I have no way of knowing how the operations at the other buildings are going, but ours goes exactly as planned. There are three doors into the building, and while we are prepared to shoot our way in, all three are unlocked. I hear windows breaking as others in our group take up positions there, to protect us from incoming fire if there are people inside inclined to shoot.
But there are no people inside, at least none that are inclined to shoot.
Danny Phelan and his daughter, Julie, are lying in pools of blood on the floor.
I go over to feel for any pulse either might have. I do Julie first, because Danny’s head has essentially been blown off; there is no chance whatsoever that he is alive. Julie is also dead by a means that has become all too familiar: a bullet to the heart.
The scene is set up as a classic murder-suicide, and the weapon lies inches from the fallen Danny Phelan’s hand.
It is not a murder-suicide.
That is bullshit.
The agent in charge of our group spreads the word that we are ground zero.
There is a delay before everyone else arrives, no doubt because they are making sure that their buildings are secure, and, in fact, empty.
Sampson takes one look at the bodies of the Phelans and pronounces it a murder suicide, pending forensic confirmation. He wastes no time in calling in a forensics team, now that the danger is gone. He also calls off our air support.
I’m standing off to the side with Bradley and Nate when Sampson approaches. His question is directed squarely at me. “Why would he have done this now?”
I shrug. “Don’t know. Must have snapped.”
“What did you mean back there when you said, ‘This is about the money’?”
Another shrug from me. “What else could it be?”
He’s not buying it. “Don’t bullshit me.”
“Never. I’m respectful of authority. Tell him, Captain.”
“He’s respectful of authority,” Bradley says.
Sampson frowns, seems about to say something negative, and then seems to change his mind in midthought. What comes out is, “You guys can leave whenever.”
That’s fine with us and Bradley pulls our officers out. As we’re walking out I see that there is a pay phone on the wall, no doubt for campers to use to call their parents. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a pay phone.
“Wouldn’t have mattered that there’s no cell service,” I say, pointing to the phone.
Nate says, “A pay phone? It’s like going back in time.”
Bradley, Nate, and I are going to drive back together, and they are going to pump me for information. And I will give them that information, once I’ve spoken to Jessie.
When we’re on the road, I call Jessie, and she gets on saying, “I was just going to call you. You were right on both counts.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” I say, trying unsuccessfully to sound modest.
“What happened at the camp?”
“Both Phelans are dead. It was made to look like a murder-suicide.”
“But we know better,” she says.
“Please get started on the next phase.”
“Already have; the whole team is on it,” she says. “And the warrant has been requested.”
“Good. Let me have McKinney’s number.”
She gives it to me, and I dial it. I had told him I would call when the operation was concluded. I can tell that Bradley and Nate are getting extremely frustrated about being left in the dark.
McKinney answers with, “Lieutenant? What happened? Is Julie okay?”
“I’m afraid she is not. Julie and her father are deceased. I’m sorry to have to tell you this.”
“Oh, no … God, no.”
“The FBI is in control of the scene, but I will let you know when the body can be claimed.”
“Thank you.”
“Where are you? We will need to conduct a final interview, to memorialize how all of this transpired.”
“I’m out of town. I will contact you when I get back. Oh, this is terrible.”
I get off the phone and Nate, having heard my end of the call, says, “He didn’t ask you how she died.”
I nod. “That’s because he killed her.”
“There are seven hundred and ninety-two companies in the country that write life insurance policies,” I say. “I know because I just Googled it.”
“So this is about insurance?”
I nod. “Has been from the beginning. When I asked McKinney what he did for a living, he said he was a broker. I assumed stockbroker, but that wasn’t the case. Jessie checked; he’s an insurance broker.”
“You mean like an agent?” Nate asks.
“No, an agent works for a specific insurance company; at least I think that’s how it works. A broker can write a policy with any company.”
Bradley points out that we had checked into the victims, and with the exception of a small policy that Helen Mizell left, there were no unusual or unexplained insurance issues.
“That’s because those people weren’t killed for the insurance money. They were killed to make sure Phelan was seen as the killer. He was set up by McKinney, Gero, and Scanlon. We removed Gero; I’m pretty sure McKinney removed Scanlon.”
“How did you know it was McKinney?” Bradley asks.
“What tipped me off initially was the phone call from Julie saying that her father took her to the camp. I know from McKinney that she spent one year at the camp, when she was fourteen. But Phelan left the family when she was twelve and didn’t come back for six years. He wouldn’t know anything about that camp.”
“That’s it? There could be other explanations for that.”
“I know, but it got me thinking. So I asked Jessie to check a couple of things. Remember when he got that call from Julie from the rest stop on the highway?”
“I do.”
“Well, we GPS-checked Julie’s phone, which is how we found out she was there. So now I had Jessie GPS-check McKinney’s phone to see where he was when he got that call. It turns out he was at the same rest stop; he was standing with her when she made the call.
