Electing To Murder

by Roger Stelljes

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to take a standard run of the mill drug or sex related murder here at The Snelling and turn it into something complicated,” moaned McRyan’s partner Richard Lich, a/k/a Dick Lick, as he stepped carefully into the room. Attired in one of his trademark shit-brown suits, striped tie and scuffed loafer ensembles that was topped off with a black fedora covering his bald dome, Lich carefully maneuvered his heavyset body around the deceased. “Why, for once, can’t it just be easy?”

  “What would be the fun in that,” Mac replied with a wry smile. “Besides, the case is more interesting when you add into this the question of how our killer knows the guy ordered from Valeninos?”

  Lich shrugged his shoulders.

  Mac’s cousin had an answer, “Valeninos is the only shop that will deliver here.”

  “Fine,” Mac responded, but then asked, “how did the killer know he ordered a pizza?”

  “Hmpf,” Lich snorted. Dick walked over to the hotel phone, picked it up and took a quick look around and didn’t see an obvious listening device. “We should have crime scene take the phone and examine it,” he said. “That’s a good question, Mac. Could have just been standing outside the door and heard it and thought it’s a good way to get in.”

  Mac chewed on that as he walked back over to the victim and ran his small pen-sized flashlight over the exposed arms of the victim. “Doc, you see any evidence of drug use on the vic?”

  “No needle marks that I saw on his arms,” the coroner answered as she pulled off the victim’s socks and examined between the toes. “I don’t see any needle marks between the toes along the feet, so he looks clean. I can tell you for sure once I examine him at the morgue and run a tox screen. However, he doesn’t have the drug user look to him.”

  Mac nodded as he looked the victim over. He had an expensive haircut with maybe one or two day’s stylish razor stubble. The victim’s clothes were a little dirty but were quality, Levi’s, nylon Nautica zip-up black pullover, top-of-the-line hiking boots. “Is it me or does this guy not fit the common demographic for clientele here at The Snelling, or at least the clientele that fractures the occasional law while here?”

  “You mean, say, a strung out drug addled sex fiend?” Lich asked.

  “Yeah, something like that,” Mac answered nodding.

  “Then that’s a negative. He looks pretty clean cut for The Snelling.”

  “Is Bob even from these parts?” Mac asked.

  “No ID. No wallet. No luggage, so who knows?” Lich answered. “Maybe he’s a student from Hamline University who wandered down the street into the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “He’s older than a Hamline student,” Mac answered. “This guy is in his thirties, I’d say.”

  “Maybe a law student?” Lich questioned. Hamline had a law school.

  “William Mitchell usually would have the law students in their thirties, going to the night school, not Hamline.” Mac answered, a William Mitchell graduate in his own right. He stood up and walked over to the bed where the victim appeared to have been sitting.

  “What are you thinking, Mac?” Lich asked.

  “Our guy was sitting here on the bed, watching television perhaps, maybe the news.”

  “The news? At The Snelling?” Lich replied skeptically. “Porn seems more likely.”

  “Speaking from experience,” Mac replied, which drew a one-finger solute response from Lich. “Whatever he was watching, our guy is sitting here, right?”

  “Yeah. He hears a knock on the door,” Lich adds. “Thinking his Valeninos’ Deluxe Supreme has arrived.”

  “Right, he looks through the peephole and the guy is holding a pizza or at least a pizza box.”

  “So he lets the killer in. The killer walks in, puts the pizza box on the table.”

  “Bob here is relaxed and perhaps reaches for his wallet. Figuring he’ll pay for the pizza quick and …”

  “The killer sees this and jumps him from behind, cuts his throat and leaves with his wallet, watch and apparently anything else our guy came with,” Mac finished as he pulled the pillows up and looked down. Between the mattress and the wall, just under the headboard, he saw a piece of paper. He unfolded it.

  “I don’t think Bob is from around here.”

  “What do you have?”

