Authors: Owen Laukkanen
THE BARBECUE WAS WINDING DOWN
when Andrei Volovoi’s phone began to ring. Instinctively, he stiffened in his seat, scanned the backyard as, in her lawn chair beside him, Veronika giggled.
“What kind of ringtone is that, Uncle Andrei?” she said as the phone continued to ring in his pocket. “It sounds like your phone is from 1980.”
Volovoi smiled back at his niece. “It’s a genuine antique, Veronika,” he told her. “I bought it when I was your age.”
He excused himself from the table, stood, and wandered into his sister’s backyard, where darkness had fallen fully and mosquitoes swarmed. He removed the phone from his pocket, a cheap, corner-store throwaway, and checked the number on the screen. Bogdan Urzica, one of his drivers. He would be calling from the road, probably Minnesota.
Volovoi glanced back at the table, made sure none of his family could overhear. Then he answered the phone. “Bogdan.”
“We have a problem, Andrei.”
Even from fifteen hundred miles away, Bogdan Urzica’s voice made Volovoi nervous. The driver and his partner, the idiot Nikolai Kirilenko, were at this moment delivering another cargo of Volovoi’s women to their buyers. Any problem Bogdan might have was bound to be serious.
Volovoi retreated farther into the backyard. Watched his sister gather his two nieces, Veronika and little Adriana, and herd them toward the house. In the distance, Volovoi could hear traffic on Ocean Parkway, happy laughter, the sounds of another Brighton Beach summer night. Inside, though, he felt cold, despite the humid air. He turned away from the house and spoke quietly into his phone. “What kind of problem?”
“A girl escaped the box,” Bogdan told him, “in northern Minnesota, just now. There is a dead man. A police officer. We had no choice.”
Volovoi closed his eyes. He trusted Bogdan Urzica. If the man was not a friend, he was a good acquaintance anyway. He was a hard worker. He was cautious. He avoided problems. He was a man Andrei Volovoi could respect. If Bogdan Urzica had killed a police officer, he’d had a good reason to do so.
Still, the thought made Volovoi’s stomach churn.
“We are safe,” Bogdan told him. “We escaped with the rest of the cargo. If you have no hesitations, Nikolai and I will continue our deliveries.”
Volovoi forced himself to exhale. Relax. It was not the first time a girl had escaped from the box. It was not the first time the drivers had been forced to kill someone.
In any case, the girl probably didn’t speak English. Most of them didn’t, but they still bought the dream that Volovoi’s pickers sold them. A new life in America. Supermodel. Actress. Fame and fortune.
Hell,
Volovoi thought,
any woman dumb enough to fall for the trap deserves the box and whatever comes after.
Generally, though, he tried not to think about the women. He was too busy keeping his business afloat.
Bogdan Urzica cleared his throat. “Boss?”
It was troublesome that a girl had escaped. It was bad, very bad, that a police officer was dead. But these things happened when you made your living selling women. There were always going to be risks, no matter how fervently you fought to contain them. No matter how often you tried to preach prudence.
This was not a disaster, Volovoi decided. Therefore, there was no reason to mention it to the Dragon.
He crossed the backyard to where Veronika watched him from the doorway, her blond hair falling in ringlets across her face. Volovoi waved at her, watched her face light up as she smiled back at him. He exhaled again, felt the tightness in his chest dissipate.
“Everything will be fine,” he told Bogdan Urzica. “Carry on with your deliveries as planned.”
“IT’S JUST FOR THE DAY,”
Stevens said. “We’ll check out Leech Lake, have a nice dinner. Stay for the night, maybe.”
Andrea pumped her fist.
“Yes,”
she said. “Mom, can we?”
“I just don’t understand why Lesley can’t find someone else,” Nancy said from across the campfire. “You’re on vacation, Kirk.”
Stevens pulled his marshmallow away from the fire. Even, golden brown. He reached behind him for a Hershey bar and a couple of graham crackers, assembled the perfect s’more, and handed it off to JJ. “There you go, kiddo,” he said. “Make sure Triceratops doesn’t get any of that chocolate, right?”
