Chapter 4 #2
“A call just came in from where he works. We need to get over there right away,” Brian said as he headed for the door. “You drive.” They got into a department car, and Eddie flipped on the lights and sirens, screaming down the same streets he’d just traveled, back to the Haver Supply office.
The place was in an uproar, with everyone standing around. Eddie whistled, and suddenly, everyone stopped. “Back here,” someone called, and Eddie made his way through to the office.
He peered inside and stifled a groan. “Who is this?” he asked.
“Bryce Prickard,” a woman said with a sniffle. Marty’s boss, and from the look of it, there was little doubt about what happened. A gun sat on the floor, and there was blood spattered on the desk and the wall behind him.
Brian was already calling for backup, and Eddie motioned for people back away so he could secure the scene. They needed the medical examiner as well as crime scene technicians to help process the room and make sure all evidence was safeguarded.
“Can you call Marty?” Brian asked, but Eddie shook his head.
“Not until we have time of death,” he said.
“I want to make sure he has a solid alibi.” Dammit, he had to make sure Marty wasn’t involved.
Other officers arrived, and so did the coroner’s office, who took charge of the body, and after pictures had been taken and a ton of evidence gathered, they got down to interviews with the various people in the office.
“How long has he been dead?” Eddie asked the coroner as they closed the back of the van on Marty’s boss’s body.
“I’m going to say about twelve hours or so. He was probably killed last evening, given the temperature in the office. I’ll know more once I finish the autopsy, but that should be pretty close.”
Eddie nodded and thanked him before returning to where Brian directed the other officers and reviewed statements. “Marty couldn’t have been involved. He was at the house all evening and went to bed early. I stayed up until midnight, and he was there.”
“Okay. We’re going to need to talk to him once we’re done here, so don’t tell him.
We’ll do that together, and then I can take his statement.
We need to do this by the book.” Brian glared at him as they moved away from the center of activity.
“I knew you had feelings for him the minute you saw his number come up. You had the same look Phillip does when he walks down the Lego aisle at the store. So this has to be done right.”
“I know. But you do realize this complicates everything. Our chief suspect in possible money-laundering and fraud is dead….”
“Yeah. And I’m willing to bet that someone really was following Marty, and they are probably looking for him right now.
It’s not too much of a stretch to figure that whoever is behind all of this took care of Bryce, and they will have no hesitation about cleaning up Marty.
With him gone, there is no one to corroborate the missing money or how it was moved.
We will have nothing but some money movement on reports. ”
“True.”
“Let’s do our best to figure out who murdered Bryce so we can keep Marty safe. And while we’re at it, I’m going to see where those bank videos are. We may get another lead if we can find the person making the deposits. And let’s hope it’s not Bryce himself.”
Eddie nodded and went back to work, hoping like hell that they found something that would lead them to the killer. They were going to need a real break if they were to find out who was behind all this… and so he could keep his promise and make sure Marty was safe.
“Okay, what do we have?” Brian asked as he approached the scene, getting information from the various officers.
Eddie shook his head to clear it and got back to work.
By the time they were done at the crime scene, they had bagged all possible evidence and spoken to everyone present who worked there.
They also checked the security system to check who had been in the office on the previous day, and there was only one person who registered in or out of the building and that was Bryce himself.
“Bryce knew his killer and let him in the building. Either that or the killer followed him inside, but that doesn’t seem to be the case since they were in his office. If the killer forced his way inside, then why not just kill Bryce right away and get it over with.”
“I agree,” Eddie said to Brian as they reviewed what they had. “He gets let in, they do whatever business they have, the killer finishes Bryce off, and then he leaves the building and uses Bryce’s ID so there is nothing left open.”
One of the officers hurried in and handed Brian an evidence bag. “I found this in the trash at the restaurant next door.”
“Good work, Davis,” Brian said. “What made you check there?”
“Well, I just thought that if I wanted to get rid of something and didn’t want it found, why not stash it in a garbage can filled with rotting food.” He curled up his nose. “So, I gave it a shot.”
Brian showed Eddie Bryce’s ID badge. “This supports our theory.”
“It does. But it doesn’t get us any closer to who might have done this. I can have this checked for evidence, but I doubt we’ll find a thing. The suspect most likely wore gloves.”
“True.” Eddie turned to Officer Davis. “Can you check all the businesses around here and see if they have any cameras, interior or exterior, that might cover the building’s side door? That seems to be the one they used.”
“Of course.” He left, and Eddie tried to think. They had sent enough off to the county lab for testing, but it was going to be a while. The fastest way of solving this case was to figure things out from what they had.
“Marty said that he saw the man who had been following him come out of Bryce’s office. Which means he’d been in the building before. We need to get a really good description from Marty of this guy,” Brian explained.
“We did. But it wasn’t much help. However….” Eddie went to the door of Bryce’s office. “If this guy was in the office, then he most likely sat down, and if he did, then he touched the arm of the chair only a few days ago. And if he was in the office just yesterday….”
