The St. Paul Conspiracy (40 page)

So, Daniels had it. But where? Hansen stepped outside and placed a call to Alt.

* * * * *

“Is this the last one?” Mac asked disappointedly.

“Yup,” Sally replied.

Mac shook his head, the disappointment obvious. He hit file, open and tried to open the last disk as a document. Nothing. He moved it to the DVD drive, opened it up and it was a recent news report from in front of the Minnesota State Capitol. “Shit,” he said quietly under his breath, lightly shaking his head.

Mac sat with his hands in his face. The whole thing had been a wild goose chase. He looked up to find Sally so he could apologize. She was in the other room, flipping through the movie DVDs. She pulled one out and was looking at it. It wasn’t like the others, colored, with movie graphics. It was blank. “What you lookin’ at?” Mac asked.

“Just looking through the movie cases here and ran across this one inside the
Basic Instinct
box. It’s blank on the front, which is odd.”

“Let me take a look.” She handed it to him. Looked like all the other CD and DVD disks he’d been looking at. He handed it back to her.

“What? You’re not going to look?”

“Are you trying to add insult to injury here?”

“No, asshole, I’m trying to help. It seems odd this blank-fronted one is in this case. Check it out.”

Mac sighed, “Okay.” He opened the CD drive, popped it in. He hit file and tried to open it as a Word document. The operation failed. He clicked to video. He figured it was just another movie or news report. It wasn’t.

“What the heck?” Sally said, peering over Mac’s shoulder.

The video was of a man and woman having sex. The woman was on top and leaning into the male, who was obscured due to the high angle of the camera. The woman looked to be Claire Daniels. “What? Daniels liked videotaping herself having sex?” Sally said.

“I guess,” Mac replied. He looked at the date in the lower right hand corner: 10.29. He then looked up, and the video showed the woman leaning up and arching her back now. It definitely was Claire Daniels, and the male was now identifiable. Mason Johnson. They were on Daniels’ bed, and the camera was looking down on the right side.

“What was Daniels doing with this?” Sally asked.

“I don’t know,” Mac replied, getting up and walking to the bedroom, leaving the video to play.

“I mean, I can’t believe the senator would allow her to do this. Was he that stupid?”

“I don’t think he knew,” Mac yelled from the bedroom.

Sally left the video and followed him, “What do you mean, he didn’t know? How could he not know?”

“I mean, I don’t think she asked his permission.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The camera angle on the video.”

“What about it?”

Mac was looking at the dresser now, “It’s too steep to have been sitting on the dresser here or on a tripod or anything. It’s almost as if it’s an overhead shot.”

“But from where then?”

Mac surveyed the ceiling above the right side of the bed. All he saw was a smoke detector. Then he looked further to his right and saw another detector in the ceiling just over the French Doors leading into the bedroom. Now that was odd. “Can you tell me why someone would need two smoke detectors in one room?” Mac asked rhetorically as he grabbed a sitting chair and placed it under the detector to the right of the bed. He climbed onto the chair and pushed the button to check if the detector worked. Nothing. He pushed it again, no response. Hmpf. He put both hands up to it and started to twist it. It was like all other smoke detectors, hard to remove, but then he heard a hard click and it pulled free and there it was. “Lookey here.” Mac said, as he pulled on a cord, with a glass piece on the end.

“What’s that?” Sally asked, moving near Mac.

“A camera I’d say.” Mac replied. “Before we go any further, I’m going to make a call.”

“To who? For what?”

“Back-up. In case we find anything.” Mac placed a discreet call. Paddy was on patrol in the neighborhood and would know to keep the whole thing quiet if nothing panned out.

“What do you think all this proves?” Sally asked while they waited.

“Nothing yet, but...?”

“But what?”

“We never found any equipment like this when we were searching the place the other times.”

“So?”

“It’s concealed somewhere we didn’t know about. What else is in there besides the equipment?”

Sally shrugged her shoulders. Five minutes later, Paddy showed with his partner, Mike Remington. Mac gave them a quick run-down.

“So, what you going to do, cuz?” Paddy asked.

