Electing To Murder (8 page)

He’d been married once as had Sally. Meredith, his ex, never liked his sudden turn to policing; it didn’t fit with her life plan. Not long after Mac made detective, he found Meredith having an affair with a partner in her law firm. A year after he discovered the affair, the divorce was finalized. Shortly thereafter, he started dating Sally. They were acquaintances of a sort, having gone to law school together, but not really knowing each other. Both of them were married at the time and did not run in similar law school social circles. When they met up years after law school while working a case together, Mac was immediately attracted to her beauty, intelligence and feistiness.

Sally and Mac had been together going on two years now, living together, and spending their lives together. They loved each other. Yet despite their love for one another, marriage was something they rarely, if ever, discussed. If the word came up, things always got a little awkward as if neither of them really knew how to talk about it. Their divorces left them both scarred and fearful of marriage, but not of commitment. They loved each other and that was enough for now. They were still young, in their early thirties, with no children. Marriage could wait for the right time.

Sally’s last text indicated she would be getting home around 1:00. Mac decided to work the case for another hour or so and could be up when she got home. They could have a little time together before they both collapsed.

Mac leaned back in his chair and soaked in the whiteboard. This was how he often solved cases. He would mind map and put everything down on paper, his computer or when he really needed to spread out, on a whiteboard. Then he would sit back and absorb the case into his mind and let it percolate. The case wouldn’t be solved in one sitting, but look at the board enough, put enough evidence and information up, and eventually the answer emerged. In this case, it was not ready to jump out at him.

The rental car was a disappointment. Mac and Lich tracked it down to the Penalty Box. Forensics opened it up at the bar but there was nothing inside. No luggage, no backpack, no cell phone and no evidence that Stroudt had been in it. The car was clean, too clean. The crime scene tech on the scene said it looked as if the car had been wiped down. Forensics hauled the car back to the county lab and would process it overnight. If they got lucky, they might find a hair, a fiber or a print from the killer. Mac doubted they would get lucky in that regard, but it was worth the effort. The GPS was more likely to provide help.

Mac looked over Lich’s notes. With some keystrokes and a password, he worked his way into the GPS system for A-1 Rent-A-Car. Stroudt rented a silver Ford 500 at 10:40 at the airport.

Stroudt left the airport and drove east into St. Paul and spent nearly an hour driving around the city. He made one stop at a bookstore on Ford Parkway in the Highland Park area. The car was parked at the bookstore for twenty minutes before Stroudt left. From the bookstore, he drove two miles to a Grand Brew Coffee House, the actual original Grand Brew, on the corner of Grand and Snelling Avenues.

From 12:02 p.m. until 2:09 p.m., Stroudt remained at the Grand Brew. The coffee house would have been crowded at that time of day with college students as the coffee shop sat across the street from Macalester College. It made some sense if he wanted to be around people interested in politics. Macalaster was a politically active small liberal arts college with a decidedly Democratic bent. If you were a Governor Thomson supporter, you would be in good company.

“So you sit at the Grand Brew for two hours doing what?” Mac mused out loud to nobody in particular. “Doing what?”

Mac suspected he might have spent some time on a computer. The coffee shop offered free Wi-Fi. On the right side of the whiteboard he had a heading titled Tasks. Under Tasks, he made a note to go to the coffee shop and look at the surveillance video to see if they could get anything from it.

Stroudt left the Grand Brew at 2:09 and drove north on Snelling Avenue. He actually drove past The Snelling and continued north another two miles before he did a U-turn and then came back to The Snelling. “Looking for an out-of-the-way place perhaps?” Mac thought to himself. He wondered if Stroudt knew how truly disreputable The Snelling was.

The car remained parked at The Snelling until 4:05 p.m. and then started moving again, driven away by the killers. “So that gives me time of death,” Mac muttered as he jotted that down in his notebook.

After leaving The Snelling, the car was driven around for twenty minutes and was then left at the Penalty Box. Given the track the car followed around the Rosedale Mall before settling at the Penalty Box, perhaps some surveillance from parking lot cameras or businesses would catch the rental on film. He made a note to look into that.

