Dog One

by Jim Riley

  “Well, let’s don’t dance around it; is Mrs. Gittleson a suspect in the death of her husband?”

  “Everyone’s a suspect until I clear them.”

  “Is she your main suspect?”

  “I don’t have a main suspect. I’m just trying to eliminate people at this point.” He wasn’t going to buy it, I knew, but it’s all it had.

  “Why would you even consider her a suspect?” With Tish, I could chalk that question up to simply not knowing any better. This guy was an attorney; he knew why I’d suspect her. He just wanted to know if I had anything on his client besides what she’d told us.

  “Well, I obviously can’t get into my case with you. I would just like to speak to your client to clear up a few matters.”

  “Such as?”

  “What time she left. Those kinds of things.” He didn’t believe me.

  “I’ll tell you what. You send me a list of written questions and I’ll see which ones I will let her answer.”

  Shit. Smart move and not unexpected.

  I got the email address and told him I would send the questions to him. I asked him to please have her do it as soon as possible and reminded him that if his client didn’t have anything to do with it, it really did behoove her to cooperate so we could find the murderer.

  The case was beginning to slow down. We were waiting on bank, phone, and credit card records, which could take up to thirty days. Even with court orders they could drag their feet. In my experience, the length of time corporations took to comply with court orders corresponded directly to how badly I needed the records. The more I needed them, the longer they took. I went home that night somewhat bummed.

  The fourth day into the case may as well have been a holiday. Nothing happened worth writing in the case journal. It had definitely slowed down to the point that I couldn’t justify keeping Randy working on it. He was a little disappointed since, like Kelly, it was his first homicide case and he had wanted to be in on the thing right up to the arrest.

  Kelly checked in with me that morning but was still running into dead ends and leaving voice messages on the rest of her witness list.

  The fifth day wasn’t much better than the fourth for leads and clues, with the exception that the toxicology came back on the victim. There were no drugs on board, but there, the victim did have a B.A.C. of .019. A .08 will get you a DUI in most states and a normal person has around a .003 at any given time. I was no expert in this area but based on his height and weight and the fact that he died around eleven in the morning, I was guessing he’d had a few the night before. So what happened to the glass? Maybe he did clean it? No. I could see him drinking out of the bottle before I could see him washing his glass. Maybe he’d gone out.

  I thought about the Viagra and wondered if the tox screen that the lab ran would have checked for it. I called them and found out it wouldn’t, so I asked them to rerun it and check. They told me it would be the full cost of another run, and I told them not to worry about the money. My boss was rich.

  I filled Kelly in over the phone. We had stopped having face-to-face debriefings unless it was just convenient. She complained that she didn’t have anything to do on the case, and I told her she would regret saying that as soon as we started getting all the records in. Two days later that started happening. The phone records showed up first. I guess they don’t feel like their information is quite as privileged as financial institutions do. I took them over to Kelly and showed her what she needed to do. Basically, determine who each number belonged to, then we would see what the calls were about. We were obviously most interested in the ones that he made on the day before and the day of his death. She seemed excited to get the job. I was glad.

  It had been two-and-a-half weeks since Joe Shit the ragman, a.k.a. Cinderella, had brought about the first officer-involved shooting in Logan County in twenty-three years. He and I had been the unfortunate ones to have that distinguished honor, with me obviously having gotten the better end of the deal. Brett and I had only talked briefly, and he had told me what a good job I had done. I had not reciprocated. It wasn’t out of anger or malice, but it wouldn’t have been true and I didn’t want to give him the impression it had been. Truth is, the perp was crazy and probably would have forced us to kill him no matter what plan we would have come up with. The problem was, we would never know. The way it went down almost ensured a bad outcome. That’s a heavy load to carry, but that was on Brett. That’s why he got paid the big bucks and got the title of Team Leader. Brett looked like he hadn’t slept the entire time since the event, and I guessed he wasn’t dealing with it very well.

