Blood Silence - Thriller (McRyan Mystery Series)

by Roger Stelljes

  Mac looked at the hole in his coat, the holes in the left leg of his jeans with some blood oozing through, and the scrapes on his left hand. Looking at Norman, he simply said, “So arrest me.”

  “Riiiiight,” Norman replied, “Just hand me your gun and tell me what the hell is going on here.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “It does if it causes Mac to stop poking around.”

  Mac explained to Norman what the scene at Meredith’s was all about. Then he asked for a favor. “So listen, Normy, any chance I could get a couple of old friends on this?”

  “Who do you have in mind?”

  Mac told him.

  Norman chuckled and understood exactly what Mac was looking for. “Let me make a call.”

  A half hour later, veteran Minneapolis detectives Ed Gerdtz and Bud Subject arrived on the scene, followed by a crime scene crew. The beauty of the two veteran detectives and friends working the scene was that certain protocol and procedures were ignored. They let Mac tag along.

  Problem was, there wasn’t much to find.

  It was clear there was a break-in. The back door of the garage leading into the pool area was wide open, and the main circuit breaker in the fuse box was turned off. Crime scene was printing both the fuse box and the door, not to mention all other surfaces in the house that might have been reasonably touched by the intruder on the way in, based upon Meredith’s recap. Ballistics would be taken on the gun. There were four shell casings.

  “Pretty quick thinking by your ex-wife there, Mac,” Gerdtz observed.

  “I’ll say,” Subject added.

  “She’s smart and always had a pretty cool head under pressure,” Mac answered while the three of them were up in Meredith’s room, checking out the bullet-ridden bed, and then he walked over to the closet and noticed the putter leaning against the wall. Meredith had been hiding in the closet. She heard the siren approaching, and then, when the lights started reflecting in the room, probably when Mac was pulling into the driveway, the killer ran. He couldn’t help thinking that she should be dead. If he hadn’t called her when he did, she would be.

  Later, Mac stood with Gerdtz and Subject around their sedan, which was parked down the street from the house. Gerdtz was puffing on a cigarette, the white smoke matching his white, unkempt-yet-thinning, Einstein-like hair while Mac and Subject sipped on convenience store coffees.

  “I’m not holding my breath on prints,” Mac muttered, taking a drink of the now-lukewarm coffee. “A silencer, getting into the house like it was nothing, with a planned escape route and driver waiting—that guy was a pro.” He changed his focus to where they had a chance. “For now, that leaves the SUV. Any hits on that?”

  Subject slowly shook his head, looking down into his coffee cup. “Not yet. If the guy was a pro, Mac—”

  “That SUV is at the bottom of a body of water,” Gerdtz finished. “Or it’s already in a chop shop or being crushed at a junk yard or buried deep in a garage somewhere. Plus, we don’t know what kind of SUV it was, other than big and dark colored. I mean, we’re searching, but …”

  Mac nodded in resignation. “It’s a long shot at best, I know. Nevertheless…”

  “We’ll keep looking,” Gerdtz answered, exhaling smoke out his nose. “Everyone on duty has their eyes and ears open.”

  “So Mac, what the hell is up with this?” Subject asked. “This whole thing doesn’t make sense.”

  “Yeah, why would someone want Meredith dead?” Ed Gerdtz added. “Is there someone out there that angry about her husband’s death that they’d want to kill her? I mean, if you’re right, and you think she was set up, then why kill her? It just doesn’t make sense.”

  Mac looked up at Gerdtz. “No, it doesn’t.”

  “It does if it causes Mac to stop poking around,” Subject casually suggested as he slid a piece of Wrigley’s into his mouth. “I’ve been paying attention to this thing from afar, and your ex-wife looks guilty. But after tonight, I’m not so sure. So if you assume someone else is responsible for the deaths of Sterling and his mistress, whoever that is seems worried about something, and when I look at what’s changed in the case”—Bud pointed to Mac—“you’re the change. They’ve been watching, and they’re worried about you, Mac.”

