The St. Paul Conspiracy (2 page)

He checked his watch, 2:30 a.m., time to get moving. Viper made a last trip to the master bedroom to look at Claire. What a shame, such a beautiful woman. He flipped off the light switch and headed for the stairs, sliding his mask back on in the process. He made his way to the garage, where he found the Lexus. A quick look inside didn’t reveal the documents. How about the trunk? He triggered the latch on the driver’s side door and popped the trunk. Empty other than a flash light, a pair of boots, and a window scrapper—typical accouterments for the coming Minnesota winter. Viper shut the trunk and moved to the rear door.

“Eagle Eye, Viper. I’m at the rear door.”

“Copy Viper. Go.”

Out the back door, through the hedge and down the alley Viper went. The pickup point was a parking lot between an apartment building and the Kozlak Foodmart. Viper moved his way to the side of a garage across the alley from the parking lot.

The black van turned into the parking lot, approaching from the other side of the alley. As the van turned toward him, the sliding door opened. Viper sprang from the side of the garage, across the alley, over the guardrail and into the van while it was moving. Once inside, he asked, “How’d Bouchard come out?”

“It’s done.”

Chapter Two

“Your day just got worse.”

Many St. Paul residents started their morning at the Grand Brew, a cup of coffee to get the workday started. For Michael McKenzie “Mac” McRyan, a fourth-generation St. Paul detective, it was his way to start the day. Not only did he love the coffee, it was making him a little dough. Two childhood friends owned the Grand Brew. Mac had invested a little money six years before in exchange for a small piece of the action. That “small piece” was turning out to be a nice, and ever-growing, supplement to his detective’s salary.

Mac grabbed his coffee and looked at his watch, 7:30 a.m.—day of paperwork ahead. He had cleared a murder the day before, a stick-up gone awry. It took Mac and his partner a week to put the case together and find the stick-up guy, a nineteen-year-old kid they identified from a surveillance camera. They hauled the kid in, and he went quickly.

Mac’s partner was Richard Lich, or better known within the department, and often to his face, as “Dick Lick.” Mac often wondered what in the world Lich’s parents had been thinking. Dick was a veteran cop with money problems; two divorces would do that to a guy. That being said, when motivated, Dick was a good detective. He had an easy manner with people and a quick wit. When he was on his game, Lich was a good compliment to Mac’s blunt, if not occasionally abrasive, approach to matters. Problem was, as of late, Lich had checked out. Mac hoped he would snap out of it soon. He could use the help.

Mac jumped into his Explorer, put his coffee in the cup holder just as his cellphone vibrated. He took a look. Just like that a seemingly slow and easy day turned busy. His captain was looking for him.

“McRyan.”

“Peters. St. Albans, between Summit and Grand, cleaning lady found a body.” Mac wrote down the address. “I called Lich. You’ll be there first. Keep me advised and keep your cell on.”
Click
.

Well, good morning to you too
, Mac thought. Captain Marion Peters was a good guy, an old-guard cop that Mac and the rest of the McRyan clan knew well. The gruff manner had more to do with last night than the body on St. Albans. The University Avenue Strangler had struck for the fifth time.

The University Avenue Strangler.
Good grief,
Mac thought. It wasn’t a cop moniker. That was a media creation and cornball as hell, but that was the media. If you have a serial killer, which they did, the media had to give him a name. A name made for great headlines in the
Pioneer Press
and
Star Tribune
.

Four women, now five, had been killed, strangled, sexually assaulted and dumped into vacant lots in the vicinity of University Avenue. The signature item identifying the killer was a balloon left behind, marking the body like a buoy. The balloon was always the same—a smiley face. “Have a Nice Day.”

Of course, with a serial killer, people, including politicians and especially the media tend to go into a panic. Mac saw it on the morning news shows, the media in full glory, hyping the murder of another innocent victim for ratings, providing “Team Coverage” and “Exclusives you’ll only see on Channel 12.” City council members had already been on the tube reassuring everyone that the police would find the killer. Undoubtedly, Captain Peters’ gruff mood had something to do with the latest murder, the media swarm, and, Mac suspected, hysterical calls from city politicians demanding something be done. As if it was that easy.

