“What do you mean?”
“What direction did you go?” Lich asked. “I mean, you were getting out of the city, right?”
Meredith looked at Mac, then Lich, and then away. “I went north on …”
“Marquette Avenue,” Mac finished then led. “Tell me why.”
“Because I was going to my parents’ place, and to get there, I needed to go up to Third Street and turn left to take 94 North out of Minneapolis.” She stopped and then smiled slightly. “If I’m going that way …”
“That is not the way to your lake house. If you were going out to Lake Minnetonka, and were going to take the shortest route, you’d have turned left on Marquette and taken an immediate right on Tenth to First Avenue …”
“To take I-394 West, out toward Lake Minnetonka,” Dick added.
“This helps, doesn’t it?” Meredith asked.
“A little,” Lyman replied. “We need to see if we can get traffic-camera footage on I-94 North to see if we can track Meredith out of the Cities. If we could do that …”
“You’d hurt the prosecution’s timeline,” Mac answered. “But let’s not get our hopes up that we’ve killed their case in five minutes here. I’ve spent years looking at traffic footage at night to try and find something. Once you’re out of downtown, if we can even track you that far, we won’t be able to see much detail on the footage, especially at night,” Mac noted. “Additionally, the murder is alleged to have taken place at 1:30 A.M., and even going north of downtown, the prosecution will argue she took her time getting out there to compose herself and make her plan. However, it’s a piece, a possible building block. So tell me about the drive up to your parents’.”
Meredith sat back in her chair and exhaled. “I remember very little about it. I played music and drove. I had a ton on my mind, and it was a long day. I’d confirmed my husband was having an affair.” She looked at Mac. “I’d just seen you for the first time in four years on the same day, and if you say anything about irony again, so help me God …”
Mac was thinking there was an amusing symmetry to it but didn’t dare say it, keeping things civil. “Not a word. What I care about is the drive.”
“With all of that going on, I just kind of zoned out and drove until I got there.”
“Like driving to work,” Lich suggested. “You get in the zone, you drive, and you don’t remember anything.”
“Exactly. It’s like you’re on autopilot.”
“No phone calls?” Mac asked.
“No,” she said then snorted. “Hell, I turned my phone off. I imagine that doesn’t help.”
“No.” Mac replied, but kept at it. “So you had no stops along the way, not even at a rest stop?”
“Sorry, no.”
“How about traffic stops? Do you remember seeing anyone pulled over? Do you remember anyone pulled over to the side of the road?”
Meredith thought for a moment and then slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“What was your arrival time at the lake?” Mac asked.
“It was 2:30ish. Again, I didn’t really look closely at my watch, but I do remember the clock above the stove when I walked into the cabin, and it was after 2:30 A.M.”
“I remember going to that cabin,” Mac said. “Once you get off I-94 and drive up through Alexandria and then north on 29, you turn left onto that dirt road, and you have to go by what? Twenty-some cabins along that tight, winding road before you reach your folks’ place? Do you think anyone could have seen you arrive?”
Meredith shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible, but I have my doubts. I mean, it was really dark, and I just don’t recall any lights being on. It’s pretty quiet up there this time of the year.”
“There are some people who live up there year-round, though, right?”
She nodded. “Yes, but not in the cabins right around my parents’ place. Those are all strictly summer places for the most part, May through September. They’re not like ours, which is a year-round place.”
Mac looked over at Lyman. “To cover our bases, we need someone to check those cabins as soon as possible. Now, and then again next weekend, in case there were some people who only came up for the weekend.”
“Summer, I need you to make a call up to Rod Roach,” Lyman directed and then said to the group, “He’s a retired Edina cop who lives up on Lake Geneva now. He’ll do it for us.”
“I’m on it,” Summer answered, walking out of the room to make the call.
Mac turned back to Meredith. “What do you remember happening next?”
“I got the call a little after 9:00 A.M. that Frederick was killed.”
“What did you do?”
