Blood Silence (9 page)

Lyman and Summer, seeing his arrival, quickly came out to the lobby.

“Hey, Mac,” Summer greeted warmly, giving him a warm hug. “It’s been a while. Congrats on the engagement. How’s Sally doing?”

“She’s great, Summer, just great. She says hi. I dropped her off at the airport an hour ago.”

“Tell her hi back. Next time she’s in town, she needs to call me.”

“I’m glad to have you here—glad to have you on my side for once,” Lyman said, shaking Mac’s hand.

“I’ll do my best, guys,” Mac replied. “I have to warn you, though—it dawned on me on the way over that I’ve never investigated like this before.”

“Like what?” Lyman asked.

“Without a badge. Without legal authority. Without police resources. Without backup. I feel kind of naked.”

“Let me worry about the legal authority part,” Lyman answered. “There are a few more hurdles to investigating when you’re on this side of the fence. But if you find something you need to look into, let Summer or me know. We’ll get that taken care of.” Then Lyman lowered his voice. “But first, before we get going, there is someone who would like to have a word with you.”

Mac sighed and grimaced. “She’s here?”

Lyman nodded and then tilted his head left. “She’s down the hall, in a conference room, looking through some documents.”

Glancing to his right and down the hall, Mac muttered, “Well, we better get this over with.”

Mac deposited his backpack and folder in the main conference room, exited, and turned left down the hallway. He knew there would need to be an airing out between them. It was inevitable, but it was not a confrontation he would relish. Meredith knew how to push his buttons, and when she did, he could get nasty in response. It was a personality component that he’d kept locked up since he’d been with Sally. He had a temper and an ability to go for the absolute jugular in an argument.

They just needed to keep it civil.

Fifty feet down the hallway, he spotted her through the glass walls of the conference room. Meredith was sitting in one of the chairs and staring vacantly out the window. The dominant feature of her view was the St. Paul Cathedral awash in light, overlooking the city from the bluff to the west of downtown. He hadn’t seen her in four years, and now he was seeing her for the second time in three days. He tried to keep it light. “Hey, Meredith.”

She turned to face him and waved for him to close the door. He did as instructed but stuck close to the wall.

“I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have envisioned this when I woke up this morning, either.”

Meredith turned back to the window, looking outside. “You must be amused by this situation.”

“Amused?” Mac shook his head, looking to the floor, and said quietly, “No, Meredith, I’m not amused. I’m concerned…”

“Why don’t you just say it?” She turned back to him now. “Just say it.”

“Say what?” Mac asked, his arms folded, leaning against the glass.

“I told you so.”

He wanted to say it, was thinking it, and it was probably written all over his face, but he thought better of it. “Meredith, what good …”

“That Frederick was a two-timing loser when I left you for him.” She pushed herself out of the chair and stormed toward him with anger in her eyes. “That something like this would happen. That I’m a cold, calculating bitch who is probably getting exactly what she deserved in the end.”

“What good would that do at this point? I don’t see how that helps you.”

“That’s not exactly a denial.”

He read her and could tell she was spoiling for a fight. He tried to de-escalate. “Look, Meredith …”

“Oh, come on, Mac. I know you. How I reacted to you becoming a cop when your life was so set as a lawyer? Inside, you’re sitting there all smug and self-satisfied. That pride of yours has to be just welling up inside of you. Your life is a dream right now—engaged, rich, on a first-name basis with the president of the United States, a book deal, doing whatever you want. And mine? Mine has turned into a nightmare because I left you and married Frederick. Tell me you’re not standing there thinking that.”

“The irony is not lost on me, Meredith.” Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he probably shouldn’t have said that.

“The irony.” She snorted and walked away from him and back toward the window, running her hands through her long, black hair. “I can just hear that mind of yours—the irony that my bitch of an ex-wife who left me now needs me to bail her out.”

“Well, don’t you?”

“Whatever,” she replied as she wiped away some tears.

