Electing To Murder (17 page)

The Judge’s cell phone rang and he looked at the display. “It’s Sally Kennedy.” He looked over to Wire and asked, “Should I answer?”

“Not yet, Judge. I need to think this through. Let’s see what’s in the backpack first.”

Shelby pulled out the laptop, which was still powered up but was at the password screen, something they didn’t have. “I can’t get into the laptop without the password,” she said. “We’ll need some help.”

“What else is there?” the Judge asked.

Shelby held up a cell phone.

“That’s a burner phone,” Wire said. “Cheap one he probably bought at a convenience store with a set number of hours. Is that the only one he had in there?”

Kate rummaged through the backpack and shook her head. “That’s the only phone.” She pulled out an Altoids tin and opened it up. Inside she found a SIM card. “I bet he kept his SIM card, though, for his contacts.”

“So I bet he dumped his cell phone because it had GPS,” Wire said. “So I wonder how they tracked him to St. Paul?” The cell phone had been the first thing she thought of.

“Perhaps they were sitting on Sebastian’s house?” the Judge offered.

“Maybe,” Wire answered skeptically. “I suppose they could have thought that if Stroudt’s intent was to come here and contact Sebastian, maybe Montgomery would try and do the same thing. But …”

“… That’s really betting on the come,” the Judge finished. “Montgomery could appear anywhere and if anything it would have been bucking the odds huge to think he’d follow Stroudt.”

“Perhaps that’s what Montgomery was thinking as well,” Wire added. “No, they tracked him in some other way. What else is in the backpack?”

Shelby pulled out a camera, an Olympus. “Maybe this will tell us what they saw.”

“Let me see,” Wire answered. She took the camera from Shelby, turned it on and started looking through the photos. “These are definitely from Hitch’s cabin in Kentucky,” she reported. “They were in the position I wanted to take pictures from.”

The Judge leaned over, “There’s Connolly walking in,” he said with disgust. “That bastard, I’m going to fry his ass if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Who is this man?” Wire asked, pointing to a rotund balding man in a black suit coat and white dress shirt.

“I don’t recognize him,” the Judge answered and then pointed to another man on the right hand side of the picture. “How about this guy?” Dixon pointed to a younger blondish man, holding something up in his hand while standing by a silver metal briefcase.

“Don’t know who that is, Judge,” Wire answered. “I only know Connolly.”

There was a fourth man in the photos, besides security. “How about the Prince of Darkness here?” The Judge pointed at a man dressed in all black including a black fedora. Wire scrolled through the photos but there was never a good picture of the man. His head was always either tilted down or he was standing in the shadows. “I can only make out part of his face,” the Judge said, pulling the camera close to his eyes. Then he handed it back to Wire. “Advance through the photos, Dara, see if we can get another look at him.”

“I remember the guy,” Wire answered. “If only because I never got a good picture of him myself in all of the chaos when people were running out of the back of the cabin and I rolled video and took pictures. The ones I took of him didn’t show much.”

Wire advanced through all of the photos but there was never a clear picture of the man’s face, only partial profiles or even shots of his back but never a straight on photo. The man was always in the shadows, behind everyone, his hat pulled down over his eyes. It didn’t help that Montgomery never seemed to focus on the man. Instead he was focused on Connolly and the rotund bald man.

Dara got to the last picture in the roll.

“What’s that a picture of?” Dixon asked. It looked like a limousine in the distance with a man opening the door.

Wire glanced at the photo. “I’d kind of forgotten about this. There was another limousine that arrived. Whoever was in it never got out because before he or she did, all hell broke loose.”

“So we have another player out there somewhere,” the Judge mused, stroking his chin, calmer now, analyzing their problem.

Wire backed through ten photos to where the younger blond man held something in his hand and showed it to Connolly and the rotund man. In the next photos he was turned, back to the camera, showing the man in the shadows it as well.

“What is he holding?” Wire asked, squinting at the small camera screen. She enlarged the photo on the display but couldn’t make out what he was holding. “I can’t really make that out. His hand covers most of it. Looks like an iPod, almost.”

