“Claire’s dead.”
Chapter Five
“We also learned she’s a horny little minx.”
Mac and Lich spent the afternoon interviewing people at Channel 6. First up was Station Manager Mary Carpenter. Carpenter hired Daniels three years earlier from a station in Denver, where she had worked for two years. Prior to that, Daniels worked in Salt Lake City. According to Carpenter, while it wasn’t officially announced, Daniels had taken a network job in Washington.
Carpenter was unaware of anything special or unusual Daniels was working on or investigating. In fact, when they heard she had been found dead, Carpenter immediately asked around, but nobody seemed to know much of anything. It hadn’t been unusual for Daniels to work the background of a story unbeknownst to Carpenter and then bring it to her or a news producer.
Mac asked, “We’d like to get a list of stories she’s worked on, as well as a list of anybody who sent threatening letters, e-mails, messages, or things of that nature.”
“We’re already working on it,” replied Carpenter.
Interviews with the rest of the station staff were similar. Daniels was well-respected, worked hard, and was the total perfectionist. As with Carpenter, all were unaware of whom she was dating.
Tim Mullany was Claire’s most frequent cameraman and her closest friend at the station. They had worked together since she came to Channel 6. He was a fifteen-year veteran at the station, had worked with numerous reporters over the years, and stated that Daniels “was easily the best I’ve worked with. She was a total perfectionist. Yet she did it in a way, the perfectionist part, that wasn’t offensive.” Smiling, Mullany continued, “She was here three years and had a lot to do with the work ethic picking up around the station.”
“Was she seeing anyone?” Mac asked.
“I’m pretty sure she was.”
“Do you know who?”
“That I don’t know. Claire kept her dating private. She never told me about the people she dated, and I never really asked. It was none of my business.”
“She made it into the tabloid pages a lot,” Lich said.
Mullany nodded, “Claire was someone that people were interested in. She was a beautiful woman, and she dated some fairly well-known people in town, an athlete or two, some fairly prominent business people. She tried to be discreet about it. I kind of admired that.”
Joe Elliott came to the conference room next. He was the sports anchor for Channel 6. He started at the station at the same time as Daniels and the two had dated briefly. If Daniels made the men’s hearts skip a beat, Elliott made the ladies swoon. He had been a college linebacker at Indiana and didn’t appear to have let the years get the better of him. He looked like he could go out and play now. Mac got right to the point, “I understand that you dated Claire Daniels a while back?”
Elliot smiled, “Yeah, we came to the station about the same time. We didn’t really know anyone and kind of struck up a friendship.”
“It was more than friends though?”
“Yeah, I was certainly attracted to her right away, and I had just gotten divorced and was looking to get back into the swing of things. Claire was at the right place at the right time.”
“Why didn’t it last?”
“I certainly had no intent of getting into any sort of relationship at that point. And our relationship, if you want to call it that, was pretty intense, but wouldn’t have lasted.”
“Intense how? Sexually intense?”
Elliott cringed, looking as if he wanted to stop the conversation. “I wish I wouldn’t have used that term. Claire was, is, my friend, and I can sense where you’re going with the question. I’m not sure what nature our relationship was or took has anything to do with what happened to her. I mean, it was two and a half years ago.”
Mac leaned forward in his chair. “I wouldn’t ask the question unless we thought it was relevant. And you’re right as to where I’m heading. As uncomfortable as this is, I need to know if she was into anything kinky or out of the ordinary.”
“Does this have something to do with how you found her this morning?” asked Elliott, going into reporter mode.
Mac stayed neutral. “Again, I wouldn’t ask unless it was relevant.”
Elliott looked away at a picture on the wall for what seemed like a couple of minutes, thinking about what he wanted to say. “Claire was no repressed Catholic school girl, that’s for sure. She wasn’t promiscuous, but she liked sex, a lot. Told me she always had, from the time she was a freshman in college. Said she even made a sex tape with an old boyfriend her junior year. She used to joke she’d end up like Paris Hilton if that thing got out. And she exuded sexuality. It was almost intimidating when she came onto you, like a sexual freight train, this pulse you would get from her.”
“Was she into anything kinky, weird, anything like that?” Lich asked.
“Weird, no. Kinky, a little. She wasn’t into anything like whips, chains, anything like that. But she was intense, energetic. I’d even say a little wild. I used to say, ‘And women say men are loud.’ I mean, you knew when she had an orgasm.”
“You said I was right about kinky. How was I right?”
“She liked different positions mostly. I remember she told me once about a shirt her friend had which showed these two little devils, male and female, in all kinds of different positions. She said she wanted to try them all. We tried a few, but nothing too crazy. It was fun. She was fun. Like I said, she was something in bed, almost perfect at sex. I mean, she could really get you going.” Elliott seemed to smile at the memory.
“Why did it end?”
“People at the station found out, so we ended it. We were new to the station, and we both felt it didn’t look right.”
“Did you remain friends?”
“Yes. We actually became really good friends. In fact, I just recently became engaged, and she bought my fiancée and me this wonderful gift for our house.”
