Electing To Murder: A compelling crime thriller (McRyan Mystery Thriller Series Book) (McRyan Mystery Series Book 4)

by Roger Stelljes

  “Exactly,” Wire added, shaking her head, looking out the front window. “About the only thing the AG didn’t do was disclose my guy’s name. In any event, at the cocktail party were a number of people in the New Jersey Congressional Delegation.”

  “You’re kidding,” Mac blurted in disbelief, now knowing exactly where this was going.

  “I kid you not,” she replied, exasperated. “Someone from that group, we never did find out whom, got word back to the Giordano’s and a week later my guy’s floating in the world’s greatest body depository.”

  “Ahh, the Hudson.”

  “He was beaten to death.”

  “You were upset,” Mac said, leading her along. He saw the darkness slowly float into her eyes as she told the story. He wanted to know it all now.

  “You have no idea,” she replied darkly. “I didn’t know who from Jersey told the Giordano’s but I found out it was Wellesley Jr. who let word slip at the party.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I followed him for three days until he went to a small out of the way bar in DC. When I approached, I didn’t look like I presented a danger. The Secret Service didn’t even bat an eye when I walked in the bar. I went in the front door, locked it behind me and walked right up to Wellesley and told him Franchesca was a friend of mine. I one punched Wellesley’s friend out of the way and then proceeded to beat the living daylights out of Donald Jr. For a minute or maybe longer, Mac, I just beat him about the face with my fists, feet and elbows. I just kept going and going and going.”

  “You lost control, right?”

  She nodded, “I was in a rage, completely out of control. I almost killed him. I might have killed him had the Secret Service not finally got inside. His face looked like hamburger when I was done with him.”

  Mac smiled, “That fits.”

  “What?”

  “I remember something about the vice president’s son dropping out of sight for a number of months and nobody knew where he’d been. When he resurfaced people commented that he looked a little different. Now I know why,” Mac looked her in the eye, nodded and grinned. “Good for you.”

  Wire rubbed her face. This wasn’t a story she often told. “I guess he had to go through several surgeries on his face to get things back in position, so to speak. Whatever,” she added dismissively. “He got off easy compared to Giovanni.”

  “So you left the bureau.”

  “Well, I wasn’t really given a choice. I was looking at more trouble than that but the Judge stepped in and looked after me and brokered a deal.”

  “Judge Dixon is a good man to have in a storm.”

  “Absolutely. My deal was I walk away and the Wellesley Jr. story stays quiet. Had that come out, it would have been a severe black mark for the vice president, who certainly was looking to run for the top spot in the next go around. You can only imagine how hard it was for the Judge to sit on that during the campaign, but the Judge is a man of his word.”

  “Remind me,” Mac said, sitting back in his booth with a broad grin on his face, “to never cross you.”

  “You do and I will kick your ass.”

  “I do believe you would.”

  As Wire drove them back into DC and the Hoover Building, they moved back to talking about the case. “You ever think we’ll find out who this mysterious Bishop is?”

  “We need to find some leverage to use on Connolly to get him to tell us,” Mac answered. “He has to be given a reason to talk.” He changed topics. “How’s your relationship with Director Mitchell?”

  Wire stared straight ahead, “Okay, I think. He wasn’t the director when I was forced to leave. But I knew him, respected him. I always thought he was a pretty straight shooter. What do you think of him?”

  Mac squinted and tilted his head, “I have limited experience with him obviously, but I agree, straight shooter. Gates, I don’t know about him yet.”

  “Lawyer,” Wire answered. “They never shoot straight. They hedge and play the angles.”

  “I live with one, don’t I know it.”

  They both laughed.

  Wire pulled in underneath and found a parking space. They made their way in, through security and up to the director’s office, where they were let in to find the director and attorney general. Director Mitchell went immediately to Wire. “Former Special Agent Wire, it is good to see you,” he welcomed, extending his hand.

  “Thank you, Director.”

  “This is Attorney General Gates.” Wire and Gates shook hands.

  “Feel odd to be back in the building?” Mitchell asked with a smile.