  “A boarding pass, interestingly enough. Delta flight from St. Louis to Minneapolis dated today. And it’s not for a Bob Smith, but for a Jason Stroudt.”

  “Case just got a little more interesting,” Lich said.

  “Perhaps,” Mac answered. “I mean, it seems to me it would be pretty unusual for someone to fly up from St. Louis and then come here?”

  “Unless he was coming up here to get a little somethin’ somethin’, a girl maybe,” Lich answered. “Or maybe he’s going to make some sort of drug deal.”

  “Where is the evidence of that? The coroner says there is no outward evidence of drugs on the victim.”

  “Maybe the tox screen will prove otherwise, Mac. Maybe he’s not a user but a dealer meeting a supplier, who knows. Smart drug dealers are ones who don’t use their own product.”

  “That’s true. To figure this out we have to start putting this guy’s life together, at least the last few hours of it, to see what’s what,” Mac declared. “Let’s go down and talk to the manager and see if he can give us anything.”

  The long-time manager of The Snelling was Tony Seville. Seville was a slight and grungy man whose eyes were constantly shifting left to right. He never looked anyone in the eye, which was advisable given where he worked. Seville was fully aware of the activities that took place at the motel he managed. Vice thought he probably got a little piece of the action from time to time from some of his regular clientele and was accomplished at turning a blind eye. Consequently, he knew little and was evasive in providing what he did know. He reported that Bob Smith checked in mid-afternoon. After some further questioning, he pegged the time at a shade after 2:00 p.m. Seville was even evasive about how Smith reserved the room. After pestering from McRyan and Lich, it turns out that there was no reservation for a room. He paid cash for one night, scribbled his name on the register and was handed a room key. The only other contact with the guest was when he called down for a pizza delivery number.

  “I gave him Valeninos.”

  “Any particular reason?” Lich asked.

  “They’re the only ones that will still deliver here and even then only while the sun is still up,” Seville answered.

  “What time was that at?” Mac asked. “That he called down for the pizza number.”

  “I couldn’t say for sure,” Seville answered quietly, slippery as ever.

  Mac finally snapped. “Damn it, Tony! All I asked was what time he called down for a fucking pizza, so enough of this shit. You know I’m not a vice or dope cop. I don’t care about what you have going on the side here. But if you don’t start answering my questions the first time, I’ll have vice and dope in here within the hour and they will care about your side action. Hell, they’ll come down here just for the practice.”

  Seville held up his hands. “Okay, okay. Detective, I’m pretty sure he called down to me between 2:45 and 3:00.”

  “What time did the driver stop in here asking for you to come up to the room?”

  “Right around 4:00 p.m.”

  Mac looked to Lich. “That gives us 2:45–3:00 to 4:00 as the kill zone.”

  Lich nodded, jotting down notes.

  “Did you see anyone approach his room?”

  “I didn’t, but …” Seville shrugged his shoulders.

  “What?” Lich said.

  “You make it a practice to turn a blind eye unless you absolutely have to?” Mac surmised.

  “Occupational requirement,” Seville answered.

  “Economic necessity,” Lich quipped. Seville just shrugged.

  Mac continued: “So when he checked in, did he have any luggage, anything like that with him?”

  “Not
that I really recall,” Seville answered and then thought for a moment. “He had a backpack, I think, over his left shoulder, but no suitcase or anything like that.”

  Mac jotted that down. “How did he get here?”

  “I think he drove,” Seville answered. “I did watch him when he walked out. There are the curtains on the bottom of the window, but when he walked out, I could see the top of a car door that opened, he dropped down and into the car. I assumed he drove it down closer to the steps at the end of his wing of the building and went up.”

  “What kind of car?” Lich asked.

  “I didn’t look. Like I said, I saw the very top of the door swing open, darker color I think, but I didn’t watch him drive away.”

  Mac looked out the window and given that the victim’s motel room was to the right, Seville wouldn’t have been able to see the car. It would have been blocked by the half-curtains for the window.

