Blood Silence (17 page)

“Maybe you’re right. The whole situation suggests someone is trying to stay hidden. Given this sleight-of-hand, corporate setup, I keep wondering if Soutex Solutions are actually the ones who killed Shane.”

Mac could talk conspiracy theories all day but looked over at Sally, who was eager to go. “Judge, I’ll leave you with this: Soutex probably didn’t kill Shane. It’s more likely the person or persons behind Soutex are staying hidden because of what they had Shane doing. They don’t want to end up like he did.”

“Or maybe they already have?”

“Or maybe they already have,” Mac answered, nodding. “What was it Deep Throat said? Follow the money. My advice is to stay on the money trail. At the end of that is a person. Find that person, and you’ll get the answers you’re looking for.”

“Okay, but will you at least convey what I’ve found to your friend in DC homicide?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

They exited the Judge’s office and walked down the hallway toward the exit. Sally noticed the far-off look on Mac’s face. “What are you thinking?”

“Huh?” Mac asked, snapping out of his daze. “Oh, something the Judge said about Bermuda and the Caymans. It’s probably nothing.” He looked at his beautiful fiancée, forgot all about the Judge, and asked, “So what are we going to do all afternoon?”

Sally whispered in his ear. “It involves no clothes and your handcuffs.”

• • •

Edina, Minnesota.

Meredith packed the rest of her clothes into her small, rolling suitcase. The media swarmed her Lake of the Isles home in Minneapolis in the immediate aftermath of the murder and arrest. To avoid the spotlight, she’d escaped to her parents’ suburban Edina home which was situated at the end of a quiet street that backed up to Interlachen Country Club. The press found her there as well, but with the story over a week old now, the media had finally moved on, and the street was quiet.

Back sleeping in her old bedroom at her parents’ house. How life had changed in less than a week. Her parents, loving as they were, were hovering over her nonstop.
Are you okay? How are you feeling? Did you sleep well? Can we get you anything?
And worst of all,
have you heard from Mac?

Have you heard from Mac?

It was a question with both an obvious and yet hidden meaning. Lyman, Summer, her parents, Uncle Teddy, and even she herself reluctantly acknowledged that her fate largely rested in his hands. Had he made any progress since Tuesday? Was there anything new to report? Were there any new leads? There had been radio silence since Wednesday, so she assumed little progress had been made. Of course, the hidden meaning of their questions was
had you not run off with Sterling, none of this would have happened in the first place
.

As if she didn’t know that.

It was getting to be too much.

She needed to escape.

So when Mom and Dad left for Sunday church, she made a run for it and left for Minneapolis and her home. As she pulled up the steep driveway, she thought about how much she loved the house—a beautiful, expansive, Spanish-styled two-story overlooking the west side of Lake of the Isles. The house was perched atop a hillside, overlooking the lake below, with the modern glass skyline of downtown Minneapolis visible over the mature trees framing the eastern side of the lake. She pulled into the garage, put down the garage door, pushed her way through the back door, dropped her keys on the counter, and soaked in the peace and silence.

Meredith went upstairs, changed into sweats and slippers, and slowly meandered through her immaculate home, in deep thought, asking herself once again, had it all been worth it? Was leaving Mac for Frederick, for the multi-million-dollar home overlooking the lake, the place on Lake Minnetonka, the condos in Vail and Cabo, the Mercedes, the bells and whistles—was it all worth it?

For a time, it seemed the answer was yes.

It was everything she thought she wanted.

Now she knew otherwise.

Frederick was who he really always was. The material wealth was just that—material, and Mac was gone.

That was a mistake she would never be able to correct. Whatever one-in-a-million, delusional chance she thought there might be of her getting another chance with him was quickly dispelled when she saw him with Sally at the presidential reception. They were a couple very much in love—real love. She could see it in Mac’s eyes. She’d been on the receiving end of that loving look once. She didn’t realize at the time how important the loving gaze of someone was. Now, when Mac looked at her, she saw no love for her in his eyes—just bitterness, pain, and worst of all now, pity.

