Electing to Murder

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Whoa!”

Portsmouth, Virginia.

Kristoff sighed as he threw the strap for his suitcase over his shoulder and picked up his duffel bag and jumped into the cab he hailed. As he jumped into the backseat of his second taxi ride of the morning, he looked to his cell phone for a further update from Vigneault. He had not provided one since his last text ten minutes ago, merely indicating that they were following McRyan and his woman partner back into the city. Kristoff forwarded the pictures from Vigneault to the boss’s people to see if they could identify her. It might give them an idea of who else was investigating the case with McRyan.

This cab ride was the second of three switches in vehicles before he met with his boss. There were always multiple vehicles used when he went to see the boss. He expected this cab ride would take about twenty minutes for him to reach the Marriot in downtown Norfolk.

The Bishop.

The Bishop was what the boss told Kristoff he could call him the first time they met. It was actually a few years before he actually knew the boss’s real name, when he saw him in a television interview. The next time he saw the Bishop and he used the boss’s real name, the boss was not pleased. It was the last time Kristoff crossed that line. His real name would make him less anonymous and the boss liked his anonymity, especially when using Kristoff to do certain work on his behalf. And the boss used the Bishop moniker sparingly as well lest it become synonymous with his real name. Few used the name the Bishop and even fewer knew it referred to the boss. In fact, Kristoff’s men were not allowed to know who Kristoff worked for. The lone exception was Foche since they were recruited as a package by the Bishop. As far as the men knew, they worked for Kristoff, who worked for some shadowy figure. Since the men were always paid and paid well, they didn’t seem to care. Kristoff took care of them and they got paid, so they worked for Kristoff.

The one thing about the arrangement that was a concern to Kristoff was if something went wrong, all the boss had to do was eliminate Kristoff and Foche and there was no tie back to the Bishop. Kristoff often wondered whether he should have created some insurance for himself. It was a risk not to. However, the risk had been and was worth the reward. They could retire at any time in style now and never need to work another day. This adventure had Kristoff thinking it was finally time to walk away. First, he had to finish this problem off and second, figure out a way to get Foche free. If he could solve the first problem for the boss, he trusted the boss would help him with the second.

If Kristoff could finish this off.

The phone call from his men was disconcerting. It wasn’t that he didn’t expect McRyan to get to Milwaukee. It was inevitable. What he didn’t expect is that he would be there so quickly. Usually, the gears of getting a cop from one city to the next required miles and miles of bureaucratic red tape. In this case, McRyan was moving as fast and as freely as Kristoff himself. The St. Paul detective was all over this case.

The boss smelled Judge Dixon.

The Judge was pulling strings behind the scenes, the man’s specialty.

As the taxi made its way through the moderate mid-morning traffic of Norfolk, Kristoff took in the talk radio station the cab driver had on. The host was setting up his next segment with the talker of the morning, Judge Dixon’s early a.m. press conference and Governor Thomson’s follow-up presser. Dixon’s early morning press conference in front of Thomson Campaign Headquarters started the Thomson campaign on the offensive. They were presenting a determined, if not angry, front. The murder of McCormick was political. Adam Montgomery’s name was out now as the second victim and Jason Stroudt’s name came out as well as a possible third victim. Now all the questions were being asked. Why was Montgomery at McCormick’s house? What was he telling McCormick? Why was Stroudt in St. Paul two days earlier? Why was he murdered? Were all the murders connected? If it was political, what was the end game? Was this intended to impact the presidential election or was there something else going on?

Judge Dixon had made sure the question being asked by the media was what was Montgomery going to tell Sebastian McCormick? Montgomery was not confronting McCormick. Rather, he was going to tell him something important, something related to the campaign, something someone didn’t want getting out and something so bad that Montgomery could not be allowed to tell it. What? Nobody knew because they were killed before it could be told.

Dixon started the fire with his press conference. Thomson threw gas on the fire when he finished with: “There is more to this than just the murders. There are some people who will have to answer some very hard questions to explain their actions.” Thomson wouldn’t explicitly say if those people were related to the vice president’s campaign or organizations supporting the vice president’s campaign, but the implication couldn’t have been made more clear.

