The St. Paul Conspiracy

by Roger Stelljes

  “So what?” Lindsay replied.

  “Serial killers pick out one kind of victim and stick with that,” Mac answered. “They don’t stray.”

  Riles picked up the thread. “So, we took another look at Jones and found some things that caused us to look in the direction of PTA.”

  “What would that be, detective?” Lindsay asked evenly, unrattled.

  “While we were looking through her apartment, and we noticed Ms. Stephens’ name on a calendar on the refrigerator. She met with Ms. Jones six days before she died on Halloween.”

  “That’s hardly unusual, detective. It’s no secret that James and Landy were good friends with Jamie.”

  “As Ms. Stephens told us. They got together for coffee, apparently something they did every once in a while. Of course on this occasion, Ms. Stephens gave Jones something.”

  “Which was?” Lindsay asked.

  “A banker’s box full of PTA documents for something called…” Mac looked at Riles.

  “Cross,” Riles finished.

  “Is that what this is about, Detective McRyan?” Lindsay asked, “I can assure you-”

  Mac cut him off, “There’s more than that, I assure you,” an intentional taunt in his voice, pushing at Lindsay. “We also know that after she met with Ms. Stephens, Jones met with Claire Daniels.” They hadn’t been able to confirm exactly when that meeting took place, but they were pretty sure it had.

  “I didn’t know that,” Lindsay replied, a surprised look on his face. Mac didn’t believe him or the surprised look, but they already decided they couldn’t use Daniels much more than that at this point.

  “Really?” Mac replied skeptically. “Somehow I doubt that.” Then he continued. “Anyway, between Stephens giving Jones the banker’s box and then meeting with a noted investigative reporter, well, that all seemed fairly suspicious to us. Especially since Jones didn’t fit the pattern of Knapp’s victims. Certainly you can see why this would be of concern to us.”

  “Knapp must have taken a shine to Jamie somehow,” Lindsay replied.

  “I’m not sure how that would be,” Riley jumped in. “I led the detail on Knapp. He ran into all of his victims through work and driving around the University Avenue area.” Riley shook his head, “In the time we followed him, he never went downtown once.”

  Mac jumped back in. “And, as far as we can tell, Jones never had any reason to spend much time along the University Avenue corridor. PTA doesn’t have any facilities over there.”

  “Could be a copycat,” Zimmer added, wanting everyone to know he was still in the room.

  “We think that’s entirely possible,” Riley replied. “But if the Jones murder was a copycat, it wasn’t pulled off by some ham-and-egger. It was the work of a professional.”

  Mac nodded, adding, “Every detail matched to what Knapp was doing. Except, of course, for the profile of the victim. Jones doesn’t fit.”

  “So that got us to thinking: who else would want to take her out?” Riles said. “And it seems that the only other thing Ms. Jones had going in her life that would cause someone to pick her out, was the fact that she was the CFO for a prominent company.”

  Mac finished the thought. “Maybe PTA had something to hide.”

  “Our financial records are impeccable, Detective.” Lindsay replied angrily. “There is no financial malfeasance here.”

  “We’ll see,” Mac replied, continuing, cocky. “But I’m not done. In PTA here, we’re not talking about just any company. We’re talking a wealthy company with tremendous assets. A company with a large security force.” Mac looked over to Alt. “People tell me that there’s more than one professional working for your firm.”

  “A professional could do a copycat killing and make it look like the work of someone else, it’s one of the things they’re trained to do,” Riley added.

  “Heck, a professional could have picked off Knapp from the third level of the Vincent Ramp. Isn’t that right, Mr. Alt?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Alt replied.

  “Riiiight,” Mac slowly replied, then continued. “So this all leads us back to Ms. Jones and PTA. In particular, we were wondering what this banker’s box full of documents Ms. Stephens gave Ms. Jones might have to do with all of this?”

