Electing to Murder

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“I’ve seen that man.”

Mac and Wire enjoyed an early lunch at a small homey café in Arlington, a place she’d discovered four years ago and tried to make it to at least once per week when she was home. The food was tremendous, excellent coffee, even better iced tea, and it felt like a Saturday or Sunday back home when he and Sally would take the paper and go to Mac’s favorite place, the Cleveland Grille, to eat and relax.

They actually discussed the election for a good long while, Mac relating his conversation with Sally and the Judge. Wire said she’d spent a couple of hours watching the election news as well. They both knew their investigation would garner a lot of media attention in the days to come, particularly once tomorrow’s election was over. Neither of them really relished the thought of the media poking around in their lives.

“Trust me,” Mac said, “it’s not a lot of fun, but my advice is to find someone you can trust and talk to them, get it out and then politely refuse to talk to anyone else. If you say it all at once, people will lose interest pretty quickly.”

“That work for you?”

“Yeah, there’s this reporter, she’s actually with NBC News now, Heather Foxx.”

“Why am I not surprised,” Wire stated, rolling her eyes.

“What?”

“She’s kinda hot.”

“Yes she is,” Mac replied sheepishly. “But she’s also very good and I found she can be trusted.” Mac told Wire about the case where he crossed paths with Foxx, a double kidnapping that involved Chief Flanagan’s daughter and the daughter of a prominent lawyer. “In any event, Heather actually helped out our case a little bit. So in return, I gave her a sit-down one-on-one and she did it right and that was that. I didn’t exactly play that case entirely by the rules but she steered fairly clear of those areas and once I’d talked to her there was really nothing left to say. She’s on the trail with the Thomson campaign now for NBC. If I end up having to talk with someone in the media about the case, I’ll probably talk to Heather.”

Wire took that advice to heart. “Maybe she’d talk to me too.”

“Heather?” Mac asked. “For sure. She’s ambitious as hell but she’s pretty discreet, at least with stuff like this.”

“What isn’t she discreet about?” Wire asked, catching the hint.

“Trying to bed me,” Mac replied casually, stuffing a fork full of ham and cheese omelet into his mouth.

A big smile came across Dara Wire’s face and she had to ask, “Really, Heather Foxx has been after you?” She was skeptical.

“I’m hurt,” Mac answered mockingly.

“Seriously? She was after you?”

“For a time, when she was working local news in the Twin Cities,” Mac answered nodding. “The fact I was with Sally didn’t seem to matter to her. She came onto me a number of times. It got a little awkward once or twice.”

“She had to be hard to resist.”

Mac nodded and smiled. “Yeah, she kinda was. A night with her would be one to remember.”

“But you never …”

Mac shook his head, “I know what it’s like to be cheated on, and I couldn’t do that to Sally. I didn’t want to do it.”

“Were you married?”

“Once,” Mac answered looking down. “I caught my ex having an affair with a partner in her law firm. Sally was married too and she thinks her ex, also a lawyer, did the same thing to her.”

“So you both have that baggage.”

Mac sat back in the booth, exhaled and nodded lightly. “The experience of it was devastating to both of us. So I just could never do that to her. I don’t think I could live with myself if I did.”

Wire smiled her approval, as she poured more coffee. “Sally is a lucky girl.”

Mac shook his head, “I’m the lucky one.”

“You both are,” Wire said. “I’m envious of you both. Don’t ever screw it up, McRyan.”

“I tell myself that every day.”

Mac was due back at the Hoover Building in a few hours and he wanted to get Wire into the investigation. She deserved it and he felt a little like he was on his own dealing with Director Mitchell and Attorney General Gates and could use the support of a partner. So when he called into the FBI director with the tip on the Bishop, he attributed it to Wire getting the information from Dixon. Mitchell said she should come in with him. “If you’re going to tell her everything to begin with, she might as well be here,” the director snickered. Mac let it roll off his back, his mission was accomplished.

“So you’re in,” Mac said. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re on the outs with the bureau to begin with?”

“Ever heard of the Giordano Crime Family in New Jersey?” Wire asked, sipping her coffee.

Mac shrugged, “Not really, sounds like the name of every other crime family.”

Wire tilted her head sideways. “I suppose it does. Anyway, about four years ago I had a guy undercover in that family, his name was Giovanni Franchesca. Somehow, the fact I had a man in the Giordano’s was discussed at a Washington DC cocktail party by none other than Donald Wellesley Jr.”

