In one sense, he felt as if he was in The Twilight Zone again. His fiancée was asking him to forgive his ex-wife. How was that possible?
In another sense, being angry with Meredith was something he had carried with him for four years. It motivated him. It drove him. He was determined to prove her wrong, to show her what she’d missed out on, to make her regret it.
Now he had that.
He’d proven it to her in the most personal way he possibly could have.
Did that make him happy?
Did it give him any peace?
Those were the questions Sally was really asking.
He chuckled to himself. A little coerced introspection can go a long way.
In that moment, he knew Sally was right, that whatever motivation he’d taken from the divorce, it was time to just let it go and move on. “How’d you become such a good amateur psychologist?”
“I don’t know,” she answered quietly. “All I do know for sure is that I want us to be married and both of us have that feeling of peace with everything that happened before. I want us to leave the past behind and focus only on the future.”
“That sounds like a good plan.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Three little letters.”
Two weeks later.
The late-November morning was beautiful, a bright-blue cloudless sky, a little crispness in the fifty-degree air as Mac jogged along the Mall, Rascal Flatts playing in his earphones.
He’d gone nearly eight miles this morning. Jogging throughout DC, there was so much to look at and take in. It didn’t really feel as though he’d gone that far as he passed by the Lincoln Memorial and made his way back toward the brownstone. As he turned the corner onto his street, he had an odd feeling of déjà vu. Parked in front of townhouse was the black limousine of Judge Dixon.
He’d really tried not to think about it much since he’d gotten home.
The chase along Highway 85 had come to him repeatedly in his sleep, waking him, often in a cold sweat. Other than accidentally seeing a report about Deep Core being forced to suspend all drilling by the North Dakota Industrial Commission, he’d paid no attention to the fallout. He didn’t care. Meredith was free and clear—that was all that really mattered. The rest would sort itself out.
But it was the Judge.
“The last time you parked in front of my place, two weeks later I ended up in Williston, North Dakota,” Mac exclaimed as he came to a stop, extending his very sweaty right hand, which the Judge took.
“How are you sleeping?” The Judge got right to it. “Still having the nightmares?”
Mac shrugged. “Yeah, but maybe not as much. Now when it pops into my mind, I wake up. So I don’t have the nightmare.”
“But then you don’t sleep.”
“It’ll pass. It always does,” Mac answered. “So what brings you here, Judge?”
“An update,” the Judge replied. “It’s a beautiful morning, my docket was light, and I had some information I thought might interest you in return for a cup of joe.”
Mac led the Judge into the kitchen and started the coffee. For the moment, Mac stuck to water. Hydration was needed first. Mac actually asked the first question. “Were you able to get Coolidge’s nephew in the right pile for Annapolis?”
“I spoke with the Secretary of the Navy, and I believe young Tyrone Coolidge will find a favorable result in his application to the Naval Academy.” The Judge took out a folder from his briefcase. “So, we finally identified those two killers. Their names are Clint Slocum and Royce Dalton.”
“Those sound like good old Southern boy names.”
“Texans to be exact, so your initial hunch on their state of origin proved correct.”
“How’d the FBI identify them?”
“Well, they did all their fancy facial recognition looking and whatnot, and eventually, they found them by talking to Wheeler’s mother. Turns out these two were childhood friends of Wheeler. They grew up just down the street from him out in Odessa, Texas.”
“How’d they become professionals?”
“The DEA helped with that once they had names and earlier photos. Turns out it was the drug cartels,” the Judge answered. “They both went down to work as ranch hands in Mexico and eventually found their way to a ranch owned by Rodrigo Diaz, who was a higher-up in the Monterrey Cartel. They were proficient with guns, and Diaz put them to work, and apparently they didn’t have a problem with killing. Diaz was eventually gunned down in a turf war with another cartel, and these two made for the US. Eventually, they crossed paths again with their buddy Dan Wheeler. As you know, Deep Core was involved in some drilling issues in Wyoming four years ago. Three locals ended up dead—executed. The cases are unsolved.”
