by EH Reinhard
“He didn’t have time to do anything with his cut from Treadwell. Shit, he might still have the Guerro money there. What the hell are we going to do? Leave it for his girlfriend? Tim sure as hell won’t be needing it.”
Chris nodded. “I’m a fan of that. That’s a minimum of another what? Another fifteen grand for each of us? Maybe more?”
“We’re damn well going to find out,” David said. “Go get the van taken care of, and I’ll go get this done. I’ll meet you two back here.”
David got confirmations from both guys.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I was at the scene at the club until just before six and home by a little after. The thought of catching an hour of sleep was enticing, but I knew it would be fruitless. I’d lay there for forty-five minutes, thinking about the investigation and everything that would need to be done, before fading off to sleep only to be wakened fifteen minutes later feeling worse than tired—I figured staying up and powering through was my only real option. I would have just gone straight back to the station if I hadn’t needed to give Butch his breakfast.
I pulled open my refrigerator door and grabbed the carton of creamer. With a quick shake, I knew there was just enough left to leave me unsatisfied—my coffee would remain black. I poured the remaining creamer in a bowl and set it next to Butch’s dish.
“Treats!” I said.
No response.
“You want some breakfast?” I called.
Butch again didn’t respond, and I didn’t see him coming from his home on the couch. My cell phone rang in my pocket. I fished it out and clicked Talk.
“Yeah, Donner, what’s up?”
“Still at the scene. We have a couple of news vans rolling up here.”
“Ugh,” I said. I wasn’t a fan of the media and had a special hatred for reporters jamming microphones in my face. My disdain stemmed from my time working in Milwaukee when every news outlet seemed to try to outdo each other in dumping on our PD. Numbers be damned. Declining crime rates be damned. To the media, big changes always needed to be made—or so the headlines usually read. We were always at a loss, had no suspects, let someone slip through our fingers, or in some way were letting the city down. The Tampa press didn’t seem all that much better, which led us to hiring Sam James, a man whose sole responsibility was to handle public relations for the department. “Tell them it’s an active investigation and crime scene. Get them back as far as you can. We’ll have a statement ready for them later today.”
“Got it, Kane,” Donner said.
“Are you guys almost ready to head back to the station?” I asked.
“I’ll address the media, and then we’ll be on our way. I think some of the patrol guys are going to be here for a bit yet.”
“What’s Reynolds doing?” I asked.
“We have an employee that showed up. He’s talking with him.”
“An employee of a gentleman’s club at seven something in the morning?”
“I guess he’s a local. Out for a jog or something. He saw all the cars here and stopped.”
“Make sure I get everything about the guy.”
“Will do.”
“Okay. What about Ed and Rick?”
“Rick left a couple minutes ago. I’m watching Ed pull out with the van now.”
“All right. I’ll see you at the office.”
“Sounds good,” Donner said and clicked off from the call.
I dropped my phone back into my pocket, opened the pantry door, and grabbed Butch’s bag of far-too-expensive cat food—he refused to eat the cheap stuff after I tried rewarding him with some of a better brand. The crinkling of the bag was all that was needed to wake him. He arrived at my feet in a flash, noticed the bowl with the creamer, and got his face low next to it, lapping while he kept a watchful eye on his cat food. I filled his dish and put his food away. I ran through my mental checklist of my morning routine. With all my t’s crossed, I grabbed my coffee and my keys from the breakfast bar and left. Rick had said he was going straight back to the station from the club and, like me, thought it useless to try to go home and sleep for an hour before his shift. I told him that I’d meet him in the lab as soon as I got back.
The clock on my Mustang’s dash said ten after seven when I pulled into the station’s parking structure. Coffee in hand, I walked inside and went straight downstairs to the forensics unit. Rick stood in a glass lab near the back of the room. I walked over, gave the door a tap with the bottom edge of my stainless steel travel mug, and walked in. “Tell me something good,” I said.
“Wish I could,” Rick said. “I actually just got back about twenty minutes ago and am just getting started with the prints pulled from the scene. Honestly, I wouldn’t hold my breath. We really only have two points that we have the most interest in—the prints pulled from around the safe and the prints pulled from around the desk area that held the recording equipment for the security cameras. I’m going to get those loaded into the system first and then start going through the rest.”
“All right,” I said. “What else?”
“Miscellaneous shell casings. All five five six casings except for one twenty-two case we found.”
“From the pistol.”
“Correct,” Rick said. “We didn’t find a spent round from it on scene, so I’m betting it’s still inside of our vic. Another little tidbit with that. After you left, I ran a GSR test on each of our guys that were on the scene. No one there fired a weapon.”
I scratched at my beard and took a drink from my coffee. “How does that work?” I asked.
“That’s a good question. The spatter on the wall looked consistent with a GSW. The height told me a shot to the head. The blood leading out and all the way across the lot and into the other one told me the same. I don’t know.”
“Friendly fire, maybe?” I asked.
“About the only thing that I can think of,” Rick said. “That would account for it.”
“What about the pistol found?” I asked.
