The Taking of Libbie, SD (Mac McKenzie #7)

I grabbed his wrist and forearm and pulled up. Miller resisted, but not very much. Up ahead I saw Harry step through the front door of the bank. He walked to the curb and stood watching us, his hands behind his back, looking like a football referee waiting for the TV time-out to expire so he could start the game.

Miller was weeping silently, yet he hadn’t given up. He pulled his arm from my grasp and tried to run again. It took some effort to gather him in my arms; I nearly tackled him. Miller made a long wailing cry. He attempted to speak, but his words were unintelligible. I pushed Miller toward the bank. His resistance diminished until he saw Harry waiting for us. For the first time he realized what was happening. He said he had made a mistake. He said he was sorry. He offered me money. He offered more money. He said he would give me anything. I thought about Victoria Dunston and what she had said.

The people who hurt McKenzie, they’re still out there and they’ll probably hurt other people, too, unless someone stops them. If McKenzie doesn’t stop them, who will?

You’re making the world a better place, I told myself, as I gave Miller a hard shove. I pulled on Miller’s arm and heaved his massive body the remaining yards to where Harry stood in front of the bank. I forced him into a sitting position at Harry’s feet. I was pointing when I said, “Special Agent Wilson, this man drugged me, beat me, kidnapped me, transported me across state lines, and left me to die on the Great Plains. I would like to press charges.”

“It’s about time,” Harry said.

Miller sobbed.

Michelle Miller slowly made her way to his writhing, nearly naked body. She looked down at her husband and shook her head.

“I want you to remember something, Dewey,” Michelle said. “You’re the one who insisted on putting an immorality clause into our prenuptial agreement. At the time I thought you meant adultery, but I think this qualifies, too. You’ll be hearing from my divorce lawyers.”

“Man, that’s cold,” Harry said.

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” I said.

JUST SO YOU KNOW

There are some astonishingly good criminal lawyers in South Dakota.

The couple that Miller hired made me look like a vengeance-crazed lunatic on the witness stand and portrayed Evan both as the most maniacal villain since Charles Manson and the greatest traitor since Judas Iscariot. After he rested his case, the federal prosecutor told me that he didn’t like our chances at all. Then the arrogant sonuvabitch decided to testify, insisting on telling the jury his side of the story even though Miller’s attorneys stipulated to the judge that they had strongly advised him against it. After sixty minutes, with his attorneys cautiously leading him, Miller had the four men and eight women practically weeping at the injustices he had suffered. After two and a half hours of the prosecutor’s systematic interrogation, they were ready to convict him of everything from Lincoln’s assassination to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. He’s currently serving one hundred and fifty-six months at the Federal Correctional Institution in Littleton, Colorado, while the appeal process runs its course. I was a little disappointed at the court’s generosity; I thought he should have received a much longer term. Yet at Miller’s age thirteen years could easily amount to a life sentence. We’ll see.

Pleading guilty and agreeing to testify against Miller didn’t help Evan much at all. He was sentenced to a hundred and twenty months in the Federal Prison Camp at Yankton, South Dakota. At least he’ll have someone from home to chat with—Jon Kampa.

Kampa’s attorneys were nearly as effective as Miller’s had been. They managed to convince a Perkins County jury that Nicholas Hendel was a thief after all, that he had attempted to defraud the community and steal all of the jury’s hard-earned tax money, and would have succeeded if Kampa hadn’t heroically tried to stop him, killing Hendel more or less by accident. The jury reluctantly convicted Kampa of second-degree manslaughter, and the judge, his judicial reasoning influenced by the fact that Kampa had been an upstanding community leader and that this was his first criminal offense, sentenced him to four years. The Feds, on the other hand, hammered him. They convicted Kampa of a dozen counts of bank fraud and embezzlement and gave him a twenty-four-year jolt—and then insisted that he serve his federal sentence before he was released to the custody of the South Dakota Department of Corrections to begin his state time.

Dawn and Perry Neske were never charged for their crimes and left Libbie immediately after testifying in the Kampa case.