“You mean get into the house?” Mac answered, following Wire’s lead.
“Right.”
“Probably not from the front, the street is quiet but a car pulling up to a house like Checketts’s in the very early a.m. on a night people are out and about might draw some attention, so they don’t come in from the front.”
Wire and McRyan were standing at the far northeast corner of the property, ten feet back from the bluff overlooking the lake. She looked to her right, to the north, and the next four homes all had privacy fences of varying heights to define their property up to the bluff line overlooking the lake. Wire looked back to the south and the two houses in that direction had high wood privacy fences.
“Not from the sides,” they said in unison.
Wire started walking to the south, following the line of the bluff overlooking the lake. Two-thirds of the way across the property she stopped and a second later McRyan, who’d been following, joined her. There was a small path winding its way with right and left switchbacks through the tall grass down the steep face of the bluff to the lake.
Wire started, “If you stayed close to the bottom of the bluff …”
“… Nobody in any of the houses along here, even if they were looking, would have seen the approach,” Mac finished. He crouched down and looked at the path which was a combination of sand and trampled down grass. Stepping to the left side of the path and into the taller grass and bush, Mac carefully made his way fifteen feet down the bluff to a ten-foot open stretch of sand in the path. There were footprints leading up to and then back down the path from the top. The prints looked fresh and there were two sets, so two people. He pulled out his phone and took pictures of the prints.
“Get moulds?” Wire shouted down.
“Yeah, we should,” Mac answered back as he slowly picked his way farther down the path to another patch of sand at a switchback where the path turned left. The same prints appeared. However, the imprints of this second set of treads were deep and distinctive, this area of the path being flatter and damp, an area where water would collect during a rain. Mac crouched down and took more pictures with his phone. Satisfied, he carefully worked his way back up the steep bluff to Wire.
“There were a couple of fresh large footprints we found in a dirt garden in the yard behind McCormick’s house,” Mac stated.
“Maybe we get a match to these?” Wire offered with a little smile.
Mac nodded as he typed an e-mail on his phone, attaching the pictures.
“Who are you sending those to?”
“My cousin Paddy. He’ll get these compared to the moulds we took last night. If we get a match …”
“… We put this whole suicide into question,” Wire finished.
“Right,” Mac finished as he completed the e-mail and then looked up with a blank stare on his face. Wire saw it.
“What, Mac? What are you thinking?”
“Whoever is behind this just took out Checketts, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And Stroudt, Montgomery and Sebastian as well.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I gotta warn Riley. They may not try to free their man in custody, but they may try to …”
“Finish off the job now that we have him,” Wire was following his train of thought and hers quickly shifted into gear. “You know, Mac, you could do this.” She explained her thoughts.
Mac replied with a smile, “That could work.” Mac pulled his cell phone out again and called Riley and explained his and Wire’s sudden epiphany. Riley understood.
“How is our shooter doing?” Wire asked Mac as Kaufman and Herdine approached.
“Riles says fifty-fifty at best,” Mac answered. “The trauma doc on the scene wants to move him, get him to the hospital.”
“Who is that you’re talking about?” Herdine asked.
“The man who shot McCormick last night? We have him in custody but he has several bullet holes in him courtesy of Ms. Wire here. We’re moving him from the off-the-books doctor we found him with to a nearby hospital,” Mac answered. “Speaking of medical issues, what’s preliminary time of death for Checketts?”
“Coroner puts it between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m.,” Herdine answered.
“Funny. And this happens just as we’re on our way to talk to him.”
Kaufman offered a smile, “This does kind of look like a suicide.”
“It does look like that,” Mac replied.
“But we don’t buy it either,” Kaufman answered. “Just a little too timely for my taste.”
“Good, then let me tell you what we’re thinking,” Wire answered. She posited her and Mac’s theory and mentioned the footprints and then their thoughts on flights from the Twin Cities. “We need to check on planes arriving and based on time of death, they would need to have arrived sometime after say midnight and before 4:00 a.m.”
