Electing to Murder

CHAPTER FIVE

“Why did you come to the Twin Cities?”

Mac took a look at his watch: 11:28 p.m. He mixed some sugar into his oversized maroon University of Minnesota coffee cup, took a sip, and winced at the taste. The coffee the break room had to offer at midnight was less than stellar and Mac was a bit of a coffee snob. He opened the refrigerator and rummaged around and found some half-and-half. He screwed off the cap, smelled the creamer once, smelled it again, and decided it was good enough. He added it to the coffee and attempted to kill its battery-acid-like taste.

Mac possessed a minority ownership stake in a coffee chain called the Grand Brew and it was about to change his life. The business had exploded in the last two years. The chain was now up to nearly two hundred coffee shops spread across Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, with plans for more expansion on the board.

The Grand Brew was started by two of Mac’s childhood friends. They needed $10,000 to get over the financing finish line for their first coffee house. Mac’s father had set up a college fund for him. But when Mac turned into a star high school athlete and went to the University of Minnesota on a hockey scholarship, the $57,408 Simon McRyan saved for his son’s college education wasn’t needed, at least for tuition, books or lodging. Mac accessed the fund from time to time in college for some spare money when needed and he also accessed it to pay for some of his law school tuition. However, when he graduated law school, the fund still had a little over $23,000 sitting in it. When his two buddies needed the extra ten grand, Mac agreed to provide it in return for fifteen percent of the business.

It was a good deal.

Each year, Mac received a dividend from the business. In the last three years, the dividend made his detective’s salary look like an allowance. Two large food corporations had been sniffing around looking to buy Grand Brew Enterprises. Both had now put legitimate offers on the table. Just before Mac arrived at The Snelling, he’d been meeting with his two friends. They told him that by this time tomorrow, he would be a multi-millionaire, all on a little $10,000 investment to help two buddies he’d known since he was six years old when they all walked to their first-grade class together. It would be a life altering event and his mind had wandered a bit in the last six hours thinking about it, wondering how much longer he would be a cop if it were to happen. If his friends were right, after tomorrow, he could do whatever he wanted with the rest of his life. What would that be? He liked what he did. It was rewarding work and it was the family business, but would he want to continue it going forward? Would he have the same passion, urgency, angst and commitment the job required? Would he need something else?

Mac shook his head. This could all wait. He refocused on the matter at hand and rolled his desk chair up to his desktop computer.

Lich was exhausted and went home. The case could wait, he said. He was probably right, but with Sally working late into the night, and Mac being a night owl anyway, he decided to keep working the case for a while longer. The case piqued his interest more than normal. On a case like this, he was less an investigator and more of a hunter, and the hunt was on. The game was afoot, as Sherlock Holmes would say.

The squad room was quiet, with only a few night shift cops hanging around. A television in the corner was tuned to CNN. The volume was loud enough for Mac to hear a replay of the day’s political conversation. The presidential election was essentially down to four states based on current polling, the same four states that Sally had spent the last three months talking about. For the last month, Sally was working around the clock and he’d barely seen her. She had a passion for the politics that he hadn’t seen before and suspected this wouldn’t be her last foray into the political arena.

He’d been married once as had Sally. Meredith, his ex, never liked his sudden turn to policing; it didn’t fit with her life plan. Not long after Mac made detective, he found Meredith having an affair with a partner in her law firm. A year after he discovered the affair, the divorce was finalized. Shortly thereafter, he started dating Sally. They were acquaintances of a sort, having gone to law school together, but not really knowing each other. Both of them were married at the time and did not run in similar law school social circles. When they met up years after law school while working a case together, Mac was immediately attracted to her beauty, intelligence and feistiness.

Sally and Mac had been together going on two years now, living together, and spending their lives together. They loved each other. Yet despite their love for one another, marriage was something they rarely, if ever, discussed. If the word came up, things always got a little awkward as if neither of them really knew how to talk about it. Their divorces left them both scarred and fearful of marriage, but not of commitment. They loved each other and that was enough for now. They were still young, in their early thirties, with no children. Marriage could wait for the right time.