“I immediately jumped in the car and headed back home.”
Mac and Lich walked her through it again, but her story held—she left the hotel and drove to the cabin and remembered nothing significant about the drive.
“Meredith, I want you to keep thinking about that drive, morning, noon, and night,” Mac directed. “Anything you can remember, we need to know. If you do recall a traffic stop, a car pulled over changing a flat tire, a semi-tractor trailer parked on the side of the road and where it was, what time—if we could confirm that, it would help your alibi that you were over a hundred miles away when your husband was shot and killed. So think on it. Sometimes you see something and it triggers a memory, and that’s all it might take.”
“Okay.”
Summer came back into the room. “Mac, you and Dick can go down to the airport Hilton now and get into Gentry’s room.”
“We’ll see you at the lake house tomorrow,” Lyman said.
An hour later, Mac and Lich were admitted to the hotel suite at the airport Hilton. It was a large suite with a common area in the center and large bedrooms to both the left and the right.
“I’d imagine J. Frederick was having Gentry polish the Sterling in one of these bedrooms,” Lich remarked, his mind wandering to one of its usual locations. Despite his mature age, the man had an amusingly dirty, juvenile mind.
Mac didn’t disagree and made a note to check the hotel surveillance of the days Gentry stayed at the hotel and then to see what else might appear in that video.
“I’m surprised she rented a room down here in Bloomington,” Lich remarked as he pulled open drawers with his gloved hands.
“If they were in downtown Minneapolis, it might be a little difficult for Sterling and her to hook up. Someone might see them. Down here, there’s a little less likelihood of that.”
“I suppose,” Lich answered, looking up.
The bedroom to the left was slightly larger and plusher and was the room Gentry was using. Her clothes were hanging in the closet and were in the dresser. The toiletries were in the bathroom, spread over the counter. Mac went through everything and found nothing remarkable.
Lich worked the living room area, focusing on the desk. “No briefcases, computers, files, or anything. It seems to me, if you’re in town on business, you’d have evidence of business with you.”
“Agreed,” Mac answered as he glanced down into the garbage can, where there was one crumpled-up piece of paper. He unfurled it. “Hmpf.”
“What?”
He held up the wrinkled piece of paper. It had three words on it. “Williston, Ray, and Murphy.”
“Williston? As in Williston, North Dakota?”
“I’d presume.”
“Well, we know Gentry and Sterling have been up in North Dakota a lot.”
“Yup,” Mac answered as he took out his camera and took a picture of the paper and then jotted the words down into his notes.
• • •
Speedy yawned as he looked at his computer screen, looking at the statistics for his newly operating rigs, the output at maximum now, the company happy with the production, if not the price.
It was approaching 5:00 P.M. He pushed himself out of his desk chair and walked over to the small mini-fridge, opened it, and grabbed a beer. He opened the Budwe
iser, took a sip, and peered through the faded-yellow curtains to the rough-dirt parking lot. The cold northern breeze blew stray leaves across the road, the sun quickly setting over the flat, barren western horizon of North Dakota, tall gas flames from the rigs visible in the distance.
He heard a ring tone from the cell phone in the center desk drawer. He strolled back over, plopped himself down into his old desk chair, and slid open the drawer. It was the cell phone that was used for his special “additional” activities for the company. He had a new e-mail, which was a reply to his earlier report from Royce. The reply included photos of the two men standing by the black Yukon that Clint and Royce took earlier in the day down in the Twin Cities. As he read through the e-mail and scanned the pictures, descriptions and instructions, he started to shake his head. “Dammit, this thing just won’t die.”
He took out a different burner cell phone and hit the number for Royce.
“We have a problem.”
“Which is what?”
“That tall, blond guy you photographed by the Yukon this morning?”
“Yes, what about him?”
“Where is he now?”
“We’re on him kind of loosely. He’s at the airport Hilton in Bloomington. We presume he’s looking at Gentry’s hotel suite. Why?”
