Electing to Murder

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Riddle me this, Dara Wire.”

Downtown 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.

“It’s up on the right, two blocks, look for the big red brick building with the shamrock.”

Wire saw it. There had been a Minnesota Wild NHL game earlier in the night. The pub was still packed with hockey fans and off-duty cops, with people milling by the front door. It was Friday night, after all. “Not exactly a discrete place to meet.”

The Judge was nonplussed, “We’ll be fine.” Then he changed the topic. “Kate, can you grab the backpack?”

“Yes,” she answered meekly, pulling the backpack over her shoulder.

“Pull in there,” the Judge ordered.

A four-door sedan pulled away from the front, creating room for Wire’s Acadia. She slid into the opening. Once parked and shut down, Wire looked around. “So, Judge, where is this McRyan?”

“He’ll be here,” the Judge replied confidently.

“He’s right there,” Shelby exclaimed, pointing to a Yukon roaring in quickly from the south on West Seventh, lights flashing.

The Judge pushed himself out of the passenger side and stood up. McRyan saw him, did a quick U-turn and then pulled up another half block past them and into an open parking space.

Wire and Shelby unloaded from the car and joined Dixon on the sidewalk as the three men and Sally Kennedy unloaded from the Yukon. “Which one’s McRyan?” Wire asked.

Shelby pointed, “Mac’s the six-foot athletic blond with the brown leather jacket and jeans walking next to Sally Kennedy.”

Wire looked McRyan over as he approached and noticed his eyes as they narrowed and looked beyond her. Then his right hand cleared his coat back.

* * *

Mac saw the Judge, Shelby and another tall brunette starting to walk towards him. But just past them, back up the block to the north, he saw a black Suburban approaching. The passenger side windows were powering down. There was a black panel van tight behind. The sliding door was opening. They were half a block away.

This wasn’t right.

Mac reached for his gun.

“DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!”

He pushed Sally down to the ground as gunfire erupted from both vehicles, glass from the parked vehicles exploding everywhere. The tall woman had reacted quickly as well, pushing Dixon and Shelby to the ground, lying on top of them.

Mac crouched behind the back bed of a pickup truck and returned fire.

His first two shots hit the Suburban’s passenger door but the third hit the shooter in the front passenger seat.

* * *

“THEY’RE NOT ALONE! THEY’RE NOT ALONE!” Moriarity yelled as Kristoff fired at Dixon and the two women.

Kristoff glanced left and saw the man behind the pickup truck and recognized him immediately.

McRyan.

* * *

Mac locked eyes on the shooter in the panel van and saw the assault rifle turn towards him. Mac got off two quick rounds and dropped behind the pickup as the bullets from the assault rifle ricocheted off the truck and the walls above him as the van and Suburban sped by.

He glanced right to see the tall woman returning fire, covering them now. Mac popped out from behind the truck and into the middle of West Seventh and fired the rest of his clip at the back of the panel van, shattering the back windows, but the van kept going. Mac looked right and saw Double Frank and Sally kneeling over Lich. “Dick!”

“He’s hit in the left shoulder.”

“I’m okay,” Lich groaned bitterly. “Go get those f*ckers.”

Mac turned his attention back south and watched the van and Suburban turn left onto Smith Avenue. He started for the Yukon, reaching in his pocket for his keys when an Acadia pulled alongside him. The tall brunette was driving. “Get in! Get in!”

Mac jumped in. “They turned left on Smith.”

The woman accelerated down West Seventh and turned hard left onto Smith Avenue. “What’s your name?” Mac asked, sliding another clip into his Sig.

“Dara Wire.”

Smith Avenue started a gradual turn to the left when they saw it. “There’s the Suburban,” Mac said. It was two blocks ahead. The panel van was not in sight.

Wire pulled up a half block behind the Suburban. “I make two bodies inside, in the passenger seats on the right side,” she said, sliding a fresh clip into her gun.

Mac was up and out the passenger door. He was taking no chances now. “In the Suburban! Put you’re your hands out where I can see them!” he ordered. There was no movement. “Put them out now!”

Again there was no movement.

Mac looked left over to Wire. She nodded and started moving forward towards the left side of the Suburban while Mac moved more slowly towards the right side, gun up. Then Wire saw a flame coming out from the gas cap.

“Back! Get Back! Get Back!”

The Suburban exploded into a fireball.

McRyan and Wire turned away from the explosion. Once they retreated their way to the Acadia, Mac reached in his pocket for his cell phone and immediately called it in, reporting that the panel van probably was proceeding south across the High Bridge towards West St. Paul but they didn’t really know for sure, there was more than one directional option from their location.

As they waited for a patrol unit, Mac looked Wire over. She knew her business. “You took out our third man at McCormick’s, didn’t you?”

Wire snorted. McRyan had figured things out quick. “You’ve been over the scene there?”

Mac nodded as he holstered his Sig.

“Were you able to get an ID off of him? He wasn’t carrying anything on him and we had to get out of there before I could do anything further.”

Mac shook his head, but his answer surprised her. “Maybe once you describe him to me, Ms. Wire, we can, because by the time I got there, the body was gone.”

Wire’s mouth dropped open. “Come again?”

“Gone. There was no body inside, just a big pool of blood, but without a body.”

“That can’t be,” Wire insisted. “When I left he had three holes in him, left shoulder and two in the upper left chest. He had a pulse and was breathing but unconscious. There was no way he walked out of there. No way. No way. NO WAY.”

Mac considered the answer and agreed. “Based on the pool of blood he left behind, I’d say you’re right, he didn’t leave on his own.”

“I knew people were coming.”

“Those people took him then.” Then Mac tacked in a different direction. “So if you’re working for the Judge, you’re ex-something, right?”

