Fatally Bound

by Roger Stelljes

  Wire shook her head, “Not that I’ve seen. They all read pretty much the same. Traces of chloroform and fabric from a dark blue rag he uses to put over the women’s mouths plus the sodium pentothal in their system. They’re all cut, really gutted. No sexual assault of any kind.”

  Mac was looking over her shoulder now, “And no trace evidence either. The way he’s attacking them, from behind, even with the chloroform, you’d think we’d get some DNA from under fingernails or something, scratching at him, but nada.”

  “At least not yet,” Wire answered. “But there must be something about these women, something they have in common.”

  “Whatever it is, the FBI hasn’t found it yet. From what I can tell, they’ve gone pretty deep into these women’s backgrounds.” Mac stood up and stretched his arms up over his head and looked at his watch, 7:30 P.M. It had been a long day and they’d worked for nearly seven hours straight. “I should order us a pizza or something,” Mac said.

  He looked back and Wire was smiling at her phone, “I don’t think that will be necessary,” she replied with a grin. “Sally just gave me the signal. She’ll be home by 8:30. She’s bringing dinner and I am to make myself scarce by then. She wants you all to herself.”

  • • • •

  Senior Special Agent Aubrey Gesch pulled the door closed from the FBI director’s office and nodded for Special Agent Grace Delmonico to follow him.

  “What happened with the director?” Delmonico asked as they reached the elevator.

  “Not in here,” was Gesch’s clipped reply.

  The two special agents silently rode the elevator down and made their way to Gesch’s Suburban in the parking garage. Once clear of the Hoover Building, Gesch opened up on the short drive back to the Washington Field Office.

  “We have to go back to Dover in the morning.”

  “Dover? Why?”

  “The FBI director is assigning us some help on the Reaper,” grumbled Gesch in reply.

  “What kind of help?” she asked warily.

  “Open my briefcase and pull out the two manila file folders,” Gesch answered.

  Delmonico did as instructed and started reading through them. “Dara Wire and Michael McKenzie ‘Mac’ McRyan. Why do those names ring a bell?” It took her a second and then the names registered. “Wait a minute, aren’t they the ones who …”

  “Did that investigation as part of the election,” Gesch finished for her as he drove onto E Street.

  “Great, but what do they know about serial killers?” Delmonico asked.

  “The director says not much, but that the two of them have a talent for figuring things out.”

  “And we don’t!” she replied bitterly. “How many of these psychos have we brought home over the years, Aubry? This is bullshit.”

  “Look, Grace, I tend to agree,” Gesch replied as he approached Seventh Street. The two of them had a long day and were under a lot of pressure, and now this. “You know what, let’s get a beer, relax and talk about this.”

  Gesch turned left onto Seventh Street, drove past the Iron Horse, did a U-turn and pulled into a spot along the southbound side of the street. The two special agents walked inside. It was a quiet night, perhaps only fifteen to twenty people in the bar. They grabbed a booth in the back, away from the rest of the patrons. A waitress quickly took their beer order. While they waited for the beer to come, they each read through the folders. Once the pitcher of beer arrived, Gesch poured them each a glass. He took a long sip and slumped back into the vinyl of the booth and exhaled.

  “Let me guess, the White House, after the disaster of the press conference yesterday, put pressure on the director,” Delmonico started, still bitter.

  Gesch, the veteran senior special agent, nodded. “Yes they did.”

  “So the White House maneuvers these two into the case for cover.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Political bullshit, that’s all we need.”

  “No we don’t.” Gesch took a sip of his beer. He’d been around the block more than once and the higher you got in the bureau, the more politics entered your world. “Look, I’m not happy about this either, Gracie, but it is what it is. They’re coming in. And, while I’m loath to admit it, they might help us.”

  Delmonico snorted her disagreement while she started reading through the folder more, sipping at her beer. “This McRyan guy, he’s a St. Paul cop. No offense to the Twin Cities, but this is a little different game here, a bigger game. This is no time for amateur hour.”

  Gesch nodded, “Perhaps, although that election investigation was a pretty big game and he did all right.”

  “And this Wire,” Delmonico griped, “she was tossed out of the bureau?”

  “Yes and no,” Gesch answered. “She was a rising star years ago, doing undercover work against the mob up in New Jersey and New York. The last case she worked went bad, her man inside the Giordano crime family ended up floating in the Hudson. Then something happened and she was out of the bureau.”

  The way Gesch said “something happened” said he knew more.

  “Spill it, Aubrey.”

  “Rumor was that her man was somehow compromised by Donald Wellesley Jr.”

  “You mean the former vice president’s son who is now in federal prison?”

  Gesch nodded. “Apparently Special Agent Wire was incensed that Wellesley Jr. blew her guy’s cover. She tracked him down to a bar here in Washington and proceeded to beat the living hell out of him until the Secret Service peeled her off of him. I guess she turned Wellesley’s face to hamburger.”

  “I think maybe I like her now,” Delmonico said with a smile.

  Gesch chuckled. “It took multiple surgeries to get things right for Wellesley. The whole thing could have all been ugly for the vice president and Wire if it all got out.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Judge Dixon,” Gesch replied, taking a pull from his beer.

