The St. Paul Conspiracy

by Roger Stelljes

  A week later he joined the police force.

  His mother, always relieved that he had been going down a different and safer path, nonetheless understood. It was the McRyan way.

  His wife never forgave him. He ruined the perfect life she thought they would have. It took seven years, but the perfect marriage eventually came to an end. He’d gotten the final divorce papers in the mail the day before.

  Joining the force had also brought the unspoken pressure for Mac to measure up to his father, the revered Simon McRyan. His dad had died in a freak deer-hunting accident fifteen years before when Mac was still in high school, hit in his heart by a stray bullet from a far-off hunter. They never found the person who’d fired the shot. Mac had been with his father, holding his hand as he died.

  Simon McRyan was the standard by which all other detectives in St. Paul had been-and to a certain degree-still were measured, and Mac wanted to measure up. He didn’t want to be known simply as Simon McRyan’s son. He was proud of his father, thought about him often when he grabbed his badge and Glock 9mm. But every day Mac operated under the shadow of Simon McRyan, cognizant of its existence, aware that, as his father’s only son, he had much to live up to.

  Mac turned left into the parking lot for Mardi Gras, knowing it would be a good out-of-the-way place to park, and saw two squads in front of the condo. The yellow crime scene tape was already up, twisting in the breeze. A crowd of locals was gathering.

  There were five other McRyans of Mac’s generation who were cops. One of them, his cousin Patrick, stood on the porch of the condo. He came down the steps to meet Mac.

  “What say you, Paddy boy?”

  “It’s not good, cuz.”

  Mac furrowed his brows, knowing the tone of Patrick’s voice. “What’s going on?” he asked quietly, as they walked towards the condo. “Our dead body is Claire Daniels.”

  Mac stopped abruptly and looked at his cousin for a minute, “The reporter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah, I always wanted to see her naked, but not like this.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Is forensics on the way?”

  “They’ll be here any minute.”

  As he headed up the front steps, Mac stopped and asked, “Any media yet?”

  Patrick rolled his eyes. “Not yet. They’re all probably still over at the serial killer site giving Riley hell, but I gotta think the newsies’ll show pretty soon.”

  “All right. I’m going up and take a look,” Mac said, as he fished out some white rubber gloves out of his pocket and turned to go inside.

  Claire was living pretty well, Mac thought when he walked in, noticing the furnishings. To his right was a large living room with nice furniture, mission-style chairs and tables with an expansive leather couch, probably from Room amp; Board or Pottery Barn. He noticed that the condo looked in order, very neat and clean. The stairway up to the second level was to his immediate left.

  At the top of the steps, a uniform cop, Bonnie Schmidt, waited for him. As Mac got to the top of the steps, she nodded towards the bedroom. A white blouse lay on the floor at the top of the landing. Mac kneeled down to it and took a quick look around. He walked back down the steps and took a look at the living room, everything in order, immaculate.

  He walked back up the steps. “Was the blouse here when you arrived?”

  “Yup. Cleaning lady said she picked up a pair of slacks on the landing. She was about to pick up the blouse when she looked into the bedroom, saw the body, and you know the rest,” Schmidt said.

  Mac left the blouse and turned into the bedroom. He carefully sidestepped the bra and panties lying on the floor. Claire Daniels lay on the left side of the bed, flat on her back, her arms spread out, her left leg straight and the right hanging over the side of the bed. Mac walked to the left side of the bed and crouched. He immediately saw the bruising on the neck. The cause of death was pretty obvious. Strangulation. The killer probably had been straddling her on the bed, pressing down on her windpipe.

  She was naked, and Mac wondered if sex had been involved. It might explain the blouse on the landing, the scattered underwear. Forensics would find out soon enough. Mac took a moment to look around the room. Odd. Other than the blouse on the landing and the panties and bra on the bedroom floor, no other clothes lay strewn about. He saw no apparent signs of a robbery. Things seemed tidy. Mac walked over to the dresser. There was a jewelry case on top. Using his Bic, he flipped it open and immediately realized she had some valuable pieces. But each slot and drawer was filled with jewelry. If someone rummaged through it, they put everything back just so.