  Lindsay, a confident smile appearing over his face, answered, “Is that what this is really all about, detective?”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “They sure were smooth.”

  Alt, with his back to the wall, had listened to McRyan thunder away at Lindsay. He was cocky, intentionally so, which was expected. They knew that he would want to piss the boss off, get him to bite. Lindsay wouldn’t, Alt thought. Too smooth, been through something like this too many times. If the Senate Intelligence Committee never got him to buckle, why would some young Irish detective from St. Paul have any luck? Nevertheless, Alt admired the kid. He was on the right track, more than he even really knew. They had suspicions, good ones for sure, but they had no hard facts, other than the Cross file, and they didn’t have the file. McRyan would ask about the banker’s box full of documents on Cross. They knew he would. They knew his whole strategy. They were ready. This is where Lindsay would end it.

  “Is that what this is really all about, detective?” Lindsay said. From where he was standing, Alt couldn’t see the boss’ face, until he turned in his chair to him.

  “Webb?”

  “Sir.”

  “Could you grab that box of Cross documents that Jamie brought in?” Alt went back out the double doors and into Lindsay’s office. The box was sitting next to his desk. This was their cover, recreated to look like the copies Jamie had given them. He picked up the box and brought them back to the conference room and set them down on the table. As he set the box down, the lawyer was whispering in Lindsay’s ear. Lindsay replied out loud. “No, I want them to see it. I want them to see there’s nothing to it.” Then Lindsay looked across the table, “Now gentlemen, this is what Jamie brought to me, what Landy Stephens gave to her. You’re free to look through these documents to your heart’s content. I think you’ll find there’s nothing in here of concern to us.”

  McRyan and Riley didn’t show much emotion, but Alt could see the disappointment. It was their body language. Their backs weren’t so straight, nor the shoulders so broad. Their bodies sagged slightly, as if a slow leak had started. Riley grabbed the ledger book and started flipping through it while McRyan thumbed through some binder-clipped documents.

  Lindsay went for the jugular. “Now, what you have here is a box of documents that, for whatever reason, James Stephens had at home. They relate to what we were doing a number of years ago at our Cross facility.” Lindsay related how they put PTA surplus out in Cross and then systematically had it destroyed.

  “Now, Jamie did raise the issue of why we didn’t try to sell the surplus materials. Since the weapons, communications gear, and things of that nature would be coming from PTA, they would fetch some money. We might have been able to make maybe twenty-five to thirty million if we’d done that. She thought we should have considered it.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Riley asked.

  “I’m a patriot, Detective Riley. If I build it for the government, they’re the ones who get it.”

  “So how did you end up with surplus?”

  “Sometimes, it doesn’t cost as much to produce a product as you think. In some cases we were more efficient, and sometimes we manufacture a surplus in case problems or errors arise. It happens in all industries, I think. But I didn’t exactly want to admit this to the government either,” Lindsay answered casually, then turned more serious, “Now, if putting a stop to all of this nonsense you have been engaging in will require me to do that, I certainly will.”

  “Of course, we don’t really know if this is what Jamie Jones had, do we?” McRyan stated.

  “This is what she brought to me,” Lindsay responded reasonably. “You can believe me or not. That’s up to you.”

  “Conv
enient that she’s not here to verify it,” McRyan accused.

  “I think that’s enough, Detective,” Zimmer shot back.

  “Shut up, Counselor,” McRyan snapped back, the disappointment now out in the open.

  “Would it be unusual for Mr. Stephens to have had these documents at home?” Riley asked.

  “It would,” Alt replied. “Our security is very tight here. For obvious reasons, we have strict rules that company-related documents are not to leave the building.”

  “So how does Stephens end up with the documents at home?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” Alt replied, although he knew why Stephens had the originals at home-because they told a completely different story. “What can I say. Executives don’t always follow all the rules.”

  “Webb is, I think, correct in that statement,” Lindsay added. “That isn’t to suggest we would look the other way, but sometimes those of us who write the rules don’t always follow them to the letter.” A frank disclosure, one to further make the boss appear forthright and reasonable.

