Chapter 8 #3
“More like orders for us to keep searching for more. He did say lots of drugs were in John Smith’s system, but no drug paraphernalia was found at the crime scene.
So, based on that, he leans toward murder, but he’s not willing to rule on that at the moment because he wants to confirm nobody removed the needed paraphernalia, for instance, to get away with insurance or whatever. ”
“Oh, good call,” Lilliana agreed, with a nod. “And then, when you complete all that …”
“Exactly, when I complete all that, Smidge will probably put it down as murder. Also a lot of fingerprints were at John’s apartment, and I mean a lot because he had a very healthy, sexually active life,” she shared, with an eye roll, “and, therefore, we’ll have to sort through a lot of people on his case. ”
“And get fingerprints to match.”
“And a lot of them we may never ID because he had so many women through his apartment who probably won’t be in our police database,” she pointed out.
“So we’ll have to figure out whether life insurance is on the table or not and work backward.
I’ll return to John’s apartment today and check out his paperwork there and see if Rodney can track down any life insurance policies on him too. ”
“If Rodney doesn’t come in soon,” Lilliana shared, “I’m kind of at a stagnant place on my case. So, I could give you a hand with that part.”
“Sure,” Kate accepted, as she handed over the files. “It would help to figure out the life insurance thing and whoever was the most recent of his girlfriends. So far, we haven’t found out who he spent his Friday night with. No cameras were at John’s apartment.”
“Possibly one of the neighbors stopped by?”
“Can’t tell. No cams even in the hallways to that apartment building. Nothing on that line at all. He did have an affair with somebody at work, the cute young receptionist, which was frowned upon. But apparently it was broken off, and she was devastated, but he moved on, as in the same week.”
“Of course he did,” Lilliana muttered, followed by a groan, “but that doesn’t mean that woman killed him.”
“Good call,” Kate noted. “Meanwhile I’ll head over to John’s apartment to search for life insurance or whatnot. Now, if you want to call Lanny, I don’t want to talk to her at the office. I want to see her in private.”
Lilliana nodded. “Good call. I’ll let you know.”
With that, Kate got up and headed out.
Rodney hadn’t made it in yet, and, if he wanted to join her later, he could. Otherwise he had plenty to keep him busy for the moment, just trying to find all of John’s girlfriends from his emails and texts and phone calls.
Kate just needed to get out of the office and to get something done, so she felt she was accomplishing something today. Otherwise she would just sit there and fall asleep at her desk. She drove back over to the victim’s apartment and got the manager to let her in.
He took a quick look around John’s apartment and winced. “The cops really don’t leave it clean, do they?”
“No,” she agreed. “When it comes to murder, the police and forensics teams tend to be very thorough.”
“Yeah, but thorough means a huge mess here. Who’ll clean this up?”
She smiled and replied, “You’ll figure that out, while I’m still trying to figure out who was John’s most-recent partner and if he had a life insurance policy.” With that delineated, she closed the door firmly in his face.
She was wary of landlords after the still-unresolved issue at her own apartment. It still pissed her off every time she thought about it. Simon had offered to get somebody to look into it. After all, he had so much experience with and dealt with insurance companies a lot.
She didn’t know what the hell that meant, but, so far, there hadn’t been any follow-up. She sent him a quick text, asking if he had any feedback info on it, but didn’t really expect an answer.
She returned her attention to the task at hand, as she stood in the bathroom of John Smith’s apartment, looking at everything he had around, wondering what she could find here. This was such a bachelor pad.
When Simon called her back, she apologized up front. “Hey, sorry, you didn’t have to interrupt work for me.”
“I can always interrupt work for you,” he stated, a smile in his tone. “And I haven’t heard back, but I will follow up,” he added. “We’ll definitely get it resolved.”
“Oh, we’ll get it resolved,” she replied, with a dry laugh, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll get any compensation for it. At the moment, it looks as if the apartment complex is also looking for some guarantee that it won’t happen again.”
“We’ll deal with them another time,” Simon told her. “First off is the insurance.”
“Right. Meanwhile I’m back at the victim’s home, the first dead guy we found, … looking for paperwork, looking for whether somebody was here at the time of his death and may have removed some drug paraphernalia, and whether he had a life insurance policy or related stuff.”