Triceratops, JJ’s big German shepherd, fixed Stevens with a mournful expression. Stevens scratched behind the dog’s ears. “It’s forty miles away,” he told his wife. “I’m closer than any other agent. He said it’s an open-and-shut kind of deal. The sheriff’s department just wants someone there to oversee the procedure. Make sure every
i
’s dotted, that kind of thing.”
“And it has to be you,” Nancy said.
“Sounds like it,” Stevens said. “On the bright side, Cass County’s springing for motel rooms.” He grinned at her. “Two of them.”
> > >
IN TRUTH,
Stevens was a little miffed that Tim Lesley had decided to interrupt his vacation for some kind of procedural exercise. Yes, Itasca State Park was less than forty miles from the Cass County Sheriff’s Office in Walker, but so was Bemidji, where the BCA’s forensics team was based. Surely someone could spare the drive.
The case itself was kind of a head-scratcher. A sheriff’s deputy, headed back to Walker from his favorite fishing hole, stops at a local diner for a cup of coffee and a slice of pie before the rain sets in. Finishes the pie, wanders out into the parking lot, and gets himself shot. When the deputy’s colleagues arrive, they find a hysterical young woman holding the guy’s personal Smith & Wesson, the mag empty. Gunpowder residue on her hands. Three holes in the guy’s chest and forehead.
“Easy-peasy,” Lesley had said. “Sheriff’s office just wants some outside oversight. They don’t get too many homicides, so they want to make sure they’re doing this one right.”
“Who’s the woman?” Stevens asked.
“Nobody’s sure yet,” Lesley said. “She didn’t have ID on her, and best anyone can tell, she wasn’t speaking much English.”
“So why’d she kill this guy Friesen?”
“Who knows?” Lesley replied. “Like I said, she’s not saying much.”
A mystery woman. No ID. No English. No clue how she got to the truck stop, or how she got her hands on that deputy’s piece.
Maybe the sheriff’s department has a better line on her,
Stevens thought, surveying his family across the campfire.
The last thing I need is another blockbuster.
HOWEVER SHE FELT
about the rest of Derek Mathers, Carla Windermere had to admit that the junior FBI agent was pretty damn good in bed.
And a good thing, too. Windermere had almost given up on sex after Mark had walked out on her and moved back to Miami two and a half years ago. She had pretty well resigned herself to living alone, avoiding complications. People were overrated, she’d decided. Relationships got messy, and Windermere liked her life clean.
She sat up in bed and studied Mathers, all six-plus feet of goofy corn-fed Wisconsin farm boy tangled up in her new cotton sheets, smiling that dumb smile that, despite her best efforts, always seemed to worm its way past her defenses.
“Goddamn it, Carla,” Mathers said. “I think we’re on to something here.”
She’d have bet money he was wrong a few months back, after they’d hooked up the first time in a Philadelphia Four Points, middle of the last case. She’d figured the big lug would make a decent stress reliever, that a guy with his looks and easygoing personality would have no trouble buying in for some no-strings-attached action.
Hell, he’d told her he joined the FBI because he wanted to be like Keanu Reeves in
Point Break
. At the time, Windermere figured the guy had a whole harem of badge bunnies waiting for him back in Minneapolis.
But Mathers had surprised her. He’d pursued her once the case broke, and when she finally relented and agreed to see him again, she found he wasn’t just the dumb lunkhead he liked to pretend to be. He’d traveled. He read books. He was a terrible dancer, but he was willing to try salsa, willing to laugh at himself when he sucked at it. And when Windermere needed her space, he didn’t get needy, or whiny, or start brooding, didn’t sulk the way Mark had always done.
And moreover, he was dynamite in bed—not that Windermere would ever let him hear that. She stood, pulled on a hoodie, and drew open the curtains of her downtown Minneapolis condo, letting the morning light into the bedroom.
