Criminal Enterprise (26 page)

S
TEVENS STOOD
UP
from a box of football jerseys and walked to the window. “Jesus,” he said. “It’s another ice age out there.”

Windermere watched him from the floor. They’d torn apart Dragan Medic’s second bedroom over the last hour or so, and found nothing. Moreover, Tomlin and Tricia Henderson hadn’t returned for the money, and Windermere had watched the minutes tick away, feeling empty and anxious and increasingly desperate. She stood and walked to the window and peered out at the blizzard, the gusting snow like so many mosquitoes beneath the yellow light from the streetlamps. “My partner still out there?”

Stevens shook his head. “What the hell happened, anyway?”

“The usual, Stevens,” she said, sighing. “Man stuff. Had to be in control.”

Stevens laughed. “He picked the wrong partner.”

“Yeah, well. His loss.” She stared out into the blizzard. “Except we might need the manpower if we’re going to find Tomlin.”

She’d sent license plate info and a description of Tomlin’s Jaguar to every police outfit in the state. In this weather, though, every car looked the same, and license plates were all hidden by snow. Tomlin’s cell phone, meanwhile, was an older model, untraceable by GPS. Mathers was harassing T-Mobile into triangulating his calls, but the process would take time. Tomlin would be gone long before the locations came through.

Stevens walked away from the window and stood in the middle of the room. He sighed and looked at her. “I need to say something.”

She cocked her head at him. “You asking permission?”

“Nah,” he said. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “It’s like this, Carla,” he said at last. “I swore I’d never do something like this again. After last time. I’m risking my marriage just being here.”

She felt a brief, guilty thrill. “What, with me?”

“Yes,” he said. “No. This whole case.” He looked around and sighed. “I promised my wife I wouldn’t do it. This cowboy stuff.”

Windermere looked at him. “Come on.”

Stevens stared out the dark window. “Pender could have killed us. You and me both. We’re headed down the same road with Tomlin.”

“So what?” she said. “Pender didn’t kill us. We beat him. We’ll beat Tomlin the same.”

Stevens shook his head. “I have a family, Carla.”

“And, what, I don’t?” Windermere tore through the tape on another cardboard box and peered inside: a stack of old
Maxim
magazines. “It’s not like I asked you to be here,” she said. “Far as I can tell, you were pretty damn eager to get yourself involved.” She looked at him. “I don’t get it, Stevens. You came here by yourself. You
wanted
to be here.”

“I missed working with you. That hasn’t changed.”

“So work with me. Let’s take this guy down.”

Stevens exhaled. “I made a promise to Nancy,” he said. “This isn’t my game anymore.”

Windermere turned back to the box. Riffled through the stack of magazines and set it aside. Picked up another box, this one filled with die-cast model cars, Japanese, mostly. No American muscle. She shook her head. “Fine.”

“What?”

She turned to him. “If it’s too dangerous for you, Stevens, then be with your family. Let me handle Tomlin. Go home.”

He stared at her. “I’m not leaving you here alone, Carla.”

“Don’t sweat it. I’ll get Doughty to help here, or someone else on my team. Someone who doesn’t need to be home with his wife.”

Stevens said nothing. Windermere shook her head.
“Go,
Stevens,” she said. “Just go home.”

Stevens didn’t move for a minute or two. Just looked at her. “Shit,” he said. “Shit.” Then he walked out the door.

S
CHULTZ PUSHED
THE
kid through the doorway. The Tomlins’ dog padded out from the kitchen, locked eyes with him, and started barking again. “You shut that mutt up,” Schultz told the kid, “or I’ll kill you both.”

The kid was pale, shaky. He turned to the dog and held out his hand. “Come on, Snickers,” he said. “Come on, be quiet.”

Someone called up from the basement, a girl. “Aaron?” she said. “Is Josh here?”

The kid looked at Schultz, terrified. Schultz put his finger to his lips and motioned down the stairs. The kid swallowed and started down, Schultz behind hm. The dog kept barking up above. Schultz turned around and leveled the gun at the little mutt, was about to pull the trigger when the girl called out again. “Snickers,” she said. “Shut
up.
”

The dog perked up at the sound of her voice, and raced down past Schultz to the bottom of the stairs. Schultz prodded the kid with the gun. “Keep going.”

The kid, Aaron, led him into the basement, past a couple of dark rooms and into the back, a rec room with carpet and couches and a big-screen TV. Schultz stopped in the doorway. There were teenagers on the couches, on the floor, cuddled up in the corners. Maybe ten kids in total, all focused on the TV and the dog and one another. Schultz stepped into the room, his gun raised. Someone gasped, and then everybody was looking his way.

