5:44 PM
Riley and Rock walked into the conference room. The shades were pulled and the television turned off. Cups of cold coffee and half-eaten donuts littered the table. Burton, Duffy, and an FBI technician wearing a headset stood around a phone and laptop computer at the far end of the conference table. Peters, the chief, and Lyman milled around the other end. The room was quiet as they waited for the call. Sitting unattended in the middle of the conference table were two large nylon bags, one black and one navy, with five million dollars split evenly between them.
Riles and Rock immediately went to the chief, who, under cover of a hug, asked Riley, “Anything?” The chief and now Lyman both knew about Brown and the Muellers. It had gone no further.
“Mac’s working it, Chief,” Riles replied, equally quiet, having just got off the phone with McRyan.
“ What’s he working?”
“Something up around Marine on St. Croix,” Riles answered cryptically, his voice just a whisper.
“What’s up there?’ Lyman pressed quietly, his lips barely moving. I’m familiar with the area. I could make a phone call or two.”
“The Muellers have land up there,” Rock answered, turning his back. The FBI men at the other end of the room had started looking down toward the conversation. “Mac and Lich can’t get back in time, so they’re going to check it out, that’s all.”
“It’s a long shot,” Riles whispered, unwrapping a piece of Big Red gum and shoving it into his mouth. “But you know Mac,” he added.
The chief nodded. If Mac had a hunch, good luck getting him off it until he was satisfied, no matter what anyone else said.
Burton broke away from the group and walked down to the men from St. Paul. “We’re set here,” he said, and then looked to Riley. “Where’s McRyan and his partner?”
“They’re in the neighborhood,” Riley answered neutrally. “He tends to draw attention when he’s around, so he wants to be on the street when the call comes in.”
Burton nodded and then looked at his watch. “Should be any minute now.”
“Tracking in the bags?” Rock asked Burton.
“Sewn into the fabric. Very small, Can’t be seen or felt. Where it goes, we’ll be able to follow.”
Rock walked over to the window, moved the drapes back, and noted the mass of media coalescing out front. There might have been two hundred people milling about. “How do we get out of here without the media being all over this?” Rock asked. “They’re hovering like flies out there. Riles and I were practically strip searched on the way in and it seems like more people are coming by the minute.”
Duffy nodded. “We’ve got three sets of plain white vehicles ready to go in the parking ramp, which the media can’t get to. When the call comes, and we have to leave, three sets leave. If, after we leave, the main vehicle still picks up a tail, we’ll take care of it before we get to wherever we’re going.”
“Any idea where we’re going?” Riley asked.
“No,” Duffy replied, taking a sip from his Styrofoam coffee cup.
Dean pulled into the parking lot of a small beige-and-brown-brick strip mall along Highway 95 in Lakeland, one of many small towns that dotted the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River, south of Interstate 94. The strip mall held a hair salon, an insurance agency, an accounting office, a law practice, and a pay phone. A flat canopy hung over the sidewalk in front of the businesses. Given the holiday, the parking lot was empty. There were no surveillance cameras, sparse traffic on the highway, and zero foot traffic. The nearest houses were on the other side of the highway, at least a couple hundred yards away.
Dressed in flip-flops and a ball cap, Dean looked like any of a thousand men on a warm holiday. The only unusual part of his ensemble was a red nylon shoulder bag, out of which he pulled a pair of black leather gloves. Taking a quick glance around, he slid on the gloves and pulled out the portable voice changer and two quarters. He also took out a three-by-five-inch index card. Dropping the quarters into the phone, Dean looked down at the card and dialed.
The conference room was silent, other than the sound of pacing shoes scuffing against the carpet. Burton and Duffy leaned over the phone, both hands on the table. The call would be recorded, and they would trace it, although nobody expected the kidnappers to stay on the line for any appreciable length of time. Everyone’s eyes were on the second hand on the wall clock. When the red hand hit twelve, the phone rang. The chief picked up on the second ring.
“Flanagan.”
