Lyman and the Hilarys explained what they wanted.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Mac said, dumbfounded, looking to an equally stunned Sally, who was sitting next to him on the couch. “I’m not a private investigator. I don’t even live here. Hell, I live in Washington. My life is in Washington, not here. I’m sorry. I have to pass.”
“Look, Mac, I know this is a lot to ask…” Edmund started.
“You’re damn right it is, Ed. I have spent four years putting everything behind me. I’ve moved on, I’m happy, I have a great life. I’m sorry about Meredith, I really am. I hate seeing this happen to her, but what you’re asking …”
“We’re not asking you to give that up, Mac. We would never do that. But …” Ann’s lip trembled. “Our daughter’s life … we’ve always loved you, Mac. What Meredith did to you was wrong, and I know what it did to you.” Ann looked at Sally. “I’m so happy Mac found you. We’re so happy for you both. I wouldn’t dare intrude on that, but …” Ann’s eyes watered, and she looked down. “But Meredith needs help. Mac, she needs your help. You’re so good at this.”
“Look, Ann, I appreciate how hard it must be for you to come here, but …” Mac started when Sally grabbed his hand and turned toward him.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” Sally asked, nodding toward the kitchen.
“O… kay,” Mac answered, a little surprised, not sure what Sally had in mind. He looked at Lyman and the Hilarys. “If you’ll excuse us.”
Sally led him to the three-season porch in the back of the house and closed the sliding door.
“I’m sorry about this, Sally. I had no idea that they’d …”
“I’m not mad,” Sally answered quietly. “I’m not mad at all. In fact, you know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you should consider doing this.”
For the second time in the last fifteen minutes, he was completely gobsmacked. “You … you… you want me to investigate this? You want me to help? You want me to help my … my ex-wife?” He looked around the room for a camera. “Am I being Punk’d here?”
“You said it yourself, Mac. You didn’t want to see her spend the rest of her life in jail.”
“Yeah, but that was before …”
“Before what?” Sally replied. “Before two people who clearly still care for you showed up in your living room? Those are two very proud people asking for your help, begging for your help. I mean, Ann Hilary is a complete wreck. I can’t imagine they’ve ever begged for anything in their lives.”
“Well … yeah, but I have you and …”
“I’m not worried about us,” Sally answered, shaking her head dismissively. “I’m not worried about Meredith. This isn’t about me, or even you and me.”
“It’s not?”
“No, it’s about you.”
“Me?”
“Let me ask you a question.” Sally folded her arms and looked him in the eye. “Could you live with yourself—could you really, honestly live with yourself, knowing you didn’t help her when you could have and she ends up spending the rest of her life in prison?” Sally slowly shook her head. “I know you, and I don’t think you could. I think you’d regret it for the rest of your life. I think it would sit and eat at you. You would end up carrying this guilt, and you’d always be asking yourself, what if? Don’t do that to yourself.”
Mac walked back into the living room and looked at Lyman. “How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad,” Lyman replied and gave Mac a quick rundown. “Despite all of that, she says she’s innocent. She’s claiming she was set up.”
“And you believe her?” Mac asked, not caring that Edmund and Ann were sitting there. Hard questions needed to be asked. Might as well start now. “And Lyman, no bullshit lawyer answers here. I’m not about helping someone who is guilty. I’m about saving the freedom of somebody who is innocent. So I’m asking: Is she innocent?”
“Despite the evidence, I think she is,” Lyman answered, and then a little smile snuck out. “Don’t you think that was a quick arrest?”
“Especially without a confession,” Mac replied, nodding.
“Exactly.” Lyman pointed at Mac. “Exactly right, my boy. I think we have a rush to judgment.”
“Meredith is just not this dumb,” Mac added, shaking his head.
“No, no she is not. This whole thing is wrapped up all nice and neat with a big, red bow. In my experience, nothing is ever that neat. I guess the question is, kiddo, are you going to help me prove that?”
“Yeah.” Mac nodded. “I think I am.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Is the pity party over yet?”
Mac walked into the spacious lobby of the Wells Fargo tower in downtown St. Paul. There was scant activity in the lobby as Mac checked in with the guard at the security desk and was directed to the elevator bank for the seventeenth floor. In his hand he carried a leather folder with a notepad. On his shoulder he hauled a backpack with, among other things, his laptop inside.
As he came off the elevator, he walked into the lobby for the law firm of Hisle and Brown. Lyman and his firm had done well over the years, as evidenced by the opulent lobby with a marble water fountain, fine furnishings, and an eighty-inch big screen framed on the wall. Straight ahead through the lobby was a large and expansive conference room, where he saw Lyman sitting with his partner, Summer Plantagenate, and the Hilarys, not to mention Teddy Archer. The whole family was here.
Lyman and Summer, seeing his arrival, quickly came out to the lobby.
“Hey, Mac,” Summer greeted warmly, giving him a warm hug. “It’s been a while. Congrats on the engagement. How’s Sally doing?”
“She’s great, Summer, just great. She says hi. I dropped her off at the airport an hour ago.”
“Tell her hi back. Next time she’s in town, she needs to call me.”