  Mac heard some commotion on the steps, looked back and saw that it was forensics. “Hey, Mac,” said Linda Morgan, a young nerdy crime-scene tech Mac really liked. “Paddy told me Claire Daniels?” Linda said conversationally.

  “You heard correct.” Mac replied, standing with his hands on his hips. “Best I can tell, the killer put his hands on her throat and squeezed. You can see the bruising. Strangling I’m thinkin’.”

  “Anything else?” Morgan asked.

  I’m sure you’ll check for sex, and I think you’ll find it,” Mac answered. “It feels like that happened here.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It just feels like it. The blouse on the floor. Bra and panties here. I haven’t spoken with the cleaning lady yet, but there were slacks down on the landing. Seems as if Claire was in a hurry to get them off. It just feels like something like that happened here.”

  “Well, if she did, we’ll find out.” Linda put on her glasses and reached for some rubber gloves to start evaluating the body. Another tech Mac didn’t know was getting the fingerprint kit going.

  Mac flipped open his cell phone and hit the speed dial for Captain Peters.

  “Peters.”

  “McRyan. Your day just got worse.” Mac said neutrally, “Our homicide is Claire Daniels.”

  Silence. Then, slightly stammering, Peters asked for confirmation. “The TV Reporter? From Channel 6?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cripes, what next,” Peters sighed. “Mac, do you need some help over there?”

  “Yeah, some extra units’d be good. We’re going to draw a crowd.” He thought a moment. “If you got any extra people to spare, I have a feeling we may need to do some door to door here.”

  “Okay. I’ll get some bodies down there. You run it. But listen, son, the shit’s going to hit the fan with this. If you get stuck, ask for help. If the media are not there yet, they will be soon. They’ll be all over you. Don’t say a word until we talk. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dick Lick there yet?” Peters asked caustically, knowing Lich’s approach to things as of late.

  Mac stifled a chuckle, “No, sir.”

  “Whatever you do, Lich doesn’t talk to the press. He always loves to talk. It’s your case. You run it, and he follows.” There was a brief silence, and then, “Look, if Dick pulls his head out of his ass, don’t be afraid to use him. He’s been around. If he’s set right, he knows what he’s doing. But you lead. I’ll let him know that.” With that Peters clicked off.

  It was his case for now. This was going to be a major case, and Peters was giving him the chance to take the ball and run with it. Mac planned to do just that.

  Mac watched forensics as they started to set up, unpacking gear from their fishing-tackle boxes. Black lights, cameras, plastic bags. He walked out into the hall and up to Schmidt. “Cleaning lady?”

  “Down in the kitchen.”

  Mac headed down. As he came to the bottom of the steps, Lich walked in. In his early fifties, Lich was pot-bellied and bald. He owned a collection of old, faded suits, replete with coffee stains and the occasional burn hole from one of his cigars. His choice that morning carried a couple stains. Lich, as Mac often said, was a piece of work.

  Lich was divorced, so he and Mac had that in
common. He had been cleaned out, which they didn’t have in common. It was a point Lich frequently made. His ex had cleaned him out and left him without a pot to piss in.

  “Mornin’, Mac. Your cousin filled me in.” Just then Lich’s cell phone went off, and Mac figured it might be Peters. He didn’t want to be there while that conversation took place. Instead he headed for the kitchen. The cleaning lady was sitting at the kitchen table with a uniform cop named Jones. “Lich’ll be a minute,” Mac explained to Jones.

  The cleaning lady was hunched over, looking anxious and just a shade from terrified. Just then Lich came in and whispered to Mac, “Peters says you lead.”

  Mac nodded, “Let’s get after it then.”

