First Case (mcryan mystery) Read online

  First Case

  ( McRyan mystery )

  Roger Stelljes

  Roger Stelljes

  First Case

  CHAPTER ONE

  “This wasn’t random.”

  “I’ll take a large Morning Jolt and a medium Dark Roast,” Michael McKenzie “Mac” McRyan said to the barista working the counter at The Grand Brew. His purchase would accomplish two things. First, the coffee would get him going as he headed to his first homicide crime scene as a detective. Second, the purchase made him a little money, as he owned part of the coffee shop and twenty others like it with some childhood friends. Mac handed over six dollars, left the change and had the coffees placed into a cardboard carrier. He walked out the front door and climbed into his Explorer and handed a cup to his partner.

  “Thanks, partner,” Richard Lich, better known as “Dick Lick,” said as he set the coffee into the cup holder.

  “My pleasure,” Mac answered.

  McRyan put his Explorer into gear and motored east on Grand towards downtown St. Paul. “So what do we have?” Mac asked.

  “Body in an alley behind The Mahogany,” Lich answered. “Beyond that I don’t know much.”

  “A murder behind the competition, that should make Shamus happy,” Mac said. Shamus was Mac’s uncle and he ran the other family business, McRyan’s Pub, which sat on the southwestern edge of downtown St. Paul. The Mahogany was a pub on the eastern side of downtown. The two bars catered to different crowds, however. McRyan’s Pub catered to cops and hockey fans. The Mahogany was known as the lawyer bar.

  As he drove towards downtown and The Mahogany, Mac thought about working his first crime scene as a detective. Being a cop was the first McRyan family business and Mac was part of the fourth generation of McRyan cops. He had numerous uncles and cousins currently in the department and a few retired uncles, who instead of patrolling the streets, now patrolled the bottles and taps behind the brass rail at McRyan’s Pub, which was the second McRyan family business.

  More significantly, Mac was the son of Simon McRyan, perhaps the best detective ever to walk behind a St. Paul badge.

  Because of that, it was not Mac’s original plan to be a cop.

  When he was a kid, being a cop was what he wanted to be, it’s what every McRyan boy wanted to be because that’s what their dads and uncles were. However, even as a young boy Mac knew his dad was special. Simon McRyan appeared on the news, was written up in the paper and every tough case seemed to come his way. He was a legend. More than once as a child and then again as a teenager, Mac heard he would have a lot to live up to when he became a cop.

  It was assumed, expected, preordained that Mac would walk in his father’s footsteps. It was the McRyan way after all. However, even as a fourteen-or fifteen-year-old, Mac was self aware enough to wonder if he really wanted to work under that kind of pressure.

  Then another path presented itself.

  Mac became a straight A student and stellar athlete at Cretin High School. He was awarded a hockey scholarship to the University of Minnesota where he captained the team to a national championship his senior season as a tough and savvy left wing. He graduated with highest honors from the University and enrolled in law school, with visions of a legal practice and maybe even politics. He graduated summa cum laude from William Mitchell College of Law. Mac accepted an offer for $100,000 a year with a prominent Minneapolis law firm. He was married to his college sweetheart, who also went to law school, graduated with honors and had a similar job lined up with a prominent law firm. They were set for a life of prosperity and success.

  But then, as it so often does, life gets in the way and changes the course you have selected.

  Mac’s two best friends were his cousins Peter and Tommy, both of whom followed the family tradition. They became cops. Two weeks before Mac was set to be licensed as a lawyer, Tommy and Peter were killed in the line of duty.

  For most people, they would have taken it as a sign that they made the right choice, to do something other than being a cop. Mac had better options, safer options, more lucrative and socially acceptable options. But the deaths of his cousins hit Mac differently. He didn’t want to run from it, he didn’t want to feel fortunate, he no longer wanted the more lucrative and socially acceptable option. He didn’t feel entitled to it, not when he looked at what the people most important in his life, his family, were doing. Instead, he felt an obligation, to his cousins, to his family and to himself.

  A week later he joined the St. Paul Police Department.

  Life had veered to a different path.

  Now, a short four years later, Mac was about to walk under the crime scene tape for the first time as a detective. He knew his dad would be looking down on him.