Mac scrolled the GPS tracking back to The Snelling and thought about the difference between how Stroudt acted before and after he left the Grand Brew. Before he got to the Grand Brew, he was using his credit card to pay for a flight and to rent a car. After he left the Grand Brew, he’s suddenly cruising Snelling Avenue, perhaps looking for a place to stay out of sight, and checks into The Snelling, paying cash for a room. The Snelling would take credit, it was just rare that anyone would actually use credit there.

Mac walked over to the whiteboard and looked at the timeline.

Why would Stroudt want to stay out of sight?

Mac kept running it through his head. On Tuesday night, he and Montgomery are using credit cards to stay at a DoubleTree Hotel and buying an expensive steak dinner. The next day they’re still using credit cards in Kentucky for gas and meals like normal business travelers. But then something happens that starts changing their behavior. He made himself a note to see if the car they rented in Nashville had GPS. Perhaps he could get some insight if the GPS told him where the car traveled.

That was for tomorrow. As for now, Mac stood up and walked to the whiteboard and wrote above the timeline “What Happened” between the last credit card expenditure on Monday night and 7:00 a.m. Tuesday morning in St. Louis. He then wrote the same thing for the time period between Stroudt’s arrival and his check-in at The Snelling. Then Mac went back and added one more thing in blue at the St. Louis notation—”Why come to Twin Cities?”

Mac sat back and looked at the board and muttered: “Why did you come to the Twin Cities?”

Political bloggers fly from Washington to Nashville seven days before the election. They drive into the Kentucky countryside and suddenly change plans, skipping their return flights from Nashville to DC and instead splitting up in St. Louis. One disappears and the other flies to the Twin Cities.

Why come to the Twin Cities?

Mac’s cell phone started ringing.

It was Sally and he suddenly had a thought.

A half hour later, Mac pushed through the back door into his house and he could hear the shower running upstairs. He made his way upstairs and up to their bedroom. He quietly put his Sig Sauer, badge and wallet in his nightstand drawer and slipped out of his work clothes.

He walked into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain, climbed into the large cast iron bathtub and joined Sally, hugging her from behind. She turned and kissed him twice lightly on the lips. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” he replied.

She was a beautiful woman with long red hair, a gorgeous smile and a wonderful thin figure.

In law school he’d noticed her once or twice, thought her quite attractive from a distance, but hadn’t given her much thought beyond that and wasn’t even sure he’d actually formally met her. He was married at the time, clerked for a law firm during the day and went to class at night. Most of his free time was spent buried in the corner of the law library studying or with his wife. As a result, he’d never really gotten into the William Mitchell social scene and, in retrospect, made but a few close friends in those three years. Sally, on the other hand, while also married at the time, didn’t work much, attended class during the day, hung around the William Mitchell campus all the time and had numerous friends with whom she was still close.

After graduation, the next time he saw her was in the days following the finalizing of his divorce, when she’d just started as an assistant county attorney with Ramsey County and had been assigned to a case he was working. He was immediately attracted to her. She was newly divorced at the time as well and the two just seemed to find each other and fit together at the right time. They’d been inseparable since.

“So I have a favor to ask,” he said as he squirted body wash onto his hands and softly washed her arms and shoulders.

“Which is what, pray tell?”

“I need to speak to people at your campaign,” Mac related the death of Stroudt. He figured he was in town for some political reason and Sally’s campaign was the biggest game in town.

“He could have been interested in any number of the federal campaigns going on, Mac,” Sally answered, guarded.

“And Dick and I plan on talking to all of them,” Mac replied easily as he washed her lower back, softly working his hands around her hips and stomach. “But I imagine I would have the most trouble getting into yours. I was thinking you might be able to pave the way for me.”

“Oh did you now?” Sally replied skeptically, but leaned back into him and looked up into his eyes.

