Deadly Stillwater (46 page)

Mac took the point, with the chief following. Every so often, along the narrow cliff walls, Mac noted a blood smear.

“You must have hit him good,” the chief said. “He’s draining a lot of blood.”

Mac and the chief approached a fork in the path. They both knelt down and each scanned with their flashlights. There were footprints in either direction.

“Riles, have you seen anything at the top?” Mac asked.

“Negative Mac. Nothing yet.”

“How about a vehicle? Truck? Car? Anything?”

“Negative. There’s a small clearing up here but the woods are really dense, Mac. We’ve swept them, but we can’t really see down to the bottom in most places. Brown could be going through there, and I don’t think we could see him.”

Mac looked to the chief. “Are you alright with splitting up?”

“Yes,” the chief answered.

“Okay, I’m betting he went straight,” Mac said. “That looks flatter and that would be easier with his shoulder and carrying that bag. Besides, my Sig is better than that antique you’re carrying.”

“Fair enough,” the chief answered. “Remember though, the son of a bitch has that .45. He has nothing to lose at this point. He will not hesitate.”

“Neither will I.”

* * * * *

Smith reached the top of the path. He’d made the right choice. Through the dense woods he could see the searchlight of the chopper, maybe one hundred yards to his right, scanning the area where the other path reached the top. All he had left was a narrow path, perhaps one hundred yards long to the pick-up truck, which was covered with a camouflage tarp.

He started down the path, jogged thirty yards, glanced back and saw him.

* * * * *

The chief reached the top of the path and met Brown’s eyes, and the barrel of the .45. He raised the Smith.

* * * * *

The end of the path emerged into a clearing on the top of the cliffs. Mac looked up to the chopper.

“Shit.”

Brown went the other way. There’s no way Riley would have missed him. He immediately turned back to his left where the chief’s path would have come out of the cliff. The exit of the chief’s path would have been into the dense forest. Then he saw the muzzle flashes.

“Riles, shots fired at ten o’clock! Shots fired at ten o’clock!” Mac yelled as he ran into the dense woods and toward the muzzle flashes.

* * * * *

The chief got two off before he ducked for cover, as Brown unloaded his .45 causing shards from the trees to rain down upon him. The shots stopped, and the chief looked to see Brown was running down the path. The chief pushed himself up and gave chase, firing.

* * * * *

The chopper was overhead scanning the path as Smith ran as hard as he could, even as one, two, and then three shots went by. The chopper must have seen the muzzle flashes for Flanagan’s shots as the light was behind him now. The truck was within reach, another thirty yards. But he needed to stop Flanagan first or he wouldn’t be able to get the tarp off and get away.

* * * * *

The chief was shooting on the fly. Then he saw Brown turning around with the .45, standing in the middle of the path, exposed. The chief set his feet.

* * * * *

Smith’s leg buckled as Flanagan’s shot grazed his right leg. He was hit, but it didn’t put him down. It was nothing like the wound in his left shoulder. Flanagan was trying to fire again, but nothing was coming out of the gun. He was out of bullets. Slowly Flanagan’s arm dropped to his side and a resigned look appeared on his face.

“Flanagan, that must be an old Smith you’re holding there and you’ve had your six. You’re finished,” Brown yelled as he raised the .45.

“But I’m not!” a voice yelled from behind him.

Smith turned around to see Mac McRyan, with bloody arms and face, feet set, gun pointed right at him.

“Put it down, Brown!”

Brown started to raise the .45.

Mac didn’t hesitate.

He hit center mass three times.

Smith Brown was blown flat on his back.

The chief walked up to Brown and kicked the .45 away. Brown spit blood out of his mouth, laboring to breathe, laboring to speak.

“You… may have… got me. But you won’t… find… the girls.”

A blood-filled smile crossed his face.

“I lost my daughter… because of… you. Now you… will know… how it feels.”

The chief kneeled down and looked Brown in the face and smiled.

“My boys, they found the girls.”

Brown’s eyes went wide with disbelief.

“No… it’s not… it’s not possible. You’re lying.” Brown said, spitting more blood.

“No we’re not,” Mac answered, standing over him now, blood streaming down his left cheek, the duffel bag of ransom money in his left hand. “We dug them out of the ground at O’Brien State Park a couple of hours ago.”

“They’re alive,” the chief stated. “You failed.”

“And we know about Burton,” Mac added. “He sold you out. He broke in two minutes.”

Brown’s shook his head, “N… N… No,” he said, the blood running out of his mouth. Death was seconds away. Mac held up the duffel bag, smiled and uttered the last words Smith Brown would ever hear.

“Game. Set. Match.”

41

“
It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

JULY 5th

4:48 AM

It took a little over two hours, and he was dead tired, but Mac gave Heather Foxx everything, or just about everything.

He looked like hell, like death warmed over he said later. Sally, watching from behind the camera, remarked that he looked ten years older.

“But that’s fine,” Heather said. “It makes the story that much more dramatic. People will see what you put into it, how hard you went after it. The big scar on your face. The whole ‘never say die’ and ‘against all odds’ thing. It’ll be great.”

“If you say so.” Mac hated interviews. But in this case, it was the least he could do. Heather had saved the chief and kept her word, kept the story close until it was done. She had lost the story of the girls’ rescue to another station – that broke while she was interviewing Mac. But she was the first with the whole story, and she had it in time for the morning news program. By the end of the day, her face – and Mac’s – would be on stations across the country, she predicted.

“Sorry Mac, the story is just that good.”

