by EH Reinhard
She went to the nightstand, knelt, and removed the drawer. Hana dug her hand into the void beneath the drawer and came back with a handful of cash. She held it out toward David.
“What the hell is that?” David asked. He stared at the money, which appeared to be a few hundred dollars in miscellaneous denominations.
“It’s eight hundred and some. It’s all we have saved,” Hana said.
“Where’s the real money? Tim took in fifty grand this week.”
“Fifty grand?” she asked. “Are we talking about the same Tim?”
David stared at Hana kneeling before him. He snatched the money and jammed it into his pocket. “Get up.” He grabbed her by the shoulder of her shirt and pulled her to her feet. “Get your ass back out to the living room.”
David jammed the barrel of his gun into her spine. As they walked from the room, David stared at the large, seemingly new bedroom television hanging on the wall. He followed her down the hall. “Sit on that chair,” David said.
Hana did as instructed, sitting on a lounge chair directly across from the couch.
David crouched before her. His eyes went left to a large television, bolted to the center of the wall, with an expensive-looking sound bar mounted beneath it. David’s eyes came to rest on Hana—she looked past him toward the kitchen.
“Something interesting in there?” David asked. He looked back over his shoulder. “In the kitchen? Is that where the money is?”
She shook her head. “There isn’t any money. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What has you so intrigued in there? You keep looking at the kitchen.”
She said nothing.
“This is the last time I’m going to ask you before we turn up the volume a little bit.”
“What does that mean?”
“Last chance.”
She remained tight-lipped.
“Okay,” David said. “Stand up.”
“For what?” she asked.
“Walk to the kitchen.”
Hana didn’t move from the chair.
“It’s going to be a lot harder for you to stand with a bullet in your chest.”
She stood.
“Walk,” David said.
He followed her to the kitchen.
Hana stood in the middle of the kitchen among the broken dishes.
David scanned the countertops. His eyes came to rest on a butcher block near the sink. He said nothing but jammed his gun back into his waistline. David grabbed Hana by her arm and pulled her toward the butcher block and the sink.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
David yanked a cleaver from the block with his right hand. With his left, he held her hand flat on the countertop. David brought the blade of the cleaver to her fingertips. Hana tried pulling her arm back. David clenched her arm between his bicep and chest and applied more pressure to keep her hand flat. “We’re done playing games. You’re going to tell me right now.”
Hana screamed for help.
David gave her a quick elbow in the face, which silenced her. He again squeezed her arm between his and his chest. “Here comes your manicure.” He centered the blade of the cleaver across the center of her hand. A single blow would take off four fingers.
“You’re the psycho. David. Your name is David, isn’t it?” she asked. “Where’s Tim?”
David slowly turned his head toward her, his face just inches from hers. “I put a bullet in your boyfriend’s head this morning.”
“It’s in the freezer!” she shouted. “The money is in the freezer. It’s in tin foil in the plastic bags.”
David had seen the foil when he ransacked the kitchen but hadn’t given it a second thought. He looked over toward the freezer. As he did, he felt Hana’s free hand going for the gun in his waistline. David lifted his arm and brought the cleaver’s blade down across her hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I sat in interview room one. Across the table from me was Aaron McCall, a two-hundred- plus-pound mid-twenties man. He wore a tight-fitting T-shirt and shorts. An MP3 player was tucked into a small pocket on his left sleeve—his attire fit with his story of being out for a jog that morning. He ran his hands through his couple-of-inches-long hair and let them fall to the table with a thud. I’d pulled his sheet before he arrived at the station. He was clean. We ran through his evening twice, front to back. During the time of the robbery, he claimed to have been at home with his wife. He gave me her number, and I planned to call her to confirm. He’d filled out a statement. Rick had come and taken a GSR swab—the guy didn’t flinch and complied without a peep. Rick let me know that the swab was negative. Mr. McCall also furnished me with the name of the female manager who handled the scheduling for the club, a Susan Edwards. He said we could contact her and get in touch with the employees who had been working the night of the shooting. McCall gave me no reason on the surface to believe that he was involved in the robbery and homicide, yet I wanted to be sure, and he might be able to give me some additional information that could help.
“We have your statement from the events of last night, Aaron. If you don’t mind, I’m just going to rattle off a couple more questions that you might be able to help me out with. After that, we’ll let you get on your way.”
He nodded. “Yeah, sure. Whatever I can do to help.”
“All right. How long have you worked at the Emerald Palace?”
“Just about three months. I got laid off from my construction job and needed something to keep the bill collectors off our backs. I have a buddy that works the door at a different club. Figured I’d try it out until I have work again. Plus, the club is only a mile or so from my house, so it’s convenient.”
“Sure. And you were out for a run this morning when you saw the police cars at the club?”
“That’s correct.”
“Normal jogging route?” I asked.
“It is. I do a big loop that passes the club. Ends up being around four miles on the nose.”
“And why were you up so early after getting in so late?”
