DEADLY STILLWATER (McRyan Mystery Series)

Chapter 3: "Who's the guy?"

CHAPTER 3

"Who's the guy?"

River Falls, Wisconsin, was a sleepy community half an hour from downtown St. Paul, fifteen miles into western Wisconsin. Mac pulled up to the crime scene tape in front of a bland industrial park. Mac, Dick, Riles, and Rock all filed out of the Explorer and walked up to the officer on guard standing in the opening between two one-story buildings and flashed their shields. The officer took a quick look at their badges and waved them through. Behind the building on the left, they found a burned-out van, a Ford Econoline Cargo. It was white, or at least used to be before it was torched. It was now massively disfigured with the frame and body distorted by the extreme heat of the fire. The van now listed to the right over the slag of melted tires. As they walked around it, Mac noted a distinguishing feature: a dent that ran for two feet just behind the bottom of the driver's side door.

A stocky man in his mid-fifties approached, a large dip of tobacco in his lower right front lip.

"You guys from St. Paul?" he asked. Everyone nodded. "Paul Fletcher, chief here in River Falls."

"Thanks, Chief," Riles replied and then introduced everyone. "How'd the call come in?"

Fletcher pulled a little black notebook out of his chest pocket, "Call came in to us around 5:45 p.m. The woman over there made the call," Fletcher pointed to an older lady holding a small terrier, "heard an explosion. She walked around to the back of the building here and found the van in flames."

"Did she see anyone, any other vehicles pulling away, anything like that?"

"Says no," Fletcher answered, spitting tobacco to the ground. "She was just walking along the street with her little dog and then heard the boom."

"How long for you to get here, Chief?" Riles asked.

"We got here about five minutes later, and the fire department just after that to put it out," Fletcher said, spitting again off to the side. "It was blown up intentionally. There's part of some sort of detonator in there and what might have been part of a plastic milk carton. The van has a Minnesota plate. And then we started hearing the radio traffic out of St. Paul about the kidnapping and to keep a look out for a white van, maybe dented. We thought this might be of interest."

"Not much left of her," Lich said.

"Nope," Fletcher replied, spitting again. "They did a pretty good job blowin' 'er up."

"I don't imagine we'll be able to get any prints or anything out of it," Rock said.

"I seriously doubt it," Fletcher replied. "The blast and fire probably took care of all that. Then us pourin' that water on it." Fletcher scratched his head. "Well shit, there probably isn't much left. Once we realized what might be going on, we left 'er alone. But at that point..." He squinted and shook his head. "It was probably too late."

"You run the plate?" Mac asked Fletcher.

"Yeah, the plate is for a van in Willmar. But the VIN number matches a van stolen in Breckenridge two weeks ago." Willmar was a town in south central Minnesota, and Breckenridge was in far western Minnesota, along the North Dakota border, two hours from Willmar. Mac snorted.

"These guys are being very careful."

"I'll say," Lich said. "So they dump the van here and use a pickup vehicle?" Lich asked.

"I imagine that's the case," Mac replied. "However, I suspect that in putting out the fire, any tracks and anything else was washed out."

"Probably so," Fletcher sighed, resignation in his voice.