Roger Stelljes - The St. Paul Conspiracy

“Maybe,” Mac replied with a smile.

“Then I walk over and Rock looks like he’s gonna puke, he’s breathing so hard. I’m not sure if he’s holding himself up or if he’s leaning on Knapp so he won’t fall down.”

Mac listened as Riley went on, when someone put a soft, delicate arm around him, slowly walking a hand up his back, scratching lightly. He turned to his left to see Sally, who looked him in the eye and planted a big soft wet kiss on him for everybody else to see. Mac, usually not one for public displays of affection, was caught up in the moment and didn’t mind.

After the kiss and some good-natured ribbing from everyone else, he and Sally moved off to the side and out of the commotion surrounding Riley. Mac got her a beer, and they talked for a few minutes when Riles, finally done with the recounting of the take down, came over to join them.

“Case isn’t kicking your ass anymore, is it?” Mac said.

“Got that right,” Riles replied boisterously and put his arm around Sally’s neck, pulling her close and pointing his beer at Mac. “Counselor, did you hear what your boy here did last night?”

“Yes, detective. I heard your last rendition over there. Of course, I’m hoping I’ll receive a more thorough debriefing later,” Sally replied, smiling seductively at Mac. He wasn’t going to make closing time.

Riles loudly jumped all over the comment, “Ohhh, I’m sure Mac will be thoroughly debriefing later.”

Sally laughed out loud. Mac smiled and shook his head at Riles. “Hey, I’m a boxer man. I hate those tighty whitey’s you wear, Pat.” Mac added, and then in a more conversational tone, “I’ll tell you one thing new I saw today though.”

“What’s that?” Sally asked, taking another sip from her beer.

“I went out to Knapp’s place. He had the whole thing on a wall in the basement. Each murder. Pictures, maps, news clippings, the whole shootin’ match. I mean right up on the wall. Organized by victim.”

“Kind of creepy,” Sally replied.

“You ain’t kidding,” Mac replied. “But that wasn’t the really odd thing.”

“What was?” Rock asked as he lit his cigar.

“There was one victim missing.”

“Really, who was that?” Riley asked casually, taking a drink.

“Jamie Jones.”

“Really. Hmpf. Wonder why?”

“Yeah,” Mac replied, “I’m thinking I’ll take a-”

Before he could finish, Rock stopped him, “Guy was crazier than shit, Mac, killing those women. He probably left Jones out intentionally just to fuck with us. He’s dead, case is over-let’s get drunk.”

Rock was right, Mac thought, at least for tonight. They needed more drinks. “Shamus,” Mac bellowed. “Another round!”

The group talked idly for a while before Riley drifted off to tell more stories about the case to anyone who’d listen. Tonight he’d have an audience. More cops were coming in by the minute. Mac managed to stay until 10:00 p.m. when Sally finally dragged him out of the Pub. A day that started lousy was about to come to an excellent end.

Kraft had been sitting in the bar, twenty feet from McRyan, keeping a low profile, just a working stiff having a beer or two before heading home. They wanted to keep an eye on the group, just to be sure all was well. He heard McRyan mention the corkboard wall in the basement and the missing victim. Kraft finished his beer, threw five dollars on the bar and waded through the sea of cops to the front door. In his car, he grabbed his cell phone, punching up Viper.

“Yeah.”

“We may still have a problem.”

“What?”

“Apparently Knapp was cutting his clippings.”

“So?”

“Somebody’s missing.”

After a pause, “Shit.”

Mac walked into the detail conference room at 8:00 a.m. and started the coffee maker. He imagined the crew would start coming in shortly, hungover to beat all. Having left the bar at a decent hour, Mac felt good.

It was clean-up day, time to file all the evidence in boxes and then take a few days off. A stack of unassembled bankers boxers already waited in a corner. Mac put a couple together and started working on the corkboard that had the St. Paul map. As he started pulling stuff down, Dan Patrick walked in.

“Good morning.”

“Ain’t nothin’ good about it,” Patrick replied, heading for the coffee. Mac chuckled quietly and went back to work on the board. He got to the pin for the body by O’Neill’s Bar, Jamie Jones. She was the one missing from Knapp’s board.

“Dan, you got the file on this Jones woman? The one you were so mad I didn’t know about.” Patrick gave him a “Go fuck yourself” look through bloodshot eyes and threw a folder over.

Jones was the CFO at Peterson Technical Applications, otherwise known as PTA, the single largest business and employer in St. Paul. They had a downtown headquarters plus research and manufacturing facilities around the state and across the country, and soon around the world. It was a diversified company as far as Mac knew, but their calling card was military hardware and communications-related equipment.

“She was CFO?” Mac asked.

“Yeah.”

She was thirty-five years old. “Kind of young for that, wasn’t she?”

“She took over last March for a guy. I forget his name now, but he was killed in an auto accident during a snowstorm. Over on Shepard Road.” Patrick responded as he threw a couple of aspirin in his mouth and washed them down with coffee. Shepard Road ran from downtown west along the Mississippi River over to the International Airport. For an inner-city road, it was notoriously dangerous in spots. Add a March snowstorm to it, and it wasn’t unheard of that a serious accident could occur.

“Let me guess, during the state hockey tourney.” Snowstorms during the state high school hockey tournament were an annual tradition in Minnesota.

“Yup.”

Mac leafed through the file. It was like the other serial-killer files with a picture of the victim, a couple of pages on the evidence tying her to the other murders and a back page, stapled to the folder, with background information, such as address, date of birth, and next of kin.

Jones had come to St. Paul seven years before. She owned a new condo down along the river. Mac recognized the address. It was one of those posh ones in the River Highlands development right on the river, part of St. Paul’s effort to take financial, meaning tax, advantage of the river front. Figures, CFO at a company like PTA should be able to afford digs like that.

She was different from the others victims. The other victims were, for the most part, working-class women-waitresses and a convenience store clerk. Even Linda Bradley, though she owned the bar, definitely had a bluecollar, working-girl feel to her. Jones didn’t. She was educated, a professional, lived in an expensive neighborhood and worked for a major corporation.

“Dan, PTA have any facilities along University Avenue?”

“Huh?”

“PTA. Do they have anything along or around University?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“It’s just that she doesn’t seem to have much in common with the other victims. How does Knapp stumble onto the CFO of PTA?”

“Don’t know, Mac. Some of that occurred to us as well. But, the murder matched all the others down to the letter. Strangled. Sexually assaulted and a Trojan condom was used. No pubic hairs or other physical evidence. Dumped in a vacant lot. Left with a ‘Have a Nice Day’ balloon.”

“Hardly impossible to copycat.”

“That’s true, except we kept a tight lid on all of the details. Very little got out. Think about it. If the media knew about the Trojan rubber, no pubic hair stuff, the van, they would have run with it. It never got out. We watched that very closely. The only thing that really got out was the balloon stuff, and that was pretty much unavoidable. Point is we’d have been able to tell if it was a copycat. No dice.”