“I’m glad to have you here—glad to have you on my side for once,” Lyman said, shaking Mac’s hand.
“I’ll do my best, guys,” Mac replied. “I have to warn you, though—it dawned on me on the way over that I’ve never investigated like this before.”
“Like what?” Lyman asked.
“Without a badge. Without legal authority. Without police resources. Without backup. I feel kind of naked.”
“Let me worry about the legal authority part,” Lyman answered. “There are a few more hurdles to investigating when you’re on this side of the fence. But if you find something you need to look into, let Summer or me know. We’ll get that taken care of.” Then Lyman lowered his voice. “But first, before we get going, there is someone who would like to have a word with you.”
Mac sighed and grimaced. “She’s here?”
Lyman nodded and then tilted his head left. “She’s down the hall, in a conference room, looking through some documents.”
Glancing to his right and down the hall, Mac muttered, “Well, we better get this over with.”
Mac deposited his backpack and folder in the main conference room, exited, and turned left down the hallway. He knew there would need to be an airing out between them. It was inevitable, but it was not a confrontation he would relish. Meredith knew how to push his buttons, and when she did, he could get nasty in response. It was a personality component that he’d kept locked up since he’d been with Sally. He had a temper and an ability to go for the absolute jugular in an argument.
They just needed to keep it civil.
Fifty feet down the hallway, he spotted her through the glass walls of the conference room. Meredith was sitting in one of the chairs and staring vacantly out the window. The dominant feature of her view was the St. Paul Cathedral awash in light, overlooking the city from the bluff to the west of downtown. He hadn’t seen her in four years, and now he was seeing her for the second time in three days. He tried to keep it light. “Hey, Meredith.”
She turned to face him and waved for him to close the door. He did as instructed but stuck close to the wall.
“I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have envisioned this when I woke up this morning, either.”
Meredith turned back to the window, looking outside. “You must be amused by this situation.”
“Amused?” Mac shook his head, looking to the floor, and said quietly, “No, Meredith, I’m not amused. I’m concerned…”
“Why don’t you just say it?” She turned back to him now. “Just say it.”
“Say what?” Mac asked, his arms folded, leaning against the glass.
“I told you so.”
He wanted to say it, was thinking it, and it was probably written all over his face, but he thought better of it. “Meredith, what good …”
“That Frederick was a two-timing loser when I left you for him.” She pushed herself out of the chair and stormed toward him with anger in her eyes. “That something like this would happen. That I’m a cold, calculating bitch who is probably getting exactly what she deserved in the end.”
“What good would that do at this point? I don’t see how that helps you.”
“That’s not exactly a denial.”
He read her and could tell she was spoiling for a fight. He tried to de-escalate. “Look, Meredith …”
“Oh, come on, Mac. I know you. How I reacted to you becoming a cop when your life was so set as a lawyer? Inside, you’re sitting there all smug and self-satisfied. That pride of yours has to be just welling up inside of you. Your life is a dream right now—engaged, rich, on a first-name basis with the president of the United States, a book deal, doing whatever you want. And mine? Mine has turned into a nightmare because I left you and married Frederick. Tell me you’re not standing there thinking that.”
“The irony is not lost on me, Meredith.” Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he probably shouldn’t have said that.
“The irony.” She snorted and walked away from him and back toward the window, running her hands through her long, black hair. “I can just hear that mind of yours—the irony that my bitch of an ex-wife who left me now needs me to bail her out.”
“Well, don’t you?”
“Whatever,” she replied as she wiped away some tears.
“Is the pity party over yet?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, Meredith, playing the martyr doesn’t suit you,” Mac suggested, still leaning against the wall, arms folded, trying to stay cool but having a hard time. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” And then he told a little lie. “And for the record, I have not spent the past four years living my life to prove you wrong. I haven’t spent the last four years looking back at what I could have or should have done differently. I’ve moved on.”
“Really?”
Mac shook his head. “Did the divorce hurt? You bet. It hurt like hell. There were mornings there for a while where it was hard to get up. But in the end, when I examined everything that happened, when I took a really long, hard look at what happened, I largely blamed myself for it.”
“You blamed yourself?” Meredith asked, incredulous. “The great Mac McRyan thinks something was his fault? This is new.”
“A little introspection never hurts.”
“Introspection?”
“Yeah, you should try it sometime.” He should stop now. He shouldn’t take the bait. Instead, he should get her focused on the case.
But he couldn’t.
She wanted to fight, and he decided he did too. He had some things to say.
“So what did all this introspection teach you?”
“I should have seen it coming.”
“Seen what coming?”
“The divorce. I should have realized a lot sooner who, deep down, you really were, Meredith. To you, life was about getting ahead, projecting an image, material wealth, appearances, and all the other trappings of success. That’s what you were all about. I mean, your definition of what makes a good life ended up so different from mine. I should have seen that long before I ever even contemplated marrying you, because those signs were all there. But I got sucked in by what was on the outside and ignored what burned inside.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You were gorgeous and smart. You were so smart, brilliant really, and I was in love with that whole package. Problem was? You weren’t in love with me.”
