T
he sun was peeking through the shades of the cabin and he yawned. His coffee cup was empty but he couldn’t really drink anymore. He’d spent the entire night hunched over his computer searching the Internet for background on McRyan and Wire.
Wire was not someone for whom a great deal of information could be found. Her name appeared as part of the election investigation and she was heavily involved in it along with McRyan. The stories alluded to her history as a former FBI agent who left the agency under mysterious circumstances. Surfing the Internet, he found she now owned and operated a security consulting business based out of Arlington, Virginia. The website showed a picture of Wire, a striking brunette, and listed as part of her background her years of service in the FBI working organized crime cases. Otherwise, there was little to be found about Ms. Wire, at least on the Internet.
That was not the case with Michael McKenzie McRyan. Despite the fact that he was in his early thirties, there was extensive information to be found in cyberspace on young Agent Mac McRyan. It made for interesting reading.
McRyan’s name was most prominently tied to the investigation regarding the former vice president’s campaign and several murders. McRyan and Wire appear to have been the parties responsible for exposing the plot. Much of the reporting was supposition and based upon interviews with other unnamed sources involved in or close to the investigation. As far as he could tell, neither McRyan nor Wire ever were interviewed regarding the investigation. In fact, there was one article in which a large component was the fact that neither McRyan nor Wire would sit down for an interview or otherwise discuss the case. It was hard to tell if it was humility, a desire to avoid media attention, questionable elements to what they did or that they were waiting to tell the story their way. From what the Reaper could tell, it appeared to be the last. A small blurb on the
Huffington Post
indicated that the two were working on a book about the investigation, both having received sizable advances from a publisher. If you were going to write a book, no sense in giving interviews for free. A savvy business move, which apparently wasn’t McRyan’s first.
He stumbled onto an article in the
Economic Times
about the sale of the Grand Brew Coffee Chain to a large grocery chain. McRyan was a minority owner of the business and appeared to have walked away with millions for his ownership interest. Therefore, he had financial freedom and could do what he wanted.
He found a note in the
Star Tribune
gossip section indicating that following the campaign investigation, McRyan was taking a leave from the St. Paul Police Department. McRyan was dating Sally Kennedy, now the White House deputy director of communications. Kennedy was a beautiful redhead who looked as if she could have been the twin sister of Amy Adams, in the Reaper’s opinion. In reading between the lines, it appeared the two were living together, as “moving trucks were reported at the McRyan/Kennedy house in the Highland Park area of St. Paul.” The article intimated McRyan would be following Kennedy to Washington, DC, but again, those were the words or thoughts of others, as neither McRyan nor Kennedy were quoted. The gossip columnist speculated that with the move, perhaps a wedding would be in the offing for the lovebirds. The two were undoubtedly living together, somewhere in and around Washington, DC. He was thinking it might be worth a look to see where McRyan lived.
The more he researched, the more he realized the campaign investigation was far from McRyan’s only case, it was just one of many. His name appeared regularly over the last four years in the newspapers in the Twin Cities, the
Star Tribune
in Minneapolis and the
Pioneer Press
in St. Paul, although again, he rarely, if ever, was quoted or interviewed. It was clear, in St. Paul, if there was a high-profile case, McRyan was involved. He even ran across a recent case involving a home invasion crew from a month or so ago, and his name appeared. It was also clear that McRyan was not afraid to drop a body to close a case. There had been a number of shootings but never a whiff of impropriety in any of them.
The one time he was able to find McRyan going on the record was an on-camera interview that had been uploaded on YouTube. The interview was conducted by Heather Foxx, the NBC News reporter who noted McRyan’s and Wire’s presence at the crime scene this morning.
The Foxx interview was from two years ago when she was still a local television reporter in Minnesota. The interview took place after a kidnapping case that had captured national attention over the Fourth of July holiday. The on-camera interview revealed an exhausted yet very well-spoken and intelligent cop. After watching the interview for a second time, one word came to mind to describe McRyan.
Relentless.
The facts of the kidnapping case spoke for themselves. McRyan would not quit. He kept digging, pushing, working and angling, willing to do anything to close the investigation and find the girls. He simply wouldn’t stop in his pursuit of the kidnappers.
