by BJ Bourg
“I was wrong.”
“Based on what?”
“The bloody keys we found in Martin’s pockets—they were for his mother’s gray Charger, which was where we found the murder weapon.”
“Right. So?”
“The blood on the keys matched Marty’s DNA.”
“He shot himself in the head. His blood was all over the scene—of course it’s his blood is on the keys. It makes perfect sense.”
“It only makes sense if Marty reached in his pocket after killing himself.”
The other end of the line went silent except for his heavy breathing.
“Someone shot Marty and then planted the keys in his pocket. The only wound on Marty was the gunshot wound, so the only blood of his that spilled was from the injuries to his head. There’s no way he shot himself, bloodied his hands, and then put the keys in his pocket.”
More silence.
“Sheriff? Are you still there?” I asked.
“I hope you’ve got more than that. I’m not reopening a closed murder investigation just because you think blood couldn’t have somehow found its way into the kid’s pocket.”
“I do have more. Dawn called Doctor Fitch and got the results of Marty’s toxicology—he had a lethal dose of Nembutal in his system.”
“A dose of what?”
“Nembutal. It’s a sleeping drug.”
“Are you saying he died of poisoning?”
Although he couldn’t see me, I shook my head. “He died of a gunshot wound to the head, but he was drugged beforehand. When he passed out, whoever drugged him put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”
Finally, Sheriff Burke cursed for about a minute straight, then said, “Damn it, Brandon! We don’t need this shit. This case was finished...closed. The media’s going to climb inside my ass and explode if I have to go out and admit to that colossal screw up.” After more cursing, Sheriff Burke sighed and sat breathing heavily for quite some time. Finally, he was calm enough to think rationally. “Okay, who are we looking at?”
It was my turn to be silent. “Um...I have no idea.”
“Okay, I don’t want you doing anything more until I have a chance to be briefed. I need to figure out how I’m going to spin this with the public before we move forward with reopening the case. As far as they know, we’ve put this case to bed.”
That’s because you rushed to jump in front of the cameras before waiting for our investigation to be complete—like you always do, I wanted to say. Instead, I asked, “Um, want me to brief you now?”
“No, I want a full briefing first thing in the morning and I want Captain Theriot there.”
“Are y’all going to meet us at the substation?” I asked, hopeful I wouldn’t have to leave my apartment early to drive to the central part of the parish.
“You know better than that.” Sheriff Burke hung up without saying goodbye.
Dawn raised her eyebrows. “Well? What’d he say?”
I told her.
She tossed the lab report on the desk, threw her hands in the air. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime? It’s the middle of the day.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m going to the gym.”
“The gym?”
“Yep. He said not to do anything on the case, so I’m going get my workout done early and taking Samantha to dinner at her favorite restaurant.”
“Is it still McDonald’s?”
I grinned. “Something like that.”
CHAPTER 40
I pulled open the door to the gym, stuck my head inside. “Hello? Anyone here?” The lights were on, but it was empty. That wasn’t unusual, as I’d often seen Tom leave the place unattended and walk to the store down the street to buy a Coke. One of the other boxers had joked that the soda machine in the gym couldn’t keep up with Tom’s caffeine addiction.
I stepped inside, smiled to myself. At least I won’t have to share the ring with anyone. I walked to the far wall of the gym and tossed my bag to the floor. I pulled out my shorts and boxing shoes and made my way toward the shower room. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out, glanced down. A text message from Debbie.
“Sorry about the delay in getting back to you,” the message read. “Yes, you can pick up Samantha this evening. We’ll be home, so you can come over whenever you like.”
I felt my face glowing as I pushed my way through the wooden door to the shower room. I jerked my head up when I heard a grunt in front of me and jumped back when I saw a naked Tom Keller standing in front of me in the shower. I caught my breath, quickly turned away in embarrassment and muttered an apology, beat a quick retreat.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Tom called behind me. “I was just getting cleaned up for this evening’s workouts. The noon crowd—”
The slamming door muffled the rest of his comment. I changed in the corner of the room and went into automatic pilot as I wrapped my hands. Tom appeared moments later wearing his signature wind pants and jacket. He slipped into the ring to warm up his shoulders. When my hands were wrapped and shoved firmly into my gloves, I joined him in the ring and shadowboxed four rounds before we started the mitt work.
Tom didn’t believe in calling out punch numbers to boxers. He believed in throwing his mitts up and letting the boxers respond to what they saw, which is what they would have to do in a real fight. I messed up a few times, misreading what he put in front of me, which prompted him to ask if anything was wrong. Finding it too difficult to talk with a mouthpiece, I only shook my head and waved him forward with my gloves. Sweat dripped into my eyes, burned. I blinked it away and focused on the man in front of me, trying hard to process what I’d seen earlier in the shower, telling myself I was wrong...I had to be wrong.
After the mitt work, I forewent my usual routine and ducked out of the ring.
“What about bag work?” Tom wanted to know. “You can’t skip your bag work.”
I pointed toward the door as I unwound the wraps from my hands. “I’ve got to get cleaned up so I can pick up my daughter. It’s not often I get a break from work, so I need to take advantage of it.”