  Their crime scene was an alley in the middle of a block of one-hundred-year-old brown and red brick buildings. Lich pulled the car to the curb just short of the alley which was now taped off. They each took one last long sip of the hot coffee and then jumped out into the cool twenty-degree March morning as the sun worked its way up on the blue crystal clear eastern horizon.

  Lich dropped his dark brown fedora on his round balding head. The fedora, trench coat, suit and shoes were all in shades of Lich’s trademark weathered brown. The clothes tightly, too tightly, formed around the bulbous mid-section of his five-foot-eight body. Lich’s ensemble made Mac look GQ in comparison. Mac was sporting a black wool trench coat, gray scarf, navy blue suit, light blue dress shirt and blue, yellow and cream stripped tie all of which hung comfortably on his blond haired blue eyed six-foot-one athletic frame.

  Mac was curious as to how things would go with “Dick Lick.” Mac had known him for years, even back when his dad was alive. Lich had the reputation of being a good detective, when he was interested in being one. Good instincts, a nice line of b.s. when needed and the willingness to occasionally think outside the box, little of which had been on recent display. As of late, he’d been finalizing his second divorce and it seemed as if his interest in police work had waned considerably. Given what the McRyan name meant in the department, Mac half-wondered if he’d been assigned to Lich as a way to motivate Dick. Mac would soon find out.

  McRyan stepped under the yellow tape and stopped, taking in the scene. The alley was narrow, like a canyon, running between the four-and five-story brick buildings that dotted either side. Dumpsters, the odd car or truck, stray paper, cardboard coffee cups, soda cans, and small dirty snow piles and patches of ice framed either side of the alley. Occasional splotches of graffiti added a certain off-color ambience to the alley. The dumpsters provided an aromatic stench that permeated the air. Garbage pick-up couldn’t come soon enough.

  “Lovely,” Lich grumbled.

  The crime scene was a hundred feet ahead. A Ford F-150 was parked along the left side of the alley, the front end nosed at a leftward angle towards the grimy alley wall just past a large overflowing rusty green wheeled dumpster. The coroner was examining a body stuffed into the truck’s rear bed and Ramsey County crime scene techs were buzzing around the scene placing small yellow numbered tents to mark potential pieces of evidence, snapping pictures and taking video.

  “Your first case, Mac. Why don’t you go ahead and run it,” Lich offered.

  “Are you sure?” Mac asked, a control freak by nature. He definitely wanted the reigns.

  “Yeah. I’ve got your back if we get stuck.”

  Mac nodded, pulled on rubber gloves, opened his notebook and approached the coroner, an old family friend named Jack Coonan. Coonan felt them approaching, looked up, saw Mac and smiled, taking in the young detective approaching him. “Let me see the shield, boy.”

  Mac pulled his trench and suit coat back to show his shield
on his belt.

  Coonan smiled. “Is this your first case?”

  “First case, Jack. So what do we have?”

  “Gordon Andrew Oliver,” Coonan answered, handing a wallet to Mac. “Patrol cop ran the plate on this truck and it belongs to Oliver. Bartender also confirmed it was his truck.”

  “Cause of death?” Lich asked.

  “Preliminary is blunt force trauma to the right temple area,” Coonan pointed with his pen to the temple area and a large hematoma. Then Coonan pointed to the back right of the victim’s head. “He might have been hit first in the back of his head. See the bruising and blood here at the base of his skull?” The coroner pointed with his pen at the right side of the back of the victim’s skull. Mac nodded.

  Coonan continued: “He might have been hit from behind, falls and hits the bumper with the front right of his head and then falls to the ground.”

  Mac leaned down to look at the back of the skull, “He was hit more than once?”

  “That indeed appears to be the case,” Coonan answered. “I’ll have to see for sure when I examine him but it looks like he was hit back here twice, maybe three times. I can confirm once I get the body on the slab. But it’s the blow to the temple on the bumper that probably killed him. This is very preliminary, of course, but I bet I’ll find temporal bleeding and without immediate medical attention, the blow to the front of the head from the bumper was fatal.” The coroner was an old pro who didn’t idly speculate. Mac suspected much of what Coonan was surmising would turn out to be the case.

