Next Girl On The List - A serial killer thriller (McRyan Mystery Series Book) Read online

  NEXT GIRL

  ON THE LIST

  McRyan Mystery Series

  By

  Roger Stelljes

  NEXT GIRL ON THE LIST (McRyan Mystery Series) By Roger Stelljes

  Copyright © 2016 Roger Stelljes.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via other means without permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. This book is a work of the author’s experience and opinion. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by: Roger Stelljes www.RogerStelljes.com

  ISBN 978-0-9835758-7-0 (e-book)

  E-book version 11.1.2016

  (To receive a message when a new release becomes available visit www.RogerStelljes.com)

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Books by Roger Stelljes

  About The Author

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To Scott Crossman – golf partner and book critic.

  Thanks for helping to make it all happen.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I’m someone who is once again going to change the trajectory of your life.”

  Washington, DC

  The man peeked through the vertical blinds and could see the first flecks of daylight elevating over the rooftops of the two-story brownstones across the street. Not a window was illuminated anywhere along the street on a sleepy early April Sunday morning.

  It was time to finish.

  The dead body laid in a naked pose, staged in the center of the living room, displayed under the light from the swing arm of a reading lamp.

  He’d killed her seven hours ago. The formula—the seduction and the deception, even these four years later—still worked, and the exhilarating sensation he’d felt as the life drained from her body was just as he’d remembered it.

  That gave him the excitement he craved.

  After the excitement of the kill, it was then time to quietly and methodically create his work of art. If killing was the excitement, the art was his passion.

  It had taken great patience to arrange the display of her body with the proper detail, her body placed face down on the floor and her arms extended left and right as required by the masterpiece he was emulating. It had taken him more than an hour to run the small string of beaded pearls through her hair, which he’d needed to painstakingly and methodically style from an awkward angle as her body laid still and lifeless on the floor. In his final analysis, he’d concluded that her hair color was a shade of brown lighter than perfection, but it was close enough. However, if there were some slight qualms about the lightness of her hair color, he had absolutely none with regard to the quality of her body. It was perfect. The width of her hips and softness of her flesh was ideal; from that standpoint, she perfectly fit his vision of what he wanted to do.

  Once her body was displayed just as he wanted, he then screwed the ornate gold frame into the narrow panels of the hardwood floor. Her name wasn’t Grace, but she was an incredible likeness to the body in the masterpiece laid beneath her.

  That was the conclusion he reached as he snapped his photographs.

  He only took photographs of the first victim, so as to properly motivate those he was challenging. The final photo he selected would be his calling card, a dramatic showpiece to start matters with the proper intensity.

  Picking up the camera once again, he brought it up to his eye, focused the lens with his left hand and then snapped three more pictures, checked the display screen to assess the quality and then snapped two more photos. He checked and evaluated the pictures before deciding to snap yet two more. All eight pictures were seriously considered, clicking the back and forth arrow buttons. Eventually, he narrowed it down, clicking between two pictures taken from the left side of her body, which in his critical analysis better exhibited her and the lovely softness of her features. There were two specific pictures that really captured the essence of what he wanted, and with that, he was finished.

  The last item on the checklist was to set the little black timer. The countdown, which started the first quarter of the game, was always the last item on the mental to-do list. Checking his watch, he set the timer and watched it start its countdown. He then switched off the reading lamp and returned it to its resting place amongst a stack of books surrounding a reading chair to the left of the front picture window.

  It was time to leave.

  At the front door, his gloved hand on the knob, he stopped and glanced back and took one last lingering look at Lisa. She was such a lovely woman, shy and reserved, unconfident and unsure, yet gracious and polite, so wanting to have a relationship and to have it with him. He had truly enjoyed her company over the past weeks, discussing their mutual interests, their favorite paintings and artists. She had a nice and quite underrated selection of pieces haphazardly displayed throughout her cramped and extremely cluttered townhouse, even remakes of a couple of his favorites.

  In some ways, having to do what he did left him feeling a bit melancholy. To do what he must, he had to take the life of someone who shared his love and passion for the arts. The saving grace in his mind was that developing that fondness for the victims, knowing, appreciating and understanding them to the degree he did, served as motivation and significantly enhanced the quality of his performance and staging. The victims were what they often admired, the subject of work of a brilliant and renowned artist. After he brutally squeezed the last breaths of life out of a victim, in some ways he felt as if he was apologizing by treating their body, their corpse, with such great and gentle care. It was his aspiration that each victim would be the prime focus of the piece of fine art they were meant to embody. Over time, as he honed his craft, each detail became more refined and each scene became more elaborate and astonishing. It made his early work look almost crude in comparison.

