Electing To Murder (28 page)

“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 another 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.”

P
ortsmouth, 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 towards 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.

FOX News Radio will continue to monitor this unfolding situation in St. Paul and bring you all of the latest updates from this news story that may have political ramifications for Tuesday’s elections. Again, our top story at this hour …”

Kristoff turned off the radio, leaned his head back against the headrest and let a tear run down his cheek.

* * *

Foucault maintained his distance behind McRyan and Wire as they drove back into Milwaukee.

“So where are they headed?” Foucault asked as he kept four cars back traveling south on Lake Drive.

“If I had to guess, they’re making a trip to DataPoint,” Vigneault replied, alternately watching their mark in front of them and checking his phone and tablet for further instructions. For now, it appeared they were simply to follow McRyan and monitor his movements and report in to Kristoff who was now on the East Coast.

The Acadia took a right turn onto East Juneau Avenue.

“I don’t think we’re going to DataPoint just yet,” Foucault said.

“No,” Vigneault replied. “I’d say we’re heading back towards someplace very familiar, however.”

* * *

Wire took Lake Drive down from Whitefish Bay into downtown Milwaukee. Once in downtown, she picked her way over as instructed by McRyan towards the bar district.

“Why am I not surprised you know how to get to the bar district?”

“That transparent, huh?” Mac answered with a smile.

“Let’s see, your family owns what I’ve come to learn is a famous …”

“Or infamous …”

Wire smiled and nodded in agreement, “… or infamous St. Paul bar and then the minute this Milwaukee cop mentions North Water Street, you’re like, that’s by Fitzgibbon’s Irish Pub, right?”

“I might have spent a night to two in this town. I hate the Packers but Milwaukee is an absolute blast. You should try Oktoberfest over here. It is an unbelievably good time.”

Their destination was a new twenty-story apartment tower on the northwest outskirts of downtown Milwaukee. The tower sat on the northern end of the North Water Street bar district McRyan so loved. Apartments on the east and north sides of the tower enjoyed spectacular unobstructed views of Lake Michigan. The west side of the tower overlooked the Milwaukee River and the south side faced the towers of downtown.

The front of the tower faced south onto East Juneau Avenue, a busy thoroughfare with a median dividing the east and west corridors of the street. Wire was driving west on East Juneau Avenue, passed the front of the apartment building, made a U-turn at Water Street and drove back east and parked on the opposite side of the median from the apartment building. They each took one final sip of coffee, their fuel for the past twelve hours, and pushed themselves back outside into the cool wet day. While the early morning had been crystal clear, clouds and coolness were quickly moving in and a light drizzle was falling. Luckily, when they stopped for coffee, Mac purchased two small umbrellas.