Fatally Bound

by Roger Stelljes

  “Oh yes she did,” the Judge answered from the doorway.

  Sally saw the change in her boyfriend’s expression. The violence appeared in his eyes and the anger in his face as he stormed towards the reporter. “That’s not good.” Then Mac pushed the cameraman down and made the threat. “That’s really not good.” Then she heard the verbal exchange. “Oh Mac, that’s really really not good.”

  The optics of the whole encounter were horrible. Sally grabbed the remote and started flipping around to the other news channels. On every one she caught some portion of the confrontation. She sat back in her office chair, exhaled and shook her head. “Nice job, Mac,” she muttered and immediately grabbed for her cell phone.

  “But that question, that would set anyone off,” Sally’s assistant suggested.

  “He’s not allowed to be just anyone in that situation,” Sally answered. “Cripes. What a mess.”

  “Well, now we know why he’s not taking your calls,” the Judge offered, smiling, but wearily shaking his head.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Shit happens.”

  Mac was fuming with himself. He’d never lost it with a reporter. Of course, when rule number one is to never talk to reporters, you generally don’t have any problems losing it with them. In this case, he’d been Pearl Harbored without any preparation or chance to see it coming and on top of that, he was accused of having an affair with Wire, having her get an abortion no less, and the whole confrontation would show up on national television in no time and would be run continuously.

  It would require an explanation.

  Mac wasn’t sure what would be worse, explaining it to Sally or the rest of the country.

  He’d lost it with others before, the mayor of St. Paul a few times, the now incarcerated president of a company another time, the occasional suspect or witness he was exasperated with. However, never like this. He completely lost his composure. There were times he thought it was helpful to lose it, if you lost it strategically and were in control of it. That was not the case with this reporter. In this case, he came momentarily unglued.

  “Man, I so stepped in it there,” he said as he sipped coffee with Wire trying to get things back under control. They were at a small out of the way diner that did not have a television anywhere on the premises.

  “Did you ever!” Wire seemed only too happy to point out.

  “Whose side are you on here?”

  “Yours, but I had no idea we were an item.”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “No, it’s not,” Wire answered bitterly. “It’s a shit show and you weren’t the only who drew fire in this fiasco. Apparently, you and I have been having an affair.”

  “Man,” Mac groaned. “I’m so sorry about that.”

  “Yeah, for people to think I’d have actually slept with someone like you,” Wire mocked. “I do have standards.”

  “I know, it must be soooo embarrassing for you,” Mac answered, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”

  “I’d like a half hour with that reporter in a cinder block room, no cameras, no nothing.”

  Mac looked at his cell buzzing for the fourth time in the last hour, “I know someone else that would like that same shot,” he moaned, staring at the display, his elbows on the table, his face resting in his hands, rubbing his temples, trying to make the headache go away.

  “As your friend,” Wire suggested, “answer it. Guaranteed she’s seen it. Answer the phone and get it over with.”

  He nodded, exhaled and answered: “Hey, Sal.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, “Yeah.”

  “You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because I just saw you do the stupidest thing.”

  He was wrong. This would be bad.

  “Look, that reporter …”

  “Was a raging fucking bitch, Mac,” Sally barked. “But you can’t let her or anyone get to you like that. This is fucking Washington, DC, not St. Paul. You can’t do that!”

  “Look, I’m sorry, babe.”

  “Don’t you babe me. Don’t you dare right now,” she replied heatedly. “You’ve been avoiding me for hours.”

  “I haven’t been avoiding you.” He had been. “I’ve been working …”

  “Don’t bullshit me like that, Mac. You can’t pull it off.”

  He could rarely get anything by her. She was in complete prosecutor cross-examination mode and he was a hostile witness. The verbal beating continued, “Oh, by the way, you and Dara looked so lovely coming out the back door of a family planning clinic, by the way. Nice visual there, sneaking out the back door. You two actually looked like you had something to hide.”

  “Seriously, that’s the card you’re going to play here?” Mac asked in disbelief, his thermostat starting to rise again. “You know better than that.”

  Sally did and quickly changed gears, “How about taking a call then? You almost always take my calls and certainly don’t make me call five or six times to get a hold of you and I needed to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About what? Seriously, that’s what you’re going with? Hello. I needed to talk to you about the case, the big break you wouldn’t tell me about last night. You know, the break in your case that involves a really important person to my boss.”

  “Oh, jeez, for a minute there I thought you might be concerned about me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Apparently this isn’t about me, it’s about you.”

  “Now you wait a minute …”

  “I don’t think so, Sally,” Mac answered, his irritation no longer suppressed. “You’re pissed I didn’t tell you, the White House, about our case. Well, the last time I checked I don’t work for you and if you think that’s the case, then one of us seriously has misunderstood this working relationship. Last time I checked, my credential reads Federal Bureau of Investigation, not West Wing or White House or Judge Dixon’s Bitch. If that’s what Wire and I are supposed to be, well then I’m done.”

  “Careful, Mac,” Wire whispered, reaching for his hand and warned. “Don’t say something you can’t take back.”