  At the front door, he prepared to leave. He slid a stocking cap onto his head, pulled the hood on his black sweatshirt up over the cap and then slung his backpack over
his shoulder.

  This was a time of maximum peril. Peering out the front door peephole, he saw nobody on the street and therefore no threats to identify him. Exhaling, he opened the door just a crack, scrutinizing every aspect of the street; first left, then right and then back to the left again. There was no one about. Quietly and quickly, he slipped out the front door, pulled it shut and then locked the deadbolt with her key. He casually walked down the steps and the short front walk, constantly checking left and right as he made his way to the Honda Civic. Within twenty seconds, he drove away.

  Thirteen hours later, with the sun nearly down as the clock approached 7:00 P.M., he slithered down the narrow crevice of an alley, holding close to the sides, staying in the shadows of the small garages and uneven privacy fences. He reached the intended garage and secured the plastic bag with the note and picture to the garage door handle and then as quickly as he’d arrived, he disappeared.

  Now there was but one thing left to do.

  • • •

  Mac stuffed the last of the dishes into the dishwasher while his redheaded fiancée, White House Deputy Director of Communications Sally Kennedy, finished up hand washing the large serving plates in the sink.

  They would be married in six weeks. The wedding would be a small, intimate affair with their family and closest friends at a private estate overlooking the Chesapeake Bay.

  He could hardly wait for it to arrive.

  All the planning was done, the wedding dress bought and fitted, the bridesmaids’ dresses were set, the tuxedos sized and rented, the menu selected, the invitations sent and the responses received. His close family and friends were all making the trek from Minnesota and he couldn’t wait to see and spend time with them. All they needed was to get to the date.

  A few of those that would also be wedding guests—their DC friends, as they called them—were now grabbing a fresh beer or glass of wine and making their way from the kitchen and into the living room. He checked his watch again, as he had every thirty seconds for what seemed like the last hour. He silently admonished himself: Mac McRyan, time does not go faster when you do that. If anything, it drags.

  “Get in here, you two,” Dara Wire yelled from the living room. “It’s starting in a minute.”

  “Your public awaits,” Sally teased as she lightly cupped his face with her right hand and pecked his lips. They each grabbed fresh beers out of the cooler and made their way into the living room and over to the couch in front of the flat screen that hung over the fireplace.

  “Nervous?” Sally asked loudly, holding his hand.

  “Not as much as you,” Mac replied with a rueful smile. “I can only imagine the political ramifications if I blew this.”

  The group erupted in laughter; Sally’s friends from the White House staff numbered many in the room.

  “It’ll be fine,” Wire added. “I’m sure I covered for you.”

  The iconic stopwatch of 60 Minutes appeared on the screen. Veteran correspondent Steve Kroft introduced the segment, the book’s flag-draped cover in the story background along with headshot renderings of Wire and Mac.

  “It all started with the murder of a political blogger in an out-of-the-way motel in St. Paul, Minnesota,” Kroft started. “Mere days later, that murder, and the resulting investigation, hit at the very foundations of this country’s electoral system. This is the story of that investigation told from the perspective of its two investigators, Mac McRyan and Dara Wire.”

  When Mac and Dara agreed to write a book about their investigation of a series of murders in the days and weeks prior to the last presidential election, an investigation that revealed that the Vice President’s campaign had rigged voting machines in three vital states, they thought it would be of some mild interest to the public, although Mac was dubious.

  “I’ll do it. I have the time and it will be an interesting experience. But when the book finally comes out it will be eighteen months after the election. In this day and age, that’s like forever. The public will have long moved on.”

  It took less than a week to prove Mac wrong.

  Mac and Wire were educated, talented and intelligent, but writers they were not. Ellen Paulson, an accomplished and award-winning author who’d written both fiction and non-fiction, was hired to assist them. Paulson was perfect for the project and did something special with all the material Mac and Wire provided over hours and hours of interviews reviewing the course and scope of the investigation. The publisher thought so too and engaged in a large promotional campaign. The book opened in the top ten of the New York Times Best Seller list and was climbing. It was an instant hit, was all the rage on the political talk shows and now their publisher and agent were fielding calls from movie producers.

  “You can’t be serious,” was Mac’s flabbergasted response when the book agent called them. “They want to make a movie out of this?”

  “Are you kidding me? Mac, it reads like a movie script,” their agent replied excitedly. “A damn good one, and the best part is, it’s a true story. This is the real deal. People eat that stuff up. Car chases, shootouts, conspiracies related to the highest office in the land. This screams movie.”

