“Yeah,” she laughed nervously, “right.”
Four hours later, he strolled through the terminal at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and out to the parking ramp on the cool November night. It was sixty degrees in Washington when his flight departed. It was considerably cooler in the Twin Cities a little after 11:00 P.M., his breath hanging like little clouds in the crisp air.
He jumped into the Yukon, put it in drive, and began exiting the parking ramp when his phone rang. The dashboard screen displayed a local 763 number he didn’t recognize.
“Hello.”
“Mr. McRyan, this is Dorothy, Mr. Sterling’s secretary.”
He sat a little more upright. People didn’t call at this time of night unless they had a reason—a really good reason. He kept it light to start. “Dorothy, didn’t I tell you to call me Mac?”
“O-o-okay.”
She was nervous. “Dorothy, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m … fine. I’m just not sure I should tell you this.”
Mac’s heart skipped a beat. “Tell me what, Dorothy?”
“I’ve been thinking about this all weekend. You’re sure Ms. Hilary didn’t do this? You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yes, I am. Now, Dorothy, what did you call to tell me?”
“It’s about the Gentry Enterprises file. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, where important parts of one of his files go missing. Sometimes Mr. Sterling kept things off the books.”
“Off the books?”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“He told me once … a number of years ago … he kept a separate file at his home on matters that were sensitive. There was a case where he suspected someone in the firm was feeding information to opposing counsel. In that case, and I think in some others since, he kept some sensitive documents at home until the case went to trial. He said they were safe and secure, whatever that meant. In any event, I thought that since—”
“There weren’t any documents in the Gentry Enterprises file …”
“And there should be, and he ended up dead, and that the documents he put into his briefcase are missing, that maybe the documents of the case were so sensitive that he decided to keep them in his secure place at home.”
“Dorothy, I’ll look into this,” Mac answered, and he was eager to do so this very minute.
“Please don’t tell anyone I told you this,” Dorothy pleaded. “I can’t afford to lose my job.”
“Your secret is safe with me, Dorothy.” He ended the call with Dorothy and called Meredith. It took several rings for her to answer.
“H-h-hello.” Meredith was groggy. “Mac?”
“Sorry, Meredith, I know it’s late.”
She yawned and then said, “Geez, its 11:33 P.M. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“I just got off the plane from DC. Listen, I have it on good authority that your husband sometimes kept sensitive law firm matters at home. Perhaps there is some of that Gentry file somewhere in your house. Can you meet me there in the morning to go through the house and search?”
“I’m already there.”
“Wait a minute, you are?” Mac answered, surprised and somewhat concerned. “I thought you were staying at your parents’ house.”
“I was. But Mom’s clucking over me like a mother hen, and all Dad does is pace around with his hands behind his back wearing a groove in the carpet. You could cut the tension with a knife, and the trial won’t be for months. I couldn’t take it. Could you?”
“Uhh … probably not.”
“Exactly. Now, as for what Dorothy told you …”
“Dorothy? I never said anything about Dorothy.”
“Please, she’s the only one who would know something like that about Frederick,” Meredith replied. “She’s been his secretary for like forever.”
“So is it true?”
“I honestly have no idea,” she answered, yawning again. “But as you know, my husband was good at keeping secrets, so who knows—she could be right. We’ll have to hunt around. First place I would look would be his home office over the garage. He designed that down to the style of nail and nail gun to be used. It is something of an off-limits place.”
“That’s probably a good place to start.”
“Wait.” And he could tell Meredith sensed the sudden eagerness in his voice. “Do you … want to come here now?”
It was late, and it wasn’t as though he could do anything with it at this hour anyway. Yet now he was just too curious to let it go. “Yeah, I’ll stop by for just a quick look. Be about fifteen minutes.”
“Ooookay,” Meredith answered with another yawn.
• • •
After the phone call, Meredith lay in bed for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling. Her old bed at her parents’ house was comfortable enough, but the body craves what it knows, and it just felt good to be in her own bed, molded perfectly to her body. Three glasses of wine and hours of reading had let her fall fast and hard to sleep. Now awake, she reached to the right for the lamp on her nightstand. She turned the knob, but the light didn’t come on. “Hmpf, the light bulb must have burned out.”
She pushed herself out of bed and slowly walked to the wall to flip the light switch, and again, nothing. She flipped it up and down again, and there was no light. Then she glanced back to her left to the nightstand on the other side of the bed, and the clock radio was black, no red lights displaying the time.
“Is the power out?” she muttered under her breath.
She exited the bedroom and walked along the carpeted catwalk overlooking the expansive foyer and winding staircase to her right and could see the streetlight on West Lake of the Isles Parkway still illuminating the street corner to the north. It wasn’t a neighborhood power outage.
That’s odd, she thought to herself as she stopped on the catwalk and looked out the large windows over the double front door.
Then there was a light but unmistakable creak of a door opening in the back of the house.