Kristoff knew that meant they had the photos. McRyan, and by extension the Thomson campaign, had the photo of Connolly and Checketts from Hitch’s lake place in Kentucky. Now Checketts was dead and that would make the news wire sooner or later and that would lead to more questions. Other questions would be asked about the other two men in the photos, Khrutov, the ex-KGB man, and his little friend.

Dixon’s press conference as well as Governor Thomson’s brief morning press conference had the media in full scandal mode and the vice president’s campaign was off balance. Despite there being almost no evidence made public that the vice president’s campaign was at all responsible, Dixon and Thomson effectively pushed the spotlight towards the Wellesley campaign and the outside groups supporting it while deftly noting the vice president was an honorable man. This was the first part of the political play. There would be more to come. But for now, the media was looking into the backgrounds of Montgomery and Stroudt to see if there was anything in their history that would indicate what this was all about. This had not gone unnoticed by the vice president’s people. The Wellesley campaign’s surrogates were on all the networks and all the shows, but despite their attempts to get ahead of the story and express sympathy to the victims, there was an air of defensiveness in their responses, even from the vice president. The defensiveness was juxtaposed against the grieving and purposefulness of the Thomson campaign and as was often the case in politics, those suffering from tragedy gained political momentum.

The boss had seen this coming, hence the cleanup in Milwaukee.

Now, there was one last loose end to take care of. Take care of that, let the boss’s plan play out and the election may yet go their way.

The cab pulled up to the entrance of the Marriott in downtown Norfolk. Kristoff exited the taxi, paid the driver and gathered his luggage. At the front desk, he collected an envelope with keys to a Ford Edge in the parking ramp and directions to meet his boss. As he reached the car, he received a text from his man Vigneault advising him to check his e-mail for pictures of a woman. He took a look at the directions to get to the Bishop. The drive would be a good three hours. In three hours, perhaps his boss could help with the identification of the woman in the photos.

He started up the Ford Edge and let it hum to life while he dug out his tablet to look at the photos from Vigneault. The rental package for the car included satellite radio. Kristoff turned it to FOX News radio.

“Our new lead story, the St. Paul Police are reporting that the man responsible for killing Sebastian McCormick and Adam Montgomery last night at McCormick’s St. Paul home has died. While the details remain sketchy, it appears that there was a shootout at McCormick’s wherein the man, who is alleged to have killed McCormick and Montgomery, was himself shot three times. Who he was shot by has not been disclosed. However, the killer escaped the scene at McCormick’s and received medical attention. He was found several hours later this morning in Eden Prairie, a western suburb of the Twin Cities, recovering from surgery to repair his wounds. The police have not yet disclosed where he underwent surgery other than to indicate it was not at a recognized medical facility. He was in the process of being transported from the location of his surgery to Fairview Southdale Hospital in suburban Edina when he went into cardiac arrest and he was unable to be revived.

There are many questions left to be answered by this incident last night. The authorities, and in particular the lead detective for the investigation, a Detective McRyan in St. Paul, have not made themselves available to the media as of yet to answer questions, pointing out that the investigation is ongoing.

FOX News Radio will continue to monitor this unfolding situation in St. Paul and bring you all of the latest updates from this news story that may have political ramifications for Tuesday’s elections. Again, our top story at this hour …”

Kristoff turned off the radio, leaned his head back against the headrest and let a tear run down his cheek.

* * *

Foucault maintained his distance behind McRyan and Wire as they drove back into Milwaukee.

“So where are they headed?” Foucault asked as he kept four cars back traveling south on Lake Drive.

“If I had to guess, they’re making a trip to DataPoint,” Vigneault replied, alternately watching their mark in front of them and checking his phone and tablet for further instructions. For now, it appeared they were simply to follow McRyan and monitor his movements and report in to Kristoff who was now on the East Coast.

The Acadia took a right turn onto East Juneau Avenue.

“I don’t think we’re going to DataPoint just yet,” Foucault said.

“No,” Vigneault replied. “I’d say we’re heading back towards someplace very familiar, however.”

