One Week Later.
Alt went in the back door, dropped the keys on the counter and scratched his head, late on Thursday night. He was beat, tired and very much wanted — but knew he couldn’t have-a vacation. He thought that when they had taken care of McRyan the week before, everything would die down some and Lindsay would stop worrying about Cross.
Instead, Lindsay had pushed for them to make renewed efforts to find the missing documents. They had to be somewhere. He was relentless. “I want no loose ends. I didn’t tolerate them when I was at the agency, and I’m not about to start now,” he said. “Go back and retrace your steps. You missed Landy Stephens’s name on Jamie Jones’s refrigerator, so you probably missed something else. So go back. I want those documents found. You have complete freedom to do what you need to, spend what you need to spend, but find those documents.”
So they spent the week looking, everywhere. They had made late-night raids on both the Jones and Daniels places yet again. It was worthless, Alt thought. This was the fifth time through. But the boss ordered it, so they did it. Different people at each location, and they found nothing. And these were people with experience finding items that were never intended to be found. Not a hint of the documents at either place.
They tapped into the systems at Fed Ex, UPS, Overnight Express, and any other package delivery service they could think of, to see if Jones had sent the documents to someone other than Daniels. They checked local delivery services to see what had been delivered to Daniels at her home address. Nothing.
They searched everywhere at the PTA building in St. Paul and at the various company manufacturing facilities in the area. Perhaps Jones thought they would never look under their own noses. Nothing. They tore her office apart. Nothing. Tore her assistant’s office apart. Nothing. They tore all of accounting apart. Nothing.
Through the use of her PDA and computer calendar, they tried retracing Jones’ steps during her last few weeks. Any restaurant she went to. Any place where she shopped. Any people she saw. They searched three of her friends’ homes. Nothing.
She was a member at the University Club, where she had a locker. Nothing.
They searched her mother’s place again and delivery records for her. They hacked into her mother’s bank records to see if she had been to Jones’s safe deposit box at any time in the last few months. Nothing.
They did the same thing with Daniels. They went through her place again, through every closet, every set of drawers, computer, files, office, basement, kitchen, built-in cabinets, car, everything. Nothing.
They searched Daniels’ mothers’ place again. They checked her mother’s bank records, no trips to a safe deposit box. No deliveries of any kind. Nothing.
In a new twist, they went through Senator Johnson’s St. Paul residence, office, car, and even the cabin. Nothing.
They were back searching at Channel 6. Alt was certain the documents weren’t there. But the boss wanted someone there every night until the documents were found.
One solution that had been implemented was that they had very carefully arranged through a sea of paperwork to purchase both Jones’s and Daniels’s places. They would take possession of both after the first of the year. If the documents were still there, they’d be found because every wall in either place was coming out. Maybe they should be x-raying the walls. That was a thought. Alt would evaluate that one tomorrow.
He reached into the fridge and grabbed a cold beer and thought of McRyan. He’d gone back to regular police work. Alt had stopped following him, especially after he’d made a less-than-subtle remark about being followed.
His group continued to monitor McRyan’s and Kennedy’s places. Nary a word about Cross. McRyan had scared them. But the investigation, if that’s what one would call it, had been shut down. Surveillance since then revealed McRyan and Kennedy were going to take a vacation together. Alt was about ready to shut that part of the operation down altogether.
Alt strolled to the den, dug around in the dark, found the remote and turned on the television. He dropped into his easy chair, flipped off his shoes and sipped his beer. He surfed through the channels until he found Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He wasn’t a big movie guy but always liked the Jones flicks. The movies reminded him of going to the movies as a kid, the good versus evil storylines, the heroes, a simpler time. He’d seen this Jones movie a hundred times, which was the case these days, all the cable channels running movies into the ground.
He turned to it just before one of his favorite parts, where Indy is in the old library in Venice, uses his dad’s Holy Grail diary, discovers the sequence of roman numerals in the library, and the entrance to the Knight’s Tomb, which is in the large Roman numeral X on the floor, and Indy says, with a sheepish smile, “X marks the spot.” This was of course after he previously said to his archeology class, “and X never marks the spot.”
“That’s it,” he thought. The original Cross documents are buried in a hole somewhere. They just had to find the treasure map and where X marked the spot.