“Yeah,” she said. “Whatever. That was okay, I guess.”
“‘Okay’?” Mathers sprang up from the bed and was instantly beside her, his arms wrapping her up and drawing her close. He was so big and strong and relentlessly enthusiastic that she felt herself caving, as always.
Just like a damn girl. Some lovestruck teenager
.
“Just ‘okay’?” Mathers asked again, his chin resting on her shoulder, his breath on her neck. “You were singing a different tune a couple minutes ago, lady.”
“A couple minutes, yeah,” she said. “Next time, try for five. Maybe you’ll get more of a reaction.”
Mathers laughed and picked her up, carried her back to the bed. Tossed her down and pinned her with those piercing blue eyes of his. Windermere let him kiss her, then shoved him away. “Okay, you big lug,” she said. “We’re going to be late.”
“You know you like me,” he said, releasing her. “No matter how much you try to play badass.”
She walked to her closet, started picking out an outfit. “I don’t have to
play
badass, Mathers,” she said. “But, yeah, maybe I like you just a little.”
“Good enough for me.” Mathers padded to the kitchen. She heard him fiddle with the coffeemaker, and then the TV came on. She ducked into the bathroom, started the shower.
“Want some company?” Mathers called.
Yes, please,
Windermere thought, but she was running late already, and not for the first time she cursed the FBI and its damn heightened-security concerns. Up to about a year ago, the Bureau’s regional headquarters had been located in downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from Windermere’s Mill District condo. Last year, though, the entire circus had moved north, way north, to a brand-new, high-security compound on the outskirts of town. Totally screwed up her commute.
“No time,” Windermere called back. She closed the bathroom door and locked it, lest he get any funny ideas. Showered, she did her makeup, and when she came out of the bathroom, Mathers was in the living room, watching the news.
“You see this?” he said. “Sheriff’s deputy shot somewhere up north. Some girl did it, they figure. Only, she doesn’t speak any English.”
Windermere studied the TV. Footage of the tiny sheriff’s office in Walker, Minnesota, a couple of cruisers and a young woman being ushered inside. She was tall and incredibly thin, with long brown hair and dark, haunted eyes.
“No ID on her, either,” Mathers said. “Nobody can figure out where she came from.”
“Walker.” Windermere poured herself a cup of coffee. “Where the hell is that, anyway?”
“Up north somewhere. Leech Lake, or something? Mississippi headwaters, thereabouts. Lake country.”
“Huh.” Windermere sipped her coffee. “I wonder if . . .”
“Yeah?”
She shook her head. “Just wondered if it was anywhere near Stevens, I guess.”
Mathers’s expression clouded briefly at the mention of the BCA agent’s name. Then he shrugged. “Could be,” he said. “Who knows? You said he was camping up there somewhere, right?”
“Could be anywhere, Mathers,” Windermere said. “The hell do I know about this miserable state?” She picked up the remote and shut off the television. “Put some pants on. We’re going to be late.”
STEVENS FIGURED OUT
pretty quick that Dale Friesen’s murder was more than just open-and-shut.
The Cass County Sheriff’s Office was located around the side of the county courthouse in Walker, across the 371 highway from a crowded Dairy Queen and a couple blocks from the lake. Stevens dropped Nancy and the kids at a picnic table by the water and drove up to the courthouse, where the sheriff himself met him in the parking lot.
“You’re the BCA guy, right?” Ed Watkins was middle-aged and slightly paunchy. His handshake was firm. “Appreciate you coming in.”
“Not at all,” Stevens said. “Anything I can do. Gotta be tough for you guys right now, I know.”
“Dale was a good man,” Watkins said, and he squinted as his eyes looked out across the parking lot. “Just seems, you know, senseless. Would be nice to get to the bottom of it.”
“My SAC said you have a suspect in custody,” Stevens said. “A woman.”