Mac pulled out onto Grand and headed east to St. Albans with a murder to work on. He was thirty-two years old, six-foot-one and one-hundred ninety pounds. He was ruggedly handsome, with blond hair and icy blue eyes. His short hair formed around a taut face, with a square jaw and a dimple the size of the Grand Canyon in his chin. He had three crisscrossing scars under his chin, the result of stitches from hockey-related cuts. He worked on his wiry, strong body frequently and was proud of the fact he remained in “game” shape, no heavier than his college hockey-playing weight.

Mac had taken a somewhat circuitous route to being a cop considering his family. Growing up, all he ever wanted to be was a detective just like his dad, the famous Simon McRyan. It didn’t hurt that his grandpa and greatgrandpa, several uncles and cousins—all of them were cops. It was the family business. As a kid, his two best friends were his cousins, Peter and Tommy. All three were going to be like their dads, St. Paul cops.

But then Mac turned out to be a straight-A student and great highschool hockey player, garnering an athletic scholarship to the University of Minnesota. After four years, he graduated again with straight A’s and had captained the Gophers to an NCAA Championship. He was engaged to the prettiest and smartest girl on campus. His road to life had been paved for something other than police work.

So, while Tommy and Peter joined the police force after college, Mac and his fiancée enrolled in law school. He graduated summa cum laude, second in his class. He had a job lined up with Prescott and Finnerty, a prominent law firm with a $100,000 starting salary. His lovely wife, also a lawyer, would make equally as much in another law firm. With his name recognition, perhaps politics would follow. He was set for a wealthy life with a beautiful wife.

Then two weeks after the bar exam, while standing on the eighth tee at Somerset Country Club, his life changed forever. His cell phone rang. Peter and Tommy had been killed in the line of duty, shot as they responded to a bank robbery.

Mac was a pallbearer for both, the only one not in a police uniform. As he stood by one casket and then the other at the cemetery, he looked to his family, more than twenty of his cousins and uncles in uniform, laying it on the line to protect their families and city. Listening to the priest speak of the commitment his two cousins had made, he felt selfish and empty. What had he done that compared to Peter and Tommy? Why had his lot in life been different? The athletic and academic success, the law degree, marrying the pretty girl—did that mean that being a cop was for someone else? That his family and their sacrifices were beneath him? That he shouldn’t feel the same sense of obligation that four generations of his family had?

A week later he joined the police force.

His mother, always relieved that he had been going down a different and safer path, nonetheless understood. It was the McRyan way.

His wife never forgave him. He ruined the perfect life she thought they would have. It took seven years, but the perfect marriage eventually came to an end. He’d gotten the final divorce papers in the mail the day before.

Joining the force had also brought the unspoken pressure for Mac to measure up to his father, the revered Simon McRyan. His dad had died in a freak deer-hunting accident fifteen years before when Mac was still in high school, hit in his heart by a stray bullet from a far-off hunter. They never found the person who’d fired the shot. Mac had been with his father, holding his hand as he died.

Simon McRyan was the standard by which all other detectives in St. Paul had been—and to a certain degree—still were measured, and Mac wanted to measure up. He didn’t want to be known simply as Simon McRyan’s son. He was proud of his father, thought about him often when he grabbed his badge and Glock 9mm. But every day Mac operated under the shadow of Simon McRyan, cognizant of its existence, aware that, as his father’s only son, he had much to live up to.

Mac turned left into the parking lot for Mardi Gras, knowing it would be a good out-of-the-way place to park, and saw two squads in front of the condo. The yellow crime scene tape was already up, twisting in the breeze. A crowd of locals was gathering.

There were five other McRyans of Mac’s generation who were cops. One of them, his cousin Patrick, stood on the porch of the condo. He came down the steps to meet Mac.

“What say you, Paddy boy?”

“It’s not good, cuz.”

Mac furrowed his brows, knowing the tone of Patrick’s voice. “What’s going on?” he asked quietly, as they walked towards the condo. “Our dead body is Claire Daniels.”

Mac stopped abruptly and looked at his cousin for a minute, “The reporter?”

“Yeah.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, I always wanted to see her naked, but not like this.”

