First Deadly Conspiracy Box Set

by Roger Stelljes

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “We got ourselves another Lee Harvey Oswald?”

  The van pulled up to the curb in front of the Vincent Ramp, and Mac, Lich, and Patrick piled out. It had taken them fifteen minutes to get back downtown from Knapp’s place in Hudson. Their fears had been put to rest on the way in, when it was confirmed that other than Knapp, nobody else had been hit. Rock and Riles were okay, which was what they were most concerned about. Riles went back to the station to get cleaned up from Knapp’s blood.

  The three of them moved up the steps to the third level where they found Rock and two other detectives in the southeast corner of the ramp, looking back towards the courthouse. Rock saw them coming and walked over.

  “Christ, what a mess.”

  “What the hell happened?” Lich asked.

  “We think a sniper hit Knapp from the corner area over there.”

  “Why here?” Mac said, not seeing anything indicating otherwise.

  “Somebody claims they saw a muzzle flash from up here.”

  “Anybody hear the shot?” Lich asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Rock replied. “Probably had some sort of silencer.” Rock wiped his shaved head with his hand. “I gotta tell ya, we’re out of the car, walking Knapp in, and next thing I know he’s slumped down and Riles is coated in blood.”

  Mac walked over to the corner between two minivans and looked out over the street towards the courthouse. It was a shot of maybe a hundred yards. The spot provided a good field of fire towards the front of the courthouse. If a person were going to take a shot, this was a pretty good place. Nonetheless, it took pretty good aim and a steady hand to make the shot, Mac thought.

  Lich walked up behind him. “We got ourselves another Lee Harvey Oswald?”

  “We got someone who was a pretty good shot,” Mac replied.

  “Don’t look that far to me,” Lich said.

  “Rock, how many shots?” Mac asked.

  “Only one, I think.” Rock replied.

  “One shot from here, not bad,” Mac said. “Probably a scope, with a silencer, a pro job?”

  “Who knows? Hell, you can get a scope and silencer for a hunting rifle,” Rock replied.

  “Any of the victims of this guy … they got family members maybe who hunt or are good with a rifle?” Mac asked.

  Rock shrugged, “Don’t know.”

  “How long before you guys were up here?”

  Rock grimaced. “Probably three or four minutes at best. It was pretty chaotic. The person who saw the muzzle flash didn’t get to us for a minute or two. Then we ran over, but whoever did it was long gone by then.”

  “Where to? Where do you go from here?” Lich asked.

  “There’s a stairway to the skyway, there’s another stairway down to the street. They might have jumped into a car in the ramp and left. Hell, they could have taken the elevator down, although I doubt it. We’re pulling the surveillance cameras. We’ll see what we find,” Rock replied.

  “No rest for the weary,” Lich replied. “I thought we were going to get some days off.”

  “We are,” Rock answered. “Chief’s already got a whole group down here looking at it. He says we’re off it. We’ve done enough. If they need to know anything about the families, they’ll ask us, but otherwise we’re done. We finish up some loose ends tomorrow, then we all get the rest of the week off.”

  “Fine by me,” Lich said.

  “Let’s go check on Riles,” Rock said.

  Mac took one last look out over the street and to the front of the courthouse. A large blood spot marked where Knapp went down. Police tape marked the area off, and the crime scene guys were collecting what little evidence there was. He shook his head. Something didn’t seem right.

  • • • • •

  Viper pulled up to the front of the boss’s house, parked his car, and walked up to the front door. The housekeeper opened the door, took his coat, and escorted him to the dining room. The boss was sitting at the table, reading some papers, sipping a glass of wine.

  “What would you like?” the boss asked, holding up his wine glass.

  “One of those would be fine.”

  Viper sat down while the boss poured him a wine. He waited for the staff to leave.

  “How’re we doing?”

  “Good so far,” Viper replied. “I was six blocks away before the police even made it up to the ramp. I was out of downtown within ten minutes. We look clean.” Viper sipped his wine, a lovely red. “Did the police get anything out of Knapp before—”

  “—his untimely demise?” the boss finished. “No. He immediately asked for a lawyer. That was that.”