He nodded, busied himself sweeping the ring and making small talk.
When I was done, I slung my gear bag over my shoulder, waved my goodbye and hurried outside. I didn’t even wait for the door to my cruiser to slam before I was dialing Dawn. “Are you still at the office?” I asked when she answered.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Get on the computer and run a criminal history check on Tom Keller.”
“The boxing dude?” I could hear her fingers come to life on the keyboard. “Why him?”
“Just do it—please. I’ll fill you in when I get there.” I called Debbie next.
When she answered her voice sounded tired.
“Deb, I—”
“Please don’t call me that.”
Not believing what I was hearing, I glanced at my phone and then put it back to my ear. “What’d you say?”
“Don’t call me Deb.”
“Why on earth not? I always call you that.”
Debbie let out an audible sigh. “Brandon, we’re not together anymore. I’d appreciate it if you could keep things professional—you know, for Samantha’s sake.”
I stared off in shock, not sure how to respond. She seemed distant, cold. “What is going on with you lately? You sound so different, like you’ve got no feelings for me.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s nonsense. Just the other day you said you loved me.”
“That was the other day. This is now. You couldn’t even find the time to come to church with us, so the feeling is obviously mutual.”
I sighed. Church—that’s the last thing on my mind. “So, are you saying you don’t love me because I didn’t go to church with y’all?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Frustrated, I said, “I’ve got to go.”
“What about Samantha?”
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“An emergency came up. I’ll probably be working all night now.”
“Are you kidding me?” Debbie’s voice was laced with venom. “I knew it! You were only trying to spend time with Samantha to get close to me. Now that you realize I don’t love you anymore you could care less about your daughter.”
“That’s not true, Deb... um, Debbie.”
“Whatever.” The line went dead.
I pulled into the substation and walked inside feeling numb all over. Dawn must’ve noticed, because she stopped what she was doing to give me her full attention. “What’s the matter?”
I slumped in a chair, let my arms dangle at my sides. “Debbie just told me she doesn’t love me anymore.”
She pursed her lips. “That bitch. Do you need me to kick her ass?”
I shook my head, pondered my options. I thought she’d eventually get over her nonsense and want to get back together, like she’d done before. But to say she didn’t love me? She’d never said that before. I was in unchartered territory and wasn’t sure how to proceed. A divorce would mean I’d only have shared custody of Samantha and wouldn’t be able to tuck her into bed every night. That didn’t sit well with me. I leaned forward to prop my elbows on my knees and rested my face in my hands, very aware of Dawn’s eyes on me. I didn’t know how long I remained in that position, but at some point she walked over and gave me a quick hug. “It’ll be okay, Brandon,” she said. “This is not the end of the world.”
I pulled away and stared into her soulful eyes. “I know this isn’t the end of the world, but I don’t want to live apart from Samantha. I don’t want to be a weekend dad.”
“Maybe Debbie will change her mind and y’all can work things out.”
I frowned. “I doubt it. She sounds pretty sure of herself.”
“Maybe you could get shared custody? Get her seven and seven?”
“I’ll have to do something, because I’m not settling for every other weekend.” I shook my head as though that would help to clear it, nodded toward Dawn’s computer. “What’d you find?”
She returned to her chair. “So, are you sure Tom’s last name is Keller?”
“Yeah, that’s his name. Why? What came up?”
“I got a few hits, but they’re all much older or much younger than your Tom Keller.”
I drummed my fingers on the desk when a thought occurred to me. I squeezed in next to her and took over her keyboard. “Check this out...” I typed in the URL for a boxing site that listed the names and records of every professional boxer in the history of the world—or nearly so—and typed Tom Keller’s name into the search box. Nothing.
“Check out what?” she wanted to know. “So far, you’ve shown me squat.”
I rubbed the stubble on my chin. What’s your real name, Tom? I tried Thomas and Tommy, but still no results. I tried spelling Keller a couple of different ways, but I again met with negative results.
“Why are you running a search for Tom Keller?” Dawn asked. “Do you think he’s involved in this case?”
A grin spread across my face and I clicked on the alias option, typed in a name. I hit the enter key and the hourglass on her screen flipped over and over and finally came to rest when a short list of names were displayed in the results section. There was only one boxer named Tom with that alias...a Tom Kosinski.
I then did a quick Google search for the boxer named Tom Kosinski and hit pay dirt.
Dawn gasped. “How’d you know it was a nickname? And how’d you know it was Tom Keller?”
The newspaper article was from many years earlier and the muscular kid in the boxing ring was much younger, but there was no mistaking Tom Keller—or Kosinski. I hit print and snatched the page off of the printer. “Can you try running a criminal history check for Tom Kosinski?”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I’m not doing anything until you tell me how you knew it was a nickname and how you knew Tom Keller was this”—she shoved a thumb in the direction of the boxer on the computer screen—“Tom Kosinski fellow.”
“When I went to the gym earlier today, I walked in on Tom in the shower. He was naked and—”
“Never mind!” She threw up her hands. “I don’t want to know anymore.”
I laughed, shook my head. “I’ll keep it G-rated.”
