had a heading titled Tasks. Under Tasks, he made a note to go to the coffee shop and look at the surveillance video to see if they could get anything from it.
Stroudt left the Grand Brew at 2:09 and drove north on Snelling Avenue. He actually drove past The Snelling and continued north another two miles before he did a U-turn and then came back to The Snelling. “Looking for an out-of-the-way place perhaps?” Mac thought to himself. He wondered if Stroudt knew how truly disreputable The Snelling was.
The car remained parked at The Snelling until 4:05 p.m. and then started moving again, driven away by the killers. “So that gives me time of death,” Mac muttered as he jotted that down in his notebook.
After leaving The Snelling, the car was driven around for twenty minutes and was then left at the Penalty Box. Given the track the car followed around the Rosedale Mall before settling at the Penalty Box, perhaps some surveillance from parking lot cameras or businesses would catch the rental on film. He made a note to look into that.
Mac scrolled the GPS tracking back to The Snelling and thought about the difference between how Stroudt acted before and after he left the Grand Brew. Before he got to the Grand Brew, he was using his credit card to pay for a flight and to rent a car. After he left the Grand Brew, he’s suddenly cruising Snelling Avenue, perhaps looking for a place to stay out of sight, and checks into The Snelling, paying cash for a room. The Snelling would take credit, it was just rare that anyone would actually use credit there.
Mac walked over to the whiteboard and looked at the timeline.
Why would Stroudt want to stay out of sight?
Mac kept running it through his head. On Tuesday night, he and Montgomery are using credit cards to stay at a DoubleTree Hotel and buying an expensive steak dinner. The next day they’re still using credit cards in Kentucky for gas and meals like normal business travelers. But then something happens that starts changing their behavior. He made himself a note to see if the car they rented in Nashville had GPS. Perhaps he could get some insight if the GPS told him where the car traveled.
That was for tomorrow. As for now, Mac stood up and walked to the whiteboard and wrote above the timeline “What Happened” between the last credit card expenditure on Monday night and 7:00 a.m. Tuesday morning in St. Louis. He then wrote the same thing for the time period between Stroudt’s arrival and his check-in at The Snelling. Then Mac went back and added one more thing in blue at the St. Louis notation—”Why come to Twin Cities?”
Mac sat back and looked at the board and muttered: “Why did you come to the Twin Cities?”
Political bloggers fly from Washington to Nashville seven days before the election. They drive into the Kentucky countryside and suddenly change plans, skipping their return flights from Nashville to DC and instead splitting up in St. Louis. One disappears and the other flies to the Twin Cities.
Why come to the Twin Cities?
Mac’s cell phone started ringing.
It was Sally and he suddenly had a thought.
A half hour later, Mac pushed through the back door into his house and he could hear the shower running upstairs. He made his way upstairs and up to their bedroom. He quietly put his Sig Sauer, badge and wallet in his nightstand drawer and slipped out of his work clothes.
He walked into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain, climbed into the large cast iron bathtub and joined Sally, hugging her from behind. She turned and kissed him twice lightly on the lips. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” he replied.
She was a beautiful woman with long red hair, a gorgeous smile and a wonderful thin figure.
In law school he’d noticed her once or twice, thought her quite attractive from a distance, but hadn’t given her much thought beyond that and wasn’t even sure he’d actually formally met her. He was married at the time, clerked for a law firm during the day and went to class at night. Most of his free time was spent buried in the corner of the law library studying or with his wife. As a result, he’d never really gotten into the William Mitchell social scene and, in retrospect, made but a few close friends in those three years. Sally, on the other hand, while also married at