Fatally Bound

by Roger Stelljes

  FATALLY BOUND

  McRyan Mystery Series

  by

  Roger Stelljes

  FATALLY BOUND (McRyan Mystery Series)

  By Roger Stelljes

  Copyright 2014 Roger Stelljes. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via other means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. This book is a work of the author’s experience and opinion. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  The publisher and author do not have any control over and do not assume responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Published by: Roger Stelljes www.RogerStelljes.com

  ISBN 978-0-9835758-5-6 (e-book)

  E-book version 6.1.2014

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’m consistently amazed by how many people are willing to help me as I go through the process of writing a book.

  As always I have to thank my reading crew, particularly my two stalwarts Mike and Scott. They’ve been there for all five books. They keep me on track with their insight, thoughts and incredibly incisive rips. At times the tweaks sting a little, and deservedly so, but the end product is always the better for it.

  I would be remiss if I didn’t also extend my appreciation to Mary Pat and my parents for giving the book a read and letting me know their thoughts and telling me when I was and was not on the right track.

  I wish to especially thank my wife for making this whole process go. It is a massive undertaking. If it weren’t for her, there wouldn’t be a fifth novel titled Fatally Bound, or any of the other books, for that matter. To my kids, once again I extend my thanks for letting me be a writer, a dad and a hockey coach.

  Finally, I thank you the readers. Your constant support, encouragement and feedback make the whole process of writing a story a wholly worthwhile endeavor. I hope you enjoy Fatally Bound.

  DEDICATION

  Someday.

  That’s what I used to tell myself, someday I’ll write that novel.

  For years I’d thought about, dreamed about and even tried to start writing a novel. I just could never get over the hump for any number of reasons, my job, raising a family and those eighteen holes of golf on Saturday and Sunday. Plus, I had no idea how to write a book or of the process to get one published. It seemed like such a huge mountain to climb. Nevertheless, the thought of writing a novel floated in and out of my mind often. It was one of those things I would do someday, yet life cruised along and someday never seemed to be coming.

  Then one day on my drive home from work in the late 1990s, I was listening to a local Twin Cities radio personality named Dan Barreiro interview this new author Vince Flynn. Vince talked about how he’d quit his sales job and took up his dream of writing espionage thrillers while also coping with dyslexia. He was so committed that he self-published his first book and was going around to area bookstores to sell it out of the trunk of his car. That night I went out and bought Term Limits, Vince’s first book, and loved it. I, along with millions of others, bought, read and enjoyed every one of his books ever since. Over the years, Vince’s story became even more poignant to me because my son copes and yet is flourishing with dyslexia.

  From that interview, I realized that if a guy could do all of this on his own, and with dyslexia no less, I had no more excuses if this was something I truly wanted to do.

  Someday finally came.

  It took me a little time and a few false starts, but I finally had a story I believed in. I started writing in 2002, finished the first draft in 2004 and published The St. Paul Conspiracy on my own in 2006, going around to Minnesota bookstores with boxes of books in the back of my car. I was following the Vince Flynn playbook. Through an acquaintance, I was able to get Vince a signed copy of my book which he so graciously talked up during a radio interview a few weeks later. You can only imagine how thrilled I was in 2009 when Vince provided a promotional blurb for the cover of my second book, Deadly Stillwater.

  I never got to know Vince personally. I only met him a few times. However, I did have the privilege of getting to know his parents fairly well through one of my law partners. In meeting and getting to know them, it wasn’t hard to see where Vince got his larger than life personality from.

  Sadly, on June 19, 2013, Vince lost his long battle to prostate cancer. Vince was only forty-seven years old, which really hit me as he was only one year older than me. He was far too young and had so many more wonderful years to spend with his family and great stories to write. His passing at such a young age was a harsh reminder to all of us that every day we have is a gift. That we should approach each day with love, passion and the enthusiastic pursuit of our dreams, whatever they may be.

  With Fatally Bound, I’m now publishing my fifth novel and I hope there are going to be many more to come. Writing these books has been a dream come true. However, I’m not sure I’d ever have gotten to someday were it not for hearing Vince during that long ago interview. Something about it motivated me into action. One true regret I have is that I never got to tell Vince personally how his story inspired me and I’m sure many others.

  As a fan, I miss not having a new Mitch Rapp thriller each fall.