“It got itself out of its holster on the guy’s ankle somehow. I’m going to have one of my team get it printed and go through the magazine after the prints.”
“What about the holster?” I asked. “Print on the thumb break, maybe?”
“I have it bagged. I took it from the body before Ed loaded him up. Speaking of Ed, I need to get with him and get something set up to get all the clothing from these guys.”
“Sure,” I said. “What about the keys we found dangling from the door lock?”
“They’re here and have to be processed.”
“Were you able to get a shoe print from the door that looked like it was booted in?” I asked.
“Toe, or top portion, of what looked to be a boot. Guessing a size fourteen or fifteen. Again, it needs to be gone over.”
“So we’re looking for at least one guy who is fairly large,” I said.
“Safe bet,” Rick said, not taking his eyes from what he was doing—scanning and entering fingerprints into the computer system.
“When does your help come in?” I asked.
“I talked to Rob. He should be here in a couple minutes. I called the rest of my team in too. Kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation here. We haven’t been this slammed with things to process in such a short period since I can remember. We’re still trying to sort through everything from the Treadwell house. I should have everyone here and be able to delegate jobs to them within the hour.” Rick continued focusing on his task at hand, not looking at me more than once or twice since I’d been in the lab, talking with him. I imagined that he wanted me out of his hair so he could get after his work, which I knew was mounting.
“Okay. I’ll leave you to it, Rick. Send the information up to me as you get it.”
“Will do, Kane.”
I left Rick in the lab and took the stairs up to the third floor. I walked to my office, unlocked the door, turned on the lights, and grabbed a seat at my desk. I tossed my keys into the rolling drawer of
my desk and glanced over at the wall clock—a couple of minutes past seven thirty. Hank and the rest of my day team wouldn’t be in for another hour at the earliest. I leaned back and brought my coffee to my lips—a small sip, then empty. After a yawn, I pushed myself up from my chair. A coffee refill was in order.
I walked the hall to the lunchroom and passed a couple of patrol officers along the way.
“Kane,” I heard.
I turned just before entering the lunchroom and stopped. Reynolds took a couple of quick steps toward me down the hall.
“Did you guys just get back?” I asked.
“A couple minutes ago. The employee that popped in might be able to help us out on our IDs.”
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me about the guy.”
“He was out for a morning run. Saw all the cars and coroner’s van and stopped in. He said that he worked the front door at the club and was there until close the night prior.”
“So he conveniently just missed the robbery and gunfire? And then was awake a few hours after closing the club to go for a jog?” I shook my empty coffee cup and waved for Reynolds to follow me into the lunchroom.
He did, and I headed for the coffee machine.
“He didn’t really strike me as the involved type, and I ran his sheet on scene. He was clean,” Reynolds said. “I guess his wife leaves for work early, so that was the reason for him being awake.”
“Right,” I said. I pulled the coffee carafe from the burner and filled my cup. “Okay. So what did he say?” I asked.
“As far as the club, he said it was a normal night. He left right around three. Nothing out of the ordinary. I told him that we’d like him to come in today to leave an official statement. I kind of figured you’d like to handle that and ask him your own questions as well. As far as right now, he agreed to head over to the medical examiner’s to give us some positive IDs on the bodies.”
“Do we know if he actually went to do that?” I asked.
“I introduced him to Ed before he drove out. He seemed like he was basically following Ed over there.”
“Okay.” I popped open a couple of creamers and poured them in my coffee before tossing the empty packages into the trash. “You got this guy’s name, number, and all that?”
“It’s at my desk. Aaron something.”
I jerked my chin at the lunchroom door. “Bring it to my office, and you and Donner can take off.”
“Sure,” Reynolds said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Reynolds dropped the employee’s information to me in my office. I sent him and Donner home. Just as I was about to try to give the guy a call, my phone rang at my desk. I leaned forward and scooped it up. “Kane,” I said.
“Hey, it’s Rick. We have print matches on two of your four.”
“Give me one second.” I pulled my notepad from my inner suit jacket pocket and flipped to the page where I’d written down the names of the registered owners of the cars in the club’s parking lot. “Ready,” I said.
“Abel Solomon and a Curtis Elliot,” Rick said. “I already forwarded the names over to Ed at the medical examiner’s office so he can contact the next of kin.”
The Solomon name, I had written down as the owner of the Maserati. The Curtis Elliot name was nowhere on my sheet. He had to have been the other man in the suit, dead by the desk.
“So were there just no matches on the other two, or are you still looking?”
“No matches,” Rick said. “They both must have done well to keep their noses clean.”
“Got it. Thanks. Anything else?”
“Not right now. My guys are just starting to show up, so maybe I’ll have more for you in a little bit.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the extra effort on this. I know you guys have a pile of stuff to sort through.”
“That’s the job. Sometimes there’s nothing to do and we stare at the wall all day, and sometimes we get this. No worries, Kane. I’ll get whatever we get to you as soon as we can.”
“Appreciate it,” I said.
“Yup.” Rick clicked off from the call.
