Electing To Murder

by Roger Stelljes

  A simple key card system, easily defeated by a professional with the right tools, served as the buildings security system. A regular key was all that was needed to enter the office, the lock for which had been easily defeated by a simple bump key. A canvas of the other office suites revealed no evidence that anyone had been in the building overnight and nobody recalled seeing anyone suspicious.

  With The Congressional Page having been broken into, Wire didn’t have a hard time getting Court to make a call to Bethesda police to arrange entry into Montgomery’s condo. Montgomery’s condominium building had much better security, with a twenty-four-hour guard and video surveillance at the entrances. As a result, it did not appear that Montgomery’s spacious condo was breached prior to their entry. There was no evidence that his place had been searched in any way. There was no computer hard drive or any evidence of one in his office, but Wire thought that was because he probably just used a laptop. Montgomery appeared to keep a very neat home. The condo was a dead end. Court said he would put out an APB on Montgomery and would let Wire know if anything turned up.

  As they were leaving the condo, Wire noticed a set of BMW keys sitting in a basket by the door. The building superintendant confirmed that Montgomery drove a white BMW 335i sedan, which was not in the parking garage. Ten minutes ago, Court called to tell her that Montgomery’s car was found in a parking garage at Reagan National. It had been parked since Tuesday.

  She contemplated calling Court about the two vehicles that appeared to be watching the condo, but she wasn’t completely sure that’s what they were doing. She had the plate number for the minivan and was contemplating a drive-by of the silver sedan to get that plate as well. Wire wanted to watch a little longer and see if they stayed. If they did, then she would make a call.

  Her cell phone for the Judge buzzed. She answered on the second ring, “Hello, Judge.” She could hear cheering in the deep background. “Where are you, sir?”

  “I’m in the bowels of Quicken Loans Arena here in Cleveland. The governor is speaking to a packed house of over 22,000.” There was a loud roar in the background. “That must be the governor’s line about a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” Then the Judge got down to business. “So have you found out anything more since you left Stroudt’s place this morning?” Dixon asked.

  Wire related the result of the search at The Congressional Page and Montgomery’s condo and the rest of her day.

  “I’m not sure, Judge, if these vehicles are watching the condo or not.”

  “Gut?”

  “They are.”

  Just then the van started and quickly pulled away, turning south and driving rapidly away from the building. “Wait a second, Judge.”

  Wire looked to the north for the silver sedan. “Judge, the minivan just left in a big hurry and turned south away from the building. Every other time they moved, they turned left and went north as if they circled the block slowly and then came back.” Wire focused on the silver sedan. The driver looked down and then put his cell phone to his ear. There was a short conversation and then the silver Ford 500 immediately pulled away from the curb, drove south, right by the restaurant in the same direction that the minivan went. Wire had the feeling that the surveillance detail was over. “Judge, I have a weird feeling here that something just happened.”

  “That they found Montgomery?”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Wire thought for a moment. “Something feels off.”

  “Dara, I think it’s time you come back to Minnesota,” Dixon ordered. “The jet is at Reagan National. I will call and have it ready to go within the hour. You are going to pick me up here in Cleveland and we’re going to head back to the Twin Cities. There is someone I think we should have you talk to.”

  “Who?”

  “Mac McRyan.”

  * * *

  6:07 p.m. Kristoff repeatedly and gently dropped the tea bag into his cup as he looked out the tenth floor window of his suite at the St. Paul Hotel, conveniently located across the street from the Landmark Towers. He turned around and leaned against the window sill and watched his people work their laptops at the large conference table. There had been a working group in St. Paul the entire campaign season tracking the Thomson campaign and its personnel, looking for any potential way into the campaign. While they found a few people to feed them tidbits of information, the working group was never able to get deep into the campaign structure in any meaningful way. Governor Thomson’s, meaning Judge Dixon’s people, were loyal and committed. However, while that effort largely failed, with Stroudt coming to town, the suite had proven advantageous. It gave Kristoff a command post from which to operate.

