Electing to Murder

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Suicide? Seriously?”

Kristoff buckled his seatbelt as the pilot told him they were ready to take off. He was leaving a team of two behind to monitor the situation at Checketts’s, to make sure what he left behind was interpreted properly by the authorities once they arrived and in time they would arrive. He hoped it would be a day or two; given it was a Saturday morning and Checketts lived alone, there was a decent chance that would be the case. He wanted it to go down as a suicide. Given the victim’s financial circumstances, it would be easy for the police to piece it all together if they were so inclined.

He took a sip of his wine. As he looked out the window while the plane taxied, he made a mock toast to Foche, his comrade in arms.

Kristoff met Foche when they were both with the General Directorate for External Security, the French equivalent of the CIA. Foche was five years his junior but he’d identified him as an exceptional candidate to be a field agent and Foche had not disappointed. They served their country ably for years around the world. However, a joint intelligence and military operation in Afghanistan in 2002 with the United States went awry. It was Kristoff’s operation but it failed, not due to his planning or execution, but because of an American security breach in Kabul that caused Kristoff and Foche to walk thirty men into a Taliban ambush in Kandahar. Kristoff, and by extension Foche as his right-hand man, were the scapegoats for the French. The two intelligence officers were moved out of the field, professionally humiliated and moved to a desk in the General Directorate where they would be quietly phased out. Their careers in the field were over. Field work was all the two men knew. It was all they wanted to do. It was what they were built to do.

Then the Bishop rescued them.

The Bishop knew what really happened in Afghanistan, knew of their exemplary records and of their capabilities. What the Bishop needed was two men who could speak multiple languages, operate in the shadows, hire the right people, be ghosts when need be and have little compunction about killing if and when it was necessary. In return for this risky work they would be paid handsomely.

They’d both gotten their hands dirty in Afghanistan and long before for menial pay and love of country. Now, they would be paid beyond their wildest dreams to do the kind of work they were built to do. Their boss of the last ten years had lived up to every commitment that had been made and then some. Their loyalty to him was absolute. If the Bishop needed something, it was done, no questions asked.

Kristoff and Foche always knew it could come to an end. Their work was dangerous but they were elite. Until last night, they’d never failed, rarely came close to harm and never were remotely close to being identified. That was all no more.

Foche was in custody and fighting for his life. He was shot three times in the chest. Kristoff was surprised to find him still alive. He thought the police would assume he was removed from the house to be dumped. With that thought in mind, that would have given Foche time to hopefully be made well enough to travel and leave the country to recover if he survived. But McRyan didn’t think that way. Instead, in a mere seven hours, he’d found Foche. On a professional level, it left Kristoff extremely impressed.

Foche had been leery of McRyan from the get go, much more than Kristoff himself. Kristoff was an operational man, a problem solver, whereas Foche was the stronger of the two in accounting for the human component of what they were doing. He had an uncanny ability to read people. Kristoff’s partner was proven right yet again. McRyan was an extremely capable adversary.

Kristoff wished to fly back to Minneapolis to immediately and personally assess the situation of his friend. Could he break him free of police custody? Could he get him on a plane to safety? Would he even be healthy enough to travel? If given some time and resources, he was confident he could make it happen, no matter the odds.

Moriarity and Holmes knew this but warned him off nonetheless. His two men told him that the police presence surrounding Foche was robust and that it would require a significant assault to free him and even then the chances of success would be questionable at best. The police in the Twin Cities were now on full alert and no chances would be taken with the security around Foche, they said, if the force surrounding him at Lupo’s office was any indication. Nevertheless, Kristoff wanted to go back to see for himself.

The Bishop understood Kristoff’s desires, but they had to wait. The “oil well” that was their current crisis was still not fully capped and the next step in tying it all off would be far more difficult and an operational approach to taking care of that problem needed to be quickly developed.

Foche could and would have to wait. In fact, with regard to Foche, Bishop held a different concern. Would he talk? “I am loyal, Kristoff, this you know. But if he lives, will Francois talk?”

“Never,” Kristoff replied defiantly. “Francois will not break, I promise you. He knows that I will come for him. They may identify him but there is no way they can tie him back to you and he will not say a word.”

“In the long run, that he is in Minnesota is not the worst for us.”

“What do you know of the Minnesota penal system?” Kristoff asked.