Mac grabbed four turtlenecks out of his dresser drawer and threw them into his suitcase. He already packed fleece tops, long johns, socks, jeans, shoes, and his toiletries. His skis, boots, poles, coat, gloves and goggles were laid out in the living room. He had two ski coats, plus his leather coat he liked to drive in, laid out on the couch. He shook his head-too much stuff. He always overpacked when he traveled. Never a Boy Scout, he followed the motto anyway, “Be Prepared.” He had everything he needed for a long weekend, and he needed a long weekend away.
Since the showdown at PTA fizzled, Mac was a grump. He never took losing well. He always thought Lombardi had it right, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” He lost. He didn’t like it.
The case gnawed at him, and he’d decided it wasn’t just because he lost, but because PTA got away with it. Because of jobs, money, reasonable doubt and politics, a deal had been struck. The chief and the rest of them were pissed about it, sure. They knew PTA got away with something, but they could all rationalize it, live with it, move on from it. They’d all seen it a hundred times before and would see it a hundred times again. “God damn it, Mac, look at O.J.,” Lich said one night at the Pub, “He was guiltier than my first wife, but now he’s hunting for Nicole’s killer on every golf course in America. It’s over, OVER, deal with it. Now pass the beer nuts.”
Mac understood the deal; he just couldn’t rationalize it like everyone else. Maybe he wasn’t cynical enough or, on the other hand, maybe too idealistic? In his view of the world there was right and wrong, and there was justice. In his mind, the pursuit of justice didn’t include calculating bank balances, economic impact, or political power. No, for the victims, the dead, justice must come for them, no matter the cost. The deal that was struck with PTA was the antithesis of that.
So the bitterness sat with him, percolated inside him, depressed him. Two women and a sitting U.S. senator were dead and the guilty parties were simply going to walk away just like that. And the worst part about it was that Mac still felt like he’d missed something. That there was still something out there to be found. Daniels, Jones, their homes, the senator-all of it kept rattling around in his attic, nonstop, pestering him, like a fly that would hover around his head and wouldn’t go away no matter how many times he swatted at it.
That he couldn’t put the case out of his mind was not lost on people. The sour mood, lack of concentration, sullen expression all told the story. So Sally and the chief intervened, and now he was packing for a ski vacation up in Lutsen, Minnesota’s, finest ski resort. At first Mac wasn’t sure he wanted to go, but then Sally told him about the place, which belonged to a friend of hers. Isolated and private. Ski in and ski out. Fireplace. Satellite television so they could watch the Vikes game Sunday night. A hot tub. A lofted bedroom with panoramic views of the ski resort on one side and Lake Superior on the other. It was all good. Mac’s mood started changing, and he was looking forward to getting away. A little trip away seemed like a good next step for them.
With everything loaded in the Explorer, he drove over to Sally’s place. Realizing he needed to get cash and gas, he stopped at the Super America. He jumped out and put the nozzle in and set it to pump itself and enjoyed the mild winter night. The temps up in Lutsen, five hours to the north, would be in the twenties for skiing. Great weather. Mac heard the nozzle pop, took it out and headed inside.
He got his cash, grabbed a bottle of water and went to the cashier. As he paid, he noticed the security television, showing all the pumps, and thought of Knapp. That had been a lucky strike, noticing that camera, he thought. It was always those little things that broke cases. The security camera could have easily been missed, and they might still be looking for Knapp. Instead, he noticed it, and Knapp was history.
Knapp and the surveillance camera got him back to thinking about PTA. He’d missed something on that case, he just couldn’t figure out what. There was an overlooked detail somewhere. Mac hadn’t spoken to anyone about it, lest people think he was obsessing, which of course he was. But he thought about the case morning, noon, and night. Enough already, Mac. Let it go! he said to himself as he climbed into the Explorer and drove to Sally’s.
They stayed up until 10:00 p.m. and then went to bed. Mac laid in the dark room, spooning against Sally, her body warm. Mac never had been one for going to bed early. Carefully reaching over Sally, he grabbed the remote off her nightstand and powered up the TV. He liked spending time at Sally’s place because she had full cable, plus some premium channels. She was a big sports fan and liked movies as much as he did. Flipping through the channels, he caught the end of Ocean’s Eleven. A fun movie, the actors all looked like they had a good time making it.
Mac flipped around some more. He caught a late edition of SportsCenter, catching some Timberwolves highlights. While not a huge hoops fan, he followed the hometown club. They’d won, beating the Bulls.
Mac tried some more channels and came to Indiana Jones. He loved Indy and once dressed up as him for Halloween, with the fedora, leather coat, whip, the whole nine yards. Indy and Marcus were in the library, looking at the roman numerals. Mac smiled, he loved this part.