“You and Hisle at the corner of Washington and West Fifth in ten minutes. With the ransom. No police. We’ll be watching.”
“What about… the… girls,” the chief’s voice trailed off. The kidnapper had already hung up.
Burton moved immediately. “Let’s hustle,” he said, leading everyone out of the conference room. “We’ll wire these two in the truck.” As the group approached the elevators, Peters pulled Rock and Riley aside.
“This is no good,” Riles said through gritted teeth. “They’re going to wire the chief and Lyman in the truck? This smells. Mac’s right, this isn’t a simple money drop. They’re going to put the chief and Hisle on the move.”
Peters nodded. “I want you two mobile. Keep a perimeter and stay on this radio frequency. We know who’s behind this, so if you see this Brown or the Muellers, move on them,” their captain ordered.
Riles’s cell phone rang.
Heather Foxx noted the three separate convoys of trucks pulling out and immediately recognized what she was seeing. “They’re running different groups out of here so we don’t follow,” she said to her cameraman as the trucks and cars streaked out in different directions. She looked back to the side entrance she’d seen McRyan and his friends use in recent days. Detectives Riley and Rockford burst through the doors and ran down the steps. Heather took a look at the news truck and her rental car. “Jump in the rental car,” she told the cameraman, fishing out the keys.
“We’re supposed to stay here,” the cameraman said.
Foxx’s instincts told her to get on the move. “Trust me. There’s nothing to do here but wait for the police to feed us a statement, and everyone gets the same thing. On the other hand,” the reporter said, gesturing toward the detectives, “Riles and Rockford, those are two of the chief’s boys. If we follow them, we might actually see something worth reporting.”
“Less than ten minutes?” Mac yelled into the phone as he accelerated down the county road to meet up with the Washington County sheriff. “Where?”
“Where?” Lich demanded, doubling up. “Where are they going to?”
Mac put his hand over the phone. “Corner of Washington and West Fifth, that’s the northwest corner of Rice Park,” and then to Riley, “What then?… Nothing? They just wait? You know what they’re going to do? They’re going to run the chief and Lyman around, Riles. They’re going to try and lose you… yeah… sounds like you’re on it? Good. Yeah, I’ll have the phone with me.” Mac hung up. “I knew it,” Mac railed to Lich. “It’s not a simple ransom drop. They’re going to put the chief and Lyman on the run.” He felt no satisfaction at being right.
“FBI will have assets all over the place, Mac,” Lich said. “They’ll be tough to shake. Especially in the middle of downtown.”
“On a normal day, yeah,” Mac replied. “But it’s the Fourth of fuckin’ July, and it’s hotter than hell. Downtown is a graveyard. There’ll be nobody, and I mean nobody, around Rice Park at that time of day. If we’ve got people following closely, they’ll stick out like 50-Cent at a Faith Hill concert.”
“Fine,” Lich replied, “but it’ll also be hard to lose them, with so few people around. There isn’t anyone for them to blend with.”
“Maybe, but they’ve been ready for everything thus far. They’ll be ready for that. Mac sighed. Dick’s point was valid, but he didn’t agree. The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told him all he needed to know. The whole thing felt wrong. “The chief and Lyman are the real target, the money’s just so they can get away in style.”
The Explorer’s speedometer read eighty-five, and the flasher pushed cars off to the shoulder as Mac burned south on the county road.
“They should be up just around the bend,” Lich said.
As Mac slowed to sixty-five and drove around a small bend in the road, two Washington County Suburbans came into view, waiting on the right shoulder a half mile ahead. Mac pulled in behind them. A paunchy man with a bushy black mustache was already out, walking up to Lich on the passenger side.
“I’m George Head, sheriff out here. The Russell place is up on the left side, another two miles.”
“Anyone do a drive-by?”
Head nodded. “I had a couple of my guys drive by five minutes ago. The said it looked awfully quiet.”
“Just the same,” Mac said. “We need to go check it out.”
“You’re sure they’re the guys?”
“They’re behind it,” Lich answered. “No question at this point.”