Schultz walked to the middle of the room as Aaron booked it to the couch and hid among his friends. “I’m looking for Carter Tomlin,” he said. The kids looked at one another. Nobody answered. Schultz pointed the TEC-9 at the closest kid, a scrawny runt wearing camouflage pants. “One more time,” he said. “Carter Tomlin.”

“He’s not here,” said a girl, a pretty blonde. Schultz turned away from the runt and looked at her. “He’s gone,” she said.

“Where the hell did he go?” Schultz asked her.

“He’s just gone.” The girl glanced at another blond girl, who shied back and buried her face in the dog’s fur. “Nobody knows where he is.”

Schultz studied the second girl. “How many of you shitstains live in this pile?”

Nobody said anything. Their eyes all seemed to gravitate to the shy blonde with the mutt. Schultz looked at her. “You?”

The girl was crying. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“She doesn’t know anything,” the other blonde said. “She doesn’t know where her dad is. Don’t hurt her.”

“Stand up,” Schultz told the shy one. The girl cried harder, but she pushed the dog away and stood on shaky, skinny legs. “Come here.”

She walked through the mess of kids to where he stood. Stared down at the carpet. “What’s your name?” he asked her.

The girl swallowed. “Heather.”

“Heather Tomlin?”

She nodded, her eyes screwed closed, tight, her whole body shaking. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he told her. “I just want my money.” Heather nodded slowly. “Your dad robbed me. Seventy grand. That’s what I’m after.”

Heather shook her head. “I don’t know anything. Honest.”

“And your dad’s gone.” Schultz waited until the girl nodded again. “Where’s your mom?” Her eyes shot open. Schultz held her gaze and looked at her mean, watching her nearly piss herself out of fear and already feeling like a first-class shitheel.

Christ,
he thought.
I just want my damn money.

“Where’s your mom?” he asked her again.
This time, the girl swallowed. Looked instinctively to the ceiling. “Upstairs?”

She nodded again, wordless. Schultz turned to the runty kid in the camouflage. “Get her,” he said. “Don’t try anything stupid. Don’t make me be the bad guy.”

The kid’s eyes went wide. He didn’t move. “Hurry, Brian,” someone said. Brian jolted like he’d touched a live wire, and hurried out of the room.

Schultz looked back at the gaggle of teens. He examined the braver blond girl, who stood, staring at him, by the couch. “Who are you?” he asked her.

The girl flushed and looked away. Not so ballsy now. “Andrea,” she said.

“You live in this house?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then sit down and keep your mouth shut,” he told her. “Mind your business.” He waved the gun at her, and she paled and retreated to the couch as someone gasped from the door behind him. Schultz turned to see the little runt, Brian, returning with two people behind him.

A woman, middle-aged. She looked exhausted but beautiful, a peek into her daughters’ futures. The girl behind her was younger than her sister, still a child. Mom saw the gun and went rigid. “What do you want?”

“You’re Tomlin’s wife,” he said, and she nodded. “I’m here for my money.”

Her eyes were red and swollen, her hair unkempt. She looked like she’d been crying nonstop for a week, but she didn’t look at him scared, and she didn’t look anymore at the gun. “I don’t know anything about your money,” she said. “Carter’s gone.”

“Seventy grand. Then I’ll go.”

She didn’t blink. “We don’t have it.”

“Your husband’s a bank robber, lady. You have it.”

“He took the money.” She looked at him, grim. “We never saw it. We don’t have it.”

“In this whole fucking house.” Schultz stared at her. She stared back, miserable but defiant. Schultz felt his frustration mounting. Could have punched through the wall. “Find him.”

“How?”

“I don’t care. Find him, or I start killing these kids.” Schultz motioned to a side table, where a cordless phone sat amid empty chip bags and soda cans. “There’s your lifeline,” he told her. “Use it.”

T
OMLIN LAY
ON
the bed in the dark motel room, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the blizzard rage outside. He wondered how far Tricia would get in the Jaguar. Wondered if she would really escape.

The ten-thousand stack she’d thrown lay on the flowered bedspread beside him, the soggy bills a bad joke at his expense. Ten thousand dollars out of a million five. Odds were better he’d die in this motel room than spend that cash.

“I see you again, I
will
kill you,” she’d said. Tomlin traced the mottled stains on the ceiling with his eyes and wondered if she’d ever get the chance. Cursed himself for being stupid. For letting her get away. He wondered how long it would take before the police found him. Someone, surely, would notice Dragan’s Civic parked outside. The desk clerk would remember his face. Sooner or later, the police would arrive. Tomlin figured he’d be waiting when they did.

Tricia had taken the money, but she’d left the guns. The big AR-15 waited inside Dragan’s Civic, a pile of ammunition along with it. The shotgun, too, and a couple of pistols. Enough firepower to put a dent in the Saint Paul police force before he finally went down. He cursed Tricia again. The cocktease. The whore.
You should have killed her,
he thought.
You should have watched her die, then taken off with the money. Instead, you let her beat you.