  “So, we should be good then,” Viper stated. “Although I have Kraft and a few others keeping an eye on things from my end, just to be sure.”

  “Good. I’ll be doing the same,” the boss added. “Now we need to get back to looking for the Cross documents.”

  “Yes, sir. Now that this is over, we’ll refocus our efforts in that direction.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “We may still have a problem.”

  Knapp’s assassination didn’t dampen anybody’s mood. The bastard killed seven women. If someone took his head off, well, that shouldn’t have happened, but nobody was going to lose sleep over it. It saved the public some money was a common view held in the Pub. Two months of built-up pressure and steam were being blown off big time. Every cab in St. Paul would be parked outside at closing time, Shamus would see to that. When Mac walked in, someone shouted out his name. Another yelled, “Hey look, it’s Ronnie Lott.” The room erupted. On his way to the bar, Mac received high fives, pats on the back, and even a couple of kisses on the cheek, which he hoped were from women. When he got to the bar, Uncle Shamus was there with a warm handshake and a cold Guinness.

  Mac made the rounds, shaking hands, trading smiles and exchanging wisecracks. He finally found Riley, Lich, and Rock holding court at the end of the bar. Even Dot was there, her first appearance with Dick. What a way to start, Mac thought. There was already a stack of empties developing around the group. It would only get bigger. If only I owned Tylenol stock, Mac thought, envisioning the bottles of it that would be consumed tomorrow.

  “Mac, my boy,” Riles said enthusiastically, acting as if he hadn’t seen him in five years, giving him a big bear hug. Riles appeared no worse for the wear from the day’s activities. If anything, having not been shot earlier made him all the more ebullient. Or perhaps it was the alcohol, of which Riles already had plenty. Others gathered around to hear Riley tell the story about the take down on Knapp. Riles had it down pat now, probably having told it twenty times already, adding great drama, timing, if not a little embellishment to it. He stood in the middle of thirty people, his arms waving, his voice getting louder, funnier than hell.

  “… Falcon’s right overhead. The lights and sirens are everywhere. Problem is, nowhere near Knapp. I can see him in the distance, between these two houses. Rock’s just ahead of me, but we’re probably seventy, eighty yards back, running as fast as our piece-of-shit bodies can go. I see Knapp running into the street between two cars, and just then this blur just comes from his left and wipes him out, takes him off his feet. It’s fucking Mac. And I mean to tell you he was going full fuckin’ throttle. He practically ran right through him. Cut him in half. I mean, I think his shoes came flying off when Mac hit him. It was a yard sale. NFL films would have loved to have footage of this.” Riles took a drink. “But Mac’s kind of out of it after the tackle, and we see Knapp startin’ to get up. But then Rock kicks it down, finds a gear I didn’t know he had anymore, and he finishes Knapp off. Total pancake job.” There’s laughter all around. “I get there and check on Mac, who’s a little woozy. I think you were seeing stars, weren’t you?”

  “Maybe,” Mac replied with a smile.

  “Then I walk over and Rock looks like he’s gonna puke, he’s breathing so hard. I’m not sure if he’s holding himself up or if
he’s leaning on Knapp so he won’t fall down.”

  Mac listened as Riley went on, when someone put a soft, delicate arm around him, slowly walking a hand up his back, scratching lightly. He turned to his left to see Sally, who looked him in the eye and planted a big soft wet kiss on him for everybody else to see. Mac, usually not one for public displays of affection, was caught up in the moment and didn’t mind.

  After the kiss and some good-natured ribbing from everyone else, he and Sally moved off to the side and out of the commotion surrounding Riley. Mac got her a beer, and they talked for a few minutes when Riles, finally done with the recounting of the take down, came over to join them.

  “Case isn’t kicking your ass anymore, is it?” Mac said.

  “Got that right,” Riles replied boisterously and put his arm around Sally’s neck, pulling her close and pointing his beer at Mac. “Counselor, did you hear what your boy here did last night?”