  “Why were you coming here, anyway?” Gerdtz asked.

  “To search for something,” Mac answered and then waved for them to follow. “Come with me.” He quickly walked back up the driveway to the house. The power was back on, and the house was now filled with light. Meredith was in the kitchen with her parents, Uncle Teddy, and Lyman, who’d all now arrived on the scene.

  “Meredith, where’s your husband’s office?”

  “Go down the back hallway into the garage and then up the narrow staircase on the right.”

  Mac made a beeline for the back hallway, Gerdtz, Subject, and the others in tow. He opened the door into the garage, which had a fairly low ceiling, and the steps up to the office cut a small hole in the back right corner. He ascended the narrow staircase, which was eight steep steps up to a landing and then turned ninety degrees and was another set of eight steep steps up to the open office above the garage. “Well, isn’t this nice,” Mac remarked with admiration. As a man who’d rehabilitated more than one house, he was impressed with the fine detail of the office.

  No expense was spared in its construction and decoration. The office was expansive, with floor-to-ceiling, built-in, deep mahogany bookshelves on all four walls tastefully filled with books, pictures, mementos, and the like. A large, rectangular Iranian rug covered a significant portion of the dark-wood parquet floor. A large writer’s desk sat at the opposite end of the room with a high-backed leather chair and two soft-leather sitting chairs in front. On the right wall, halfway down, was a stone fireplace with a flat-screen television mounted above. Halfway down the left wall was a built-in wet bar. Behind the wet bar was a small bathroom. “If I had this kind of office,” Mac mused, “I’m not sure I’d ever leave it.”

  “When he was home, he didn’t,” Meredith replied derisively. “He would bury himself in here. It was his little sanctuary.”

  “Mac, why are we up here?” Lyman asked.

  “Because apparently Sterling would at times store sensitive information at home rather than in the files at his law firm,” Mac answered as he walked around the room, looking at the shelves. “And this is the most likely place he would store that information if he did.”

  “Big house, Mac,” Lyman replied. “He could have hidden stuff anywhere.”

  “How often did you come up here, Meredith?” Mac asked.

  “Almost never,” she answered. “He liked to be left alone up here to work, and I just kind of understood that I, and anyone else for that matter, should avoid coming up here.”

  Mac looked over at Lyman.

  “Okay, so if it’s in the house, it’s likely in here,” Hisle now agreed.

  Meredith joined in, as did the others, looking for a place for him to hide or store materials. People checked the shelves and knocked on the walls on the back of the bookshelves for a hollow sound. Mac inspected the wood floors along the shelves to see if there were any floor markings indicating a shelf would move and checked behind pictures and the flat-screen television, yet nothing was found. After a half hour of searching, the group was losing steam.

  “I don’t know, Mac,” Lyman suggested. “Great theory, but maybe he didn’t store anything here—or maybe not in this office. Like I said, it’s a big house, and it isn’t his only house.”

  Meredith, physically and emotionally exhausted, looked as though she just wanted to go back to bed as she plopped herself down in a chair in front of the desk.

  Now coming down from the adrenaline of the chase and the initial search of the office, Mac too was tired as he sat down at the desk and sunk himself into the deep leather chair and soaked in the room. Twisting in the chair, he looked up at the ceiling—the high ceiling with the thick wood beams and recessed lighting high
above the floor. “The ceiling,” he muttered as he pushed himself out of the chair and went to the steps back down to the garage. The ceiling in the garage was finished but hung low. There was a drop-down ladder in the middle. He pulled down on the rope, unfolded the ladder, and climbed up into the storage space. At the top, he saw a chain for a light and pulled it on. There was a small crawl space, perhaps five feet in height, for storage. There were assorted boxes, along with tubs filled with Christmas decorations and lights. However, what drew Mac’s attention was a framed-in area covered in sheetrock to the left of where he thought the desk sat in the office. He crawled back into the storage space to the boxed-in area, with square sides three to four feet in length. Something was encased behind the sheetrock.