“Is the pity party over yet?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, Meredith, playing the martyr doesn’t suit you,” Mac suggested, still leaning against the wall, arms folded, trying to stay cool but having a hard time. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” And then he told a little lie. “And for the record, I have not spent the past four years living my life to prove you wrong. I haven’t spent the last four years looking back at what I could have or should have done differently. I’ve moved on.”

“Really?”

Mac shook his head. “Did the divorce hurt? You bet. It hurt like hell. There were mornings there for a while where it was hard to get up. But in the end, when I examined everything that happened, when I took a really long, hard look at what happened, I largely blamed myself for it.”

“You blamed yourself?” Meredith asked, incredulous. “The great Mac McRyan thinks something was his fault? This is new.”

“A little introspection never hurts.”

“Introspection?”

“Yeah, you should try it sometime.” He should stop now. He shouldn’t take the bait. Instead, he should get her focused on the case.

But he couldn’t.

She wanted to fight, and he decided he did too. He had some things to say.

“So what did all this introspection teach you?”

“I should have seen it coming.”

“Seen what coming?”

“The divorce. I should have realized a lot sooner who, deep down, you
really
were, Meredith. To you, life was about getting ahead, projecting an image, material wealth, appearances, and all the other trappings of success. That’s what you were all about. I mean, your definition of what makes a good life ended up so different from mine. I should have seen that long before I ever even contemplated marrying you, because those signs were all there. But I got sucked in by what was on the outside and ignored what burned inside.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were gorgeous and smart. You were so smart, brilliant really, and I was in love with that whole package. Problem was? You weren’t in love with me.”

“That’s not true,” she replied, shaking her head. “That is not true. I loved you.”

Mac snorted. “Bullshit. I’ve often wondered if you’re even capable of it.”

“I did. I did love you,” she answered defensively.

“Well, if you did, if you were in love with me at some point, when I stopped meeting all of the ‘husband criteria,’ that was the end of that. It was time for a new husband. Someone who could advance you to wherever it was you wanted to get to. As a cop, you didn’t think I could do that.”

“Oh, fuck you, Mac.”

“Now who’s not being honest?” He went for the jugular. “It got to the point I could never really believe a damn thing you said, because it didn’t feel like there was anything real about you.”

“Really? Then why are you here now? How can you possibly trust me now?”

“I didn’t say I did,” Mac answered. “I’ll question everything you say, but I just don’t think you did it.”

“Why? Why would you think that? I mean, you think I’m this cold, calculating, heartless, loveless person, so why wouldn’t I be capable of killing my husband?”

“I didn’t say you weren’t capable of it.”

Meredith was shocked. “You think I could kill someone?”

“The Meredith I divorced? There’s not a doubt in my mind,” Mac answered, narrowing his eyes on her. “But not like this. The murder of J. Frederick Sterling and Callie Gentry was a crime of passion, of emotion. You don’t have that kind of passion or emotion pumping through you. You wouldn’t have been so sloppy to have left yourself open to a murder charge like this.”

“I wouldn’t?”

“No,” Mac answered, shaking his head, going in for the kill. It was time for the argument to be over. “If you did this, you’d have planned it out to the nth detail, Meredith, so that there would be no way to possibly trace it back to you. I mean, if there were anyone in this world I’d bet on to plan the perfect murder, to make it look just right, it would be you. Hell, you’d be angry with yourself if it didn’t look perfect. That’s who you are, and that’s why I don’t think you did it.”

Meredith shook her head, looking down at the floor, the tears welling in her eyes. “You think that little of me.” She walked over to the window and wiped tears away from her face. She turned back to him. “Why are you willing to do this for me, then?”

Mac exhaled a long breath. “I loved you once. I really did. Those feelings were a long time ago, but they were real and honest and true. And that’s … that’s enough to make me not want to see you spend the rest of your life in prison. I’d rather have you spend the rest of your life hating the fact that you have to be grateful to me for keeping you out. I want you to wake up every day for the rest of your life and know you’re free because the cop you kicked to the curb saved your ass.”

Meredith shook her head at him, sighed, and said, “Well, at least you’re motivated.”

“Damn right. So let’s get to work.”

