murders, whoever that man is that you think you’re protecting, he’s going to come for you next and right soon. You might want to think about that tonight while you retire to your comfortable Watergate Apartment.” Mac opened the door to leave, but looked back at Connolly one last time, an evil grin on his face. “Think about the fact that you’re next.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Ahh, the Dude abides.”
McRyan stepped back into the control room to find Director Mitchell and Attorney General Gates waiting with bemused expressions on their faces.
“Jesus, Detective,” Mitchell blurted with a wry smile on his face.
“I like the theatrics,” Gates added. “Your prosecutor girlfriend must have rubbed off on you a little. That was like the end of a really good cross examination.”
Mac shrugged his shoulders. “Sirs, you saw what I saw. This might not be how the bureau would have done it, but he was sitting in there all smug and comfortable. It was time to rattle his cage.”
“Consider it rattled,” Gates replied with a smile and then asked, “So who is this Bishop?”
“I don’t know,” Mac answered.
Mitchell and Gates gave Mac a quizzical look, “What do you mean you don’t know?” Mitchell asked, confused.
“I don’t know,” Mac replied, shrugging his shoulders. “We need to figure it out. Bishop is code for something.”
“Where did you get this ‘Bishop’ from then?” Gates inquired.
Mac calculated his response in his brain. Riley gave him the name but it came from a place he wasn’t ready to reveal. He trusted Mitchell but he wasn’t sure about Gates yet. So for now, he needed to use some other pieces to keep them at bay. He grabbed his iPad out of his backpack and pulled up Wire’s pictures from Kentucky.
“I’ve been thinking since last night that this thing doesn’t stop with Connolly, that there is someone else higher pulling the strings.” Mac opened a picture up on his iPad. “This picture is from the Kentucky meeting, I showed this to you both earlier. I talked about it with Dara Wire before I came over here.”
Mac recounted his discussion with Wire and her taking of the pictures when the last limousine arrived in Kentucky, the foot briefly coming out the door, the order to shoot at Stroudt and Montgomery being given.
“This man never gets out of the limousine. He starts to but he doesn’t get out because Stroudt and Montgomery are discovered. There is a few seconds delay before Stroudt and Montgomery were fired upon and chased. That delay tells me that an order was given. Wire is certain that the man who was holding that door open was in charge of security at that scene. Wire said that Montgomery and Stroudt were discovered. When that happened, the security man spoke down into the limousine and then a few seconds later shots were fired. I think that order was given by the man in the limousine.”
“Okay, fine,” Mitchell said, but then asked, “how does that get the name or moniker of Bishop?”
Now it was time to tap dance. “While we were sitting here watching Connolly be interrogated, one of my detectives in St. Paul called. He was looking over the notebooks that Montgomery had in his backpack that Ms. Wire was able to get away with from McCormick’s house in St. Paul. He found a couple of notations in quotes regarding ‘the Bishop.’ I remember seeing them as well but they meant nothing at the time. I had no context for them. However, between what Wire and I talked about and my detective mentioning the reference to ‘the Bishop,’ I took a chance.”
“A pretty damn big one,” Mitchell declared the disbelief evident on his face. “I mean, that’s pretty thin.”
“That’s not thin, Mitch, it’s emaciated,” Gates growled. “You took a big chance, son. What if you were wrong, Detective?”
“I wasn’t,” Mac answered. “You saw the look on his face, Connolly nearly shit his pants. We need to start looking at who ‘the Bishop’ is.” Mac hoped that would be enough to mollify the two men for now.
Gates and Mitchell shared a look and then both shrugged their shoulders. What could they say; McRyan’s gambit worked. “I’ll get a team on this Bishop,” Mitchell said. “See what we can come up with. In the absence of more information, my guess is a search with only ‘Bishop’ or ‘the Bishop’ will turn up a ton of information. It’ll take some sifting.”
“Or another piece to tie it all together,” Mac added and then got back to Connolly.