  “And he gave you the name Bob Smith?”

  Seville nodded.

  “Did you look at his identification at all? Perhaps his driver’s license?”

  “No,” Seville responded. “The only time I do that is if someone tries to pay with credit, then I might give that a look because I don’t want to get stiffed, but people usually don’t flash the plastic here, almost always cash. If they pay cash, I don’t really care what their name is. Joe Schmo, Bob Smith, Little Richard, I don’t care what name they use as long as we get paid.”

  “How about the name Jason Stroudt?” Lich asked. “That name mean anything to you?”

  Seville shook his head.

  “Was Bob Smith the only person you rented that room to today?” Mac followed.

  Seville nodded.

  “Anything else, Tony?” Mac asked skeptically. “Anything you’ve purposefully neglected to tell me?”

  The Snelling manager shook his head. “You know what I know, Detectives.”

  Mac and Lich stared him down.

  “Honest.”

  Mac and Lich walked out of the manager’s office. There wasn’t a car parked in the vicinity of the victim’s room.

  “So where’s the car?” Lich asked.

  “We have two things to track down, our victim and his car,” Mac said, scribbling down some to do’s. “I’m going to call Delta and see if Bob Smith is really Jason Stroudt. From there, maybe we can track the car.”

  * * *

  Heath Connolly stood off to the side of the dais reading e-mails from his campaign staff while Vice President Wellesley delivered his second speech of the day in Cincinnati. The campaign manager tried to focus on the flurry of e-mail clogging his smart phone. One e-mail wanted approval of Friday and Saturday’s travel schedule. Another e-mail inquired about Connolly’s availability to appear on the Sunday morning political shows and This Week was making a particular push which made Connolly wince. He always tried to avoid This Week, if for no other reason than the Washington Post’s George Will always seemed to twist him in knots. Another e-mail provided him with an update on Super PAC advertising in Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia and Ohio, the key battleground states. However, he was having trouble focusing, the hairy events of the night before still fresh and swirling around in his mind.

  He’d held many a late night meeting at Hitch’s place in the past without a problem and it had seemed like a completely safe and out of the way place for last night’s meeting to see the demonstration of The Plan in its ultimate form. Unfortunately, that demonstration was delayed several hours and only then provided in the hanger at the airport in Princeton, Kentucky, once completely secured. From what Connolly had seen, the plan would work. He just needed to keep the election tight and the plan from being exposed.

  The former was looking easier than the latter when there was a buzz in his left suit pant pocket.

  He casually put his campaign phone inside the breast pocket for his suit coat and reached into his left pant pocket and pulled out his other phone, which displayed a new text message. The message read: ‘One down, one to go.’

  Connolly casually elbowed Donald Wellesley Jr. standing just to his right and handed him the phone. Wellesley Jr. knew fully the events of the night before even though he’d not attended them. He handed the phone back to Connolly and whispered, “Any idea where they are on the other?”

  “No.”

  “Breathe easy, Heath,” Wellesley said casually. “It’s only a matter of time before Kristoff and his merry band of men track him down and then this thing will be in the bag, like it always should have been.”

  Connolly snorted, “I won’t breathe easy until this is over.”

  “Fine,” Wellesley replied nonplused, “but we keep the pressure on in Iowa, Wisconsin and Virginia and we’re golden, my friend. Thomson won’t know what hit him.”

  * * *

  Kristoff watched the scene unfold at The Snelling from across Snelling Avenue, sitting in a black Chrysler minivan. To his right was his long-time friend and business partner Francois Foche. Both were taking in the murder scene of Jason Stroudt with binoculars.

  Once again they were cleaning up a mess. They’d cleaned one up in Milwaukee last night only to get the call that they had a new one requiring their attention.

  Jason Stroudt was one half of their problem, which meant that one half of their newest problem was now solved. Stroudt, and his partner, somehow knew about the meeting at Hitch’s cabin. In the chase through the woods from Hitch’s cabin, one man managed to get a partial plate on a Ford Taurus as it sped away. The partial plate led to Stroudt.