“Boy, you’ve made a mess of things,” she moaned, shaking her head, looking out the massive picture window.

Her phone rang in her pocket. It was her mother. No, she wasn’t coming back today. No, she was fine. “I just need a little alone time, Mom. I’ll call later.”

She walked back into the kitchen. In the refrigerator was a bottle of white wine she’d recently opened. She poured herself a glass and glanced left and noticed the thick hardcover book sitting on the table in the eating nook. It was Gillian Flynn’s
Gone Girl
, a book she’d started two weeks ago. Meredith picked it up, grabbed her glass of wine, went into the small den off the kitchen, turned on the gas fireplace, curled up in a blanket in the soft chair by the window, and opened the book, getting back into the story, thinking,
If only I could be a gone girl.

• • •

Mac was very relaxed on the flight back to the Twin Cities, his body light, loose, and completely at ease. It was a revitalizing day and a half. There had been yesterday afternoon and the fun with the handcuffs, and then a quiet dinner at their favorite little Italian place in Georgetown, and then back home for a late-night movie they started but did not finish.

“We could break in the new couch?” Mac suggested as he pulled his lips a centimeter away from hers.

“I think we should,” Sally answered seductively as she pushed him down.

“Be gentle.”

“You know you don’t mean that.”

On Sunday, they lounged around all morning, ate a leisurely breakfast, and read the paper. In the afternoon, they snuck upstairs again, and then after a quick homemade dinner, Sally dropped him off at the airport.

“Stay safe,” she warned lightly.

“I always do.”

“Yeah,” she laughed nervously, “right.”

Four hours later, he strolled through the terminal at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and out to the parking ramp on the cool November night. It was sixty degrees in Washington when his flight departed. It was considerably cooler in the Twin Cities a little after 11:00
P.M.
, his breath hanging like little clouds in the crisp air.

He jumped into the Yukon, put it in drive, and began exiting the parking ramp when his phone rang. The dashboard screen displayed a local 763 number he didn’t recognize.

“Hello.”

“Mr. McRyan, this is Dorothy, Mr. Sterling’s secretary.”

He sat a little more upright. People didn’t call at this time of night unless they had a reason—a really good reason. He kept it light to start. “Dorothy, didn’t I tell you to call me Mac?”

“O-o-okay.”

She was nervous. “Dorothy, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m … fine. I’m just not sure I should tell you this.”

Mac’s heart skipped a beat. “Tell me what, Dorothy?”

“I’ve been thinking about this all weekend. You’re sure Ms. Hilary didn’t do this? You’re absolutely sure?”

“Yes, I am. Now, Dorothy, what did you call to tell me?”

“It’s about the Gentry Enterprises file. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, where important parts of one of his files go missing. Sometimes Mr. Sterling kept things off the books.”

“Off the books?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“He told me once … a number of years ago … he kept a separate file at his home on matters that were sensitive. There was a case where he suspected someone in the firm was feeding information to opposing counsel. In that case, and I think in some others since, he kept some sensitive documents at home until the case went to trial. He said they were safe and secure, whatever
that
meant. In any event, I thought that since—”

“There weren’t any documents in the Gentry Enterprises file …”

“And there should be, and he ended up dead, and that the documents he put into his briefcase are missing, that maybe the documents of the case were so sensitive that he decided to keep them in his secure place at home.”

“Dorothy, I’ll look into this,” Mac answered, and he was eager to do so this very minute.

“Please don’t tell anyone I told you this,” Dorothy pleaded. “I can’t afford to lose my job.”

“Your secret is safe with me, Dorothy.” He ended the call with Dorothy and called Meredith. It took several rings for her to answer.

“H-h-hello.” Meredith was groggy. “Mac?”

“Sorry, Meredith, I know it’s late.”

She yawned and then said, “Geez, its 11:33
P.M.
Don’t you ever sleep?”

“I just got off the plane from DC. Listen, I have it on good authority that your husband sometimes kept sensitive law firm matters at home. Perhaps there is some of that Gentry file somewhere in your house. Can you meet me there in the morning to go through the house and search?”