“That’s not true,” she replied, shaking her head. “That is not true. I loved you.”
Mac snorted. “Bullshit. I’ve often wondered if you’re even capable of it.”
“I did. I did love you,” she answered defensively.
“Well, if you did, if you were in love with me at some point, when I stopped meeting all of the ‘husband criteria,’ that was the end of that. It was time for a new husband. Someone who could advance you to wherever it was you wanted to get to. As a cop, you didn’t think I could do that.”
“Oh, fuck you, Mac.”
“Now who’s not being honest?” He went for the jugular. “It got to the point I could never really believe a damn thing you said, because it didn’t feel like there was anything real about you.”
“Really? Then why are you here now? How can you possibly trust me now?”
“I didn’t say I did,” Mac answered. “I’ll question everything you say, but I just don’t think you did it.”
“Why? Why would you think that? I mean, you think I’m this cold, calculating, heartless, loveless person, so why wouldn’t I be capable of killing my husband?”
“I didn’t say you weren’t capable of it.”
Meredith was shocked. “You think I could kill someone?”
“The Meredith I divorced? There’s not a doubt in my mind,” Mac answered, narrowing his eyes on her. “But not like this. The murder of J. Frederick Sterling and Callie Gentry was a crime of passion, of emotion. You don’t have that kind of passion or emotion pumping through you. You wouldn’t have been so sloppy to have left yourself open to a murder charge like this.”
“I wouldn’t?”
“No,” Mac answered, shaking his head, going in for the kill. It was time for the argument to be over. “If you did this, you’d have planned it out to the nth detail, Meredith, so that there would be no way to possibly trace it back to you. I mean, if there were anyone in this world I’d bet on to plan the perfect murder, to make it look just right, it would be you. Hell, you’d be angry with yourself if it didn’t look perfect. That’s who you are, and that’s why I don’t think you did it.”
Meredith shook her head, looking down at the floor, the tears welling in her eyes. “You think that little of me.” She walked over to the window and wiped tears away from her face. She turned back to him. “Why are you willing to do this for me, then?”
Mac exhaled a long breath. “I loved you once. I really did. Those feelings were a long time ago, but they were real and honest and true. And that’s … that’s enough to make me not want to see you spend the rest of your life in prison. I’d rather have you spend the rest of your life hating the fact that you have to be grateful to me for keeping you out. I want you to wake up every day for the rest of your life and know you’re free because the cop you kicked to the curb saved your ass.”
Meredith shook her head at him, sighed, and said, “Well, at least you’re motivated.”
“Damn right. So let’s get to work.”
• • •
Lyman spent an hour walking Mac through the case while Plantagenate, Meredith, and her family listened in. Mac listened intently, taking notes, reviewing documents, and asking sporadic questions. There was a file at the ready for him to take home for his review and use. As he listened, he began forming his own plan of investigation.
Lyman started with the murder scene out at the house on Lake Minnetonka and worked through the investigative report, at least what they had at this point. “I will be getting more evidence after the arraignment tomorrow morning,” Lyman noted. “Needless to say, the evidence definitely points at Meredith.”
/> “Yes, it does,” Mac replied, looking back at his ex-wife. “Which is why she didn’t do it.”
“Why do you say that?” Plantagenate asked.
“Too easy,” Mac answered with one of his favorite investigative thoughts. There were those who said the simplest answer was usually the right one. That was usually true, except when it wasn’t. Besides thinking Meredith wouldn’t act in this fashion, he agreed with Lyman’s assessment—something smelled. “All I know is that I’d have taken more time, even with someone who looks as good for the murder as Meredith does. I’d have taken another day, maybe two, before I moved, just to think it through, just to evaluate if I was missing something. In my view, they were a little too quick to arrest.”
“Do you question the integrity of the investigators?” Ann Hilary asked.
“No,” Mac answered, shaking his head, “just their competence.”
Next, Lyman moved on to motive, reviewing the investigative file from John Biggs. Mac looked back at Meredith with a smirk. “You used Biggs?”
She smirked back. “You said something about irony earlier. He knew the mark.”
Lyman finished up with some preliminary thoughts on the approach to Meredith’s defense. He pushed himself out of his deep leather desk chair, went to a cabinet in the wall, and opened it to reveal a small bar. “Bourbon, everyone?” Lyman asked. He poured five glasses.
“So, Mac,” Lyman asked. “Any thoughts?”
“I need to investigate the murder first, which means I need access to that lake house, and I need to figure out a way to explain away that gun. The killer used it, which means they knew it was there somehow.”
“And they knew her finger prints would be on it,” Ann Hilary said.
Mac shook his head. “I think the killer got lucky with that, Ann. There is no way the killer knew her prints would be on it. For a killer, it would be enough that she knew it was there—her prints are a very lucky bonus.” He took a drink of the bourbon. “But to work through all of that, I need some help. I need someone to bounce ideas off of, to talk to, and to be my sounding board.”
“I’ll get you into the house tomorrow after the hearing. As for help, you have anyone in mind?” Lyman asked.
Blood Silence Page 7