“He forced her to do it, just like he must have done at the recent call from the camp. He forced her to make the call, and then he killed them.”
“So how were they planning to make money off the insurance?” Bradley asks, and then as he realizes it, he adds, “Damn.”
I nod. “Right. Scanlon’s explosive device is meant to take out a lot of people, and they already know which people they are. I’ll bet that McKinney was setting up insurance policies while Phelan was in prison. This thing takes time; you can’t set up a policy and then have the person get murdered the next day; it would cause too much suspicion.”
“But won’t multiple policies set off suspicion anyway?”
“They wouldn’t because it would be spread out. He could have a hundred different policies across a hundred different companies. Don’t forget, he had almost eight hundred to choose from. As a broker he could deal with anyone. There would be no reason for any one company having to pay off on a policy that would set off an alarm. It’s possible that no single company even holds more than one of the policies for the planned victims.”
I continue. “I’ll bet the Helen Mizell policy was a practice run just to make sure the process works; he may even have used the fifty grand to pay the premiums on all the other policies. But I’m sure he’s got fake names and accounts set up to receive the money. The amount of work involved to construct all this must have been incredible; I’ll bet he needed every day that Phelan was in prison.”
“How did he know so much about Phelan?” Bradley asks. “He knew all these people that Phelan could have had grudges against.”
“I’m sure he got all the information from Julie without her even realizing it. That’s why he was with her in the first place.”
“So we need to find McKinney,” Nate says.
“I’m hoping he’ll come in, because he d
oesn’t know we have made him for this. He might want to continue to play the grieving fiancé because if this goes according to his plan, he can continue to live his life out in the open while he collects the money in the dark.”
I don’t mention that the grieving fiancé role means he’d get mentioned in the obituary, fulfilling one of Jessie’s goals for herself.
“You think he’ll come in?” Nate asks.
“Not sure. He’s smart; he might sense the danger.”
“We have to go at this from the other end also,” Nate says. “We’re reasonably sure the device has been planted; that would have been Scanlon’s job, and McKinney wouldn’t have killed Scanlon unless the job was done. So if you’re right, then this bomb has to go off at a certain time, when certain people are present.”
“Right,” I say. “Because he has to know which people are going to die; they have to be the people he planned for. And the same people wouldn’t be likely to always congregate together. But it could be anywhere … a church, a political meeting, the Rotary Club … anywhere. But there’s a hard time and a hard place.”
And we’re in a very hard place ourselves.
James McKinney has gone silent.
I’ve tried to reach him by phone, but the call goes directly to voice mail. This creates a problem greater than just not being able to talk to him; the fact that the phone is shut off means we cannot identify his location by GPS. For all we know the phone could have been discarded or destroyed, and he may be onto another one.
I doubt that he knows we’re onto him, though that is a possibility. Until now he has been playing us like an accordion, and I know of nothing that we’ve done that would make him think he’s lost that upper hand.
On one level it might be a good thing for him to know we know his role in this, and I’ve even considered recommending we go public with it. He would have to understand that our being aware of his plan would make his pulling off the insurance scams much more difficult, if not impossible. It might make him abort the plan.
On the other hand, he could think that some of it would remain salvageable, or even follow through as an act of revenge. I just can’t know how his mind works, though I certainly have seen incontrovertible evidence that it does not contain a conscience.
Jessie and I have abandoned any pretense of not talking about work at home; it’s our conversational topic every waking minute. It is all-consuming, and intensifies constantly with the knowledge that we are running out of time. Tonight the conversation is pre-dinner, while we’re walking Bobo.
“It has to be soon,” Jessie points out. “He wouldn’t have killed Scanlon, and then especially the Phelans, if that wasn’t the case. He was cleaning up all the loose ends. None of them had any remaining value to him, because whatever he was planning was locked and loaded.”
She’s absolutely right, of course, and there’s nothing I can think of to do about it.
I dial McKinney’s number again, as I have been doing pretty much every five minutes. As always, it goes directly to voice mail. I don’t bother leaving a message, since I’ve left three already. If he wants to call me back, he will.
Jessie tells me that her people are making no progress on the insurance end of this. With no specific group of people to look for, there is no way to know what insurance policies taken out in the last three years would relate to our case.
“And there are over seven hundred companies to look at,” she says. “We’d have to get seven hundred subpoenas, and even then we couldn’t do it. We just don’t know what we’re looking for.”
I wish I could make a suggestion that would solve that problem, but I can’t. The truth is that the policies that are part of this won’t become known until they are about to be paid, which means the people holding them are dead.
“Why did they make the killings look like they were all revenge for petty grudges, other than his ex-wife?” Jessie asks.
“McKinney knew we’d make at least some of the connections; and that it would make Phelan look crazy and capable of anything. He was playing us, and very well. His goal was to make it look like, when the bomb went off, it was consistent with Phelan’s behavior.”
She shakes her head. “His high school English teacher? That’s going back pretty far.”
