“I went back twenty years and you wouldn’t believe how many there have been. I found over three hundred possible. I was able to eliminate most of them for a couple of reasons. The cause of death was usually from an illness of some kind, a lot of cancer, or the age of the widow at the time was wrong for Mackenzie.
“Then I took out the ones who died from other than a heart attack. That cut the list down to nine possibilities.”
By now, Marc’s initial annoyance was gone and his lawyer’s antennae were up and working. Plus, he was simply curious at where she was going.
“I did some more digging for pictures and information about the dead husbands, their wealth, who got what and pictures and descriptions of the widows.”
Maddy reached into her satchel and removed everything she had shown Tony the night before. While she was separating the pictures and documents, she said, “I was able to eliminate five of the nine that way.”
Maddy stood up and aligned the four sets of papers in front of Marc on his desk. With her right hand, she patted the two reports to her right, Marc’s left, then said, “Go over these two first then the other two.”
“You think these might be Mackenzie?”
“Please, Marc, look them over first. You want some coffee?” she said as she stood up.
Marc had picked up the first report then said, “No, grab me a Diet Pepsi from the fridge will you, please?”
Maddy left Marc alone for ten minutes while she chatted with the staff. Barry Cline came in from outside and greeted Maddy, who had done some investigative work for him as well.
“What’s going on?” Barry asked.
“Sorry, I can’t really get into it. I’m seeing Marc about something and he’s reading over some documents for me,” she vaguely replied.
Ten minutes later she re-entered Marc’s office with the sodas. He was looking over the information on the second one.
He finished it a few minutes later then said, “These two are maybe, at best.”
“Before you make any judgment check the other two, please.”
It took him over thirty minutes because he went through both twice. When he finished he looked up at the wall past Madeline and softly said, “Holy shit.” Then he said it again much louder.
Marc leaned forward, placed his left elbow on the desk, his chin in the palm of his hand, looked at Maddy and asked, “What do you think?”
“I want to know what you think,” she replied.
He let his hand drop, folded them together on the desktop and said, “The first two,” he paused a couple seconds before continuing, “I don’t think so. The pictures aren’t quite right and they happened a little too close together, timewise.”
“I agree, but they were possible,” Maddy said.
“These other two,” Marc said patting the papers on his right, “They’re her. I suppose we could find a techie with photo comparison software to run an analysis, but I’m ninety percent they’re her.”
“The timing is perfect and both men knew each other. Her marriage to Hayes wasn’t long after Bauer’s death. I’ll bet that’s how they met. And she married Cartwright, the guy in Chicago, not too long after Hayes’ death. All heart attacks and either a quick burial or cremation.”
“Could there be others?” Marc asked.
“I don’t think so,” Maddy replied. “If you draw the timeline for all four of them there isn’t a big enough gap between them to allow for a fifth one. Possible, but not likely.”
“Great, so she’s only murdered four men and taken all of their money,” Marc commented sarcastically. “How much do you think she got, total?”
“Close to a hundred million give or take a couple,” Maddy said. “Marc, this woman is fucking evil!” Maddy rarely swore and when she did there was a good reason for it.
Marc sat silently looking at her for several seconds then said, “The question is: what do we do about it?”
“What can we do about?”
“Nothing,” Marc said shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head. “We’re still bound by privilege and there’s nothing we can do.”
“Even for things we found out after the trial that had nothing to do with it?” Maddy asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” Marc answered her.
“Um, Marc, I may have made a big mistake.”
“What did you do, Madeline?”
“I showed this to Tony last night. I wanted his opinion and…”
“Oh, that’s not a problem,” Marc said with relief. He picked up his personal phone, found Carvelli’s number and speed-dialed it. Tony answered right away and in less than a minute it was understood that he would keep this confident also since Mackenzie was a client of his as well as Marc and Madeline.
When Marc finished with Carvelli, he said to Maddy, “About all we can do is see her and try to convince her to come clean.”
“Do we have an obligation to do that?”
“A legal or ethical obligation, no,” Marc continued. “A moral obligation, yes. I can’t just let this slide.”
“She’s a psycho, evil, she-devil,” Maddy said. “She might go after you, too.”
Marc thought that over before saying, “First of all, you’re coming with me. And,” he again paused, “I don’t think so. That’s not the Mackenzie I knew when we were kids.”
“Oh, and this is? And you think you need to drag me into it too? Thanks.”
“Hey, you started it. Besides, better we find out,” Marc said as he dialed Mackenzie’s number
“I’m bringing a gun,” Maddy said.
“Good idea," Marc said while he listened to Mackenzie’s phone ring.
FIFTY-FIVE
“Why am I so nervous about this?” Maddy asked Marc just as Marc reached for the front doorbell of the Crocus Hill house.
He pushed it and said, “Because we’re about to find out some things we might not want to know.”
A smiling Mackenzie opened the door, took one look at Maddy and Marc and said, “Wow, this looks serious. Everything okay? They haven’t changed their mind about retrying me, have they?”
“No, no,” Marc smiled slightly. “Too late, we do need to talk.”