  Mac exhaled and closed his eyes. His partner was right. He was stepping close to that line. “Look, Sally. You’re right, I didn’t tell you about the break because we were trying to keep it under wraps. We didn’t tell anyone and I’m trying to protect you because if we are right where this is going, Hannah Donahue is going to look bad, which by extension will make her father look bad and maybe even the White House since you got us on the case to begin with. I think it would be better for you to know less.”

  “Actually that’s even more of a reason for you to tell me about it.”

  “Why?”

  “So if it is bad, we could be prepared. Mac, it is not your job to determine what I need to know politically. That’s mine. I needed to know this might be an issue for us. So I could have …”

  “Leaked it, perhaps,” Mac finished. “Because that’s what you’d have done, right?” Mac retorted. “Leak it, control it, minimize the damage to the White House, maybe actually distance yourselves from Bill Donahue, at least until you need him for his money, yet still spin it that the White House appointees to the investigation have developed an important lead that may have broke the case. Hey, political points for us, woo hoo,” he mocked.

  “Yeah, well you pretty much screwed the pooch on that idea an hour ago,” Sally retorted, sarcasm oozing from her voice.

  He was tempted to say something else but heeding Wire’s advice, he didn’t. “That idea is exactly why I didn’t tell you. This is a murder investigation, and if something leaks, that could set us back just when we might be making some headway. This is murder, not politics, Sally. There isn’t a cloture vote on this damn thing.”

  “Well duh,” was her snooty reply, “but here’s a newsflash, superstar. You and Wire being on the case ma
kes it political, Mac. We put you there. That means we’ve got serious skin in the game. So what do you do? You go ahead and find a way to wrap abortion into this. That’s a brilliant maneuver, that’s so helpful. I mean, couldn’t you have at least addressed that? Couldn’t you have said the investigation had nothing to do with that?”

  “I’d rather have people thinking that, the Reaper thinking that’s where we’re going, as opposed to him and the public having an idea what this thing is really all about.”

  “Sweet, so now we can deal with the political fallout. You should see my in-box, all of our in-boxes and voice mails, thanks to your little brainstorm.”

  “Not my concern.”

  “Not your concern? You’re supposed to be helping us. I mean, for someone as smart as you are, you are borderline brilliant, how could you meltdown like that? How? How is that possible? The way you left it the country thinks your investigation is either about abortion or that you had Wire get one. Had you given me a call earlier in the day, we could have discussed this. I would have suggested to you that if the media shows up when you’re at the Fallway Clinic, here is what you should say. This is what I do, Mac, communications, messaging, anticipating trouble and preparing for it. So given all that, I would have thought that even a political Neanderthal such as you would have taken a couple of minutes and given me a call and a little heads-up.”

  “Well I didn’t.” He didn’t really have anything more to say. At this point he just wanted to eject.

  “That’s all you got? I just didn’t?”

  “At this point Sally, the way my day is going, it’s probably best that’s all I say. And you know what? You might just want to consider pulling a punch or two as well.” He’d pretty much had enough. They rarely fought, but when they did, there were usually fireworks. Neither of them had a lot of back down in them.

  “I think we’re done here,” Sally said, fuming on the other end.

  “Hey, for once we agree,” and he hung up and tossed the cell phone onto the table.

  “Well that went well,” Wire said, rolling her eyes, shaking her head at Mac. “Is there anyone else left you want to piss off today?”

  “Nope,” Mac answered. “Pretty much filled out my Yahtzee Card.”

  “Good news for you is she loves you so damn much, she’ll get over it and forgive you.”

  “Forgive me? And what about me? Don’t I get to get over it? Don’t I get to forgive her?”

  “Nope. You just have to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For being a pigheaded, prideful, dumbass arrogant male,” Dara answered, looking at him like he was an idiot. “Listen, partner, we do represent the White House. Like it or not, they put us on this case. Sure we said yes, and the FBI director was totally on board with it, but the White House made this happen. They do have skin in the game. We can’t and won’t take orders from them, but at the same time we can’t …”

  “Make them look bad.” Mac shook his head. Then the realization really hit him where it hurt. “I made Sally look bad.”

  “No, it was we. I was there too.”

  “But I’m the one …”

  “Yeah, you’re the one who stepped in it big time, but it’s on me too. You’re my partner. I’m in for a penny …”

  “In for a pound. Just know, if you step in it, I’ll feel the same way.”

  Wire nodded and for the first time in a while, smiled. “Look, next time, tell Sally. She and the Judge understand an investigation like this. They would have known how to handle this.”

  Mac was about to object but she stopped him. “Mac, you’d have told Sally about our break, but Gesch gave you so much shit last night about your White House girlfriend that you got your back up about it. Your pride got in the way. You could have told her. You should have told her. Would they have done something with it? Maybe, but come on, she and the Judge would have known how to handle it, they wouldn’t have screwed us.”

  “No, they probably wouldn’t have.”

  “That’s right. Face it, okay, you fucked up. I would suggest that when you apologize to Sally, and you will apologize, you just fall on the sword, it’ll be the least painful option for you.”

  He took a long sip of his coffee, sat back in the booth and shook his head. “Okay, so we’ve established I’m a royal screw up and I have some amends to make. Can we please move on?”