“Let’s not dick around then,” Head said bluntly. “We’re just gonna blow right up the driveway and crash the place. You fellas got vests?”
Lich pointed to the back seat.
“Put ‘em on.”
The sheriff hustled back to his Suburban while Mac and Lich pulled on and secured their vests. Once set, Mac gave a quick honk and they all pulled out, accelerating down the road. The house, a sad place with chipped and fading yellow paint and a slightly sagging green-shingled roof, was set back two hundred yards from the road in a thin grove of maple and poplar trees. A large, rusted, light-blue pole barn sat behind the house. The yard was unkempt, the lawn overgrown and weed-filled. The Washington County Suburbans sped up the long dirt driveway and skidded to a stop at the front porch. Mac stopped hard behind them and everyone was out.
The sheriff yelled, “Go!” Two men went up the porch and hammered down the front door, while Mac, Lich, and a deputy ran around to the back, weapons drawn on the back door. They heard the men working the house, with several “Clears” called out. Within thirty seconds, a deputy pushed out the back door and shook his head. Nobody was home.
Mac and Lich moved inside. A quick inspection of the house revealed no furniture or working power. The only sign of a recent presence was a familiar-looking card table and four chairs in the kitchen.
“They’ve been here.” Mac said. “The table. The chairs. They’re clean, new, recently used and the same as we found at that house in St. Paul.”
Mac was out the back door and jogged to the large pole barn. The front and back doors were open. It was empty other than a few cement blocks, scraps of wood, two sawhorses, and four new garden shoves and a new spade leaning against the wall. Mac walked to the shovels, the metal still shiny. He looked to his left. At the far end a deputy was kneeling down, picking at the dirt with a pen.
“What do you have?” Mac asked, hustling up to him.
“Sawdust,” the deputy replied. “It’s just kind of spread here in the dirt, and it’s spread around here.” The deputy saw the look on Mac’s face. “Is this important?”
“Yes,” Lich replied as he walked up. “Mac, did you see the new shovels and sawhorses over along the wall there?”
“Yes,” Mac answered as he jogged out the back door of the pole barn, his hand over his eyes as he scanned the property.
Sheriff Head walked up to them. “House is clear. I assume you noted the chairs and table in the kitchen.”
Mac nodded, but kept the search on. “How big is this piece of property again?”
“Eighty acres,” Head replied, following Mac as he started to walk back toward the driveway. “It runs out the back, east to the property line for the state park. What are you looking at?”
Mac walked quickly past the sheriff’s Suburbans and his Explorer to where a jagged road ran back toward the state park. Mac kneeled down where the road ventured into taller grass. There appeared to be fresh or at least recent tire tracks. “I think someone’s driven through here recently.”
He stood up and looked up at a thick forest in the distance, perhaps a half mile or a little more away. The road – practically a trail through the taller grass – meandered like a stream in the direction of the trees. Mac closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and thought back to the kidnappers’ video, the view out the windshield that showed high grass, weeds, and a rough road up to a heavily wooded area. Then later they’re in the woods, thick woods, burying the girls.
He opened his eyes, looking again into the distance. The land looked right. As Mac looked around, he couldn’t see another house or building anywhere in the distance. He knew O’Brien State Park. The area that was frequented by the general public was along the St. Croix River, not on the land backing up to the farm.
“Sheriff, how far to the state park line?”
“Like I said, it’s an eighty-acre plot,” Head replied, pointing straight out. “It goes back, I don’t know maybe another quarter of a mile, maybe a little more to the property line.”
“Is there a fence or boundary for the state park?”
“No,” Head replied, shaking his head. “There are some green posts every so often that mark it, but there isn’t a fence or anything.”
Mac turned to the sheriff. “There are a bunch of new shovels in the pole barn. Grab them!” he yelped back over his shoulder, running to the Explorer.
“Mac!” Lich yelled, running behind him. “Where are you going?’
“You drive,” Mac ordered, handing the keys to Lich. “Follow the trail.”