  “Yes, Detective. I heard your last rendition over there. Of course, I’m hoping I’ll receive a more thorough debriefing later,” Sally replied, smiling seductively at Mac. He wasn’t going to make closing time.

  Riles loudly jumped all over the comment, “Ohhh, I’m sure Mac will be thoroughly debriefing later.”

  Sally laughed out loud. Mac smiled and shook his head at Riles. “Hey, I’m a boxer man. I hate those tighty whitey’s you wear, Pat.” Mac added, and then in a more conversational tone, “I’ll tell you one thing new I saw today though.”

  “What’s that?” Sally asked, taking another sip from her beer.

  “I went out to Knapp’s place. He had the whole thing on a wall in the basement. Each murder. Pictures, maps, news clippings, the whole shootin’ match. I mean right up on the wall. Organized by victim.”

  “Kind of creepy,” Sally replied.

  “You ain’t kidding,” Mac replied. “But that wasn’t the really odd thing.”

  “What was?” Rock asked as he lit his cigar.

  “There was one victim missing.”

  “Really, who was that?” Riley asked casually, taking a drink.

  “Jamie Jones.”

  “Really. Hmpf. Wonder why?”

  “Yeah,” Mac replied, “I’m thinking I’ll take a—”

  Before he could finish, Rock stopped him, “Guy was crazier than shit, Mac, killing those women. He probably left Jones out intentionally just to fuck with us. He’s dead, case is over—let’s get drunk.”

  Rock was right, Mac thought, at least for tonight. They needed more drinks. “Shamus,” Mac bellowed. “Another round!”

  The group talked idly for a while before Riley drifted off to tell more stories about the case to anyone who’d listen. Tonight he’d have an audience. More cops were coming in by the minute. Mac managed to stay until 10:00 p.m., when Sally finally dragged him out of the Pub. A day that started lousy was about to come to an excellent end.

  • • • • •

  Kraft had been sitting in the bar, twenty feet from McRyan, keeping a low profile, just a working stiff having a beer or two before heading home. They wanted to keep an eye on the group, just to be sure all was well. He heard McRyan mention the corkboard wall in the basement and the missing victim. Kraft finished his beer, threw five dollars on the bar and waded through the sea of cops to the front door. In his car, he grabbed his cell phone, punching up Viper.

  “Yeah.”

  “We may still have a problem.”

  “What?”

  “Apparently Knapp was cutting his clippings.”

  “So?”

  “Somebody’s missing.”

  After a pause, “Shit.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Ever heard of Bristol, Ohio?”

  Mac walked into the detail conference room at 8:00 a.m. and started the coffee maker. He imagined the crew would start coming in shortly, hungover to beat all. Having left the bar at a decent hour, Mac felt good.

  It was clean-up day, time to file all the evidence in boxes and then take a few days off. A stack of unassembled bankers boxers already waited in a corner. Mac put a couple together and started working on the corkboard that had the St. Paul map. As he started pulling stuff down, Dan Patrick walked in.

  “Good morning.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ good about it,” Patrick replied, heading for the coffee.

  Mac chuckled quietly and went back to work on the board. He got to the pin for the body by O’Neill’s Bar, Jamie Jones. She was the one missing from Knapp’s board.

  “Dan, you got the file on this Jones woman? The one you were so mad I didn’t know about.” Patrick gave him a “Go fuck yourself” look through bloodshot eyes and threw a folder over.

  Jones was the CFO at Peterson Technical Applications, otherwise known as PTA, the single largest business and employer in St. Paul. They had a downtown headquarters plus research and manufacturing facilities around the state and across the country, and soon around the world. It was a diversified company as far as Mac knew, but their calling card was military hardware and communications-related equipment.

  “She was CFO?” Mac asked.

  “Yeah.”

  She was thirty-five years old. “Kind of young for that, wasn’t she?”

  “She took over last March for a guy. I forget his name now, but he was killed in an auto accident during a snowstorm. Over on Shepard Road.” Patrick responded as he threw a couple of aspirin in his mouth and washed them down with coffee. Shepard Road ran from downtown west along the Mississippi River over to the International Airport. For an inner-city road, it was notoriously dangerous in spots. Add a March snowstorm to it, and it wasn’t unheard of that a serious accident could occur.

