Wire frowned and nodded and then asked skeptically. “Suicide? Seriously?”
“That’s what they’re saying,” Mac answered. “No suicide note, but in his office, his financial records are lying about. It would appear the man was personally broke. He owed a lot of money to casinos in Vegas and he didn’t have the equity to pay. So rather than face it, he hung himself. It’s wrapped up all nice and neat.”
“But you don’t buy it?”
McRyan shook his head as he looked out over the lake. “Awfully convenient, don’t you think,” it was a statement, not a question.
“They’re tying up loose ends?”
“Yeah, but whose loose ends? What did the Judge have to say?”
“That he needed some time to think,” Wire answered.
Wire and McRyan stared out over the bluff and into the deep blue waters of Lake Michigan, the cool winds refreshing after a long night’s work. “So last night these guys are in St. Paul, coming after Montgomery and taking McCormick in the process. I mean, in reality, Sebastian was just in the wrong place at the wrong time if you think about it.”
“Agreed.”
“So then they come over here and get Checketts before we can even talk to him.”
Wire nodded, “Because we now have the pictures with Checketts in them. He’s a liability now.”
“How did they do that? I mean, they’re shooting at us at what, almost 11:00 p.m. last night? We get here at a little after seven this morning. So that’s an eight-hour window and in reality a lot less than that to get over here to Milwaukee and do the deed. I wonder what time of death is for Checketts?”
Wire gave that a moment’s thought and then smiled. “There aren’t just people sitting here in Milwaukee you can hire on a moment’s notice to do this right?”
Mac shook his head and the raised his eyebrows, as if to say, go on.
“So they had to fly over here,” Wire said, a slight smile coming across her face. “And if you fly over here …”
“… there has to be a record of the flight,” Mac finished the sentence for her.
“Right,” Wire replied and then looked back out to the lake. “That’s right. I don’t suspect they flew over commercial.”
“I doubt there would have been one available at that time of night,” Mac answered. “It’s almost surely a small commuter plane or corporate jet like we flew over on.”
Wire folded her arms and put her finger to her lips, “I wonder how many places there are around here that you could fly into like that?”
“We need to start looking,” Mac answered.
“Given what these guys are capable of, there may not be a record of the flight,” Wire said.
“That could be,” Mac answered. “But I bet there’s a tower log of the flight or radar signature of the flight, something for a plane coming from Minneapolis/St. Paul over to Milwaukee or the surrounding area. If we move quickly enough they might not be able to erase the flight from the records.”
“Okay, so we look into that,” Wire stated as she turned to look at the house. “So this is no suicide. Checketts was murdered. How would you have done it?”
“You mean get into the house?” Mac answered, following Wire’s lead.
“Right.”
“Probably not from the front, the street is quiet but a car pulling up to a house like Checketts’s in the very early a.m. on a night people are out and about might draw some attention, so they don’t come in from the front.”
Wire and McRyan were standing at the far northeast corner of the property, ten feet back from the bluff overlooking the lake. She looked to her right, to the north, and the next four homes all had privacy fences of varying heights to define their property up to the bluff line overlooking the lake. Wire looked back to the south and the two houses in that direction had high wood privacy fences.
“Not from the sides,” they said in unison.
Wire started walking to the south, following the line of the bluff overlooking the lake. Two-thirds of the way across the property she stopped and a second later McRyan, who’d been following, joined her. There was a small path winding its way with right and left switchbacks through the tall grass down the steep face of the bluff to the lake.