“Minnesota does not have the death penalty for murder,” the boss answered. “If he is convicted of first-degree murder, he will get a life sentence. Minnesota prisons are not as bad as some other states, nor, might I add, as secure.”

“Then in time I will get him out.”

“And I’ll help,” the Bishop answered. “But first, we must finish this or it will not matter.”

“Understood.”

Kristoff poured himself another glass, “I will see you again, my friend,” he whispered and toasted Foche one more time and started contemplating his next move.

* * *

The two Milwaukee detectives, understanding what their Twin Cities colleagues had gone through and where their suspicions were coming from, treated the scene as a homicide.

Problem was, the scene looked an awful lot like a suicide.

There were no signs of any struggle or forced entry into the home, other than the efforts of McRyan to get inside from the patio to see if Checketts was still alive. There was no suicide note left behind. However, a look at the financials and correspondence on Checketts’s desk suggested a likely reason for his suicide, if that’s what this was. The man was broke. He’d lost millions in Vegas and owed millions more and he didn’t have the funds to cover it. He appeared to be ruined financially, at least on a personal basis. You could theorize how a person like Checketts, a successful businessman who was about to be broke, couldn’t face it. The crime scene techs weren’t finding anything inside the house to suggest otherwise and the coroner, at least preliminarily, said it looked like a suicide. That is what it looked like to Kaufman and Herdine as well, although they were both careful to say that is what it looked like. Mac could tell the two of them were on the ball with a healthy dose of police skepticism. He knew plenty of cops who would see the obvious, take it and never give it a second thought, never question if the obvious was actually the answer.

Mac walked out the back of the house and found Wire down by the edge of the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, talking on her cell phone.

“Yes sir, that’s correct,” Wire reported. “I will, sir.”

“Dixon?” Mac asked as he walked up.

Wire frowned and nodded and then asked skeptically. “Suicide? Seriously?”

“That’s what they’re saying,” Mac answered. “No suicide note, but in his office, his financial records are lying about. It would appear the man was personally broke. He owed a lot of money to casinos in Vegas and he didn’t have the equity to pay. So rather than face it, he hung himself. It’s wrapped up all nice and neat.”

“But you don’t buy it?”

McRyan shook his head as he looked out over the lake. “Awfully convenient, don’t you think,” it was a statement, not a question.

“They’re tying up loose ends?”

“Yeah, but whose loose ends? What did the Judge have to say?”

“That he needed some time to think,” Wire answered.

Wire and McRyan stared out over the bluff and into the deep blue waters of Lake Michigan, the cool winds refreshing after a long night’s work. “So last night these guys are in St. Paul, coming after Montgomery and taking McCormick in the process. I mean, in reality, Sebastian was just in the wrong place at the wrong time if you think about it.”

“Agreed.”

“So then they come over here and get Checketts before we can even talk to him.”

Wire nodded, “Because we now have the pictures with Checketts in them. He’s a liability now.”

“How did they do that? I mean, they’re shooting at us at what, almost 11:00 p.m. last night? We get here at a little after seven this morning. So that’s an eight-hour window and in reality a lot less than that to get over here to Milwaukee and do the deed. I wonder what time of death is for Checketts?”

Wire gave that a moment’s thought and then smiled. “There aren’t just people sitting here in Milwaukee you can hire on a moment’s notice to do this right?”

Mac shook his head and the raised his eyebrows, as if to say, go on.

“So they had to fly over here,” Wire said, a slight smile coming across her face. “And if you fly over here …”

“… there has to be a record of the flight,” Mac finished the sentence for her.

“Right,” Wire replied and then looked back out to the lake. “That’s right. I don’t suspect they flew over commercial.”

“I doubt there would have been one available at that time of night,” Mac answered. “It’s almost surely a small commuter plane or corporate jet like we flew over on.”

Wire folded her arms and put her finger to her lips, “I wonder how many places there are around here that you could fly into like that?”

“We need to start looking,” Mac answered.

“Given what these guys are capable of, there may not be a record of the flight,” Wire said.

“That could be,” Mac answered. “But I bet there’s a tower log of the flight or radar signature of the flight, something for a plane coming from Minneapolis/St. Paul over to Milwaukee or the surrounding area. If we move quickly enough they might not be able to erase the flight from the records.”

“Okay, so we look into that,” Wire stated as she turned to look at the house. “So this is no suicide. Checketts was murdered. How would you have done it?”

“You mean get into the house?” Mac answered, following Wire’s lead.