Mac shifted gears. “I haven’t had a chance to speak to her family. Claire had been married, right?
“Yes.”
“Must have been before she came here?”
“Yeah. She married a guy named Kevin Daniels out in Salt Lake City. It didn’t work out, lasted maybe a year and a half, and that was it.”
“Why didn’t it work?” Lich queried.
“It was her career. She didn’t want to stay at home and have babies, and he wanted that from her. She always said it was a big mistake. He wasn’t a bad guy. He probably thought he could change her, convince her to do the family thing.” Elliot shook his head, “But that wasn’t Claire then and never would have been. She was ambitious and intense about her career. Shit, I’ve never seen someone so intense about everything she does.”
“Perhaps that explains the DVDs,” Mac said.
“DVDs? What are you talking about?” asked Elliott.
“When we were looking around her place, we saw she has this cabinet full of DVDs of her work.”
“That’d be Claire,” stated Elliott, nodding and smiling. “She was very vain and a complete and total perfectionist. She was like a football player. She’d watch film of herself all the time. It’s why she was so damn good at what she did.”
• • • • •
The rest of the senator’s afternoon schedule was cleared. There wasn’t much on it, mostly lobbyists who would be more than happy to accommodate him and speak with him another time.
He couldn’t believe it. He’d been with her just the night before. She was fine when he left. The first question he asked was, “When? How?”
“She was found dead in her condo this morning,” Hines replied. “The media doesn’t have much, but I spoke with a few people, and apparently someone strangled her. They think sometime last night, although the police haven’t released anything official yet.”
Johnson and Hines sat in silence for a number of minutes. Hines broke the silence. “You saw her last night?”
“Yes.”
<
br /> “What happened?”
Johnson didn’t like the tone of the question. “What do you mean, what happened?”
“Easy. What did you and Claire do?”
“What do you think we did?”
Jordan knew what that meant. However, he was not only the chief of staff, but a former prosecutor, and he suspected now that his best friend might end up being a suspect.
“Did you use a condom?”
Johnson jumped out of his chair and screamed, “What?”
Hines put his hands up immediately to say, “I’m not asking what you’re thinking.” He put his finger to his lips and looked towards the door.
Johnson composed himself. “What do you mean you’re not asking what I’m thinking? You’re asking me if I used a condom. Yes, Claire and I had sex. I did not use a condom.”
“So, you left semen behind.”
It was a statement, not a question, and in that instant Johnson knew exactly where Hines was going. Not only had his lover been killed, he might be a suspect.
“I did.” Johnson responded in a soft voice, “But, Jordan, man, I didn’t kill her. I swear to God. She was alive and well when I left.”
“What time did you leave?”
“Around 1:30 a.m.”
“Did anyone see you leave?”
Johnson immediately bowed his head, running his right hand through his thick black hair. “Yes.”
“Was it someone you knew?”
Johnson exhaled, “No, it was someone walking along the sidewalk. I looked outside before I left to see if anyone was out there. I waited until after 1:00 a.m., so someone from the bar crowd didn’t see me. I didn’t see the guy, but I obviously missed him. He passed by me right under the streetlight.”
The senator realized he was in a pickle. Suddenly a ton of thoughts flashed through his mind all at once. If this got out, what would his wife say? What about the political implications? Could he survive? He didn’t kill her, but it would probably come out that he was seeing Claire. “So what’s gonna happen?”
“We’ll have to see. Assuming they find the guy who saw you, the police may want to interview you. How much they want to talk to you may depend upon cause of death, what time they think she died, who else she might have been seeing, who might have an axe to grind—that sort of thing.”
“What do we do now?”
“We call Lyman.”
• • • • •
Late in the afternoon, Mac and Lich left Channel 6. They drove in silence along I-94 heading back towards Daniels’s place. As Mac hit the Lexington Parkway exit and headed south towards Summit Avenue, Lich piped up, “So what do you think we learned?”
“Well, we learned she’s really well liked and respected,” Mac replied. “She doesn’t appear to have any enemies at the station. She was serious and committed to her work. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, she wasn’t working on anything that would cause someone to want to kill her. Nobody’s aware of anyone she was currently seeing.”
“We’ve also learned she’s a horny little minx,” Lich added, obviously enjoying the more salacious details acquired that afternoon.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to mention that. Elliott obviously enjoyed the fling they had,” Mac said. “But we learned she was passionate, maybe a little kinky, but not into anything unusual.”
“Elliott neutered the details,” Lich replied dismissively. “I imagine at some point he’ll be going through them in his mind again, probably to great delight.”
Mac couldn’t disagree, although he didn’t respond as he turned left on Summit and drove past the Victorian mansions and majestic cathedrals that dotted the avenue’s landscape. He zoomed by the sprawling Minnesota governor’s mansion on his right and stately William Mitchell College of Law on the left. Three more blocks east, Mac pulled into an open spot along Summit, a block short of Daniels’s place on St. Albans. As they got out of the truck, Lich remarked, “I can’t believe how warm it is.”
It was remarkably warm, Mac thought. It was 5:00 p.m. and still sixty degrees, which was extremely warm for November 1st in Minnesota. Might not want to mothball the golf clubs just yet, he thought.
