Roger Stelljes - First Case

“How can he tell?”

“The shape of the wound is like an indentation, made by something that is a half inch wide. The downward angle of the wound suggests that whatever was used came from a high angle from someone taller than Oliver. Coonan thinks the person was over six feet, at least six-two.”

“And Martin Burrows is how tall?”

“Six-three.”

In the late afternoon, with the sun quickly fading in the west, Mac and Lich tried to find Burrows at the apartment he was renting just off Snelling Avenue near the Minnesota State Fair Grounds. There was no answer to their door knocking. The manager let them into the apartment, which was a small one bedroom. A quick look revealed Burrows was not there. His pickup truck was not in the parking lot either. His wife said that if he wasn’t at his apartment, he often liked to ride a bar stool at Drew’s Saloon, a small working man’s bar on Dale Street, just north of Interstate 694.

Drew’s Saloon was a corner bar that occupied half of an old two-story brown brick building with Vittolo’s, an Italian restaurant, occupying the other side that fronted Dale Street. They were separate establishments. Behind the saloon and restaurant was a shared parking lot, which Mac cruised. Burrows’s red Chevy Silverado was among the twelve vehicles scattered about what looked to be thirty parking slots.

“He’s here,” Lich said as Mac pulled the Crown Vic into an open parking spot. Mac checked his watch, 6:09 p.m. The sun was just a glimmer in the western sky. It would be dark in a matter of minutes.

“Where’s our backup?” Lich wondered.

“Right there,” Mac answered with a smile as a patrol car pulled up to the curb running along the parking lot. McRyan jumped out and quickly walked over to the squad car. One of the patrol cops was Mac’s cousin Shawn, who powered down his window, smiled and greeted his cousin: “Look at you in the suit,” Shawn needled as he exchanged knuckles with Mac. “So what do you need from us, cuz?”

Mac gave Shawn and his partner, Victor Montonez, a picture of and the rundown on Burrows, including size, criminal record and general volatility. “So he might be trouble, boys. Lich and I will go in the back. You and Victor stroll in the front and hopefully the show of force will make him come nice and easy.”

Mac and Lich allowed Shawn a minute to pull around the front and then casually made their way through the back door. Once inside the back door, they walked down a narrow, inclined, ten-foot hallway into the bar proper. Inside the bar, there was a distinct walkway down the middle to the front door. To their left were a series of booths running the length of the wall to the front window where Mac could make out Saloon in reverse stenciled in cursive on the front window. To their right was the bar, which ran the length of the wall with a break in the middle with an opening that led into Vittolo’s. The gap into Vittolo’s caught Mac by surprise. He didn’t think there was a connection between the two establishments.

“I don’t like where he’s sitting,” Mac whispered to Lich.

Martin Burrows was sitting on a stool next to the throughway into the restaurant. He was carrying on a conversation with two other men and had his back to Mac and Lich. However, he was facing the front entrance and Mac could see his shoulder muscles tense up when his cousin Shawn and Montonez walked in the front door. The patrol cops locked in on Burrows immediately who stepped away from his bar stool and turned to the back of the bar and saw Mac and Lich.

Mac had his right hand holding his suit coat back to reveal his service weapon and his badge on his belt. He held his left hand up, “Martin Burrows, I’m detective McRyan with the St. Paul Police Department. I need to talk to you.”

Mac locked in on Burrows’s eyes. Burrows peeked to his left, into the opening into Vittolo’s. Mac didn’t have anyone covering that way and he could tell from the look on Burrows’s face that he knew it too. “Martin, stay calm. Don’t do something stupid,” Mac warned.

Burrows bolted.

“Ahh shit, that’s something stupid,” Mac muttered as he gave chase into Vittolo’s, his cousin falling in behind him.

Burrows was out the front door of the restaurant and burst into the rush hour traffic on Dale Street, just barely avoiding a collision with a Grand Am coming north on Dale and then dodging between a Camry and Dodge Ram pick-up truck traveling south. Mac was out the front door two seconds later. He held his left hand out to halt traffic coming north while Shawn did the same with southbound traffic, leaving them a lane across Dale. Montonez and Lich jumped into the patrol car.

Across Dale, Mac burst ahead of Shawn and gave chase after Burrows, who was twenty-five yards ahead of them running down the sidewalk. Free from dodging cars, Mac quickly closed the gap on Burrows, cutting down ten yards in one block. Burrows crossed another street and then, sensing Mac was closing in, looked back, saw that he was and veered hard right into a narrow alley. When Mac reached the entry to the alley, he slowed some and carefully turned the corner, looking for an ambush.

There was no ambush.

Instead, Burrows was running up the alley, dumping garbage cans, fifteen yards ahead now.

“Burrows!” Mac yelled as he sprinted forward, easily dodging and hurdling the dumped cans, sirens getting closer. “Burrows, stop!” Mac yelled as he quickly closed the gap on Burrows. “This will not end well for you!”

Mac was within five yards now, halfway up the alley. Burrows knew it and moved right and grabbed a two-foot-long two-by-four lying by a garbage can, turned and started to swing it. Mac, anticipating the blow, went in low and put his shoulder into Burrows’s mid-section, tackling him off his feet before he could finish his swing.

Mac rolled him quickly onto his stomach, put his right knee into Burrows’s back, and grabbed his left arm. Shawn, who’d been trailing behind, reached the scene and slapped a cuff on the right wrist and then the left.

Burrows looked like a tied up calf.

Mac, the effort of the two-block sprint catching up to him, looked Burrows in the eye and mocked, between deep breaths, “What were you thinking… running… like that? Do… Do… Do I look like I’m out of… shape… to you?”

Burrows coughed and spit, “No.”

“That’s right,” Mac answered sarcastically. “I ran the Twin Cities marathon last fall. You were not going to get away from me. Only someone guilty of murder would do something that stupid.”

Burrows eyes popped out of his head, “Oh my God. Did I really kill him?”

“Predators.”

It took him three hours to alibi out on the murder of Gordon Oliver. Five minutes of interviewing him, forty-five minutes to get a video file e-mailed from Mystic Lake Casino and another two hours to review the video. Between midnight and two a.m. Martin Burrows sat on a stool at a blackjack table at the casino in Prior Lake, a suburb twenty miles southwest of Minneapolis, a good half-hour drive from the site of Gordon Oliver’s murder.

Martin Burrows wasn’t their guy.

Nonetheless, for Martin Burrows it was the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good news for Burrows was that he had an iron-clad alibi for Gordon Oliver’s murder.

The bad news, as best Mac could tell, Burrows lost at least three hundred dollars. According to security at the casino, Burrows accused the dealer of cheating him and confronted him in the casino parking lot. That confrontation was broken up by casino security.

The ugly was that the Prior Lake police were looking for Burrows because he followed the blackjack dealer from the casino to his apartment and beat him, and beat him badly, in the parking lot. Burrows thought he’d killed the dealer when Mac accused him of murder.