Electing To Murder Page 2

  “Why do you say that?”

  “The Johnny Walker Blue. You don’t break out the Blue for just anybody.”

  Montgomery looked inside and his partner was right. On the massive coffee table were a dozen glasses, two buckets of ice and four bottles of Johnny Walker Blue. “What’s the Blue go for these days?”

  “My dad bought a bottle last Christmas. He said it ran just north of $200 a bottle.”

  “Who are these other two guys?” There was another short, stout, older-looking man pacing around the room in a black suit and shirt, and with a black fedora pulled down tight on his head. He had said perhaps three words to Checketts and spent the remainder of his time either on or reading his smart phone. The third man sitting at the table was thin with blond hair and high cheekbones. He spent his time alternately on his laptop and looking at his phone. It did not appear that the three men necessarily knew one another.

  “I don’t know, never seen them before. Checketts carried in a briefcase and the other two look empty handed.”

  Just then lights appeared to their left. “Let’s see who else is coming to dinner,” Montgomery said quietly. The blogger put his camera up and zoomed in.

  “So who do we have?” Stroudt asked, letting the binoculars hang around his shoulders, his vision partially blocked by trees.

  “Looks like,” Montgomery moved slightly left and looked through the camera into the cabin and started snapping and then stopped, quietly uttering, “Oh my God!”

  “What?” Stroudt asked urgently.

  “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “What? Tell me,” Stroudt answered, sliding left as well, the binoculars coming to his eyes.

  “It’s Heath Connolly,” Montgomery whispered excitedly.

  “No way.”

  Montgomery simply nodded.

  “Checketts and these other two guys are meeting with Connolly? Five days before the election? Out here in backwater Kentucky?”

  “What have we stumbled onto here?” Stroudt whispered excitedly.

  Montgomery didn’t respond, he simply snapped photos.

  * * *

  Connolly was inside now, Wire thought as she settled into position behind the base of a massive fallen trunk of a large tree. The tree was one of four or five on the ground in her immediate vicinity. All appeared to have recently fallen, probably the result of a strong storm from the summer now long since passed. The position provided her a clear view of the circular drive to the back of the cottage which would allow for the taking of pictures as everyone departed. Two private security guards were standing on the back porch, both with Styrofoam cups in their hands. Wire put the camera to her eyes, zoomed in and took pictures of each. Another man stepped onto the back porch and gave orders, casually waving the men off the porch and walking around the cabin. Wire snapped two photos of the man, who appeared to be in charge of the security.

  Instructions given to the worker bees, the man moved back inside the cabin. And what was going on inside is what interested Wire. However, to see she would need to move to the front of the cottage. She turned to her right, took one careful step and she saw them, perhaps sixty to seventy feet away, camped behind a similar log, already taking photos.

  Wire was really good at this but she wouldn’t be able to get into position on this side of the cabin without being noticed by the two men. Even if she could, if they made a mistake, she’d be caught up in the wash. The car she’d seen in the driveway must belong to those two. They’d beat her to the scene.

  So who were they? Who did they work for? How did they know about this meeting? Those were questions Wire wanted to ask, and would, but in a different and safer time and place. She had the license plate and would track them down. However, for now, unless all she wanted was pictures as the meeting participants walked in and then out the back door, she needed another option.

  Wire turned her gaze to the property on the opposite side to the north of the cottage. The topography of the land was not promising as it ran down away from the cottage, although she could make out what looked like another cabin perhaps a hundred feet north of the Hitch place. She carefully moved back to her left ten feet to get a better look. The cabin was older and much smaller, but was two stories with a steep pitched roof. The peak of the roof looked to be just slightly above the height of the main level of Hitch’s. If she could get up on top of that roof, she might be able to see into the cabin from the other side. Wire slid the night vision glasses back on and started carefully moving back towards the road.