“Great,” was his wry reply. “But I’m done, right? I don’t have to do any more of this?”

“Not with me. I imagine many of my brethren will be seeking your time.”

“Not if I can help it,” Mac answered, yawning. He could barely stay awake; his body was shutting down.

The bureau was none too happy, not that he cared at this point. They weren’t happy that one of their men had been the mole, although that wasn’t out as of yet. Heather held back that element of the story, at least for now. The FBI seemed even more aggravated about the interrogation technique used on Burton. The director was flying in to town to personally meet with the mayor, as well as the chief and Peters, blustering about an explanation and investigation. Peters said he and the chief weren’t worried about it.

“Fuck the FBI,” Peters snorted. “Besides,” he added. “If the almighty director makes a big stink, we’ll have Heather go with the whole story.”

“She’ll play ball?” Mac asked.

“Hell yes,” Peters responded smiling. “She feels like she’s one of us now, a ‘copper.’ She’d like nothing more than to go with it, but we’re willing to work with the bureau on it. But if the Fibbies make a lot of noise and don’t play ball, we’ll cut Heather loose. She’ll have a field day.”

“How’s Duffy doing?”

“We’re covering for him. The company line is, he had no idea what we were doing.” Peters whistled. “Man, he is pissed about Burton. Ed Duffy is a company man. He believes in the bureau. He’d have joined in on Riles and Rock’s fun with Burton if he could have.”

Mac needed sleep and he had a hospital bed at North Memorial. The hospital bed wasn’t provided as a courtesy. To get to Smith Brown he had run through thick woods, low branches, and thorny bushes. As a result, he was full of deep scrapes and bruises. He required stitches in five places, particularly for the fleshy rip in his left thigh and a gash along his left cheek. The cheek scar, depending upon how it healed, might require some plastic surgery. The thigh wound was thick enough that the emergency room doctor was worried about infection. He wanted Mac to stay in the hospital for a few hours to monitor his recovery. Until the leg wound healed, he would have to walk with a cane.

The emergency room doctors also checked for wood ticks. He’d been in the woods a lot, and the last thing he wanted was Lyme disease. However, a little bull’s-eye bite was nowhere to be found on his body.

Mac cleaned up, put on some clean clothes, and jumped into bed and crashed. Sally woke him with a kiss a little after 10:00 AM. It took a few minutes to shake the cobwebs loose, but the smell of eggs, bacon, and toast, even if it was hospital eggs, bacon, and toast, brought him back to life. He skipped the coffee – he had lived on it for the last four days – and instead gulped down refreshing glasses of ice water and orange juice.

Half-way through his breakfast, the doctor checked in. There was no sign of infection in the thigh wound. However, the face wound was another story.

“You’ll have to give that one a week or so to see how it heals. Ten stitches tend to leave a mark. You might need a little clean up on that.”

The doc left and Mac resumed eating his hospital breakfast. As he finished the last of the eggs, there was another knock on the door. Mayor Olson stuck his head in.

“Detective McRyan was wondering if I might have a moment with you and Ms. Kennedy?” he asked politely. He was by himself. No staff.

Mac looked at Sally who shrugged her shoulders.

“Sure. Why not.”

The mayor slowly walked over to the bed. The smugness and arrogance of the past few days, in reality the past several months, was gone. The man looked tired, with razor stubble and dark circles around his eyes. Not only that, he looked a way Mac had never seen him look – humble. Hizzoner stuck out his hand.

“Well done, Detective, well done. Thank you.”

Mac was surprised, and it must have showed. He slowly extended his hand to the mayor’s.

“I suspected you might feel that way,” the mayor said, giving Mac a firm handshake. “Given how I’ve treated you and your cohorts the last while here, I owe you an apology.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Mac replied, stunned at what he was hearing. “Why the change of heart?”

“Lots of reasons,” the mayor said as he sat down in a chair by the bed. “You certainly bailed me out. I put Burton in charge of the investigation. I walked the chief and Hisle right into the trap. I would have had their blood on my hands. You saved my ass.”

“Bailing you out is not why we did what we did.”

“Oh, I know that. It was just a byproduct,” the mayor replied. “I’m probably the last person you were worried about. However, what I realized is that by putting Burton in charge and creating this level of distrust between the department and me, that made what you had to do that much harder. I’m sure that if we trusted one another, that if we had a better working relationship, I wouldn’t have been putting up road blocks to prevent you from doing what you do so well. Instead of keeping things from me, you could have come to me with your concerns about someone working this thing from the inside. I could have helped. I could have provided resources. But you didn’t trust me, did you?”

Mac shook his head.

“Well that’s on me,” the mayor said quietly. “That’s all on me.”

“You can understand I’m a little surprised to be hearing this,” Mac said.

“I imagine you are. Unfortunately, it took something like this to happen to make
me
see the light. It didn’t hurt that the chief and I had a good heart to heart a couple of hours ago. He lit me up pretty good about my office’s relations with the force, and he was one-hundred percent right. I haven’t been supportive. I’ve been anything but. Well, that’s going to change. It’ll start at a press conference in a couple of hours. Peters and I will be handling it. I will be offering my praise and thanks for a job well done.”

“I think I can speak for Riles, Rock, Lich, and everyone else. We will appreciate it.”

“Good,” the mayor said. “Of course, once all the euphoria from this dies down, we’re going to have to deal with some stuff.”

“Such as?” Mac asked, a little wearily.

“Burton and the FBI for all the obvious reasons. Burton has already hired a lawyer, and the bureau is squawking about how we accessed various records.”