Deadly Stillwater

• Deadly Stillwater
  
• Midpoint
  

DEADLY STILLWATER

By

Roger Stelljes

DEADLY STILLWATER

By Roger Stelljes

Copyright 2010 Roger Stelljes. Smashwords Edition.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or or introduced into any information storage retreival system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via other means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

This book is a work of the author's experience and opinion. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is is licensed for your peronal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

The publisher and author does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

Ebook cover designed by: Carole Sauers

Published by: Roger Stelljes

Visit the author website at: www.RogerStelljes.com

ISBN 978-0-9835758-0-1 (ebook)

ISBN 10: 1-59298-307-3

ISBN 13: 978-1-59298-307-0

First paper printing: 2009

Ebook version 2011.10.17

Other books by the award winning author Roger Stelljes:

The St. Paul Conspiracy

Acknowledgments

The process of publishing a book starts with the author’s written word. However, only with the help of many others does a book ultimately see print. I am indebted to a number of people who helped make this second book possible. I’d like to thank friends and family for assistance in editing, cover design, marketing, and technical assistance. I can’t thank you all enough for your time, thoughts, and encouragement. I hope you enjoy the finished product as much as you did the rough one. Finally, I’d like to thank my wife and children for their infinite patience as Dad pursues his dream.

1

“
Fifteen Seconds”

SUNDAY, JULY 1ST

Dictionary definitions vary, but “retribution” is typically defined as punishment imposed for purposes of repayment or revenge for the wrong committed. For Smith, retribution simply meant payback. He’d waited sixteen years for it, and now he was three hours away from starting to get it.

Smith turned the panel van left into the alley and pulled three-quarters of the way down toward Western Avenue. He stopped and then backed in behind a small office building housing an accounting office with a storefront facing Western. From this position, the back of the café was visible at a forty-five-degree angle to the right. Smith had watched the area and this parking spot in particular every Sunday for the last month. Nobody ever came to the building or parked in the back on a Sunday afternoon. He expected this day would be no different.

His watch said 2:03PM. The office building’s parking lot was elevated two feet above that of the restaurant across the alley. This allowed for a somewhat unobstructed view of the restaurant’s back patio, which was surrounded by a six-foot-high wood fence. He could only see the tops of heads or upper torsos of patrons and staff from his position. Nonetheless, the spot provided a needed clear view of the café’s small parking lot outside the fence. The target’s car, a new Prius, occupied the second to last space in the back of the lot, located close to Western.

Smith set his gaze on the back of the restaurant, Cel’s Café, a little bistro on the corner of Western and Selby avenues. The café was a busy hub in St. Paul’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood, an area of turn-of-the-century Victorian homes encircling the majestic Cathedral of Saint Paul. The stately mansions of Summit Avenue lay a mere three blocks away. The café was a busy post-church lunching spot. By the mid-to-late afternoon, it changed over to a light crowd of book or newspaper readers, drinking coffee, iced tea, and, for those living on the edge, maybe a bloody mary. Cel’s also employed a young waitress named Shannon Hisle, the daughter of St. Paul’s wealthiest and most prominent lawyer.

Smith pulled black leather gloves tight over his hands and turned to the back of the van where two large men, brothers Dean and David, fiddled with duct tape, masks, and gloves of their own. There was also a gas-filled plastic milk carton with a detonator taped on the side for later. Each had a .45 lying on the floor. Smith turned his attention to the passenger seat and the police scanner, which reported little activity on this sleepy summer afternoon.

Smith had spent fifteen years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. Because of who he was, the beatings started his first day. He had fought, but he didn’t have a fighting chance. Those first few years, he suffered broken ribs, fingers, and wrists more than once. In one of the last and most brutal of the assaults, he suffered a broken nose that left him with a large and permanent bulbous knot just below the bridge and a shattered eye socket that blurred the peripheral vision in his left eye. He spent long tours in the infirmary, recovering from the abuse, only to be put back into the general population to be unmercifully beaten again and again. He had no allies, no protection, and no hope in those early years.

If it wasn’t for the arrival of the two hulking brothers in the back of the van, he wouldn’t have made it. Three years into Smith’s sentence, David who was six-foot-three and 240 pounds of bulging muscles, moved into a neighboring cell. David saw firsthand the results of the beatings. He didn’t like what he saw. Along with his equally large and skilled brother Dean, three cells further down, David used skills honed in the Golden Gloves to put a stop to it.