“Okay,” Mackenzie said and stood back to let them enter. She said hello to Maddy. Marc suggested the dining room table and they went in and took chairs. Mackenzie sat at the head of the table with Marc to her right facing the wall and Maddy to his left.
“Okay, what?” Mackenzie asked while a feeling of dread washed over her from head to foot. By the look on their faces, although she did not want to admit it, Mackenzie knew why they were here.
Maddy had laid her leather satchel with the research papers in them on the table. Marc reached in and removed all four sets of documents. He placed the one from Milwaukee regarding Kenneth Hayes and those from St. Petersburg and Joseph Bauer in front of Mackenzie. She looked at the cover page of each set of documents, read the name of each man, became visibly unnerved and sat back in her chair.
“I have to ask, Mac,” Marc said, “What can you tell me about these two men?”
Mackenzie’s initial reaction was to act indignant and tell them both to leave. Instead, she took a minute to think over the past twenty years then made a decision.
“Are either or both of you wired?” she asked.
Maddy looked at Marc who calmly answered for both of them. “Of course not. We’re here as your lawyer and hopefully, still your friends.”
“Are you still covered by attorney-client privilege?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Marc replied then reached over and squeezed her hand. This gesture of affection caused Maddy, the cynical ex-cop, to raise her eyebrows a bit.
Mackenzie, still holding Marc’s hand, visibly sighed, looked each of them in the eyes and said, “I guess it’s time to tell someone. Wait here a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Mackenzie left the room, turned right at the stairs and went upstairs to the second floor. When she did this, Maddy removed her .35
7 Ladysmith from the holster on her hip. She leaned forward, placed her left arm casually on the table while holding the gun on her leg, unseen, under the table.
“You won’t need that,” Marc said.
“I hope not,” Maddy replied.
True to her word, Mackenzie returned holding a manila envelope in her hands. She sat down next to Marc and said, “You can put the gun away, Maddy. I’ll show you everything.”
Mackenzie removed the papers from the envelope while a slightly embarrassed Madeline holstered the revolver. Mackenzie handed the documents to Marc.
Marc, with Maddy looking over his shoulder, scanned the first page, looked at Mackenzie and said, “A police report for criminal sexual conduct? Mac, why don’t you tell us what this is?”
“October eleventh,” she began. “Two days after my twenty-third birthday, I met a girlfriend for dinner at the Wild Onion on Grand in St. Paul. We met about seven-thirty, had a nice time, nice evening. Her name’s Becky. We had become good friends at the U and hadn’t seen each other for a couple of months. My birthday was a good excuse to get together and catch up.
“It was a Tuesday evening and we both had jobs; our first jobs after college graduation. I remember every detail. We split up about ten. She was parked a block away on Grand down the street toward the Cathedral. I was parked on a side street, Avon, what would that be, south, toward St. Clair?”
“Yes, south,” Marc agreed.
“Anyway, we split up in front of the restaurant. She went to her car and I went to mine.”
Mackenzie stopped and averted her eyes from Marc and Maddy. Looking down at the table top she continued. “I shouldn’t have parked there. The streetlight by my car was out and I noticed it when I got there. I was in a hurry so I parked there anyway…”
“That doesn’t make what happened your fault,” Maddy said, understanding where this story was headed.
“I know,” Mackenzie agreed looking at Maddy with a wan smile.
“Go on,” Marc quietly said.
“Anyway,” Mackenzie continued. “I got to my car and the next thing I knew three young men were all over me. A tan colored Ford van had suddenly appeared, they jumped out, grabbed me, threw me in back, climbed in after me and took off.
“For the next two hours, I went through hell. It’s the only way to describe it. While one of them drove, the others tore my clothes off, took turns slapping, punching and kicking me until I couldn’t resist anymore. I tried, I really did but it was useless.
“One of them slapped a piece of tape over my mouth to shut me up and they taped my hands behind me. I laid on a small blanket, naked and scared to death while they drove me to their destination, Lake Phelan. It must have been about a half-hour because they drove right to it. I was so scared I could barely breathe. I thought for sure they were going to rape then murder me. They weren’t wearing masks. They didn’t make any effort to hide their faces. The only thing they did about their identities, I found out later, was to use fake names.
“On the way, even though I was horribly afraid, I tried to stay calm and think. I noticed a couple of things about the van, the inside. If I ever found it, I could identify it.”
“That took some balls,” Maddy said.
Mackenzie gave her the same simple smile then continued. “I decided I would cooperate and hopefully they would let me live. I thought maybe all they wanted was sex and if I went along with it I’d be okay.
“They took me to Lake Phelan, on the East Side of St. Paul, to a parking lot down the street from the pavilion. It was on the main street between the lake and the golf course. Phelan Parkway.”
“You saw this from the van?” Marc asked.
“No, I found out later,” Mackenzie said.
“Let her finish,” Maddy quietly told Marc.
“When we got there, one of them told me I’d better not scream or they would kill me. He then ripped the tape off my mouth. That’s not like TV. It really hurts. I told them they didn’t need to hurt me, that I’d cooperate. That just made them laugh.”