“Ah, I’m sorry to hear that. It must be one of the hard parts, you know, digging into somebody’s life.”
“It is.”
After she ended the call, she began going through the bathroom cupboards, underneath the sink—typically utilized for an overload of toilet paper or similar items. But here, though not unexpected, were condoms by the case—which revealed a lot about his success rate attracting women—and cleansers, but not the kind she was used to.
She studied them for a minute, and then heard a strange sound in the other room. She got up and headed out to the living room, then stopped when she saw a woman standing there, looking around in confusion. Kate walked toward her, and the other woman saw her, her gaze instantly hardening.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
Kate closed the front door so the woman couldn’t easily leave. “That’s a really interesting question,” she noted, as she pulled out her badge. “Maybe the better question is, who are you?”
The woman stared at her, saw her badge, and all the color fled from her face. She whispered, “What are you doing here?”
“No,” Kate declared, “again, my questions are, who are you, and what are you doing here?”
The other woman glared at her and muttered, “I’m not playing word games with you.”
“Good,” Kate snapped, her tone turning sharp. “Tell me who you are, why you’re here, and how you got into this apartment.”
“I used to have a key, but the door was unlocked. I was hoping he was home, and we could talk.”
“So, because I left it unlocked, you just walked in? That was the kind of relationship you had with him?”
She flushed. “We’ve been in a relationship for half of the year,” she stated.
Kate mentally went back over the time frame that Norma, “his girlfriend,” had been involved with John also and snorted. “I see. And who are you?”
“Angel,” she snapped. “My name is Angel Delaware.”
“Show me ID, please.”
Angel produced her ID, while flushed with what appeared to be anger.
Maybe it was something else because her lips were tightly clenched to stop her from screaming and yelling.
Perhaps Angel thought Kate was in some way associated with her boyfriend or partner or whoever she thought John was to her.
Or it could also be because Angel now suspected that something was truly wrong.
Regardless Kate took a look at the woman’s ID, took a photo of it with her phone, then handed it back.
She asked Angel, “When did you last see him?”
“Is he missing?” Angel asked, staring at her.
“When did you last see him?” Kate repeated, noticing Angel’s chin firming up with a surprising amount of temper, considering the question wasn’t difficult. Kate had to wonder just how far Angel would go with that temper.
Angel finally relented, shaking her head. “I haven’t seen him for,” she frowned and said, “maybe a couple days—yeah, a couple days. The last time I was here, he refused to open his door.”
“What day was that?”
She hesitated, then finally relented. “Friday,” she snapped.
“And you haven’t been here since then?”
“No, … we had a huge fight,” she shared, raising both hands. “And it’s really been bugging me. I just wanted to see if the two of us could talk it out.”
“Have you had fights and talked it out before?”
“Sure,” she replied. “I mean, that’s what you do in long-term relationships. You fight, and then you talk it out and figure out where you’re going from there.”
Kate didn’t know about that, but it was as good of an excuse as any. “So, you used to have a key to this apartment.”
Angle flushed. “I gave my key back to him after our fight.”
“And yet you just walked in today.”
“Of course I just walked in,” she snapped. “I mean, we literally just had the fight. It’s not as if he had already picked up with somebody else.” Then she glared again at Kate. “Unless you’re telling me that you’re his newest side piece.” She gave her a snide look.
Kate coldly stared at her and remarked, “Seems your relationship is off to a really good start if that’s what you’re thinking he’s doing in the meantime.”
“He’s extremely virile,” she explained, while backing up. “And I don’t expect him to go without for long. He would go without for a day or two, but that would be it,” she noted. “So, yeah, I came to my senses, and I’m back.”
“And if it wasn’t you here in his apartment over the last couple days, who was here?”
Her eyes widened, and she shook her head. “Nobody. Not that way. I mean, we literally just broke up.”
Kate didn’t say anything about that. She continued her questions. “And you haven’t seen him for a couple days?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“I sent him a few texts, telling him that I wanted to talk and that I wanted to come over to discuss the problem that I had with what he was doing, and go from there. You know, make up,” she admitted.
“Anything else you two talked about?”
“I sent him a couple spicy texts,” she shared. “And I expected that he would get back to me, but he didn’t. So, I came over to see if he was still really that pissed off with me.”