Sally’s last text indicated she would be getting home around 1:00. Mac decided to work the case for another hour or so and could be up when she got home. They could have a little time together before they both collapsed.

Mac leaned back in his chair and soaked in the whiteboard. This was how he often solved cases. He would mind map and put everything down on paper, his computer or when he really needed to spread out, on a whiteboard. Then he would sit back and absorb the case into his mind and let it percolate. The case wouldn’t be solved in one sitting, but look at the board enough, put enough evidence and information up, and eventually the answer emerged. In this case, it was not ready to jump out at him.

The rental car was a disappointment. Mac and Lich tracked it down to the Penalty Box. Forensics opened it up at the bar but there was nothing inside. No luggage, no backpack, no cell phone and no evidence that Stroudt had been in it. The car was clean, too clean. The crime scene tech on the scene said it looked as if the car had been wiped down. Forensics hauled the car back to the county lab and would process it overnight. If they got lucky, they might find a hair, a fiber or a print from the killer. Mac doubted they would get lucky in that regard, but it was worth the effort. The GPS was more likely to provide help.

Mac looked over Lich’s notes. With some keystrokes and a password, he worked his way into the GPS system for A-1 Rent-A-Car. Stroudt rented a silver Ford 500 at 10:40 at the airport.

Stroudt left the airport and drove east into St. Paul and spent nearly an hour driving around the city. He made one stop at a bookstore on Ford Parkway in the Highland Park area. The car was parked at the bookstore for twenty minutes before Stroudt left. From the bookstore, he drove two miles to a Grand Brew Coffee House, the actual original Grand Brew, on the corner of Grand and Snelling Avenues.

From 12:02 p.m. until 2:09 p.m., Stroudt remained at the Grand Brew. The coffee house would have been crowded at that time of day with college students as the coffee shop sat across the street from Macalester College. It made some sense if he wanted to be around people interested in politics. Macalaster was a politically active small liberal arts college with a decidedly Democratic bent. If you were a Governor Thomson supporter, you would be in good company.

“So you sit at the Grand Brew for two hours doing what?” Mac mused out loud to nobody in particular. “Doing what?”

Mac suspected he might have spent some time on a computer. The coffee shop offered free Wi-Fi. On the right side of the whiteboard he had a heading titled Tasks. Under Tasks, he made a note to go to the coffee shop and look at the surveillance video to see if they could get anything from it.

Stroudt left the Grand Brew at 2:09 and drove north on Snelling Avenue. He actually drove past The Snelling and continued north another two miles before he did a U-turn and then came back to The Snelling. “Looking for an out-of-the-way place perhaps?” Mac thought to himself. He wondered if Stroudt knew how truly disreputable The Snelling was.

The car remained parked at The Snelling until 4:05 p.m. and then started moving again, driven away by the killers. “So that gives me time of death,” Mac muttered as he jotted that down in his notebook.

After leaving The Snelling, the car was driven around for twenty minutes and was then left at the Penalty Box. Given the track the car followed around the Rosedale Mall before settling at the Penalty Box, perhaps some surveillance from parking lot cameras or businesses would catch the rental on film. He made a note to look into that.

Mac scrolled the GPS tracking back to The Snelling and thought about the difference between how Stroudt acted before and after he left the Grand Brew. Before he got to the Grand Brew, he was using his credit card to pay for a flight and to rent a car. After he left the Grand Brew, he’s suddenly cruising Snelling Avenue, perhaps looking for a place to stay out of sight, and checks into The Snelling, paying cash for a room. The Snelling would take credit, it was just rare that anyone would actually use credit there.

Mac walked over to the whiteboard and looked at the timeline.

Why would Stroudt want to stay out of sight?

