment was noticeably absent. There were no homes nearby on that side of the road.
“Should be pretty easy to see him coming and going,” Rock remarked.
“If we can find a place to sit and watch. We can’t exactly sit at the end of the driveway unnoticed,” Mac replied.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Riles added.
A housing development was springing up a quarter mile up the road on the right side, opposite Knapp’s place. Riles drove down to the development and turned right. Three homes were under construction on the right side of the street. Between the second and third was a vacant lot that eventually would hold a home. It was a pile of dirt for the time being. Riley turned the van around, and they pulled along the curb. They could see through the vacant lot to Knapp’s place.
“Here’s one spot,” Rockford stated.
It turned out that for now it was the only one that they could find to watch Knapp’s place without drawing attention. They drove by the farmhouse one more time then went back to the others waiting at the restaurant. Riley gave the orders for the night. Two would wait at the restaurant and watch from the south, while the other two would take up the spot in the housing development. Riles ordered Mac, Lich, and Rock home.
“What about you, Riles?” Rock asked.
“I’m going home too, I’m exhausted.”
Chapter Nineteen
Beep, beep, beep. Mac reached over and turned off the alarm. He sat up and yawned and took a closer look at the clock, 6:30 a.m. Riles had sent him home at 10:30 p.m. He’d called Sally on the way home, and she had him come over. Five minutes after hitting the sack, he was asleep. Never a deep sleeper or someone who required anymore than four or five hours, Mac crashed hard and slept soundly. Several hours of sleep left him feeling refreshed.
He swung his feet out of bed, rubbed his eyes and yawned. He got up, scratched his ass as he went over and looked out the window. A gust of wind rattled the pane, and the leaves skipped down the street. It was overcast, another typical cloudy, windy, chilly November day.
The shower was running. He wondered if Sally was feeling as refreshed as he was. Mac headed for the shower to find out.
Two hours later, he checked his watch as he pulled up to the Grand Brew. He wanted his usual double latte to start the day, even if he was starting much later than usual. Mac was one for routines, and this was one of them.
As he walked inside the coffee shop, he had a smile on his face as he thought about the last two hours. Sally had indeed been refreshed. While she gave him the obligatory, “Men are animals,” when he jumped into her shower, they had quickly moved to the bed.
Later, as they dressed, Mac filled her in on Knapp.
“What are you guys going to do?
“We’ll follow him and see what develops. We can’t even be sure that this is the guy.” Mac took a bite of his toast and, with a half-full mouth, said, “But it feels right.”
Sally sipped her juice. “How come?”
“Just does. Instinct, intuition, gut. Whatever it is, this is the break the case needed.”
“I hope you’re right,” Sally said as she bit into her toast. “You guys thinking about a search warrant?”
“I’m thinking our case on this guy is a little thin. But I imagine we’ll be talking about it” Mac replied. “Before we get that far, we have to see the van first.” He took a sip of his juice. “Another thing that concerns me about going for a search at this point is that he’s been so good at leaving nothing behind for evidence. He probably has that van clean as a whistle. If we go for the warrant, find nothing, then where does that leave us?”
“I see your point,” Sally replied. “So you follow?”
“Yeah. If he sticks to his pattern, maybe we catch him in the act or something.”
Twenty minutes later, Mac pulled the door open to the Grand Brew and headed inside. He ordered his usual, paid his usual and headed out.
Sally got into her office just before 9:00 a.m., turned on her computer and picked up her phone to check voicemails. Only three messages, which was a pleasant surprise. She punched in her computer password and heard a knock on the door. Oh oh. She turned to see Helen.
“Good morning, Helen.”
“Good morning. A light day ahead of you?” The tone in her voice said it all. Sally was late. If Helen Anderson was a stickler for anything, it was being on time. She wanted the impression that her office was working hard, doing the people’s business and, by extension, her business. Therefore, she always wanted her people in early and working late. Of course, many in the office grumbled that they did all the work and Helen got all the glory. She did like to be on camera and quoted in the paper. The fact that she knew little, if anything, about criminal law didn’t help and pissed people off. But she was the boss, at least for now, a senate run in the offing.
“In fact, yes,” Sally replied.
“I see,” Anderson said, the tone of disapproval remaining.
Sally needed to change the subject, “I have what may be some good news, though.”
“What’s that?”
“The police may finally have a suspect in the University Avenue killings.”
That perked up Helen’s attention, “Really? Tell me.”
Sally could see Helen savoring the headlines.
Mac, Lich, Riley, and Rock, along with a few others, met briefly downtown with Chief Flanagan and Peters. Knapp had come home at 1:15 a.m. He was on the road again at 8:00 a.m., heading into work at Quick Cleaners.
Knapp’s Q Cleaners location was on the northwest corner of Lexington and University Avenue. He had appeared for work at 9:30 a.m. His MVR record from Wisconsin said he was employed as a driver. They figured he worked some sort of later 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. shift, which made some sense based on pick-ups and drop offs.
The building itself was on the corner, with a large parking lot full of vans to the west. Mac pulled his van into a shopping mall parking lot across the street with the back of the van facing the store. He and Lich could look out the tinted windows in the back. They each had binoculars, and a radio sat on the floor. The rest of the crew was spread out around the store, waiting for action.
At 10:15 a.m., the radio crackled with the voice of Dan Patrick, “I think our boy just came out the door.”
Mac responded, “Copy that.” He looked through his binoculars and saw a tall, lean, white male with short blond hair, almost a military cut. He was wearing a green full-body, zip-up uniform and had a clipboard. Mac noticed his boots, bright black, as if they had been spit-shined.
Knapp got into one of the white Q Cleaner vans and backed it up to a small loading dock where a couple of other men from inside started loading the van with white hangers full of plastic-covered shirts, suits, uniforms, and other clothing for delivery. In ten minutes the van was full. One of the other workers gave Knapp a few sheets of paper that he put on his clipboard. Knapp gave the guy a little wave, jumped in his van and pulled out of the parking lot, heading west along University.
The detail tailed Knapp all day as he made deliveries up and down University Avenue for nearly four hours, going as far west as the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and back east along University, to within a few blocks of the State Capitol. Deliveries were made to homes, offices, factories, a motel, restaurants, and bars. The stops never ventured far north or south of University Avenue. At 3:00 p.m. he stopped at a McDonald’s for a late lunch. Mac watched through the binoculars as he wolfed down a super-sized meal.