First Deadly Conspiracy Box Set

by Roger Stelljes

  The front door opened, and Viper saw Hisle look out. Hisle saw the news van as well, and a grim look overtook his face. The detectives and Hisle went back in the house. The Channel 6 van pulled up just then. A reporter and cameraman got out. All four of them stood around talking, waiting for something to happen. They didn’t have to wait long.

  • • • • •

  Hisle carefully closed the front door before he turned to the three men. “When did they get here?”

  “They just pulled up,” Peters replied.

  “I guess it was inevitable,” said Hisle, and then a little suspiciously, “How do you suppose they found out?”

  Peters gave Lich a little look. Did you talk? Lich gave a little shake of his head. No. “I don’t know, Lyman. They didn’t follow us, we made sure. I don’t know how they found out.”

  Lyman shrugged. It was all going to come out anyway. “What will you say on the way out?”

  “I assume that means we’re done?” asked Mac.

  “Yes, it does. You’ll do what you have to do. Again, what will you say to the media?”

  “For now, nothing,” replied Peters. “But we’ll be charging the senator, and that’ll be news. I’m sure the department and district attorney’ll have something to say.”

  “I imagine so,” said Hisle with a wry smile. “I can’t imagine Helen Anderson missing time in front of the camera.”

  Everyone shared a knowing smile. With that, the three of them left. Mac took the circular drive back out towards the main road. The media stood in the middle of the road. As he pulled up, Peters let his window down from the backseat. The blonde reporter was from Channel 12. Mac had seen her many times but couldn’t remember her name, Polly something or other. She stuck her microphone inside. “So what are you doing out here, is Senator Mason Johnson a suspect?” she asked.

  No we’re out here enjoying the fall colors, Mac thought.

  “We have no comment right now,” replied Peters.

  Channel 6, a brunette, yelled, “Will you be arresting Senator Johnson?”

  A better question, thought Mac.

  “Again, we have no comment right now. You can contact Sylvia Miller later today. She’ll have something to say.” With that, Peters put his window back up, and they pulled away, heading back towards St. Paul. The media futilely yelled questions at the Explorer as they drove off.

  Chapter Eleven

  “The Cross files, right?”

  The media was waiting for them when they got back to St. Paul at 5:00 p.m. Mac understood the attention that was coming. This was a big story: a United States senator implicated in the murder of a news reporter. It was going national as a story and would turn into a circus before all was said and done. Mac called Sally on the way in to let her know what had happened. They would be working late, he thought.

  Once back, they headed up to Chief Flanagan’s office. Sylvia Miller met them in the hallway. They knocked and headed in.

  The chief saw them come in and didn’t wait for them to sit down, “Tell me.”

  “He did it,” said Peters.

  “He admitted that, of course,” the chief replied wryly as he came from behind the desk and waved everyone towards the couch.

  “Oh, yeah, all the way down to crushing her windpipe,” Lich chimed in as he found a spot on the couch to sit.

  “Good, just in time for the media cabal out front.”

  Everyone laughed a little. Sally Kennedy and Helen Anderson walked in just then and joined them over by the couch. The chief, down to business, asked more seriously, “So, what really happened?” Peters nodded to Mac.

  He gave Flanagan the run down for the next several minutes. He stuck strictly to the facts. Peters, pimping his detectives, jumped in a couple of times to talk about the good cop, bad cop routine Lich and Mac had put the senator through. At the end, the chief was smiling. Mac liked Flanagan and so it was good to see a smile crack his face. It had been a long week for him.

  “So,” the chief asked Mac, “we have our killer, do we?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You guess?”

  Mac hesitated, “No. Probably our guy.”

  The chief pressed, “You don’t seem so certain, boyo. What gives?”

  Mac thought for a moment and decided, what the hell, he’d play devil’s advocate. “It’s too easy.”

  “Hah,” Lich bellowed. “What’s wrong with easy? I love easy.”

  “That explains Dot,” replied Mac with an evil grin. Lich scratched his nose with his middle finger. Kennedy saw the juvenile display between the two of them and giggled.

  “Who’s Dot?” Peters asked, clueless.

  “Nobody,” replied Mac. “I still can’t get over the fact that a guy this smart did this. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “When does murder ever make sense?” replied Lich. “I’ve spent twenty years dealing with it, and very few have ever made any fuckin’ sense.”

  Mac nodded, “I know, I know. But something’s bothering me about this, and I can’t for the life of me put my finger on it.”

  “Shit,” replied Lich dismissively. “The senator looked guilty as the day is long.”

  “Agreed,” said Peters.

  “I agree with you both for the most part,” Mac replied, scratching his head. “But there was a couple of times during the interview where I almost felt like he was …” he was grasping, “… I can’t explain it.”

  Sally gave it a shot. “You felt like he was telling the truth?”

  Mac pointed at her. “Yeah. Something like that. It was just a feeling I had a couple of times. That he had genuine emotion, not of guilt, but of loss. I can’t even tell you what triggered it.”

  “Son,” the chief interjected, “I’ve seen guys who murdered their wives, girlfriends, best friends. After they did it, they felt a sense of loss, but you know what? They were still murderers.”

