First Deadly Conspiracy Box Set

by Roger Stelljes

  Michael McKenzie “Mac” McRyan seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

  He wasn’t going pro as a hockey player but he was handsome, ambitious, smart if not borderline brilliant, graduating magna from the University of Minnesota and heading to law school. They married after their second year of law school together. Mac had a six-figure job lined up post law school which meshed well with her similar job offer from a large firm.

  Mac was happily on board with the plan that Meredith had set in motion.

  Then his two cousins, his two best friends, the co-best men at his wedding, were murdered in the line of duty. Mac felt the calling of the family business and changed the plan.

  Meredith was not on board.

  She didn’t want him to do it. She didn’t understand why he needed to do it. In her mind, Mac should have felt just the opposite. He should have felt fortunate that he could avoid such a dangerous line of work, blessed that he had options in life that were more lucrative, safe and in her mind acceptable. She said he was destined for more than working a police beat.

  Mac couldn’t give in, wouldn’t give in to her on this one. He had to do it. There were four generations of cops in his family. He had numerous uncles and cousins who were cops. He idolized them, worshipped them and until a few years before, had always wanted to be one of them. His two best friends had sacrificed their lives. Their sacrifice left Mac feeling like what he’d done in life, no matter the success he’d had, no matter the money he’d make or the status he would attain, would ever match up. It would never come close to what his family had sacrificed, to what Peter and Tommy had given. This was something he had to do as a man, as a McRyan, and Meredith needed to realize this. It hadn’t been part of the master plan but life has a way of intervening and changing your course. It wouldn’t have to be forever but for a time, so that he could look his family in the eye.

  This was vital to him. He simply had to do it. He wanted the woman he loved on board. He expected the woman he loved to be on board.

  Meredith either didn’t understand it or simply viewed what Mac was doing as beneath him and, by extension, her. He upset her carefully crafted plan and she was not happy with the course change. She married a lawyer who at a minimum would become wealthy and at a maximum, could become much more. She didn’t set out to marry a cop. A few weeks after he got out of the academy and was working patrol, Mac overheard Meredith talking to her mom, derisively saying “he’ll do this for a few years, get bored and will realize he is wasting his talents. Hopefully he’ll realize it before it’s too late.”

  Mac never confronted her about it but it motivated him all the more. Proving her wrong and showing her that he was right became his motivation. He wanted to prove to her that this was the right thing for him, that they could have the life she envisioned, maybe just getting there a different way. He was out of a uniform and with the vice squad within two years. He worked some undercover for another year and became a detective within four years before he reached age thirty. Mac was on his way. And it wasn’t just on the job, but financially as well. He’d also invested in the Grand Brew Coffee shops. That little ten grand investment was paying off twenty fold and was certain to provide more.

  Yet Meredith was unhappy.

  Things had changed.

  There was no going back.

  The last six months Meredith came home later and later at night. There were a few nights where she said she was working through the night and just stopped home in the morning to shower and change clothes. A new case came up that required trips to New York, Washington and San Francisco. She became distant at home. Their love life, once extremely active and adventurous had essentially come to a halt.

  At first, Mac wanted to believe it was just that she was as driven to succeed in her career as he was in his. But he had always taken pride in being brutally honest with himself and knew he was in denial. All the telltale signs were there. He was virtually certain of it but he needed to be sure.

  Mac knew five retired cops who became private detectives. The best of the lot was John Biggs, a detective who once worked cases with and had the respect of Simon McRyan. Biggs ran a small private investigation firm and developed a very good reputation and catered to an exclusive clientele. Three weeks ago Mac hired Biggs to find out if his instincts were right.

  At 11:00 p.m. sharp, Biggs let Mac into his office. A thick manila folder with Meredith Hillary McRyan written on the tab sat in the middle of Biggs’s desk along with a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and two glasses and that told Mac all he needed to know.

  “Looks like I was right.”