  “Hey, Dell.” He knocked on the frame of my door and stepped in.

  “Hey, Brett. How you doing?”

  He sat down and blew a long sigh. He still hadn’t looked at me.

  “Not so good.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Yeah.” He finally looked up. “You can take back over the team.”

  Brett and I talked it out. I never went as far as to tell him he’d done the right thing that night, and he never tried to get me to. We both knew he hadn’t and it didn’t have to be rehashed. He realized that being good at practicing wasn’t nearly the same as being good under fire. He was struggling over quitting the team altogether, and I told him the only way I’d come back was if he’d stay on as my Assistant Team Leader. He took it as a compliment, but it took me quite a bit of talking to get him to agree. He really was a stand-up guy and a good operator. He just hadn’t quite been ready for what happened. I did an integrity check and questioned my motives about what I had and hadn’t said to Brett. I wondered if deep down I had wanted the position back and had somehow put some blame on him that he didn’t deserve. No, I was right.

  In the middle of my conversation with Brett, my phone had rung. I decided to let the voicemail get it. After Brett left I checked my messages, and it was Coop wanting to know about me coming to the JTTF meeting. I had forgotten to call him. I checked the clock and saw that I had about an hour before the meeting and it was about an hour’s drive away. I could make it if I left then. I started to get up and go since Coop had gone to some trouble to get me on the task force to begin with, but decided I’d stay and work on the case. There was nothing really pressing at the moment, but I would have felt guilty not being at my desk and doing something. I called him back, but he had already left for the meeting.

  On a case that’s hit a wall, a new clue, or an old one with new breath breathed into it, is a godsend. The eighth day had been just that and more. It had begun with a cell phone call from Bell in Lubbock. He had been up since the wee hours of the morning sitting on the boyfriend’s place. Actually, it was a friend’s place and the young man was supposed to be couch-surfing there. Bell had gotten the information from an informant who had decided to trade if for a pass on a Possession of Marijuana charge. Smart move. Bell had found the car right where it was supposed to be, in front of a four-plex. He didn’t know which one it was, but he could see two of the front doors and the car. He was set. He’d been there for several hours when he called me.

  “Hey, Dell, it’s Bell.”

  I snickered.

  “Yeah, my wife thought it was funny, too. Our names, I mean.”

  “Mine too.”

  “How long you married?”

  “Twenty-three years. You?”

  “Four years. This time. Twenty-three years, that’s a long time.”

  “Yeah, my wife’s a saint. Yours?”

  “Mine’s a bitch. Hey, anyway, you owe me.” He obviously didn’t like talking about what sounded like his soon-to-be next ex.

  “I’ll send flowers.”

  “I want a hot tub in the condo you get for me when I come to testify.”

  “Consider it done.”

  After he brought me up to date on his surveillance, he told me he had his partner doing some background, trying to figure out a way to get into the apartment. He promised to give me an update later. He was going balls
to the wall considering he didn’t even have any local interest in the case. I loved working with other cops that were professional. Sometimes when you call another agency somewhere and ask for assistance, they treat you like crazy Cousin Eddie who always comes begging. Sometimes though, like with Bell, they take the case as if it were their own. Like they have some kind of vested interest in solving it. I’d have done the same for him, too. I liked Bell. And he probably pissed his bosses off, too. I could just tell.

  The toxicology lab called me about an hour after Bell had. They had found Viagra in the vic’s system. Judging by the levels, he had taken it after 7:00 p.m. the night before. Four hours after his wife had left for the airport. Maybe it wasn’t her that gave him the herpes?

  Bell called me back and he was in his office. Seems he did have a knack for pissing off the bosses. When his sergeant found out he had already put in around twenty hours on my case, he went through the roof. He told Bell if he didn’t have enough cases of his own, he could get assigned some more. His involvement in my case had ceased at that point. At least, his involvement that his sergeant would know about. He had managed to find out the registered owner of the car was not going to be the boyfriend, unless he was very good at keeping in shape. The registered owner had been in his late eighties. I say had been because he had died two months earlier, so he wasn’t going to be any help with the ID, it looked like. The car had apparently been sold but had not been re-registered. Bell had found all that out after he got back to the office and was going to have a patrol officer do a pretext stop on the car. In the process he could ID the driver. Voila.