  It took her ten minutes to pick her way over to the property north of Hitch’s cabin. She was now peaking around the corner of the three-car detached garage sitting twenty or so feet lower than Hitch’s place. The backyard of the cabin was open and cleared like a yard you would find in the city, with just a few trees interspersed through what would be a finely manicured yard in the summer. Fortunately, the cabin appeared to be buttoned up for the year and the floodlights on the garage were dark. Nevertheless, she stuck close to the northern edge of the property and the tree line and scooted to the cabin.

  There was an old metal television antennae tower that hugged the north side of the cabin. Wire suspected this was left over from a bygone era before cable or satellite dishes became prevalent. She looked at the base, which had cement footings. The tower itself was secured to the house in two places by metal brackets. Best of all, it had foot rungs. It was sturdy and would easily hold her one hundred twenty-five pounds. She put her left foot into the first rung, when to her right she noticed another set of headlights approaching.

  Wire stepped back down off the antennae and slithered back to the rear corner of the cabin and peered towards the driveway behind Hitch’s place. Another limousine had arrived. She slipped off her backpack and kneeled down and took out her camera. She snapped a photo of the license plate. A man providing security opened the rear passenger door.

  * * *

  “Someone else has arrived,” Stroudt stated, seeing the headlights appear. “Who do we have now?”

  “I can’t tell,” Montgomery answered, starting to stand up. “Let me see if I can get in position to take a picture.”

  “Can you get one?”

  “I need a little better angle,” Montgomery answered as he stood up. He moved to his left five feet, not looking down, and stepped awkwardly onto a branch.

  The crack was loud—too loud.

  * * *

  Wire had her camera trained on the newly arrived limousine. A foot appeared from the rear passenger door, a man ready to step out.

  “There’s somebody up there!” she heard a security guard scream as she slipped safely back behind the cabin. “Up in the woods. Up there! Up there! On the south side! On the south side! Up there!”

  The two men had been discovered. She was instantly relieved she’d had to change positions. The security man holding open the limousine door was animatedly talking to the man inside the limousine. Then the security man took two steps away from the limousine, quickly pivoted to the south and ordered: “Don’t let them get away.”

  “There they are! There they are!” one of the guards yelled.

  Then she heard it, an unmistakable sound.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  Three shots fired.

  “What in the hell?” she muttered to herself.

  Then she heard another series of gunshots.

  The limousine that had just arrived peeled out of the driveway.

  The meeting was over.

  She sprinted back to the detached garage and took stock. With security focused on the south side of the Hitch cottage and away from her location to the north, Wire took a chance.

  She jumped from behind the detached garage and bounded up the hill to the back of Hitch’s and knelt down in a small cluster of trees. She snapped photos of Connolly and others running out of the cabin, and into the waiting limousines and SUVs.

  The motorcade quickly sped away.

  Wire held her position
for a few minutes in case she missed any straggling personnel hanging around. The cabin had gone quiet; most of the lights now out. Sure that it was now safe to move, she carefully moved back away from the cabin and up towards the road and picked her way back to the Acadia all the while wondering “What did those two see, anyway?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “What would be the fun in that?”

  Thursday, October 31st

  The Snelling Motor Lodge was a two-story L-shaped motel from a bygone era, both in its shape and function. It was L-shaped to fit snuggly into a tight lot on the east side of Snelling Avenue near the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. In years gone by, its function would have been to host out-of-state families in the cities either visiting or working at the Minnesota State Fair or in town visiting their children attending Hamline University which was located just to its north.

  However, what travelers needed from a hotel, matched with years of neglectful ownership, had allowed The Snelling to fall into a dilapidated state. The red paint was peeling away from its cedar siding and the years of harsh Minnesota winters and heavy snow had wreaked havoc on the faded black shingled roof, causing it to look as wavy as Lake Minnetonka. The cement parking lot was strewn with small pot holes and the sidewalks were chipped and cracked. People looking for a good night’s rest and some peace and quiet usually did not stay at The Snelling. People looking to engage in activities they didn’t want others to see did. Time and neglect turned The Snelling over to a poorer clientele, one that frequently included drug dealers, junkies and prostitutes. So it was no surprise to Detective Mac McRyan that at 5:30 p.m. he was turning into the parking lot of The Snelling, pulling up to yellow crime scene tape and parking next to the coroner’s wagon.