  “So now, Detective, can I make you a copy of the documents?”

  They were at a dead end, and Mac knew it. To save face he’d take a copy of the documents. Problem was they wouldn’t tell him anything, and he knew it, knew Lindsay would never give him anything of value that easy. He knew the documents were fake, a white wash meant to paint the story Lindsay wanted told. There would be no smoking gun in there. “Sure, we’d like a copy to look at.”

  “Is there anything else, Detective?” Lindsay asked.

  “Not right now. We might be back.” Mac replied.

  “I think not,” the lawyer, Zimmer, replied.

  “I don’t think that’s for you to say, Counselor,” Riles replied harshly.

  “It will be my decision as to whether my client submits to this witch hunt again, Detective,” Zimmer replied acidly, getting on his high horse, pointing at Mac. “This is bullshit, and you know it. You haven’t put one piece of hard evidence on the table.” Zimmer waved his arms wildly. “You have these wild suspicions and have accused Mr. Lindsay, or someone who works for him of murder. Yet you have not one, not one, solid piece of evidence. It’s beyond belief that you’re here with this, accusing this company, and its president, a pillar in this community, of this. I tell you what, if the media got a hold of this, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. I’d advise my client to pull all of their business out of this city, just to start.”

  “Your client has had weeks to cover his tracks,” Mac replied. “We’re only getting started.”

  “You keep going with this garbage,” Zimmer said, hot, standing, fists on the table, “and I’ll take whatever action I deem necessary to defend my client.”

  “What would that be, Counselor? Don’t we have enough dead bodies at this point!” Mac said, immediately wishing he could take it back.

  “Detective!” Zimmer yelled and then pointed at Flanagan. “Chief, you may want to reconsider this detective’s position with your department.”

  “Relax, Counselor,” the chief replied, standing up, putting his hands up. “Everyone just calm down. I think it would be a good idea at this point, if Mr. Lindsay and I had a little discussion in private.”

  “Sir?”

  “Mac, you, Pat and Peters wait outside with the mayor,” the chief replied, in a tone that suggested he had seen enough.

  “Yes, sir,” Riley replied, lightly grabbing Mac by the arm. Mac didn’t say anything, trying to conceal his disappointment and probably doing a poor job of it. Along with Captain Peters, they went back through the double doors and out into the lobby area. Mac and Riles left Peters to the mayor and went into a small copy room.

  “Fucking Zimmer. What a piece of shit,” Mac mumbled under his breath.

  “Piece of shit got under your skin,” Riley replied.

  Mac just nodded and exhaled. He rarely lost his cool. It generally only happened when he lost at something, and he felt like he just lost.

  “We’re done, buddy,” Riley said.

  “We didn’t get much in there, that’s true, but there’s something going on here, Pat.”

  “I agree. But at this point, the chief is thinking we can’t get them.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  Riley snorted. “Shit. What do we have? Nothin’ solid. They have an alibi, an answer for everything, and you and I both know it.” Pat slowly shook his head. “One hundred dollars says that, when the chief comes out, he’s going to tell us to go to the Pub, have a beer and come back tomorrow, ready to get back into the rotation because we are done with this.”

  Mac didn’t have a response. Instead he grabbed a rubber band off the counter, started twisting it with his hands and walked around the small copy room, looking at the postage machine, the ten different three-ring binders with various office procedures, and then meandered over to the copier. It was new and rather large, with a flat screen touch-pad control panel. On the wall behind it were various procedures for copying, requiring you enter an employee code and project number. There were further instructions for printing from a desktop computer, how to set up large print projects or scanning documents into the system and sending them to your own computer. On the bottom of the instructions, it said, “Think Paperless.” PTA must have been making a corporate move to a paperless office.

