Stolen Prey (35 page)

A
FTER DROPPING
Albitis and making the call to 911, Sanderson wiped the phone with a Kleenex and dropped it out the window onto the freeway, where it was run over several hundred times in the next hour or so, before the biggest chunk of the finely ground remnant made it to the shoulder.

She was worried about Albitis, but was now more focused on the gold. Albitis, she thought, really couldn’t turn her in, without implicating herself. So, however that turned out, it was something for the future. For now, she had to take care of the gold, which was the only remaining reason for doing any of this.

B
ACK AT THE HOUSE
, she threw the boxes of gold back in the car. Since she’d already moved them once, by the time she was finished, she’d moved seventeen hundred pounds of heavy metal, almost as though she’d been stacking car batteries all day.

When the gold was loaded, she went out to Albitis’s car and found more gold in the trunk. She backed Albitis’s car up to the garage and transferred the gold to her car. Then she got a bunch of garbage bags from under the kitchen sink, a spade, and a blue plastic tarp from the garage, put them in her car, and pulled out to the street. Albitis’s car went into the garage: she’d move it later.

With all that done, she headed out into the countryside. Out to the farm.

She’d never really expected to have the money to buy the place, but she’d visited it a dozen times, touring her dream. Dog kennels over here, a stable over there. Chicken coops to the right.

The drive south took a bit more than an hour, into the Cannon River Valley south of Farmington. The farm was barely a farm anymore—forty acres were planted with a ragged cornfield, but the other forty were nothing but weeds and a scattering of saplings sprouted from windblown seed. A line of taller timber marked the north side, where the land started to fold as it dropped down to the river. The acreage didn’t border on the river itself, but was close. She could walk to a bridge….

She got to the farm as the sun was hovering above the horizon, turning the overhead clouds a gorgeous lavender-and-salmon. She pulled open the gate—the owner of the land had told her she
could stop by anytime—and pulled in, closed the gate behind herself, and drove slowly along a thin track toward the timber.

She dug carefully, throwing the dirt onto the blue tarp. By the time she finished, it was nearly dark, the sun long gone; she put one of the plastic bags in the hole, filled it with boxes of gold, then cinched up the bag so it would be as waterproof as possible, then did the same with a second bag. She refilled the hole, replaced a few pieces of sod by flashlight, then threw her equipment back in the car. If anybody were to come by before the next rain, they might find themselves some gold. But that was unlikely: one in a million.

When she was done, she examined the site one last time with the flashlight, then drove carefully back across the field to the gate, drove through, replaced the gate, and drove home.

She missed Lucas by ten minutes.

T
he dimensions of the problem were now clear.

Lucas went back to the BCA offices, spoke briefly with Shaffer, who was directing a regional search for Martínez and the third shooter, talking to DEA officials and Mexican Federales, all of whom would love to get their hands on her. Shaffer could plainly see that if he got the bust, he’d be hero of the week; and even if he didn’t, he was getting the credit for breaking her out, and he was taking it.

Lucas no longer cared about her: now it was a matter of locating her, and whatever happened would happen. Most likely, he thought, it’d be a couple highway patrolmen, in their funny blue hats, chasing them down in rural Kansas, after they were spotted at a gas station. Lucas had his differences with various state highway patrols, based on what the Porsche management referred to as “spirited driving,” but conceded that when it came to the chase-and-shoot business, they were pretty good at it.

But: there remained the problem of the thieves who set off the whole episode, and most notably, Sanderson. If Albitis died, Sanderson would be a murderer, Lucas thought. That was not allowed in the state of Minnesota.

When he left Shaffer, he called Del: “I’ll be in my office. Come on up, we’ve got to do some plotting.”

Del showed up a half hour later. He was wearing a double-knit blue blazer, a white shirt with a red polyester necktie, gray slacks, and dress shoes. All of the clothing was slightly too large for him, his thin neck sticking out of the shirt collar like a turtle’s. Taken all together, he looked like a security guard at a movie theater.

“You going to court?”

“Just came back,” he said. He unclipped the necktie and put it in his pocket.

Lucas watched him do that, then said, “Let me see the tie for a minute.”

“Huh?”

“Let me see the tie.”

