As it turned out, Leeann Chin really didn’t have a restaurant in the Northtown Mall or anywhere close to it. Which was good news because it blew Richard Nye’s alibi all to hell and bad news because it was already late afternoon and I hadn’t eaten lunch. I had my stomach set on Peking chicken with fried rice and had to settle for a chili dog with fries on the side at the Hot Dogs ‘R Us stand.
Afterward I did a tour of the local video stores. There were six within two miles of the mall. None of the clerks who worked at the stores were willing to reveal whether or not Richard Nye or Debbie Miller had an account with them until I claimed that Richard and Debbie were suspected of renting films, dubbing them, and selling the copies to other video stores. Suddenly each store was happy—and relieved—to report that neither of them was a member.
It pleased me to gain information that way. Just like a semiprofessional private investigator, I told myself. I couldn’t wait to tell G. K.
There were police cars with decals plastered on the doors parked all over the place: County of Anoka, City of Anoka, Coon Rapids, Blaine, Fridley, Columbia Heights, Spring Lake Park, Ramsey, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Mixed among them were other vehicles, mostly vans, with decals that were even more garish: WCCO, KSTP, KMSP, FOX NEWS, KARE-11. Some of them were even parked legally.
It took me five minutes to find an empty meter along East Main Street and another five to walk back toward the courthouse complex. As I approached the impressive crowd gathered in front, I thought, Either Tuseman is giving a press conference or the circus is early this year.
Turned out it was Tuseman. He was standing in front of the entrance, his jacket off, his tie loosely knotted, his sleeves rolled up, the wind in his hair, and smiling like a man who just won the Powerball. Flanking him were uniformed representatives of the various law enforcement organizations, including Lieutenant John Weiner. They all seemed excessively pleased with themselves as well.
Arranged around them was a semicircle of TV cameras and klieg lights and the operators of both. Still photographers from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, and Associated Press stood or knelt next to them. TV reporters and representatives from WCCOAM and Minnesota Public Radio, each of them armed with a microphone, were scattered between the cameras, all of them vying for attention while trying not to block the camera lenses. Print reporters, their notebooks opened and pens poised, stood in back. Common folk, like me, watched from a distance.
I saw Genevieve Bonalay. She waved me to her side.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Shhh,” she hissed.
We listened to Tuseman. He was just getting warmed up, talking about the scourge of the drug methamphetamine; talking about its devastating long-term effects on the individual and its tremendous damage to the community. He spoke about how methamphetamine was spreading across the country, fueled by small rural labs and super labs in the Southwest and Mexico. He spoke about how he, personally, was dedicating the resources of his office to finding and punishing those that would “bring this poison into Anoka County, who would use it to poison our children.” It took him a long time to get to the point, and the media people were becoming increasingly antsy—just think of all the editing they’d have to do.
Finally, he announced what the media had been enticed there to hear. All of the law enforcement organizations present, under his direction, of course, had just that day executed the largest, most sophisticated “sting” in the history of Anoka County—Tuseman seemed to like that word, because he used it a lot. The sting resulted in the arrest of “eighty-seven individuals involved in the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine, also known as crystal meth.” The individual city, county, and state police organizations combined their resources in a coordinated assault—gue^s who did the coordinating—on suspected meth labs and stash pads throughout the county. The arrests were made with “lightning speed and precision” starting early in the morning and ending about noon.
Tuseman said the sting was the result of an intensive fourteen-month-long investigation by his office and the Anoka County Sheriff’s Department. He said that the arrests were carried out without incident. Not a single shot had been fired; not a single officer was injured. What’s more, Tuseman believed that these arrests would most certainly lead to even more arrests as suspects gave up fellow dealers and addicts in an effort to gain lenient treatment.
He said it was a great day for Anoka County, and he issued a warning to anyone who would bring crystal meth into his jurisdiction: “There is nowhere you can hide.”