  Wire smiled shyly. “A bit.”

  “Where are we at on Bishop?” Mac asked, getting right to it as he usually did.

  “We don’t have anything new on that,” Gates replied, “at least not yet. I have people still looking into the case Ms. Wire mentioned to you this morning. The moniker or name of Bishop shows up, but as you reported, it was never determined who that was. I’ve got people re-looking into the case, but it’ll take some time.”

  “However,” Mitchell interjected, “we’ve been digging into your dead killer back in the Twin Cities, Francois Foche. We brought Special Agent Duffy back into this and we’ve been accessing other resources and have developed a good biography on Foche. So let’s go take a look at that.”

  Director Mitchell led them down the hall to a special meeting room. On the far wall was a screen split in two. On the left side of the screen was the face of Ed Duffy. “Good afternoon, Special Agent Duffy,” Mac welcomed.

  “And to you, Detective McRyan. How ya doing, Mac?”

  “I’m hanging in there.”

  Mitchell made other introductions and then looked to the screen with Duffy’s face. “Special Agent Duffy, please start the brief.”

  “Yes, sir,” Duffy began by showing a picture of Foche. “Francois Foche had been with the General Directorate for External Security for France for many years.” Duffy spent a few minutes reviewing Foche’s background.

  “Ed, where did you get all this?” Mac asked.

  “French Intelligence shared with us through the CIA,” Director Mitchell answered for Duffy and looked at Mac and Wire. “That doesn’t leave this room.”

  Mac and Wire nodded.

  “Special Agent Duffy, please continue.”

  “Yes, sir. Foche was a field agent and had a very good career. However, there was a French and United States joint intelligence and military operation in Afghanistan in 2002 that went bad. Foche’s superior officer, a man named Nicolas Kristoff, ran the operation but it failed. There is some question as to how it went bad and unfortunately, it appears that there may have been a security breach on our side of the operation. Nonetheless, Foche and his superior, Kristoff, walked thirty men into an ambush in Kandahar.”

  “Let me guess,” Mac speculated. “Foche and Kristoff took the fall in France for the operation going bad.”

  “So it appears,” Duffy replied. “After the failure of the mission, Foche and Kristoff were reassigned back to Paris and not long after, they retired from the Directorate and were never heard from again.”

  “Never heard from?” Wire asked.

  “Yeah,” Duffy replied, nodding his head in agreement. “It was as if they disappeared. The pictures you and Detective McRyan provided us on Foche show that he’s had some work done to change his appearance slightly. It looks like some nose and chin work but we’re certain that it’s Foche that you have.”

  “How about this Kristoff, he disappeared as well?” Mac asked.

  “Yes,” Duffy replied. “Here’s a picture of Kristoff.”

  The picture went up on the screen to the right.

  “I’ve seen that man!” Mac exclaimed, standing up and marching to the screen displaying Kristoff’s picture. “It’s the eyes. I’ve seen those eyes.”

  “Where, Detective?” Director Mitchell asked.

  “St. Paul. He was the face in the panel van in St. Paul, outside my fa
mily’s pub. He was in the panel van shooting at us. I locked eyes on him for a second or two. That’s him.”

  “Foche and Kristoff were still working together then,” Wire said. “The question remains for whom?”

  “Let’s go ask Connolly,” Mac suggested.

  “On what basis do you go back after Connolly?” Director Mitchell asked.

  “Kristoff was Foche’s superior with French Intelligence. He’s probably Foche’s superior now. So he was at McCormick’s place in St. Paul,” Mac said looking at Wire. “You said you could sense Foche’s friends coming when you shot him at Sebastian’s house, right?”

  “Yes,” Wire answered. “He was wired for communication and I could hear people approaching.”

  “Guaranteed Kristoff was one of them,” Mac stated with conviction. “Then later he’s in that van trying to take us out in front of the pub. He probably took out Checketts and I bet …”

  “He’s coming after Connolly next,” Mitchell finished the thought for McRyan.

