The St. Paul Conspiracy Read Online Free Page A

media would go nuts with one of their own dying.
    “Bill, grab Paddy. He’s up for detective. Take him around with you. Al, grab another uniform and start knocking on doors. If you come across something, let me know.”
    With that Green and Clark headed out to start the canvas.
    Mac and Lich headed back upstairs. Morgan was jotting down some notes as another tech took a few more pictures of the body. A third tech was dusting for prints. “Linda, got anything for us?”
    Morgan stared at her notes a minute, biting her lower lip. “Body temp indicates preliminary time of death as between midnight and 2:00 a.m. Cause of death is pretty obvious; she was strangled. He got on top of her and basically pressed the air out of her, with his hands on her neck, thumbs straddling her windpipe, fingers around the back. Strong sucker whoever did it.”
    “Sex?”
    “Yeah, she’d had it all right. I’ll be able to tell you a little more about that once we examine her downtown.”
    “Will you be able to get DNA?” Lich asked.
    “We should.”
    Mac thought for a moment, “She had sex, but...”
    “It looks consensual. I’ve taken a quick look. There’s nothing to indicate rape. There’ no tearing around the vagina that I can see. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”
    “Are you saying he—we’re assuming a he—killed her after sex?”
    “Not necessarily. I might know more when we get back and examine her. Could be that she was into something weird, sexual asphyxiation, something like that. I don’t see any tools or props around here to suggest that, though. It could be she said he was a bad lay, and he got pissed and killed her. Heck if I know right now, but we might be able to do better after we examine her.”
    “All right. Are you going to move her now?” Mac asked.
    “In a bit. We need to take more pictures and do a few other things.”
    Lich appeared to be mildly interested for a change. “What do you think?” Mac asked.
    “No signs of forced entry. At this point, nothing points to a break in so it seems like it was someone who knew her.”
    Mac couldn’t argue with that. No forced entry made it more likely it was someone she knew, which would narrow the field of suspects. They headed down the steps. Lich reached the bottom and was looking at the front door. Mac slipped by him onto the front porch and looked out at the street as a Channel 12 news van pulled up. “Ahh, shit.”
    “You knew they’d get here sooner or later. They’ll soil themselves when they find out it’s Daniels.” Lich replied lightly, morbidly amused by the situation.
    Mac turned back towards Lich, who was standing, hands on hips looking out to the street. Mac’s eyes wandered down to the floor mat in front of the door. He kneeled down and flipped it up thinking, She wouldn’t ... but she did.
    “Well, lookey there,” said Lich, “I didn’t think people did that anymore.”
    “Might explain no forced entry,” Mac thought. Lich called upstairs for forensics to come and get a picture. Just then Mac’s cell phone chirped.
    “McRyan.”
    “Peters. You and Lich need to come down and fill me in. The chief’ll be in on the meeting. It’s 8:40 now. Be here by 9:00.”
    Peters clicked off. Downtown was ten minutes away. Mac looked at Lich “We have an audience in twenty minutes.”
    “The chief?” Lich asked.
    Mac nodded. Lich chuckled lightly.
    “Bet he’s had half the city council on the horn yelling at him this morning. Now this. I wouldn’t miss it.” Lich replied.
    Mac snorted, “Well let’s get going then. I’d hate to deprive you of the show.”

Chapter Three

“Real police.”

    Viper yawned. It had been a long night. After a couple hours’ sleep, he was back to monitor the situation. Sitting in the back of a blue van parked on the northeast corner of Summit and St. Albans, he looked back at Daniels’ brownstone one-hundred-fifty yards away through tinted glass. A crowd had gathered, and a number of uniformed