“Now that sounds kinda interesting,” Kaufman answered, obviously intrigued.
“Can you guys look into that?” Wire asked.
Kaufman looked over to Herdine who nodded. “Why not,” Kaufman said and pulled out his phone.
While his partner walked a few feet away to make that call, Herdine continued. “Along the lines of how you guys are thinking, I have an interesting tidbit of information for someone who might not buy that this is a suicide. Turns out it’s been a tough run for DataPoint.”
“Oh, why do you say that?” Wire asked, perking up, catching Herdine’s leading tone.
“I got a call from my HQ a few minutes ago,” Herdine replied. “Three nights ago, Wednesday night, DataPoint’s CIO, Gabriel Martin, was killed in a hit and run accident in the city.” The Milwaukee detective smiled mischievously.
“Did you say Wednesday night?” Wire asked but was looking at Mac who mouthed, “Kentucky.”
“I did at that,” Herdine answered. “Interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”
“The coincidences are starting to pile up,” Wire replied, still locked on Mac.
“Thought you might say that,” Herdine replied and then offered a piece of paper out of his notebook. “I’ve got a guy you could talk to about that case, maybe you can share notes, perhaps help each other out? In fact, if you wanted to call him at that number in say ten minutes, I’m sure he’d be available to chat with you.”
* * *
Foucault put the binoculars on the scene from the northeast, a quarter mile away up the shoreline as it angled away from Checketts’s home. Vigneault worked the camera, taking photos, zeroing in on the two cops talking on the bluff. He looked away from the camera to the pictures on his tablet, then back into the camera and took three more photos. He checked the pictures and looked at the tablet again. “No doubt about it. That’s McRyan.”
“Can’t be. He was in Minnesota just a few hours ago.”
“It’s McRyan and he’s with a woman cop, or at least I think she’s a cop. She carries herself like a cop.”
“Take some pictures of her. What about that woman who fired on our guys at McCormick’s and then again at us outside that pub? Is that her?”
“Did we ever get a good description of her?” Vigneault asked as he snapped photos.
Foucault looked to his notes, “Tall, brunette, black jacket, knew how to handle a gun.” Foucault looked through his binoculars. “That could be her. She certainly fits the description.”
Vigneault smiled, “Was she described as good looking?”
Foucault put the glasses back up to his eyes, “She was not, but then again, the descriptions of her came from people under fire so I doubt they took in the aesthetics. However, my friend, I do see a tall brunette with her long hair in a ponytail who is rather fetching. She’s in a short black leather coat and she has a Sig Sauer on her belt but …”
“But what?”
“McRyan has his shield on his belt. I don’t see one on her.”
“Could be in her coat,” Vigneault posited.
“I suppose, or maybe she’s with an
other law enforcement agency. FBI agents don’t wear their badges on their belts or around their necks.”
“They also show up to crime scenes in functional dark suits or navy blue wind breakers with FBI in gold lettering, not skin tight blue jeans and stylish black leather coats,” Vigneault noted. “Hmpf.”
“What?”
Vigneault watched through the camera. “Take a look through your glasses.”
Foucault did and saw the woman working her way south along the shoreline, looking down the bluff towards the lake. She stopped and McRyan joined her. They looked at each other and there was some conversation. Then McRyan started down the bluff looking at the footpath. “Isn’t that the path you guys used?”
“Yes.”
McRyan stopped and started taking pictures with his cell phone. The St. Paul detective then worked his way farther down the path and did the same thing and then took another look farther down the path to the lake but did not go down any farther. After another minute, he made his way back up and he and the woman were then joined by the Milwaukee cops.
“I’m starting to think that our plan to make it look like a suicide is going to be questioned,” Foucault said.
Vigneault snapped a few more photos and then pulled the camera down. “You may be right. We came up that path so there are probably footprints. In the dark we couldn’t really see very well on the way up and back down but it seemed like mostly grass.” He hooked his camera up to his tablet and copied the photos into an e-mail to Kristoff. Then he pulled out his phone and made a call.
