Blood Silence (12 page)

“We’ll have to look at the traffic cameras,” Mac replied.

“Yeah,” Dick answered but then shook his head. “But you know as well as I do that this ain’t an episode of
CSI
. Once she’s on the interstate, at night—” Lich shook his head. “Good luck.”

“It’s not impossible.”

“No, but you still have a timeline issue, because even if you could follow that fancy silver Mercedes of hers all the way up to Maple Grove, which is about the limit of the traffic cameras northwest of Minneapolis on I-94, she’d have gotten to that point by what—12:30
A.M.
?”

“Which leaves an hour to get back down to Lake Minnetonka,” Mac replied.

“And the murder happened at 1:30
A.M.
Mac, she could do that easily. The only way we really establish her alibi is to find someone who saw her arrive up there or saw her on the way up there.”

“Unlikely,” Mac answered. “I had a voicemail message from Lyman. His guy up in Alexandria hit all the cabins in the vicinity of Meredith’s parents’ place on Lake Carlos. There were only a few places that were inhabited, all by retirees, all of whom were in a nice, deep, warm slumber at 2:30
A.M.
Friday morning.”

“I think it’s safe to say that alibi is going to remain a huge issue.”

“So is motive,” Mac added. “It doesn’t matter what my gut, head, or knowledge of Meredith’s character say. She had motive; Biggsy’s pictures and video will prove it.”

“Just because she had motive doesn’t mean she did it.”

Mac turned around, bemused. “Don’t look now, but you just defended Meredith?”

Lich shook his head. “Not necessarily. I’m merely pointing out that it is one thing to have motive but quite another thing to act on it. Lots of people would want to kill someone. That doesn’t mean they would
actually
do it. That deep down inside they would have it in them. So motive”—Lich shook his head—“doesn’t bother me as much as a lack of an alibi and the crime scene evidence and that fucking gun; that’s what’s killing her right now. We find something at the crime scene to debunk that shit, or you find something in Sterling or Gentry’s background that points the finger at someone else, and motive becomes less meaningful because multiple people have it. It only matters now because of the other stuff.”

Mac smiled at Dick’s breakdown of the case. His frumpy look and the way he slowly waddled around making off-color jokes often masked the fact that he was a hell of a street-wise cop. “I knew there was a reason I kept you as a partner.”

Lich gave Mac a sincere smile, and then he became the jackass again. “One could say it’s ironic that her private investigator will be the one who hangs her because he got the photos of Sterling pile-driving Gentry,” Dick mused, slurping from his drink, “Unless, of course, you’re able to prove otherwise. I got faith in you, buddy.”

“Let’s stay on motive though, for a second. Meredith had motive, but to your point, who else had motive?”

“That, boyo, means digging into Sterling and Gentry, going through their lives and files. That’s going to take you awhile, and I’ve got only one day left to help. So while you have me, what are
we
going to do?”

“Like a good coach, I’m going to effectively deploy my resources,” Mac answered, finishing the last of his Grain Belt Nordeast. “We’re going to focus on what you can help me with best, which is the murder scene. We need to pick that apart, and together, we’re pretty good at that. If we have witnesses and people to talk to, we’re a good tag team. Once you have to go back to being a cop, I’ll start focusing on Sterling and Gentry. Lyman, Summer, and even Meredith can help with that. But for now, you and I investigate the murder, and that starts with the lake house.”

Mac moved to the sheet that was labeled Crime Scene. He’d spent a lot of time looking at and thinking about that column, even when they were talking about other components of the case. He flipped through the crime scene photos they had. “I’m eager to get an actual look at the lake house tomorrow. Something bothers me about it.”

“What?”

“I can’t put my finger on it. I just look at it, and something is … off.”

“Off?” Lich asked, smiling, pouring himself another bourbon.

“Yeah, off. There is something in those pictures that is percolating in my mind, but it’s not a fully formed thought yet,” Mac replied as he walked behind the bar and reached in the fridge for another beer. “I want to see that murder scene. I want to work that hard, and I want to talk to the neighbors who saw her car leaving. I want to cast a very wide net around that house and see what turns up. Then, after we’re done with that, I’m going to take a good, long look at the lives of Sterling and this Callie Gentry. If Meredith didn’t do this, then it’s something in their backgrounds, particularly what they were working on, that was the trigger here.”