  I called the CBI lab and asked to speak to a technician in serology. After introducing myself, I told them we had brought some bed linen in that had been collected as evidence in a murder investigation. I knew from past experience that the state lab was overloaded, overworked, and underpaid. It still didn’t stop me from asking them, though, if they’d gotten to my evidence yet. Surprisingly, and happily, I found out they had. And yes, there were semen and vaginal discharge stains on the bottom sheet, as well as several pubic hairs. We had provided them with samples from our victim, and they had already eliminated his pubes from the ones found. It left three. Two were brown. Mrs. Gittleson was a brunette. One was blond. A real blond. Bingo. Or crap. It’s all in how you looked at it.

  I called Kelly and told her to come to the office when she could get away to go over what we had. When she got there, I grabbed Randy up as well. It wasn’t hard since he was in the office with me. We went to the conference room so we wouldn’t be bunched up in my cubicle.

  “Okay. Our vic is killed at 11:35 on the slopes in front of God and everybody. We have a smorgasbord of fifteen wits. Kelly has re-interviewed twelve thus far and has found out that the perp had long, blond hair and a beard. From statements we have it being a deliberate act and not an accident. Based on the scene we can jump to the conclusion that he was not only bumped on purpose, but targeted, since the perp had to ski such a long distance to get to him. We have a clothing description of the perp that matches half the people on the slope. The perp continues on downhill and our vic dies when his neck wraps around a tree. The doer disappears into the crowd, never to be seen again. Randy, have we checked the surveillance tape from the ski area yet?”

  “Yeah. I watched it two times the other night at home. Nada.”

  “Okay. From the house we collected sheets and bedding. The bottom sheet has semen and vaginal discharge, as well as three unidentified pubic hairs.”

  “Couldn’t some of them be from the victim?” It was Kelly.

  “No, those were eliminated already. Two are brown and one is blond. Mrs. Gittleson is a brunette and the brown ones may be hers, but we’ll have to get samples to compare.”

  “Anyone else using the bed?” Randy asked it and it was a good question.

  “Don’t know. Maybe I can get Mrs. Gittleson to give us a hint. By the way, she has lawyered up, in case I hadn’t told you.” I found out that I had told Kelly, but Randy hadn’t known.

  “So we have a killer with blond hair, a blond boyfriend, and a blond pubic hair. Coincidence?” It was Randy again.

  “Coincidences happen, but they’re as rare as hen’s teeth.” Kelly looked at me and smiled when she said it. I smiled back. She was learning.

  “Correct. May turn out to be nothing but definitely something to keep in the back of our minds. In the meantime, Detective Bell got a small lead on the boyfriend and is trying to get us an ID. His car is still registered to the last owner, who is unavailable for interview. I’m writing out some questions for Mrs. Gittleson so her attorney can look them over. If we’re lucky he’ll let her answer one or two. Kelly, you’re still going over the phone records, right?”

  “Yep. Nothing jumping out at me so far. Several local calls but to places like restaurants, the ski area, back to the house. I’m following up with the places he called, though.”

  “How about long-distance calls while he was up here?”

  “At least one a day to his office. Sometimes three or four. And a few to numbers I haven’t been able to figure out yet.”

  “More work calls, probably.” I said it more to myself than to either one of them. It struck a chord but I didn’t know why.

  I had been working for almost ten days straight and I needed a day off. I had made sure Kelly had taken at least one, and Randy was already back on his normal schedule. I told Randy to get any documents, such as bank records or credit card records, over to Kelly if they came in the next day. Then I told them to leave me alone unless something broke in the case. Tish was coming up on her day off, and I really needed some rest and time with her.

