Roger Stelljes - The St. Paul Conspiracy

“I didn’t know that,” Lindsay replied, a surprised look on his face. Mac didn’t believe him or the surprised look, but they already decided they couldn’t use Daniels much more than that at this point.

“Really?” Mac replied skeptically. “Somehow I doubt that.” Then he continued. “Anyway, between Stephens giving Jones the banker’s box and then meeting with a noted investigative reporter, well, that all seemed fairly suspicious to us. Especially since Jones didn’t fit the pattern of Knapp’s victims. Certainly you can see why this would be of concern to us.”

“Knapp must have taken a shine to Jamie somehow,” Lindsay replied.

“I’m not sure how that would be,” Riley jumped in. “I led the detail on Knapp. He ran into all of his victims through work and driving around the University Avenue area.” Riley shook his head, “In the time we followed him, he never went downtown once.”

Mac jumped back in. “And, as far as we can tell, Jones never had any reason to spend much time along the University Avenue corridor. PTA doesn’t have any facilities over there.”

“Could be a copycat,” Zimmer added, wanting everyone to know he was still in the room.

“We think that’s entirely possible,” Riley replied. “But if the Jones murder was a copycat, it wasn’t pulled off by some ham-and-egger. It was the work of a professional.”

Mac nodded, adding, “Every detail matched to what Knapp was doing. Except, of course, for the profile of the victim. Jones doesn’t fit.”

“So that got us to thinking: who else would want to take her out?” Riles said. “And it seems that the only other thing Ms. Jones had going in her life that would cause someone to pick her out, was the fact that she was the CFO for a prominent company.”

Mac finished the thought. “Maybe PTA had something to hide.”

“Our financial records are impeccable, Detective.” Lindsay replied angrily. “There is no financial malfeasance here.”

“We’ll see,” Mac replied, continuing, cocky. “But I’m not done. In PTA here, we’re not talking about just any company. We’re talking a wealthy company with tremendous assets. A company with a large security force.” Mac looked over to Alt. “People tell me that there’s more than one professional working for your firm.”

“A professional could do a copycat killing and make it look like the work of someone else, it’s one of the things they’re trained to do,” Riley added.

“Heck, a professional could have picked off Knapp from the third level of the Vincent Ramp. Isn’t that right, Mr. Alt?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Alt replied.

“Riiiight,” Mac slowly replied, then continued. “So this all leads us back to Ms. Jones and PTA. In particular, we were wondering what this banker’s box full of documents Ms. Stephens gave Ms. Jones might have to do with all of this?”

Lindsay, a confident smile appearing over his face, answered, “Is that what this is really all about, detective?”

Alt, with his back to the wall, had listened to McRyan thunder away at Lindsay. He was cocky, intentionally so, which was expected. They knew that he would want to piss the boss off, get him to bite. Lindsay wouldn’t, Alt thought. Too smooth, been through something like this too many times. If the Senate Intelligence Committee never got him to buckle, why would some young Irish detective from St. Paul have any luck? Nevertheless, Alt admired the kid. He was on the right track, more than he even really knew. They had suspicions, good ones for sure, but they had no hard facts, other than the Cross file, and they didn’t have the file. McRyan would ask about the banker’s box full of documents on Cross. They knew he would. They knew his whole strategy. They were ready. This is where Lindsay would end it.

“Is that what this is really all about, detective?” Lindsay said. From where he was standing, Alt couldn’t see the boss’ face, until he turned in his chair to him.

“Webb?”

“Sir.”

“Could you grab that box of Cross documents that Jamie brought in?” Alt went back out the double doors and into Lindsay’s office. The box was sitting next to his desk. This was their cover, recreated to look like the copies Jamie had given them. He picked up the box and brought them back to the conference room and set them down on the table. As he set the box down, the lawyer was whispering in Lindsay’s ear. Lindsay replied out loud. “No, I want them to see it. I want them to see there’s nothing to it.” Then Lindsay looked across the table, “Now gentlemen, this is what Jamie brought to me, what Landy Stephens gave to her. You’re free to look through these documents to your heart’s content. I think you’ll find there’s nothing in here of concern to us.”

McRyan and Riley didn’t show much emotion, but Alt could see the disappointment. It was their body language. Their backs weren’t so straight, nor the shoulders so broad. Their bodies sagged slightly, as if a slow leak had started. Riley grabbed the ledger book and started flipping through it while McRyan thumbed through some binder-clipped documents.

Lindsay went for the jugular. “Now, what you have here is a box of documents that, for whatever reason, James Stephens had at home. They relate to what we were doing a number of years ago at our Cross facility.” Lindsay related how they put PTA surplus out in Cross and then systematically had it destroyed.

“Now, Jamie did raise the issue of why we didn’t try to sell the surplus materials. Since the weapons, communications gear, and things of that nature would be coming from PTA, they would fetch some money. We might have been able to make maybe twenty-five to thirty million if we’d done that. She thought we should have considered it.”

“Why didn’t you?” Riley asked.

“I’m a patriot, Detective Riley. If I build it for the government, they’re the ones who get it.”

“So how did you end up with surplus?”

“Sometimes, it doesn’t cost as much to produce a product as you think. In some cases we were more efficient, and sometimes we manufacture a surplus in case problems or errors arise. It happens in all industries, I think. But I didn’t exactly want to admit this to the government either,” Lindsay answered casually, then turned more serious, “Now, if putting a stop to all of this nonsense you have been engaging in will require me to do that, I certainly will.”

“Of course, we don’t really know if this is what Jamie Jones had, do we?” McRyan stated.

“This is what she brought to me,” Lindsay responded reasonably. “You can believe me or not. That’s up to you.”

“Convenient that she’s not here to verify it,” McRyan accused.

“I think that’s enough, Detective,” Zimmer shot back.

“Shut up, Counselor,” McRyan snapped back, the disappointment now out in the open.

“Would it be unusual for Mr. Stephens to have had these documents at home?” Riley asked.

“It would,” Alt replied. “Our security is very tight here. For obvious reasons, we have strict rules that company-related documents are not to leave the building.”

“So how does Stephens end up with the documents at home?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Alt replied, although he knew why Stephens had the originals at home-because they told a completely different story. “What can I say. Executives don’t always follow all the rules.”

“Webb is, I think, correct in that statement,” Lindsay added. “That isn’t to suggest we would look the other way, but sometimes those of us who write the rules don’t always follow them to the letter.” A frank disclosure, one to further make the boss appear forthright and reasonable.