I woke up my computer and punched in the first confirmed name, Abel Solomon, to search for a rap sheet. His sheet came up a moment later. He was a six-foot-one, one-hundred-eighty-five pound balding white male in his fifties. His address showed a nice area of town. The only thing he’d been arrested for was drunk driving and possession charges about ten years prior. I clicked Print and pulled up the next name, Curtis Elliot. My eyes went from the top of the computer screen down. Curtis Elliot was a forty-one-year-old white male with a square head and black goatee. His DL showed that he was six foot three and two hundred and forty-five pounds. I looked at his priors, which were many—assault charges, battery, drugs, and more drugs. His address showed the same as Solomon’s.
“That’s interesting,” I said, still staring at the computer monitor.
I entered one of the yet-to-be-confirmed names that I’d written down in my notepad, Terry Brandt—we figured him to be the security guard with the snapped neck that we’d found by the dumpsters. Aside from his driver’s license listing his photo, height, weight, and address, the only other thing I learned was that the man had no priors. I tried the last name, the other security guard found dead in the office, who we assumed to be Steven Mitte. Like Terry Brandt’s, his sheet showed no criminal charges or convictions. I leaned back in my chair and rubbed at my eyes. Unless Rick called with something amazing to tell me, my next week plus was going to be spent knee deep in the waters of working the phones, calling friends and families of the victims, setting appointments, and making house calls—none of which I figured would get me much closer in the investigation of who was actually behind the crimes. I pulled my coffee to my lips for a drink, set it back down, and reached for my desk phone. I punched in Hank’s number and held the receiver against my ear with my shoulder.
“Rawlings,” he answered.
“Hey, it’s Kane. When do you think you’ll be in?”
“Probably in about forty-five minutes or so. I just have to hop in the shower, and then I’m off. Karen is just heading out now, so I can finally get in there.”
“Don’t you have like three bathrooms, two having showers?” I asked.
“Yeah, but Karen uses both to get ready for some reason. Who knows. I don’t ask.”
“Maybe ask her to just use one,” I said.
“I tried that a couple of years back. I seem to remember her response being a long-winded version of no and that I should just shower before bed instead. Anyway, is something going on?”
“We had another four overnight. I was up at three something and on scene a bit after that. Been up since.”
“Another four?” Hank asked.
“Yeah, four at a gentleman’s club in Ybor City. Robbery and homicide, it appears.”
“Any suspects?” Hank asked.
“None at the moment, but there are some similarities to the killings at the cigar factory. Either way, we have IDs and are going to have to start working it.” I glanced to my right, toward the sound of knuckles knocking on my open office door. Detective King stood in my doorway. I waved him in and pointed at a guest chair.
“All right,” Hank said. “I’ll let you fill me in on the rest when I get there. I’ll be quick.”
“Sure,” I said. “See you in a few.” I hung up and focused my attention on Detective King. “What’s up?” I asked.
“I just heard you had another dead drug dealer overnight.”
“Huh? Who?” I asked.
“Abel Solomon.”
“So you’re familiar with the guy?” I asked.
“Local gentleman’s club owner and drug pusher, or upstanding businessman who has no idea that cocaine flows from his clubs like water.”
“So this guy was the owner? Interesting layer to add to our pile,” I said.
“That it would be.”
“What do you know about the guy? Other than just drug dealer and own
er of the Emerald Palace.”
“Technically, he’s not the drug dealer but the supplier to his employees, who were the dealers. He’s been around for a while. Pretty neatly run operation. I think he actually owned three or four of those kinds of establishments that were all basically doing the same thing. I know one got raided a couple of years back. They found seven or eight employees holding cocaine that was packaged for sale.”
“But nothing on him?” I asked.
“Nope. What was the scene like? I was actually going to take a drive out there and have a look, but I imagine most everything has been gone through by now.”
“Robbery,” I said. “We had this Solomon and another two shot inside of the club and another, who looked like another security guard, killed outside in the parking lot.”
“You have the names of the others that were killed?” King asked. “I just heard Solomon’s name from the night shift.”
I read him off the names that we had.
“Don’t know the two named Brandt or Mitte, but Curtis Elliot, I’m familiar with. Busted him a few years back.”
“He shows the same address as this Solomon guy,” I said.
“Yeah, most of his fall guys, or managers, or bodyguards, or whatever you want to call them, lived in-house.”
“Expand on that,” I said.
“Solomon had a couple of muscle-bound goons who would protect him. Not just in the physical sense, either. Their job also included taking the fall for him if any charges ever came up. They’d work in his clubs as managers, and if any heat ever came, they’d take the rap. I imagine they were compensated well. We tried going after Solomon a couple of times over the years, but it was pointless. As far as everything on the surface, he was a businessman that had no idea what was going on, meaning the selling of drugs, inside of his businesses. The managers would say that it was all them acting on their own accord and do their time. Then another guy would take up the position. Pretty damn smart if you think about it.”
“Until it involves being killed during a robbery,” I said.
“All jobs have their downsides.”