  Kristoff and Foche tracked Stroudt to the Twin Cities via his credit card and flight. They’d tracked him from the airport to The Snelling. The rest, while not hard, was constructed on the fly. In his experience, when you had to make such a move on the fly, something invariably was missed.

  Having taken care of Stroudt, Kristoff and Foche reviewed what the blogger had in his backpack. Stroudt and his partner saw too much in Kentucky. What had Kristoff worried was that whoever was with Stroudt in Kentucky probably possessed the same information and photos that Stroudt did. Kristoff knew what the election plan was and if someone knew what they were looking at in the photos and put the pieces together, the fallout would be massive.

  Kristoff and Foche had to tie off the loose end from Kentucky.

  So who was with Stroudt last night?

  Kristoff was certain it was Stroudt’s blogging partner Adam Montgomery. The two of them flew together to Nashville and stayed at the same hotel. For now, it appeared that Montgomery had fallen off the grid, exercising far more caution than that exhibited by his now late business partner. Montgomery’s cell phone was turned off, there was no credit card activity and they had been unable to track his whereabouts since Kentucky. He did not make his Nashville flight nor had he taken any other flight, unlike his business partner. Kristoff had a team conduct a search of Stroudt’s home and office in the early morning hours. The team was still reviewing everything from the search but thus far they had no leads on how the two bloggers knew of Kentucky.

  Montgomery would surface eventually. Kristoff’s men were tracking Montgomery’s cell phone, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, website, credit cards and cash card. Sooner or later he would show up on the electronic grid, they always did. Kristoff just needed Montgomery to come out of hiding in or near a place where he had assets available to be deployed.

  In the meantime, Kristoff and Foche decided to monitor the Stroudt crime scene. They’d been watching The Snelling for a half hour when the Black Yukon arrived bringing the first suit to the scene. “Younger guy,” Foche said hopefully.

  “Do St. Paul cops drive high-end Yukons?” Kristoff wondered out loud as he picked up his cell phone and made a call. “I need you to run a Minnesota plate.”

  Fifteen minutes later he had the rundown on the Yukon on his phone. “This could have gone better,” he muttered.

  “Why?” Foche asked.

  “The Yukon is not department issue but the personal vehicle of Mic
hael McKenzie McRyan. He’s a detective and from the look of things, a fine one. Magna Cum Laude graduate from the University of Minnesota and William Mitchell College of Law. He joined the police department after law school and has some rather impressive police work to his name.”

  “Guy with that background becomes a cop for a very specific if not personal reason,” Foche said with some insight. “Something must have happened to him or a family member to make him become a cop.”

  “You may be right. Part of the answer may be that police work is something of the family business. Apparently there are many a McRyan in the St. Paul Police Department. His late father was Simon McRyan, a detective of some regard years ago. Perhaps young Michael McKenzie here simply followed the calling to the family business.”

  “What has he done that means we should hold him in such high esteem?” Foche asked.

  “You remember hearing about that shoot-out in St. Paul with some professionals who worked with the military contractor PTA?”

  “I do,” Foche answered, sitting up in his passenger seat and dropping the binoculars from his eyes to look at Kristoff. “I knew the man with PTA. His name was Webb Alt. I worked with him two different times when he was CIA, they called him Viper. He was very good.”

  “While at PTA, this Alt got into some off-the-books arms sales business that this McRyan discovered. McRyan took him down. There was a chase through downtown St. Paul and McRyan got the drop on Alt and shot him in a parking ramp. Then summer before last there was a kidnapping case, where the St. Paul police chief’s and a prominent lawyer’s daughters were kidnapped. It was a national story over the 4th of July. There was significant media coverage.”

  “McRyan had that one as well?” Foche asked.

  “He did. Apparently, against orders, he went rogue with a couple of other detectives. He brought both women home and took down all the kidnappers, even the FBI agent working it from the inside.”