“His name is McRyan—Mac McRyan. Does that name ring a bell?”
“McRyan?” Clint replied and looked over at Royce. “Does the name Mac McRyan mean anything to you?”
After a moment, Royce slowly nodded. “Yeah, FBI guy who investigated that Reaper case out east last summer.”
“He’s the blond-haired guy leaning against the Yukon.”
Royce closed his eyes and wearily shook his head. “I reckon he is a man who will cause us some discomfort.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Just because she had motive doesn’t mean she did it.”
With the takeout BBQ chicken and ribs long since devoured, Mac and Lich retired down to the man cave in Mac’s basement and laid out the case.
“Kind of like old times,” Lich said as he rested on a barstool and savored his bourbon while Mac posted the last large sheet of sticky paper up on the long wall in the basement. There were four long sheets in all, labeled Motive, Alibi, Crime Scene, and Sterling/Gentry. These were the key elements of the case, and Mac wrote on the sheets what they knew, along with some key photos of the players and crime scene. For Mac, this was the only way he could visualize a case and all of its elements—by putting them up on the board, or in this case, the wall in his basement. He could use his laptop or, in a pinch, a legal notepad, but his preferred method was up on the wall. As he investigated, he would add pieces until the picture emerged.
“By old times, do you mean me running the white board and you getting pickled?” Mac asked, turning back with a smirk.
“Exactly, boyo, except now that you’re filthy rich, the booze is top shelf.”
“You know nothing but the best for you, Dicky Boy.”
For two hours, they worked through the case file, such as it existed. Lyman would receive much more from the prosecution through discovery in The People of Hennepin County v. Meredith Hilary. As that information came, Mac would add it to the wall.
“Thoughts?” Lich asked.
“We need more ”—he struggled for the terms—“information and answers. I’ve got a ton of questions, but I’m light on answers.”
“It’s early,” Dick replied.
Mac took a sip of his beer and then pointed to the wall. “The Motive and Alibi columns are particularly thorny issues.”
Photos from John Biggs’s investigation were placed under the heading of Motive. “Those photos of Sterling and Gentry had to infuriate Meredith,” Lich said, aggressively gulping his bourbon.
“You would think so,” Mac suggested in a tone that said he didn’t necessarily think she’d be infuriated. Like the chess player she was, she’d have been thinking of her next move instead.
“You would think so?” Lich asked incredulously. “As a homicide detective, I know so.”
“You can’t think that way,” Mac answered, looking back at Dick. “Nor can I. We’re not homicide detectives this time. We have to shift our point of view here. We’re not trying to prove her guilt; we’re trying to cast doubt on it.”
“Or prove her innocent.”
“Or prove her innocent.”
“So how are you going to attack motive?” Dick asked. “You and I heard what Meredith had to say earlier today. We picked her drive to the cabin apart for a couple of hours. Her alibi sure isn’t going to be a weapon.”
“We’ll have to look at the traffic cameras,” Mac replied.
“Yeah,” Dick answered but then shook his head. “But you know as well as I do that this ain’t an episode of CSI. Once she’s on the interstate, at night—” Lich shook his head. “Good luck.”
“It’s not impossible.”
“No, but you still have a timeline issue, because even if you could follow that fancy silver Mercedes of hers all the way up to Maple Grove, which is about the limit of the traffic cameras northwest of Minneapolis on I-94, she’d have gotten to that point by what—12:30 A.M.?”
“Which leaves an hour to get back down to Lake Minnetonka,” Mac replied.
“And the murder happened at 1:30 A.M. Mac, she could do that easily. The only way we really establish her alibi is to find someone who saw her arrive up there or saw her on the way up there.”
“Unlikely,” Mac answered. “I had a voicemail message from Lyman. His guy up in Alexandria hit all the cabins in the vicinity of Meredith’s parents’ place on Lake Carlos. There were only a few places that were inhabited, all by retirees, all of whom were in a nice, deep, warm slumber at 2:30 A.M. Friday morning.”