“Why don’t you just keep it to yourself?”
I grabbed her crime scene file from the desktop and thumbed through it until I found the picture of the ring. I threw it on the desk and pressed my finger against the emblem on the ring. “Tom’s got a tattoo of that same bomb image on his back left shoulder.”
“No way!”
“Yes way.” I folded my arms across my chest. “And do you know how I know Tom killed Marty?”
“How?”
“The gun was placed in Marty’s left hand.”
Dawn’s brows furrowed. “I’m not with you.”
“Marty was right-handed, but Tom thought he was a southpaw and that’s why he put the gun in Marty’s left hand—a southpaw is a left-handed fighter.”
CHAPTER 41
Dawn walked to where I sat at the extra desk in Becky’s office and dropped a stack of papers in front of me. “Tom Kosinski’s an ex-con.”
“No kidding?” I turned from the arrest warrant I’d been typing, scanned the criminal history.
“He did some prison time for murder.”
“Murder?” I found the entry in the records, but it didn’t tell me much. “Who’d he kill?”
“He’s definitely our guy, Brandon. He beat his wife to death with his bare hands and did ten years hard time. While he was in prison, he started a boxing team and killed a fellow prison boxer in the ring.”
I flipped through the pages, looked up at her. “How do you know all this?”
She smiled coyly, winked. “I’ve got my ways.”
“What’d you do?”
She shrugged. “Nothing scandalous—I just called the prison warden.”
“What else did he say?”
“He said they did a full investigation into the death, a law suit was filed, and the boxing program got shut down.”
“Was Tom charged?”
“No. They ruled it an accident.” Dawn lifted a finger. “Oh, the warden did say Tom never lost a fight in prison—in or out of the ring. Like you figured, he said they called him Tom The Bomb Kosinski.”
I was thoughtful.
“What is it?” Dawn asked.
I pulled up Tom’s boxing record on Becky’s computer. “That’s why there’s a ten-year gap in his fighting record—he was in prison.”
“The fights he had in prison don’t count?”
“Not toward his professional record.” I minimized the webpage, stared at the blank line for the suspect’s address. “We need to find out where he lives.”
Dawn ran his name and social security number, but couldn’t find anything on him. He hadn’t had a job since he left prison, hadn’t filed taxes...hadn’t even ordered a pizza under his real name or the name Tom Keller. It was like he’d disappeared off the planet.
I left the address line blank on the warrant I’d been typing and proofread the probable cause narrative, moved over so Dawn could read it. “Did I forget anything?”
She read it over, nodded her stamp of approval. I called the sheriff and gave him the update, and he ordered me to get the warrant signed and arrest Tom as soon as possible.
While Dawn faxed the warrant to the judge, I started making calls and assembling an arrest team. Within the hour, the warrant was signed and the office was buzzing with activity. Captain Anthony Landry, who commanded the patrol division and special operations unit, had assigned four SWAT members and two uniformed deputies to assist us. Dudley and Karla had also arrived and I ushered them into a conference room at the front end of the substation.
I drew a diagram of the boxing gym and its parking lot on a large dry erase board, and everyone listened as I devised an apprehension plan. I was going to
walk into the gym wearing a body wire, move to the back of the gym as usual, put my bag on the ground near the back door and unlock it. I’d then ask Tom to work me on the mitts to fine tune what he’d shown me earlier in the day. As soon as we were in the ring and his hands were strapped into the mitts, I’d complain about my gloves not fitting right and pull them off. On that cue, the team would move in to help me apprehend him.
I pointed to the four SWAT officers. “I want y’all staging behind the gym. There’re no windows, so it’ll be easy to approach the back door without being seen. When y’all come through the door, the boxing ring will be right in front of y’all—hard to miss.” I turned to Dawn, Karla, and the two patrol deputies. “Y’all can stage across the parking lot at the hamburger joint and move closer when y’all hear me make contact with Tom. Enter through the front door and be ready to take down any of the boxers if they interfere with the arrest.”
I studied each of their faces. Everyone looked ready, if not eager, to make the arrest. We filed out of the office and left the substation in a small caravan. As we approached the gym, the SWAT officers peeled off in their Suburban and ducked down a side street to come up behind the gym. Dawn was with Dudley and Karla, and they stopped in front of the hamburger joint with the patrol deputies as I turned into the parking lot.
The sun was bright as I walked away from my cruiser and pushed through the front door of the gym. I stood to the side so my eyes could adjust to the dimmer light inside. The timer rang loudly to indicate the start of a new round and several boxers sprang into action—some on the bags, some jumping rope, and two shadow-boxing in the ring. With my heart pounding in my chest, I scanned the room for Tom, but didn’t see him. Spencer was pacing at the back of the gym with his phone pressed against his head. He was always on that phone...hustling businesses for sponsorships, negotiating contract terms with other promoters, fighting with his ex-wife over the price of child support.
I shook my head. I’d have no problem paying child support, if it came to that, but I didn’t know what I’d do if Debbie ever did what his wife did and spent the money on expensive jewelry and clothes for herself, while spending the bare minimum on their children.