They walked to the corner, turned right on St. Albans towards Daniels’s condo, and stopped to take in the scene. The crowd had thinned some, but the news trucks and reporters were milling around. While Lich was standing with hands on hips, looking towards the news media getting ready for their 5:00 p.m. live reports, Mac saw Green and Clark standing on the porch to Daniels’s place. Mac grabbed Lich by the elbow and nodded his head towards the two other detectives.
In a couple of minutes, they had threaded their way through the crowd, ignoring the many questions. The yellow police tape finally held the media back. Mac and Lich climbed up the steps to the porch. “What’s the status around here?” Mac asked. Clark gave them the rundown, all the people they interviewed and buildings cleared. “What about across the street?” Mac asked.
Clark answered. “We missed four units in the one right across the street. That was one of the first places we went, so the people may be back by now.”
“Okay. Lich and I can run over there quick before we have to head back downtown. Which units?”
Clark gave them the numbers, and Mac and Lich headed across the street. The three-story brown-brick apartment building rested on the southeast corner of Summit. It was one of many desirable red-and-brown-brick apartment buildings between Summit and Grand.
At the first apartment, there was still no answer. They would have to come back. Mac jotted a note on the back of his business card and slipped it under the door. At the second unit, Mac and Lich found a couple of women in their mid-twenties just home from work having a beer. One was a heavier-set brunette still wearing her blue business suit. The other was an attractive, petite blonde, wearing a tight T-shirt that showed her midriff and blue jeans. She made eyes at Mac immediately, which he tried to ignore, although it was difficult. Her name was Carrie. She said that she and her roommate had been at the Halloween party at Mardi Gras the night before. They left the bar around 12:30 a.m. and walked home along St. Albans and came in the back door along the alley. They hadn’t seen anything and might not have even if they were looking as both admitted to having a really good time at Mardi Gras. It looked like they were ready to get a good start today, as there were a couple of empty bottles sitting on the coffee table. After five minutes, it was apparent that they knew nothing. Yet, every time Mac got up to leave, Lich kept the conversation going.
As they finally left, Mac asked. “How come you kept that going?”
“Just trying to get you laid. She was attractive as hell and ready to be had,” Lich said, smiling. “Hell, she was throwing herself at you. They know nothing about the case. You should step back and get yourself a little.”
Mac appreciated Lich’s concern. He wasn’t the first one to make the comment in the last few months. It had been a while. His buddies kept telling him he needed to “Get back on the horse.”
In the next unit, they found a couple of William Mitchell law students. They had ignored Halloween altogether, having studied until 10:00 p.m. at the law school. Then they came home, had a beer and hit the rack around 11:45, after watching Letterman. They hadn’t seen anything and didn’t even know that Daniels lived so close.
Lich and Mac moved on to the last unit, which was on the third floor along the front of the building. They knocked on the door a couple of times. No answer. Mac slipped a business card under the door with a note to please call him. He and Lich turned to leave, were ten feet down the hall when they heard the chain unhook and the dead bolt turn open. They turned to walk back as a Hispanic man who appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties opened the door. “What can I do for you?”
“St. Paul detectives,” Mac replied as he and Lich flashed their identifications. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Juan Hernandez. What’s going on?”
“There was
a murder in the neighborhood, and we’re wondering if you knew anything about it?”
“No kidding? Where?”
“It was across the street, in one of the condos on St. Albans. The victim was Claire Daniels—you know, the reporter from Channel 6. We’re asking everyone who lives in the neighborhood if they saw anything,” said Lich. “And by the way, can we step inside?”
“Oh, sure.”
Mac, Lich, and Hernandez stepped inside his apartment into the living room, which was sparsely furnished with a couch, chair, coffee table, and TV. There were few if any personal furnishings displayed. Lich, looking around, asked, “Just move in?”
“Yeah, just a few days ago,” Hernandez replied. “When did it happen, the murder?”
“We think last night?”
“Oh, my,” Hernandez replied, putting his hand to his chest. “What time?”
“We’re not sure,” Lich lied.
“Hmpf.” Hernandez walked over towards the porch looking out onto Summit Avenue. “Is her place the last condo on the end?”
The way he said it caused Mac and Lich to share a look. This guy was leading somewhere. “Yes. Why do you ask?” Mac inquired.
“Well, I was having trouble sleeping last night, so I went out for a walk around 12:30 a.m. Thought maybe the fresh air would clear my head. So, anyway, I was walking up St. Albans and ran into someone in the street.”
“Who was that?” Mac asked neutrally.
Hernandez hesitated. “You guys probably won’t believe this.”
“Give it a shot,” Lich said.
“Mason Johnson,” Hernandez blurted.
That got their attention. “What? Mason Johnson? Senator Mason Johnson?” Mac replied, disbelieving, his heart skipping a beat.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure,” Hernandez replied confidently.
Mac shared a quick look with Lich that said, Oh, boy, the case might have just gone nuclear. “What time?” Mac continued.
“It was 1:30.”
“You’re sure?”
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