“Right.”

“Probably not from the front, the street is quiet but a car pulling up to a house like Checketts’s in the very early a.m. on a night people are out and about might draw some attention, so they don’t come in from the front.”

Wire and McRyan were standing at the far northeast corner of the property, ten feet back from the bluff overlooking the lake. She looked to her right, to the north, and the next four homes all had privacy fences of varying heights to define their property up to the bluff line overlooking the lake. Wire looked back to the south and the two houses in that direction had high wood privacy fences.

“Not from the sides,” they said in unison.

Wire started walking to the south, following the line of the bluff overlooking the lake. Two-thirds of the way across the property she stopped and a second later McRyan, who’d been following, joined her. There was a small path winding its way with right and left switchbacks through the tall grass down the steep face of the bluff to the lake.

Wire started, “If you stayed close to the bottom of the bluff …”

“… Nobody in any of the houses along here, even if they were looking, would have seen the approach,” Mac finished. He crouched down and looked at the path which was a combination of sand and trampled down grass. Stepping to the left side of the path and into the taller grass and bush, Mac carefully made his way fifteen feet down the bluff to a ten-foot open stretch of sand in the path. There were footprints leading up to and then back down the path from the top. The prints looked fresh and there were two sets, so two people. He pulled out his phone and took pictures of the prints.

“Get moulds?” Wire shouted down.

“Yeah, we should,” Mac answered back as he slowly picked his way farther down the path to another patch of sand at a switchback where the path turned left. The same prints appeared. However, the imprints of this second set of treads were deep and distinctive, this area of the path being flatter and damp, an area where water would collect during a rain. Mac crouched down and took more pictures with his phone. Satisfied, he carefully worked his way back up the steep bluff to Wire.

“There were a couple of fresh large footprints we found in a dirt garden in the yard behind McCormick’s house,” Mac stated.

“Maybe we get a match to these?” Wire offered with a little smile.

Mac nodded as he typed an e-mail on his phone, attaching the pictures.

“Who are you sending those to?”

“My cousin Paddy. He’ll get these compared to the moulds we took last night. If we get a match …”

“… We put this whole suicide into question,” Wire finished.

“Right,” Mac finished as he completed the e-mail and then looked up with a blank stare on his face. Wire saw it.

“What, Mac? What are you thinking?”

“Whoever is behind this just took out Checketts, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And Stroudt, Montgomery and Sebastian as well.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I gotta warn Riley. They may not try to free their man in custody, but they may try to …”

“Finish off the job now that we have him,” Wire was following his train of thought and hers quickly shifted into gear. “You know, Mac, you could do this.” She explained her thoughts.

Mac replied with a smile, “That could work.” Mac pulled his cell phone out again and called Riley and explained his and Wire’s sudden epiphany. Riley understood.

“How is our shooter doing?” Wire asked Mac as Kaufman and Herdine approached.

“Riles says fifty-fifty at best,” Mac answered. “The trauma doc on the scene wants to move him, get him to the hospital.”

“Who is that you’re talking about?” Herdine asked.

“The man who shot McCormick last night? We have him in custody but he has several bullet holes in him courtesy of Ms. Wire here. We’re moving him from the off-the-books doctor we found him with to a nearby hospital,” Mac answered. “Speaking of medical issues, what’s preliminary time of death for Checketts?”

“Coroner puts it between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m.,” Herdine answered.

“Funny. And this happens just as we’re on our way to talk to him.”

Kaufman offered a smile, “This does kind of look like a suicide.”

“It does look like that,” Mac replied.

“But we don’t buy it either,” Kaufman answered. “Just a little too timely for my taste.”

“Good, then let me tell you what we’re thinking,” Wire answered. She posited her and Mac’s theory and mentioned the footprints and then their thoughts on flights from the Twin Cities. “We need to check on planes arriving and based on time of death, they would need to have arrived sometime after say midnight and before 4:00 a.m.”

“Now that sounds kinda interesting,” Kaufman answered, obviously intrigued.

“Can you guys look into that?” Wire asked.

Kaufman looked over to Herdine who nodded. “Why not,” Kaufman said and pulled out his phone.

While his partner walked a few feet away to make that call, Herdine continued. “Along the lines of how you guys are thinking, I have an interesting tidbit of information for someone who might not buy that this is a suicide. Turns out it’s been a tough run for DataPoint.”

