by Mike Markel
He nodded, not fully convinced. I was okay with that.
We drove back to headquarters and went to brief Chief Murtaugh. We caught up with him in the incident room, where he had just finished up a meeting with a group of uniforms.
I filled him on everything since we had last talked, including Cory the Dealer getting the crap kicked out of him, our interview with Max the Roommate, and now the murder of Kendra the Courier.
“So what’s your latest read on the case? I assume this is all related, right?” the chief said.
I turned to Ryan to let him respond. He nodded for me to answer. “It could be a coincidence: Kendra made her way to the skate park, with the cash in her pants, ready to score, and she got jumped. But we think it’s related to Lake’s murder: She was the loose end that needed to be tied up.”
“And the drug dealer getting beat up? How does that fit in?”
“Well, we’re not sure it does. Cory isn’t telling us, which makes us think he’s afraid of fingering the killer.”
“You think someone was warning him to stay in line?”
I looked at Ryan. He nodded. “That’s what we think now.”
“If Kendra was a loose end that needed to be tied up, why didn’t they do the same to Cory?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe she was expendable because she’s untrustworthy—she was too easy to enlist to carry the drugs. Since she’s a junkie, they knew she’d do or say anything if someone offered her drugs or cash.”
The chief said, “You’re saying Cory is more trustworthy, which I get. But that would also imply they want to keep him alive because of what he has on them—or what he offers them.”
“We need to keep working on that.”
“If he’s a dealer, that might be the obvious answer.”
“Ryan says some programs have been known to use drugs and girls to entertain recruits on campus,” I said.
“I haven’t heard that about CMSU, but I know it happens at other schools,” the chief said.
“Well, we canvassed the skate park. We’ll wait for Harold and Robin to see if there’s any new forensics.”
“Other than that,” the chief said, “we’ll just hope someone makes a move.”
We thanked the chief and headed back to the detectives’ bullpen. My phone rang. The screen read “Rawlings Regional Medical Center.” I answered and hit Speaker.
“Detective Seagate. This is Lauren Wintrow. I’m the shift supervisor of the nurses. We screwed up.”
“Yeah?”
“The patient you talked to yesterday: Cory McDermott? We’ve misplaced him.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s not here.”
“And you’ve looked?”
“For the last two hours. We follow a protocol for that.”
“I assume you have a protocol for not losing patients in the first place, right?”
“That’s why I said we screwed up, Detective.”
“When was the last time you know he was there?”
“Eleven fifteen last night was the last time a nurse signed his chart.”
“When would be the next time a nurse would check him?”
“Between four and five this morning.”
“What the fuck happened?”
“We don’t know what the fuck happened, Detective. Listen to me. I already said we screwed up. He walked out of here sometime between eleven fifteen last night and four or five this morning. That’s all I know. There’s another way to look at this, Detective: If it was all that important that he stay in the hospital, you might have told us and put an officer on his door.”
I paused a second. “What did you say your name is?”
“Lauren Wintrow.”
“Lauren, you’re right. I’m sorry for biting your head off. I realize you didn’t screw this up. You’re just the one who has to tell me. Thanks for letting me know. You learn anything else, call me right away, okay?”
“Yes, Detective. I’m very sorry.”
I ended the call and turned to Ryan. “Well, that kinda changes things, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does.” He flashed a big smile. “This is exciting!”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Chapter 21
“If Cory walked out of the hospital before midnight, he could’ve made it over to the skate park and run into Kendra, right?”
“Absolutely,” Ryan said.
“And he could’ve said to her, ‘Hey, Kendra, wanna make some more money?’ She would’ve been happy to see him. He stabs her, grabs the five-hundred she was gonna give him for a baggie full of heroin.”
“And then Cory never needs to worry that anyone is going to identify him,” Ryan said. “If he’s the dealer for the football and basketball teams, he lives happily ever after.”
“We gotta bring him in.”
“I’ll put out the bulletin.” Ryan picked up his desk phone and punched in the number for the sergeant’s desk to set it up.
It wasn’t two hours later when I got a call from Reception. “Seagate.”
“Detective, there’s a Cory McDermott here for you.”
“Great. Have the officer who found him bring him up.”
“We didn’t find him, Detective. He just walked in.”
“Really?” I needed a second to take that in. “Okay, have an officer escort him up to the bullpen, please. Thanks.”
Two minutes later, an officer led Cory McDermott into the bullpen. He looked even worse than he did yesterday in the hospital. His face was still swollen, but now the bruises around his eyes and his mouth were starting to turn purple and black from all the busted blood vessels. But he had put the gold loops back in his ears. He recognized me and nodded before starting to walk in my direction. With every step, he held onto a desk or a cabinet for balance. The twenty yards took him the better part of a minute.
I stayed in my chair. Ryan stayed seated, too. “Hello, Cory.” I gave him an official smile. I wasn’t interested in acting sympathetic toward him. I let him stand there. “What can we do for you?”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure,” I said. “Go ahead. Talk.”
