Little Girl Gone (An Afton Tangler Thriller #1)(92)

“If that’s the case, he’s a bad luck errand boy,” Afton said. “Because now all that money’s at the bottom of the Mississippi.” She wondered what two million dollars of waterlogged money looked like.

“This has been bad luck all around,” Thacker said. He glanced over at Richard Darden, who’d since been retrieved from the woods. Darden sat shivering on the back end of an ambulance, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His head was bowed and he was weeping while one of the EMTs, a young African-American man with soulful eyes, tried to comfort him.


*

FINALLY, there was nothing left to do but regroup. Which was how Afton found herself sitting in Mickey’s Diner in downtown Saint Paul, guzzling hot coffee with Max, Deputy Chief Gerald Thacker, Don Jasper, Harvey Bagin, and Andy Farmer.

“Nothing to show for tonight but a damn hole in the ice,” Thacker said. His hair was plastered flat against his head from wearing a stocking cap and he looked beyond haggard. He seemed to be taking tonight’s failure personally.

“Maybe the divers will have better luck in the morning?” Jasper asked.

“Maybe,” Max said. “But it’s going to be treacherous as hell. There’s an even bigger storm rolling in.”

“Does it ever stop snowing here?” Jasper asked. “In Chicago we get wind off Lake Michigan and a couple weeks of below-zero temperatures. But this much snow . . . it’s almost apocalyptic. I mean, what’s next? Frogs and locusts?”

“This year’s snowfall is unusually heavy,” Afton told him.

“That so?” He looked like he wanted to believe her.

“No. It’s always like this,” she said.

A faint smile creased Jasper’s face. “You were just trying to make me feel better, is that it?”

“Did it work?” Afton asked. She liked this rangy FBI agent who was able to maintain his cool as well as his sense of humor.

“No,” Thacker said in a tone that indicated their banter wasn’t one bit welcome at the table.

Afton cleared her throat. “What happened with Darden?”

“Ambulance took him to Regions Hospital,” Thacker said. “They thought he might be suffering from hypothermia.” He placed his hands flat on the table and then pushed himself up. “Okay, everybody. Party’s over. Go home and get some shut-eye. We start again first thing tomorrow.” He pulled out his cell phone, scowled at it, and shuffled off to make another call.

“We’re in limbo,” Jasper said. “Still haven’t located the dead snowmobiler’s vehicle. Maybe when we fish him out, we can get a positive ID and work from there.”

“Might have to thaw him out first,” Bagin said.

“Hopefully the current hasn’t carried his body all the way down to Hastings,” Max said.

“If that’s the case, there won’t be a lot to go on,” Jasper said.

Afton set her coffee cup down with a loud clink. “Then we start over, just like Thacker said. We go back to square one, review the case files, and try to get a fresh perspective.”

Jasper, looking slightly bemused by her tenacity, hooked a thumb in Afton’s direction. “Is she always such a pit bull?”

Max shook his head. “You have no idea.”





39


MARJORIE was finishing a bowl of Grape Nuts Flakes when the newsflash came across the morning show. She’d been watching Wake Up with Terri and Tony, which aired early each Saturday morning on Channel 7. Terri was showing Tony how to make a graham cracker piecrust, laughing her fake TV personality laugh and making a big show of slapping his hand whenever he did something wrong. Which was, of course, fake TV bumbling.

When the anchorman’s face came on, Marjorie stood up and walked to the sink to rinse out her bowl. She turned on the faucet, tuning out the anchorman and the stupid, screaming red graphics that whirled about his head. But when the anchorman uttered the fateful words Darden baby and bungled ransom, her world suddenly tilted on its axis.

What?

The words crashed inside Marjorie’s brain like a freight train careening off its tracks. She spun around and rushed to the TV. Frantically jacked up the sound.

She watched in horror as the anchorman, who cautioned viewers that this was, as yet, an unconfirmed report, laid out all the dirty details. He explained about the ransom call that had been received by Richard Darden, the mysterious directions that had led him to the Wabasha Street Caves, the bungled ransom, and how the kidnapper’s snowmobile had plunged through thin ice. He closed his report by noting that the drowned man, whose body had just been recovered some forty minutes ago, was suspected to be that of Lars Torbert, a prominent Saint Paul attorney.

Marjorie’s jaw dropped.

Ransom demand? Wabasha Street Caves? Saint Paul attorney?

None of that had remotely figured into her plan. So what the hell had just happened?

As her cold, reptilian brain strained to process this bizarre information, the realization of what had probably happened began to fall into place. And finally, the answer lit up like a cool blue neon beer sign hanging in the front window of a bar.

That * Torbert had rolled the dice and tried to pull an end run on her. He’d attempted to negotiate a phony exchange that would net him a big fat pile of money. Only it had worked out badly for him. And now he was dead, drowned like the filthy weasel he was, probably laid out on a cold slab in the Saint Paul morgue.