“Kristoff, I’m sending you photos to look at. McRyan is on the scene here, not just Milwaukee PD. Yes, McRyan. And I have pictures of a woman who is with him and seems to be investigating with him. I think she is the woman from St. Paul.”
* * *
Double Frank and Paddy McRyan followed the ambulance as it motored on Interstate 494 as it approached Highway 100. The trauma surgeon had pronounced the killer stable enough to travel to the hospital. There were two squad cars in front of the ambulance. Double Frank and Paddy were directly behind, followed by two more patrol units. The ambulance was riding quiet, no lights, driving the posted. A state patrol helicopter flew overhead.
Double Frank had his hand casually draped over the wheel when the ambulance started to accelerate. “What the …”
The ambulance lights and siren came on.
“Uh-oh,” Paddy uttered, “that doesn’t look good.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Whoa!”
Portsmouth, Virginia.
Kristoff sighed as he threw the strap for his suitcase over his shoulder and picked up his duffel bag and jumped into the cab he hailed. As he jumped into the backseat of his second taxi ride of the morning, he looked to his cell phone for a further update from Vigneault. He had not provided one since his last text ten minutes ago, merely indicating that they were following McRyan and his woman partner back into the city. Kristoff forwarded the pictures from Vigneault to the boss’s people to see if they could identify her. It might give them an idea of who else was investigating the case with McRyan.
This cab ride was the second of three switches in vehicles before he met with his boss. There were always multiple vehicles used when he went to see the boss. He expected this cab ride would take about twenty minutes for him to reach the Marriot in downtown Norfolk.
The Bishop.
The Bishop was what the boss told Kristoff he could call him the first time they met. It was actually a few years before he actually knew the boss’s real name, when he saw him in a television interview. The next time he saw the Bishop and he used the boss’s real name, the boss was not pleased. It was the last time Kristoff crossed that line. His real name would make him less anonymous and the boss liked his anonymity, especially when using Kristoff to do certain work on his behalf. And the boss used the Bishop moniker sparingly as well lest it become synonymous with his real name. Few used the name the Bishop and even fewer knew it referred to the boss. In fact, Kristoff’s men were not allowed to know who Kristoff worked for. The lone exception was Foche since they were recruited as a package by the Bishop. As far as the men knew, they worked for Kristoff, who worked for some shadowy figure. Since the men were always paid and paid well, they didn’t seem to care. Kristoff took care of them and they got paid, so they worked for Kristoff.
The one thing about the arrangement that was a concern to Kristoff was if something went wrong, all the boss had to do was eliminate Kristoff and Foche and there was no tie back to the Bishop. Kristoff often wondered whether he should have created some insurance for himself. It was a risk not to. However, the risk had been and was worth the reward. They could retire at any time in style now and never need to work another day. This adventure had Kristoff thinking it was finally time to walk away. First, he had to finish this problem off and second, figure out a way to get Foche free. If he could solve the first problem for the boss, he trusted the boss would help him with the second.
If Kristoff could finish this off.
The phone call from his men was disconcerting. It wasn’t that he didn’t expect McRyan to get to Milwaukee. It was inevitable. What he didn’t expect is that he would be there so quickly. Usually, the gears of getting a cop from one city to the next required miles and miles of bureaucratic red tape. In this case, McRyan was moving as fast and as freely as Kristoff himself. The St. Paul detective was all over this case.
The boss smelled Judge Dixon.
The Judge was pulling strings behind the scenes, the man’s specialty.