“You think the girls are out there?”
“No,” he answered. “I know it.”
As the van took I-35E south into downtown St. Paul, an FBI tech taped body mics to the chests of the chief and Lyman. “Just speak normally,” Burton said. “These are very sensitive microphones. They’ll pick up any conversation you have, even if you whisper.”
Lyman and the chief both nodded, tucking their shirts back into their pants.
“Downtown’s pretty quiet today. Won’t be anyone around,” the chief said. “It’ll be hard for you to be close.”
“We’ve got you wired, and we’ve got the tracker in the bags,” Duffy said.
“We won’t be far, and your boys will be around and they know the streets,” Burton said calmly. “Just concentrate on getting your girls back, and we’ll worry about the rest.”
The chief sat down next to Peters and asked in a whisper, “What do you think?”
“Watch your back,” Peters replied quietly.
“Two blocks,” the driver yelled.
Burton and Duffy each handed bags to the chief and Lyman.
Foxx pulled up to the curb just short of the corner of Main Street and West Fifth Street. She was parked a block back from Riley and Rockford, who’d taken a left on West Fifth Street and parked their white Chevy S-10 along the side, just short of the end of the street. The reporter could see Rockford, who had a set of binoculars put up to his eyes.
“What are they watching?” the cameraman asked, filming across Heather from the passenger side.
“Well find out soon enough,” Heather answered.
The truck pulled up to the corner, and the chief and Lyman jumped out. Without a word, Burton slid the door closed. The truck pulled away down Washington Street and turned right on Kellogg Boulevard, heading out of sight.
Lyman and the chief walked up onto the corner. The chief scanned Rice Park, a park shaded by mature trees. The park took up the entire block, with benches lining walkways running diagonally from the outside of the block to the large marble fountain in the middle. The park was empty.
“What next?” Lyman asked.
Just then a ringing sound came from the garbage can sitting on the corner.
“That,” Flanagan answered as he looked down and then reached into the can, pulling out a duffel bag. A cell phone with a traditional telephone ring tone was inside. The chief answered.
“Flanagan.”
Paddy McRyan stood in the empty St. Paul Grill restaurant, inside the St. Paul Hotel, peering out the large picture window that looked out across market Street and into Rice Park. He watched the chief grab a bag out of the garbage can, pull the cell phone out, and start walking toward the water fountain in the center of the park. “Captain, they’re getting into the fountain, they’re going underwater,” Paddy said as calmly as he could, knowing what would happen to the body mics.
“Copy that,” Peters replied into Paddy’s earpiece. And then, his captain confirmed his worst fears. “We’ve lost audio contact.”
“We need to keep an eyeball,” Paddy said urgently into his radio, moving to his right to improve his viewing angle.
“Copy that,” Peters answered, taking charge. “What are they doing now?”
“They’re out of the fountain.” Paddy put his binoculars to his eyes, focusing the view. “The chief is on a cell phone. Do we have audio back?”
“Negative. We are not getting that feed.”
Paddy watched as Hisle and the chief knelt down to the ground, just out of his view. He couldn’t see what they were doing. After a minute, they slung the nylon bags over their shoulders. “They’re on the move, south, hold on…” The detective moved to his left, to the far edge of the picture window. “The chief and Hisle are walking out of Rice Park, south, back along Washington Street over to Kellogg.”
“Are you sure?” Peters asked. “The tracking devices in the bags show them stationary.”
That explained why they had knelt down. “They transferred the ransom into different bags. They are now out of my line of sight.”
I’m on the west side of the Xcel Center,” Riles said into a radio. “They’ll have to come out onto Kellogg Boulevard, and we have a good viewpoint.”
“Copy that,” Burton replied. “But keep your distance. Hang on… I’m looking at the map…”
“We’ll hold along West Seventh and Kellogg,” Riley responded. “We should have an eyeball if they walk our way.”
“Do that, but hold to the corner,” Burton ordered.