  Lich was standing to the left of the truck. “So our guy was hit from behind, hits the bumper and falls over here to the left of the truck.”

  Mac walked over to the left side of the car. He looked at the corner of the metal bumper on the left side of the truck and the smudges of blood on the bumper. In addition to that blood, Crime Scene had also marked the blood pool on the ground, just to the left of the back left side of the truck. There was also a small amount of splatter on the truck’s back left quarter panel.

  “You think robbery, Mac?” Lich asked, testing.

  Mac shook his head, “If it were, why not take the wallet? Jack, was any money in the wallet?”

  “Yeah, Mac, couple of hundred bucks, American Express and Discover cards too, plus the guy has an Omega watch, pretty nice, still on his wrist.”

  Mac looked to Lich, “If you were robbing the guy…”

  “…You’d take the wallet, the money and credit cards.”

  “And you wouldn’t stuff the guy in the rear bed of the truck. You’d take the wallet, watch, maybe even the truck, and get out of Dodge.”

  “So probably not a robbery then. I’m with you so far Mac,” Lich said.

  “Jack, can you give me a time of death?” Mac asked.

  “I’d say somewhere between midnight and two a.m.” Mac nodded and jotted down some notes.

  “Who found the vic?” Lich asked.

  “Bartender from The Mahogany,” Coonan answered. “He’s talking to the uniform cop back there.” Coonan was pointing to the back entrance to The Mahogany thirty feet behind them.

  Mac and Lich walked back to the uniform cop who was standing next to a tall, thin, disheveled man with a goatee. They introduced themselves to the clearly shaken bartender named Chet Remer. “You know our victim?” Mac asked.

  Remer nodded then said, “Gordy was a regular with us. He was in two or three nights a week, occasionally on a weekend.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Last night. He was in like usual after work.”

  “Where does he work?” Lich asked.

  “At a law firm. Krueger, Ballantine, Montague and Preston.”

  Lich looked to Mac, the lawyer turned cop. “Do you know the firm?”

  Mac nodded. “Sure. KBMP is a well-known firm with forty, maybe forty-five attorneys, I think. Their offices are here downtown, over in the old Lowry Lewis Building.” Then to the bartender: “Mr. Remer, was Gordon Oliver an attorney there?”

  “An associate I think.”

  “So he was in last night?” Mac asked.

  The bartender nodded.

  “What time did he arrive?”

  “Maybe nine-thirty, give or take. That was kind of a usual time for him. He’d been working some longer hours as of late he said. He said he was gearing up for trial.”

  “What time did he leave the bar last night?”

  “He left around midnight, I think. I remembered he gave me a wave on the way out the back and it was no big deal. He’s done it a hundred times I bet.”

  “Did he always park out back like that?”

  “Yeah,” Remer answered. “We let a few regulars like Gordy do that. A little perk.”

  “How was it you found Mr. Oliver this morning then?” Lich asked.

  “I went to a little after bar party with some friends last night after we closed at one. My friends dropped me back off at the end of the alley here this morning a little before five. My Jeep is parked back here. I noticed Gordy’s truck was still here which I thought was odd since I saw him leave, and leave alone. I walked over and saw the blood on the driver’s side. I looked inside the truck’s cab, didn’t see him and then got a sick feeling in my stomach. So I called 911. The police got here a few minutes later, popped the truck’s rear bed gate and flip cover and,” Remer’s lip started to tremble, “there he was.”

  “I know this is difficult,” Mac said, “but can you think of anyone that would want to hurt Mr. Oliver?”

  “No I can’t,” Remer answered. “He was a good guy, especially for a lawyer.”

  Mac and Lich both snorted, which Remer noted.

  “I know, I know,” Remer said. “Lawyers can be a little full of themselves.”

  “Tell me about it,” Lich retorted, looking right at Mac with a toothless smile.

  “Whatever,” Mac shot back, shaking his head.

  Remer picked up on it, “You a lawyer or something?” he asked Mac. “Or maybe you’re married to one.”