“Where is she?”

“Upstairs.”

“Is forensics on the way?”

“They’ll be here any minute.”

As he headed up the front steps, Mac stopped and asked, “Any media yet?”

Patrick rolled his eyes. “Not yet. They’re all probably still over at the serial killer site giving Riley hell, but I gotta think the newsies’ll show pretty soon.”

“All right. I’m going up and take a look,” Mac said, as he fished out some white rubber gloves out of his pocket and turned to go inside.

Claire was living pretty well
, Mac thought when he walked in, noticing the furnishings. To his right was a large living room with nice furniture, mission-style chairs and tables with an expansive leather couch, probably from Room & Board or Pottery Barn. He noticed that the condo looked in order, very neat and clean. The stairway up to the second level was to his immediate left.

At the top of the steps, a uniform cop, Bonnie Schmidt, waited for him. As Mac got to the top of the steps, she nodded towards the bedroom. A white blouse lay on the floor at the top of the landing. Mac kneeled down to it and took a quick look around. He walked back down the steps and took a look at the living room, everything in order, immaculate.

He walked back up the steps. “Was the blouse here when you arrived?”

“Yup. Cleaning lady said she picked up a pair of slacks on the landing. She was about to pick up the blouse when she looked into the bedroom, saw the body, and you know the rest,” Schmidt said.

Mac left the blouse and turned into the bedroom. He carefully sidestepped the bra and panties lying on the floor. Claire Daniels lay on the left side of the bed, flat on her back, her arms spread out, her left leg straight and the right hanging over the side of the bed. Mac walked to the left side of the bed and crouched. He immediately saw the bruising on the neck. The cause of death was pretty obvious. Strangulation. The killer probably had been straddling her on the bed, pressing down on her windpipe.

She was naked, and Mac wondered if sex had been involved. It might explain the blouse on the landing, the scattered underwear. Forensics would find out soon enough. Mac took a moment to look around the room. Odd. Other than the blouse on the landing and the panties and bra on the bedroom floor, no other clothes lay strewn about. He saw no apparent signs of a robbery. Things seemed tidy. Mac walked over to the dresser. There was a jewelry case on top. Using his Bic, he flipped it open and immediately realized she had some valuable pieces. But each slot and drawer was filled with jewelry. If someone rummaged through it, they put everything back just so.

Mac heard some commotion on the steps, looked back and saw that it was forensics. “Hey, Mac,” said Linda Morgan, a young nerdy crime-scene tech Mac really liked. “Paddy told me Claire Daniels?” Linda said conversationally.

“You heard correct.” Mac replied, standing with his hands on his hips. “Best I can tell, the killer put his hands on her throat and squeezed. You can see the bruising. Strangling I’m thinkin’.”

“Anything else?” Morgan asked.

I’m sure you’ll check for sex, and I think you’ll find it,” Mac answered. “It feels like that happened here.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It just feels like it. The blouse on the floor. Bra and panties here. I haven’t spoken with the cleaning lady yet, but there were slacks down on the landing. Seems as if Claire was in a hurry to get them off. It just feels like something like that happened here.”

“Well, if she did, we’ll find out.” Linda put on her glasses and reached for some rubber gloves to start evaluating the body. Another tech Mac didn’t know was getting the fingerprint kit going.

Mac flipped open his cell phone and hit the speed dial for Captain Peters.

“Peters.”

“McRyan. Your day just got worse.” Mac said neutrally, “Our homicide is Claire Daniels.”

Silence. Then, slightly stammering, Peters asked for confirmation. “The TV Reporter? From Channel 6?”

“Yes.”

“Cripes, what next,” Peters sighed. “Mac, do you need some help over there?”

“Yeah, some extra units’d be good. We’re going to draw a crowd.” He thought a moment. “If you got any extra people to spare, I have a feeling we may need to do some door to door here.”

“Okay. I’ll get some bodies down there. You run it. But listen, son, the shit’s going to hit the fan with this. If you get stuck, ask for help. If the media are not there yet, they will be soon. They’ll be all over you. Don’t say a word until we talk. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dick Lick there yet?” Peters asked caustically, knowing Lich’s approach to things as of late.