Mac kept running it through his head. On Tuesday night, he and Montgomery are using credit cards to stay at a DoubleTree Hotel and buying an expensive steak dinner. The next day they’re still using credit cards in Kentucky for gas and meals like normal business travelers. But then something happens that starts changing their behavior. He made himself a note to see if the car they rented in Nashville had GPS. Perhaps he could get some insight if the GPS told him where the car traveled.

That was for tomorrow. As for now, Mac stood up and walked to the whiteboard and wrote above the timeline “What Happened” between the last credit card expenditure on Monday night and 7:00 a.m. Tuesday morning in St. Louis. He then wrote the same thing for the time period between Stroudt’s arrival and his check-in at The Snelling. Then Mac went back and added one more thing in blue at the St. Louis notation—”Why come to Twin Cities?”

Mac sat back and looked at the board and muttered: “Why did you come to the Twin Cities?”

Political bloggers fly from Washington to Nashville seven days before the election. They drive into the Kentucky countryside and suddenly change plans, skipping their return flights from Nashville to DC and instead splitting up in St. Louis. One disappears and the other flies to the Twin Cities.

Why come to the Twin Cities?

Mac’s cell phone started ringing.

It was Sally and he suddenly had a thought.

A half hour later, Mac pushed through the back door into his house and he could hear the shower running upstairs. He made his way upstairs and up to their bedroom. He quietly put his Sig Sauer, badge and wallet in his nightstand drawer and slipped out of his work clothes.

He walked into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain, climbed into the large cast iron bathtub and joined Sally, hugging her from behind. She turned and kissed him twice lightly on the lips. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” he replied.

She was a beautiful woman with long red hair, a gorgeous smile and a wonderful thin figure.

In law school he’d noticed her once or twice, thought her quite attractive from a distance, but hadn’t given her much thought beyond that and wasn’t even sure he’d actually formally met her. He was married at the time, clerked for a law firm during the day and went to class at night. Most of his free time was spent buried in the corner of the law library studying or with his wife. As a result, he’d never really gotten into the William Mitchell social scene and, in retrospect, made but a few close friends in those three years. Sally, on the other hand, while also married at the time, didn’t work much, attended class during the day, hung around the William Mitchell campus all the time and had numerous friends with whom she was still close.

After graduation, the next time he saw her was in the days following the finalizing of his divorce, when she’d just started as an assistant county attorney with Ramsey County and had been assigned to a case he was working. He was immediately attracted to her. She was newly divorced at the time as well and the two just seemed to find each other and fit together at the right time. They’d been inseparable since.

“So I have a favor to ask,” he said as he squirted body wash onto his hands and softly washed her arms and shoulders.

“Which is what, pray tell?”

“I need to speak to people at your campaign,” Mac related the death of Stroudt. He figured he was in town for some political reason and Sally’s campaign was the biggest game in town.

“He could have been interested in any number of the federal campaigns going on, Mac,” Sally answered, guarded.

“And Dick and I plan on talking to all of them,” Mac replied easily as he washed her lower back, softly working his hands around her hips and stomach. “But I imagine I would have the most trouble getting into yours. I was thinking you might be able to pave the way for me.”

“Oh did you now?” Sally replied skeptically, but leaned back into him and looked up into his eyes.

“There is always an easy and a hard way to do things,” he replied casually. “I figured …”

“… That given where we are in the campaign season …”

“… The easier way seems the better approach for both you and I. Win, win.”

Sally turned around to face him and curled her arms up around his neck, running her hands through his wet hair. “It’ll cost you,” she said as she leaned up and kissed him lightly.

“Hmmm. What is the price this time?” Mac answered as his hands softly followed the contours of her body, his left hand lightly caressing her buttocks while his right hand gently cupped her breast.

“One I’m sure you’ll most happily pay,” she purred as she kissed him again, this time, a long, slow, wet kiss as the water cascaded around their bodies.

“Perhaps you’d like to move this to the next room over,” Mac suggested quietly after a minute.

“I think I might,” she answered before kissing him softly again. “I think I just might.”