  “Good pick-up,” Mac answered, remembering that bartenders spend significant amounts of time observing and evaluating people. “I was going to be, but then I didn’t. Wife is a lawyer.”

  Remer nodded. “Then you know this is a lawyer bar, right?”

  Mac nodded. He’d been in a half-dozen times over the years with his wife and law school classmates.

  “Well, we obviously see lots of them in here and, I don’t care how much they spend, some of them are real assholes, arrogant and full of self-importance. But Gordy wasn’t. He was plenty confident for sure, but he was friendly and not a bad looking guy at all. He dressed well and looked the lawyer part, pinstripe suits, nice ties, fancy watch, spent some money on the haircut, all that. He cut a good look and from what I observed, he had an effective line of bullshit for the ladies.”

  “Get himself a fair amount of tail, did he?” Lich asked, his mind drifting to one of the few topics he liked to discuss in detail and, as Mac had learned, with great frequency.

  Remer smiled. “Gordy left with company plenty of nights. I asked him his secret and he’d just say ‘you gotta use all the tools in the toolbox, Chet.’”

  “He was killed outside your bar,” Mac said, getting back on track. “Did anyone in here give him trouble last night?”

  “Not last night.”

  “How about other nights then?” Mac followed, catching the bartender’s drift.

  “Maybe a month ago he got into it pretty good with a guy in the bar. It was heated. We had a couple of off duty cops in here that night and they broke it up before it got physical, but it looked like it could have easily escalated to that level.”

  “Do you know why?”

  Remer smiled. “Like I said, Gordy was good with the ladies and from what I saw he didn’t really let a diamond ring stand in his way. He almost viewed it as a challenge. I think that night we might have had an angry husband or boyfriend.”

  “Do you have a name?�
� Mac asked, jotting down notes.

  “I don’t. I can check but I don’t think we wrote anything up on it.”

  “Did you recognize the guy?”

  “Not at the time. I probably would if I saw him again because of what happened that night. But he wasn’t a regular, that’s for sure, but whether that was the only time he was in here I don’t know. I know he hasn’t been back and Gordy never mentioned it again. I think he was here with some people from his law firm that night so they might know more about it.”

  “Speaking of his work, did he ever mention any trouble there?” Mac inquired.

  “No. He worked long hours at that firm like most young lawyers do, but he really seemed to like it. Sometimes he came here with people from the firm, lawyers, secretaries and stuff. I think he was a little friendly with a couple of women from the firm or at least it sure seemed like it. But again, he never mentioned any work trouble. He just worked a lot, I know that.”

  Lich and Mac spent a few more minutes interviewing Remer and then left him and walked back into the alley to look over the crime scene again. Mac walked back to the blood pool and knelt down to look around when a flash of light to his right caught his eye. Under the front of the left rear tire he saw a small brass plate, maybe an inch by half inch, rectangular in shape. It wasn’t marked as evidence. Mac pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket. He carefully moved around the blood pool and crouched down close to the brass piece and shined his flashlight on it. It looked like there was blood on it. Mac called over a crime scene tech to mark, photograph and bag it.

  Mac stood up and then looked back towards the dumpster and stared for a minute. Lich noticed the look.

  “What are you thinking, Mac?”

  Mac stood up and walked over to the dumpster and crouched down behind it, careful not to touch the dumpster. There was a gap between the back of the dumpster and the wall. He could peek through and see the back door to The Mahogany. The victim still had his wallet, watch and the car was still there.

  “Jack, did the vic have his cell phone?”

  Coonan shook his head. “Yes.”

  This wasn’t a robbery, Mac thought. Robber wouldn’t put the body in the truck, not to mention the fact that the wallet, watch, cell phone and perhaps even the truck would be gone. Mac peeked back through the opening again. “I think our killer crouched down behind the dumpster here, lying in wait for Mr. Oliver. When Oliver passes,” Mac stood up and swung down with his right hand, “the first hit knocks Oliver into the bumper of the truck here. Who knows, there’s a patch of ice here as well so after he’s hit, he stumbles, maybe steps on the patch of ice and then hits his head on the bumper. Then the killer hits him a time or two when he falls to the ground, finishing off what was already probably a finished job because the blow to the head on the bumper is what kills him.”