Rock pulled his truck up to the corner of West Seventh and Kellogg, holding in the left hand turn lane, his hazard lights on in case anyone pulled up from behind. Riley was looking east as Kellogg gently curved away like a half-moon. Flanagan and Hisle came into view, walking across the street to the sidewalk on the south side of Kellogg. They turned west, walking toward Riles and Rock. Three hundred yards away, a half-dozen people waited at a bus stop in front of the pedestrian tunnel entrance to the RiverCentre parking ramp, an underground ramp built into the bluff over the Mississippi River. You could enter the ramp with your car from Kellogg Boulevard on top or from Eagle Street, which ran eighty feet below Kellogg at the bottom of the bluff.
“We have them in view. They are walking in our direction.” Riley reported into the radio.
“They’re stopping,” Rock added. “They’re stopping.”
“Be advised the chief and Hisle have approached a group of people waiting at a bus stop at the RiverCentre parking ramp,” Riles said. “Are they going to put them on a bus?” he asked Rock.
“Looks like it,” Rock answered. Just then a bus approached from the south on West Seventh. It had its turn signal to take a right.
“We have a MTC Bus, an articulated bus, approaching our position from West Seventh. It’s turning east on Kellogg.” Riles gave the bus number and read the digital board over the windshield. “Be advised. The digital board on the bus says it is going to the Taste of Minnesota.” The Taste of Minnesota was a large food and music festival taking place on Harriet Island on the south side of the Mississippi River, opposite downtown. The culmination of the Taste was the big Fourth of July fireworks show. There were thousands of people on the island taking in the concerts and food.
“Those buses must be thirty, maybe forty feet long,” Rock said.
“If not longer,” Riles responded and then to Burton he said, “They’re going to run the chief and Lyman through the crowds at the Taste and try to lose us.”
Burton’s voice came over the radio. “We’re flooding the Taste of Minnesota. I want units converging on that location now.”
“That’ll help,” Rock said, relieved.
“About fuckin’ time we got after it,” Riles added.
The bus pulled up to the stop. The chief and Hisle were out of their view now, hidden behind the bus.
“Do I turn?” Rock asked, anxious.
“Hold here,” Riles responded coolly. “We have temporarily lost visual,” he reported. “We are blocked by the bus.” They didn’t have enough assets in the area at the right spots. “If they get on, we’ll follow.”
“Copy that,” Burton answered.
Twenty seconds later, the bus’s brake lights went off and it pulled east down Kellogg boulevard. There was nobody remaining at the bus stop.
“Be advised, Flanagan and Hisle are on the bus,” Riley reported.
Rock turned left and followed.
Lich accelerated along the path, which had started to smooth out. The sheriff and his deputies followed behind them. The tall grass was halfway up the doors on the Explorer at points as the trail snaked its way towards the tree line. A green metal stake appeared to their left, just as the sheriff said.
“That’s the property line for the park,” Mac explained. The trees were getting ever closer.
The tire tracks turned in a slow arc to the left until they ran parallel with the tree-line, now two hundred yards to the right.
“God, I wish I had the laptop with me,” Mac muttered as he closed his eyes again, pulling up the video in his memory bank. He recalled the van turning to run parallel to the tree line and then abruptly turning right, into the high grass, directly to the woods. Opening his eyes, he saw it, fifty feet ahead, a right turn into the high grass. “Turn right.”
“I got it, partner. I remember this from yesterday,” Lich said, slowing the Explorer and turning right to follow the fresh tire tracks. “These aren’t too old Mac. A day or two at the most.”
Mac nodded. The adrenaline was rushing through him now as Lich closed in on the edge of the trees. “Where is it?” Mac said. “Where is it?” He peered at the line of trees, looking for it.
“What? What are you lookin’ for?”
“That!” Mac pointed at a tree with orange tape tied around it. “That orange tie. That was on the video. They’re here. They’re here.” He grabbed a flashlight out of the glove compartment and jumped out of the truck before it had even stopped and ran frantically along the tree line, looking for the next sign. Where had they gone in? Mac worked his way down the edge of the tree line to the right of the orange tape. That felt like the right way. The box was wide. It would have been natural to slide it out of the van and walk straight back. The opening needed to be wider to allow them to operate in the dense trees.