“These two did it?” Mac asked.
“The FBI thinks it’s likely. Deep Core was there and having trouble, Wheeler was their man there, and by that time, these two were back in the United States, so it seems to fit.”
“So now we know who killed Shane. Who killed all of them,” Mac replied, appreciating the sense of closure. He poured himself some coffee and refilled the Judge. “I guess it’s now all wrapped up with a pretty red bow.”
“Not quite,” Dixon answered. “There is one open question.”
“Which is?”
“Who killed O’Herlihy. The Bureau wanted me to ask you if you had any ideas on that.”
“You’re running errands for the FBI now?” Mac asked with a dig.
“No,” the Judge answered. “I had the information about these two killers and figured you’d be interested. So … any thoughts on who would kill this O’Herlihy?”
“When a guy like that gets killed, it’s about the money, Judge. Who lost money?”
“That’s what I was thinking as well. And you’d said something about Deep Core needing an infusion of cash, and they did get one—forty million dollars.”
“So there’s your answer,” Mac replied, leaning against the counter.
“But we don’t know where the money came from. No record. One day, suddenly, Deep Core had the money to get their operation going. One day O’Herlihy was flush with cash.”
“That tells me he probably got it from one person,” Mac answered. “Who gives you forty million dollars?”
The Judge smiled. “Someone you know.”
“That’s right,” Mac answered. “Someone you know well. Someone you trust—a friend, a family member, somebody like that.”
“I agree, and the FBI agrees, but they’re not finding anything. So they asked me to have you give this file a read for your take on it.”
“Director Mitchell still wants me to come and work for him, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“He’s persistent. I’ll give him that.” Mac wasn’t enthused about even thinking about the case again, but he agreed to sit down and start thumbing through it. For an hour, while the Judge drank coffee and monitored his cell phone, Mac worked his way through the file. At one point, the Judge went into the living room to take a call from the president. When he came back in he asked, “Anything?”
“No, not yet,” Mac answered, shaking his head as he started going through some photos, and laughed. “Geez, they went back a ways on this guy. I mean, all the way back to his time at the University of Colorado, forty years ago. Heck, here’s his fraternity picture. O’Herlihy had a hell of a head of hair … back …” Mac did a double take on the man next to O’Herlihy. “No way … wait, that can’t be … shit.”
“What?”
“You have got to be kidding me … there is no way this is possible, is it?” Mac muttered, putting his face in his hands, shaking his head.
“What, Mac? What?” the Judge asked.
“Three little letters.”
“What letters?”
“PHI.”
“PHI?” The Judge asked. “Protected health information? HIPAA?”
“The letters were in Sterling’s notes. That’s what I thought they
meant. I mean, it made sense. The Bullers were having health problems. Those letters made me think to ask for their medical records, for their protected health information. But this picture …” He shook his head. “This will kill her.”
“Kill her? Kill who?” the Judge asked. “What is it, Mac?”
“Judge, I need a favor, and I think you owe me.”
• • •
The morning was a cool, crisp winter morning of eighteen degrees with large, puffy snowflakes slowly drifting down from the thick cover of gray December clouds wrapped over Minneapolis like a thick blanket. There was just the lightest cold breeze causing little wisps of snow to weave their way across the asphalt path in front of him.
Mac sat casually on the park bench just off the path looking east out over Lake Calhoun, the lake now frozen over for the winter. The walking path at his feet was popular with joggers and walkers.
A large tumbler of coffee rested in his left hand, and his smaller Glock-9 was in the right pocket of his long, black wool coat. An ear bud in his right ear, hidden under his black wool cap, kept him in communication with Bull Phelps, who was keeping watch from a short distance away behind him, providing backup—not that he’d need it this morning, but Mac suspected the man walking toward him killed one man. He was taking no chances.