  “And, Mac, if he didn’t do it,” Sally said quietly, thoughtfully, “who did?”

  “Well, that’s the issue now, isn’t it?” Mac said. “Like I said, it was a feeling I had. I have no evidence, zero, zip, nada, to point at anyone else. It’s probably silly to have even have brought it up.” Mac sat back on the couch, exhaling, wishing he hadn’t said a thing about it. Lich was probably right. What’s wrong with easy?

  The chief picked up on his disappointment, “Don’t feel bad about it, boyo. Senator’s been a convincing guy for a long time. You’re just reading a little too much into things, which happens.” The chief then smiled. “Bottom line is you and Lich have done a hell of a job here.”

  Helen Anderson jumped in, “So, we charge him?”

  “Mac?” Flanagan asked, prodding.

  “We’d be idiots not to.”

  “Agreed,” replied the chief, shooting Mac another big smile. “Helen, I think Ms. Kennedy, Mac, Lich, and Marion here need to get together and write it up.”

  “I’ve already started, but I need the detectives to fill in some blanks,” Sally replied. “Who’s going to arrange for the senator to come in?”

  “I’ll make the call,” said the chief. “We’ll work it out so that he can turn himself in voluntarily. Shall we make it tomorrow?” he asked in a hopeful voice.

  “Yes, later in the morning,” replied Sally.

  “Good,” and to Mac, Lich, and Peters, “You boys off with Ms. Kennedy. I’ll call you with the particulars on when Johnson’ll be coming in.”

  “Any chance you’ll have to go and arrest him?” Anderson asked.

  “Nah,” replied Peters. “That’d only add to the media attention. Johnson’ll want to start working the jury now.”

  “Which means that he’ll be ever so cooperative,” added Sally. “Let’s get this thing written up.”

  The chief said, pointing to Mac, Lich, and Peters, “You heard her, go to work.”

  “What about a statement for the media?” asked an excited Sylvia Miller. “We could make the 6:00 p.m. news.”

  M
ac couldn’t blame her for being excited. It had been a rough week for her as well.

  “We can talk about that, Helen. Why don’t you stick around as well,” the chief replied. “Boys, good work.”

  • • • • •

  Viper and the boss had been watching from his office, sitting on the couch, having a drink. The boss had a bank of seven televisions mounted into a built-in cabinet—a large screen in the middle and three smaller screens on each side. They had on all of the local stations, plus CNN and FOX News. Senator Johnson’s impending arrest for Daniels’s murder was on every television. The media circus began in earnest with Viper’s little tip to news stations earlier in the day. The media had footage of the detectives leaving Hisle’s place in the Explorer, as well as pulling into the Department of Public Safety. “A wonder why they didn’t just follow them with a van or chopper,” said the boss.

  The highlight, at least for Viper and the boss, was the joint statement of Sylvia Miller and Helen Anderson that they would be arresting the senator for the murder of Claire Daniels. Anderson was particularly giddy, loving the attention. She apparently was prepared for the press conference as she was immaculately dressed in a blue power suit, her hair perfectly placed with just the right amount of makeup. She was good on camera, not a parsed word in her statement. Sylvia Miller, on the other hand, just looked relieved, which probably was the view of the entire department. Between the Daniels case and the serial killer, it had been a rough week for them, Viper thought.

  “It’ll be crazy tomorrow,” mused the boss.

  “Yes, sir, it will.”

  “Will we rest easier now that the senator has been charged?”

  Viper thought for a moment and replied, “Not just yet.”

  The boss nodded, “The Cross files, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are we at on that?”

  “We’ve been searching. We can’t find them, assuming the original files are still out there somewhere.”

  “We need to assume they are.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Cross files could hang them all. They mistakenly fell into the hands of the company’s CFO, who had been dealt with as well. They had a copy of the Cross files, but the originals had proven elusive. The concern was that the originals had been shared with or were in Daniels’s possession.

  “The files were not at Daniels’s place. I looked everywhere.”

  “And what about our dearly departed CFO?”

  “Nothing. I went through her place twice, both before and after and found nothing. We have checked through our contact at her bank—no safe deposit box. There was nothing on the laptop or work computer. We searched her mother’s place in Arizona and her sister’s place in Florida; nothing. We searched her house and have been tracking her mail; nothing.”

  “So, where are they?”

  “I don’t know, sir. We’ll keep looking.”

  “What about Channel 6?”

  “We had someone there the night we took out Daniels, two nights before and every night since. He’s on the cleaning crew,” Viper answered. “If we assume there is a file or box with 437 pieces of paper in Daniels’s work area or somewhere around the station, he would have found it by now,” he added, shaking his head, skeptical. “He’s going to try again tonight, but I think it’s a dead end. If they had the files, they’d have used them. If someone found them and was trying to make sense of it all, we’d have heard about it.”

  “You think they don’t exist?” the boss asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “All I know is we are looking everywhere and haven’t found anything.”

