Chapter 9
I headed to the office around three, and once everyone else was back in the building around four o’clock, I called for a meeting. I’d grabbed a coffee and sat down in the conference room.
“We’re just waiting on Cap,” I said. “He wanted to sit in.”
I got confirmation from Steve, Colt, Wade, and James. Garcia had sent me a message that he would return from the doctor’s office as soon as he could, but I figured I’d just bring him up to speed with everything when he got back as opposed to delaying the meeting for who knew how long.
Halloway walked in a minute later, swung the door closed, and grabbed a seat. “Let’s get into it,” he said as soon as his butt hit the chair. “What did we get?”
“A homicide committed by a mystery man with an unknown motive and who was driving someone’s car that apparently has also gone missing,” I said.
“You know what they call that, right?” Halloway asked.
“Crap sandwich?” I asked.
“A different four-letter word before sandwich,” the captain said. “But yeah. What do we actually know?”
Colt kicked things off. “So we all know what we had on scene. A homicide with no clear motive. The victim was confirmed to be Robert Mehen. Skip has notified next of kin, Mehen’s wife, named Valerie—same surname.
I have her information for you guys, and Skip said that he’d inform her that we’ll be reaching out to her.
“I’ll do it,” Steve said.
“I’ll get it for you when we’re done,” Colt said.
“Let’s see. What else. Our victim took thirteen rounds, and we have sixteen casings.
So from witness accounts and evidence left on scene, the shooter dumped the magazine into Mehen.
Nine-millimeter, full-size pistol that we haven’t recovered.
Witnesses put our suspect as average height, weight, and build.
White male, brown hair, in his forties. I still have the ballistics to run, so hopefully, we can get something there.
I also have the phone of our victim, which I passed off to Tech, and Mehen’s truck is in our garage for me to process. ”
“So the truck to process, a phone and ballistics to do?” Halloway asked by way of confirmation.
“Correct,” Colt said. “I’ll probably start on the truck after the meeting, but I don’t think I’ll have either done before tomorrow sometime.”
“All right. What do we have on the tech front?”
Wade and James went next. James discussed Sloan’s laptop that we had, saying that it needed to be processed but we were looking for any kind of “find my phone” thing on it.
He also stated that there had been no activity from Keegan Sloan’s phone, which we’d been trying to track for a location.
James finished by saying he doubted we would get anything from Mehen’s phone since it took a round or two during the homicide, but he would try anyway.
Wade spoke about the supermarket and neighboring businesses’ video footage of the shooter. He planned to enhance what he could of the captured footage in hopes of getting some good stills of the shooter that we could maybe distribute to local news outlets in hopes that someone recognized the guy.
“So that should all start filtering in tomorrow?” Halloway asked.
“Whatever we can get done in a couple hours yet today, and then tomorrow, yes,” Wade said.
The captain acknowledged Steve. “What did you get, Walsh?”
“So after we spoke with Keegan Sloan’s mother and dropped a couple things back here for Tech, I went to the auto repair shop that Keegan Sloan worked at.
I’d already called them earlier and confirmed that he hadn’t shown for his shift this morning.
So, I got over there, and I talked to his boss and a handful of his coworkers.
Long story short, he missed his shift today, and neither his boss or coworkers have seen or heard from him since Saturday—the shop is closed Sundays.
But one coworker claimed that Keegan was planning on going downtown Saturday night, for whatever that’s worth. ”
“He was seen by his mother yesterday evening,” I said, just so everyone was clear.
“Right,” Steve said. “So that probably doesn’t do anything for us.
But back to the coworkers, none of them said that Keegan hung around any questionable people.
No questionable people ever shined around Keegan’s workplace.
None of them could think of anyone that would have been driving Keegan’s Honda Accord. ”
“So, not much luck there for the most part,” Halloway said.
“Nah, not much,” Steve said. “They just figured he no-showed. A couple guys tried calling him, but he never answered.”
“Yeah, it kind of seemed that him being MIA wasn’t really even noticed,” I said.
“His mom assumed that he was staying at his girlfriend’s.
His girlfriend that I spoke with, or ex-girlfriend, I should say, claimed that she’d just broken up with him and was basically telling him to leave her alone.
So his lack of contact with her since last night was kind of chalked up to that, him leaving her alone. ”
“Tell us about this breakup,” Halloway said. “Think there could be anything there?”
“It obviously crossed my mind, and who knows what we’ll find when we start really digging into this, but my gut says no, she isn’t involved in whatever this is in any way.
The breakup stemmed from him cheating, I guess.
The last correspondences were him trying to beg forgiveness.
She didn’t hesitate to show me her phone with their messages back and forth. ”
“What about the girl he cheated on this girlfriend with? Do we have her information?” Halloway asked.
“No. Though if Keegan exchanged numbers or messages with this other woman, we’ll be able to get that information from his phone records. But from what the girlfriend said, Keegan claimed it to be of the drunken one-night-stand variety. About all we know there.”
“Okay. Anything else from the girlfriend? Or ex-girlfriend or whatever?” Halloway asked.
“Nothing that can really point us in a direction. The last message she received from Keegan was around ten o’clock last night.
As of now, I think that’s probably going to be his last contact with anyone, but we’ll have to see what his electronics tell us to be sure.
VanHaren claimed that Keegan wasn’t involved in anything questionable.
No drugs, no shady people, nothing of the sort.
But I’ve got the name of one of his friends that I want to contact. ”
“So we could very well be dealing with a pair of separate homicides here,” the captain said. “As opposed to this Keegan having something, or anything, to do with the supermarket shooting.”
“And that, kind of like everything else with this so far, still doesn’t really make any sense,” Steve said.
“Our supermarket shooter would had to have killed and disposed of Mr. Sloan last night for who knows what reason. And where that went down, we have no idea. But then, he what?” Steve lifted a hand as if in question.
“The guy hangs on to Keegan Sloan’s car and uses it to commit another homicide this morning? ”
“I mean, it doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to do,” I said. “But that’s kind of what this is looking like.”
“So how are we thinking we should work this?” Halloway asked.
“The easiest thing to do would be find Keegan Sloan’s Honda. That or try to connect the victims somehow,” I said. “If Sloan is even a victim, that is. I asked his mother and girlfriend if they knew Mehen or had ever heard Keegan mention the name. Got a no from both.”
“Same at his work,” Steve said. “I asked everyone that I talked to if they’d heard of the guy but came up blank.”
“And we have a BOLO out on this car?” the captain asked.
“The Midwest guys had it out before we ever even got on scene,” I said. “The tag was added to the BOLO as soon as we got it.”
“I’ll get that BOLO stretched statewide,” Halloway said.
As we wrapped up the rehashing of what we had, and I sat there thinking that Halloway’s initial description of the investigation being a “crap sandwich” was pretty much spot-on, my phone buzzed against my leg. I saw the captain reach for his phone as well, and then Steve, and then Colt.
I slid out my phone and looked at the screen. The message was from the Hialeah PD. They had a homicide they needed us on.
I caught the time on the wall as I leaned back in my chair. “I got it. You guys keep running with this. I’ll give you guys a shout if I need you for some reason.”
“I’ll send Gomez,” Colt said. “I want to get going on Mehen’s pickup.”
“All right. Tell him I’ll see him out there.” I left the conference room, made a quick stop in my office, and dialed Amy as I was walking out of the building to tell her that, as usual, I would be late.