Roger Stelljes - The St. Paul Conspiracy

Patrick had made a valid point. If it wasn’t Knapp, who was it? And if it was somebody else, they had to have the inside scoop to get it just right. Pretty unlikely. Nevertheless, something seemed odd about it all.

Mac touched his belly. Three cups of heavy coffee were getting to him. He grabbed Jones’ file and the sports page and headed to the can. The sports page offered little so he put it over the handicap arm lift and reached down for the Jones file. He flipped it open and started reading through the memo again. Jones was strangled with a nylon rope, yellow, might have been a water skiing towrope. She was sexually assaulted post mortem. There was the presence of Trojan condom residue, but no pubic hair or any other piece of evidence left behind. It was a spot-on match.

He flipped the memo up and looked at the background information stapled to the back of the folder. Jones was born in 1969 and raised in Bristol, Ohio. Her mother lived in Sun City, Arizona, now. Dad was deceased. Jones had apparently never married. She was a graduate of Duke University and had a masters from Northwestern. She obviously had brains to get into both of those schools. She worked in Chicago before coming to Minnesota. She had been at PTA for seven years, worked her way up the ladder, becoming a very young CFO.

Mac furrowed his brow. Something on the sheet registered with him, like he had seen it somewhere before, but he wasn’t sure what or where. He finished, got up and went to the sink to wash his hands. The door burst open. His cousin Paddy, in uniform, came in.

“Hey, cuz.”

“How you doing, Mac? Hungover?”

“Nah. Early night.”

“Ahhh. Sally.”

Mac smiled and nodded as he worked the soap on his hands.

“Hell of a run for you, cuz,” Paddy said, “Catching Knapp the way you did and Daniels…”

Daniels. Mac bolted from the bathroom, briskly walked down the hall and hit the stairs to the basement and the evidence room. A uniform cop, Jorgenson, was working the desk. “Hey, Mac, great job on Knapp-”

“Thanks. Say, I need to pull some evidence. Everything on the Daniels case.”

“Daniels? What’dya need that for?”

“Just want to check something out.”

“Okay, whatever you say.”

Jorgenson came back with a box with various pieces of evidence. Mac flipped the top off and started digging through evidence bags. And there it was, the 1987 Bristol, Ohio, high school yearbook. He opened it to the page he dogeared weeks ago that had Claire Daniels’, then Claire Miller, graduation picture, first picture on the left, top row. It was on the right page. On the left page halfway down, middle of the row, Jamie Jones. Mac did a rough estimate of the graduating class. There were probably forty or fifty students, a small class.

Mac checked the evidence out and went back up to his desk and started up his computer and did a Google search for Bristol, Ohio. Bristol, south of Youngstown, had a population of just over 1,200.

Mac sat back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. What were the odds that two women who graduated high school together from a tiny southern Ohio town would be murdered the exact same night in St. Paul, Minnesota?

He got on the phone and called Daniels’ mother, who he had spoke to once during that investigation. She wasn’t particularly helpful then and was no more so now. It wasn’t that she was difficult; she just didn’t know much about what her daughter had been doing with her social life. Apparently that was the case for her daughter’s high school life as well; she didn’t recall a Jamie Jones from Bristol.

Mac had never spoken to Jones’ mother, but there was a number for her in the file. Mac introduced himself to Ms. Jones, who spent two minutes thanking him for catching Knapp.

“Ms. Jones, I have one question for you. Do you remember a classmate of your daughter’s named Claire Daniels?”

“Claire Daniels… hmm… no, I don’t recall a Claire Daniels.”

Mac kicked himself, “Wait, it was Miller then, Claire Miller. Do you recall a Claire Miller?”

“Oh, I remember Claire. She was pretty popular when Jamie was in high school.”

“Were they friends?”

“They knew each other. It’s a small town, so everyone was pretty friendly.”

“Did your daughter ever mention running into Claire up in the Twin Cities?”

“Ohh, yes. Said she saw her on TV. I guess Claire was a reporter. Jamie said she gave her a call, and they got together for coffee or something.”

“Do you know when it was that they got together?”

“No, I don’t. I’m sorry. I think it was recently, at least recently before Jamie was killed. But I can’t be sure exactly when.”

Mac managed to get off the phone before Ms. Jones was able to ask too many questions. He needed to think. Had he found something or was his mind playing games with him? He got up and walked over to the pop machine for a Diet Dr. Pepper, popped the top and took a long drink, looking out the window over Interstate 94. He turned to head back to his desk, when he saw Sally walking down the hall. She saw him and walked over, “Hey.” She saw the look on his face. “You don’t look so good.”

Mac lightly grabbed her arm and walked her into a vacant interview room and closed the door.

“What’s up?”

“I got a bad feeling about something.”

“What?”

“Remember I mentioned last night that on Knapp’s wall, one of the victim’s was missing.”

“Yeah.”

“Kind of thought it was odd.”

“Yeah, so. He was nuts.”

“Maybe so. But have you ever heard of Bristol, Ohio?”

“No. Should I?”

“Not really. It’s a small town in southern Ohio.”

“So.”

“It’s where Jamie Jones graduated from high school in 1987.”

“Mac, I don’t see where your going with-”

“-It just so happens it’s also the high school that one Claire Miller, who became Claire Daniels, also graduated from in 1987.”

Sally’s jaw dropped a little. “Odd coincidence, I guess.”

“It get’s even odder. They were killed the same night.”

Sally’s jaw dropped completely. “What are the odds?”

“Very long, I think.”

“It’s probably still just a coincidence,” Sally said with little conviction.

“Maybe,” he replied skeptically. “But I spoke with Jones’ mom, and she confirms that the two of them had recently gotten together for coffee.”

Sally slipped into lawyer mode. “They’re from the same hometown. So what?”

“Murdered on the same night? That in and of itself makes you wonder. But there’re other things. I’ve looked over Knapp’s other victims. Jones doesn’t fit. She’s professional. The others are working class. Jones has nothing to do with the University Avenue area. She lives down by the river and works downtown. How does Knapp run into her? She does no business in the University area, and Knapp never was downtown once in the entire time we followed him.”

Sally sat down, looking away at the white, concrete wall of the interview room. Quietly she said, “If you’re right, this means the Senator-”

“-Maybe didn’t do Daniels,” Mac said, equally quiet. “And Knapp didn’t do Jones.”

“So who did?”

“Good question.”

Viper had been working around the clock, living in a minivan for what seemed like weeks. He was starting to feel all of his forty-seven years of age. Sore, achy, lethargic and just plain worn out. Kraft’s phone call didn’t exactly help. They weren’t done yet. McRyan and Kennedy’s places would need to remain infested a while longer.

He slept in late, not having set an alarm. Apparently nothing came of pillow talk between McRyan and Kennedy. If anything important had happened or been said, someone would have called.