  “Let me guess, during the state hockey tourney.” Snowstorms during the state high school hockey tournament were an annual tradition in Minnesota.

  “Yup.”

  Mac leafed through the file. It was like the other serial-killer files with a picture of the victim, a couple of pages on the evidence tying her to the other murders and a back page, stapled to the folder, with background information, such as address, date of birth, and next of kin.

  Jones came to St. Paul seven years before. She owned a new condo down along the river. Mac recognized the address. It was one of those posh ones in the River Highlands development right on the river, part of St. Paul’s effort to take financial, meaning tax, advantage of the river front. Figures, CFO at a company like PTA should be able to afford digs like that.

  She was different from the others victims. The other victims were, for the most part, working-class women—waitresses and a convenience store clerk. Even Linda Bradley, though she owned the bar, definitely had a blue-collar, working-girl feel to her. Jones didn’t. She was educated, a professional, lived in an expensive neighborhood and worked for a major corporation.

  “Dan, PTA have any facilities along University Avenue?”

  “Huh?”

  “PTA. Do they have anything along or around University?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “It’s just that she doesn’t seem to have much in common with the other victims. How does Knapp stumble onto the CFO of PTA?”

  “Don’t know, Mac. Some of that occurred to us as well. But, the murder matched all the others down to the letter. Strangled. Sexually assaulted and a Trojan condom was used. No pubic hairs or other physical evidence. Dumped in a vacant lot. Left with a ‘Have a Nice Day’ balloon.”

  “Hardly impossible to copycat.”

  “That’s true, except we kept a tight lid on all of the details. Very little got out. Think about it. If the media knew about the Trojan rubber, no pubic hair stuff, the van, they would have run with it. It never got out. We watched that very closely. The only thing that really got out was the balloon stuff, and that was pretty much unavoidable. Point is, we’d have been able to tell if it was a copycat. No dice.”

  Patrick made a valid point. If it wasn’t Knapp, who was it? And if it was somebody else, they had to have t
he inside scoop to get it just right. Pretty unlikely. Nevertheless, something seemed odd about it all.

  Mac touched his belly. Three cups of heavy coffee were getting to him. He grabbed Jones’s file and the sports page and headed to the can. The sports page offered little so he put it over the handicap arm lift and reached down for the Jones file. He flipped it open and started reading through the memo again. Jones was strangled with a nylon rope, yellow, might have been a water skiing towrope. She was sexually assaulted post mortem. There was the presence of Trojan condom residue, but no pubic hair or any other piece of evidence left behind. It was a spot-on match.

  He flipped the memo up and looked at the background information stapled to the back of the folder. Jones was born in 1969 and raised in Bristol, Ohio. Her mother lived in Sun City, Arizona, now. Dad was deceased. Jones had apparently never married. She was a graduate of Duke University and had a masters from Northwestern. She obviously had brains to get into both of those schools. She worked in Chicago before coming to Minnesota. She had been at PTA for seven years, worked her way up the ladder, becoming a very young CFO.

  Mac furrowed his brow. Something on the sheet registered with him, like he had seen it somewhere before, but he wasn’t sure what or where. He finished, got up, and went to the sink to wash his hands. The door burst open. His cousin Paddy, in uniform, came in.

  “Hey, cuz.”

  “How you doing, Mac? Hungover?”

  “Nah. Early night.”

  “Ahhh. Sally.”

  Mac smiled and nodded as he worked the soap on his hands.

  “Hell of a run for you, cuz,” Paddy said, “catching Knapp the way you did and Daniels …”

  Daniels. Mac bolted from the bathroom, briskly walked down the hall and hit the stairs to the basement and the evidence room. A uniform cop, Jorgenson, was working the desk. “Hey, Mac, great job on Knapp—”

  “Thanks. Say, I need to pull some evidence. Everything on the Daniels case.”

  “Daniels? What’dya need that for?”

  “Just want to check something out.”