• • •

Lyman spent an hour walking Mac through the case while Plantagenate, Meredith, and her family listened in. Mac listened intently, taking notes, reviewing documents, and asking sporadic questions. There was a file at the ready for him to take home for his review and use. As he listened, he began forming his own plan of investigation.

Lyman started with the murder scene out at the house on Lake Minnetonka and worked through the investigative report, at least what they had at this point. “I will be getting more evidence after the arraignment tomorrow morning,” Lyman noted. “Needless to say, the evidence definitely points at Meredith.”

“Yes, it does,” Mac replied, looking back at his ex-wife. “Which is why she didn’t do it.”

“Why do you say that?” Plantagenate asked.

“Too easy,” Mac answered with one of his favorite investigative thoughts. There were those who said the simplest answer was usually the right one. That was usually true, except when it wasn’t. Besides thinking Meredith wouldn’t act in this fashion, he agreed with Lyman’s assessment—something smelled. “All I know is that I’d have taken more time, even with someone who looks as good for the murder as Meredith does. I’d have taken another day, maybe two, before I moved, just to think it through, just to evaluate if I was missing something. In my view, they were a little too quick to arrest.”

“Do you question the integrity of the investigators?” Ann Hilary asked.

“No,” Mac answered, shaking his head, “just their competence.”

Next, Lyman moved on to motive, reviewing the investigative file from John Biggs. Mac looked back at Meredith with a smirk. “You used Biggs?”

She smirked back. “You said something about irony earlier. He knew the mark.”

Lyman finished up with some preliminary thoughts on the approach to Meredith’s defense. He pushed himself out of his deep leather desk chair, went to a cabinet in the wall, and opened it to reveal a small bar. “Bourbon, everyone?” Lyman asked. He poured five glasses.

“So, Mac,” Lyman asked. “Any thoughts?”

“I need to investigate the murder first, which means I need access to that lake house, and I need to figure out a way to explain away that gun. The killer used it, which means they knew it was there somehow.”

“And they knew her finger prints would be on it,” Ann Hilary said.

Mac shook his head. “I think the killer got lucky with that, Ann. There is no way the killer knew her prints would be on it. For a killer, it would be enough that she knew it was there—her prints are a very lucky bonus.” He took a drink of the bourbon. “But to work through all of that, I need some help. I need someone to bounce ideas off of, to talk to, and to be my sounding board.”

“I’ll get you into the house tomorrow after the hearing. As for help, you have anyone in mind?” Lyman asked.

“I can get Lich for a day or two. He’s on vacation for the next few days and bored out of his mind. You’ll have to pay him, though.”

“Not a problem,” Lyman said. “I know the Richard Lich retirement fund can always use an infusion of cash. What else?”

“The other big issue is, if we take Meredith out of it, who else has motive to kill Sterling and Gentry?”

“You’ll need access to the law firm,” Plantagenate suggested, following the train of thought.

Mac nodded. “We’ll need access particularly to Sterling’s files. Callie Gentry was Sterling’s client first and his mistress second. Who is she? Meredith, do you know what they were working on?”

“Something up in North Dakota is all I know.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes,” Meredith replied defensively and then shook her head, looking away. “I mean, Frederick and I were drifting apart the last year or so anyway. He wasn’t confiding in me much, so I know very little about what was going on in North Dakota.” She went quiet for a few moments and looked down. “When I started getting suspicious, I looked in the working file and billing file on our network, and there was little detail as to what they were doing, just a lot of
review file
entries. What I do know is that they took lots of trips up there, which I suppose is what started to make me suspicious to begin with. She paid our firm a boatload in fees for the last several months, millions in fees, and as best I can tell, the only one who did work on those files was Frederick. He has a litigation team on his files, and they haven’t touched the case, so whatever it was, he was keeping it to himself.”

“Maybe the files won’t tell you much,” Lyman offered.

Mac shook his head, disagreeing. “Meredith was looking through those files as a wife suspicious of her husband, not as part of a murder investigation. There are things that would be irrelevant to one that could be very relevant to the other.”