Mackenzie paused again and wiped a small tear from her face as she recalled what happened. For the next hour, the four of them took turns raping, sodomizing and forcing themselves in her mouth. All the while for amusement, they laughed, joked around, hit, kicked and slapped her.
After sufficiently amusing themselves, barely conscious though she was, she recalled being dragged out of the van and onto a walkway bridge over a creek that ran into the lake. Two of them hoisted her up onto the bridge railing and pushed her battered, beaten and naked body into the creek.
“At first,” Mackenzie continued, “I thought I was going to drown and I felt relieved. At least they weren’t beating me anymore. They weren’t raping and hurting me anymore. I literally thought death would at least put an end to it.”
She looked at both Marc and Maddy and said, “If you haven’t been through something like that, you cannot understand how bad it was. I’ve thought about it many times. Hundreds. Trying to adequately describe what it was like and I can’t do it. I really thought death would be preferable. At least the pain would stop.
“In a few seconds, I realized the water wasn’t very deep. It was muddy and had a lot of weeds and sticks, but where I was it was only a couple feet deep. I managed to pull myself up so my head was onshore, on the grass. It was a picnic area. Of course, at that time of night and that late in the season there wasn’t anybody around.
“I remember lying there for a while, I don’t know how long. It had been a warm September so the water was still warm, warmer than the air. My main memory was how much I hurt. Everything hurt, from the top of my head to my toes. It was very difficult and extremely painful to breathe too. I later found out I had a partially punctured lung. I laid there for a while, I don’t know how long, maybe twenty to thirty minutes, I’m not sure. I remember how warm and nice the water felt and it made my injuries feel a little better.
“After a while I saw some headlights pull into the parking lot. I crawled out of the water and tried to stand. I couldn’t at first. My knees buckled a couple of times. I finally managed to stay upright and stumble up to the car. It was only a couple hundred feet but I hurt so bad it seemed to be a mile.
“I got up by the car and they saw me. A couple of teenage kids looking for a place to make out. I must have looked like I’d crawled out of a swamp.
“The next thing I knew I was in the backseat with the girl holding me. She had a coat around me. Her boyfriend was driving and they got me to Regions Hospital where I woke up later that night. I don’t even remember the ride there.
“It’s all in there,” Mackenzie said. Referring to the documents she had brought down from upstairs and given to Marc. “Including the medical report and the statements from the kids who found me. I want you to know I’m not lying. I didn’t make this up.”
“No one thinks you did,” Marc quietly said.
“Two St. Paul cops came, two detectives. An older white man, probably in his fifties and a younger white man, in his mid-forties. They took my statement. My purse was gone with my money and ID; my clothes were gone and I later found out, my car had been towed.”
“Why wasn’t there a female detective?” Maddy asked.
“Don’t know. I asked about that later when it was obvious the two men couldn’t find their way out of a bathroom and weren’t particularly interested in what happened. I admitted to them that I had told those guys I would cooperate and they said that could be construed as giving my consent.
“I pointed out to these two Neanderthals that even if I did consent to the sex I sure as hell didn’t consent to the beating. The older one, the senior detective just shrugged and said, ‘Their lawyers will just say they got a little carried away.’ You can guess how much effort they put into the case.”
“What time of day was that?” Maddy asked. “Was it the night it happened?”
“Yes, probably five, six o’clock in the morning,” Mackenzie said.
&nb
sp; “Night shift guys. Lazy assholes waiting for retirement,” Maddy replied.
“Two, three weeks went by and nothing much was happening.”
“Was it in the papers?” Marc asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Mackenzie said. “For three or four days it was all over the news.”
“Funny, I don’t remember it,” Marc said.
“They didn’t use my name. They don’t identify rape victims,” Mackenzie reminded him.
“That’s right,” Marc agreed.
“Anyway, after three weeks or so with no news from the cops I decided to see what I could find. I was feeling a lot better, physically. Most of the bruises had healed, my six broken ribs were better and the three teeth they knocked out were replaced.
“I went online looking for the parking sticker I saw in the back window of the van. I figured they were college students so I started checking the local schools. Even though the sticker in the window was facing out, I had a clear image of it in my memory. It took about ten minutes online for me to find it. Macalester College in St. Paul.
“I didn’t bother to tell the two cops. I figured I’d find these guys faster myself. It took less than two days driving around the campus and the streets around Macalester. I found the van parked in a driveway of a house about a mile south, in Highland Park. It had the same cracked mirror on the passenger side and parking sticker. I also took a chance late that night to peek inside. It was unlocked and I found the ceiling light was missing the plastic cover, just like the one I was kidnapped in. My torn up clothes and the blanket with my DNA on it were gone. It also smelled like someone had thoroughly cleaned the inside with bleach. Because of that, there was no proof, other than my word that I was ever in the van.”
“I can see where this is going,” Marc quietly said.
“I went to the two detectives, Laurel and Hardy I called them, and told them what I found. They were both pretty pissed off I was interfering in their investigation. We had a big argument and I went to their supervisor who made them get off their lazy asses and go pick these guys up. They found all four of them living in that house they were renting.”
Marc Kadella Legal Mysteries Vol 1-6 (Marc Kadella Series) Page 220