Del took it out of his pocket and passed it over. Lucas turned and dropped it in his wastebasket. “I’ll buy you a new one,” he said.

Del looked wistfully at the wastebasket and said, “I sorta liked that one.”

“I’m doing this for your own good. You remember Bertha Swenson? You remember what I did for you there?”

“Ahhhh…”

“This is the necktie equivalent of Bertha Swenson. Think about it.”

“She wouldn’t have shot
me….”

T
HEY PLOTTED
:

“We need a way to get Sanderson out in the open. The way I read her, she’s a hippie, a little flaky, probably got dragged into it against her will, but in the end, she winds up whacking Albitis.”

“And you say Albitis is really the only thing we’ve got on the rest of the group?”

“Now that Turicek is dead,” Lucas said. “Sandy says every time there was a big gold sale at one of the dealers we were looking at, Albitis was getting off and on a plane. The DEA has followed the money trail to a supposedly Syrian company, and it was supposedly a Syrian woman who was buying the gold.”

“But you can’t tie Albitis to the Syrian woman—not directly.”

“No, and it doesn’t matter much, if Albitis dies. Actually, we’re probably better off if she dies, because we can build our case, and she won’t be around to deny it.”

“As long as a Syrian woman doesn’t show up.”

“That won’t happen,” Lucas said. “Albitis is the Syrian woman. I know it.”

“Then where’s the gold?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Sanderson’s got it.”

T
HEY WORKED
around that question, and Del finally suggested that what they knew wasn’t adding up to much of a court case. “We’ve got Kline getting shot, and Sanderson was looked at, but they could be completely innocent. In fact, we’re the ones who sicced the Mexicans on them.”

“That’s true.”

“We may
know
they were involved in the theft, somehow, but all they have to do is deny it,” Del said. “If they get a decent lawyer, the lawyer will pin the theft on Turicek and Albitis. I mean, Turicek was apparently some kind of criminal over in Lithuania, and he brings in Albitis—we’re pretty sure of that.”

“Yeah.” Lucas spun around in his chair, looked out at the parking
lot. Then, “Kline was involved. But he got shot, and that’s some kind of punishment. Maybe we let him go: work a deal, get Sanderson. She’s a killer, or close to it.”

“How do we cut him out?”

K
LINE HAD
checked out of the hospital, in a rental wheelchair, and had gone back to his apartment. Lucas and Del arrived at ten o’clock the next morning, Lucas carrying a briefcase full of paper, including the murder book on the Brooks killings, as well as files on Pruess, the Polaris vice president who’d been thrown in the dumpster, on the killing of Rivera, and the shootings of Uno and Dos.

He planned to take the whole mass, as he told Del, sharpen it to a fine point, and shove it up Kline’s ass.

When they arrived at Kline’s apartment building, they could see, from the street, a light on in the bathroom through the new window. They went up and pounded on the door.

Nothing.

They pounded again, and then a weak, nervous answer: “Who is it?”

“Lucas Davenport, BCA. I spoke to you before.”

After a long pause, Kline called back, “How do I know it’s you?”

“You could look out the peephole,” Lucas said.

“But if it’s not really you, as soon as I look out the peephole, you could shoot me again.”

“Ah, for Christ’s sakes, Kline, it’s me,” Lucas said. “Call your building manager and ask her to come up and look.”

There was another long silence, then the peephole darkened, and finally a chain rattled on the inside. Kline, unshaven, white-faced,
peeked out, saw Del, looked up and down the hall, and said, “All right.”

He’d been on his feet, and now he settled back, in the wheelchair, and rolled himself backward into the apartment. He’d been watching a morning talk show: a man stood behind a microphone, turned to a stunned-looking young man, and said, “Sean, you are … NOT … the father.” The crowd cheered, or jeered, and Kline clicked it off.

“Trying to keep from going insane,” he mumbled, apparently embarrassed to be caught watching the show. “What do you want?”

“We need to talk to you about this whole case,” Lucas said.

“I talked to a guy in the hospital,” Kline said, “And he told me that one thing I shouldn’t do is talk to the cops. You’re probably recording all of this.”

“We’re not recording it, and we don’t want you to say much anyway. We’re here more to make a presentation,” Lucas said.

“A presentation?”

“Yes. All you have to do is sit there and listen.”