She showed the Judge, who took a closer look. “I don’t know what that is. Maybe if it were bigger we could get a better idea,” the Judge said.

“I think Montgomery was going to use the laptop and its bigger screen to show us the photos but before he could …” Kate suggested from the back and then she started to tremble again. “Before he could, that man came from out of nowhere and started shooting.”

The Judge looked over to Wire, “The man you shot. Did you recognize him?”

Wire shook her head. “I didn’t look at him long, Judge, but I didn’t recognize him. I checked him quick but he didn’t have any identification on him. Maybe the police will figure out who he is.”

“Speaking of which, perhaps we need to get with them now,” the Judge offered.

Wire wasn’t so sure. “Judge, we have no idea how deep this goes, who these guys have contacts with, who we can trust.”

The Judge nodded, “I hear you but there is one man I know we can trust.”

“We can trust Mac,” Kate added meekly, still in shock. “We can trust him.”

“Yes we can,” the Judge said assuredly. “And he will know who he can trust. We have to go in, Dara. We’re sitting ducks out here.” Dixon reached for his cell phone and hit the number for Sally Kennedy.

* * *

From the flashing lights stationed in front of McCormick’s house emerged the chief. Charlie Flanagan was a tall and angular man, who walked with an elegant gait befitting of a man with a bright white shock of hair. Most of the time the chief looked aristocratic in his pinstripe suits and flowing trench coats, but he acted and sounded anything but.

The chief had been the top lawman in St. Paul for eleven years, an impressive stretch of service for a big city chief. This was particularly the case because the chief was not an especially adroit politician and he refused to play the games politicians loved to play. He was not, and proudly was not, a politician in a policeman’s job. He was a policeman in a political job. Flanagan was a St. Paul cop for thirty-six years. He never forgot whom he was the chief of and that was the police. He was beloved and respected by the force. His men would do anything for him because they knew the chief would have their backs. It was that loyalty and devotion that had kept him in his position for so many years.

The chief, sans his usual suit and tie and his white hair having a mildly Einsteinish look to it late in the evening, approached McRyan, who was standing on the front steps of the house. The chief was like a father to Mac, having been with him when his father Simon was shot and killed in a fluke hunting accident. Since that day, the chief fulfilled Simon’s role as a father figure. The two could read each other like father and son and the chief heard it in Mac’s voice when he called.

“How bad?”

Mac ran his right hand over his face and answered: “Two dead inside, one the deputy campaign manager for the Thomson campaign, Sebastian McCormick. The other is Adam Montgomery.”

“The blogger you’ve been trying to track down?” the chief asked. Mac had brought the chief into the loop earlier in the day on the case after their meeting with Dixon.

“Have you talked to the Judge?”

“That’s how I ended up here,” Mac answered, then related the phone call from Dixon, which brought Mac to the scene.

The chief nodded to the inside of the house, “How did it all go down in there?”

McRyan gave the chief the quick rundown and his theory on how McCormick and Montgomery ended up dead. He finished with: “We have a large blood pool against a wall in the dining room but no body to go with it.”

“So someone’s missing,” the chief answered, nodding his head. “You said Dixon called you and that brought you here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is the Judge now?”

Mac shook his head. “I don’t know, Chief,” he said quietly.

The chief exhaled and closed his eyes, wondering if the Judge ended up on the wrong end of this. “Is his the missing body?”

“I don’t know, Chief. We have calls into all the hospitals about gunshot wounds. I suppose he could have gotten himself to a hospital and we just don’t know about it yet but …”

“… but what?”

“I don’t think that’s how it went down.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“It’s not.”

Mac and the chief turned to see Sally. “I have the Judge on the phone.”

* * *

They tied it off at McCormick’s and then in an instant they were back to square one.

Kristoff rubbed his temples, the stress headache expanding by the minute. And now Foche was gone. This would be the first time in twenty years that he would not have him by his side while he was operating, and what he now knew was that he was not the only one operating here.