  “I want Angelina Jolie to play me,” was Wire’s thrilled reply, and then to Mac, she said, “Would you just lighten up and enjoy the ride? What actor is in his mid-thirties, six-foot plus, has blond hair, is marginally attractive and has a huge dimple chin? That’s who we need to play you.”

  “Nobody has a chin like this, so I guess they won’t be able to cast for the role,” Mac replied derisively. For some reason, he wasn’t excited to see his likeness on screen.

  “Fat chance,” Wire answered, shaking her head at her friend. “Man, you have got to get over the sourpuss routine on this. Lighten up, for cripes’ sake. This is awesome!”

  “Well, Mac, maybe this will make you happy,” their agent offered. “You two have already easily covered your advances. The royalty checks are coming, and they won’t be little. So sit back, enjoy it and start thinking about what you’ll wear to the movie premiere.”

  This didn’t mean everyone loved the book.

  While Wire, their literary agent, their publisher and those around them were reveling in the attention, Mac knew there was a price to be paid. The entire time he was working on the book, he knew where he was most vulnerable, and that was in the arena he hated the most—politics.

  Mac had never felt like he showed any political favoritism whatsoever when investigating the case. He pursued the facts and the evidence wherever they led. There was no disputing what he and Wire found and who was responsible for the murders or trying to fix the election. However, when it came to politics, people often liked to focus on the process rather than the result.

  In running the case, it was Mac who let Wire join the investigation, and she was working for the Vice President’s opponent. He kept Judge Dixon in the loop and accessed some of his resources. The Judge was running Governor Thomson’s campaign. Sally worked for Judge Dixon at the time and now worked for him and President Thomson at the White House. So while Mac felt like he played the investigation straight, he was left wide open to charges of political bias. The supporters of the Vice President and his party, the ones not implicated in the scandal, were more than happy to point that out, and were doing so repeatedly to anyone who would listen. Of course, in response, representatives of the President’s party were using the book as a proxy to launch counterattacks, which in the end put him, as the lead investigator, in everyone’s political crosshairs.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sally said, unworried. “Besides, controversy means clicks, interest and increased sales. Laugh all the way to the bank.”

  Mac wasn’t laughing.

  Prideful, he didn’t like his credibility being attacked, and in the first week the book was on the market, it was attacked, repeatedly. To some, he’d engaged in a political witch hunt on behalf of Judge Dixon, the man who would become President and his soon-to-be wife.

 
; “Then go on the offensive,” Sally had argued, going into her communications director mode. “You’re not talking. You’re saying no to every interview request. So in the absence of you speaking up for yourself people will wonder whether there’s anything to all this bullshit people are slinging. Fight back. The media wants to talk to you. So talk.”

  Mac and Wire had spoken very little to the media, even with the book’s immediate success. As cops, they had a natural skepticism of the media, the gotcha questions and the short interview segments where it could prove difficult to defend yourself, or your comments or answers were taken out of context.

  Then, not long after Sally’s pep talk, 60 Minutes called.

  In return for the exclusive interview, the producer promised a lengthened segment to take a deep and objective dive into the investigation.

  They were both still leery, but then Mac said, “It is 60 Minutes. They aren’t infallible, but they are—”

  “The gold standard,” Wire answered, finishing the thought. “If you can’t trust 60 Minutes, who can you trust?”

  “I think we need to do this,” was Mac’s ultimate conclusion.

  Now they were watching the segment.

  All in all, they were happy with how it turned out. Steve Kroft was a pro and asked Mac some hard but fair questions, particularly about the involvement of Judge Dixon.

  “You can understand how people might claim bias,” Kroft suggested. “You can understand how some people would say it affected how you approached the investigation.”

  “I can,” Mac answered, nodding his head. “I guess all I can do is say two things in reply. One, once I realized what this case might be about from a political standpoint, knowing the election was just days away, I needed to find the answers as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to find the answers two days after the election—just think of that scenario. It would have made 2000 look like a picnic. So to avoid that, I needed resources, and Judge Dixon had immediate access to those, so I took his assistance for one night. It was a shortcut. I allowed Dara Wire to join the investigation despite what people see as a conflict. She’s a damn good investigator, was offering to help and I needed help at that moment, but to let her tag along was, I’ll admit, not the usual protocol. So people may question me and how I went about things, but my second point is what you don’t hear, Steve. You don’t hear our critics questioning what we found. They question the how but not the what. People can question me and my integrity all they want, but the final results speak for themselves, and nobody, not even the people questioning me and my conduct of the investigation, can question the guilt of those involved. If I have to take some heat for how I got the job done, I can live with that because in the end, justice was done. We. Got. It. Right.”