Page 115 of Precise Justice

“Sure, no problem,” Maddy said.

Five minutes later Teresa came back with a nine by twelve envelope and handed it to Maddy.

“I’m curious,” Maddy said. “Why did you pull the file?”

“I expected the police to come after them,” Teresa answered.

“Did they?” Maddy asked.

“Nope, haven’t heard from them.”

“We may have to have you testify just to authenticate these,” Maddy said.

“Cool, just let me know. I’ll need a subpoena to take time off from work and get paid.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks, Teresa.”

Carvelli parked the CTS behind an unmarked St. Paul Police Ford. He could see the head of a man sitting in the Ford’s driver’s seat. Carvelli looked at his watch and thought,right on time. He could also see the man, a St. Paul PD detective sergeant looking in his rear view mirror then start to get out of the car.

The two men met where their cars met. They shook hands and greeted each other. The St. Paul detective was a man Carvelli knew well. His name was John Lucas. By coincidence, or maybe not, he was the husband of Carolyn Lucas, the de facto head of the office staff who worked for Marc’s landlord, Connie Mickelson.

“Thanks for meeting me, John,” Carvelli said.

“No problem, Tony. Got me out of the office,” Lucas replied.

They were standing on the sidewalk, out of sight of their destination, Capitol Pawn. Parked facing west, they had stepped over two feet of dirty, hard as a brick snow from the street onto the sidewalk. The Minnesota State Capitol Building could be seen two blocks to the east.

“I don’t think you’ll get much out of Rudy. He gets inventoried regularly by our burglary guys and always comes up clean.

“He did a few months at Lino Lakes, oh, probably twenty plus years ago for receiving stolen property. Ever since old Rudy’s been very careful. If something comes in that might even be a little warm, it goes out the back door within minutes. Burglary has even used decoys but Rudy seems to smell them. The stuff is gone before our guys go in.”

“Yeah, I remember him from back in the day when I was in burglary with the MPD. Even so, let’s go in and see him, anyway,” Carvelli said.

A buzzer went off when they went through the front door. Rudy was with a customer at the bullet proof glass shield covering the counter. If a robber could somehow get the money from behind the counter, Rudy could still trap him in a cage at the front door. No one had bothered to try robbing Rudy in over a decade.

Rudy looked past the customer, a white kid no more than sixteen, and loudly greeted his visitors.

“If it isn’t my old friend Detective Lucas and look who he has with him. The ghost of Christmas past, Anthony Carvelli.”

The instant Rudy said the word detective, his young customer scooped up the items he was pawning. They went into his jeans’ pocket and he scurried down an aisle away from Carvelli and Lucas.

“Hey, Rudy, been a while,” Carvelli said.

“And I haven’t missed you at all, Carvelli,” Rudy said with a smile. “I heard you’re a hotshot private dick now. Good for you.

“Detective,” Rudy said to Lucas, “whatever you want to know or hope to find, I know nothing about it.”

“I think we should get a half dozen cops in here with a search warrant to do an inventory,” Lucas said to Carvelli.

“Go ahead, I can use the money. The last two times they did it, they made a mess, found nothing since I am a poor, honest, humble man. I sued and made a nice piece of change for it.”

“Look at these,” Carvelli said removing the insurance photos from a coat pocket. “Off the record, have you seen any of them?”

Rudy looked over the photos and while admiring them, muttered, “Nice stuff. Good quality.”

“Rudy?” Lucas said. “We’re dealing with a multiple homicide here.”

“Hypothetically,” Rudy said.