“I sleep during the day while my wife is at work. I just stay up after I get home from the club. Usually go to bed around ten in the morning or so, get up around five at night, just before the wife gets home. That way, I have mornings with her and evenings before I head off for work.”
“Sure,” I said. “Did you see anyone suspicious in the club prior to closing? Maybe someone that was lingering about?”
Aaron shook his head. “No one comes to mind.”
“What can you tell me about the sale of drugs at the club?”
He went silent for a moment. He looked at the mirror on the wall behind me.
“So you were aware?” I asked.
“Um.” He scratched at his arm. “Look, man, I worked the door. I had no part in any of that. I’m not going to lie and say that I didn’t know that was going on with some of the people there, but I wasn’t a part of any of that.”
“What can you tell me about the owner, Abel Solomon, or the club manager, Curtis Elliot?”
“Probably not anything that’s going to help you. Mr. Solomon had his own little group of people at the club that were in the in crowd. People that would hang out with him in the VIP lounge and in his back office. I wasn’t part of that crowd. I took this job just to pay the bills until I found something better. I went to work, did my job, and went home. That’s it.”
“Sure,” I said. “What about Curtis Elliot? What can you tell me about him?”
“He was part of that inner circle. I don’t think he and I spoke more than three words to each other in the six months that I worked there.”
I felt my cell phone vibrating against my leg. I pulled it out and looked at the screen. I didn’t recognize the number.
“Give me one second, Aaron. This might be related to our investigation,” I said.
He nodded.
I left the interview room for the hall and clicked Talk. “Lieutenant Ka
ne,” I answered.
“Lieutenant, this is Peter Sandford, the Hernando County coroner.”
“Yes. Did we get something?” I asked.
“You can thank our DB for wearing some form of Kevlar gloves, which preserved a couple of prints for us. Are you ready for your ID?” he asked.
“One second,” I said. I walked into the observation room next to the interview room that I had Aaron McCall seated in.
Hank sat at the desk with the monitoring equipment. He’d been watching the interview that I was conducting. He glanced up at me as I walked in. “Got something?” he asked.
I motioned for Hank to give me a second, sat next to him at the desk, and took out my notepad and pen. I held my phone to my ear with my left hand and got ready to write. “Ready,” I said.
“Your DB is Tim Morgan,” Sandford said. “Extensive priors. Ready for the COD?”
I wrote down the name. “I am,” I said.
“I found what looks to be a small caliber GSW to the head. I haven’t started on the autopsy yet or retrieved the bullet that I believe to still be in him. That should be concluded within a few hours.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Can you give me a call as soon as we have that information?”
“Sure. Like I said, it will be later in the day. As far as trying to make contact with next of kin, did you want me to handle that or did you plan to? Seeing as he was in our state’s facilities, next of kin shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Why don’t we hold off on that for a second, if possible? I’d like to look into this a bit more on my end. Just a couple of hours.”
“We can do that,” Sandford said.
“Okay. If this ends up being connected to our investigation, I’ll put my forensics unit and medical examiner in touch with you.”
“No problem.”
“Thanks for the call,” I said and clicked off.
“ID on our burned DB?” Hank asked.
“Yeah, pull him up.” I tilted my notepad so Hank could read the name.
Hank woke up the computer in front of him and punched the guy’s name into the system. I saw the guy come up on the monitor right away and leaned in so I could read the screen. Tim Morgan was a five-foot-ten, one-hundred-and-ninety-two-pound parolee with dark hair and a dark goatee. The man had a single vehicle, a 2005 Volkswagen registered to him—color black. His home address came up as a house in Tampa—not too far from the scene at the gentleman’s club and surprisingly in our jurisdiction. Hank scrolled down the page to the man’s charges, which showed multiple burglary and robbery convictions. He’d been released just a few months prior.
“Print that,” I said.
Hank did, and the printer in the corner of the room shot out a couple of pages. I scooped up the paper that had a copy of his driver’s license. “Let me see if Mr. McCall recognizes this guy. Do me a favor. Call Jones and get him on contacting the female manager from the club. Have him get the employees’ names and get started on contacting them. Do you need her name and number?” I asked.
“I wrote it down when he said it,” Hank said. He tapped a piece of paper on the desk.
“Did you write down McCall’s wife’s number too?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“Okay. Call Jones and then call the wife. Just make sure what he told me meshes with her.”
“Sure,” Hank said.
“All right. Back in a minute.”
I walked next door to the interview room where Aaron McCall was waiting, closed the door at my back, and approached the table. “Aaron, have you seen this man in the club recently?” I laid the copy of his driver’s license down.
Aaron looked at it briefly and slid it back toward me. “He doesn’t look familiar,” he said.
I took a seat on the corner of the table. “Okay. Do you remember seeing a 1980s minivan in the lot that night? Or maybe a different night?”
“Eighties minivan? No.”