Wire nodded. “FBI.”

“Thought so,” Mac answered. “Thanks for the cover back there.”

“Right back at you,” Wire replied. “I saw it in your eyes when we were approaching you on the sidewalk in front of the bar.”

“I saw the windows going down on the Suburban and then the panel van door was sliding open and given what had already happened tonight …” Mac shrugged. “It had the look and feel of a hit.” He paused for a moment and then looked Wire in the eye. “How in the hell did they know you were going to be there?”

“How did they know Montgomery was going to be at Sebastian’s? How did they know we were going to be at the bar? Why did they kill Stroudt? I’m looking for answers to all of these questions,” Wire declared.

Mac picked up her drift, “I’m beginning to understand why you were leery of coming in. Someone is on you, somehow.”

Wire nodded.

“Well ya got an ally now, Dara Wire. After the last hour, I too am very interested in getting answers to these very same questions, and I have a badge.”

“It’s an all access pass.”

“Damn right it is, at least around here,” Mac answered seriously.

A patrol unit arrived on the scene. Mac issued instructions to the patrol officers, who began securing the scene. Another minute later, two fire trucks arrived on the scene and there were another two dead bodies in St. Paul, making it five on the night.

“We need to get back to the Judge,” Wire said.

“Yeah, and I’m going to have a very pissed off partner and extremely anxious girlfriend,” Mac answered as they jumped back into her shot-up Acadia. As she turned around, Mac took in the scene of the burning Suburban, knowing there were two dead bodies inside and then thought of the missing one from McCormick’s. “Riddle me this, Dara Wire. If you were willing to blow up two of your own men without a second’s thought back there, why would you go to the effort and the risk, I might add, of removing the body from McCormick’s?”

Wire considered the question as she turned right back onto West Seventh. “Because you might identify the shooter and that ties him back to whoever hired him.”

“Right,” Mac replied. “So you get the body out of there and … do what? Dump it somewhere else?” There was a questioning skeptical tone to his voice. “If you were going to dump that body, then why do you leave the two behind in the Suburban?” Mac’s tone said he wasn’t buying the body dump theory.

Wire caught the tone and where he was heading. “There’s another scenario worth considering, isn’t there?”

Mac nodded. “He was alive and maybe he meant enough to someone that he needed to be saved.”

Wire considered that for a moment. “Hypothetically, if that was the case, they couldn’t risk taking him to an emergency room here. I’m sure you’ll check all of them to be sure.”

“We will and they wouldn’t go there. If that was your only option, you’d leave him to die at McCormick’s or heck, you’d finish the job off, put a bullet in his head to make sure he wasn’t saved. No. They would have to have a doctor willing to handle something like this off the books.”

“How many people in this town do that kind of work?” Wire asked. “There can’t be many, the town’s not big enough.”

“It’s an area of over three million people so it’s bigger than you think. However, to the larger question of who does this kind of work off the books, I know of a couple who’ve helped us on occasion when we’ve had a CI get injured but needed to avoid the hospital. But you said this guy has three holes in his chest, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then that requires a whole different level of care. We’re going to have to do some work on that.”

The crime scene tape was already up and West Seventh was blocked from Kellogg two blocks to the north to two blocks south of the pub. A patrol cop recognized Mac in the passenger seat and pulled up the crime scene tape to allow them through. The area looked like a war zone and his family’s business looked worse for the wear, with bullet holes in the building’s red brick facade and shattered bar and car window glass everywhere. It was something of a miracle that more people weren’t injured. Three ambulances had arrived and various people were being treated for scrapes and bruises but only one person was actually shot—Lich. In the opening of the third ambulance, Mac saw his partner lying on a stretcher, propped up, an IV already in his arm and an extremely pissed off look on his face. It made Mac smile. If Dick was pissed, he would survive.

“Tell me you caught the bastards,” Lich growled.

Mac shook his head as he jumped up into the ambulance and sat next to his partner, “Negative. But I am glad to see you’re okay.”

“I’m not f*ckin’ okay. I got shot,” Dick pointed to his left shoulder and the wound in his shoulder socket. “A first for me.”

“Looks like they grazed you is all,” Mac said casually, inspecting the wound. His partner wasn’t grazed. The wound was a through and through. It looked painful as hell so he expressed some sympathy. “See you inside in a few minutes so we can keep working. We’ve got three bodies now, or five if you count the two that just were barbequed over on Smith.”

“You’re on your own, douche bag.”

“p-ssy.”

They both chuckled. Lich was in pain, but he would be fine and Mac breathed a sigh of relief.

“Who’s the tough broad,” Lich asked, looking Wire up and down as only he could, in other words, without any subtleness whatsoever. “From what I saw it looks like she can handle a weapon.”

“Richard Lich, meet Dara Wire.”

“Detective,” Wire waved from the ambulance doorway.

“So what’s your story?”

“Ex-FBI is part of it,” Mac chimed in.

“Feeb, huh?”

Mac nodded, “Fraid so.”

Wire shook her head. “My story is a long one. Let’s just say as of late that I’ve been working for the Judge.”

“Speaking of that,” Mac jumped in, turning serious, “where is everyone else?”

“Inside, downstairs. Dixon, Shelby and one very worried and pissed off assistant county attorney that you live with.”

* * *

“The police have the information now. I was unable to tie it off, they have the pictures of Connolly,” Kristoff said matter of factly to his boss. He provided a brief explanation of McCormick’s and what happened outside of McRyan’s Pub. “I’m sorry. We failed.”

“You could not have foreseen the events of this evening. The information they now have is a problem but a solvable one. To cap the well, we need to go in a different direction. The jet is at Flying Cloud airport. Get there and your next assignment will be waiting.”