Kill Fee Read online

  ALSO BY OWEN LAUKKANEN

  The Professionals

  Criminal Enterprise

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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  Copyright © 2014 by Owen Laukkanen

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Laukkanen, Owen.

  Kill fee / Owen Laukkanen.

  p. cm.—(A Stevens and Windermere novel ; 3)

  ISBN 978-1-101-62477-7

  1. Government investigators—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9199.4.L384K55 2014 2013025366

  813'.6—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  FOR ANDREW AND TERRY

  CONTENTS

  Also by Owen Laukkanen

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  Chapter 146

  Chapter 147

  Chapter 148

  Chapter 149

  Chapter 150

  Chapter 151

  Chapter 152

  Chapter 153

  Chapter 154

  Chapter 155

  Chapter 156

  Chapter 157

  Chapter 158

  Chapter 159

  Chapter 160

  Chapter 161

  Chapter 162

  Chapter 163

  Chapter 164

  Chapter 165

  Chapter 166

  Chapter 167

  Chapter 168

  Chapter 169

  Chapter 170

  Chapter 171

  Chapter 172

  Chapter 173

  Chapter 174

  Chapter 175

  Chapter 176

  Chapter 177

  Chapter 178

  Chapter 179

  Chapter 180

  Chapter 181

  Chapter 182

  Chapter 183

  Chapter 184

  Chapter 185

  Chapter 186

  Chapter 187

  Chapter 188

  Chapter 189

  Chapter 190

  Chapter 191

  Chapter 192

  Chapter 193

  Chapter 194

  Chapter 195

  Chapter 196

  Chapter 197

  Chapter 198

  Chapter 199

  Chapter
200

  Chapter 201

  Chapter 202

  Chapter 203

  Chapter 204

  Chapter 205

  Chapter 206

  Chapter 207

  Chapter 208

  Chapter 209

  Chapter 210

  Chapter 211

  Chapter 212

  Chapter 213

  Chapter 214

  Chapter 215

  Chapter 216

  Chapter 217

  Chapter 218

  Chapter 219

  Acknowledgments

  1

  The billionaire picked a heck of a day to die.

  It was a sunny Saturday in early April, a beautiful afternoon in downtown Saint Paul, the kind of day that seemed to chase away any memory of the long Minnesota winter just passed. It was not the kind of afternoon for a murder.

  An hour before the billionaire met his end, a plain-looking man and a beautiful woman met for a greasy lunch at the old dining car on West 7th Street, and when they’d finished, dawdled slowly along St. Peter toward the Mississippi River.

  They made an odd couple. He was paunchy and balding, pale and comfortably middle-aged. She was brown-skinned, statuesque, and maybe even a little severe, more than a decade his junior. And though they walked close beside each other, talked easily, and laughed quickly, there was a slight hesitation in their manner, an unresolved tension. They were something more than simply passing friends.

  They reached 5th Street and turned west, walked past the stately old Saint Paul Hotel and into Rice Park, an oasis of calm amid the rush of the city. The day was sunny but still crisp, and the park was filled with families and other couples, native Minnesotans and tourists alike. The man and the woman walked aimlessly, took a leisurely tack past the Landmark Center, with its pink granite towers and turrets, and then crossed through the park toward the vast Central Library. They bought coffees inside the Saint Paul Hotel, and then wandered back out and found a bench in Rice Park. It was a Saturday afternoon, and neither Kirk Stevens nor Carla Windermere had anywhere else to be.

  In truth, they looked forward to these meetings, Stevens and Windermere both. They weren’t always so languid—work, the Minnesota weather, and the demands of Stevens’s family made routines a fantasy—but they happened, a couple times a month, maybe, and that was almost enough.

  Windermere sipped her coffee and tilted her head skyward, basking in the sun’s warmth. “This is what I’m talking about, Stevens,” she said. “This is what I’ve been waiting for. Sunlight. Warmth. Vitamin D.”

  Stevens grinned at her. “Summer’s coming,” he said. “You survived another winter. You’re practically a Minnesotan now.”

  “Like hell.” Windermere glanced at him sideways. “I’m a warm-weather girl, always will be. No matter how many snowstorms I live through.”

  “You like it up here, though,” he said. “Kind of. Admit it.”

  “Maybe. It ain’t the weather, though.”

  He cocked his head. “Then what is it?”

  Windermere shook her head, the hint of a smile on her lips. She took another sip of coffee and set the cup down on the bench between them. Then she looked around the park.

  People milled about, enjoying the sunshine, taking pictures of the fountain, the Landmark Center, the hotel, the statues of the characters from the comic strip Peanuts—homage to its creator, Charles Schulz, a Twin Cities native. Windermere watched a family crowd around Charlie Brown, all of them smiling wide, posing for the camera, laughing and jostling one another. She waited until the picture had been taken and the family had wandered off before she turned back to Stevens.

  “It ain’t you, either,” she said. “So don’t get any ideas. It’s not the food, or the scenery, or the nightlife. Miami’s got Minnesota beat every time.”

  “Then it must be the work,” Stevens said. “Is that it?”

  “The work.” Windermere pursed her lips. “Yeah, I guess so, Stevens. It must be the work.”

  TWO AND A HALF YEARS EARLIER, Kirk Stevens had driven from Saint Paul to the FBI’s regional headquarters in downtown Minneapolis, where he’d met a woman with bewitching eyes and a slight southern accent who’d sat him down in her cubicle in the Criminal Investigative Division and listened as he outlined a sensational theory about a group of nomadic young kidnappers. The woman was Windermere, and Stevens, a Special Agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, needed her help tracking the kidnappers out of state.