“Let’s find out where this camera leads too.” Mac replied as he pulled the chair into the closet and underneath the hatch to the crawl space in the ceiling. “Paddy, you might have to give me a boost.” Putting his right foot into Paddy’s cupped hands, he was pushed up into the attic. Mac called down, “Hand me your flashlight. And your gloves, I don’t want to touch the insulation.”

Paddy handed both items up. Mac pointed the flashlight towards where he thought the smoke detector was. He carefully walked on the joists and saw the black cabling for the camera, probably six or seven feet away. The cable had been run along a joist to a support post ten feet away, up the support post to the roof and then away from Mac and over towards what he thought was the hallway and perhaps the bathroom. He maneuvered his way over to where the cable came back down and went back into the ceiling, buried under the insulation. Pulling the insulation back, he pointed the flashlight down at the hole where the cabling went through, but he couldn’t see anything. He looked back to the opening to the attic. It was at a forty-five degree angle away from him. Carefully, he walked back across the joists to the opening and jumped down.

“What did you find?” Sally asked.

“It leads back that way.” Mac pointed in a forty-five degree angle to the hallway, towards the bathroom. Inside the bathroom Mac stood scratching his head. The bathroom was long and narrow. The vanity and toilet were along the left side, but that was the wrong angle he thought. To the right were the bathtub and a small narrow towel cabinet, which contained nothing but towels. He walked back into the hallway where there was a narrow built in wood buffet, which had shelving on the top, a middle drawer and a cabinet on the bottom. The cabinet held some extra towels and nothing else. The shelves had books, a picture and a wood Roman numeral X. Hmpf. “Has to be right in this area.” Mac said.

Mac walked back into the bathroom and looked at the tub. Then he looked back to the hall. He paced the length of the bathroom off, which was five yards or fifteen feet. The bathtub was six feet. The towel cabinet was maybe another foot. That was seven feet, where were the other eight? He went to the hall and looked at the built-in cabinet, it was maybe a foot deep. Looking around the edges of the built in, he noticed a small gap between the molding and the cabinet. “I wonder,” he said out loud.

“Wonder what?” Sally asked.

A smile creased Mac’s face. “Paddy, where have you seen a built-in buffet like this?”

“I don’t know, cuz.”

“If there was a plaque here on the right side, then would you recognize it?”

Paddy studied the buffet for a minute then also smiled, “In the basement at the Pub.”

“Yeah and down there it’s—”

“—the door to Patrick’s Room.” Paddy finished.

Mac opened the middle drawer and reached under the lip. He felt with his hand, and he hit it, a small metal latch. He pulled on it and heard a click and felt the cabinet push in.

“What the hell, a secret room?” Sally asked.

Mac shook his head, smiling. “Kind of. People had these types of builtins put in during Prohibition—a good place to hide booze. You’ve seen the one down at the Pub. It leads into Patrick’s Room down there.”

Pushing the cabinet in, Mac saw two things, a small television with a DVD recorder and a banker’s box with Cross handwritten on the side, resting on the floor. “I guess X does mark the spot,” he said as he walked into the hidden room and pulled rubber gloves onto his hands. Mac flipped the top off the box and started looking through the documents. Having studied what Lindsay had given them a week earlier, he immediately recognized that these documents were different. There was a ledger book, which he flipped open. There were entries with names and dollar amounts handwritten in red and black ink. He started running down the names with his finger when Sally spoke up.

“Mac, take a look at this.”

Mac stood up and went to the shelf where the television and DVD recorder sat. There was also a rack of DVDs with just dates on them. He went to it and hit the open/close button. There was a DVD inside.

“Paddy and Mike, start writing all this down.”

Mac looked at the DVD and then at the rack, and the generic DVD cases all had sporadic dates on them going back what looked like a couple years. There was one unlabeled DVD case, which was empty. He looked back to the one in the machine. Seeing a remote, Mac picked it up and pushed play. He turned on the little television.

The video starts and the view is from the right side of the bed. Daniels and the senator come into view on the left-hand side of the screen, embracing one another, kissing and undressing. There must be some switch that she hit to start it. They fell onto the bed. The video and sound were clear.

“Look at the date?” Sally said.