* * *

Wire took Lake Drive down from Whitefish Bay into downtown Milwaukee. Once in downtown, she picked her way over as instructed by McRyan towards the bar district.

“Why am I not surprised you know how to get to the bar district?”

“That transparent, huh?” Mac answered with a smile.

“Let’s see, your family owns what I’ve come to learn is a famous …”

“Or infamous …”

Wire smiled and nodded in agreement, “… or infamous St. Paul bar and then the minute this Milwaukee cop mentions North Water Street, you’re like, that’s by Fitzgibbon’s Irish Pub, right?”

“I might have spent a night to two in this town. I hate the Packers but Milwaukee is an absolute blast. You should try Oktoberfest over here. It is an unbelievably good time.”

Their destination was a new twenty-story apartment tower on the northwest outskirts of downtown Milwaukee. The tower sat on the northern end of the North Water Street bar district McRyan so loved. Apartments on the east and north sides of the tower enjoyed spectacular unobstructed views of Lake Michigan. The west side of the tower overlooked the Milwaukee River and the south side faced the towers of downtown.

The front of the tower faced south onto East Juneau Avenue, a busy thoroughfare with a median dividing the east and west corridors of the street. Wire was driving west on East Juneau Avenue, passed the front of the apartment building, made a U-turn at Water Street and drove back east and parked on the opposite side of the median from the apartment building. They each took one final sip of coffee, their fuel for the past twelve hours, and pushed themselves back outside into the cool wet day. While the early morning had been crystal clear, clouds and coolness were quickly moving in and a light drizzle was falling. Luckily, when they stopped for coffee, Mac purchased two small umbrellas.

As expected, the detective waiting for them was standing underneath the entrance awning for the apartment building named the Waterview Tower. Herdine’s guy was a detective named Darwin Ring, who if he wasn’t a spitting image of Bobby Rockford, had to be some sort of relative, Mac thought. Ring was big, very black and when he smiled, there was a Michael Strahan like gap in his bright white front teeth. However, unlike Bobby Rock, Ring was an exceedingly snappy dresser with a sharp, perfectly tailored downtown black pinstripe suit, silver monogrammed dress shirt, accented with a vibrant purple tie and spit shined Kenneth Cole lace-up dress shoes. Ring topped it all off with a black classic center dent fedora and a long black umbrella that he leaned on. He was right out of Central Casting. Mac liked him before he met him.

“Detective Ring, I presume,” Mac said, extending his hand. “Mac McRyan, St. Paul.”

“Michael Mackenzie McRyan, you mean?” Ring replied with a hearty laugh and a booming voice. “I guess we’ll just have to call you 3M.”

Wire laughed uncontrollably.

Mac smiled, “I like it, Detective, I like it lot.” Then he looked to his temporary partner, “Detective Ring, this is Dara Wire.”

“Ahh,” Ring answered, his two hands swallowing her one. “You are the pretty unaffiliated cop my friend Herdine mentioned. It is my pleasure indeed.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Wire answered with a big smile.

Pleasantries were exchanged for another minute and then Wire moved to business, “Detective Ring, I assume your colleagues filled you in why we’re down here.”

“They did indeed, Ms. Wire. This is a most peculiar case, I must say, and quite interesting,” Ring replied while opening his umbrella. “Let us go stand in the median and I can describe to you the events that transpired here this past Wednesday night.”

Ring led them across the westbound side of East Juneau to the median which was ten feet wide. He faced the apartment building entrance. “So here’s what happened. Gabriel Martin exits the Waterview Tower there and he crosses the westbound side of the street like we just did and gets to the median here and pauses.”

“How do you know he pauses?” Wire asked.

The detective opened a Milwaukee Police Department file and pulled out some still photos. “Because we have traffic camera photos of Martin standing here to wait for traffic to pass.” Wire and McRyan each looked at the photo. A man is standing in the median under a streetlight. Rain is falling and he’s looking in the direction of oncoming traffic. Mac looks to the west and see’s the traffic camera high up on the light pole, one camera looking to the north on Water Street and the other looking east on Juneau towards their position.

