Chapter 13
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Doreen quickly phoned Mack and relayed the latest information. “He was really, really ugly about it,” she shared, “and definitely not somebody who would be perturbed that Devon was gone.”
“Yeah, so many of them are like that though,” Mack noted, “and Derrick is in prison and is not the type to earn any extra privileges. I did check and confirmed that he didn’t have any day passes around the date of Devon’s death.”
“So, it wasn’t him.”
“It wasn’t him in the sense that he couldn’t have done it himself,” Mack pointed out. “Yet that doesn’t remove the possibility that a payment was made or something like that, in order to have the kid killed by someone else.”
“Ooh,” she cried out. “That would be a murder for hire.”
“It would, indeed.”
“And would keep Derrick in prison for quite a while. His father didn’t sound very impressed at the idea of Derrick getting out, and Derrick seems to think that his father will never get out, at least not if Derrick can help it. So, I’m not sure who’s telling the truth there.”
Mack added, “I have actually spoken to the prison, and the father is due to get out sooner than later. I think it’s less than a year, like nine months or something like that.”
“Okay, good,” she noted, “so at least he told the truth about that much.”
“Which isn’t a lot, considering he’s in prison right now.”
“I agree with you there,” she said, “but we have to start somewhere.”
He laughed. “I don’t know about starting somewhere, but obviously we have different opinions.”
“I would say Duke’s son is definitely bad news,” she murmured. “But I don’t have anything other than the phone conversation with Derrick and what his father told me to go by.”
“And the father seems to have a pretty strong opinion.”
“I think he’s suffering in prison,” she stated. “He thinks it’s his son’s doing, which I’m sure it is, after talking to Derrick.”
“Do you think Derrick hates Duke that much?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” she replied. “Derrick said as much. He’s definitely got a hate on going about having such a terrible childhood, and he also really hates Birdie. And he truly hated Devon, who had more than Derrick did.”
“But that doesn’t make Derrick a suspect.”
“But it doesn’t take him off the suspect list either,” she pointed out.
“No, it doesn’t. In other words, we’re just getting more suspects, including this one.”
Doreen added, “Derrick didn’t think Devon was going to college at all. And the college admissions office did tell me that Devon was signed up for online classes. Still, we don’t know for sure that he was doing even that much.”
“Huh.” Mack offered, “I’ll check around and find out.”
“If he was strictly online, that reduces the number of possible suspects or witnesses,” Doreen said.
“Although Derrick had a motive, just sheer jealousy, it’s not necessarily a good one.
But then what would be the reason for killing Devon right now?
” she pointed out. “I mean, Derrick’s been in jail this whole time, so why take out Devon now? ”
“Good question, and, when you get an answer, you can always let me know.” Then with a laugh, Mack added, “I’ve got to get back to work.” And, with that, he hung up.
She stared down at her phone, then wondered about the possibility of talking to Birdie again.
She had to be careful though since she didn’t want to piss off the one person who had brought her in on this case.
Doreen had also learned enough about Birdie to know that, while the woman might have been singing her praises, Birdie could be doing the opposite very quickly if she thought it was warranted or served her own personal purposes.
That put Doreen in a very odd position. Yet she didn’t want to be worried that Birdie had done something wrong, something more than just being a horrible person, since that wasn’t yet considered a criminal activity.
Although, as far as Doreen was concerned, if she could eradicate horrible behavior from the world, she would be first in line to try.
She pondered the information she had, staring down at it, remembering that she had found the names of both Duke and Derrick Hanson in Solomon’s files.
Something she hadn’t sent to Mack yet. She bolted to her feet, grabbed her laptop, and brought up the files in question.
And, sure enough, they were both named therein and so—what a shocker—was Birdie.
She emailed them to Mack. She stared at the information, shaking her head.
She didn’t think this was applicable, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why Birdie would be named herein if it wasn’t applicable. Solomon had a separate file opened on Birdie and her daughter, Cassandra, and it was all about the drunk driving charge that never was.
Nothing on Duke’s first wife, Stephanie, Derrick’s birth mother. “Interesting,” Doreen murmured, as she went through the information.
What Solomon had documented was the fact that the family of a young man who had died in the car accident caused by Cassandra had tried very hard to get Cassandra charged with vehicular manslaughter.
Instead, it had been deemed an accident due to bad weather.
Reading that, Doreen had to wonder if an alcohol test had even been administered.
As she went through Solomon’s files, she found a copy of the DUI documentation, including test results, that were filed in the case. She stared at it for a long moment, quickly scanned that particular piece into Mack, then made a call to Nan. “Hey, do you think I can come down and talk to Birdie?”
“She’s not doing all that great actually,” Nan shared. “We think it’s all the stress.”
“And that could be,” Doreen replied, “but it would help a lot if I could talk to her.”
“Well, I can ask,” Nan replied. “Let me call you back.” And, with that, she hung up.
Doreen sat here, still staring at the file, when Mack called her.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
“From Solomon’s files,” she stated.
He groaned. “Of course you did.”
“It’s what I think it is, isn’t it? Proof that Cassandra was driving with a blood alcohol level three times what’s legally allowed?”
“Yep, which means she should have been charged with vehicular manslaughter, if she’d lived,” he snapped.
“The fact that she didn’t get charged … She did live a few weeks afterwards so why wasn’t she?”
“I know. We can probably put that at Birdie’s feet, but you’ll have a hard time if you’re thinking of trying to make her pay for it.”
“I’m not sure making Birdie pay for it is what’s important at this point in time,” she noted. “Don’t get me wrong. Obviously what she did was awful, but …”
“But what?” he asked, his voice distracted as somebody called his name.
“She’s suffered too.” She paused, thinking. “What if the family member of the guy who died in the DUI accident had something to do with Devon’s murder?”
Mack asked, “Like for revenge, you mean?”
“It’s just something that I wondered.”
“It’s not a bad thing to wonder,” he said. “Still, we’re up against why now? What would be the reason to do something like that so many years after the fact?”
“Oh, I should know how many years—”
“Nine,” he shared.
“Oh, right.”
“Except, as they say, revenge often tastes better cold,” he added, with a laugh.
“I wouldn’t know,” she murmured. “Revenge has never been something I’ve been strong on.”
“No, you sure haven’t, but that doesn’t mean something isn’t there.”
She clearly heard the smile in his tone and in his words. “It’s just something to think about, and I know I’m reaching.”
“Reaching is what you’re good at though,” he added, “and you always come up with all kinds of stuff we never even considered.”
“You would have come to this one on your own,” she said.
“I hadn’t though,” he admitted in a rueful tone. “I didn’t even realize this was a thing. The captain won’t like it. I’ll tell you that.”
“No, I’m sure he won’t, but it’s also part of the reason there’s been such a stink about the department for so long.”
“Yes, but it’s not his doing. It’s because this kind of illegal activity was going on in the department back then, so we have to acknowledge that it has given all of us a bad name.”
“Exactly,” she noted, “so, sorry, but back over to you guys.”
He snorted. “I’m being called into a meeting, but I’ll talk to the captain as soon as I can and will get back to you.”
Once again, she was left staring at her phone.