  “Color me shocked.”

  “Apparently Wire came to the attention of the great man while he was the attorney general. He intervened and negotiated a soft landing for Wire in return for keeping her mouth shut. That was almost five years ago. Wire ended up getting involved in that election case because she was working for Dixon and the Thomson Campaign and her little investigation crossed paths with McRyan’s murder investigation in St. Paul. The rest, as they say, is history.”

  “Is she good?”

  Gesch nodded. “I don’t know her, Grace, only of her. All I’ve ever heard is she’s smart, tough and clearly loyal.”

  Delmonico took a look at her picture and then another tucked behind it, a full-body shot dated last November. “She’s tall,” the special agent noted, “And quite pretty.”

  “I’ve also heard that.”

  “So Wire’s smart. What about McRyan?”

  “The director says he’s even smarter.”

  Delmonico snorted her disagreement as she opened up the manila folder on McRyan. It took her a few minutes. McRyan had an undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota and a law degree, again summa, from William Mitchell College of Law. “William Mitchell is in St. Paul, right?”

  Gesch nodded.

  McRyan passed the bar, had an attorney job lined up at a big Twin Cities law firm when two of his cousins were killed in the line of duty. “Looks like he comes from a family of cops,” Delmonico reported, taking another sip of her beer.

  “That’s what the director told me,” Gesch answered. “Director Mitchell knew McRyan’s father, said he was one of the best local cops he ever ran into. Says Michael Mackenzie, or Mac, is better.”

  Delmonico kept reading. “He’s had some pretty good cases besides the election case last fall. I remember this double kidnapping case. That was him?”

  Gesch nodded.

  “And it says here that he is dating …”

  “Lives with.”

  “… White House Deputy Communications Director Sally
Kennedy. I’ve seen her on TV, the super attractive ginger, right?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “How did he land … her …” Delmonico had flipped to a picture of McRyan. “Okay, I see how he did that. Tall, blond hair, blue eyes, athletic looking with a big dimple in his chin, I guess I can see how she might go for all that.” Delmonico exhaled, took another sip of her beer and slumped in her booth. “Okay, so I’ll admit these two have pretty good backgrounds. What’s their role with us?”

  “The director said that these two would take a fresh look at the case in their own way. Like I said, the director said the two of them are just good at figuring stuff out. He says McRyan is what you call ‘Natural Police,’ a natural investigator. He’s just good at it, sees things that others don’t and thinks outside the box. The director offered him a job after the election, he offered them both jobs, in fact, and they both turned him down.”

  “Why?”

  “McRyan has money, lots of money,” Gesch answered.

  “Another reason Kennedy probably went for him.”

  “It probably didn’t hurt. It’s not in the file, but he made a pile selling out a minority interest in some coffee chain based in the Twin Cities. Wire has her own business which is thriving, so I think she’s been working and that’s why, I think, they turned down the offers. Also, it’s not generally well known, at least yet, but those two also got a sizable advance from a publisher to write a book about the election investigation, so neither of them needs the work or the paycheck.”

  “So why come into the case?”

  “Because the Judge, and by extension, the president, asked them to. Those are two people you simply can’t say no to.”

  “And I suppose neither can we.”

  • • • •

  It was almost eleven. Mac had to get up early to pick up Wire and drive to Dover, and he wasn’t in the least bit of a hurry to go to sleep. Going to bed, yes, going to sleep, no. Of course, an hour ago, a bed hadn’t been required. They christened the new kitchen instead.

  “You know, we have a perfectly good king-size bed upstairs,” Mac suggested while they dined on the mostaccioli and spaghetti Sally brought home.

  “I came through the door and saw you and suddenly believed in the Fierce Urgency of Now,” she answered with a big seductive grin.

  Mac cackled, “Wow, now you’re quoting MLK to explain our sex life.”

  “Like you objected,” she cooed.

  “I certainly didn’t,” he answered, leaning over and kissing her lightly. “I had no objections at all. In fact, there were a couple of your little maneuvers that were new. You’ll have to do those again.”

  “I was reading the sex tips section of Cosmo while you were gone.”

  “Remind me to buy you a full year’s subscription.”

  “The center island withstood our assault,” she added with a mischievous smile. “I believe I can now fully trust in your craftsmanship.”

  Sally was always glib and flirty after sex. It was one of those little things he loved about her. The recap after they made love. It was never roll over and go to sleep. No, there was the postgame show and a breakdown of the highlights and the key moments in the encounter. Without fail, she always had something funny and seductive to say. It oftentimes led to another round, or overtime, as he’d taken to calling it. Sally had a way of always making him want her more.

  Now, he was sitting on his kitchen floor and leaning against the center island in his boxers and Sally was sitting across from him cross-legged in nothing but his white University of Minnesota T-shirt with some of the best red hair porn he’d ever seen her have. Easy rock was playing lightly from the speaker on the counter. They were drinking red wine and eating right out of the take-out boxes. The only illumination was three candles, two on the counter and one on the center island. It was totally romantic.