“Any recurring vehicles that come to mind? Maybe something leading up to that night that you may have seen a couple times?”
“Nothing that I can think of,” he said.
“Maybe a black Volkswagen?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Okay. Give me one second.” I left the room and walked back into the observation room. Hank had a phone to his ear. From his questioning, I could tell that he had McCall’s wife on the line.
Hank clicked off a minute or two later. “His story checks out,” he said.
“All right,” I said. “Did you talk to Jones?”
“I gave him the number to call and the woman’s name.”
“Okay. Do you want to kick this guy loose for me? I’m going to pop in by the captain and see what he thinks we should do about our Brooksville DB.”
“Sure,” Hank said. He pushed himself up from the chair.
I made for Captain Bostok’s office.
I found the captain seated at his desk. I gave his open door a knock and walked in.
“Done with your interview?” Bostok asked. He didn’t take his eyes from his computer.
“Done. Hank is kicking him loose as we speak.”
“And what are we thinking on the guy?”
“I don’t believe he was involved, and his alibi checked out. We have something else, though.”
The captain leaned back in his chair and jerked his chin at his guest chairs. I took a seat and slid over to him the sheets that I pulled on our burned DB.
“So this is our burned DB from Brooksville. Local coroner up there says he has a small caliber GSW in his head. This could be our guy from the club.”
Bostok pushed his glasses up his nose and took the top sheet in hand. “Local, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah. Priors for burglary and robbery as well. Parolee.”
“Interesting,” Bostok said. “Know who his parole officer is? Or was, I should say.”
“I’d have to call the office. His parole officer should have his next of kin listed as well. I asked the coroner up in Hernando County to hold off on contacting anyone until we know a bit more.”
“What are your thoughts?”
“I figure I’d make contact with his parole officer, see what they know, and then move forward.”
“Search warrant on the local house?” Bostok asked.
“I’d imagine so.”
“All right. Let me get the wheels turning on that. Why don’t you call the DOC and see who was assigned to this guy. Pop back in after you do that.”
“Will do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
After being transferred three times and sitting on hold for the better part of ten minutes, I waited on the line for a Ken Hagen—the officer assigned to our Tim Morgan. He picked up.
“Officer Hagen,” he said.
“Lieutenant Carl Kane, Tampa Homicide,” I said.
“Lieutenant. What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for some information on a parolee assigned to your supervision.”
“Sure. The name?” he asked.
“Tim Morgan. I have a home address here if you need it.”
“Nope. I’m familiar with Mr. Morgan. What is this in regards to?”
“He’s deceased,” I said.
A pause came from his end of the phone. “Deceased, huh? I don’t imagine natural causes, judging by your department.”
“Correct,” I said.
“What was the cause of death?”
“Right now we believe it to be a GSW. His body was burned as well. Hernando County Coroner has the body and is just beginning the autopsy. We have an active investigation that may tie in with his death.”
“All right. Well, what can I help with?”
“I wanted to see what you could tell me about the guy, and I’ll need next of kin information and all of that.”
“Sure. Let me pull his file. Give me just a second here.”
“No problem,” I said.
He came back on a moment later. “Okay. He
’s been under supervision since November thirteenth. Looks like all of his scheduled appointments were completed. We have his employment listed simply as handyman. Normally we’d like to see him employed by a third party, but he had an established handyman business prior to incarceration. We have a next of kin listed as a Catherine Price, mother. She resides in Kissimmee. Father deceased. No children. I have an address and phone number for the mother here.”
“Let me get that,” I said.
He gave both to me.
“The home address listed for him. Was he living alone?” I asked.
“No. He resides with his girlfriend. Her name is Hana Wheeler. Age thirty-one. Clean record.”
“Is she the only other person residing at his current address?” I asked.
“My records don’t list anyone else.”
Officer Hagen was reading straight from the file. I wanted to know about Tim Morgan, the man, and what could have led to his part in the crime and death.
“Did you do the visits personally?” I asked.
“I did. One home visit when he moved in with the female. Prior to that at his apartment. The rest of the visits, he came to our office.”
“What can you tell me about him, personally? Any indications that he may have been back in the business of what got him sent up?”
“I wouldn’t say that he gave me any indications of that. I would have noted it. As far as our visits, it was standard fare. I ran through the mandatory questions. If he was using drugs, had any police contact, asked about his work, things like that.”
“Were you familiar with any of his friends? Know who he was spending time with outside of the girlfriend?”
“Work and at home with the girlfriend. He never spoke of social activities.”
“What about past accomplices for the things he was charged with? Any contact there?”
“I have a list here. Basically people that he was advised to not have contact with. I can email that over to you if you’d like. As far as if he actually was talking to these people, I couldn’t say for certain, but he claimed that he left that behind and had maintained zero contact.”
I was quiet for a moment. It seemed as if Officer Hagen was basically a by-the-book kind of guy when it came to his parolees. I wasn’t going to get much other than whatever he had in the file in front of him.