Kline looked from Lucas to Del, and back and forth a couple of times, and then, “I guess I can do that. But I’m not answering any questions.”

“Just listen,” Lucas said.

Kline said to Del, “Nice tie, dude.”

“Hermès,” Del said, in his best French.

T
HE PLACE
smelled weird, like hot dogs and sweat, brittle yellowed wallpaper and dry rot, with a little old-bathroom smell
thrown in. The couch was covered with newspapers, and when Lucas looked for a place to sit, Kline said, “Throw those papers on the floor,” and Del did that, making a stack and dropping it beside one couch arm.

Lucas took the paper out of his briefcase, put the case between his feet, and started talking:

“Don’t say anything. Don’t argue with me, just listen,” he said. “Now, we know you were involved in this theft from Polaris. There’s no question in our minds about that.”

“Oh, bullshit, you’re—”

“Shut up,” Lucas said. “Just listen to the case.”

Lucas laid it out piece by piece. How ICE had found two back doors into Polaris and had documented them before she took them out. How they had to be done from the inside. How Kline had migrated to Hennepin National, where he’d hooked up with three other people for the theft: Turicek, Sanderson, and eventually, Albitis.

“We can tie you to the other three. We can tie Turicek to Albitis, and Albitis to the gold purchases. We believe we can tie Sanderson to the attack on Albitis—she called nine-one-one on a phone Albitis used to call Turicek, and I recognized her voice on the tape. The tape is being analyzed in our laboratories now, and after we get the forensic voice analysis done, we’ll be able to hook that to Sanderson. So, we’ve got you all in a bundle.”

Kline broke in, shaking his head: “You don’t have me. All you have on me is that I sat in the same office. And I’ll tell you what: banks deal with each other all the time, system to system. I think Ivan found a way into Polaris from our system, picked out an account to loot, and did it. He never told me about it. I think
it was him and Albitis, and everything else you’re telling me is bullshit.”

Lucas shook a finger at him: “Not bullshit. I think we can make a powerful case. But you’re right about one thing—our case against you is the weakest. We don’t care about Turicek, because he’s dead. So it comes down to you and Albitis and Sanderson. We’ve decided to settle for two out of the three. We’re going to give somebody partial immunity, in return for testimony against the other two.”

“Partial immunity,” Kline scoffed. “That’s worth a lot. Go to prison and get killed for being an informer … get banged by a bunch of faggot convicts … that’s an attractive deal.”

Del said, “Listen, Jake, you know what happened here. The Brookses, David Rivera, the cop from Mexico, Pruess, the VP from Polaris … we’re not going to come after you for stealing a little money. We’re coming after you for multiple murder. You and the others touched this off. How old are you? Close to thirty? You’ll be sixty years old, under Minnesota law, before you’d have your first chance to see the outside again.”

“But I’m innocent,” Kline said.

“Oh, bullshit, Jake,” Lucas said. Then, into a moment of deadlocked silence, “But there’s something else. And I brought some stuff to show you.”

“I need to talk to a lawyer.”

“You do, but for now, listen another two minutes,” Lucas said. “Have you been watching television? All the news reports about these Mexican gangsters?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it.”

“I’ll tell you what—they don’t have the gold. We’re lying about that, hoping to confuse things.”

“So they can’t go back,” Kline said. “The killers. That’s cruel. Funny, but cruel.”

“Sooner or later, the truth is going to come out,” Lucas said. “When it comes out, these gangsters are going to say to themselves, ‘Jacob Kline and Kristina Sanderson and Edie Albitis have our twenty-two million dollars.’ They’re going to come after you. They’re going to want their money. You understand?”

“I understand what you’re saying, I’m not sure I believe it. There seems to be a lot of bullshit going on here.”

“So look at this,” Lucas said. “Does this look like bullshit?”

He reached down between his feet, got the color prints of the murder scenes, the Brookses, Rivera lying in a puddle of blood, the Mexican guys shot on the couch and in the middle of the parking lot, Pruess folded like an old banana in the dumpster, and then lying on the street partially unwrapped, one butchered hand sticking out on the blacktop.

Lucas pushed out a close-up of a finger joint. “This belonged to Patrick Brooks. Cut them off one at a time. Used them to write a message on the wall.”