“You’re absolutely sure it was a woman who fired at you?” Kristoff asked the driver.

“I saw the ponytail swing as she turned and she moved and ran like a woman but also like a pro. She was law enforcement, military, something along those lines. She popped three at us, bing, bing, bing, like it was no big deal.” Not to mention the three she put into Foche.

Kristoff was running scenarios through his head as to whom she could be working for and his biggest worry was that it was someone with the Thomson campaign. If that were the case, the campaign now had in their possession the evidence to potentially burn his boss, to potentially burn them all.

Moriarity, who was riding shotgun up front, turned to Kristoff in back, “I have Ginger on the line. She says the laptop is still on the move.”

“To where?”

D
owntown St. Paul quickly appeared in the windshield once Wire jumped on Interstate 35E and started heading south towards downtown St. Paul. She didn’t want to go to the police, at least not officially yet. With the events of the last hour, she was leery of anyone at this point.

Things were spiraling out of control. What Wire wanted to do was go into hiding in a hotel somewhere far away to sit for a few hours and run everything through her head. Things were happening so fast, she wasn’t thinking, just reacting.

Who or what they were reacting to she had no idea. What she did know was that:

Sebastian was dead.

Stroudt and Montgomery were dead.

There were killers out there operating with impunity.

They were up against an opponent with serious resources and she at least was entertaining the notion that it included law enforcement at some level, regardless of what the Judge said. How else would they have tracked Montgomery to Sebastian’s? That took people, equipment, resources and the one entity that had those elements in large supply was the government.

It wasn’t inconceivable that the vice president, or Connolly as his proxy, or more likely Connolly on his own for that matter, could access federal resources or call in local favors, even in Governor Thomson’s backyard. The crime, whatever it was, was so large that the cover up had to succeed at all costs.

Given all of that, she simply couldn’t bring herself to believe in anyone right now.

The Judge understood where she was coming from, both emotionally and logically. Dixon was as devastated as anyone in the car. He had raised Sebastian in a political sense not to mention a personal one. He would grieve the loss. But one thing the Judge knew how to do was compartmentalize. The emotional drawer was closed for now and the crisis drawer was open. Logically, he knew he had to treat their situation like it was a political crisis and react accordingly.

Soon Sebastian’s death would become news. The national media full court press would be all over the story within hours. When tied with the deaths of Stroudt and Montgomery, the media storm would be immense. Consequently, Judge Dixon couldn’t simply disappear while Wire thought things through.

There was a presidential election at stake.

Whoever was behind these three murders was trying to cover up something that would impact it.

“At least that’s how we have to look at this,” the Judge said.

Wire knew he was right, but something still didn’t feel right.

* * *

Mac had the siren going again, this time pushing traffic to the side along St. Paul’s majestic Summit Avenue, taking the most direct route east across St. Paul. He passed his law school William Mitchell on the left and was approaching the historic University Club on his right. “Why not meet them at the Department of Public Safety?” Double Frank asked from the backseat.

“Agreed,” Lich added from the back. “More protection there.”

Sally took the call from Dixon. “The Judge says his friend is not in a trusting mood after McCormick’s house. The Judge personally vouched for Mac,” Sally reported. “The Judge’s friend said fine, but they had to meet someplace where Mac could trust everyone.”

For Mac, if it wasn’t at HQ, there was only one other place—McRyan’s Pub. The place would be full of cops and family, some one in the same, and Mac would vouch for any of them.

“Hang on,” Mac said as he turned hard right off of Summit Avenue and eased off the gas and let the steepness of Ramsey Street pull the Yukon down from the steep bluff overlooking the city.

“Who’s this friend you’re talking about?” Lich asked.

“I don’t know who it is,” Sally replied. “The Judge is a complicated and calculating man who moves in mysterious ways. But if I had to guess, the Judge has had someone playing a different angle on this than you.”

* * *

“Which place is it, Judge?” Wire asked, having just passed the Xcel Energy Center, traveling southwest through the intersection of West Seventh and Kellogg Boulevard.