The Art of Making Money - Jason Kersten [108]
The only logical conclusion was that, somehow, Jim or Vicki Shanigan had managed to notify them of their impending arrest. Given that the Shanigans’ phone was tapped, Jim could have slipped Senior a written note during the “controlled delivery” the previous Friday. If that’s true, then why Senior hadn’t gone ahead and destroyed the equipment and paper as well is a mystery. The hardware was worth thousands of dollars, and he might have hoped that he could pass it off as simple office equipment, especially since Art and Natalie possessed the most incriminating evidence—the scans.
When it came to damaging evidence, the ATF and Alaska State Trooper’s drug unit did just as well as the Secret Service. According to state law, Senior wasn’t allowed to possess firearms because of his robbery conviction in ’92. But the ATF seized a Glock 10mm pistol, a Ruger .458, a Winchester mag rifle, and a Coast to Coast 12 gauge shotgun, along with several boxes of assorted ammo. The troopers got their hands on 267 pills of OxyContin, six marijuana pipes, four containers of weed, a digital scale, and a prescription pad. They also found a bug detector that Art had left behind. Clearly, Senior hadn’t used it.
The haul, coupled with the Shanigans’ cooperation, was overwhelming and both Senior and Anice knew it. After arresting them both, Clark took them back to the jail in Anchorage, where he and Sweazey sat them down in the interrogation rooms. While Clark had been raiding Senior’s, Sweazey had served another warrant on Chrissy’s house in Anchorage, with far less success. He came up with absolutely zero evidence, and Chrissy had stood strong under interrogation. When Sweazey grilled her as to her stepbrother’s whereabouts, she told him she wasn’t sure, but “thought they might have gone to Phoenix.”
Having failed with Chrissy, Clark and Sweazey were unequivocal with Senior and Anice.
“If you ever want to see your children again, you need to tell us, right now, where we can find Art junior,” they told each of them.
Senior hawed. He admitted that Art had made the counterfeit that the Shanigans had passed—and that he and Anice had passed at least fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of it themselves—but he did not initially disclose Art’s location. Like Chrissy, he said he wasn’t sure.
Anice was another story.
“He’s in Dallas, and all of this is his fault,” she told the agents. By the end of her interrogation, she had written and signed a two-page confession detailing her involvement, with certain curious caveats. She claimed that she didn’t know the money that Senior had initially given her was counterfeit, and that it was only later, after the plan was well under way, that she embraced it.
Art has always been reluctant to believe what happened next. But it’s there in the arrest report. The agents returned to Senior and asked him to confirm that Art had flown to Dallas.
“Yeah, they’ve gone to Dallas,” he said.
For the second time in his life, he had given up his son.
ART AND NATALIE had not flown to Dallas. Though that had been their original itinerary, Art started “getting a bad feeling” during the layover in Seattle. On a hunch, he exchanged their tickets for a flight to Houston, deciding that it would be safer to head for Longview from there. He then called Will Grant and arranged for him to pick them up at the new location. The strategy was sound. Two Secret Service agents were in fact waiting for him at the gate at DFW when his original flight arrived.
In Houston, Art, Natalie, Alex, and Andrea piled into Will Grant’s car and struck out for Longview. As they cruised