  This wouldn’t be his first rodeo at The Snelling.

  Mac put his new Yukon in park and took one last long sip of his Depth Charge Coffee from the Grand Brew. Thirty-three years old, he had four years as a detective. He was a fourth generation cop, with cousins and uncles scattered throughout the St. Paul Police Department. When you retired from the first family business, you went to work for the second family business, McRyan’s Pub, sitting on the southwest corner of downtown St. Paul on West Seventh Street.

  While policing and owning a bar were the family businesses, Mac’s route to being a cop was far more circuitous than for the rest of his family. He’d been a hockey player at the University of Minnesota, captain his senior year. He was also a scholastic All-American. As a result, Mac McRyan had other options available to him. So while other McRyans of his generation stayed true to family form and went into policing, Mac went to law school with his college sweetheart, got married and appeared set for a long, lucrative and successful legal career. He had been hired by the biggest firm in town with a six-figure salary waiting. Then lightning struck two weeks after he passed the bar exam. His two cousins and best friends were killed in the line of duty and suddenly he felt the pull and obligation of the family business. Mac made detective by age twenty-nine, was divorced by age thirty and now at age thirty-three was the best detective on the force.

  He grabbed his worn brown leather folder, pen and cell phone and rolled his athletic six-foot-one frame out of the warmth of the truck. There was a definite chill in the air. The temperature was dropping quickly from a noontime high of forty-eight and was now dipping into the mid-thirties, with a stiff northwest breeze adding to the chill, cold even for Minnesota in late October. Winter was still a ways away, but days like today made you realize it wasn’t that far away. Mac threw his black wool overcoat on over his suit coat and pulled a navy blue scarf around his neck and walked under the crime scene tape.

  His cousin Shawn, a uniform cop, greeted him with a smile and: “Hey cuz. I didn’t think the chief would send the A-squad to The Snelling.”

  “Just my luck, I guess,” Mac answered. “Hold this,” Mac said as he handed his cousin his brown leather folder and reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of rubber gloves. He took the folder back, “Lich will be along any minute.”

  “So you think the governor will pull it out next Tuesday?”

  “I sure hope so,” Mac answered, “if for no other reason than just to see Sally happy. Given all the work she’s put in the last couple of months, she’ll be absolutely devastated if he doesn’t.”

  Sally was Sally Kennedy, Mac’s girlfriend. She had taken leave from her assistant Ramsey County attorney job to work on Minnesota Governor James Thomson’s presidential campaign. An old law school friend who was a close aide of the national campaign manager, a famous local political operative named Judge Dixon, recruited her back in mid-summer. She’d poured herself into the work and made a very favorable impression on the man known as “The Judge.” It would be good for her career since she had aspirations beyond the county attorney’s office. Judge Dixon was an excellent man to have for a reference.

  “So what do we have, Shawney?” Mac asked, getting back on task. A dead body awaited his attention.

  “Body is upstairs. I snuck a quick peek. You’ve got a white male, probably in his mid-thirties. Bloody as hell. The guy’s throat was cut nearly ear to ear, pretty gruesome. Given the location, I’d say it’s probably a drug-robbery-sex cocktail.”

  Mac raised an eyebrow, “So I can just go home then?”

  Shawn smiled, “I suspect the powers that be probably would like a detective, particularly one of your caliber, to sign off on the theory of a lowly patrolman.”

  “Pity,” Mac replied. “Who discovered the body?”

  “A Valeninos Pizza delivery driver, with an assist from the motel manager.”

  “Valeninos?”