“The vice president’s son? Seriously?” Mac asked, surprised, as he filled her coffee again, settling in for the story.

“Yeah, he’s the one,” Wire answered bitterly, mixing sugar into a fresh cup of coffee.

“How’d he know about your guy?”

“Wellesley Jr. was tight with the then attorney general who was spouting off one night in his office about the case and how close we were getting to breaking that family open. The AG in his infinite wisdom mentioned we had the undercover in the family.”

“Nice,” Mac grunted with disgust.

“Exactly,” Wire added, shaking her head, looking out the front window. “About the only thing the AG didn’t do was disclose my guy’s name. In any event, at the cocktail party were a number of people in the New Jersey Congressional Delegation.”

“You’re kidding,” Mac blurted in disbelief, now knowing exactly where this was going.

“I kid you not,” she replied, exasperated. “Someone from that group, we never did find out whom, got word back to the Giordano’s and a week later my guy’s floating in the world’s greatest body depository.”

“Ahh, the Hudson.”

“He was beaten to death.”

“You were upset,” Mac said, leading her along. He saw the darkness slowly float into her eyes as she told the story. He wanted to know it all now.

“You have no idea,” she replied darkly. “I didn’t know who from Jersey told the Giordano’s but I found out it was Wellesley Jr. who let word slip at the party.”

“So what did you do?”

“I followed him for three days until he went to a small out of the way bar in DC. When I approached, I didn’t look like I presented a danger. The Secret Service didn’t even bat an eye when I walked in the bar. I went in the front door, locked it behind me and walked right up to Wellesley and told him Franchesca was a friend of mine. I one punched Wellesley’s friend out of the way and then proceeded to beat the living daylights out of Donald Jr. For a minute or maybe longer, Mac, I just beat him about the face with my fists, feet and elbows. I just kept going and going and going.”

“You lost control, right?”

She nodded, “I was in a rage, completely out of control. I almost killed him. I might have killed him had the Secret Service not finally got inside. His face looked like hamburger when I was done with him.”

Mac smiled, “That fits.”

“What?”

“I remember something about the vice president’s son dropping out of sight for a number of months and nobody knew where he’d been. When he resurfaced people commented that he looked a little different. Now I know why,” Mac looked her in the eye, nodded and grinned. “Good for you.”

Wire rubbed her face. This wasn’t a story she often told. “I guess he had to go through several surgeries on his face to get things back in position, so to speak. Whatever,” she added dismissively. “He got off easy compared to Giovanni.”

“So you left the bureau.”

“Well, I wasn’t really given a choice. I was looking at more trouble than that but the Judge stepped in and looked after me and brokered a deal.”

“Judge Dixon is a good man to have in a storm.”

“Absolutely. My deal was I walk away and the Wellesley Jr. story stays quiet. Had that come out, it would have been a severe black mark for the vice president, who certainly was looking to run for the top spot in the next go around. You can only imagine how hard it was for the Judge to sit on that during the campaign, but the Judge is a man of his word.”

“Remind me,” Mac said, sitting back in his booth with a broad grin on his face, “to never cross you.”

“You do and I will kick your ass.”

“I do believe you would.”

As Wire drove them back into DC and the Hoover Building, they moved back to talking about the case. “You ever think we’ll find out who this mysterious Bishop is?”

“We need to find some leverage to use on Connolly to get him to tell us,” Mac answered. “He has to be given a reason to talk.” He changed topics. “How’s your relationship with Director Mitchell?”

Wire stared straight ahead, “Okay, I think. He wasn’t the director when I was forced to leave. But I knew him, respected him. I always thought he was a pretty straight shooter. What do you think of him?”

Mac squinted and tilted his head, “I have limited experience with him obviously, but I agree, straight shooter. Gates, I don’t know about him yet.”

“Lawyer,” Wire answered. “They never shoot straight. They hedge and play the angles.”

“I live with one, don’t I know it.”

They both laughed.

Wire pulled in underneath and found a parking space. They made their way in, through security and up to the director’s office, where they were let in to find the director and attorney general. Director Mitchell went immediately to Wire. “Former Special Agent Wire, it is good to see you,” he welcomed, extending his hand.

“Thank you, Director.”

“This is Attorney General Gates.” Wire and Gates shook hands.

“Feel odd to be back in the building?” Mitchell asked with a smile.