That was the really bad part. The money was a setback, sure, probably fatal. What really hurt, though, was the soggy stack of bills on the bed beside him, the memory of Tricia’s face as she’d driven away.

She’d won. She’d taken the money and the Jaguar and driven off into the sunset. She’d stood at the door with her pistol aimed squarely at Tomlin and laughed at him and dared him to come at her. And he hadn’t done it. He’d stood there and watched as she’d driven away. And then he’d walked back into the motel room and locked the door and lay down and stared up at the ceiling and waited for the police to find him.

He’d kept Dragan’s keys. Could feel them in his pants pocket. But he didn’t drive away, didn’t bother to run. Because he was a chump, after all.

The blizzard raged outside. Tomlin listened to the wind howling and stared up at the stains on the ceiling, thinking about Tricia and feeling plain fucking sick with envy. Then he heard his phone ringing. It had been ringing for a while, he realized. He’d been so lost in his thoughts, he’d ignored it. Now he listened to the tinny ringtone, the police probably, setting a trap. The phone rang a little longer, then stopped. A moment later, it started again.

Tomlin sat up.
Let them trap me,
he thought.
It’s bound to happen soon enough, anyway.
He stood up and fished the phone from his coat. Looked at the display. His home number. He waited until the phone was silent again. Then he paged through the call log. Five missed calls. All from home. The phone rang again. The same number.

Here we go.
Tomlin flipped open the phone and held it to his ear. Expected to hear Carla Windermere, or Kirk Stevens, or some other cop. Or maybe Becca, selling him out, pretending nothing was wrong. Instead, he got someone different. Someone worse than the cops. “Tony Schultz.” The man’s voice was harsh and triumphant. “You remember me, Brill?”

Suddenly, Tomlin felt even sicker. “What do you want?”

“I want what you took, Tomlin. Can’t make you give me my teeth back, but I do want my money.”

“Your money.” Tomlin laughed, cold. “I don’t have it.”

Schultz snarled. “Bullshit.”

“My partner just robbed me. Took every cent. Sorry.”

“Sorry don’t cut it, brother.” A pause. “You got a nice place here, Tomlin. A nice family. Your baby girl’s got a nice bunch of friends.”

“You don’t understand. I don’t have your money.”

“I understand fine,” Schultz replied. “Maybe you don’t understand. Come home and talk to me, or I make a pile of bodies in your basement. We clear?”

Schultz hung up before he could answer. Tomlin put the phone back in his coat pocket. Then he sat on the bed and looked around the motel room some more.

T
ONY SCHULTZ
PACED
Tomlin’s rec room, his boots leaving a muddy trail on the carpet.
Show the fuck up, Tomlin,
he thought.
Show up, so I can get my goddamn money.

He’d trashed the house looking for the stash. Dragged Tomlin’s daughter—the older one—with him, and told her mother if she tried anything funny, he’d shoot the girl in her head. He’d searched every room in the house. Tore open mattresses and pulled clothes from the closets. Far as he could tell, Tomlin wasn’t lying. The whole house was clean. Unbelievable.

Schultz dragged the girl into the train room at the end. Stared in at the huge setup, examined it closely. Then he ripped the train table to pieces, ruined it, put holes in the mountains, and destroyed the cities. Trashed the whole room as Tomlin’s daughter wept beside him. He found nothing. Stalked back to the rec room and collared Tomlin’s wife.
“Where is it?”

She stared at him and said nothing. He drew back his hand to slap her. She didn’t flinch. “I don’t fucking know.” She spat the curse like she’d been saving it for months. “I don’t fucking know anything.”

He held her before him, his open hand raised. Then he released her.
“Shit,”
he said. Tomlin’s wife glared at him as she retreated. She didn’t say anything more.

—

S
CHULTZ COULD FEEL
time wasting. He studied the collage of terrified faces around him and wondered if he could kill any one of them. He’d been asking himself that same question all night.

Carter Tomlin he could kill. The cop outside, maybe. But these damned teenagers, Tomlin’s daughters, his wife? Schultz had hoped Tomlin would jump when he heard his kids were in danger. Prayed the bastard wouldn’t try to test him. But the clock was ticking now, and Tomlin still hadn’t showed. Schultz’s TEC-9 was slick in his hand. He kept pacing.

The blond girl, Andrea, was staring at him. She held his gaze when he looked at her. Still ballsy. Schultz tried to wait the girl out, but damned if she wouldn’t blink. Finally, he rubbed his eyes and looked away. Swore under his breath and paced the room some more, waiting for Tomlin to show.