  Mac heard a door open behind him, out in the lobby area. He heard the chief ask for them. “Let’s go,” was all the chief had to say when he stuck his head in the copy room.

  “What are we doing?” Riley asked as they climbed into the elevator. The mayor was staying behind.

  The chief waited for the doors to close. “We can talk about it downstairs.” They rode down the rest of the way in silence. Once in the parking garage, Flanagan said to Captain Peters, “You take the van back, the boys and I here are going to take a little walk.”

  They walked out of the garage and onto the street and back towards the Public Safety Building. “I wanted to wait until we were away from the building. Who knows-they might be listening,” the chief said. “You boys are done, you know that, right?”

  Riley sighed. “Yes, sir.”

  “Mac?” the chief asked.

  “Sir, if we kept looking…” Mac started.

  The chief put up his hand and then after a few seconds, “Your dad said something to me once.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We only catch ’em when they make mistakes. These guys,” the chief said, looking back at the PTA building and lightly shaking his head, “They haven’t made any mistakes. Sometimes, people simply get away with it.”

  “So, you think they did it?”

  “They’re up to something. What? I’m not sure.”

  “They sure were smooth,” Riley said.

  “Too smooth,” the chief replied. “I don’t know. They seemed to know what was coming.”

  “So, what did you talk about with Lindsay?” Riley asked, shifting gears.

  “We stop investigating, and they say nothing of the little conversation we just had. That was the deal.”

  Made sense, Mac thought. The department had had a rough go with Knapp. The tumult surrounding that had died down now. If word got out that internally the department questioned the deaths of Claire Daniels, Jamie Jones, and possibly the senator, the department would take another hit. The chief didn’t want that to happen.

  “So what’s the mayor doing?” Mac asked.

  “Once Lindsay and I struck our little agreement, he wanted some time with the mayor to talk about issues of interest between PTA and the city.”

  “Meaning, PTA’s willingness to stay in St. Paul?”

  “Yup.”

  They quietly walked for a block. Mac finally broke the silence, “If they don’t make mistakes, how do we catch them?”

  “I asked your dad that once,” the chief answered. “He said, we build a time machine and go back and catch them in the act.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven


  “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

  One Week Later.

  Alt went in the back door, dropped the keys on the counter and scratched his head, late on Thursday night. He was beat, tired and very much wanted — but knew he couldn’t have-a vacation. He thought that when they had taken care of McRyan the week before, everything would die down some and Lindsay would stop worrying about Cross.

  Instead, Lindsay had pushed for them to make renewed efforts to find the missing documents. They had to be somewhere. He was relentless. “I want no loose ends. I didn’t tolerate them when I was at the agency, and I’m not about to start now,” he said. “Go back and retrace your steps. You missed Landy Stephens’s name on Jamie Jones’s refrigerator, so you probably missed something else. So go back. I want those documents found. You have complete freedom to do what you need to, spend what you need to spend, but find those documents.”

  So they spent the week looking, everywhere. They had made late-night raids on both the Jones and Daniels places yet again. It was worthless, Alt thought. This was the fifth time through. But the boss ordered it, so they did it. Different people at each location, and they found nothing. And these were people with experience finding items that were never intended to be found. Not a hint of the documents at either place.

  They tapped into the systems at Fed Ex, UPS, Overnight Express, and any other package delivery service they could think of, to see if Jones had sent the documents to someone other than Daniels. They checked local delivery services to see what had been delivered to Daniels at her home address. Nothing.

  They searched everywhere at the PTA building in St. Paul and at the various company manufacturing facilities in the area. Perhaps Jones thought they would never look under their own noses. Nothing. They tore her office apart. Nothing. Tore her assistant’s office apart. Nothing. They tore all of accounting apart. Nothing.

  Through the use of her PDA and computer calendar, they tried retracing Jones’ steps during her last few weeks. Any restaurant she went to. Any place where she shopped. Any people she saw. They searched three of her friends’ homes. Nothing.