“Betty Horst found her,” the sheriff said. “She runs the Paul Bunyan down there at the junction. Said the girl was just sitting in the mud beside the body—beside Dale—in the pouring rain, gun at her feet. Said she figured the first three or four shots were thunder before she came to her senses.”
“And the woman,” Stevens said. “You don’t have a name for her?”
“Don’t have anything. No ID, nothing. I guess she was saying something when Betty found her, but Betty says it didn’t sound like English. Anyway, she sure clammed up when my men arrived.”
“Didn’t say anything?”
“Not a word. Eyes all wide and panicky like she was thinking about running. Like she knew she was in for it now.” Watkins whistled, low. “She’s a looker, though, I’ll tell you that. But dirty
as all hell. Reeked something rotten when we put her in the truck.”
“And you make her for the shooting?”
“Best as we can figure, yeah,” Watkins said. “She had Dale’s Smith and Wesson at her feet and residue on her hands. Seems like the simplest explanation.”
Stevens mulled it over. Looked across at the Dairy Queen, the line for ice cream cones four kids deep. “I heard the mag was empty.”
“You heard right,” Watkins told him. “Betty Horst said she heard a whole pile of shots out there. We found casings in the muck all over the place.”
“And Friesen was shot, what, three times?”
“Twice in the chest, once in the head. Like a goddamn execution.” Watkins’s gaze went distant. Then he straightened. “Why don’t I take you inside, Agent Stevens, show you around?”
> > >
STEVENS FOLLOWED WATKINS
into the sheriff’s office. Smiled at the secretary, shook hands with a couple deputies. Got the sense that everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to say something profound.
He wondered if his reputation had made it north to Cass County. After the first case with Windermere, the kidnappers, there’d been news coverage. Sensational stuff. A little more after the next couple cases, too.
I hope these guys aren’t looking for some big-city crime-fighter tricks,
he thought.
That’s Windermere’s department.
Still, there were a couple questions that jumped out at him, right off the bat, though he waited for Watkins to give him the grand tour before he asked them. The sheriff showed him around the department’s modest headquarters, then led him into lockup and showed him the suspect.
“Here’s our shooter,” Watkins said, gesturing into the holding cell. Inside was a very thin, very young, very miserable-looking woman, clad in an oversized
WALKER, MINNESOTA
sweatshirt and jogging pants. She was huddled at the back of the cell, hugging herself, shivering, as far away from the bars as she could get. She didn’t look at the men, but stared at the floor instead, her eyes dark and hollow, her hair stringy and limp. She was a couple years older than Andrea, probably, a couple years at most.
“And you can’t get a word out of her,” Stevens said.
“Won’t talk, won’t eat, won’t even look at you,” Watkins said. “Every time we come near her, she shies away like a dog that’s been kicked one too many times.”
The girl looked haunted, Stevens thought. Scared. More like a victim than a killer.
“The rest of the bullets in the magazine,” he said, following Watkins back into the departmental offices. “Where’d she fire them? Into the ground beside the decedent?”
Watkins rubbed his chin. “No, sir,” he said. “To be honest, we’re not really sure where she fired them. Seemed to just kind of shoot them at random.”
“You said Betty Horst heard the shots?”
“Like a hammer, she said. Like someone pounding nails.”
“Sure,” Stevens said. “So we have the suspect blasting off the full magazine, pretty much nonstop. But the decedent—Deputy Friesen—takes a couple shots to the chest and another to the forehead. Pretty precise, you said.”
“That doesn’t exactly make sense, does it?” Watkins said.
“No, it doesn’t.” Stevens found a coffee machine, poured himself a cup, realizing that his family’s camping adventure was probably over. “So what the heck was she trying to hit with the rest of those bullets?”
“Wish I knew,” the sheriff replied. “You want to check out the crime scene?”
Stevens thought of the suspect again. Couldn’t shake the feeling of unease as he pictured her in that cell. The young woman was small, lost, and terrified out of her wits. And somehow she’d wound up the prime suspect in a murder.
Stevens shook his head clear. “Sure,” he told Watkins. “Let’s go.”