“Oh, why do you say that?” Wire asked, perking up, catching Herdine’s leading tone.

“I got a call from my HQ a few minutes ago,” Herdine replied. “Three nights ago, Wednesday night, DataPoint’s CIO, Gabriel Martin, was killed in a hit and run accident in the city.” The Milwaukee detective smiled mischievously.

“Did you say Wednesday night?” Wire asked but was looking at Mac who mouthed, “Kentucky.”

“I did at that,” Herdine answered. “Interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”

“The coincidences are starting to pile up,” Wire replied, still locked on Mac.

“Thought you might say that,” Herdine replied and then offered a piece of paper out of his notebook. “I’ve got a guy you could talk to about that case, maybe you can share notes, perhaps help each other out? In fact, if you wanted to call him at that number in say ten minutes, I’m sure he’d be available to chat with you.”

* * *

Foucault put the binoculars on the scene from the northeast, a quarter mile away up the shoreline as it angled away from Checketts’s home. Vigneault worked the camera, taking photos, zeroing in on the two cops talking on the bluff. He looked away from the camera to the pictures on his tablet, then back into the camera and took three more photos. He checked the pictures and looked at the tablet again. “No doubt about it. That’s McRyan.”

“Can’t be. He was in Minnesota just a few hours ago.”

“It’s McRyan and he’s with a woman cop, or at least I think she’s a cop. She carries herself like a cop.”

“Take some pictures of her. What about that woman who fired on our guys at McCormick’s and then again at us outside that pub? Is that her?”

“Did we ever get a good description of her?” Vigneault asked as he snapped photos.

Foucault looked to his notes, “Tall, brunette, black jacket, knew how to handle a gun.” Foucault looked through his binoculars. “That could be her. She certainly fits the description.”

Vigneault smiled, “Was she described as good looking?”

Foucault put the glasses back up to his eyes, “She was not, but then again, the descriptions of her came from people under fire so I doubt they took in the aesthetics. However, my friend, I do see a tall brunette with her long hair in a ponytail who is rather fetching. She’s in a short black leather coat and she has a Sig Sauer on her belt but …”

“But what?”

“McRyan has his shield on his belt. I don’t see one on her.”

“Could be in her coat,” Vigneault posited.

“I suppose, or maybe she’s with another law enforcement agency. FBI agents don’t wear their badges on their belts or around their necks.”

“They also show up to crime scenes in functional dark suits or navy blue wind breakers with FBI in gold lettering, not skin tight blue jeans and stylish black leather coats,” Vigneault noted. “Hmpf.”

“What?”

Vigneault watched through the camera. “Take a look through your glasses.”

Foucault did and saw the woman working her way south along the shoreline, looking down the bluff towards the lake. She stopped and McRyan joined her. They looked at each other and there was some conversation. Then McRyan started down the bluff looking at the footpath. “Isn’t that the path you guys used?”

“Yes.”

McRyan stopped and started taking pictures with his cell phone. The St. Paul detective then worked his way farther down the path and did the same thing and then took another look farther down the path to the lake but did not go down any farther. After another minute, he made his way back up and he and the woman were then joined by the Milwaukee cops.

“I’m starting to think that our plan to make it look like a suicide is going to be questioned,” Foucault said.

Vigneault snapped a few more photos and then pulled the camera down. “You may be right. We came up that path so there are probably footprints. In the dark we couldn’t really see very well on the way up and back down but it seemed like mostly grass.” He hooked his camera up to his tablet and copied the photos into an e-mail to Kristoff. Then he pulled out his phone and made a call.

“Kristoff, I’m sending you photos to look at. McRyan is on the scene here, not just Milwaukee PD. Yes, McRyan. And I have pictures of a woman who is with him and seems to be investigating with him. I think she is the woman from St. Paul.”

* * *

Double Frank and Paddy McRyan followed the ambulance as it motored on Interstate 494 as it approached Highway 100. The trauma surgeon had pronounced the killer stable enough to travel to the hospital. There were two squad cars in front of the ambulance. Double Frank and Paddy were directly behind, followed by two more patrol units. The ambulance was riding quiet, no lights, driving the posted. A state patrol helicopter flew overhead.

Double Frank had his hand casually draped over the wheel when the ambulance started to accelerate. “What the …”

The ambulance lights and siren came on.

“Uh-oh,” Paddy uttered, “that doesn’t look good.”