  Mac exited the crawlspace, climbed back down the ladder, and saw he’d now drawn the interest of Lyman.

  “Did you find something?”

  “Maybe,” Mac answered as he climbed the steps back up to the office and went to the left of the desk. He threw back the rug and looked at the parquet wood, examining the seams of the floor. The dark parquet pieces were approximately three feet by three feet. Mac looked under the desk for a latch or button but didn’t see one. Behind the desk was a built-in credenza with filing drawers on the left and right and a two-door cabinet in the middle. “If you were going to run a latch, you’d run it down through the built-in, wouldn’t you?” he murmured as he opened the middle cabinet doors and felt up under the ledge until he felt a latch, pressed it, and smiled at the snapping noise. He looked back to his left, and a section of the parquet floor had popped up.

  “Well, hello there,” Lyman exclaimed while everyone else came over to take a look. Mac got down to his knees and removed the piece of flooring. In the floor was a combination safe.

  Mac looked at Meredith. “I suppose since you didn’t know this existed, you don’t have the combination?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I know a guy,” Mac suggested.

  “You know a guy?” Meredith asked.

  “Yeah, I got guys everywhere. This particular guy is a safe cracker. We’ll get him here tomorrow.”

  “While you’re doing that,” Lyman answered, “I’m going to have a chat with the Hennepin County attorney. And Mac, you’re going with me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “My conspiracy meter, and it’s on high alert.”

  7:15 A.M.

  Hennepin County Attorney Candace Johnson was an early riser. It was one of her political selling points as she was well into her second term—late to bed and early to rise, representing the legal interests of Minnesota’s largest county. And then there was her political ambition—she had it in spades and was eyeing higher office. A United States Senate seat was open next year. Johnson was positioning herself for it and therefore was on the constant hunt for cases and opportunities to burnish her already-robust resume.

  This was one of them.

  A victory over Lyman Hisle, putting a lawyer and the daughter of a prominent family in prison for murder, would only further enhance her cross-party appeal.

  As a result, despite Lyman’s well-crafted and delivered arguments of the past twenty minutes, she was not dropping the case against Meredith. If anything, she was digging in her heels.

  “Someone tried to kill her,” Lyman pointed out again, sitting comfortably in the leather chair in front of Johnson’s desk. To Lyman’s left was Assistant County Attorney Dan Goodman, who was the lead prosecutor on the case, although undoubtedly Johnson would play a role—she always did on the larger cases. Mac stood in the back of the office, leaning against a credenza, sipping what seemed like his sixth coffee.

  Mac had slept two hours and felt that he needed a couple more but wasn’t sure when he’d get them. “They broke into the house, cut the power, took four shots at what they thought was my client’s body, and then fled the scene,” Lyman explained calmly. “I’m sure that is something that will be of interest to a jury.”

  “As I said, Lyman, I’m relieved Mrs. Sterling is still alive,” Johnson answered, sitting back in her tall, leather desk chair, arms folded across her chest, right leg over the left. “But that’s all I am. I look forward to trying her case.”

  “I don’t know, Candace,” Lyman replied skeptically, shaking his head. “It’s becoming increasingly clear she’s innocent of these charges. You know it, and I know it.”

  “Do I?” Johnson retorted confidently. “I mean, what has really changed here?” She pressed. Johnson still held a strong hand. “Your client had motive, means, and opportunity, and despite your well-told and compelling story, you’ve done nothing, absolutely nothing, to disprove that. Your client has no credible alibi for the night of her murder. I have her prints on the murder weapon. I have no forced entry at her lake home. I have her car leaving the scene. Nothing you’ve said today disproves any of that, and yet you’re asking me to drop the charges? Seriously, Lyman? Why would I even contemplate what you’re asking?”

  “If anything,” Goodman added, “we’re still asking if you want to plea this out.”

  “If I wanted to talk plea, we already would have,” Lyman answered coldly.

  “Well, as for last night’s intruder,” Goodman offered, “it’s all just a little too convenient for me.”

  “How so?” Lyman asked.