• • •
Mac was driving west on Lake Street, just crossing Lyndale Avenue, in the stoplight-clogged Uptown area of south Minneapolis, ten minutes from Meredith’s, when his phone rang again. It was Meredith, probably calling to ask him to wait until the morning. “Hey—”
“Mac!” Meredith whispered urgently, and he could hear the fear in her voice. “All my power is out, and I think someone just came in the back door.”
“Call 9-1-1 right now! I’m on my way!” Mac hung up and punched the accelerator. He used the Yukon when he was a St. Paul cop, and there were certain modifications he’d made. One was flashing lights in the truck’s front grill and a siren. He flipped open the center console and hit the button to activate it all.
• • •
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“I think someone is breaking into my house,” Meredith whispered quickly and gave the address as she stood just inside her bedroom door. Then she sensed someone moving towards the front of house as she peeked out the door and over the banister and down into the large foyer. “Someone is definitely in the house,” she whispered anxiously.
“Help is on the way,” the dispatcher answered. “Can you stay on the line?”
“I’ll try,” Meredith replied as she slithered back into her bedroom, slowly closing the door, leaving it slightly open. She then immediately realized that was the wrong move. If someone was here, they were here for her, and at this point of the night, where would they look—the bedroom.
She quickly glanced around. What to do? She needed to buy time.
Meredith raced back to the bed and arranged the pillows under the comforter in the form of a body. Then she went back to the bedroom door, peered back out the crack she’d left open, and could see the outline of a dark figure set against the white plaster walls of the grand staircase, slowly making his way up the steps, one arm hanging low, holding something.
She was
trapped.
There were two options—the bathroom or the closet. The closet was big, had hiding places, clothes, and lots of things to throw if need be. She ducked inside and moved to the right side—her side of the closet, where there were more long, hanging clothes. As she glanced left to Frederick’s side of the closet, she saw something long and shiny. It was Frederick’s putter, the Odyssey two-ball one with the oversized, heavy steel head on it. She grabbed it and then slipped behind a long row of dresses on her side. As she looked back toward the closet door, she was able to view the antique mirror she stood in front of every morning as she dressed. It was angled toward the bed.
“I’m in my closet now,” she whispered anxiously to the 9-1-1 operator.
“Help is coming.”
• • •
Uptown was hell to drive through—stoplights every block, heavy stop-and-go traffic, even late on a Sunday night. There was a blockage at a light ahead at least ten cars deep in both westbound lanes. The eastbound lane was mostly empty, cars waiting a block down at a stoplight.
“Shit. Gotta do it!”
Mac veered left into the eastbound lane and buried the accelerator, racing ahead into the brightness of eastbound headlights that had the sense, despite now having a green light, to hold their position as he approached. At the intersection, he jerked the wheel right and veered back into the westbound land, car horns honking all around him. A minute later, he reached West Lake of the Isles Parkway on the southeast corner of the lake. It was a one-way street winding its way counterclockwise east around the lake.
Problem was, Meredith was on the west side.
The fastest way was clockwise.
“Shit. Gotta do it!”
• • •
She heard the door to the bedroom creak open.
“I think he’s in my bedroom,” Meredith reported in as soft a whisper as she could muster. Her heart was racing as she watched the mirror, gripping the putter. Then an arm appeared in the mirror’s reflection, and she watched intently as it slowly and deliberately came up, holding something long.
Her hand went to her mouth.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
The shots were muffled—suppressed—but they were shots nonetheless.
She held her breath, her arms shaking, and it felt as though her heart was going to explode out of her chest. Go away, she thought. You’re done. You’ve killed me—now leave.
But he didn’t.
The shooter realized something wasn’t right.
The body in the bed didn’t react to the shots. Meredith could see the shooter’s reaction and confusion in the mirror. He moved to the left side of the bed and whipped off the blankets and saw the pillows underneath. The shooter immediately turned to his right and looked in Meredith’s direction, toward the closet and bathroom, the only two options for someone to escape.
The man started toward her, moving cautiously, gun up, getting closer.
Meredith crouched down to set her phone on the floor. Then she slowly stood up and tightened her grip on the putter with both hands as the man—big, dressed in all black—bit by bit moved toward the closet door.
He disappeared from the view of the mirror, and she knew he’d moved close to the wall as he approached the closet door.
She couldn’t just try to hide.
This man killed her husband. He killed Gentry.
He was there to kill her, to finish the job.
She had to fight.
She had to get past him and get out of the house.
Meredith slid out of her hiding spot, breathing rapidly through her nose as a bead of sweat ran down her forehead.
She could sense him approaching the opening to the closet.
The man was being oh so cautious. He knew she was in the closet, hiding and maybe waiting to attack.
Her hands became moist as she gripped the putter, slowly raising it from the floor over head.
There was a siren.
It was faint in the distance at first, but the sound rapidly increased in intensity.
It was closing fast.
Then colored light flared through a window, illuminating the white walls of the bedroom.
There was a flash of movement in the mirror.
• • •
Mac roared north along West Lake of the Isles Parkway. Two cars ahead saw him coming and veered off to the side.