As he dug further into McRyan, he found an exceedingly interesting background. Like any good detective, he was extremely street smart. However, he was also scary book smart, a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Minnesota as well as William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. He’d been a star high school athlete in three sports and received an athletic scholarship to play hockey at Minnesota. While there, he captained the team to a national championship. In a feature article in the
Pioneer Press
Sports Section, McRyan was described as a fearless grinder, an indispensible leader, a left wing willing to do the dirty work that allowed the scoring stars the freedom to roam the ice. As he searched further on YouTube, he found a long video with highlights of the national championship game. The sports section article indeed aptly described McRyan. As a player, he went into every corner, body checking everyone in sight and spending his entire night harassing the opposing goaltender, scoring a key third-period goal on a rebound with two defenders draped all over him. He was, in a word, relentless.
A star athlete, graduating from college and then law school with high honors, so why was he a cop?
He could not find an answer.
From what he could tell there were other McRyans in the St. Paul Police Department. He found an obituary for a Simon McRyan, who was survived by, among others, a son named Michael. Based upon the date of the obituary, Simon died when McRyan was in high school, an unfortunate victim of a hunting accident. Simon McRyan was a highly regarded police detective, so perhaps that was part of it, the son following in the father’s footsteps. The name McRyan appeared in other old news articles as well and it appeared that being a cop was something of the family business in St. Paul. Still, if being a cop is the family business, why go to law school? It was a question that remained unanswered as the blazing sun pushed its way through the shades.
The Reaper sat back from his computer, rubbing his tired eyes and sore neck. “So that’s the man who’s gunning for me.”
He’d done some research on Special Agent Aubry Gesch when he took Wyland. Gesch had a long and fairly distinguished FBI career, a worthy adversary who’d closed plenty of cases but had some misses over the years.
From what he could tell of McRyan, however, there were no misses. If he got into a case, he finished it.
This was the man now on the hunt for him.
Based on what he’d seen, Gesch was still running the investigation but McRyan was no caddie. He was heavily involved and undoubtedly responsible for the recent breaks in the case, including his picture now being displayed, one a surveillance image with his beard and two sketches, one with a half beard and the other now without. All of this progress occurred since McRyan became involved. The powers that be had put that unyielding force on the case and McRyan would be coming for him. If McRyan’s other cases were any indication, there would be no hesitation about a finish to the case that involved the Reaper being dead.
Three more left to punish.
What was becoming apparent was that he would have to avoid McRyan to finish and time was not his friend.
Two weeks between kills was too long.
T
he flight back took less than an hour. They were back in the X5 with a late drive-thru lunch. At 3:30
P.M.
just northeast of DC, Mac was maneuvering his way through the streets of Landover, Maryland, making his way to Fallway Medical Clinic.
While the name wouldn’t necessarily suggest it, Fallway Medical Clinic provided family planning services. The clinic building was set back with a cluster of three buildings in a small treed enclave. The family planning clinic was set to the east on one side of the street, with the other two set to the west, one building hosting doctors’ suites and the other a pediatric clinic. The Fallway Clinic was a nondescript rectangular cement building with few windows beyond those framing the front entrance. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a warehouse compared to the sleek stainless steel and glass of the other two buildings. The sign on the front of building to the right of the front main entrance simply read Fallway Medical Clinic and nothing more.
“Well, they’re not advertising what they are,” Wire observed. “That’s a pretty bland-looking building.”
“Not bland enough,” Mac answered, pointing to the people holding picket signs. “The protesters know it exists.” There were six protestors hanging around loosely on the sidewalk in front of the clinic. When Mac drove by, the protestors briefly came to life and raised their signs, but once Mac and the FBI sedan behind him pulled by, they relaxed again.
Mac pulled around to the back of the clinic to a small parking area for staff that separated the clinic from the thick woods behind the clinic. As they parked, a woman opened the back door to let them in. Her name was Sylvia Kostas, an administrator working at the clinic. She led them into her office and closed the door.
“I’d like to keep this as private as possible, I’ve seen the news reports about you two,” Kostas stated.
“Then you know what we’re investigating?”
“I assume Hannah Donahue’s murder. How can I possibly help?”
“You served as a counselor at the AAHS camp at Lake Seneca Lodge in the same dorm with her seven years ago, correct?”
“Yes. I was on the floor above her, Leslie Felding and I.”
“And we’re going to go see her next,” Mac answered. “Do you recall the other counselor in your dorm?”
Sylvia squinted, thinking back. “I think her name was Missy, or at least we called her that.”
“Actually her name then was Melissa Ross,” Wire noted.
Kostas snapped her fingers, “That’s right.”
“Her married name was Melissa Goynes,” Mac added and put out a picture of Goynes. “She was the first victim of the Reaper. Hannah was the third.”
Kostas sat back in her chair, shocked. “I never made the connection. Oh my God!” she exclaimed, looking at the picture, starting to shake. “You have my attention now. What’s the connection?”