  Biggs walked behind his desk and took the cap off the Scotch and poured two fingers in each glass. “I’m sorry, kid,” Biggs answered simply as he handed Mac a glass. “The question now is how much do you really want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  “You sure?”

  Mac simply nodded. In his heart and his head he knew this was the case and was mentally prepared for it. Nevertheless, the reality of it still hit him like a punch to the gut.

  “Take a seat.”

  Biggs flipped open the folder. He had two clipped sets of pictures, handing one to Mac. Biggs or one of his investigators followed Meredith Monday through Friday up until three days ago, when Biggs had seen enough and began to put together his investigative report. Biggs walked through the report and pictures with Mac. Biggs was good, very good, Mac realized objectively. He had the goods. He caught Meredith in the act on multiple occasions.

  It was with whom that threw Mac.

  Meredith worked on complex corporate litigation and many cases would involve five or six attorneys, usually a senior partner, a junior partner and three to four associates. Mac had figured Meredith found another similar aged associate at her law firm given she was working late and traveling more on firm business. But that was not the case and who she was sleeping with told him everything he needed to know about his wife, what he was blind to about her all along. Their relationship was less about love and more about social status. When Mac was at the University and in law school he looked like a man who was on the right path. He was on the path of status, wealth and notoriety. These were the things, Mac realized, that mattered most to his wife. Meredith was more concerned with status, wealth and looks than love and honor. She had to be because she was having an affair with the senior partner she’d worked with since she first joined the firm, the very married forty-seven year old J. Frederick Sterling.

  “Surprised it’s Sterling?” Biggs asked.

  “Stunned.”

  “Me too,” Biggs answered. “Because I did a little research about his marital history.”

  “Which told you what?”

  “Well, J. Fred here is on his second marriage,” Biggs answered. “And he has a prenuptial agreement with the current Mrs. Sterling that has an interesting provision or two.”

  “Interesting?” Mac asked, catching Biggs’s tone. “Interesting how?”

  “If they divorce she gets $350,000 and that’s it.” Biggs took a drink of his Scotch.

  “Pocket change for a guy with his money,” Mac answered with a dismissive wave. “From what Meredith told me a few years ago, he’s worth at least seven or eight million dollars.”

  Briggs held up his hand, “Except there’s an infidelity clause in that prenup my friend. If they divorce because he’s caught cheating, she gets a cool five million.”

  Mac’s jaw dropped, “Five million… dollars.” Mac whistled. “Really?”

  Biggs nodded with a satisfied look on his face.

  “Hmpf. I’m surprised you didn’t run into a private investigator tailing him. She ought to have one on retainer just to protect herself.”

  “I seriously thought the same thing but we didn’t see anyone,” Biggs said as he lifted the bottle and Mac nodded. Biggs poured more liquor into Mac’s glass. “A friend of a friend of an acquaintance got me a look at the prenup. Apparently the first marriage went tits up because J. Freddy
was schtoppin’ wife numero dos.”

  “So wife number two knows that Sterling has the wandering eye and writes in a little protection,” Mac adds. “He stays faithful or if not…”

  “It’ll cost him,” Biggs finished. “The language is rock solid, if he gets caught cheating, he owes the five million. Of course that would be on top of the rather sizable monthly alimony of $25,000 he pays to wife number one from his first divorce eight years ago, not to mention child support for three kids at Blake School, which runs him somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty grand a year. Now he took home a little under $900,000 last year so he’s not living check to check—yet. If he gets divorced because he gets caught with his fly down, it’ll cost him dearly.”

  Mac’s strategy and terms for divorce suddenly became crystal clear.

  Chapter Seven

  “So what is this then?”

  Mac got home at 1:15 a.m. Meredith was already asleep and given what he’d just learned from Biggs, couldn’t bring himself to join her in bed so he simply racked out on the couch. Never one who needed more than a few hours of sleep, he was up by 5:30 and went for a long run.