  Kristoff’s technical people had worked backward on Stroudt to St. Louis. Airport security video revealed that Stroudt arrived at the airport in St. Louis on Thursday at 7:15 a.m., dropped off by Montgomery in the same rental car that the two political bloggers rented back in Nashville. After dropping Stroudt off at the Delta departure door, the airport video feed showed Montgomery turning in the rental car at the National Rent-A-Car lot at the airport.

  From there, Montgomery grabbed a cab. The GPS tracking system in the cab revealed that Montgomery was driven back into downtown St. Louis. Downtown traffic cameras were accessed and the group was able to follow Montgomery walking for a few blocks but then lost him near Busch Stadium. From that point in time, Montgomery had fallen off the grid. There was no credit card or cell phone activity. It obviously occurred to Montgomery sooner than it did to his business partner that he needed to lay low.

  Kristoff wondered why the two of them had chosen St. Louis. They could have gone back to Nashville, driven to Louisville or down to Memphis among other big cities, so why go to St. Louis? There had to be a reason. Stroudt’s history revealed no ties to St. Louis in any way shape or form. As best the working group could tell, he may have never even been to the city before Thursday morning. However, a deeper search into Montgomery’s past revealed he had a second cousin named David Reeves that lived in St. Louis.

  Montgomery and Reeves were close as kids, when they were growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina. There were two Reeves boys, David and Michael, who were the same age as Montgomery. However, it was David with whom Montgomery had been in contact with recently and who lived in St. Louis. The second cousin came up through a search of Montgomery’s e-mail history and there were four cell phone calls in the last three months. The only reason the connection wasn’t made sooner was that the second cousin only moved to St. Louis in the last three months yet still had his cell phone with the Houston, Texas, area code.

  Reeves lived in the Kingsway East neighborhood in St. Louis. The Reeves family owned three vehicles, a Chevy Suburban, a Toyota Camry and a white 2001 Honda Accord, which looked to be the vehicle for the Reeves’ seventeen year-old daughter. The Suburban and Camry were tracked via their GPS systems and were located at home and at David Reeves’s workplace. The Accord was not at home or at the high school. In looking at the GPS system for the Suburban, it appeared that Reeves drove into St. Louis yesterday morning to a location one block from Busch Stadium, presumably to pick up his second cousin. Kristoff was making an educated guess, but thought Montgomery borrowed the Accord from Reeves. As a 2001 model, it did not contain a GPS system and thus there was no way to track the vehicle to know for sure.

  But now they caught a break thanks to Gerstner.

  LoJack.

  LoJack, as a tracking system, came to fame as an aftermarket vehicle tracking system that allowed vehicles to be tracked by police with the aim being to recover the vehicle after a theft. After its beginnings in the prevention of car theft, LoJack evolved into a tracking system for trucks, construction equipment, motorcycles and now laptop computers. The Congressional Page had a LoJack system loaded onto their new laptops. The LoJack system was installed by TRP, which stood for Technical Recovery Professionals, a component business of their outside computer support company, Technical Office Professionals or TOP.
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  Ginger, one of Kristoff’s technical people, was now accessing the TRP system to track the laptop. Kristoff was anxious and therefore impatient for results. “How much longer, Ginger?”

  “Relax. I’m working it,” she replied tersely.

  Kristoff hovered as Ginger’s fingers worked frantically over her keyboard. After five minutes, he was impatient. “Damn it, do you have anything or not, Ginger?”

  “Almost there. I just need to get through one more layer of the system here, hold on …” There were more blinding fast keystrokes, followed by some play-by-play from Ginger which consisted of “no, no, yes, I got you, no I don’t, there, there it is, yes, yes, YES!”

  “I’m in, now I’m just waiting for the map to pull up. Should be just a few seconds … Whoa!”

  “What?”

  “I found it.”

  “Where?”

  Ginger turned her laptop around for Kristoff to see, “Montgomery and the laptop are moving north on Interstate 35W, just south of Minneapolis. Kristoff, your boy is coming to you.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “He’s natural police.”