Wire smiled shyly. “A bit.”

“Where are we at on Bishop?” Mac asked, getting right to it as he usually did.

“We don’t have anything new on that,” Gates replied, “at least not yet. I have people still looking into the case Ms. Wire mentioned to you this morning. The moniker or name of Bishop shows up, but as you reported, it was never determined who that was. I’ve got people re-looking into the case, but it’ll take some time.”

“However,” Mitchell interjected, “we’ve been digging into your dead killer back in the Twin Cities, Francois Foche. We brought Special Agent Duffy back into this and we’ve been accessing other resources and have developed a good biography on Foche. So let’s go take a look at that.”

Director Mitchell led them down the hall to a special meeting room. On the far wall was a screen split in two. On the left side of the screen was the face of Ed Duffy. “Good afternoon, Special Agent Duffy,” Mac welcomed.

“And to you, Detective McRyan. How ya doing, Mac?”

“I’m hanging in there.”

Mitchell made other introductions and then looked to the screen with Duffy’s face. “Special Agent Duffy, please start the brief.”

“Yes, sir,” Duffy began by showing a picture of Foche. “Francois Foche had been with the General Directorate for External Security for France for many years.” Duffy spent a few minutes reviewing Foche’s background.

“Ed, where did you get all this?” Mac asked.

“French Intelligence shared with us through the CIA,” Director Mitchell answered for Duffy and looked at Mac and Wire. “That doesn’t leave this room.”

Mac and Wire nodded.

“Special Agent Duffy, please continue.”

“Yes, sir. Foche was a field agent and had a very good career. However, there was a French and United States joint intelligence and military operation in Afghanistan in 2002 that went bad. Foche’s superior officer, a man named Nicolas Kristoff, ran the operation but it failed. There is some question as to how it went bad and unfortunately, it appears that there may have been a security breach on our side of the operation. Nonetheless, Foche and his superior, Kristoff, walked thirty men into an ambush in Kandahar.”

“Let me guess,” Mac speculated. “Foche and Kristoff took the fall in France for the operation going bad.”

“So it appears,” Duffy replied. “After the failure of the mission, Foche and Kristoff were reassigned back to Paris and not long after, they retired from the Directorate and were never heard from again.”

“Never heard from?” Wire asked.

“Yeah,” Duffy replied, nodding his head in agreement. “It was as if they disappeared. The pictures you and Detective McRyan provided us on Foche show that he’s had some work done to change his appearance slightly. It looks like some nose and chin work but we’re certain that it’s Foche that you have.”

“How about this Kristoff, he disappeared as well?” Mac asked.

“Yes,” Duffy replied. “Here’s a picture of Kristoff.”

The picture went up on the screen to the right.

“I’ve seen that man!” Mac exclaimed, standing up and marching to the screen displaying Kristoff’s picture. “It’s the eyes. I’ve seen those eyes.”

“Where, Detective?” Director Mitchell asked.

“St. Paul. He was the face in the panel van in St. Paul, outside my family’s pub. He was in the panel van shooting at us. I locked eyes on him for a second or two. That’s him.”

“Foche and Kristoff were still working together then,” Wire said. “The question remains for whom?”

“Let’s go ask Connolly,” Mac suggested.

“On what basis do you go back after Connolly?” Director Mitchell asked.

“Kristoff was Foche’s superior with French Intelligence. He’s probably Foche’s superior now. So he was at McCormick’s place in St. Paul,” Mac said looking at Wire. “You said you could sense Foche’s friends coming when you shot him at Sebastian’s house, right?”

“Yes,” Wire answered. “He was wired for communication and I could hear people approaching.”

“Guaranteed Kristoff was one of them,” Mac stated with conviction. “Then later he’s in that van trying to take us out in front of the pub. He probably took out Checketts and I bet …”

“He’s coming after Connolly next,” Mitchell finished the thought for McRyan.

“That’s right, sir. Connolly knows who’s behind this and it’s this Bishop. Kristoff is working for this Bishop character,” Mac surmised, pacing the room. “We need a pressure point to get Connolly to talk. Wire and I can show Connolly a picture of the man who will kill him. Maybe with a face, he’ll be more willing to cut open a vein and talk.”

The attorney general sat back in his chair and contemplated what McRyan had to say. He looked at his watch, 3:30 p.m. “Let’s give it a shot. I’ll call his lawyer. When do you want to go after Connolly?”

“Sooner the better.”