“I’m already there.”

“Wait a minute, you are?” Mac answered, surprised and somewhat concerned. “I thought you were staying at your parents’ house.”

“I was. But Mom’s clucking over me like a mother hen, and all Dad does is pace around with his hands behind his back wearing a groove in the carpet. You could cut the tension with a knife, and the trial won’t be for months. I couldn’t take it. Could you?”

“Uhh … probably not.”

“Exactly. Now, as for what Dorothy told you …”

“Dorothy? I never said anything about Dorothy.”

“Please, she’s the only one who would know something like that about Frederick,” Meredith replied. “She’s been his secretary for like forever.”

“So is it true?”

“I honestly have no idea,” she answered, yawning again. “But as you know, my husband was good at keeping secrets, so who knows—she could be right. We’ll have to hunt around. First place I would look would be his home office over the garage. He designed that down to the style of nail and nail gun to be used. It is something of an off-limits place.”

“That’s probably a good place to start.”

“Wait.” And he could tell Meredith sensed the sudden eagerness in his voice. “Do you … want to come here
now
?”

It was late, and it wasn’t as though he could do anything with it at this hour anyway. Yet now he was just too curious to let it go. “Yeah, I’ll stop by for just a quick look. Be about fifteen minutes.”

“Ooookay,” Meredith answered with another yawn.

• • •

After the phone call, Meredith lay in bed for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling. Her old bed at her parents’ house was comfortable enough, but the body craves what it knows, and it just felt good to be in her own bed, molded perfectly to her body. Three glasses of wine and hours of reading had let her fall fast and hard to sleep. Now awake, she reached to the right for the lamp on her nightstand. She turned the knob, but the light didn’t come on. “Hmpf, the light bulb must have burned out.”

She pushed herself out of bed and slowly walked to the wall to flip the light switch, and again, nothing. She flipped it up and down again, and there was no light. Then she glanced back to her left to the nightstand on the other side of the bed, and the clock radio was black, no red lights displaying the time.

“Is the power out?” she muttered under her breath.

She exited the bedroom and walked along the carpeted catwalk overlooking the expansive foyer and winding staircase to her right and could see the streetlight on West Lake of the Isles Parkway still illuminating the street corner to the north. It wasn’t a neighborhood power outage.

That’s odd,
she thought to herself as she stopped on the catwalk and looked out the large windows over the double front door.

Then there was a light but unmistakable creak of a door opening in the back of the house.

• • •

Mac was driving west on Lake Street, just crossing Lyndale Avenue, in the stoplight-clogged Uptown area of south Minneapolis, ten minutes from Meredith’s, when his phone rang again. It was Meredith, probably calling to ask him to wait until the morning. “Hey—”

“Mac!” Meredith whispered urgently, and he could hear the fear in her voice. “All my power is out, and I think someone just came in the back door.”

“Call 9-1-1 right now! I’m on my way!” Mac hung up and punched the accelerator. He used the Yukon when he was a St. Paul cop, and there were certain modifications he’d made. One was flashing lights in the truck’s front grill and a siren. He flipped open the center console and hit the button to activate it all.

• • •

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

“I think someone is breaking into my house,” Meredith whispered quickly and gave the address as she stood just inside her bedroom door. Then she sensed someone moving towards the front of house as she peeked out the door and over the banister and down into the large foyer. “Someone is definitely in the house,” she whispered anxiously.

“Help is on the way,” the dispatcher answered. “Can you stay on the line?”

“I’ll try,” Meredith replied as she slithered back into her bedroom, slowly closing the door, leaving it slightly open. She then immediately realized that was the wrong move. If someone was here, they were here for her, and at this point of the night, where would they look—the bedroom.

She quickly glanced around. What to do? She needed to buy time.

Meredith raced back to the bed and arranged the pillows under the comforter in the form of a body. Then she went back to the bedroom door, peered back out the crack she’d left open, and could see the outline of a dark figure set against the white plaster walls of the grand staircase, slowly making his way up the steps, one arm hanging low, holding something.