Chapter 15
I was up around six and finishing breakfast around seven when my phone rang—Skip from the medical examiner’s office.
I swiped to answer as I took my plate to the sink. “Morning, Skip.”
“Nash. How ya doing?”
“I’m finishing up my breakfast and about to head into the office. What’s up?”
“I’ve got Grant Minter’s wife’s contact information for you. The guys here gave her yours late last night, but I wanted to make sure you could reach out to her.”
I slid out the catch-all drawer in my kitchen and grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen. “Shoot.”
He gave me Alice Minter’s information, and I jotted it down. “Got it. Did Minter’s body tell you anything?”
“I haven’t started the autopsy,” Skip said. “But I probably will within the hour. Just a preliminary look says blunt force trauma, which I imagine you could have guessed. Weapon was something maybe an inch thick.”
“The video seems to show this guy pulling something from his hip, but as he walks out, he doesn’t have anything in hand. And we didn’t find anything looking like a murder weapon in the storage unit. I was kind of leaning toward maybe a collapsible baton or something of the sort.”
“That would have probably done it,” Skip said. “I’ll try to match up some things that I have here with the injuries when I get going on him. I should be able to give you a better idea by the afternoon on what exactly was used.”
“All right,” I said. “What’s shaking on the Mehen front? I think Colt said that you were going to have someone send over the bullets that were retrieved from the body so he could run ballistics.”
“Yeah. The night shift took care of it. I’ll double-check, but I think that’s all set, so someone should have them over to you guys shortly I would think.”
“All right. Give me a shout after you’re done with Mr. Minter.”
“Will do,” Skip said.
I clicked off from the call, walked out to my backyard bar, and grabbed a seat while I dialed Alice Minter.
On the off chance that Amy got out of bed and brought Lucky with her, I didn’t want a bunch of background noise while I was on the phone.
Alice Minter answered within a couple of rings, and after a ten-minute talk, I had an interview set with her at eleven o’clock at her home.
Contact with Mrs. Minter made, I went inside to get ready for work.
In my bedroom, with Amy still in bed, I tried to be as quiet as I could while getting dressed.
“Leaving already?” Amy asked.
I’d just snugged up my soft body armor and was buttoning my shirt.
“Yeah. Sorry. I was trying not to wake you up. I want to get back out to the storage unit for another look around before I meet with the victim’s wife at eleven.”
Amy scooted up in bed. “I’m sorry. That’s terrible. I don’t know how you can deal with that all the time.”
“It’s the job,” I said and let out a breath.
“I know. It just can’t be easy. For anyone. You or them.”
I gave her a nod, as she was spot-on.
“I suppose I should probably get up too. I have to be in by ten. That means you, too, Lazy.” Amy petted Lucky, who’d taken over my side of the bed when I got up. Lucky opened her eyes, looked at me, then curled up a bit more.
“She looks like she’s pretty content doing what she’s doing,” I said.
“Come on. It’s time to get up.” Amy gave Lucky a playful push.
She didn’t budge an inch.
“You want to see a magic trick?” I asked.
“What?”
“A magic trick,” I said. “I’m going to make the dog disappear.”
“What are you going to tell her, that there’s an S-Q-U…”
That was as far as Amy got into the spelling of “squirrel” before Lucky jumped up and ran from the bedroom.
“You know she can spell,” I said.
“Apparently.”
I finished getting ready and kissed Amy goodbye before she jumped in the shower. After letting Lucky out, I filled her dish with her breakfast and left for the office.
The stop at work was quick, just enough time to call Gomez, grab a coffee and doughnut from the lunchroom, and head out.
Gomez had said that he would be on scene right around eight o’clock.
And judging by the traffic clogging the road, I’d be there about the same time.
I puttered along, stop and go, and spent another twenty minutes fighting through the morning commuters before I finally pulled into the parking lot for the Brenner’s Self-Storage complex.
I planned to drive toward the unit where the homicide occurred, but the gate was down.
I veered right, found a parking spot near the main office beside a beige sedan, and walked inside.