“Holy shit, October 31st.” Mac grabbed the remote and did what most men in this situation wouldn’t do, he advanced the video forward. When it stopped they were to the point in time where the senator had his back to the camera, now clothed, working his tie. Daniels was lying on the bed, naked, smiling and talking. It lasted for a few minutes, some casual talk. Then, finally dressed, the senator leaned down, kissed her and walked out of the room. Daniels rolled over and had her back to the camera, the nightstand light still on. She lay still, looking as if she had fallen asleep.

Then he came from the left, a black streak. He was dressed in all black a ski mask over his head. He jumped on the bed and was on top of her in an instant, strangling her.

“Oh, my God,” Sally croaked, putting her hands to her own throat.

Daniels flailed away at the killer, hitting him in the face, the arms, kicking with her legs, but he was too strong, never releasing the grip. After a minute, the flailing slowed down, less strong, the life slowly leaking out of her body. Finally, the arms slowly fell down to the bed, and Daniels was gone. The man in black checked her pulse, nothing.

“Who are you?” Mac uttered in a hushed voice, putting his face close to the screen.

The man in black got off her and stood on the far side of the bed and rubbed his jaw through the mask. Then he took off his gloves and pulled the mask from over his head.

“I fuckin’ knew it!” Mac yelled.

“You know who that is?” Sally asked.

“Yeah. Webb Alt.”

“Who’s he?”

“Vice-president of Security at PT fuckin’ A. I knew it. I knew it!” Mac yelled, a wave of satisfaction rushing over him.

He pulled his cellphone out and started dialing, and looked over to Paddy, “You guys get all this down. You’re key witnesses now.” They both nodded, furiously scribbling into their notebooks. The chief’s secretary answered, “This is McRyan. I need to speak to the chief.”

“Mac, he’s in a meeting, I can take a message.”

“Charlene, put me through on this. When I tell him what I have, he won’t care.”

He waited and then a minute later Flanagan got on the line, agitated, “Mac, what the hell.”

“Chief, we got ’em.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Let’s roll.”

Alt took the elevator up to the top. At least they knew who had had the documents, Daniels. Taking her out had been the right thing. However, the question was: what did she do with them? They’d been through her place a number of times and hadn’t found anything. They would be going back again.

He got off the elevator and walked right in and told Lindsay what they had found.

“How did we miss it at the station?” was his first question.

“The log book was in a locked cabinet, sir. Last night it was lying out, and they were able to get a look at it. In fairness to those guys, I ordered them to spend their time looking around her work area and where the station stored documents and not the receptionist area. It wasn’t until this week that we started looking at delivery companies. That triggered them to take a closer look up front, where a delivery of this nature would come.” He didn’t have a better answer than that.

“So, what are we doing now?”

“I’m sending Hansen and Hennessey over to Daniels’ place now. I’d prefer to wait until it’s dark to send them back in. There is a lot of traffic in the area. They’ll sit tight until I give them the go ahead.”

“What about moving up our possession of the condo?”

“Already working on it. I’ve told the real estate guy to do whatever needs to be done.”

“If nothing else, have him get us in there today for another look around.”

“Absolutely.”

“Where else could she have put those documents?” Lindsay asked. He knew they had looked high and low for them.

“I don’t know. There’s some place out there we’re not aware of. However, we know now that it was Daniels who has them. So, now we focus on her completely.”

“What about the delivery source?”

“We’ll take care of him later.”

* * * * *

Mac followed Paddy in the squad in front, with another behind them, lights flashing, as they headed downtown. The box and DVD player were in the back seat.

As Mac drove, Sally was looking through the ledger book from the box. “Mac, these guys were up to something with this Cross place.”

“What are you seeing?”

“Huge money going to a lot of people. Stephens, the guy from the video Alt, someone named Bouchard, a Hennessey, Hansen, Kraft, Thompson, Skogman, probably about twenty in all. The biggest money goes to someone who’s only marking is an X.”

“What kind of money?”

“Millions, Mac. Millions.”

“Whatever they were doing, Stephens was keeping the records. He was the money man after all. Stephens dies in the accident. The records are up at the cabin. He dies, Ms. Stephens finds the box and gives it to Jones. She looks through it and realizes what’s been going on. She does two things. She likely confronts Lindsay with it, and she also talks to Daniels. PTA figures this out and takes them both out.”