He took a sip of his coffee as his mark approached, the man walking at his usual brisk purposeful pace, dressed in a navy-blue sweat suit with red stocking cap and winter gloves. Mac’s target this cool morning was a man of routine. The man always took this walk every day. It was a ritual for Teddy Archer—the same path, the same time, every day.
Meredith’s godfather didn’t recognize Mac as he walked briskly along the path, focused strictly on what was ahead of him.
“Hello, Teddy,” Mac greeted, his left arm thrown over the back of the bench, his right leg crossed over his left.
Archer stopped and looked left, and it took him a moment, letting the face register with him. “Mac? Is that you? What a coincidence seeing you here.”
“It’s no coincidence, Teddy,” Mac answered darkly. “I knew you’d be coming along here.”
Archer noted Mac’s ominous tone. “Is something wrong, Mac?”
Mac reached inside his coat, took out an envelope, and sat it down on the bench to his left. “I think you better sit down.”
Archer did as requested and picked up the envelope. “What’s this?”
“Read it.”
Mac had spent days kicking himself for not recognizing PHI for what it was. It was an honest mistake. It wouldn’t be unusual for a litigator such as Sterling to have a reference to protected health information in his files, especially considering he handled plaintiff cases and often dealt with medical records. And when the Buller medical records became a part of the case, he assumed perhaps that was what the PHI reference was.
But it wasn’t.
In Sterling’s dyslexia-wired, cryptic-note-taking mind, PHI was short for something else.
PHI related to Archer.
Teddy Archer was once a very successful Minneapolis investment banker with his own firm, Archer Heights Investments. Seven years ago, Teddy retired from the investment banking rat race. When he did, the firm became Heights Investment Partners, and then a few years later, Heights Investments became Peterson Heights Investments when the firm merged with the larger Peterson Investing of Chicago. He’d kept only loose track of those various machinations, if only because his financial planner did, at one time, have some of Mac’s money invested with Peterson Investing of Chicago. Mac realized when he was reading a newsletter announcement of the merger that the Heights group was Teddy’s old group.
The recollection of that long-ago newsletter and the letters PHI was what triggered Mac to look into Archer.
A friend of the Judge’s at the FBI dug into Archer’s finances off the books.
Once he did, the picture painted itself.
“Judge, I would like to try to save Meredith from more suffering,” Mac stated. “Let me talk to the man.”
The Judge knew exactly what Mac was after. “I’ll give you forty-eight hours.”
Mac wanted no record of his trip to the Twin Cities. He called Rahn. Phelps and the plane arrived in Washington twelve hours later and flew him to Minneapolis.
He arrived with all the evidence he needed.
Archer’s financials and travel told the tale.
Teddy had drawn out four million dollars in the last six months from his accounts. The amounts matched, almost to the penny, the money that, shortly after his withdrawals, ended up in the accounts of Clint Slocum and Royce Dalton.
That four million was small in comparison to the forty million in cash that Archer provided to Selwyn O’Herlihy, and Mac surmised that Teddy bought a piece of the action in Deep Core. Mac tied Archer to Deep Core and O’Herlihy financially. Finally, from what he’d been able to gather, Archer wasn’t nearly as savvy an investor after he left his firm as he was when he had the firm. Between the crash of 2008 and his own poor investment decisions, Archer had managed to fritter away a significant chunk of his fortune. If the Deep Core gamble failed, he wouldn’t have but ten to twelve million left at most. For a man like Teddy Archer, that wouldn’t be acceptable—not when you’d had a couple hundred million at one point. Deep Core and O’Herlihy needed those wells to pay, but so did Teddy.
And then there was the travel.
Archer had been to Houston six times in the past seven months and up to Williston another four. His last trip to Houston was a day before O’Herlihy was murdered, and he flew out of Houston the morning he was found dead, making it back just in time for the press conference announcing the dropping of charges against Meredith.
And Teddy was in Houston to see O’Herlihy.
