The St. Paul Conspiracy by Roger Stelljes Page A

hundredth time, he heard one of his crew exclaim, “ Beautiful .” Viper knew what that meant. He moved over to the window and saw McRyan and his partner approaching the Explorer, along with a Hispanic male.
    “Well that didn’t take long,” remarked Viper, a smile creasing his tired face.

Chapter Six

“Ever heard of Chappaquiddick?”

    While Lich was taking Hernandez’s statement, Mac made a call to Linda Morgan for an update. The Daniels case had been on the fast track, everything else, other than the case of the serial killer, was pushed aside. Morgan confirmed that the cause of Claire Daniels’ death was suffocation by strangulation. While measuring time of death was a tricky thing, they had been able to narrow it down to between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. She’d had sex, but there was no vaginal tearing. Rape was not indicated. They would be able to get DNA from the semen, but it would take a little time. They had prints from the scene, which had yet to be matched. That may quickly change , Mac thought.
    “When will the autopsy be done? When can I have the official results?” Mac asked.
    “Tomorrow morning.”
    “Anything else? I’m on my way to meet with the chief.”
    “Nope. We’ll have the autopsy done and the results to you in the morning. Any ideas on who might match the semen or prints?”
    Mac thought for a moment, he’d have to run things by the chief and Captain Peters first, “I might have something for you on that later.”
    “Who?”
    “Can’t tell you yet. I gotta run that one by the powers that be. All I’ll say is, it could be tricky.”
    Mac could hear the excitement in Linda’s voice, “Let me know as soon as you can, okay? It’d be really great to clear this one. Get the media off our asses.”
    “That it would.” Mac hung up on Linda and shuffled over to a pay phone, flipping the White Pages open to the government listings. He found the number for Senator Johnson’s office. A staffer told Mac that the senator had been in town until this morning. Last night he had been at a fund raiser in downtown Minneapolis that ended sometime around 10:30 p.m. The senator had been in town. Hernandez seemed legit.
    Just then Clark and Green came down the hallway with a man in a red cardigan sweater with glasses hanging on a string around his neck. Green stopped while Clark took the man into an interview room. Green had an excited look.
    “Who’s that?” Mac asked.
    “Daniels’ neighbor, guy named John Chase. You’ll never guess who he saw leaving Daniels’ place two nights ago.”
    “Mason Johnson.”
    Green went blank. “How... how the hell did you know?”
    Mac related the discovery of Hernandez having seen Johnson leaving the night before. Lich approached and Mac filled him in on Chase. Lich had checked with Motor Vehicle Records. The senator had a white Lexus with Minnesota plates. It was registered under Gwen Johnson, his wife, with an apartment address at Galtier Plaza in downtown St. Paul. Mac mentioned his conversation with Morgan and that he had confirmed that the senator had been in town.
    “Mac, boy, seems like we got ourselves a prime suspect,” said Lich, pulling up his trousers and popping on the balls of his feet.
    “We’ll see.”
    “We’ll see, my ass. Don’t look a potential gift horse in the mouth.”
    “Well, let’s go tell the chief about our prime suspect and ruin his night,” Mac said.
    With Hernandez’s statement in hand, Mac and Lich headed up to the chief’s office. This would be an interesting meeting. It would include the Chief, Captain Peters, Sylvia Miller, as well as District Attorney Helen Anderson. Mac had to chuckle, for as much as Chief Flanagan loathed the cameras, Anderson loved them. Anderson was something of a publicity hound. While an assistant district attorney would handle the case, the high profile guaranteed Anderson’s involvement. She was more a politician than attorney and held hardly concealed aspirations for higher office.