  As a writer, Vince Flynn was and will continue to be a huge inspiration to me.

  Because of him someday came.

  Fatally Bound is dedicated to his memory.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Preamble

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

 
; Also by Roger Stelljes

  About the Author

  PREAMBLE

  He sat on the black metal folding chair in the dark, almost invisible to her, just a large, dark, hulking shadow with a deep guttural voice. The man leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs, his gloved hands clasped and his eyes behind his wool face mask boring in on her. The video camera, recording, sat high on the tripod to his left.

  Over her head hung a solitary light bulb with a chain pull underneath a silver, coned shade to focus the light downward.

  She was slumped in the chair, exhausted, hands cuffed behind her back while her legs were securely fastened to the chair with duct tape. Hours of tears and the resulting running mascara caked her exhausted face.

  He was angry, angrier than he’d even been. The rage was unlike anything he had ever felt, it was overwhelming, it was becoming controlling. “So that’s it?” he asked again.

  “Yes!” she pleaded weakly, little energy left.

  “You’re sure,” the deep voice asked darkly. “You’ve told me everything? You’ve left nothing out?”

  She nodded.

  “You’ve told me about everyone?”

  “Yes,” she whimpered.

  “You’ve left no one out?”

  “No.”

  Coming into it, he only wanted to get the truth and she knew what it was. The story was so much worse and coldhearted than he could have ever imagined. It wasn’t an accident; it was a killing, it was a murder. It wasn’t just one person either. Many had a role and none of them, NONE of them paid for it.

  They all just walked away.

  It filled him with a rage, a rage even worse than anything he’d felt as his life had spun downward these past five years, leaving him a broken man.

  It all started with the woman in front of him.

  The system wouldn’t help him, and now, he decided it would help her, because even within the system, she could never ever pay a high enough price. She would never be punished the way she should.

  He couldn’t let it stand.

  He wouldn’t let it stand.

  He reached up to his left and turned off the video recorder.

  “What are you going to do to me now?” she asked weakly.

  He stood up and pulled out the knife.

  “No! Please No! No! No! NOOOO!”

  Nobody could hear the screams.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.”

  Two years later, Dover, Delaware.

  Hannah sang passionately along with Adele’s Rumour Has It, the three Bud Lights providing her a little happy buzz, that and giving her phone number to Tyler. Tall and handsome, Tyler was a good-looking sales guy and he’d made a nice casual and smooth sales pitch at the bar. No cheesy lines, no tired moves, just some good solid verbal, physical and expressive flirty foreplay. Her friends said he was a player. She didn’t necessarily disagree with that assessment, but she played it pretty cool herself. When Tyler asked for her number, she didn’t hesitate, she offered it right up, although that was all she offered up, and he didn’t push for more either. She would make him work for that, and from what she could tell, he seemed interested in putting in some work. He was going to call, for sure. She could tell from the look in his eyes. A text, a call, something would come tomorrow and it excited her, gave her heart a little flutter, the first she’d had in a long while, maybe even years. Lately she’d been thinking it was time to start living again.

  She pulled her Audi A6 into her garage and let the song run out. She loved the chorus and sang along with it: “Rumour has it … Rumour has it … Rumour has it he’s the one I’m leaving you for.”

  “God, I love that song,” she exclaimed happily as she pushed herself up out of the car and grabbed her large purse from the passenger seat. She walked out the side door of the garage, hitting the opener button on the wall and watched to make sure the door went all the way down. The sensors had a history of being finicky, although not this time. With the door down, she locked the dead bolt for the side door of the garage and walked the fifty-foot sidewalk to the back door of her little two-story white house. The exterior light was off and she admonished herself for it, not remembering that she was going out for the night.

  She fumbled with her keys, feeling for the house key for the back dead bolt. “Ah, there it is.” She opened the back door and walked inside, closing the door behind her and locking it. She moved to the right into the kitchen and tossed her keys onto the counter and plugged her cell phone into its charger. From the refrigerator she poured herself a small glass of milk that she quickly downed, turned off the kitchen light and walked though the doorway into the living room.

  The right hand and rag was clamped over her mouth.

  The left powerful arm quickly wrapped around her chest like a vice.

  She was lifted off the floor.

  Hannah gasped for air and breathed in. The rag was soaked in something and she could feel the immediate effect of the fumes.