“I think it’s safe to say that alibi is going to remain a huge issue.”
“So is motive,” Mac added. “It doesn’t matter what my gut, head, or knowledge of Meredith’s character say. She had motive; Biggsy’s pictures and video will prove it.”
“Just because she had motive doesn’t mean she did it.”
Mac turned around, bemused. “Don’t look now, but you just defended Meredith?”
Lich shook his head. “Not necessarily. I’m merely pointing out that it is one thing to have motive but quite another thing to act on it. Lots of people would want to kill someone. That doesn’t mean they would actually do it. That deep down inside they would have it in them. So motive”—Lich shook his head—“doesn’t bother me as much as a lack of an alibi and the crime scene evidence and that fucking gun; that’s what’s killing her right now. We find something at the crime scene to debunk that shit, or you find something in Sterling or Gentry’s background that points the finger at someone else, and motive becomes less meaningful because multiple people have it. It only matters now because of the other stuff.”
Mac smiled at Dick’s breakdown of the case. His frumpy look and the way he slowly waddled around making off-color jokes often masked the fact that he was a hell of a street-wise cop. “I knew there was a reason I kept you as a partner.”
Lich gave Mac a sincere smile, and then he became the jackass again. “One could say it’s ironic that her private investigator will be the one who hangs her because he got the photos of Sterling pile-driving Gentry,” Dick mused, slurping from his drink, “Unless, of course, you’re able to prove otherwise. I got faith in you, buddy.”
“Let’s stay on motive though, for a second. Meredith had motive, but to your point, who else had motive?”
“That, boyo, means digging into Sterling and Gentry, going through their lives and files. That’s going to take you awhile, and I’ve got only one day left to help. So while you have me, what are we going to do?”
“Like a good coach, I’m going to effectively deploy my resources,” Mac answered, finishing the last of his Grain Belt Nordeast. “We’re going to focus on what you can help me with best, which is the murder scene. We need to pick that apart,
and together, we’re pretty good at that. If we have witnesses and people to talk to, we’re a good tag team. Once you have to go back to being a cop, I’ll start focusing on Sterling and Gentry. Lyman, Summer, and even Meredith can help with that. But for now, you and I investigate the murder, and that starts with the lake house.”
Mac moved to the sheet that was labeled Crime Scene. He’d spent a lot of time looking at and thinking about that column, even when they were talking about other components of the case. He flipped through the crime scene photos they had. “I’m eager to get an actual look at the lake house tomorrow. Something bothers me about it.”
“What?”
“I can’t put my finger on it. I just look at it, and something is … off.”
“Off?” Lich asked, smiling, pouring himself another bourbon.
“Yeah, off. There is something in those pictures that is percolating in my mind, but it’s not a fully formed thought yet,” Mac replied as he walked behind the bar and reached in the fridge for another beer. “I want to see that murder scene. I want to work that hard, and I want to talk to the neighbors who saw her car leaving. I want to cast a very wide net around that house and see what turns up. Then, after we’re done with that, I’m going to take a good, long look at the lives of Sterling and this Callie Gentry. If Meredith didn’t do this, then it’s something in their backgrounds, particularly what they were working on, that was the trigger here.”
“Literally.” Dick snorted. “You’re right, if she’s innocent.”
“She is,” Mac answered.
“How can you know?” Lich asked.
“Call it my gut,” Mac replied. “You remain skeptical.”
“Your ex-wife is no angel. All history suggests a layer of ruthlessness lying underneath that pretty exterior. You, of all people, should understand that.”
“Oh, I do,” Mac replied. “And don’t confuse my thinking she didn’t do it with me thinking she isn’t capable of it. I could see her doing it—I really could, Dick. The Meredith I know could be totally capable of it. Just not like this, not in such an impulsive and messy way. That’s just not her. She’d have planned the thing down to the last detail.”
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