  Wire took in the lights of downtown Cleveland as her Learjet made its final descent to Burke Lakefront Airport. Governor Thomson thoroughly worked the state of Ohio all day. He started the day in Cincinnati and then worked his way northeast through the state, with stops in Dayton, at Ohio State University in Columbus, Akron and now Cleveland where he was making three different appearances. The campaign would then spend the night in Cleveland before leaving first thing in the morning for a day of campaigning in Iowa and then back to Wisconsin.

  Wire spent the hour and a half flight from DC jotting notes down on her tablet on the day’s events.

  Question: What have I learned?

  Answer: Very little.

  She made no progress in tracking down Montgomery other than to confirm that it was highly unlikely that he was in the Washington DC area. While Montgomery’s home did not appear to have been searched, Stroudt’s home and The Congressional Page had and there was little if anything left behind for her to work with. Detective Court thought they might find something in the forensics reports for the two crime scenes but she wasn’t holding her breath. She was up against professionals. It was highly unlikely that they would leave something behind. Nonetheless, the crime scene techs worked through both scenes and Court said he would call if anything jumped out at him and would be sure to get her a copy of the report.

  Before she got on the plane, she’d given the Judge the license plate numbers for the blue minivan and the silver Ford sedan she saw hovering around Montgomery’s condominium in the afternoon. She hoped those plates might give them some idea of who they were dealing with.

  The jet landed and taxied to the side of the runway where the Judge’s limousine was waiting. When the plane came to a stop, the copilot emerged from the cockpit and opened the plane door and eased the drop down steps to the tarmac. The Judge exited his limousine with an unlit cigar in his mouth, a beige trench coat draped over his right arm and his old tan weathered lawyer briefcase in his left hand. An aide grabbed the Judge’s luggage from the trunk and walked it over to the copilot who took care of storing it. Dixon climbed up the steps and onto the plane. He nodded to Wire as he dropped his coat and briefcase on an open seat opposite of her, loosened his tie and walked over to the galley and mixed himself a drink. He looked back to Wire who nodded her approval and he brought over two bourbons.

  The Judge took his seat, buckled himself in and said, “We’re good to go,” to the copilot who simply nodded, ducked back into the cockpit and a moment later the jet eased forward, heading towards the runway.

  “So how was your day, dear?” the Judge asked whimsically.

  “Felt unproductive. And yours, darling?”

  “Not too bad, not too bad at all. Huge crowds, lots of enthusiasm and the governor was really quite good. He’s not the most scintillating speaker but he has found another gear here the last few weeks and has turned into a helluva candidate. I think he’s starting to feel it.”

  “How about the polling, at least your internal polling, what is that telling you today?”

  The Judge leaned over and opened the latch on his briefcase, pulled it open and pulled out a report with polling data for the key states. “We picked up a point in Wisconsin and Iowa yesterday and we hit both those states tomorrow to cement those gains. So on the straight politics front, I feel pretty good.” Dixon said, “As to what our opponents are up to …” The Judge shook his head and took a long sip from his drink.

  Wire sighed her own disappointment, “I don’t have much, Judge. Did those license plates tell us anything?”

  “Yes, but mostly no,” Dixon replied, pulling a sheet of paper out of his suit coat pocket and handing it to Wire. “The plates are legitimate. The minivan and sedan were rented in DC from Budget. They were rented by an Ed Jones and John Brown …”

  “Of course they were,” Wire leaned back in her seat and shook her head at the bland names, certain they were cover IDs. “Let me guess, their addresses are PO Boxes somewhere.”

  The Judge pointed to his nose, “Exactly, the two men rented them under corporate credit cards for a Black Knight Enterprises. Unfortunately, Black Knight Enterprises is a PO Box in the Cayman Islands and my contact at the bureau didn’t have any more for me, at least at this point. I may reach out to some NSA or CIA people I know to see if they can find anything for me. But if I don’t know any better, they sound like …”

  “Mercs,” Wire finished. “It would require two things to figure out who they are really working for. Time and resources, neither of which we have.”

  “What does this all tell you?” the Judge asked.