As he came around a right bend, he saw Meredith’s house up on the left and hit another button inside the center console. The glove box opened, and a tray dropped down from above with a Glock 9mm resting inside.
He turned hard left into the driveway and accelerated up, reaching for the gun as he turned to the right and slammed the brakes, screeching to a stop under the large portico to the front door. Out of the truck, he sprinted to the front door and tried the knob. Locked. He stepped back and kicked it in just below the knob and then jumped to the left side, crouching low, scanning the inside of the foyer, gun out front.
A shadow appeared on the landing of the second floor. Mac looked up. His arms followed.
“Mac! Mac, is that you?”
“Meredith, are you okay?”
“He just went out the back, I think through the door to the garage!”
“Stay in the house!”
Mac pivoted back out the front door and ran to the south side of the house, stopped, gun up, scanning. Across the driveway was a two-foot crevice between the fence for Meredith’s property and the wrought-iron fence for the mansion to the south. He ran across the driveway to the corner of the fence and quickly peered around the corner, and then in a crouch made his way through the crevice to the alley. When he reached the opening to the alley, he stopped, dropped low, peered out, and listened.
He heard rustling to his left.
At the far end of the alley to the south, he saw a runner.
The flashing lights for the Minneapolis police were approaching quickly, brightening the clear night sky, and Mac could tell they were coming from the north down the parkway along the west side of Lake of the Isles. That was quickest route to the house, but the wrong direction from the chase.
Mac stayed close to the edge on the left side of the alley, running but crouched low, gun up, expecting the intruder to look back around the corner. Thirty feet short of the end of the alley, he darted across to the right side, placed his back against the tall, white fence, and quickly moved to the end of the alley and peeked around the corner down West 28th Street. He saw the exhaust of a dark SUV idling a block up and a man running to reach it.
Mac darted around and ran along the sidewalk, his gun hanging low in his right hand.
The first bullet caught the tree to his left, and the second whistled by to his right as he dove behind a large tree between the sidewalk and street. Two more hit the tree, but there was nary a firing sound. “Fucking suppressor,” he mumbled bitterly as he peeked around the right edge of the tree to see the man running for the SUV getting inside.
Mac rolled to his right, pushed himself up, and burst out into the middle of the street as the SUV accelerated away. He set his feet and fired, pelting the back of the SUV, shattering the glass, but it did not stop. Several blocks ahead, it turned left.
“Shit!”
He reached for his phone to call it in and realized he’d left it in his truck.
“Shit!”
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” he growled as he started sprinting back towards Meredith’s house.
• • •
“Dispatch, we have shots fired, just west of this location,” Sergeant Norman calmly reported into the radio mic on his left shoulder as he stood on the front stoop with Meredith, his right hand resting on his service weapon.
“Oh God! Oh God!” Meredith groaned worriedly. “He better not get himself shot!”
“Who?” a uniformed officer asked. “Who better not get himself shot?”
“Mac. He was chasing after the guy.”
“Mac?” the patrol officer asked and looked at Norm
an.
“The only Mac I know is Mac McRyan,” Norman said.
“That’s him,” Meredith answered nervously.
“Figures,” Norman replied, shaking his head and reaching again for his shoulder radio, “Dispatch, be advised there is a former St. Paul police officer named Mac McRyan giving chase to the west of this address.”
More police cars flooded into the area, two approaching the house, another two turning right onto West 28th Street. Four more officers approached the house. Two of them glanced left and instinctively reached for their weapons.
Mac emerged from the crevice between the fences.
“Hands up!” the officers ordered, guns drawn.
“Easy! Easy!” Mac answered, tiredly and half-heartedly putting his arms up. “The name’s McRyan. I’m a former St. Paul cop. You need to put out an alert for a large, dark-colored SUV. It will have damage to the back—bullet holes in the tailgate and shattered rear-window glass. It could still be in this general area.”
The officers hesitated, unsure.
“Do it!” Mac growled. “Do it fucking now!”
“I recognize him. He’s McRyan,” one officer stated. The other spoke into his shoulder radio, requesting the alert.
“Jesus, Mac!” Meredith exclaimed as she approached him. She didn’t embrace him or even try to, but after a moment of inspection, she did stick her right index finger in the hole in the right arm of his leather jacket. “Nice,” she noted, shaking her head. Then she looked him in the eye, angry, yet with a modicum of concern, or maybe guilt. “Are you trying to get yourself killed, dumbass?”
“Well, you could have told me about the silencer,” Mac replied, amped up. “That would have been good to know about.”
“I … I …” Meredith sputtered.
“Mac? What gives?”
Mac looked left of Meredith and saw a familiar face. “Hey, Normy,” he exclaimed to his old friend, Paul Norman. “How the heck are you? And look at you, a sergeant no less. Congratulations.”
“What in the hell are you doing, Mac?” Norman asked, seeing the gun in Mac’s hand and the police lights still flashing in the grill of the Yukon. “Last time I checked, you’re not a cop.”
Blood Silence Page 14