Roger Stelljes: The St. Paul Conspiracy

“Well, if she did, we’ll find out.” Linda put on her glasses and reached for some rubber gloves to start evaluating the body. Another tech Mac didn’t know was getting the fingerprint kit going.

Mac flipped open his cell phone and hit the speed dial for Captain Peters.

“Peters.”

“McRyan. Your day just got worse.” Mac said neutrally, “Our homicide is Claire Daniels.”

Silence. Then, slightly stammering, Peters asked for confirmation. “The TV Reporter? From Channel 6?”

“Yes.”

“Cripes, what next,” Peters sighed. “Mac, do you need some help over there?”

“Yeah, some extra units’d be good. We’re going to draw a crowd.” He thought a moment. “If you got any extra people to spare, I have a feeling we may need to do some door to door here.”

“Okay. I’ll get some bodies down there. You run it. But listen, son, the shit’s going to hit the fan with this. If you get stuck, ask for help. If the media are not there yet, they will be soon. They’ll be all over you. Don’t say a word until we talk. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dick Lick there yet?” Peters asked caustically, knowing Lich’s approach to things as of late.

Mac stifled a chuckle, “No, sir.”

“Whatever you do, Lich doesn’t talk to the press. He always loves to talk. It’s your case. You run it, and he follows.” There was a brief silence, and then, “Look, if Dick pulls his head out of his ass, don’t be afraid to use him. He’s been around. If he’s set right, he knows what he’s doing. But you lead. I’ll let him know that.” With that Peters clicked off.

It was his case for now. This was going to be a major case, and Peters was giving him the chance to take the ball and run with it. Mac planned to do just that.

Mac watched forensics as they started to set up, unpacking gear from their fishing-tackle boxes. Black lights, cameras, plastic bags. He walked out into the hall and up to Schmidt. “Cleaning lady?”

“Down in the kitchen.”

Mac headed down. As he came to the bottom of the steps, Lich walked in. In his early fifties, Lich was pot-bellied and bald. He owned a collection of old, faded suits, replete with coffee stains and the occasional burn hole from one of his cigars. His choice that morning carried a couple stains. Lich, as Mac often said, was a piece of work.

Lich was divorced, so he and Mac had that in common. He had been cleaned out, which they didn’t have in common. It was a point Lich frequently made. His ex had cleaned him out and left him without a pot to piss in.

“Mornin’, Mac. Your cousin filled me in.” Just then Lich’s cell phone went off, and Mac figured it might be Peters. He didn’t want to be there while that conversation took place. Instead he headed for the kitchen. The cleaning lady was sitting at the kitchen table with a uniform cop named Jones. “Lich’ll be a minute,” Mac explained to Jones.

The cleaning lady was hunched over, looking anxious and just a shade from terrified. Just then Lich came in and whispered to Mac, “Peters says you lead.”

Mac nodded, “Let’s get after it then.”

The cleaning lady, Gloria, had arrived at her normal time, 7:00 a.m. She had gone upstairs to grab some clothes for the laundry. On the way up the steps, she had picked up the slacks on the landing and saw the blouse at the top. As she bent over to pick up the shirt, she glanced around the corner and saw Daniels lying on the bed. She then immediately called 911.

After having gotten the summary, Mac asked, “Did you and Ms. Daniels ever talk? Have a conversation?”

“Sometimes. She was friendly, always letting me make coffee for myself, as long as I made some for her. Sometimes I would bring rolls. She was a nice lady.”

“Did she ever mention anyone who might be after her? That she was concerned about? Was there ever any hate mail lying around? Disturbing phone messages? Anything like that?”

The woman’s eyes were wide with innocence. “No.”

“How about people she saw, dated? Ever talk about any of that?”

“We never talked about things like that. I didn’t know her like that. I might see her in the morning and say, ‘You have a date last night?’ She would just kind of smile and nod.”

“Was she seeing anyone right now?”

“She might have been, but I don’t know who it was.”

“Is it ‘might’? Or do you know?”

Terror edged into her eyes. “I think she was seeing someone. Yes.”

“Why do you think so?”

“When she’s dating someone, she gets up really late. She works late and I think her dates are late.”

“And if she’s not seeing anyone?” Lich asked.

“Then she’s a pretty early riser, has coffee, reads the paper, exercises. But if she had a date, it seemed like she liked to sleep in late.”

“Anything else that tells you she was seeing someone,” Mac continued.

“No, just that she seemed to be sleeping in late.”

“And you don’t know who she’s seeing?”

“No. She never said. If he ever stayed the night, he was gone before I ever got here.”

“How many days a week do you come?” Lich asked.

“Three.”

“Three?” Mac asked, “Seems like a lot for someone who lives alone.”

Gloria said, “Ms. Daniels, she liked things perfect.”

“Neat freak, huh.” Lich said.

“Not so much that as just a perfectionist,” Gloria answered. “Just the way she was.”

“When you arrived here this morning, did anything seem out of place, you know,” Lich asked, and then pointed up, “other than the obvious?”

Gloria vigorously shook her head. “No, everything seemed pretty normal.”

“How’d you get in?” Mac inquired.

“Front door. I have a key.”

Mac went to look at the front door for a second. There was a dead bolt, fairly new. He examined the lock and the door. It was clean, no scratches, no signs of forced entry. He walked back to the kitchen.

“Gloria, is your key for the deadbolt?”

“Yes.”

“Was the deadbolt locked this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Is that a new lock?”

“It was put in a few months ago.”

Mac looked past her to a stairway going down the back. “Is the back entrance down those stairs?”

The cleaning lady nodded.

Mac and Lich went down the steps and looked at the back door. Unlike the front door, the knob was very old. There was a deadbolt, but it wasn’t locked. Through the door was a single-car garage with a garage door and a dead-bolted side door to the left. This dead bolt was newer looking. As with the front door, there was no sign of forced entry.

“Wonder if the same key opens both?” Lich said.

“Let’s see.”

They headed back up, and the cleaning lady confirmed that both doors had the same key. Mac did some quick mental gymnastics. No evidence of forced entry. No evidence of robbery. Maybe somebody had a key?

Just then a couple of other younger detectives from robbery homicide showed. Mac chuckled. Bill Clark and Al Green looked like a couple of IBM guys. They were tall, with short black hair, blue suits, and red ties.

“I must not have gotten the memo.”

Green and Clark at first looked blankly at him. Then they looked at each other and just shook their heads, “Fuck you, Mac,” Green replied. “The captain ordered us down to give you a hand. So, what do you need smart ass?”

Mac chuckled and gave them the rundown on what they had so far, which wasn’t much. “Let’s start door knocking on all these brownstones and checking the apartments across the street. Use some uniform guys, and I’ll get Peters to send some more down.” Mac was also thinking the newsies would be there soon, and he would need to control them and the crowd. The media would go nuts with one of their own dying.