  “That maybe more than just politics were going on down in the Florida Keys,” Wire answered. She took a sip of her drink. “Connolly arranged access to some serious professional help. There was good security on that island. I couldn’t have gotten over there even if I’d wanted to. Heck, I needed to be careful across the bay as it was. The security personnel were constantly looking out over the water at the beach I was sitting on.”

  The Judge sat back and played with his small beard, pulling at the hairs on his chin. “So how does Heath Connolly coordinate with these people? You ever see anything like that?”

  “Not that I recall, or not that I have recognized thus far,” Wire answered. “So I don’t know, I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but did he slip away another time that we missed?”

  Wire shrugged her shoulders, “He could have. I’ve stayed on him as best I can but ever since Florida, I’ve put him to bed and gotten up with him, literally, every day. I’ve flown all over the country, followed buses, stayed in hotels, tracked him in cars and run up one hell of a travel bill for the campaign. He’s rarely been out of my sight for more than a few hours. Other than Kentucky, I’ve seen nothing but familiar faces.”

  “But you’re not with him all the time.”

  “No I’m not. I’m not on the plane with him, I’m not in his hotel room and I’m not in his condo at the Watergate. There are times I do not have him under surveillance.”

  “He must be communicating with them.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Dara answered. “But I don’t see them hanging around, if that’s what you’re asking. Like I said, other than Kentucky, there’s been nothing but familiar faces. I’m sure he communicates with them but I don’t have a tap on his phone or access to his e-mail. I’m good but I’m not that good, at least not on my own.”

  “And he’s too smart to communicate in that fashion anyway,” Dixon answered dismissively. “He’d have a separate phone to talk to whoever he’s talking too, just like you and I.”

  “I’m doing what I can, Judge,” Wire said defensively.

  “I know you are, Dara,” the Judge answered, sitting up in his seat, patting her on the knee. “I know you are.”

  “There’s just onl
y so much I can do on my own,” Wire stated with frustration. “I don’t have people. I don’t have technical assistance. I don’t have any authority.”

  “Correct,” the Judge answered. “You don’t have any of that. But then again, this is not what I hired you to do to begin with, which was simply shadow Connolly and tell me what he was up to, which you have done for me spectacularly well. This is much bigger now and more complicated. That’s why we’re going to sit down first thing tomorrow morning and talk with Detective McRyan in St. Paul.”

  Wire, who’d spent the day with Detective Court from Alexandria, a competent and professional cop, was skeptical. “Judge, I mean no disrespect, but he’s a St. Paul cop, what can he really do?”

  “He’s not your average cop, Dara.” Dixon provided some background on McRyan. “And Mac? He knows this smells. I could hear it in his voice and Sebastian saw it in his eyes. He knows Stroudt was in Kentucky. In fact, he has a good timeline established. And after today, as sure as the sun rises in the east, he is going to come back at us because he knows we know more than we let on. So rather than pissing him off, I’d rather have him on our side. If we tell him what we know and give him what we have, little though it may be, he will run with it. And once he has the scent, look out.”

  Wire didn’t often hear the Judge speak of people in this way. The man was a hard sell, yet he gushed about this St. Paul detective. “You’re that impressed with him?”

  The Judge nodded. “He’s natural police. You will like him. I guarantee it.”

  “So do we call him when we land?”

  “I have Ms. Kennedy taking care of that. We will meet first thing in the morning.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Kristoff, we have a problem.”

  Mac was a St. Paul guy through and through, but when it came to good restaurants, the competition to the west, Minneapolis, won hands down. In particular, Mac and Sally had developed an affinity for the little restaurants, bistros and character filled hole-in-the-wall bars just northeast of downtown Minneapolis, across the Mississippi River, in an area known to the locals as Nordeast. They often found themselves over in that part of town, going to dinner at one of the little eateries and then finding a small bar or two, usually with good live music, for post-dinner drinks, especially if they made their way over that way on a weekend. The twenty-something crowd, along with Twins and Timberwolves fans could have the robust bar district in downtown Minneapolis, but Nordeast catered to the thirty-something crowd and that worked just fine for them.