A bell hanging on the door sounded my presence as I stepped into the building. A man, maybe fifty, stood at the front counter filling out some paperwork. The guy working the counter looked around the customer at me—he was the same manager from the night before who had shown me the video footage.
“I just need to get through the gate,” I said.
The customer turned and looked at me as I spoke then looked away just as fast.
“Sure,” the manager said. “I can open it from in here. Drive on up, and I’ll get you through. One of your other guys just went back.”
I glanced at the monitors over the front counter, and they appeared to show a marked cruiser and Gomez’s truck parked by the unit the man was killed in.
“Appreciate it,” I said.
I left the office, hopped in my cruiser, and made for the gate, which was already up by the time I reached it. As I made the turn by the dumpsters, I saw the Hialeah patrol car and Gomez’s truck parked by the storage unit like I’d just seen on the security feeds. I parked the cruiser and got out.
“Morning,” I said as I walked into the storage unit.
I got looks over the shoulder from both Gomez and the female Hialeah officer, who turned out to be Jenks.
“Lieutenant,” Jenks said.
“You must have been right behind me,” Gomez said. “I’ve maybe been here a minute.”
“Yeah, the manager in the office said that you’d just come in.”
With the body having been removed prior to me leaving the night before, all that remained was the victim’s blood pool, cast-off blood and matter, and the contents of the unit.
“You weren’t out here all night, were you, Jenks?” I asked.
“No, no, no,” she said. “I went home shortly after you left last night. I just tagged in for Officer Hammond, who had been on the place since about four this morning. And I think Hammond said that he tagged out with Hartwell, who came before I left last night.”
“Anything overnight?” I asked.
“Nope. Nothing was happening here. They said all was quiet. The same for the guys that were taking turns out by the expressway.”
“I guess that’s good,” I said. “What about you, Gomez? Seeing anything new?”
“Nah, not really,” Gomez said. “But with some better light, I’m hoping we can find something in the way of actual evidence. I’m going to get a couple more photos here minus the body and then get started looking around.”
“Sure,” I said. “Do we have a plan of attack for the search?”
“I figured I’d just go from A to B. Walk across the lot by the dumpsters on the far side where we saw the suspect come and go from.
Then up on the roof, then down in back out to the bike trail.
Then maybe down the trail a bit east and west. Look to see if we can find anything pitched. Check nearby trash cans. All that.”
It sounded like a full day’s work.
“I’m going to meet with the victim’s wife at eleven, so I’ll probably take off around ten thirty. I can start looking around back by that bike path. Walk up and down and see if anything pops out.”
“Sure.” Gomez nodded. “You said that you spoke with her? The vic’s wife?”
“Briefly,” I said. “Mostly, I just introduced myself, did my best to comfort her, and told her I’d do my damnedest to bring whoever was responsible for this to justice. Then we set the interview time. That was really about it. I did ask her what her husband was doing out here last night, though.”
“What did she say?” Gomez asked.
“She said she didn’t even know that he was here or why he would be.
She’d mentioned being out of town and was twenty minutes from home last night when she got the call from the medical examiner’s office.
She did say that she’d tried calling him earlier in the day and he didn’t answer.
The last time she spoke with him was the night the homicide happened. ”
“Got it,” Gomez said.
“Did the out-of-town thing strike you as questionable?” Jenks asked.
“I mean, not that I’m suggesting anything, or am a homicide detective, but every case that I think I’ve ever seen on TV where a husband or wife gets someone to kill their significant other, said husband or wife is always out of town”—Jenks made air quotes—“when it happens.”
“Her emotions all seemed genuine,” I replied. “That said, it was a phone call, and I can usually get a better feel for that kind of thing in person. Trust me, I’ll have my radar up for anything questionable when I talk to her.”
“I dropped this guy’s phone in the tech department last night,” Gomez said. “You may want to have them try to get into it before you go talk to her. In the off chance that the wife called him right before he came out here or sent him a text to come out here to look for something.”
Both Jenks and Gomez had valid points, and the phone information would be good to have prior to sitting down with Minter’s wife.
“Yeah, let me call Tech quick,” I said. “See what they can get me.”