realized that they needed to put together a timeline. Mac rolled a whiteboard into a vacant office, grabbed some dry erase markers and went to work laying out the timeline in black along the top of the board.
“Okay, so let’s see if we can put together the last two days for these guys,” Mac looked down at his notepad. “Stroudt and Montgomery flew out of Washington DC on Tuesday afternoon at 12:34 eastern time, direct to Nashville, arriving at 1:23 p.m. central time.” Mac jotted the times down on the board.
“Upon arrival in Music City,” Lich said, “Stroudt’s and Montgomery’s credit cards tell us that they checked into the airport DoubleTree Hotel.” Mac jotted that down on the whiteboard in green.
“Green for dollars?” Lich asked.
“Intuitive, isn’t it?” Mac quipped. “What did they do once they were in Nashville?”
“It looks like they go out to dinner at Cash’s Steakhouse on Tuesday night. They spend $249 on dinner, have themselves a couple of steaks, maybe a nice bottle of wine and then go back to the hotel.”
“How do you know they went back to the hotel?”
“Hotel bill shows two rounds of drinks later on Tuesday night at the hotel bar,” Lich responded, holding up a copy of the bill.
Mac jotted that on the board. “Okay, so they return to the hotel and presumably spend the night there.”
“They do,” Lich answered. “They get a late checkout of one o’clock from the hotel. Hotel bill shows they had breakfast at the hotel coffee shop. From there,” Lich flipped over the pages on his notebook, “they travel north into Kentucky and stop at an Erma Lou’s, which, based upon a little map search, is near Oak Grove, Kentucky. They spend $28.77, presumably on a meal. The credit card is closed out at 4:47 p.m.”
Mac jotted that on the timeline.
“Then an hour later Adam Montgomery uses his credit card at a gas station in Cadiz, Kentucky.”
“Where is Cadiz, Kentucky?” Mac asked.
“I haven’t found that yet,” Lich said.
Mac sat down at his computer and did a Google Map search for Cadiz. It was a town in southwest Kentucky, ninety miles northwest of Nashville. Mac printed off the map and taped it on the board.
“So these two fly into Nashville and drive up to Cadiz on Wednesday, which is here,” Mac pointed to Cadiz on the Kentucky map. “So after they stop in Cadiz, Kentucky, around 6:00 p.m., the next time we get a scent of these guys is this morning, fourteen hours later, in St. Louis when Stroudt jumps on a plane to get here.”
“No hotel anywhere?” Lich asked.
“No credit card record of one,” Mac answered, flipping through his notes. He shrugged, “They could have paid cash for one, like Stroudt did this afternoon at The Snelling.”
“Possible, I suppose,” Lich replied. “So the next hit we get is this morning in St. Louis.” “That’s right,” Mac answered jotting it down on the timeline. “Stroudt takes the flight out of St. Louis this morning and comes here.”
“And Montgomery probably drops off the rental car about the same time and there is no other credit card activity for him,” Lich noted and Mac added it to the timeline.
“Stroudt arrives here 10:00 a.m. from St. Louis and checks into The Snelling at 2:00 p.m.,” Mac used the black dry erase marker and extended the black line further right, with a few more hash marks, “2:45–3:00 p.m. Stroudt calls for a pizza and …”
“… he is killed sometime between then and 4:00 p.m.”
They stood and looked at the whiteboard in silence for a few minutes. Mac, arms folded, stared quizzically at the whiteboard, lightly shaking his head.
Lich knew the look; he’d seen it a thousand times before. “Spit it out.”
“So these guys fly into Nashville on Tuesday night. They have a casual steak dinner, go back to the hotel and have a couple of drinks. Then the next day they get up and start heading up into Kentucky, towards Cadiz. So far, it’s your standard business trip, right?”
Lich nodded.
“So what happens on Wednesday night that causes these guys to all of the sudden drive to St. Louis this morning?”
“Did they have return flights to Washington out of Nashville?”
“Yes,” Mac answered. “They were scheduled to fly out this morning at 10:22, both of them. They would have been back in DC in a little under two hours. We know where Stroudt ended up going. He purchases a plane ticket this morning to come up to the Twin Cities. Montgomery did not make