  She fought with everything she had, squirming, kicking, writhing, struggling, trying to break free, but she couldn’t get loose as the massive arms immobilized her and held her tight against his large body.

  She screamed, but the sound went into the rag, covering her mouth like a mask.

  Hannah looked around, searching for anything that could help, and saw a sturdy bronze candlestick. It could do some damage, but with her arms and body wrapped, she couldn’t reach for it.

  She was breathing frantically and thrashing her body, the fumes filling her lungs.

  The man’s vice grip tightened more, swallowing her into his body.

  Then he dropped down to a knee and threw her down onto the floor and lay on top of her, pinning her to the floor, the hand never leaving her mouth.

  She fought harder, gasping, trying to yell once again, but the sound went nowhere and caused her to inhale another large breath of the toxic fumes.

  She convulsed, thrashed and tried to use her legs to push up, but the intruder was massive, heavy and couldn’t be moved.

  There was another deep breath and she sucked in more fumes.

  She felt her strength leave and her arms would no longer respond to her commands.

  Everything blurred.

  Everything went black.

  • • • •

  “Hannah, wake up,” he stated flatly, leaning in close to her, lightly cupping and patting her face. Hannah mumbled a little but didn’t come to, her head still drooping.

  He slapped her hard, “Wake up!”

  Hannah snapped awake. She blinked and became alert and immediately pulled at her restraints, her arms and legs duct taped to the metal armchair.

  She looked around quickly, recognizing the thick cinder blocks of the cellar to her house. It might not have been soundproofed, but it was a close as could be without being so. When she was down here, she could never hear a thing from upstairs or outside.

  A large, wide, menacing man hovered in front of her, dressed in black including a black wool facemask over his head and white gloves on his hands. On his right hip, looped through his belt, she saw a long sheath for a knife with the black hilt sticking out. To his right was a video recorder mounted on a tripod.

  “Wh … wh … who are you? What do you want with me?” she asked frantically while fighting her restraints.

  “That will be answered soon enough. As for what I want with you?” He sat down in the chair. “Hannah, I want, and you will give me, the truth.”

  “Truth? What truth?”

  He held up a picture of a woman. “The truth I got from Melissa, you remember her, don’t you?” He held up another picture. “And Janelle? You remember her, don’t you?” He let those words sink in for a moment.

  Hannah’s eyes closed. Tears welled in her eyes and began to stream down her face. She sniffled, shook her head and sighed in resignation, “I … I … I always knew this day would come.”

>   • • • •

  11:03 A.M. Dover, Delaware.

  The FBI Suburban pulled up to the crime scene tape. The driver flashed his credentials and another uniform lifted the yellow crime scene tape. The Suburban pulled forward one hundred feet and parked behind a Dover police patrol car.

  FBI Senior Supervisory Agent Aubry Gesch sighed as he jumped out of the passenger seat. His partner, Supervisory Agent Grace Delmonico, slipped out of the backseat. If this in fact was their man, then they’d seen this movie two times before, but like always, it was a little different. This time the victim was killed in her home, a small two-story white house set in an idyllic tree-lined neighborhood of 1930s-styled homes. Probably the first time a murder occurred on this sleepy little well-kept street.

  A police sergeant approached, “Are you the FBI agents from Quantico?”

  Gesch and Delmonico nodded and showed their FBI badges and identification.

  “Please follow me,” the sergeant directed gravely, waving them to follow him up the front walk.

  They fell in behind the officer and walked up the paver stone sidewalk, climbed two red-bricked front steps and inside the front door of the small, white clapboard, two-story home. Once inside, they were led to the left of the staircase dividing the house and back into the kitchen, then back down a steep set of steps into the house’s cellar where the grisly scene, for the third time, unfolded.

  Like the other two, she was staged in the fetal position with her arms wrapped around her upper chest, her lower abdomen sliced open in the shape of the Holy Cross, the blood from which created a large pool of deep red around the body. To the left of the body were the two chairs, one a metal folding chair, a metal office chair with arms, the chair he bound her to while he interrogated, tortured and ultimately gutted her.

  “Just like the other two,” Delmonico said as she crouched down to inspect the victim with her flashlight, looking for the note. Red flags had been raised with victims one and two, the notes and the staging of the bodies pointing to a potential serial. Three bodies made it official.