“We’re hoping you can help us with that,” Mac stated. “Let me ask, did you know Hannah well?”
Kostas shrugged, “I got to know her pretty well that summer. We had to work together quite a bit.”
“Did you stay in contact since that summer?” Wire asked. “Were you friends after that?”
“Yes, although I wouldn’t say we were super close,” Kostas answered, nodding. “I suppose one of the reasons we stayed in some contact is that I’m from Delaware originally, Dover, so when I’d go home to visit, I’d go see Hannah. I actually helped her move into her house a few years ago when I was visiting home that weekend.”
“So in those years since you worked together, how did she seem?” Wire asked, leaning forward, elbows on her knees.
“What do you mean?”
“Happy? Sad? Different?”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Agent Wire.”
“Think about it this way, Sylvia,” Mac suggested. “Was she somehow different from when you were with her that summer at camp?”
Kostas sat back and thought for a minute. “It was probably another year after that summer before I saw her again. When I did, now that you ask these questions, she was different, I guess. She’d committed to being a teacher and she was more serious and mature about … everything.”
“Which was different from what she had been like?”
Sylvia smiled and nodded, “Hannah was very popular at camp for a reason. She was a fun rich Cornell party girl with a stash of weed and wine in her footlocker at camp.”
“And she was never caught with that?” Wire asked.
“No, and she never worried about getting caught. Like I said, she was a rich Ivy League party girl. She never worried about the repercussions. She didn’t have to with her family’s money and influence, it’s like there were no consequences.”
“And a year later?”
“Not as much like that. The personality was still there, but you had to work a little to get it out.”
“How so?”
“It’s hard to describe it,” Kostas replied, sorting through her vocabulary options in her head. “It was like … like she needed permission to smile, to laugh, to have a good time. She used to go from zero to sixty in five seconds when it came to laughing, joking and partying. Then a year later … it was just different. Sometimes I wondered if something had happened to her.”
Mac and Wire shared a knowing look. “Did you ever ask what brought about this change?” Mac pushed.
Kostas shook her head.
“Did she ever say anything?”
“No. Why are you asking?”
“We think something happened or she was involved in something that summer that is coming back to haunt her and maybe the other victims. Does the name Rena Johnson mean anything to you?”
Kostas thought for a second and shook her head, “No, should it?”
Mac didn’t answer, instead asking: “Did anything bad happen that summer at camp that Hannah was involved in? Something that would have been … I don’t know … a life altering type of event?”
“Like what?”
“Like an event, an accident, an incident of some kind that could have gotten her into serious trouble?”
“What are you getting at?”
“We’re particularly interested in an event that occurred on Saturday, August 17th of that summer. Do you recall anything about that date?”
“No I don’t, why?”
“Nothing at all?”
“That would have been at the end of the summer camp, I would think. I’m not sure I’d have even been around.”
“Why not?” Dara asked, her turn to be confused.
“I think, given that date, that Saturday would have been the end of the last week of the summer camps. I know for a fact that once all the kids left about two hours later, I packed and I left for a summer vacation with my family in Maine. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been around that night.”
“How about Leslie Felding, would she have been there that night?”
“Maybe. I don’t know for sure, you’d have to ask her. Why do you keep asking about that night? What happened that night? Who is Rena Johnson?”
Mac and Wire explained.
Kostas simply shook her head, “Honestly, if Hannah was involved in that, she never,
ever
said a word.”
• • • •
6:10
P.M.
Nervousness set it.
Her husband had left two hours ago in a cab with a rolling suitcase. He was going out of town. You don’t take a rolling suitcase for a day trip.
She wouldn’t be back until at least 9:00
P.M.
if not later given her work hours. It gave him time to contemplate how he planned to work his way inside. The house was at the end of the street with the stream running to the south of the house and the alley in the back ended in that fashion as well.
He opened his backpack sitting in the front seat of his pickup.
Lock picks.
• • • •
“Listen, we need to talk.”
“Where are you calling me from?”
“My office.”
“We shouldn’t be talking.”
“We have a problem. Somebody knows.”
“I told you, I told all of you that night that we could never speak of this again. We could never see each other again.”
“Have you been watching the news? Have you seen what is happening?
Somebody knows
.”
“Knows what?”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“There is nothing to know. There is no evidence.”
“Then explain what has happened to Melissa, Janelle, Hannah and Helen. Explain that?”
There was a pause, “Okay, listen, you need to stay calm.”
“How do you expect me to stay calm? Jesus Christ, someone is coming for us. They’re picking us off one-by-one.” The voice paused. “Look, maybe we ought to go in and tell the truth. Whatever trouble we’d be in would be a better price to pay than our lives.”
