Criminal Enterprise by Owen Laukkanen

coach.”
    “Sure,” Stevens said. “I’ll show him the badge and the gun. Make sure he knows Andrea Stevens should be starting.”
    “You big bully. I knew there was a reason I married a cop.”
    “Thought it was my stunning physique.” Stevens paused. “I’ll try and make it. Been a while since I caught a game.”
    “Make it happen,” said Nancy. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
    They told each other good night, and Stevens hung up the phone. He lay back on the bed and listened to the wind howl outside, and he thought about the Danzers some more.

30
    T HE FORENSICS TEAM showed up in the morning. Waters drove the Suburban south this time, took the county road west and met the trail at the southern end. There was a big snowplow waiting at the trailhead, and Waters pulled in to follow with the BCA van behind him, and they formed a slow convoy up into the bush.
    They were still a mile or so out when the snowplow had to quit. The driver stopped the truck and leaned out of the cab. “Too narrow,” he told Waters. “Good thing you brought those machines.”
    They readied the snowmobiles as the forensics team unloaded the van. There were two of them, a man and a woman, and they climbed on the back of the Ski-Doos with their kits as Waters and Stevens settled in to drive.
    The technician gripped Stevens tight as he sped through the forest after Waters. Shouted something in his ear that Stevens didn’t catch. And then they arrived at the fork in the trail and the abandoned Thunderbird, and Stevens helped the technician peel her hands from around his stomach and stood again on unsteady legs, looking in at the car.
    He waited with Waters as the techs went to work. Hung back as they opened the driver’s-side door and peered in. He still caught the scent drifting out of the car, noxious and permeating, two years of decay suddenly unsealed to the world. The techs set their jaws and started to work. Stevens watched them and paced to stay warm.
    The female tech came back after a half hour or so. “Been there awhile,” she said, grim. “You can forget the autopsies.”
    “Autopsies,” Stevens said.
    The tech nodded. “We’ll have to ferry them back on the snowmobiles, I guess. No other way to get back here.”
    Stevens stared at her. “Them.”
    “The front seat and the back.” She cocked her head at him. “There’s two of them in there, Agent. Is that news?”

31
    W INDERMERE SAT IN the passenger seat of Doughty’s Crown Vic, staring out at a patched-up stucco building on a street corner in Phillips. In the driver’s seat, Doughty unwrapped a meatball sub. “Told you this guy was local,” he said.
    The building was a gray two-story cube, the paint old and uneven. It looked like it had been a garage once, or a storefront or something, before someone with more ambition than cash converted it into housing. Now it apparently housed Nolan Jackson, a thirty-five-year-old career criminal and alleged bank robber.
    The location was good, she had to admit. Phillips was a high-crime neighborhood barely a mile east of Eat Street, and only a couple miles southwest of Prospect Park. Perfect positioning for most of the robberies. “How the hell would a Phillips guy get his hands on Tomlin’s receipt, though?” she asked Doughty.
    Doughty took a bite of his meatball sub. Sauce dribbled down his chin, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. “Your guy said he was robbed, didn’t he?”
    “He was lying.”
    Doughty chewed. “Are you sure?”
    Windermere said nothing. This morning, talking to Tomlin, she’d been sure. Now, after looking at Jackson’s file, after stepping back and looking at Tomlin, a boring-ass accountant with a family and an expensive home, she could almost see Doughty’s point. Almost.
    “So, what,” she said, “this guy Jackson just breaks into Tomlin’s car for the parking receipt and a handful of quarters? He’s a grand-theft-auto guy looking at a ninety-thousand-dollar Jag, and