“Literally.” Dick snorted. “You’re right,
if
she’s innocent.”

“She is,” Mac answered.

“How can you know?” Lich asked.

“Call it my gut,” Mac replied. “You remain skeptical.”

“Your ex-wife is no angel. All history suggests a layer of ruthlessness lying underneath that pretty exterior. You, of all people, should understand that.”

“Oh, I do,” Mac replied. “And don’t confuse my thinking she didn’t do it with me thinking she isn’t capable of it. I could see her doing it—I really could, Dick. The Meredith I know could be totally capable of it. Just not like this, not in such an impulsive and messy way. That’s just not her. She’d have planned the thing down to the last detail.”

“On that”—Lich pointed emphatically at Mac—“I’m with you, buddy. That conniving bitch doesn’t take a shit without a plan.”

M
ac and Lich pulled up in front of the Sterling lake house. The crime scene tape flapped in the cold wind of a gray November day. The first little hint of winter was upon the Twin Cities, at 10:07
A.M.
, with the temperature at a not-so-balmy twenty-four degrees. They each took one last, long drag from their tall coffees, zipped up, and exited. Mac went to the back of the Yukon, opened the tailgate, and took out his black nylon backpack and another small duffel bag. They walked up the front steps to find a waiting Hennepin County sheriff’s deputy, who looked over their identification and then unsealed the front door to the lake house.

Lyman and Company would be arriving around noon. Mac and Lich wanted some time on their own to work the scene. Inside the front door, the two of them slid on white rubber gloves. Mac then kneeled down and opened the duffel bag and took out a brown expandable folder, handed a copy of the investigative report to Dick, and kept one for his own use.

It was one thing to read an investigative report and quite another to actually walk the scene. The crime scene photos—the angle they were taken from or perhaps the height of the photographer—made the lake house look large, yet now, standing inside, Mac was struck by its relatively quaint size. Lake Minnetonka was dotted with many a multi-million-dollar lake mansion. However, this lake house was very much a nice cottage—furnished immaculately, but really a normal-sized one-story walkout that had been remodeled in the not-too-distant past.

They were standing in the living room. To their left was a hallway leading to the guest bedroom and the murder scene. Straight ahead was an area that looked like a recent addition—the modern, open kitchen and den that overlooked Lake Minnetonka. To the immediate right, on the other side of the long wall of the house, was the small hallway to the two-car garage. Part of the den addition was also a master suite that was situated behind the back of the garage.

Mac and Lich each read from the investigative report and walked the house, going their own individual direction and getting a feel for the flow of the house and scene. There was no talk, no discussion, simply a long half hour of reading the report, mumbling, and walking the scene. They both spent a significant amount of time in the guest bedroom, where the murders happened. Even with the bodies removed, it wasn’t hard to visualize the gruesomeness of it all. There was a large pool of blood on the mattress, with blood spatter all over the headboard and the wall above, as well as the lampshade and window curtains to the right of the bed.

“It’s like a scene out of
Scarface
,” Lich muttered. “Blood and bullets everywhere, like a frenzy.”

Mac wasn’t sure he agreed but was not yet sure why.

According to the report, Sterling and Gentry left the Hilton together shortly after 11:00
P.M.
The security system for the house was disarmed at 11:42
P.M.
, so it was assumed that was the time of their arrival. That made sense to Mac, given that it would generally take a half hour to get from downtown Minneapolis, drive southwest, and wind their way to the lake house. Sterling’s Jaguar was still parked in the garage.

They were shot around 1:30
A.M.
, according to neighbors who stated they heard the shots fired. The two were not in the master suite in the back of the house. Instead, Sterling at least had the decency to take Gentry to the guest room at the front of the house—the bedroom that was likely the master at one time, before the addition.