  The cleaning lady, Gloria, had arrived at her normal time, 7:00 a.m. She had gone upstairs to grab some clothes for the laundry. On the way up the steps, she had picked up the slacks on the landing and saw the blouse at the top. As she bent over to pick up the shirt, she glanced around the corner and saw Daniels lying on the bed. She then immediately called 911.

  After having gotten the summary, Mac asked, “Did you and Ms. Daniels ever talk? Have a conversation?”

  “Sometimes. She was friendly, always letting me make coffee for myself, as long as I made some for her. Sometimes I would bring rolls. She was a nice lady.”

  “Did she ever mention anyone who might be after her? That she was concerned about? Was there ever any hate mail lying around? Disturbing phone messages? Anything like that?”

  The woman’s eyes were wide with innocence. “No.”

  “How about people she saw, dated? Ever talk about any of that?”

  “We never talked about things like that. I didn’t know her like that. I might see her in the morning and say, ‘You have a date last night?’ She would just kind of smile and nod.”

  “Was she seeing anyone right now?”

  “She might have been, but I don’t know who it was.”

  “Is it ‘might’? Or do you know?”

  Terror edged into her eyes. “I think she was seeing someone. Yes.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “When she’s dating someone, she gets up really late. She works late and I think her dates are late.”

  “And if she’s not seeing anyone?” Lich asked.

  “Then she’s a pretty early riser, has coffee, reads the paper, exercises. But if she had a date, it seemed like she liked to sleep in late.”

  “Anything else that tells you she was seeing someone,” Mac continued.

  “No, just that she seemed to be sleeping in late.”

  “And you don’t know who she’s seeing?”

  “No. She never said. If he ever stayed the night, he was gone before I ever got here.”

  “How many days a week do you come?” Lich asked.

  “Three.”

  “Three?” Mac asked, “Seems like a lot for someone who lives alone.”

  Gloria said, “Ms. Daniels, she liked things perfect.”

  “Neat freak, huh.” Lich said.

  “Not so much that as just a perfectionist,” Gloria answered. “Just the way she was.”

  “When you arrived here this morning, did anything seem out of place, you know,” Lich asked, and then pointed up, “other than the obvious?”

  Gloria vigorously shook her head. “No, everything seemed pretty normal.”

  “How’d you get in?” Mac inquired.

  “Front door. I have a key.”

  Mac went to look at the front door for a second. There was a dead bolt, fairly new. He examined the lock and the door. It was clean, no scratches, no signs of forced entry. He walked back to the kitchen.

  “Gloria, is your key for the deadbolt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was the deadbolt locked this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that a new lock?”

  “It was put in a few months ago.”

  Mac looked past her to a stairway going down the back. “Is the back entrance down those stairs?”

  The cleaning lady nodded.

  Mac and Lich went down the steps and looked at the back door. Unlike the front door, the knob was very old. There was a deadbolt, but it wasn’t locked. Through the door was a single-car garage with a garage door and a dead-bolted side door to the left. This dead bolt was newer looking. As with the front door, there was no sign of forced entry.

  “Wonder if the same key opens both?” Lich said.

  “Let’s see.”

  They headed back up, and the cleaning lady confirmed that both doors had the same key. Mac did some quick mental gymnastics. No evidence of forced entry. No evidence of robbery. Maybe somebody had a key?

  Just then a couple of other younger detectives from robbery homicide showed. Mac chuckled. Bill Clark and Al Green looked like a couple of IBM guys. They were tall, with short black hair, blue suits, and red ties.

  “I must not have gotten the memo.”

  Green and Clark at first looked blankly at him. Then they looked at each other and just shook their heads, “Fuck you, Mac,” Green replied. “The captain ordered us down to give you a hand. So, what do you need smart ass?”

  Mac chuckled and gave them the rundown on what they had so far, which wasn’t much. “Let’s start door knocking on all these brownstones and checking the apartments across the street. Use some uniform guys, and I’ll get Peters to send some more down.” Mac was also thinking the newsies would be there soon, and he would need to control them and the crowd. The media would go nuts with one of their own dying.