David and Dean had saved his life. Smith would do anything for his two friends. It was one of the reasons why he now sat behind the wheel and had masterminded what was about to take place. Before he could get his, Dean and David needed to get theirs.

* * * * *

Monica sat at her table at the front of the bistro, sipping her iced tea, alternately reading her Harlequin novel, watching the target, and making calls on her cell phone.

Dressed in a frumpy floral blouse, faded black spandex pants, and black heels, sporting a 1960s bouffant wig of black hair, she had the look of a mid-forties woman whose social life revolved around reading about romances she would never have. It was far from her normal, stylish look, but it was the look she wanted for today. She had used it the previous three weeks when she came in on Sunday afternoons to scout the movements of Shannon Hisle. The mark was sitting at the bar now, closing out her tables, sipping a Diet Coke. She would be leaving soon.

Taking one last sip of her iced tea, Monica put the receipt in her purse, popped a complimentary mint in her mouth, and discreetly wiped down the table and the arms of her chair. She’d never been arrested nor had her prints taken, but she didn’t want to take a chance.

Hisle finished the last of her tabs and handed them to her manager, who gave them a quick look and approval. Monica checked her watch – 4:56 PM – and placed a call as Hisle put her purse over her shoulder. Smith picked up on the first ring.

“Fifteen seconds.”

As Hisle pushed the back door open, Monica slung her purse over her shoulder, walked out the front door and turned right, casually strolling east along Selby Avenue and away from the action beginning to unfold.

* * * * *

Dean, a black ski mask over his head, was out of the van now, crouched down behind a parked pickup truck three cars to the right of Hisle’s Prius. David, his mask down as well, was stationed at the van’s side sliding door. Smith focused on the back door and saw the pretty brunette push her way through. He pulled the van into the alley and turned left, driving slowly down the alley, watching Hisle all the way.

* * * * *

Shannon hustled to her car with her head down and digging with her right hand across her body deep into her black purse, searching for her car keys.

When she reached the back bumper of her car, she halted and dug with both hands, leaning down and peering in.

“Where the heck did they go?” she muttered.
Ah ha
, there they were, buried in a corner, under her cell phone. She grabbed the cell phone and keys and sensed the sudden flash of movement from her left. She looked up in time to see a mammoth black-masked man barreling toward her.

“
NO!... NO!....”

* * * * *

Dean scooped Hisle, putting his hand over her mouth as she screamed and thrashed against his iron grip.

Smith quickly turned right out of the alley and pulled up along the curb. David slid the door open and grabbed the struggling Hisle out of his brother’s hands. He dragged her inside, sat on top of her, and pinned her arms down. Dean jumped in, closed the door, and grabbed the duct tape as Smith punched the gas and took a hard right turn on Selby and accelerated east to Summit Avenue. Dean and David duct taped the girl’s hands, ankles, and mouth. They then put a pillow case over her head. Hisle squirmed and tried to scream through the duct tape pasted over her mouth. A brief look in the rearview mirror and Smith could see the horror in her eyes. It was only beginning for her.

2

“
How do they know she’s coming?”

Mac McRyan swerved his Ford Explorer through traffic in Spaghetti Junction just north of downtown St. Paul, flasher and siren going strong, as it had been since he left Stillwater and his boat fifteen minutes earlier. It had been a wonderful Sunday up until now. With his sister, Julia, her husband, Jack, and his girlfriend, Sally, he had spent the day on his family’s boat on the St. Croix River, picnicking and soaking up the sun. It was the most relaxing day that he and Sally, a busy Ramsey County prosecutor, had experienced in months – at least until now. As the group was tying up the boat and deciding where to go for dinner, the call came in. Now he skidded to a quick stop just short of the patrol car parked across the intersection of Selby and Western.

Mac’s full name was Michael McKenzie McRyan, but for all of his thirty-three years he’d simply been known as Mac. He’d been in the McRyan family business – the St. Paul Police Department – for eight years. A fourth-generation cop, Mac had relatives sprinkled throughout the department.

He rolled his athletic six-foot-one frame out of the Explorer. Ruggedly handsome, Mac had short blonde hair, icy blue eyes, and a taut face with a dimple the size of the Grand Canyon on his scarred chin. A former captain of the University of Minnesota hockey team, he was still at his 190-pound playing weight and worked hard daily to keep it that way. Sliding on his Oakley sunglasses, he walked toward a uniform cop who waved him through. Mac took in the scene, with squad cars and Crown Vics everywhere. He saw two techs from County Forensics taking pictures and prowling around the parking lot behind Cel’s. And, of course, the chief’s Boys stood just behind them.