  When Mac decided to become a cop, one thing he agreed to was buying a house. The house, of course, needed to meet Meredith’s expectations. Consequently, the house was most definitely at the upper end, and in reality, beyond what they probably could afford at the time, a 4,500 square foot Victorian in the Mac-Groveland neighborhood, four blocks east of the University of St. Thomas. While he never had any formal training, Mac was handy with tools and interior design. He’d spent the better part of the last four years on various restoration projects in the home, including the furniture layout and color scheme. It was plenty livable when he started but it was now a beautiful home and would, if he put it on the market, easily net him double the original purchase price, even in the flat-lined real estate market. That day was soon coming, but until then Mac would enjoy another of the house’s perks, its close location to Summit Avenue.

  Summit Avenue ran east from the Mississippi River a little over four miles to downtown St. Paul. It was a boulevard filled with stately mansions, synagogues and churches, majestic one-hundred-year-old trees, the Minnesota Governor’s mansion, his law school William Mitchell College of Law, the University of St. Thomas and Macalester College. It was a wonderful stretch of city for a morning run.

  He put his earphones in, set the music to random and began his run in the cool March air. The morning jogs were always important to him. He worked problems out in his mind in the solitude of the early morning. For the last several months, he’d thought through his marital issues. Now he had a plan for dealing with that. This morning he wanted to think about something else, the Gordon Oliver murder. His first case and after one day, he felt stymied.

  The first thing he did was mentally run through everything he knew. For the next twenty minutes he ran through the crime scene. Oliver had been hit from behind on the back of his head, but there was no weapon at the scene that they could find. While he hadn’t seen the final autopsy report, Coonan was sure the weapon used was not something like a tire iron or something else heavy. It was enough with the force of the blow to knock him down, but not enough to kill him. The blow to the front of his head on the bumper had taken care of that. The weapon was not found at the scene so the killer dumped it elsewhere or, while unlikely, still had it. Mac had noted the small brass plate with blood on it. It might have come from the murder weapon although it could have just as likely been lying on the ground and Oliver fell on it and that’s how his blood ended up on it.

  Forensics might be able to shed some light on what the killer hit Oliver with. The forensics report would probably be in his e-mail inbox when he got to the Department of Public Safety. Oliver’s truck had been dusted for prints on the outside. The only prints found belonged to Oliver. March nights were still cold in Minnesota and the killer probably wore winter gloves so prints were unlikely.

  He crossed Dale Street, three miles into his run. Mac ran the Twin Cities Marathon the previous fall. The last stretch of the marathon was along Summit Avenue. Since training for the marathon, he’d kept running five days a week. He checked his sport watch and he was running at a steady seven minute pace.

  The murder just didn’t feel random. It wasn’t a robbery. His money and credit cards weren’t missing. Oliver’s Omega watch and cell phone were still with him. How about a briefcase? Mac hadn’t thought of that and made a mental note to see if perhaps some legal papers were missing. Perhaps that would give them a lead.

  It likely wasn’t a robbery because the body was placed in the back of the truck. Were it a robbery, the money, watch, cell phone and anything else of value would have been taken and the killer would have left the body. They wouldn’t have taken the time to hide the body. But why did the killer feel the need to hide the body? They wanted a delay in it being found perhaps? They needed the time to set up their alibi? Mac could almost sense in his mind that the murder was a split second decision made by the killer and then an ‘Oh shit’ moment and the killer puts the body in the truck and ditches the scene as quickly as possible.

  That strongly suggested it was someone who knew him.

  Mac reached the St. Paul Cathedral, the halfway mark of his run and pulled out his cell phone. He had some good thoughts and quickly sent an e-mail to his work computer before he forgot them. He played random music on the first stretch of his run but Mac wanted some Springsteen for the return run and selected Darkness on the Edge of Town. Mac checked his watch and started the run back towards home.