Mac flipped through the photos of the murder scene, and Sterling and Gentry’s naked bodies were intertwined with one another in a manner that suggested they were in the act or embracing one another when they were killed. As he analyzed the photos more closely, something about the body positioning looked off to him. The picture was speaking to him, he just didn’t yet understand what it was trying to say to him. He decided he’d let that marinate in his mind and then come back to it.

The gun was dropped on the floor at the foot of the bed, and then the shooter, whom the police presumed to be Meredith, ran from the house. The neighbors in the two houses to the south heard the shots fired and called 9-1-1. The dispatch logs recorded the first call coming in at 1:33
A.M.
and the second a minute later. After they made the call, neighbors in both houses to the south saw a silver Mercedes sedan racing away from the scene. Based on photos, the witnesses identified the car as a two-door, sporty Mercedes S550.

Mac left the bedroom and walked back to the living room, once again feeling like something was amiss, but he wasn’t sure what it was. He was seeing
something
.

Lich was sitting in a chair, flipping through photos. “What do you think?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Mac answered as he flipped through the photos himself. “We’ve both walked the house and reviewed the report. Let’s play it out.”

“Okay.”

They headed to the garage.

Mac went to the car, Sterling’s Jag, which was still parked in the garage. He looked inside the car and saw Sterling’s briefcase still in it—or at least he assumed it was Sterling’s. It was behind the driver’s seat. Mac opened it and found it empty. “Odd.”

“What?” Dick asked.

“His briefcase is here in back, but it’s empty.”

“So?”

“You only bring a briefcase home if you have something you need to bring home. You don’t bring home a briefcase just for the sake of bringing it home.”

Lich shrugged. “Something to ask about, I guess.”

“I suppose,” Mac answered as he closed the car door. “So Sterling and Gentry arrive out here at 11:40 or so. He pulls into the garage, and they proceed into the house.”

“He opens the door, they step inside the hallway here, and he …”

“Turns off the alarm,” Mac said, “and they start getting into it.”

“Right here?” Lich asked skeptically.

Mac pulled out a crime scene photo and set it on the floor. The photo showed Gentry’s coat on the floor near the back door. “There is no hook on the wall, and the coat closet is on the other wall. They embrace one another, start kissing, and the undressing starts here.”

“Did they get fired up on the way out here?”

“Maybe,” Mac replied, “or in the garage before they got out of the car, or it just happened organically. This is an affair Sterling is having. It’s new. It’s forbidden and dangerous. For a guy like him, the affair is exciting, and that raises in you—”

“A certain passion, heat, whatever,” Lich finished. “I get it.”

“However it happened,” Mac said, “once they were inside, they started getting into it.”

“Okay, on second thought, I think you’re right,” Lich answered, walking out of the short hallway and into the living room area, flipping through the photos. “Clothes started getting shed here, right behind the couch.” The photos showed Sterling’s tuxedo coat and Gentry’s high heels on the floor. From the couch, they turned right toward the hallway. Lich set down two more photos where Sterling’s black bow tie and shirt were dropped halfway to the hall.

Mac walked past Lich toward the hallway to the guest bedroom, stopped at the hallway entrance, and dropped two more photos on the floor. “His undershirt is here at the entry, and then her dress is down the hall. They were building up.”

“Yes, they were,” Lich uttered as he walked into the bedroom. “They finish undressing here. His shoes and socks and—”

“Her nylons, panties, and bra at the head of the bed here, and then they fall onto the bed.”

“And they get after it.”

“Or so it would seem. Forensics report found evidence of fresh semen in the bed. They definitely had sex, no question.”

They both took in the scene for a moment. “Next, a little less than two hours later, they’re dead,” Lich stated as he lay photos of Sterling and Gentry on the bed—naked, bodies tangled, shot multiple times, with the fatal wounds, one to the back of Sterling’s head and one to Gentry’s forehead.

“You know, Mac,” Lich suggested, “this could be what it seems. Meredith knows he’s having an affair, and she suspects he’s bringing her out here. After all, he did it with Meredith. She sees the pictures Biggs had, she knows his history, and she follows him out here to see. She sees all the clothes lying in the hallway, hears the two of them having sex, and she—”