  “Yeah. Apparently our vic upstairs ordered a pie. The driver knocks on the door and there’s no answer. He looked in the window, there was a sliver of a gap between the curtains and the window and he saw a leg on the floor and the guy wouldn’t get up no matter how long he knocked. Driver was smart enough to …”

  “… realize where he was and went and got the manager,” Mac finished.

  “That’s right. Manager came up, opened the door, saw what you’re going to see and called 911.”

  “Do we have a name?”

  “Yeah, Bob Smith.”

  Mac gave his cousin a skeptical look, “Bob Smith? Seriously?”

  “That’s what the motel manager said. At least that’s what the room register has his name as.”

  “Let me guess. Neither identification nor a credit card were required to rent a room?”

  “The Snelling rarely asks for such niceties from its clientele these days,” Shawn answered. “Not good for their customer retention program, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t imagine it is,” Mac sighed as he strode over to the open-air concrete stairs and made his way up the steps to the second level and strolled along the balcony to room 211. He carefully stepped inside the doorway. Like all rooms at The Snelling, this one was cramped. To his immediate right was a cheap small square table with two extremely weathered navy blue fabric chairs. An unopened Valeninos’ pizza box sat on the table. Farther inside and to the right were two twin-size beds. The bedspread of the closest bed was slightly disturbed and the two pillows were stacked on the left side near the nightstand. A cheap oak dresser and old-school box television on a stand were to his left. The bathroom and a door-less closet containing two stray metal hangers on the clothes rod were to the back.

  The body was laying face down, less than ten feet inside the door. There was a line of blood splatter on the left wall running above the dresser and across the mirror. The coroner was crouched down, examining the body, careful to keep her feet out of the pool of blood. She looked up to see Mac and smiled. “Detective McRyan, how nice to see you.”

  “And you, Doctor. What can you tell me about our boy Bob Smith here? Like, for example, do we know if that’s actually his real name?”

  “We don’t. No wallet on the body or in the room,” the coroner answered. “There are markings on h
is left wrist suggesting he wore a watch but there isn’t one to be found.”

  “You’ll take prints off the vic, of course?”

  “You bet, Mac. We’ll run them and see if we get a hit. Given we’re at The Snelling, odds are in our favor.”

  Mac looked back to a uniform cop standing just outside the door. “Did you guys find any luggage? Duffel bag? Backpack? Anything like that?”

  The uniform shook his head.

  Mac turned back to the coroner, “How long has Bobby here been dead?”

  “No rigor, so I’d say he hasn’t been dead more than two to three hours tops. Cause of death looks pretty obvious, knife, right across the throat.”

  “I assume he was grabbed from behind?” Mac asked, as he jotted down notes.

  The coroner nodded.

  “And he’s facing the left wall here when he cuts him across the throat. Look at the blood splatter. See how it runs across the wall and thins out left to right? That would suggest to me the killer used his right hand.”

  “As would the wound, from what I can tell,” the coroner replied. “The guy is damn near decapitated.”

  “So how does our killer get in here and get the jump on the guy?” Mac asked and then looked down to his right at the table. “The pizza perhaps?”

  “Maybe. The vic makes a call for a pie,” the coroner says. “Pizza guy gets in the room and then takes the knife to our guy.”

  “Valeninos will love that,” Mac answered, shaking his head. “But that doesn’t really add up, does it? I mean, the Valeninos guy found our body to start with.” Mac flipped up the top to the pizza box. The box was empty.

  “Interesting. No pizza in the pizza box.” Mac turned to the uniform cop. “Is the Valeninos guy still hanging around?”

  “Yes.”

  “Confirm with him that he still has the pizza that was ordered.”

  The uniform ran off. Mac turned back to the room, “So between whenever he made his order and the time they found him, someone got in here, dressed as a delivery man, and decapitates our guy. But why? For what reason? Why is Bob, or whatever his name really is, so important? So important that someone would, in broad daylight no less, get in here, to The Snelling, to kill him.”