  It wasn’t random. Therefore, the case would be solved through the people involved in Gordon Oliver’s life. The law firm and The Mahogany thus far were the two consistent places in his life. He worked long hours at the law firm. He was at The Mahogany several nights a week. The profile Mac and Lich were developing of Gordon Oliver was a workaholic who blew off the stress of his job with sex, often with women from work or The Mahogany. Those were the ‘tools in his toolbox,’ Mac muttered to himself.

  Martin Burrows, now that would have been nice and easy. Burrows had been perfect but he had an air tight alibi. Perhaps there was another aggrieved husband or boyfriend out there that they had yet to discover. He and Lich would need to re-canvas the bar and the law firm to dig further. Forensics was downloading his home computer and e-mail and Mac wanted to review it to see if anything jumped out at him. They were also working on getting access to his law firm e-mails. The County Attorney’s office was working through the issues on that. It wasn’t that the law firm was being difficult, just crossing their i’s and dotting their t’s on their obligation to protect their client’s information.

  Mac crossed Snelling Avenue at 6:15 a.m. heading west, now in the last stretch of his run. The traffic was starting to pick up some now on Summit Avenue, the morning rush not far off. He made a last mental checklist of what he’d thought about as he kicked it down for his house, finishing the last mile of his eight-mile run at 6:27. He stopped a block short of his house and walked the rest of the way for a cool down, sending himself another e-mail of his thoughts on the case while he did so. They would be in his inbox when he got to work in an hour.

  Mac walked up the driveway to the side portico entrance of the house and into the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator as Meredith walked into the kitchen in a dark olive dress suit and off white blouse and three-inch heels. She looked good. She always looked good.

  Mac started a pot of coffee and said, “I was thinking we haven’t had a dinner together in a while.”

  “No we haven’t,” Meredith replied looking at her watch and waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. “I can’t tonight, I’ll be working late. This Clanex merger is proving to be a killer.”

  “I suspect I will be working late tonight as well,” Mac answered. “I picked up the Gordon Oliver murder.”

  “I heard about that yesterday,” she answered. “Word is he was probably killed by so
me jealous husband. I hear he was quite the ladies’ man.”

  “Yeah, women should be careful about men like that,” Mac replied, curious if Meredith caught the meaning. “Anyway, how about tomorrow night? I can try to be home by seven. I could pick up some Chinese,” which was her favorite. “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about. It’s kind of important.”

  “I think I can make it,” Meredith answered as she poured coffee in her travel mug.

  • • • • •

  At the station, Mac and Lich discussed the case over coffee and came to the conclusion they needed to go back to KBMP and interview everyone again. Mac brought in two additional veteran detectives, Frank ‘Double Frank’ Franklin and Rick Beckett, as there were upwards of eighty people to go back through. It was a long morning and early afternoon. Mac and Lich re-interviewed everyone from the day before while Franklin and Becket interviewed others in the office that had less exposure to Oliver.

  A little after three p.m. they reconvened in a small law firm conference room to review notes. Stan Busch gave Mac and Lich a list of cases that Oliver had worked on for him the past six months. Michael Harris worked on most of the cases with Oliver but recalled nothing about the cases that were a problem.

  “Gordon could be extremely combative in depositions, at times overly so,” Harris said. “I’ve seen him piss off opposing counsel and deponents more than once. But that’s standard and most of the people we had Gordon depose were usually lesser players in the cases. I tended to handle the bigger fish so I’m hard pressed to think of anyone in a case that would want to kill Gordon. I can’t think of one case where that was an issue.”

  “How about clients?” Mac asked. “Was there ever a client that Oliver had issues with?”

  “Not one that I can think of,” Harris answered. “Like I said the other day, Gordon was really attentive to our clients and our clients are pretty happy. Stan reels them in and I do the litigation work with Gordon’s help, at least until yesterday. Gordon was a pain at times, detective, but like I said yesterday, I’ll miss the guy. As a young associate, he was money.”