“No, we can’t do that. I’ll handle this. If you’re afraid, I’d suggest you figure out a way to make yourself scarce for a while. The FBI will find the killer soon enough.”
She hung up the phone and looked at it. This was a problem. She scrolled her contacts for the number. There was an immediate answer.
“Yes.”
“I think we need to have our people pay someone a visit. She may be cracking.”
• • • •
Sally nibbled on carrot sticks and sipped from her bottle of water as she took a break from her laptop and crafting language for the president’s upcoming speech on immigration reform. CNN was on the television mounted from the ceiling in the corner. Politically, the news cycle was slow at the moment, so CNN was, as were the other networks, continually coming back to the murder of Sandy Faye in Baltimore and the ongoing Reaper investigation. The Grim Reaper graphics weren’t helping nor were the constant recitations of the biblical verses, which were now coming out. In the last twenty-four hours, the media significantly intensified their coverage. The media lost one of their own as victim number four. This was on top of the previous victim, the daughter of William Donahue. There was blood in the water and a big story to be reported on.
It had been twenty-four hours since Faye’s murder and very little new had come out beyond another new picture of the killer. The image was a grainy surveillance image from some distance but now the killer was without a beard. That led to a revised drawing of the killer with a clean shaven face. While the image was constantly being shown, there were no new breaks in the case being reported. That wasn’t necessarily a surprise. Sally thought there was little distinctive about the face. You could walk by him on the street and think nothing of it.
Now retired FBI agents and big city homicide detectives with serial killer case experience were coming out of the woodwork to comment and speculate on the investigation. Someone had ducked their head into Sally’s office earlier in the day to tell her that the Investigation Discovery Channel was now running a twenty-four-hour serial killer marathon. The first three stories on the front of the
Huffington Post
dealt with the investigation as well. The media was slowly but surely turning up the heat and the FBI task force was feeling it, Mac was feeling it. Drinking tequila shots before coming to bed told her he was feeling the heat.
The press briefing from later in the morning provided little new about the investigation other than to answer questions and state that the investigation was ongoing. Mac’s and Wire’s names came up and there was constant speculation from the various talking heads on CNN, MSNBC and FOX as to whether the White House had involved itself in the investigation. FBI Director Mitchell attempted to defuse that issue. He acknowledged their role in the investigation but stated that the bureau asked them in to assist. The press remained undeterred. And in Sally’s mind, why would they be? The network correspondents who regularly covered the Justice Department as well as the litany of retired FBI agents commenting on the investigation all stated that in their experience, it was highly unlikely the FBI would bring in people from the outside unless specifically pressured to do so.
In the case of the Reaper investigation, that wasn’t entirely true.
When the Judge strongly suggested bringing Mac and Wire into the case, Director Mitchell eagerly agreed, if they wanted in. He wanted the two of them to come back into the fold after the campaign investigation. Perhaps he viewed the Reaper case as another way to get them to come back.
With nothing new and the speculation becoming boringly repetitive, Sally muted the television and went back to the immigration speech. A few minutes later there was a knock on her door and she looked up to find Judge Dixon.
“What’s up with your boy?” the Judge asked.
“I assume you mean Mac?”
“I do, what’s he up to?”
“What do you mean?”
“How’s the investigation going?”
Sally pointed to the muted television, “Haven’t you been watching? All Reaper all of the time, or at least it feels that way.”
“I’ve been watching but it doesn’t tell me anything. What do
you
know?” The Judge was fishing for information.
Sally shrugged, “Nothing really. Mac got home very late last night and was out the door early this morning ahead of me. He was going somewhere on an FBI jet but thought he’d be back tonight. Judge, I don’t get how he does it. He goes for days on end with little sleep when he gets his teeth into something like this. He won’t let it go until it’s done.”
“He didn’t say anything about the case though?”
Sally shrugged her shoulders, “He said there was a small break but he wouldn’t share with me beyond that.”
“What was the break?”
“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Why not?”
“He said something about keeping a wall between the investigation and the White House. I got him to commit to tell me if anything came up that would be an issue for us.”
“Did he say why he got home so late?”
“He said something about briefing the attorney general and FBI director.”
The Judge sat down on the small couch that filled the left wall of her office. “I heard there was a late night briefing as well, which strikes me as odd, unless …”
“There was some sort of break in the case.”
“And not a small or minor break either,” the Judge stated. “Small potatoes doesn’t get the attorney general hanging around for late night meetings. I know. So what was it?”