  He’d intended to drop the case in Windermere’s lap and forget about it—he was, after all, just a state policeman—but Windermere had insisted he join her, put in a special request, and Stevens had found himself on a plane to Chicago less than a day later. It was the start of the roller-coaster ride of Stevens’s career.

  A year or so later, it happened again. Carter Tomlin, a wealthy Saint Paul accountant-turned-bank-robber, an acquaintance of Stevens’s. Windermere sniffed him out. Stevens hadn’t believed her. Neither had her FBI partner, or her superiors, not until Tomlin had started to kill. Not until he’d dragged Stevens and his family into the middle of his murderous spree.

  They’d drifted apart after that first kidnapping case. The second time, after Tomlin, they stayed close. Even amid the awful terror and the adrenaline rush, the sickening race against time and Tomlin’s dwindling sanity, Stevens had missed Agent Windermere. And though the FBI agent was about as prickly as a sea urchin, Stevens knew she felt the same.

  So now here they were, a year after Carter Tomlin, sharing a park bench in downtown Saint Paul, drinking coffee and enjoying the sun, talking and laughing like lifelong friends. It was, Stevens thought as he looked around at the park, an almost perfect day.

  ACROSS THE STREET, a silver Bentley sedan turned in to the driveway in front of the Saint Paul Hotel. Stevens watched it glide to a stop outside the building’s ivy-covered façade. Windermere nudged him. “Check it out,” she said. “Maybe it’s Prince.”

  “I get it.” Stevens shook his head. “Because this is Minnesota, right? Everybody in a nice car has to be Prince.”

  “Or F. Scott Fitzgerald. But I don’t think he rolls in a Bentley.”

  “I don’t think he rolls, period,” said Stevens. “I figure at this point he’s pretty much stationary.”

  They watched as the driver climbed out of the Bentley and circled around to open the rear passenger door. A short, white-haired man in an expensive suit stepped out to the pavement.

  “Fitzgerald,” said Windermere. “What did I tell you?”

  Stevens squinted across the driveway. “He looks old enough, anyway.”

  The white-haired man leaned on a cane as he stepped away from the big sedan and started slowly toward the hotel’s front doors. Windermere cast an eye at her companion. “Barely looks older than you, Stevens.”

  Stevens arched an eyebrow. Started to reply, but never got the words out. A shot cracked out from somewhere, cutting him off. Someone screamed. A split second later, the white-haired man collapsed to the pavement.

  2

  Windermere was on her feet before the white-haired man hit the ground. She ran across the cobblestone street and up the hotel driveway, dodging angry taxicabs as horns blared. Someone was still screaming. Bystanders ducked for cover.

  The man was dead; Windermere knew it instantly. He’d taken the shot to the back of his head, just behind his right ear, and the results were not pretty. There was blood, lots of it. Bone, too. Gore spattered the driveway. Windermere dashed toward the hotel doors and ducked behind the big Bentley, wishing she’d brought her service Glock. “Everybody stay down,” she said. “And someone call 9-1-1.”

  Stevens crashed in beside her, breathing hard. Looked across at the white-haired man. “Shit,” he said. “Where’s the shooter?”

  Windermere crouched low and playe
d the scene back in her head. Heard the shot again; watched the white-haired man fall. Pictured the entry wound and tried to map the bullet’s trajectory. “Sniper,” she said.

  Stevens got it immediately. He twisted around and peered across the back of the big sedan. Behind them, the Landmark Center loomed, its myriad turrets and towers excellent vantage points for any would-be killer with a rifle and a scope. Stevens nudged her. “Up there.”

  3

  Lind dropped the rifle as soon as the target fell. He pulled the window closed and walked out of the room and onto the balcony surrounding the inner courtyard.

  Already there were sirens outside. Word was spreading. People stood on the balcony, their office doors open, cell phones and paperwork still clutched in their hands. They shot quizzical looks in Lind’s direction. He ignored them and walked along the balcony to the stairs.

  The sirens grew louder as he descended to ground level. The stairwell was crowded. Clerks. Secretaries. Librarians and curators from the museums housed inside the center. Lind walked past a tour group and descended quickly to the main level, then crossed the courtyard to the building’s front doors. He slipped around another group of confused workers and hurried out into daylight, passing a man and a woman on the front stairs, a black woman and an older white man, their jaws set, both of them moving quickly. Lind didn’t slow down. He turned right on 5th Street, away from the swarm of police cars outside the hotel, and kept walking.

  STEVENS AND WINDERMERE hurried into the Landmark Center, dodging scared civilians every step of the way. It was chaos inside, people everywhere. Stevens pushed through to the inner courtyard, Windermere right behind him. “The towers,” Stevens said. “How do we get up there?”

  Windermere searched the courtyard. Spotted a set of stairs. “Come on.”

  A woman flew out of the stairwell just as they approached. Nearly collided with Stevens, her eyes wide and wild. Windermere caught her. “Whoa,” she said. “Slow down. What’s the rush?”

  The woman squirmed. Fought Windermere’s grasp. “Let me go,” she said. “I have to find the police.”

  “We’re police,” Stevens told her. “BCA. FBI. What’s the story?”

  The woman looked at Windermere. Then at Stevens’s badge. “Thank God,” she said, pointing across the courtyard. “He went that way.”

  “Who?” said Windermere.

  “The shooter. He went that way. I followed him down.”

  Windermere swapped glances with Stevens. “Describe him,” she said.