Ryan got up and walked toward the wall. He took out his phone, presumably to cancel the bulletin we had on Cory. It took him only a few seconds. He came back to his desk and sat down.
“I don’t feel so good,” Cory McDermott said. “Is there someplace we can talk where I can sit down?”
“Yeah, let’s go to an interview room.” I stood and led him and Ryan to Interview 2. We all sat down. “What’s on your mind?”
“I want to make a deal,” he said.
“What kind of deal?”
His scowl suggested he didn’t appreciate my attitude. “I want immunity for any charges related to selling the heroin.”
“That’s interesting. Yesterday you told us you didn’t sell drugs anymore.”
“Are you gonna talk to me or not?” His eyes were bloodshot, his voice weary.
“Okay, Cory. You willing to make a statement?”
He shook his head. “After we reach a deal.”
“Doesn’t work like that. First you have to tell us your story. We’ll get it to our prosecutor. He’ll tell us whether we’ve got a deal.”
“This is off the record?”
“Off the record.” I pointed to the controls for the recording system on the wall. “We’re not recording this.”
“How do I know you’re not secretly recording it some other way?”
“Cory, listen to me. You tell us your story. We see if the prosecutor is interested. If you don’t believe me that’s how it works, walk out of here. We know you know how to do that. Get an attorney. Ask him. Or bring him with you when you come back.”
I could tell by his expression that he wanted to start talking now, even though he was scared and ready to fall down from exhaustion and pain.
“Your call, Cory.”
He sat there, tapping his fingers o
n the battered steel table.
“I got an idea for you,” I said. “Make the story hypothetical.”
“What?”
“Tell us you know a guy. Let’s say he lives in New Mexico. He sells this woman some dope. Take the story from there. You know, so you’re not saying this has anything to do with you.”
Some criminals are surprisingly ignorant about the law. He could tell us he killed Lake Williams, Kendra Cummings, and his own mother. Until he wrote it down and signed it or said it into a camera, we couldn’t do a thing with it.
He nodded. “Okay. There’s this guy lives in New Mexico—”
“What’s this guy’s name?”
Cory looked at me, confused.
“Sorry, Cory, just messin’ with you. What did this guy do, Cory? This guy in New Mexico.”
“He supplied some heroin, which someone else took to a third person, who shot up and died.”
“All right. This New Mexico guy, did he intend to kill the third person?”
“No.”
“Did he know this heroin would be used to kill the third person?”
Cory thought for a second. “He knew what would happen if someone shot up with it. I mean, if they didn’t know it was pure.”
“But did the guy know that someone was gonna shoot it up, or did he think someone was maybe gonna cut it to bring it down to normal potency?”
“This guy in New Mexico wasn’t really thinking in those terms. He was offered some money to deliver a product. That was the extent of it.”
“Okay, so what does this New Mexico guy want?”
“He’s willing to do the time for distribution, but he wants immunity from any charges related to the death of the guy who shot up.”
“What’s he willing to give the New Mexico cops?”
“He’s willing to tell them about the people he works for. The ones who ordered the heroin.”
“The ones who wanted the guy dead? The guy who shot up?”
“Yeah.”
“Does he know why they wanted the guy dead?”
“They never told him.”
“Is he willing to make a statement and appear in court, if it comes to that?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s say the cops are willing to bring this to the prosecutor. There’s another problem.”
“Which is?”
“What’s the point of getting immunity on the drug death if this guy stabbed the woman who carried the heroin to the junkie?”
Cory’s jaw fell slack. “What the fuck?”
“Not sure what you’re saying there, Cory.”
“You think it was me?”
“Yeah, the thought did cross my mind.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Well, for one thing, how do you even know Kendra’s dead?”
“I just came from the skate park. That’s all they’re talking about.”
“You walked out of the hospital late last night. You had plenty of time to see her at the skate park, where we know you often do business. You figure if you kill her right there, you’re home free.”
“Then why am I here?”
“In case we can’t find the forensics to charge you with her murder, you want to go on record as saying you didn’t do it—and make sure you get immunity on anything we might charge you with related to Lake’s murder. You killed Kendra so there’s nobody to testify against you.”
“I’m not a murderer.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “That’s more for a jury to decide.”
“So you’re saying you’re gonna charge me with killing Kendra?”
I shook my head. “I’m not saying anything about who we’re gonna charge—for Lake or for Kendra. They’re both open investigations.”
“I already told you about selling the drugs that killed Lake.”
“Well, not really. You told us a little about that story.”
“How do I prove I didn’t kill Kendra?”
“That’s a tough one, Cory. Proving you didn’t do something, I mean. Why don’t you start by telling us everything that happened since you walked out of the hospital?”
He nodded. “I talked to the nurse, the one who checked in on me around midnight. She told me my blood tests and the imaging shit they did on me turned out okay. My organs weren’t fucked up. Just the bruising.”