Mac had a surveillance photo of Archer leaving O’Herlihy’s downtown Houston condominium with his friend on the afternoon of the night O’Herlihy was murdered—an act that happened within a few hours of Mac’s harrowing truck chase up in North Dakota. Teddy was neck deep in Deep Core, and he was the last person known to be with O’Herlihy. It wasn’t a stretch to think that any man who could set up his goddaughter for murder would have any problem pulling the trigger on his business partner and old fraternity brother, especially when that partner was going down for everything.
“Why?” Mac asked after Archer had reviewed the documents. “Why, Teddy? How could you do this? How could you set up Meredith like that? How could you sanction her murder?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Archer stonewalled, looking straight ahead.
“Really, Teddy? I have you. You’re caught. You can’t act like you’re not caught. You’re done.”
Archer glanced right, a cold look in his eyes. “You ain’t got shit, Mac.”
Mac had thought—really expected—there would be remorse. He’d truly underestimated how craven the man really was. How all the care and love he appeared to give Meredith all those years was simply an act. Or maybe money just meant that much to him. “You can deny it all you want, but I’ve got your ass nailed, and there isn’t even an official investigation yet. And I’ll tell you what, Teddy. The FBI Director has been after me for a year to come work for him full time, and I’ve been saying no. But in two days I’m going to go see him and tell him I will take the job on one condition: that my first case will be to nail your ass, and you know I will. It’ll hurt Meredith—it’ll crush her, but you’re responsible for nine murders, Teddy. Two children, killed in their own beds, Teddy! You paid for that, you sanctioned that, and you will answer for it, both in this life and the next.”
Archer dropped the pages he’d been looking at back down on the bench and reached for his coat pockets.
“Keep your hands where I can see them, Teddy,” Mac ordered and turned so that Archer could see the bulge in Mac’s coat.
Archer did as ordered. “Easy, Mac.”
“There’s no fuckin’ easy here. You killed O’Herlihy—who says you w
ouldn’t try on me?”
Teddy snorted. “Prove it.”
Mac guffawed. “Prove it? You think I can’t? You think I won’t?” He looked at Meredith’s uncle in disbelief. “I don’t get it. I don’t understand how you could do that to Meredith, to Ann, to people you supposedly loved. How? How could you do that? I just don’t understand. How, Teddy? How the fuck could you do this?”
Archer didn’t respond.
Mac pushed himself up slowly from the bench and took three steps. He exhaled, turned back, and looked down at Archer. “Teddy, this ends one of two ways. One way is in two days I turn this all officially over to the FBI, and I nail you. Or second, you eliminate the need for me to do that. It’s your choice how you go down. Personally, I don’t care what you decide.”
• • •
The funeral for Theodore Louis Archer was hugely attended by family and friends. There had to be a couple hundred people, Mac thought as he scanned the pews of the church.
Officially, the coroner found that Archer died through a mixture of pills and alcohol. Edmund found him Tuesday afternoon, after he’d failed to show for a planned lunch meeting and wasn’t answering his phone. He’d been dead twelve hours by the time he was found. There was talk of suicide, but there was no note, and it wasn’t uncommon for Teddy to take sleeping pills, and he was never shy about drinking, so everyone, other than Mac, was willing to believe it was probably an accident.
The funeral was on Saturday, and Mac slipped into the back of the Basilica of St. Mary in downtown Minneapolis for the service, receiving knowing glances from a number of people who were friends of the family. One lady turned back to him in the church at one point to quietly thank him for all he’d done. Apparently Mac’s role in Meredith’s exoneration was well known by those in attendance.
He’d joined the back of the funeral procession of vehicles to Calvary Cemetery, a massive Catholic cemetery located northwest of downtown St. Paul. With no children and no wife who predeceased him, Ann had arranged for Teddy to be buried near their parents on the west side of the cemetery. Mac stood well to the back of the crowd, up a small rise, as the priest delivered his final words.
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