Criminal Enterprise Read Online Free PDF Page B

was up to right now, whether that boyfriend of hers—Mark—had stuck around. Wondered about her bank robbery case and if she ever got bored working the high-octane stuff. If she ever longed for something slow-moving, low-pressure. Knowing Windermere, the answer was no. The woman ate, slept, and breathed in the fast lane.
    Stevens picked up another cold case file and flipped it open. Chased Windermere from his mind and started to read.
    This one was a middle-aged couple out of Saint Cloud, the Danzers. Vanished around Christmas a couple years back. Stevens remembered the case from the newspapers. They’d been driving to Duluth to visit relatives for the holidays. The man’s body turned up behind a rest stop in Moose Lake; he’d been stabbed. The papers figured the wife did it, had murdered hubby and disappeared. But officially, the investigation had produced nothing. A statewide manhunt hadn’t found the missing wife or the beat-up Thunderbird she’d been driving.
    Stevens studied the pictures in the file, the dead husband and his missing wife. Elliott Danzer had a mess of gray hair and a wide smile. Sylvia Danzer was regal, an arched eyebrow and a twinkle in her eye. They were in their mid-fifties, had been married thirty years.
    Just a few years older than me and Nancy,
Stevens thought.
Not even a decade.
He looked at the pictures some more, flipped through the file. Then he turned back to his computer and typed in the case code.
    Let Windermere have her fast lane,
he thought, settling in.
I can do slow and steady just fine.

10
    T OMLIN FOUND the gun he wanted a week before Christmas.
    Finding the gun was easy; obtaining the gun was a pain in the ass. The state of Minnesota prided itself on honoring its citizens’ Second Amendment rights, and Tomlin found truckloads of weapons for sale online, from pistols to all-out assault rifles. Every seller, however, wanted proof of a police-issued purchase permit, and the last thing Tomlin wanted was a record of sale.
    Still, he scoured the classified listings and finally found a decent handgun in Hastings, about an hour southeast of town. The seller didn’t mention any permits or ID, and Tomlin sent him an e-mail using an alias and a free Hotmail account. “Interested in your pistol,” he wrote. “Can bring cash if we close today.”
    The guy replied an hour later. “See you tonight.”
    That afternoon, Tomlin borrowed Becca’s Navigator and drove southeast, tracing the bank of the Mississippi down Route 10 into Hastings. It was dark when he arrived in the town, and he stopped at a gas station and dialed the guy’s number. “It’s Roger Brill,” he said when the guy picked up. “I e-mailed you earlier about the gun.”
    The guy’s name was Schultz. He gave Tomlin directions to a farmhouse south of town. “Come whenever you like,” he said. “I got nothing going on tonight.”
    “Twenty minutes.” Tomlin hung up and drove out of town, picking his way along the empty back roads, the lights of farmhouses like ships in the distance. He missed the place once and doubled back and found it, drove up the long driveway, and parked beside an old Ford alongside the house.
    The house was small, wooden, drafty-looking, a couple lonely lights on in the windows. Tomlin climbed out of the truck and heard a door open at the front of the house. “You Roger?”
    Tomlin looked up at the porch, where a man stood silhouetted in the doorway. “Mr. Schultz?”
    “Call me Tony,” the guy said. “And come on inside. Too damn cold to be farting around out here.”
    Tomlin walked the front path to the house, climbed the creaky front steps to where Tony Schultz stood waiting. He was a big guy—not fat exactly, but big all around. The kind of guy used to getting his run of the jukebox at the neighborhood bar. “Glad you made it,” he told Tomlin. “Come on in. Want a beer?”
    “Beer’s good.” Tomlin followed the guy into the house.
    Schultz disappeared into the kitchen. Came