“There is always an easy and a hard way to do things,” he replied casually. “I figured …”

“… That given where we are in the campaign season …”

“… The easier way seems the better approach for both you and I. Win, win.”

Sally turned around to face him and curled her arms up around his neck, running her hands through his wet hair. “It’ll cost you,” she said as she leaned up and kissed him lightly.

“Hmmm. What is the price this time?” Mac answered as his hands softly followed the contours of her body, his left hand lightly caressing her buttocks while his right hand gently cupped her breast.

“One I’m sure you’ll most happily pay,” she purred as she kissed him again, this time, a long, slow, wet kiss as the water cascaded around their bodies.

“Perhaps you’d like to move this to the next room over,” Mac suggested quietly after a minute.

“I think I might,” she answered before kissing him softly again. “I think I just might.”

W
ire watched as her coffee maker dripped with the last of her cup to go. She had a long day planned and needed the caffeine to get started. After she deplaned at Reagan National at 1:30 a.m. from the private jet the Judge arranged, she retrieved her Land Rover from long-term parking and drove straight to her Arlington townhouse. Wire could never really sleep on a plane, even a private one that had a very comfortable leather couch with pillow and blankets, and even when she’d been on the go for nearly thirty-six hours straight. She rested her eyes but never really drifted off to restful REM sleep, she just couldn’t make it happen on a plane. Once she got home, she went right to bed and set the alarm for 7:00 a.m. When the alarm went off she reluctantly pushed herself out of bed, put on her sweats and running shoes and took a quick three-mile jog to get her body and mind going.

In the solitude of the early morning run, she developed her plan for the day. She would start at Stroudt’s place if for no other reason he lived in Alexandria and his condominium was just minutes away from her Arlington home. Stroudt wasn’t answering his cell or home phone, although she wondered if that was intentional. Her number was not one he would have recognized and she did not leave a message. Her next stop would be the offices of The Congressional Page, which were located in a small office space in Georgetown in DC. She was familiar with the building, which was located just across the street from the Georgetown University campus. The phones were going unanswered at The Congressional Page and the blog had posted nothing new since early on Tuesday, which was unusual as there were usually blog updates throughout the day. The last stop would be Montgomery’s home in Bethesda, Maryland. He too was out of communication. For Wire, the silence was deafening and that told her something was up.

She hoped she would find one of them somewhere along the way and begin to get some answers as to what either or both of the political bloggers saw that caused the security around the cabin to go ballistic. It ate at her that she’d not gotten more information for the Judge from the Kentucky meeting. She felt like she’d failed him. He didn’t seem to share the same view. “Dara, kid, what could you have or should you have done differently? You couldn’t have gotten to the meeting any earlier because you didn’t know where it was so you followed and did what you are supposed to have done, try to get into position to take pictures and video. What if you hadn’t worked your mole inside Wellesley’s campaign? What if you hadn’t tracked Connolly to Kentucky? What if you didn’t get pictures of him at this meeting? Where would we be then? We will identify these people and we will piece it together. We know they’re up to something and that is a good thing.”

“But Judge, there isn’t a lot of time. The election is days away and what if we don’t find the answers or don’t get them in time?”

“We’ll deal with what if, if and when ‘what if’ comes,” the Judge replied calmly, as good a crisis manager as there was. “You are not the only one on this now, I’m in on this and I’ve got people I can and will reach out to. We will get answers, kiddo. We will.”

Wire wasn’t convinced but the Judge pumped her up.

“Listen, Dara, we’re where we are in large part because of the boost we got out of the Florida Keys and that was all you, honey. That was all you. And knowing about Kentucky now is all you. So what you need to do now is stay on it, work it and see where it leads.”

Wire had no idea where it led.

It was time to find out.

She finished her run, quickly showered, put on fresh clothes, ate two pieces of wheat toast, threw a few more additional sets of clothes in a duffel bag, grabbed her coffee tumbler and jumped into the Land Rover. Stroudt’s address was plugged into the GPS and she pulled away for a ten-minute drive.