  For two hours they talked, touched, kissed and caught up with one another. It was two hours of conversations about anything but work. As serious people as they both were, they both loved their intake of pop culture. Both had tablets that were full of magazines that made for mindless entertainment reading. Mac always made time for his St. Paul boy Vince Flynn and would occasionally dive into a legal novel, although he preferred nonfiction, biographies and historical books. Sally was more of the fiction reader, with a thing for Gillian Flynn and Lisa Gardner mysteries. Where they agreed was an eclectic mix of television shows and they spent a half hour recapping their recent viewings of their favorites, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Rehab Addict, Homeland, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Suits, Castle and Game of Thrones. They talked about their families, from how Sally’s brother was going to have his third child to Mac describing how his seventeen-year-old niece, Maura, was busted for minor consumption.

  “It sounds like Tess was rather upset with Maura,” Sally said, twisting spaghetti around her fork.

  “Over the top, really,” Mac chuckled as he shoveled in more mostaccioli. “Minor consumption isn’t the greatest thing to have on your record.”

  “We could probably fix that.”

  Mac nodded. “I made a couple of calls over to Minneapolis and we’ll get it taken care of for her. She’ll have her do a little community service. But Tess,” he smiled ruefully, “was all over her like white on rice.”

  “Was Maura upset?”

  “Natch. But I really think she was just more embarrassed that her mom and dad had to come and pick her up. Of course, I was able to cheer Maura up a little bit.”

  “How?”

  “I told her about the time my dad and I went to pick up Tess from the jail up in St. Cloud. She was arrested for public intoxication and ended up with a minor consumption when she was a sophomore up at St. Ben’s. Oh man, did Dad have fun with her on that hour-ride home. I told Maura all about it.”

  Sally laughed. “Tess will love you for that.”

  “I told her I told Maura about it.”

  “Oh God. You did not?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “When you have kids she will get you back.”

  “Kids? Did you say something about kids?” Mac asked with raised eyebrows.

  “A conversation for another time,” Sally demurred. “Let’s get back to Tess. She had to be hot with you.”

  “Oh yeah, she went off on me something fierce. I said pot meet kettle. It was hilarious.” He reached for the bottle. “More wine?”

  “Please,” Sally replied happily and Mac filled her glass with more of the pinot noir. He emptied the rest of the bottle into his glass.

  “I could get another,” he offered. The wine fridge was five feet away.

  She waved him off, “I’ve had plenty and I do, after all, have to work tomorrow.”

  “You work every day,” Mac replied.

  “Such is life at the White House,” she replied with enthusiasm, raising her glass in a mock toast. Mac figured at some point the euphoria of working in that building would wear off and it would become more of a job, with the usual grumbling and the like, but seven months in, she was still like a kid in the candy store.

  “Man, did you and the Judge work me today,” Mac said.

  “A little,” Sally replied, taking a sip of her wine, “but I didn’t have to work you that hard, Mac. You wanted in on this.”

  Mac shrugged. It was the truth; he did.

  “And that’s okay,” she added. “It’s what you do, Mac. You’re gifted at it. I figured something like this would happen eventually and I think the Judge did too, and you just needed a little teeny tiny push.”

  “I was just a little surprised you were so gung ho for me to do it.”

  Sally shook her head, “I’m not necessarily. I was happy when you turned down the FBI job and I’m happy you’re safe and I don’t have to worry so much. But I didn’t want you chained to the radiator with nothing to do either.”

  “You know I didn’t turn down the FBI job for safety reasons.” They’d never discussed his reasons. Sally always ass
umed he did it for her. She got after him pretty good after the election case, the danger of the case, the risks he took. There were some long conversations about it and she expressed her fears and worries that she was scared she would lose him. The fierceness of her worries put him back on his heels, she could tell. She’d always felt a little guilty about it.

  “Then why did you turn it down?”

  “There were a couple of reasons. I wasn’t sure I’d have the same edge for the job after the election case. It’s pretty hard to ever imagine having a bigger case than that, Sal. That was like the Mount Everest of investigations. I mean, think about it. What could top it? Would I bring the kind of effort and motivation to the run of the mill case anymore? I wasn’t … I just wasn’t sure I could or would.”

  “What’s the second reason?”

  “I like being the lead dog, being the one at the head of the pack, not one of the dogs in the middle. In the job the director offered, as attractive and generous as it was, I wouldn’t be the lead dog. I would just be one of the dogs. So I passed. Now, if I wasn’t sitting on this pile of money, my decision might have been entirely different, but I didn’t have to take the job. I don’t have to take any job.”

  “The money helps,” she suggested, looking down, digging for more spaghetti.

  “You know what the money really does, babe?”

  “What?” she asked, looking up.

  “It lets me live life on my terms. It let me move here with you without even having to think about it. It gives me the freedom to do what I want. Whether that’s rehabilitating this townhouse, writing this book or taking on a case if it interests me. Like the robbery case in St. Paul? That interested me. I made a difference there. I cracked that thing open. This case definitely interests me. Maybe I can make a difference here. And I get to be the lead dog the way this thing is set up. I get to work with Wire, someone I, and you by the way, can absolutely trust to have my back, so that’s why I said yes.”