  Tish was halfway through cooking dinner when I came home. I told her to freeze it and I took her out to D’Angelo’s. It’s one of the finer Italian restaurants, or any restaurant for that matter, in Eaglenest. I knew it was going to cost me about a day’s wages, but that was okay. It had been a long time since we had treated ourselves to a night on the town. The linguini was superb, as was the veal, but the company and just being away from work were what made it worth it all. I very much still enjoyed dating my wife.

  She asked me about the case and I told her some of it. I thought about what Bell had said about his wife, and it made me appreciate Tish even more. I was still as much in love with her that night as I had been the day we got married. We sat at the table and talked for over two hours. About this and about that, but not anymore about the case. I needed a break and she sensed it. Toward the end of the conversation, we got to talking about working in the emergency services industry. Me as a cop and her as an RN, and we were comparing pros and cons. We both get to help people, but she got to be a hero, where I always had to be the bad guy.

  “Yeah, but you get to know all their family secrets.” Tish was always nosy.

  “Yeah, but you get to see them with their clothes off.”

  “You get to put them in handcuffs and take them to jail.”

  “And you get to poke them in the ass with a pointed object.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I do have the better job.”

  “Yeah, but if they get too out of hand I get to shoot them.”

  “Yeah, well, I get to shove a catheter tube up their ying-yang.”

  I cringed and a chill shot up the back of my neck. “You win. I promise to never shoot you if you promise to never put a tube or anything else up my ying-yang.”

  “Deal. Let’s go home and I’ll let you do something else with your ying-yang.”

  I figured the meal was going to come to around $165. I left four fifties on the table and we headed for the house. I knew I didn’t have to worry about stopping to buy condoms, but I was sure hoping I had at least one Viagra left in the cabinet.

  After a day off, a great dinner, and outstanding sex—I had found one last Viagra—I was ready to get some work done. Unfortunately, there was no work to get done. If I thought the case had hit a wall last week, it was nothing compared
to now. The case had stalled. I called about the bank and credit card records, only to be given the runaround. By the end of the conversation, I was thoroughly convinced that I would in fact get the records. Someday.

  Bell was having a hard time finding time to do anything on my case. I surely didn’t hold it against him. That’s just how it was. I’d have to write a real nice letter to his department thanking them for allowing him to help me and telling them what an outstanding cop they had working for them. Kelly had finished talking to all the witnesses and nothing new had come up. The lab was working on DNA, which would take weeks, and I didn’t really have anything to compare it to yet anyway. I still needed to get a DNA sample from Mrs. Gittleson, but I was coming up short on the affidavit for my court order. At least, that is what that worthless piece of shit Deputy District Attorney was telling me. He was making it sound like I needed to prove she killed her husband before he would sign off on the affidavit. I pointed out to him that I in fact needed the information to prove she did it. He didn’t see the irony. Since he had to sign off on the thing before a judge would, I was stuck. So was the case.

  I went back over everything I had and still couldn’t come up with a lot left to do until something came in. Information from Bell, bank records, something.

  I was getting frustrated. Coop’s phone call to me was a nice distraction. I filled him in on the case and he suggested I take a road trip to Lubbock. I had been toying with the idea and hearing him say it pushed it higher to the top of my list. He also filled me in on the meeting I had missed, well, after blistering me for not showing up.

  “How are you ever going to get to be an expert like me if you don’t show up for the trainings and meetings?”

  “I’m already an expert. Ask CNN.”

  “You wouldn’t know a terrorist from a tulip if bin Laden’s ghost walked up and handed it to you.”

  “Bite me.”

  Now that the sarcasm and banter was out of the way, he got serious. “Not much happening in our neck of the woods. I briefed the group on a Sunni Muslim that’s living on the western slope and has indirect ties to al-Qaeda. Mainly a family member of a money-moving thing. I’ll get the file to you. It’s classified so don’t put it out, just let me know if his name comes up.”