He found it forty feet back from where they were parked, an opening with a jagged path that angled further into the trees. Crouching down, he saw matted-down grass and brush. The trees along the path showed broken branches and scraped bark. The area had been trampled through and recently.
“In here,” Mac said, following the trampled path into the woods, Lich was right behind, with the sheriff and his men trailing with shovels. “We’re looking for a white PVC pipe,” Mac yelled back. “At most, it’ll be sticking up three or four inches out of the ground.”
Mac moved another fifty feet ahead and stopped, wiping the perspiration from his brow. He could feel his hair soaking with sweat and his shirt clinging to his body. There were fresh tracks in the ground straight ahead of him; another set branched to the right off of a larger tree. Lich tracked to the right, while Mac moved straight ahead, deeper into the woods. The mosquitoes hovered in vicious swarms. Within fifteen feet of the split they walked into a clearing, maybe twenty by twenty feet. A thick layer of loose branches and leaves covered the forest floor. Mac panned right to left with his flashlight, and the light bounced off of something unnaturally white beneath a camouflaging layer of twigs and branches.
“There! There it is!” Mac yelled, running and then sliding down to his knees, ripping the debris away from the open pipe.
“CARRIE! CARRIE! CARRIE FLANAGAN! SHANNON HISLE! WE’RE HERE! WE’RE HERE!” Mac yelled down the pipe. He waved frantically to the deputies. “Get
those shovels over here! We’ve found them! We found them! He bent down again, mouth to the pipe, shouting, “CARRIE! SHANNON! WE’RE HERE! WE’RE HERE!”
Carrie held Shannon in her arms. Shannon’s breathing had become more labored, and she was showing no signs of consciousness for the last few minutes. It was just after six now. Carrie didn’t think she had any tears left, but she started to cry one more time.
Sobbing, she almost didn’t hear it. Then she thought her mind was playing tricks on her. It was there and then it was gone. But then it was there again, muffled, coming from the air pipe, but it was unmistakable. “Carrie! Shannon! Hang on!”
She scrambled over to the vent and yelled as loud as she could. “HELP! HELP! WE’RE DOWN HERE, WE’RE DOWN HERE! HELP US! HELP US!”
“I think I heard something,” Mac said, holding up his hand. Everyone froze. He heard the voice, faint beneath the earth. “I hear them! They’re down there! They’re down there! DIG!”
The deputies dug haphazardly, throwing dirt everywhere. “How far down are they?” the sheriff asked.
“Four feet, maybe five.” Mac replied. “In a large wood box, two feet high, four feet wide, six feet long, running to the left of the pipe.”
Four deputies were working furiously in the loose soil. Mac stood up and Lich gave him a big hug, lifting him off the ground. “You son of a bitch. You unbelievable son of bitch.”
Mac paused to re-gather his wits. “Sheriff, we’re going to need air ambulance out here. Shannon Hisle is a type 1 diabetic. She’s been without insulin for at least two days, probably more. She’s going to be in rough shape. Get an ER doc on that chopper, and I want you to call North Memorial, not Regions in St. Paul.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a long story, but someone is working this from the inside. So if we fly into St. Paul, that could end up bad for the chief and Hisle. You need to do this quietly, Sheriff – keep it off the airwaves.”
“I understand,” the sheriff replied, reaching for a cell phone instead of a radio.
“One other thing,” Mac said. “In the center console of my Explorer is a black bag. It has a syringe and insulin in it, bring that back.”
The sheriff nodded and jogged as quickly as he could out of the woods, Lich in tow.
“Dick, call Riles,” Mac yelled after them.
“Where are these guys going?” Heather Foxx’s cameraman said as they followed the pickup truck over the Wabasha Bridge and the Mississippi River below.