“Anyway, traffic passes and Martin quickly walks across the two lanes to his car parked on Juneau here.” Ring pulled out his cell phone and opened a video file. “The rest you should see for yourself.” The detective hit play and Wire and Mac leaned in to watch.

“Whoa!” Mac recoiled from the video.

“Oh my God,” Wire yelped, raising her hands to her face.

As Martin reached his car and opened the door, a Chevy Suburban comes from the west and runs him over. The Suburban ran over Martin, the car door and didn’t stop, just kept going and out of camera view.

“The Suburban didn’t slow down a lick,” Mac added. “There was no attempt to evade or anything.”

“No there was not,” Ring replied. “The driver was either completely oblivious, looking in a different direction or down or to the left or …”

“… It was intentional,” Wire finished. “If the driver was distracted or looking in a different direction, the truck wouldn’t be on such a straight path …”

“… Nor would it have accelerated like that,” Mac finished. “That’s a hit, plain and simple.”

“I agree,” Ring answered.

“I take it you never found the driver?” Wire asked.

“Nor the Suburban,” Ring replied. “I got the video footage you just looked at. I tracked the license plate and it was for a Suburban reported stolen at literally the same time this accident happened. The owner was at the Menomonee Falls police station filing the report when Martin was run down. In any event, we used some traffic cams to track the Suburban for a number of blocks until it got out of downtown to the north but then we lost it.”

“How about GPS?”

“Tried that but we lost track of it on that as well up around Lac Du Cours Lake north of town here.”

Mac shook his head and gave a knowing smile. “It’s probably at the bottom of that lake. There was a panel van that we were tracking last night that was involved in the shooting outside my family’s pub. We tracked the van to the bottom of the Mississippi River south of St. Paul. I bet they did the same here.”

Ring jotted down some notes. “I’ll have to check on that. See if we find it there. Not that it’ll do much good at this point.”

“You never know, forensics is an amazing thing,” Mac added.

“Did you get a look at the driver at all?” Wire asked.

The detective shook his head, “Wish we did, my lady. The driver was wearing a baseball cap pulled down low and the collar of his coat was pulled up so the face is obscured so we didn’t really get a good look at his face.”

“Was there a passenger?”

Ring nodded. “That’s yet another reason why I think it’s a hit, because even if the driver was distracted …”

“… The passenger sees Martin and stops him.”

“In this case, the passenger directs the driver,” Mac stated. “I assume no good facial views of the passenger either?”

Ring shook his head, “Dressed in the same uniform. They were a team.”

“How about witnesses? Were there any?” Wire asked, looking around. It was a busy street near the bar district.

“Kind of,” Ring replied. “The security guard for the tower heard the collision and was the one who called it in. There were two other witnesses walking on the street but they were a good hundred yards away when Martin was run down. They gave us a description of the Suburban but not much else. So there wasn’t much there.”

“How about Martin? Anyone have a reason to want to kill him?”

“That’s what was incredibly odd,” Ring answered. “I figured we’d find someone with motive when we started digging through his life but turns out, the guy didn’t have much going.”

“Let me guess,” Mac started. “He had work and not much else.”

“Correct.”

Mac and Wire looked up and down the street again, taking the scene in. Wire held her gaze to the west while Mac asked, “So Martin didn’t live here, right?”

“No,” Ring answered. “He was visiting a friend here, a Ms. Ginger Bloom. Turns out she was his assistant at DataPoint.”

“Fishing off the corporate pier?” Mac asked.

Ring smiled, “You know they say that is a really bad idea, that it can go really bad.”

“It certainly did in this case,” Wire noted.

“You could say that, Ms. Wire, you could,” Ring replied with a smile. “In any event, Mr. Martin was here until just after 11:00 p.m. on Wednesday and then when he left, he was killed.” The detective looked at his file and sighed sadly. “You know. This Martin guy didn’t look like he ever did anything wrong. Good citizen, worked hard, maybe even a workaholic, and yet he gets steamrolled in the middle of a busy street and I can’t understand why. What did he do?”

“Detective Ring,” Wire answered, “that’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“And,” Mac finished, “we’re thinking the answer is at DataPoint. Think you could help us?”

Ring nodded, “Let me make some calls.”