  “It just so happens that the one night she goes to her home, someone gets into her house? Oh, and the gallant Mr. McRyan here just so happens to be on his way to save the day to make it all look good,” Johnson proffered. “How convenient.”

  “Oh, so you’re mocking us,” Lyman retorted with a little edge. “You think she set this up?”

  “Makes as much sense as what you’re proposing, Lyman,” Goodman replied with a smile. “She has the resources to make this happen. And if Candace were to drop the charges, suddenly she’d have millions at her disposal to pay the intruder for making it look good.”

  “And my theories are fanciful,” Lyman mocked and then grinned. “I think my client would welcome your in-depth investigation of her phones and financials. Someone tried to kill her last night—she didn’t set anything up.”

  “Oh, come on, Lyman. Give me a frickin’ break. It’s a beautiful home in Lake of the Isles, full of treasure. Your client and her late husband are worth millions,” Johnson barked, jumping back into the fray, untroubled by the latest developments. “She’s been gone, staying at her parents. Why is it so hard to believe that someone would break in?”

  “Then why have a silencer? Why, when he got into the house, was his first move to go up to the master bedroom and pump four into what he thought was Meredith?” Mac retorted with disgust, speaking for the first time. He was not impressed with Johnson or Goodman. “The man was not an intruder looking to steal a painting or a vase. Give me a fucking break.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Goodman asked.

  “Because, Daniel,” Mac mocked as he threw his empty coffee cup into the waste basket, “unlike you, I have experience in this area. The way the man moved, shot, and operated says he was a pro. And I got a news flash for you. Professional killers”—Mac shook his head—“they don’t break and enter to steal. They’ve already been paid. That man was there to do one thing and one thing only, and that was to finish the job and earn his money.”

  “Too bad you didn’t catch him—we could have asked him,” Goodman needled. “Instead, he got away, and you’re left with nothing.”

  “For now,” Mac replied icily.

  “What proof do you really have, though, that this makes her innocent?” Goodman asked. “We need proof of innocence to drop the charges. Other than the break-in, for which there are a number of possible explanations, nothing has changed in this case.”

  “Dan makes a good point—why the sudden need to off Mrs. Sterling?” Johnson asked confidently. “Why, just six days after she was arrested and supposedly set up, would the killers now want to eliminate her?”

  “Because Mac’s investigating,�
�� Lyman answered.

  “Oh, well,” Goodman mocked, feigning fright. “I guess we should all just go home then, if the great Mac McRyan is investigating.”

  Johnson laughed along. “Yes, I guess I should just take your word for it and save the county a bunch of money.”

  “Lyman’s point is,” Mac suggested, trying to keep his composure, “that perhaps they’re afraid of what we’ll find. If they kill her, we stop looking—or at least I stop looking or they think I do.”

  “You’re awfully confident, Mr. McRyan,” Johnson suggested.

  Mac snorted. “I have a track record.”

  “Arrogant much?” Goodman asked, looking Mac in the eye.

  “You really think you’re going to win this, Mr. Goodman, Ms. Johnson?” Mac asked with a smirk. He’d taken the measure of Johnson and Goodman, and he wasn’t impressed.

  “Do you?” Johnson asked, undeterred. “I go back to what I said a minute ago. I’ve got motive, means, and opportunity, and you’ve done nothing, absolutely nothing, to disprove that. Ask that fiancée of yours, who used to work for me, and she’ll tell you that’s a winning hand. So until you can convince me that I don’t have those things anymore, I’m not dropping the charges.”

  “And last night means nothing to you?”

  “It could have been staged. It’s a robbery. There are any number of possible explanations besides yours. All I really have is the word of your ex-wife that this all happened up in that bedroom. You didn’t see it happen, did you? You don’t know if this whole story of her hiding in the closet, ready to hit this killer with a putter is true. You saw what she wanted you to see.”

  “I’ll tell you what, those bullets that nearly clipped me didn’t feel staged,” Mac growled in reply, displaying the hole in the right sleeve of his leather jacket. “You all might want to think about that.”