“I think toward the Taste of Minnesota – Harriet Island. The chief and Hisle must be on that bus,” Foxx answered. “This could be really good. Shoot some footage.”
“What’s up with the ransom?’ Mac asked Lich as he hung up his cell phone.
“The chief and Hisle are on a bus heading to the Taste of Minnesota. Riles thinks they’re going to try to run the chief and Hisle through the crowd and either do a drop of the money or try to lose the chief and Lyman.”
“Are they tracking them?”
“Only with an eyeball,” Lich replied. “They hooked up body mics and tracking in the bags, but now both are compromised.”
“How?” Mac asked, and Lich explained.
“We have the girls. Let’s just move in.” Mac griped. “We’ll get Brown and the Muellers later.”
“That’s what I said,” Dick answered. “But Riley wants that fucking mole, and he figures the best way to get him is to catch Brown and the Muellers at the Taste of Minnesota. Burton doesn’t know about the girls, but he senses the danger to the chief and Lyman as well. He’s locking Harriet Island down. He’s got two choppers overhead. He’s flooding the area with agents and cops, the whole nine yards.”
Thump.
Mac turned his head.
The deputy pushed the shovel down again.
Thump. Thump.
It was the unmistakable sound of a shovel hitting wood.
“Clear the top! Find the sides! Find the sides!” Mac yelled frantically. A deputy quickly found one side and Mac jumped down into the pit, kneeled down and noted the screws, one every six inches along the side. He climbed back out and looked to another deputy standing to the side. He climbed back out and looked to another deputy standing to the side. “The top is screwed into this thing. We’re going to need crowbars, tire irons, anything to help pry the top off. Go!”
The deputy ran out while another retuned with an update. “North Memorial’s chopper is in route, ER doc on board. ETA is less than fifteen minutes.”
The deputies worked frantically to dig out the sides of the box enough so they could have leverage to pry up the top of the box. It took a couple of minutes of digging and clearing. The deputy returned with four crowbars and two tire irons.
Mac and Lich jumped down into the pit to the right side of the box. The remaining deputies surrounded the box. Everyone jammed the crowbars and tire irons in, prying in between the top and side pieces, pushing down with all their strength to pry the top off. At first the screws wouldn’t give, but under continuous pressure, the screws started to come loose, groaning loudly, and the top came off with an ear-shattering pop and was pushed to the left.
Everyone froze.
Carrie Flanagan laid on the right and Shannon Hisle the left. Flanagan looked up and shaded her eyes with her left hand. Her hair was matted, and there were dirty tear streaks down her cheeks. Hisle was curled up in a fetal position, unmoving.
Mac jumped into the box, between the girls, and helped Carrie up. Two of the sheriff’s deputies lifted her out. Mac knelt down to Shannon, checking her pulse and listening to her chest. She was breathing. Her breathing was rapid, and Mac noted her breath smelled almost fruity.
“Carrie, how long has she been like this?”
“I don’t kn… kn… know for sure,” Carrie chattered. “She’s been fading in and out for the last couple of hours.”
“What’s her status?” the sheriff asked.
“She’s unconscious. Her pulse is rapid and so is her breathing,” Mac replied as he lifted Shannon and handed her up out of the box. He climbed out and took her limp body from the deputies, carrying her as the group made its way out of the woods. Once clear of the trees Mac gently laid Hisle down next to the trucks, lightly slapping her face.
“Shannon! Shannon! God damn it, you hang on, do you hear me?”
He head lay against the deputy’s lap.
The sheriff dropped down a first aid kit next to them. Mac checked her pulse while Lich opened up the box and grabbed the blood pressure monitor.
“I’ve got her pulse at 120,” Mac said.
“Blood pressure is low,” Lich reported. “Eighty-one over forty-five.”
“The black bag!” Mac said. “Get me the Glucose Meter.”
Dick handed it to Mac and he tested Shannon.
“What’s it say?” Lich asked.
“The glucose is high, way high. She needs insulin.”
