The Professionals (11 page)

“He get the license plate?”

Garvey shook his head. “Too dark.”

“A red Ford van. Full-sized?”

“Yeah. Passenger van, not cargo. Some other guy said he saw a cute brunette hanging around in her car in the evening,” said Garvey. “Said
he didn’t know whether it was relevant or not, but she seemed to be casing the Beneteau place.”

“A brunette, huh?”

“Yeah. Curly hair.” Garvey shrugged. “I dunno. Could just be a coincidence.”

“What kind of car?”

“Some kind of late-model Chevy, he said. Big car. Maybe an Impala?”

“An Impala. Okay.”

Garvey watched him, smile a mile wide, eyes bright. He’s feeling the rush, thought Landry. Loving this stuff.

“So what do we do, Paul?” Garvey asked. “What’s the story?”

Landry shrugged. “We let them handle it, I guess. Unless the family opens up, there’s not a hell of a lot we can do. Keep an eye out for red Ford vans, but that’s a long shot and a half.”

“We’re going to let them get away?”

“No,” said Landry. “We’re going to go back to the station, type up a report, come back tomorrow, and canvass the block again. We’ll put in the time. But without a statement from the old lady or any kind of solid lead on the Ford, we’re stuck.”

He turned back toward the house, where Patricia Beneteau and her so-called lawyer were no longer visible in the light from the front room. They’d gone inside to the warmth, pretty much the only sensible thing to do on a night like this one. Even the techs were finishing up. In ten minutes, Beneteau’s body would be loaded into the medical examiner’s van and driven down to the morgue, and the street, chalk and bloodstains notwithstanding, would return to normal. Landry shivered under his umbrella. “All right, Bill,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

A
gent Stevens parked his Cherokee downtown and walked into the FBI’s Minneapolis field office. A fifteen-story skyscraper in the heart of the city, the Feds’ Minnesota headquarters looked like nothing more than the head office of some financial firm—North Star Investors, perhaps. It certainly didn’t look like a police station, and that, Stevens thought, was probably how the Feds wanted it.

He walked inside the building and introduced himself at the front desk, surrendered his sidearm, and made a couple passes through the metal detector before he got it right. Then he climbed into an elevator and rode it up to the Criminal Investigative Division.

When the elevator doors slid open Stevens stepped out onto a vast, open floor not unlike his own at the BCA, an expansive room of low cubicles and glass partitions ringed by private offices on the outside. It was the kind of office you’d expect to find at an investment bank or a software company, its long banks of monitors and server farms speaking to the reality of police investigation in the computer age.

“Agent Stevens?”

Stevens found himself staring into the eyes of the woman who had called his name. She was beautiful—she must have been about thirty,
tall and slender, her brown skin rich and her hair coal black and ruler-straight—but it was her eyes that got him. Deep shimmering pools with startling hazel centers, they seemed to bore deep inside him as he stood rooted in the lobby, watching her approach.

She came closer and proffered her hand, a polite smile on her lips. “I’m Carla Windermere,” she said. She spoke with the hint of an accent, somewhere southern. “We spoke on the phone.”

Stevens took her hand and they shook. “Kirk Stevens,” he said. She had a firm, cool grip. “It’s good to meet you in person.”

Windermere led him out of the reception area and down the first line of cubicles, stopping at a desk close to the end of the row. “I don’t have much of an office, I’m afraid.”

She stole a chair from the cubicle beside hers and offered it to Stevens, then sat down in her own. Stevens glanced around the workstation. It was impeccably neat, almost obsessively so. One picture decorated the low walls, a snapshot of a man about her age in a Hawaiian shirt, posing on a dock with an enormous swordfish. “They told me when I came to Minneapolis I’d get my own office.” Windermere smiled. “Little did I know.”

“You’ve been here long?”

“Almost a year now,” she said. “Transferred from Miami in December.”

“Wow. I’m very sorry.”

She laughed. “It’s not so bad. I figured it would be worse. Like that old comedy bit about Prince being the only black person in Minnesota. I figured me and my boyfriend would triple the score.”

She smiled at Stevens. He found himself smiling back at her. “Your accent doesn’t quite sound like South Beach.”

“Mississippi,” she said. Then she paused. “Well, more like Tennessee. I grew up across the state line from Memphis.”

“So you’re a warm-weather person all the way.”

Windermere shrugged. “I don’t mind the cold so much. I can’t drive in the snow, but I’m learning. My boyfriend, though. He hates it.”

“He’ll get used to it,” Stevens told her. “Wait till he tries ice fishing.”

“We’ll see.” She straightened. “Anyway, enough of me wasting your time. You said you had a case, Agent Stevens.”

“Sure,” he said. “A kidnapping.”

“A kidnapping. In Minnesota.”

Stevens nodded. “Just like the movies. Ransom demand and all.” He gave her the full story, from Terry Harper through Ashley McAdams to Ryan Carew and his Joliet address. Windermere listened intently, staring at him with those piercing eyes.

She sat forward when he was finished. “What makes you so sure they’ve done this in other jurisdictions?”

“It’s just a hunch,” he said. “These guys aren’t buying a van and driving it to Minneapolis for a sixty-thousand-dollar score unless they’re stringing multiples together.”

She nodded. “All right,” she said. “I can see that. So you think we should check out the Carew kid’s address in Joliet.”