  “That’s right, sir. Connolly knows who’s behind this and it’s this Bishop. Kristoff is working for this Bishop character,” Mac surmised, pacing the room. “We need a pressure point to get Connolly to talk. Wire and I can show Connolly a picture of the man who will kill him. Maybe with a face, he’ll be more willing to cut open a vein and talk.”

  The attorney general sat back in his chair and contemplated what McRyan had to say. He looked at his watch, 3:30 p.m. “Let’s give it a shot. I’ll call his lawyer. When do you want to go after Connolly?”

  “Sooner the better.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “You can’t make this shit up.”

  Kristoff spent the day walking the neighborhood around the Watergate Complex, familiarizing himself with the streets, the buildings, the alleys, the parking spaces and access to the Metro subway lines. Sipping a coffee on a park bench, he watched the flow of people around the massive apartment and business complex. At a street side café, he had a long lunch, read the Washington Post and took in the surroundings. With two bottles of water, he sat on another park bench, read a Vanity Fair and conducted his own surveillance of the area. Having completed his recon of the blocks surrounding the Watergate Complex, he parked his Ford Edge on Twenty-Fourth Street near the George Washington University Medical School.

  He wasn’t worried about video surveillance given the dark beard he was wearing along with the lightly tinted dark-rimmed glasses. What he was concerned about was alternative ways out of the area and the contingencies he could count on. For two hours he observed the security of the Watergate East complex, assessing the quality of the security personnel in the building and the local police presence. The building security was of good quality, not the rent-a-cop you typically found. The personnel looked like they could handle themselves, particularly if they came as a team. The video surveillance was robust with cameras visible everywhere.

  The most interesting development was the presence of the FBI. He noticed it in the afternoon, when two men entered the building wearing pullover sweatshirts with slight bulges in their backs. Kristoff got up to follow the two men, who were admitted to the building by security without having to use a key card. The two men went up to the eighth floor. Kristoff observed them enter an apartment just down the hall from Connolly’s.

  That little tidbit of information locked his plan in.

  After he returned from conducting his reconnaissance, he wiped down the condominium and packed his small overnight bag for when he climbed back up. Once he was done with Connolly, he would walk three blocks to his car and simply drive to Reagan National and take his flight to Paris. From there he would disappear, this time for good. This was his last kill for his boss.

  The lights in his condominium unit had been off for an hour. The sun had set in the west and there was no moon. It was dark. The lights in the condo below had been off for at least a half hour. He peered over the edge of the balcony for the condo. Given the unique architecture of the Watergate Complex, the apartment Kristoff was repelling from was slightly cantilevered over the eighth and ninth floors below. He secured a mooring hitch knot to the balcony and once again looked over the edge.

  • • • •

  “Detective McRyan, former Special Agent Wire, you have the green light,” Attorney General Gates said. “Connolly’s attorney will meet you at the Watergate. Connolly is there although the attorney hasn’t been able to reach him yet but he will by the time you get there.”

  Mac took the pictures of Kristoff, put them in a manila folder and slid them into his backpack.

  “Speck and Berman are going with you,” Mitchell added.

  “Fine by me,” Mac answered but then he looked to Agents Speck and Berman, “but follow my lead on this because you’re the ones he’ll make the deal with, not me.”

  “Good cop?” Berman asked with eyebrows raised.

  “Bad cop,” Wire answered.

  • • • •

  Kristoff pulled his gloves tight and then slowly let the black rope down to the level of Connolly’s balcony. He climbed over the ledge, set his feet against the cement pillars of the balcony and pushed away from the building and repelled down to the ninth floor balcony, landing his feet on the balcony rail. He pushed out slightly and dropped his feet to the balcony floor, setting his feet between the small vertical cement pillars. His feet set on the bottom of the balcony, he leaned down and to his right to check the lighting for Connolly’s apartment. The bedroom was dark and the light towards the living room area was dim but he could see the unmistakable flashing of television light.

  Once again he set his feet, exhaled and pushed himself out from the balcony and let the rope slide easily through his hands as he swung underneath the ninth floor balcony and landed lightly on the iron railing for the balcony of Connolly’s condo and then froze. He was sensing for movement inside from Connolly.