Lich reached inside the black bag and handed Mac a needle and small bottle of insulin. Mac pulled the cover off the needle and stuck it into the top of the bottle, drawing out ten units of regular insulin, just as Lyman had instructed. He rolled Shannon onto her side and plunged the needle into her lower abdomen, injecting the drug into her system.
“Will that snap her out of it?” the sheriff asked.
“I don’t know,” Mac answered. “The girl’s father told us that if she was in this condition when we found her, this is what she would need. After a minute he stood up, leaving the deputy to monitor Hisle’s pulse. He walked over to Carrie, who sat on the bumper of the Explorer with a bottle of water in her hands. Her face was blank, nearly lifeless.
“I told Shannon you’d find us,” Carrie said weakly as Mac sat down next to her. “I told her you’d find us,” she repeated as she started to cry again. Mac put his arm around her shoulder and held her.
“Wait a second,” the deputy said, his hand on Shannon’s wrist and his eyes on his watch, “I think we’re getting a little better here.”
Hisle’s eyes fluttered and her breathing regulated. Mac kneeled down and put his right hand to her face. “That’s it Shannon, come back to us.”
“W… w… water,” she said weakly. A deputy quickly handed down a bottle, and Mac put it to her lips, letting her take some small sips.
Mac looked up. Lich smiled broadly as the sound of a chopper rose in the distance. The sheriff moved away and shot up a flare. Within a minute, the helicopter was touching down, the whoosh of the blades matting down the tall grass. The ER doc, in his hospital blues, was out of the chopper and on Shannon in an instant, checking her eyes and pulse. McRyan gave him the status report.
“You gave her insulin?” the Doc asked.
“Her glucose was high,” Mac answered. “So she needed insulin. We gave her ten units.”
“Good,” the doctor answered as he checked Shannon’s glucose again. “The ten units looks like it was a good start.” He reached into his own box of supplies and pulled out another bottle of insulin and administered another ten units. He then set up an IV. The paramedics put her on a stretcher and transported her over to the chopper. The doctor stood up and came to Carrie, “How are you doing, young lady?”
“I think better,” Mac answered when the young woman said nothing. “She seems okay, physically at least.” They all knew that her injuries would be psychological.
The doctor looked Carrie in the eye and said, “How about you come with us, okay?”
Carrie looked at Mac, who smiled and nodded. “You go. I’ll see you at the hospital later.”
Gail Carlson sat on the county road, a quarter mile away from the farmhouse. It had been nearly a half hour since the police went up to the house. She’d driven down the road a little further, inching closer, but neither the Suburbans nor McRyan’s Explorer were around the farmhouse now. She heard it first, and then saw a North Memorial helicopter, flying low and fast from the south and passing right over the farmhouse. It passed out of her sight, but almost immediately the sound of its rotors changed to one she knew from experience meant that it was landing. Carlson figured it meant one thing. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Heather Foxx.
“I think McRyan might have found the girls.”
“Where?”
Carlson related her current position in Marine on St. Croix. “So where are you at right now?”
“Following two other cops. We just pulled up to the Taste of Minnesota. The cops are all over a bus that Flanagan and Hisle jumped onto.”
“So do you want to go with the story? That they found the girls?”
Foxx heard the question, but was looking at Pat Riley and Bobby Rockford racing back to the pickup and blowing out of the parking lot, siren blaring. Something was amiss. “Not yet Gail. Something’s not right here.”
Lich smiled around a fresh cigar in his mouth as he handed one to Mac. “God damn it Mac, we found them. Man did you pull a rabbit out of the hat with this one!”
Mac smiled, reaching out to take the cigar, but he paused when he saw the time on his watch. “We’re not quite done yet, my friend,” he said. “Six twenty-one: they should be at the Taste of Minnesota any minute.”
Mac’s cell phone chirped. It was Riley. “Do you have the chief? What? Wait. Slow down. Say that again. How in the hell can that happen?”
“What? What’s wrong?” Lich asked, his smile gone.
Mac looked at him with a stunned expression. “The chief and Lyman weren’t on the bus.”