  “Bill, grab Paddy. He’s up for detective. Take him around with you. Al, grab another uniform and start knocking on doors. If you come across something, let me know.”

  With that Green and Clark headed out to start the canvas.

  Mac and Lich headed back upstairs. Morgan was jotting down some notes as another tech took a few more pictures of the body. A third tech was dusting for prints. “Linda, got anything for us?”

  Morgan stared at her notes a minute, biting her lower lip. “Body temp indicates preliminary time of death as between midnight and 2:00 a.m. Cause of death is pretty obvious; she was strangled. He got on top of her and basically pressed the air out of her, with his hands on her neck, thumbs straddling her windpipe, fingers around the back. Strong sucker whoever did it.”

  “Sex?”

  “Yeah, she’d had it all right. I’ll be able to tell you a little more about that once we examine her downtown.”

  “Will you be able to get DNA?” Lich asked.

  “We should.”

  Mac thought for a moment, “She had sex, but…”

  “It looks consensual. I’ve taken a quick look. There’s nothing to indicate rape. There’ no tearing around the vagina that I can see. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”

  “Are you saying he-we’re assuming a he-killed her after sex?”

  “Not necessarily. I might know more when we get back and examine her. Could be that she was into something weird, sexual asphyxiation, something like that. I don’t see any tools or props around here to suggest that, though. It could be she said he was a bad lay, and he got pissed and killed her. Heck if I know right now, but we might be able to do better after we examine her.”

  “All right. Are you going to move her now?” Mac asked.

  “In a bit. We need to take more pictures and do a few other things.”

  Lich appeared to be mildly interested for a change. “What do you think?” Mac asked.

  “No signs of forced entry. At this point, nothing points to a break in so it seems like it was someone who knew her.”

  Mac couldn’t argue with that. No forced entry made it more likely it was someone she knew, which would narrow the field of suspects. They headed down the steps. Lich reached the bottom and was looking at the front door. Mac slipped by him onto the front porch and looked out at the street as a Channel 12 news van pulled up. “Ahh, shit.”

  “You knew they’d get here sooner or la
ter. They’ll soil themselves when they find out it’s Daniels.” Lich replied lightly, morbidly amused by the situation.

  Mac turned back towards Lich, who was standing, hands on hips looking out to the street. Mac’s eyes wandered down to the floor mat in front of the door. He kneeled down and flipped it up thinking, She wouldn’t… but she did.

  “Well, lookey there,” said Lich, “I didn’t think people did that anymore.”

  “Might explain no forced entry,” Mac thought. Lich called upstairs for forensics to come and get a picture. Just then Mac’s cell phone chirped.

  “McRyan.”

  “Peters. You and Lich need to come down and fill me in. The chief’ll be in on the meeting. It’s 8:40 now. Be here by 9:00.”

  Peters clicked off. Downtown was ten minutes away. Mac looked at Lich “We have an audience in twenty minutes.”

  “The chief?” Lich asked.

  Mac nodded. Lich chuckled lightly.

  “Bet he’s had half the city council on the horn yelling at him this morning. Now this. I wouldn’t miss it.” Lich replied.

  Mac snorted, “Well let’s get going then. I’d hate to deprive you of the show.”

  Chapter Three

  “Real police.”

  Viper yawned. It had been a long night. After a couple hours’ sleep, he was back to monitor the situation. Sitting in the back of a blue van parked on the northeast corner of Summit and St. Albans, he looked back at Daniels’ brownstone one-hundred-fifty yards away through tinted glass. A crowd had gathered, and a number of uniformed cops controlled the situation, putting out the yellow crime scene tape, keeping people to the other side of the street. It was 8:15 a.m.

  Viper took another drink of water, avoiding the coffee the rest of his crew swilled. He rarely drank coffee. It was bad for the system, and he was a self-professed health nut, except for the occasional beer or glass of wine. He would have to watch it though, or he’d have to hit the can, and he didn’t want to leave the van. He wanted to make sure events started and stayed on the proper course.