As the taxi made its way through the moderate mid-morning traffic of Norfolk, Kristoff took in the talk radio station the cab driver had on. The host was setting up his next segment with the talker of the morning, Judge Dixon’s early a.m. press conference and Governor Thomson’s follow-up presser. Dixon’s early morning press conference in front of Thomson Campaign Headquarters started the Thomson campaign on the offensive. They were presenting a determined, if not angry, front. The murder of McCormick was political. Adam Montgomery’s name was out now as the second victim and Jason Stroudt’s name came out as well as a possible third victim. Now all the questions were being asked. Why was Montgomery at McCormick’s house? What was he telling McCormick? Why was Stroudt in St. Paul two days earlier? Why was he murdered? Were all the murders connected? If it was political, what was the end game? Was this intended to impact the presidential election or was there something else going on?
Judge Dixon had made sure the question being asked by the media was what was Montgomery going to tell Sebastian McCormick? Montgomery was not confronting McCormick. Rather, he was going to tell him something important, something related to the campaign, something someone didn’t want getting out and something so bad that Montgomery could not be allowed to tell it. What? Nobody knew because they were killed before it could be told.
Dixon started the fire with his press conference. Thomson threw gas on the fire when he finished with: “There is more to this than just the murders. There are some people who will have to answer some very hard questions to explain their actions.” Thomson wouldn’t explicitly say if those people were related to the vice president’s campaign or organizations supporting the vice president’s campaign, but the implication couldn’t have been made more clear.
Kristoff knew that meant they had the photos. McRyan, and by extension the Thomson campaign, had the photo of Connolly and Checketts from Hitch’s lake place in Kentucky. Now Checketts was dead and that would make the news wire sooner or later and that would lead to more questions. Other questions would be asked about the other two men in the photos, Khrutov, the ex-KGB man, and his little friend.
Dixon’s press conference as well as Governor Thomson’s brief morning press conference had the media in full scandal mode and the vice president’s campaign was off balance. Despite there being almost no evidence made public that the vice president’s campaign was at all responsible, Dixon and Thomson effectively pushed the spotlight towa
rds the Wellesley campaign and the outside groups supporting it while deftly noting the vice president was an honorable man. This was the first part of the political play. There would be more to come. But for now, the media was looking into the backgrounds of Montgomery and Stroudt to see if there was anything in their history that would indicate what this was all about. This had not gone unnoticed by the vice president’s people. The Wellesley campaign’s surrogates were on all the networks and all the shows, but despite their attempts to get ahead of the story and express sympathy to the victims, there was an air of defensiveness in their responses, even from the vice president. The defensiveness was juxtaposed against the grieving and purposefulness of the Thomson campaign and as was often the case in politics, those suffering from tragedy gained political momentum.
The boss had seen this coming, hence the cleanup in Milwaukee.
Now, there was one last loose end to take care of. Take care of that, let the boss’s plan play out and the election may yet go their way.
The cab pulled up to the entrance of the Marriott in downtown Norfolk. Kristoff exited the taxi, paid the driver and gathered his luggage. At the front desk, he collected an envelope with keys to a Ford Edge in the parking ramp and directions to meet his boss. As he reached the car, he received a text from his man Vigneault advising him to check his e-mail for pictures of a woman. He took a look at the directions to get to the Bishop. The drive would be a good three hours. In three hours, perhaps his boss could help with the identification of the woman in the photos.
He started up the Ford Edge and let it hum to life while he dug out his tablet to look at the photos from Vigneault. The rental package for the car included satellite radio. Kristoff turned it to FOX News radio.
“Our new lead story, the St. Paul Police are reporting that the man responsible for killing Sebastian McCormick and Adam Montgomery last night at McCormick’s St. Paul home has died. While the details remain sketchy, it appears that there was a shootout at McCormick’s wherein the man, who is alleged to have killed McCormick and Montgomery, was himself shot three times. Who he was shot by has not been disclosed. However, the killer escaped the scene at McCormick’s and received medical attention. He was found several hours later this morning in Eden Prairie, a western suburb of the Twin Cities, recovering from surgery to repair his wounds. The police have not yet disclosed where he underwent surgery other than to indicate it was not at a recognized medical facility. He was in the process of being transported from the location of his surgery to Fairview Southdale Hospital in suburban Edina when he went into cardiac arrest and he was unable to be revived.
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