What Jessie just said jogs something in my mind, but I can’t get ahold of it. “Julie probably talked about her father a lot, and McKinney would have learned things about his background from her. Maybe he asked Danny Phelan seemingly innocent questions as well.”
We get back and Bobo goes right to sleep. He’s unconcerned about the case; he’s made that clear. I’m still trying to figure out what Jessie said that triggered something still unknown in my mind, but I can’t because another awful thing just crowded into it.
“We’ve got another problem,” I say, “and it’s a big one.”
“What’s that?”
“The bomb isn’t on a cell phone trigger; it can’t be.”
“But what about the discarded cell in Scanlon’s room, with the wire attached?”
“Maybe that’s a backup if the timer doesn’t work, but it can’t be the only way.”
“Why not?”
“Because he killed off Phelan. If the device is shown to be set off by a cell phone, then the dead Mr. Phelan is off the hook, because he’s not in shape to dial a phone. McKinney needs to make it look like Phelan planted the bomb, so it can’t be a cell phone trigger.”
Jessie sees that she has two voice mail messages from people who work for her, and as she retrieves them, I dial McKinney again. Of course it goes straight to voice mail. It’s driving me crazy, to the point that I really wish there was a way to hang up a cell phone by slamming it down.
Jessie relays to me what she got in her messages. “The phone call to McKinney from Julie at the camp … both her phone and his show it was made and received not at the camp, but about three miles away.”
I nod. “There’s no cell service there, so they went to the closest place they could find some. There’s a pay phone, but he couldn’t have her call from there, because he couldn’t receive it there, since his phone wouldn’t work.”
Jessie says something, but I don’t hear her and therefore don’t respond. “Shit. That’s where he is,” is what I actually say.
“Where?
“At the camp. That’s why I can’t get through to him. It’s not that he has the phone turned off; it’s that he has no cell service.”
I stand up. “Jessie, I need you to make two calls for me. One, tell Nate to meet me at the camp. He can come right in; McKinney is not there.”
“I thought he was?”
“The second call you need to make is to your niece, the one who went to Cedar Brook.”
“Callie?”
“If that’s her name. Tell her that you know there’s a way that kids could sneak in and out between the boys and girls camps. I need to know what that is. Then call me when you have the answer.”
I don’t wait for her to respond, because I know she’s got it and will do exactly as I asked.
The target has to be something unquestionably connected to Phelan.
McKinney wouldn’t have taken a chance that we wouldn’t be positive that Phelan set the charge before he killed himself. His suicide would have left questions about timing—specifically why would he kill himself before he reached his ultimate revenge, whatever that is?
McKinney would have wanted to avoid those questions by being absolutely sure that we’d blame Phelan, even posthumously. Then McKinney would be off the hook, free to collect the insurance money without any scrutiny.
I can’t be positive it’s about insurance, but there’s no other possibility that I can think of. Bottom line is that at this point, it doesn’t matter; we have enough evidence to be sure it’s McKinney. We need to catch him and stop that bomb from going off, then later we can figure out his motive.
And I think I know where the bomb is. There is one place, and one place only,
that I can think of that is not only definitely tied to Phelan, but also would have a totally predictable group of potential victims present.
Jessie calls me just as I’m reaching for the phone to call her. She says, “Nate’s on the way, and I spoke to Callie. She said there is a narrow path in the woods behind the tennis court. It’s not obvious; it’s only about a foot wide, but once you enter it gets wider. Then it gets smaller at the other end, which is where the boys’ camp is. She made me promise I wouldn’t tell her mother.”
“Good. Jessie, I think I know where the bomb might be set. There is a high school reunion coming up soon for Phelan’s class.”
“I know; the head of the committee gave you that whole electronic packet, so we would have contact information for Phelan’s classmates if we wanted them. I have it on my computer.”
“Good. Does it say where and when the reunion is? He told me, but I can’t remember.”
“Hold on.”
She only takes about thirty seconds, but it feels like thirty years. “It’s at the Colonnade Room in Park Ridge; I’ve been there; they have a banquet hall in the back. And … oh, my God … it’s tonight … it’s going on now.”
“You have got to get everyone out of that restaurant as soon as possible.” I have no idea how she can do that, and I’m sort of relieved when she doesn’t ask.
“I’m on it,” she says, and hangs up.
I am officially scared in a way I can’t remember being before. Nate and I are going to do what we have to do; we’re good at it, and if it is at all possible, we will get it done.
But at the same time I have just sent Jessie into a situation that is far more dangerous and difficult to deal with. It compounds my anxiety tenfold that I am not going to hear what happened until it is over.
I’m almost as angry as I am scared. All of this was right in front of me, but I couldn’t see it until now, when it may be too late.
And Mr. McKinney, I am going to take it out on your ass.
I get to the camp and wait by my car in the parking lot near the main building. Nate arrives ten minutes later, gets out of his car and asks, “What have we got? Jessie called but didn’t tell me what is going on. She said she had to call her niece. That was a little weird.”
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