“He probably wore gloves of some sort to keep from leaving a trail, and Bryce wouldn’t think anything of it since this guy wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.”
Eddie could almost see the meeting. He didn’t know what the conversation was about, but he could see them in the office, their movements.
The man standing in front of the desk, Bryce in his chair, then turning to get something out of the locked drawer in his desk.
He imagined Bryce thinking he was in control as he pulled out what he leaned forward to get.
Then he straightened up and came face to face with a gun.
The shot must have been a surprise, but he hadn’t had much time to think about it.
Bryce had slumped onto the floor, half in and half out of his chair, and then the shooter left, dropping the gun.
“We aren’t going to get much off the weapon,” Eddie said. “I’m willing to bet that the serial numbers are gone. The shooter wore gloves, and it’s completely untraceable.”
“We could see who might have sold it,” Brian offered.
“Good luck. The gun was probably bought in Seattle or Portland. Maybe even San Francisco. The fact that it was used here—and left—tells us we aren’t going to get much.
We could run ballistics, but if the gun has been used before, it would only show that it changed hands.
Otherwise, our shooter wouldn’t have left it. ”
“That’s probably true, but we have to be sure.”
“I know. I’m just saying, we don’t need to push that to the front of the list.” Eddie closed his eyes and let the scene play out again. “But maybe we can test the arms of the chair, and this.” He lifted a baseball from a stand on the desk with a gloved hand.
“Why?”
“Because if you’re in here and you see one of these out of a case, your first instinct is to pick it up a look at it. So maybe our shooter did that.”
“But he probably wore gloves,” Brian said.
Eddie nodded. “I know. But humor me. We might get something off of it.” He slipped it into an evidence bag and sealed it.
Then he turned away and stepped out of the office before grabbing a tissue from a nearby desk, just managing to contain a sneeze.
“What the hell is in this place?” He sneezed again.
“Are you getting sick?” Brian asked.
“No. I was fine before I came in here.”
“We shut down the air-handling system so anything airborne didn’t get sucked up into it,” an officer said. It made sense, but Eddie’s eyes were watering, and he headed outside and into the fresh air, breathing deeply before he sneezed twice more.
“Is this an allergic reaction of some type?” Brian asked once Eddie got himself under control.
“It must be. Though I don’t know what it is. I’m allergic to mushrooms, but that’s all. I have to make sure they don’t get put on my pizza. I break out when I eat them. It isn’t a respiratory type of thing.” He breathed deeply as the reaction seemed to abate slightly.
“Stay out here. We’re almost finished.” He went inside as another officer came out, sneezing and coughing.
“That place is a mess,” he said as he stood next to Eddie. “I can barely breathe in there. It has to be contaminated with something.”
“I get that.” He didn’t want to go back inside, but it was his job. But instead of just going inside, he grabbed a mask out of the door of his car and returned to see that everything was being handled correctly.
“Marty,” Eddie called out as he came inside the house with Brian behind him. The scene at his office had been secured and the office closed as an active crime scene in case it was needed again.
“I’m in here. What’s going on? There should have been a bunch of work, but there was nothing. Is today a holiday that I forgot about?” He had his computer on his lap.
“Maybe, in a way,” Brian said, and sat down.
Eddie did the same, concerned about how Marty was going to take the news they had.
“I’m just going to say what we need to. We got a call this morning from one of the people in your office, and your boss, Bryce Prichard, was found dead in his office.
We believe he was killed between seven and nine yesterday evening. ”
“Oh,” Marty said. “Do you have any idea who killed him? Was he shot?”
“Yes. And we have an idea. It could very well be the person who was following you. But we aren’t sure.”
“What can I do to help?” Marty asked.
Brian cleared his throat, and Eddie closed his mouth, keeping himself from answering.
“We’re not sure. I know you gave us a description of the man you saw in the office, and we believe he could be the killer.”
“I gave you a good description. I can try again, but I don’t know how much more I can tell you.”
“We know. And you gave us the documentation.” Brian pulled out his computer from his bag and booted it up.
“We got the security tapes from the bank, and we have a few pictures that we hope you’ll recognize.
” He worked for a few minutes and then turned the screen around. “Do you recognize any of these people?”
Eddie had already seen the images, so he watched Marty, who put his hand to his face.
“That’s Vicky.” He blinked and finally lowered his hand.
“She’s one of the ladies in the office. She does a number of things, including act as Bryce’s and Mr. Haver’s assistant…
of sorts. They ask her to run errands and stuff for them.
I can’t believe that she would be involved in something like this. ”
“Yeah… well. It looks like she takes the bags they give her, and she drops them in the night drop before leaving. And it seems she does this at three to four banks each night. So, if she had no idea what she’s doing, then….” Brian’s words trailed off as Marty’s look grew murderous.