  “Well, all I know,” replied the boss irritably, “is that we better find those damn documents before someone else does or we’re dead. Until they are found, we keep searching everywhere.”

  Viper shared his boss’s irritation. If the files existed and were found by the wrong people, he would be on the run for the rest of his life. He prepared for the eventuality of that. He had plans in place to be on the run for years, both while in government service and out. These were options he didn’t want to exercise. Living somewhere in South America would be tolerable. Someplace warm and sunny would be fine. But, he liked his home in Minnesota, the winter retreat in the Caymans, the Vette, and his hefty salary. He hated to have to give all that up.

  “We’ll keep looking.”

  • • • • •

  It had been another long night spent with Sally. They finally got started putting together the complaint around 7:00 p.m. Mac reflected on the fact, that despite his reservations, they had an awfully solid case. They had charged, and obtained convictions, with far less. Of course, Lyman Hisle usually wasn’t on the other side. Nonetheless, seeing it all laid out on paper made him feel more comfortable. The chief was probably right; he was over analyzing the situation. It’s like Lich said, “What’s wrong with easy?”

  Speaking of easy, Lich was the first to leave. Dot paged him, and he was raring to go again. He left around 9:00 p.m., quietly promising Mac that he owed him big time. Captain Peters hung around. He’d been through this a thousand times and made several useful suggestions about putting the complaint together. Sally had done this many times as well. Mac was, by comparison, a little green with the process and humbly realized he still had plenty to learn.

  Around 10:30 p.m., with the complaint pretty much done, Captain Peters left. “You two get going soon. It’s going to be a big day tomorrow.” Sally said she wanted to go through it one more time, and Mac, being the most familiar with the case, stuck around to answer any questions. Convenient how that had worked out, he thought.

  “Tomorrow will be exciting,” Sally said, while typing away, making a few changes. It had been fifteen minutes since she had said anything. Mac remembered how a law professor once said that a legal document is never written until it’s been edited and polished five times. Sally was proving that axiom a couple of additional times over. Focused and intense, the flirtations of the night before were suppressed. She was all business, and well she should be. Much of Mac’s work was over, but hers was only beginning. Not to mention that she would be going up against Lyman Hisle and Senator Mason Johnson. She had best get her game face on now.

  “Yes, hopefully I’ll avoid much of it,” replied Mac.

  “Not gonna happen. This is your case. You’ll be front and center.”

  He sighed. “I imagine so.”

  “Read through this one more time for me,” directed Sally as she left the office.

  The State of Minnesota vs. Mason Johnson. The complaint laid out their evidence, and the case looked solid. Mac wondered what Lyman would do to create reasonable doubt.

  Chief Flanagan called to let them know that the senator would turn himself in voluntarily at 10:30 a.m. Mac and Lich were to be there. He would be processed like any other suspect. After that, a bail hearing was set for 3:00 p.m. The chief and Helen Anderson had also decided to do a perp walk. Mac didn’t like that.

  You did a perp walk when you wanted the public to see that you had arrested someone. This would involve walking the senator out in cuffs, putting him in an unmarked car, and driving the five blocks from the Department of Public Safety Building to the Ramsey County Courthouse. Then he’d be walked into the courthouse in cuffs and would appear in front of the judge. The whole process would be on the news. There would be pictures in the paper, and the media would yell questions at the senator while he was cuffed. It would be a spectacle.

  Mac understood why the chief was doing it. It had been a hard week on the department and on Flanagan. Although he wasn’t good himself in front of the media, he knew that his department needed some good press. Especially since the serial killer had yet to be caught. Sylvia Miller probably would have pushed for the whole thing even if Helen Anderson hadn’t already approved it.

  Sally reappeared, and Mac got a little whiff of perfume. Was that for him or the result of a long day and wanting to smell fresh? “This looks good,” he said.

&
nbsp; “You feel better about the case now?”

  Mac nodded. “Yes.”

  “You should,” Sally replied, and then shifting gears. “I wish I could have seen the interview today.”

  “You know, this shouldn’t be the case, but …” Mac hesitated.

  “But what?”

  “It gave me a charge, getting to the senator the way I did.”

  “That’s nothing to be ashamed of. I heard he called you an ‘arrogant fuck.’”

  “That he did.”

  Sally nodded. “I get the same feeling on a good cross examination. You get someone to admit something they didn’t want to or you box them in, and it feels good. You get a high from it.”

  “Exactly,” Mac replied.

  She took one last quick look at the complaint. She looked satisfied with it. “What time is it?”

  “Twelve fifteen.”

  “Holy cow. I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “Me to.” He helped her put her coat on. “Where are you parked?”

  “I’m across the street in the Vincent Ramp.” The Vincent Ramp, despite the efforts of its owners, was the darkest parking ramp around, with low ceilings, lots of pillars, and plenty of places to hide. It wasn’t the safest place in the middle of the day, let alone after midnight.

  “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  The crisp, cool November air greeted them outside. It felt good after a night in Sally’s cramped and stuffy office. The Vincent Ramp was kitty corner from the courthouse. They took the elevator up to level four where her Camry was parked close to the elevator, under a light.