  “Sure, as long as you’re cooled down now. You’ve been running pretty hot the last hour or two.”

  “Maybe I’m just exhausted.”

  “Me too,” Wire answered. “Want to call it a day?”

  “No. As you can imagine, I really don’t want to go home at the moment.”

  • • • •

  “Remind me to never piss you off,” the Judge said ruefully, sitting on Sally’s couch. “Did you treat hostile witnesses this way when you were a prosecutor?”

  “He can be such an arrogant … ass sometimes,” she said, still furious with him.

  “Yeah, but it’s that arrogance, that stubbornness, that edge, that ‘I’m the smartest guy in the room’ mentality, that makes him good.”

  “Any more days like this and Director Mitchell will have him working the FBI motor pool.”

  “I seriously doubt that,” the Judge answered, chortling. “Sure, Mac screwed up today, but the only reason he was in a position to screw up in the first place was because he and Wire are the ones who keep making things happen on that investigation. That task force was nowhere before those two got involved. Now they’re somewhere. They’re going to find this guy and soon.”

  “Really?” Sally asked skeptically, perhaps because she was still so pissed at Mac.

  “Yeah, Mac discovered some connection between three of the victims yesterday. It’s tied to a summer camp they attended seven years ago in upstate New York. I suspect he was at the clinic to interview someone who was at the camp and knew Donahue or one of the other victims. He and Wire have created every break on that case, Sally, every single one. They’re working their asses off and you said it yourself earlier, Mac’s operating on fumes, he’s exhausted. That’s when shit like this happens. It’s one of the differences between St. Paul and working here and he just learned that lesson the hard way.”

  Sally snorted and shook her head.

  “Listen, it’s up to you, but I’d cut your boy a little slack.”

  “That damn reporter,” Sally wanted a piece of her, going after Mac that way. She would never admit it to him but she’d have shoved the microphone down the woman’s throat.

  “Oh, I think we’ll figure out a way to deal with her. That was more than just a little out of bounds.”

  Sally grimaced, “Does the president know about this?”

  The Judge nodded. “You know what he said?”

  “What?”

  “Shit happens.”

  “That’s what he said?” Sally asked skeptically.

  “Yup.”

  “Maybe, but Mac’s shit left the FBI and us a hole to dig out of if my e-mail is any indication.” Her in-box had exploded in the last hour, as had her voice mail box.

  “Ahh, we’ll be fine,” the Judge replied with a dismissive wave and a rueful laugh. “I’ve seen worse, and if Mac brings this thing home eventually, nobody will give a rip about today or at least not much of a rip. Look, I’ve already talked to Thomas Mitchell, within the hour the FBI will be out with a statement indicating that the investigation has nothing to do with abortion. That will take care of the in-box and voice mails. That won’t be an issue.”

  “You sure?”

  The Judge nodded confidently, “I know you’re worried, but don’t be. Mac stepped in it, but the funny thing is, give it a few hours or a day and something else will come along to command people’s attention. Like I said, it’s up to you, but I think Mac deserves a break on this one. What happened at that clinic …”

  “Is not Mac’s fault,” she finished the thought for him.

  “No, when you r
eally think about it, it’s not. And let me tell you something else. There’s nobody I’d rather have going after that evil son of a bitch than Mac McRyan,” the Judge stated, pushing himself up off the couch. “And let me tell you something else young lady. Given what happened today, Mac’s going to be extra motivated and that my dear, is a very good thing. That’s turning lemons into lemonade.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “This is gonna hurt.”

  Gaithersburg, Maryland.

  After Mac’s cooling off period at the coffee shop, he and Wire made their next stop at the home of Leslie Felding, a twenty-eight-year-old financial analyst for Starling Industries. She lived in a brick two-story colonial-looking townhouse north of Interstate 270.

  Felding opened the door and recognized them immediately, “You two were on television earlier,” but then she went on guard and looked confused. “Why are you here?”

  “We have some questions about the murders of Hannah Donahue, Sandy Faye and Melissa Goynes. You were a camp counselor with them seven years ago at Lake Seneca Lodge,” Mac stated.

  Felding let them into her townhouse and took them back to the kitchen where they could all sit around the table. “I remember Hannah,” Felding stated as she sat down. “I don’t remember a Melissa Goynes or Sandy Faye.”

  “Melissa Goynes is our victim’s married name, her maiden name was Ross,” Wire replied, taking out the AAHC picture from seven years ago and pointing to Melissa Ross. “Sandy Faye is a television reporter in Baltimore, but her real name back when you were at camp with her was Helen Williams.”

  Felding’s eyes went wide, “I remember Melissa Ross. She worked in my dorm that summer. The Helen Williams name doesn’t really ring a bell, nor does the picture, but then again, that was years ago.” She shook her head, holding the picture in her right hand, looking it over, “My gosh, Melissa.”

  “Have you been following the news reports on this killer people are calling the Reaper?”

  “A little,” Felding answered. “I knew Hannah fairly well, at least that summer. I’ve hardly seen her since but obviously when I heard her name I paid some attention to the news reports but after the first day I didn’t really follow it. It was a little gruesome and depressing.”