  There was no movement.

  He eased himself down to the balcony floor and listened again. The only movement he noticed was from Connolly’s neighbor to the right where a small party was taking place. From inside Connolly’s condo, he heard a cell phone ringing and then a man answering the phone with a: “Hello?” It was the voice of Heath Connolly.

  Kristoff tied the rope around the top of the railing. He pushed his back against the exterior wall of the building and reached for the handle for the sliding glass door for the bedroom. Surprisingly, it slid open.

  Kristoff slithered inside.

  • • • •

  “Chase, why would I want to talk to them?”

  “Listen, you get to hear what they have to say. It’s better for us to know. They’re coming to you, not making you come in. No press, no cameras, just them and us. It’s worth sitting down and hearing them out.”

  Connolly exhaled. “Okay, when?”

  “Five minutes,” Chase answered.

  “Five minutes?” Connolly exclaimed angrily. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Sorry, couldn’t be avoided. They’re pulling up to the building now. I’ll wait for them in the lobby.”

  Connolly sighed. “Okay. Call when you’re in the lobby and I will buzz you up.”

  He hung up and threw the cell phone down on the counter. He reached for a drink glass and his bourbon bottle and poured himself a drink. He put the heavy drink glass to his lips and let the liquid flow down his throat, warming his chest.

  “Who’s coming in five minutes?”

  Connolly spun around to see Kristoff with a gun trained on him, a silencer on the end.

  “Th… th…the FBI.”

  Kristoff pulled the trigger twice. The two shots to the chest blew Connolly back into the counter and then he fell to the floor, landing on his back. The blood flowed out of his chest and through his white dress shirt. Kristoff took three steps and stood over the political mastermind who looked up at him, his eyes blinking uncontrollably, his mouth wide open, gasping for air.

  The killer put the end of t
he silencer to Connolly’s forehead and squeezed.

  Heath Connolly was gone.

  The phone began to ring and the display showed the call was coming from the lobby.

  Kristoff quickly moved to the bedroom and the sliding door. However, two apartments down to the right were two men on the balcony, lighting cigars. They would not be leaving soon. If he tried to climb back up they would see him. He untied the rope and pulled the end and the mooring knot came loose and the rope fell to him. He quickly wound up the rope and put it in his backpack.

  Kristoff quickly assessed the situation.

  The FBI was coming up from the lobby and they were also likely down the hall. Connolly’s apartment was third from the end of the building. There was a stairway at the end of the hall.

  He went to the kitchen. Connolly had a fully stocked liquor cabinet, with several bottles of gin, vodka and whiskey. He took out four bottles and screwed off the caps. Next, he searched the kitchen drawers and found thin dish clothes. From a fifth bottle, he poured Vodka on the towels and stuffed them in the tops of the other bottles to create a wick. Kristoff set one bottle by the door to the hallway and put the other three in his backpack. Then he pulled out another Walther PPK/E and stuffed it in the front of his jeans. The other he held in his right hand, the silencer still on the end.

  Kristoff undid the dead bolt. He pulled out his lighter and lit the wick for the first Molotov cocktail.

  • • • •

  “That was Speck,” Agent Cummings reported to Agent Butler, as he looked at the television monitor plugged into the Watergate Security system and the camera focused on Connolly’s front door. “He says they’ll be coming up in about five minutes. We should see them going into Connolly’s condo.”

  “Looks like Connolly is opening up already for … them … wait … a …second … what in the hell?”

  An arm swung out the door and what looked like a burning bottle was flying down the hallway towards their unit and then there was an explosion. The agents reached for their weapons and opened the door to find the hallway full of smoke and fire.

  Cummings jumped into the hallway and looked to his left towards Connolly’s place. He couldn’t see through the smoke and flames which were blazing fifteen feet in front of him. The sprinklers started to go off. Cummings saw a fire alarm on the wall ten feet back. He back stepped, his weapon pointed back towards Connolly’s unit and pulled down the fire alarm. Next to the fire alarm there was a fire extinguisher in a red box.