“So you walked?”
“That’s right. I don’t get sick days from the company, like you do. If I don’t sell product, I don’t eat. I went to the park to do some business.”
“Where you ran into Kendra.”
“No.” He said it with some force. “That didn’t happen. She wasn’t there. I did some other business, I don’t deny that. But Kendra wasn’t there.”
“How do you explain that’s where we found her body this morning?”
“I have no idea. Maybe she was there after I was. Or they killed her and dumped the body there in the middle of the night. That way, you’d find it and think she got hit during a deal. Or, better yet, you’d pin it on me, which is exactly what you’re doing right now.”
“Why should we believe you?”
“If I killed her, like you said, why would I come in here? I’d get in my pickup and hit the road.”
“You have a pickup?”
“Yeah, I do. It’s not registered in my name—for obvious reasons—but you’re missing the point: If I killed Kendra, I’d be long gone. I sure as shit wouldn’t drag my busted body in here so you could charge me with something I didn’t do. I’m here about immunity on Lake. That’s it.”
“You’d be willing to give us DNA?” I knew we already had his DNA from his previous convictions, but I wanted to see his attitude.
“Any fuckin’ thing you want: hair, cheek swab, urine, whatever. I didn’t kill Kendra. You’re not gonna find my DNA on her. If you do, just lock me the hell up.”
I glanced over at Ryan, who was taking notes in his skinny notebook.
“Listen to me, Detective,” Cory said. “I came here to get out from under any accessory charges related to Lake. I’m willing to give you the name of the guy who ordered the heroin. Isn’t that the guy you ought to be looking at?”
“After you tell us who ordered the heroin,” I said, “what’s your next step? Let’s say we cut this deal with you where we drop the heroin sale down to distribution—and we don’t go after you for killing Kendra. Then what happens?”
“Depends on what the judge does. Or a jury.” Cory winced in pain. “I’ll probably go inside for six months, maybe more because of my record.”
“Yeah, then what? Aren’t you scared of the guy you’re gonna flip on?”
“When I get out, I hit the road. Maybe he’ll see that it’s best to just let it go. Maybe he’ll make it a point to come after me.”
“You’re taking quite a risk. I mean, talking to us.”
“I don’t have a lot of options. When I found out Kendra was dead, I knew it might get back to me. You were already looking at me for selling the heroin to Lake. I knew what you were gonna do with Kendra: You were gonna put it on me. Which is exactly what you’re doing. I’m willing to take the distribution charge, but if I just leave town now, you’ll charge me with Kendra and do a national search for me. I’d rather help you get whoever killed Kendra, even if that means I go inside and then I’ve got them on my ass.”
He did have a point. “Okay, Cory. Here’s what we’re gonna do. You tell us your story. We’ll bring it to our boss. If he likes it, it goes to the prosecutor. If he likes it, he’ll talk to you about charges. At that point, you’ll need a lawyer. If you don’t have one, the public defender will act as your counsel. You understand that?”
“Yeah, I understand that.”
“Tell us your story.”
“I have a contact. I supply drugs to the athletics department.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Since I was booted off the team seven years ago.”
“How are yo
u paid?”
“Cash. Always cash.”
“Tell us about the heroin deal.”
“My contact wanted some product. I got it, like I’d done dozens of times before.”
“Did you know it was for Lake Williams?”
“No. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. I supplied the heroin. Listen, if I’d known they wanted to kill Lake—or kill anyone—I wouldn’t have had anything to do with that. I can’t sell drugs to dead people. And I knew Lake. I wouldn’t have hurt him.”
“So, how do you even know it was your heroin killed him?”
“I don’t. For all I know, he OD’ed on some other shit he got on the street. I have no idea how it happened. The only reason I think it might be my junk is that I know Kendra lived out in that homeless camp with him—and I know I didn’t have anything to do with killing her.”
I nodded. “Okay, Cory, who’s your contact with the athletics department?”
He shook his head. “Not until I get the deal. In writing.”
“You’re kidding.”
“If I give you the name now, you go out and arrest this guy or whatever. And I’m left swinging in the breeze.”
“Like I told you, Cory, we can’t do anything with the information you give us until you sign a statement.”
“I’m not gonna take that chance. This guy’s name is the only card I’ve got to play. Why should I trust you to take care of me after I play it? The prosecutor will figure out some way to screw me. You’ll arrest my contact—and I’ll do ten or fifteen years for killing Lake.”
“Cory, you gotta trust somebody. You either trust the prosecutor to follow the law or you trust a guy who’s killed two people already. A guy who knows there’s only one person still alive who can finger him. You sign a statement here today, we can put you in protective custody until we pick up the killer. If you don’t, you’re on your own.”
Cory shook his head. “I’m not gonna walk into a prison cell. Not gonna take that chance.”
I turned to Ryan. “Would you escort Mr. McDermott out?”