Read Online Electing To Murder by Roger Stelljes - Free Book Online

the flight, chances are Montgomery is the one who got him there. Then Montgomery goes into …”
    “… hiding.”
    “Yeah. It’s an alternative explanation. He splits up from Stroudt, sending him up here to the cities. He goes into hiding and is not interested in coming out—at least not yet.”
    Lich sighed and shook his head. “I know you like to see conspiracies everywhere and the good Lord knows you’ve been right a few times, but come on, Mac. I mean, if these guys are worried about someone tracking them, then why would Stroudt use a credit card to buy a flight to the Twin Cities? Why use a credit card to rent a car? You are not exactly hiding when you do that.”
    Mac sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “Agreed. But then why pay cash for a trashy hotel?” Mac asked. “It’s like he wasn’t hiding and then all of a sudden decides to hide. Why else go to The Snelling?”
    “Usual reasons. Drugs. Sex.”
    “I look for conspiracies, you always look for sex.”
    “I obviously have my priorities in order.”
    “No,” Mac answered chuckling, “I just think with my upper unit and you with your lower unit.”
    “Whatever,” Lich answered dismissively.
    “But seriously, Dicky Boy,” Mac pressed, “it’s as if sometime between when he landed and then checking into The Snelling, he changed what he was doing. He landed around 10:00 a.m. and gets to The Snelling sometime after 2:00 p.m. That’s four hours. Where are Stroudt’s cell phone records?”
    Lich grabbed them off his desk and handed them to Mac. Mac picked up the cell phone record he’d printed off for Montgomery. “There, those two spoke to each other for five minutes from 12:08 to 12:13 p.m.,” Mac said, jotting it down on the whiteboard as he said it. “So he speaks with Montgomery and he says we have to ‘go to ground’ but Stroudt acts too late. Whoever is tracking him is already on him, sees his opportunity at The Snelling and now we have a dead body.”
    Lich shrugged. “Pure speculation.”
    “Speculation is my middle name,” was Mac’s ready reply. “We need to find us some facts, but it’s not a bad theory.”
    “If you do say so yourself.”
    “I do.”
    Lich’s phone rang. “Yes, this is Detective Lich. Okay, how do I get into the system?” Lich wrote feverishly into his notebook. “Right, thanks.” Dick finished writing.
    “So what was that?”
    “Stroudt rented a car when he got to town today.”
    Mac picked up right away, “But it wasn’t at The Snelling.”
    “Exactly. It was moved.”
    “And you know this how?”
    “GPS tracking in the car.”
    “Where did the car end up?”
    “Parking lot outside the Penalty Box in Roseville.” The Penalty Box was a sports bar that was just a few miles north of The Snelling, located across the street from Rosedale Mall.
    “He rented it at the airport, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “And we have our four-hour gap between when he landed and he got to the hotel. Will the GPS tell us everywhere he went?”
    “It will.”
    * * *
    Heath Connolly sat in his plane seat, sipped his martini and looked over the polling data spread across his lap. On paper, the situation was under control.
    The vice president was feeling good about his chances. He said he could feel it in the crowds, the surge of momentum. He said it repeatedly, “I can feel the surge out there. The momentum is with us.”
    And the vice president wasn’t necessarily wrong. He was closing really well in the light red states like Missouri, New Mexico and West Virginia, all states Vice President Wellesley would need to win. There was momentum there and further visits wouldn’t be necessary. Of course, those were states Connolly fully expected to win in the end.
    There was also some small momentum in Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio and Virginia, the states where the election would ultimately be won or lost. The Super PAC advertising was a non-stop barrage that the Thomson campaign simply couldn’t match.