“And I want to check out the Georgia and Maryland addresses. And take a look in Memphis and anywhere else for other unsolved hit-and-run kidnappings. I don’t have jurisdiction, obviously, so I thought you guys could take over.”

“Okay,” she said. “I have to run this by my Special Agent in Charge. You got a card?”

He gave her a card. “We’ll be in touch, Agent Stevens,” she said, standing. “I’ll get back to you when the boss gives me his thoughts.”

Stevens stood. Looked around. “I almost wish I could be here to see this case through,” he said.

“Why’s that?” Windermere smiled. “Don’t trust the Feds?”

“I trust you guys,” he said. “But this case—if I’m right—it could be a blockbuster.”

“
If
you’re right,” she said. “Are you?”

He caught her eyes on him and paused. “I think so.”

She winked. “Relax, Stevens. I’m messing with you. I’ll give you a call.”

Windermere walked him back to the elevator. He shook her hand
again and got on board, watching her walk away as the doors slid shut, her eyes still burning holes inside him.

Later that night, Stevens did the dishes, watching his wife from the corner of his eye, admiring the curve of her neck as she pored over a mess of files at the kitchen table. She caught him looking, stuck out her tongue, and then leaned back in her chair. “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “It’s going to be a hell of a week.”

“Tough cases?”

“Too many of them. Brennan’s on vacation, so I’m covering his people as well as my own. The bastard, running off to the tropics when the whole goddamn state can’t afford an attorney.”

“They did the crime.” Stevens put down his dish towel. “Let them do the time.”

“They didn’t all do the crime,” Nancy said. “That’s why I have a job.”

Stevens walked over to his wife and stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. He bent down to nuzzle her hair. “You have this job because you’re too nice to be a tax lawyer,” he said.

Nancy sighed. “Nice isn’t the word. Disinclined to make money, more like.”

“You and me both,” said Stevens. “We could have been rock stars. Or doctors. On the plus side, I think my case finally flipped.”

“You solved it?”

“Almost as good. The kids were operating out of state. Means it’s FBI territory. I talked to a field agent today, and she’s going to take over.”

Nancy leaned back in her chair. She stared up at him. “Really?”

He nodded. “Just waiting for official confirmation.”

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “Andrea has volleyball all week, and I think J.J. is coming down with something. It would be great if you were around.”

He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be around,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting in the living room, just settling into the Timberwolves game when the phone rang. “I’ll get it,”
he called, reaching for the handset, but it was too late. Nancy was already on the line.

“Agent Stevens?” she said. “I’ll just get him.” He heard her put the phone down, and she poked her head into the living room a couple seconds later, wearing a mischievous smile. “
Agent Stevens
,” she said. “Your other girlfriend is calling.”

“What, Lesley? Great.” He made a show of rushing for the telephone. “Hello?”

“Agent Stevens, it’s Carla Windermere.” Her voice was warm and buttery. “Good news. The SAC okayed the case.”

“Excellent,” said Stevens. “I’ll forward you the paperwork tomorrow, then.”

“Actually, you might as well just bring it by yourself.”

“Why’s that?”

“We’re shorthanded here, Stevens. Homeland Security and all. My boss called your boss and asked if he wouldn’t mind detailing you to the FBI for the duration. Looks like we’re going to be working together.”

Lesley. That bastard. “You really think that’s necessary?”

“Couldn’t hurt,” said Windermere. “This is your baby. Anyway, I thought you wanted to solve this thing with me.”

“I want to.” Stevens sighed. “It’s just a hell of a week.”

“Get your game face on, Stevens. This is the big time. We’re going to take down these kids, you and me.”

“Sure,” he said. “Sure. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He hung up the phone and sat back in his chair as Nancy came into the room.

“So?” she said, smiling. “You gonna be my knight in shining armor this week?”

P
ender woke up early and turned on the television. He watched the news with the volume turned down, and when the Beneteau case came up, he sat close to the screen, straining for information and watching the reporter deliver her monologue a few feet from where they’d dumped Beneteau’s body. According to the reporter, the police had no suspects and were appealing to witnesses to come forward. From Pender’s point of view, that sounded like success.

After lying awake for most of the night, Pender had nearly convinced himself to forget about the murder. To feel nothing. Beneteau was dead. That was a fact. They had to deal with it, and they had to get as far away from the crime scene as possible, lest they end up paying with their own lives for their first major mistake.

By dawn, Sawyer was awake on the opposite bed. He’d said nothing since they left the crime scene, and he looked shrunken in the dim light, his eyes swollen and his face pale. Pender caught his eye. “You all right?”

Sawyer didn’t move. Didn’t look up. “Fine,” he said.

“Forget about it,” Pender told him. “It could have happened to any of us.”

The big guy laughed, rueful and cold. “That’s a lie.”

“You gotta get over it. We gotta get over it. Professionals deal with stuff like this. They don’t let it bring them down.”

Sawyer stared up at the ceiling. “I keep seeing his face.”

Pender watched him a long moment. “What do you want to do?” he said finally. “You want to quit? We could hop a flight to Seattle this morning.”

Sawyer said nothing. He looked across at Pender, searching his eyes.

“You want to quit, we can walk away right now.”

Mouse sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Walk away from what?”

“From the job,” said Pender. “We have to decide. How do we deal with what happened last night?”

He looked at Sawyer, then Mouse. Foot on the gas, he thought. “Last night was a speed bump. It doesn’t change anything. If we can get out of Detroit, we can keep making money.”