by Paul Carr
The two detectives stretched on vinyl gloves and entered.
“I’ll check the rooms down the hall,” Crook said.
Dalton surveyed the small living room. It was dusty, but no clutter, and nothing appeared out of place. A large screen TV sat in the corner. The sofa looked as if no one ever sat on it, and there was a recliner, and a table next to the chair with a lamp and an ashtray. A couple of cigarette butts lay in the ashtray, the only indicator that someone lived in the place. The adjoining kitchen also looked neat and clean. No dishes in the sink, a trash container with three beer bottles in the bottom. The dinette table had nothing on its top, and a chair sat on either end of it.
“Come back here,” Crook said from the hallway. Dalton headed that way. The bed had been made, but it looked as if someone had wrestled on top of it, the covers twisted and pulled down on one corner. Crook pointed to the wall on the far side of the bed near the closet. “There’s blood spatter, down near the floor. I think it’s still wet.”
Dalton nodded. “Yeah, I see it. Smells like bleach in here.”
Crook nodded. “Somebody cleaned up, but they missed that spot.” He went into the connecting bathroom. “The shower curtain is gone, too.”
A droplet of water hung on the showerhead from recent use, and the bottom of the tub was wet. A couple of shower hooks had smears of blood on them. Dalton pointed at the smears. “Looks like the person who took the curtain might’ve cut himself on one of the hooks.”
Taking out his phone, Crook said, “I’ll call Tarver and tell him to come here when they finish at the jail.”
“How about staying here until the team shows up. I want to talk to the ME before he takes Chan’s body away.” Crook agreed, and Dalton headed back to the jail. Dr. Bragg was standing outside the cell as he came in.
“The jailer said you think this man was murdered,” Bragg said.
“That’s right. A man dressed in a guard’s uniform entered the jail using Otto Edwards card key around midnight. He went directly to the cell and went inside, then left right after that. I’m pretty sure the guy wasn’t Otto Edwards. Buddy and I went to his home. The door was open but he wasn’t inside. There’s blood in the bedroom and bathroom. I think the guy who came in here injured or killed Edwards and took his ID.”
Bragg stretched on gloves and stepped inside the cell. “How do you think he was killed?”
“Probably drugs. Look for an injection site like you found on Blake Owen.”
A few minutes later, Bragg said, “There’s a puncture mark on his neck and bruising on his face. The perpetrator might’ve caught Chan while he slept and held his hand over his mouth while he injected him. I’ll know if it was a drug that killed him after I test his blood.”
As the CSIs finished up, Tarver told Dalton they had found several different fingerprints, but no blood. “The prints probably belong to guards and previous detainees.”
Dalton hadn’t thought about that; the killer could have been a previous detainee. When the prints came back, they could look into those other than the guards.
“By the way,” Tarver added, “I sent you an email on the results from the Blake Owens house.”
“Anything significant?”
“No. You already have the shoe impressions. The only prints we found were those of the victim. We didn’t find any blood.” That just meant that the killers were careful and wore gloves.
“Did Buddy Crook get in touch with you about Otto Edwards home?” Dalton asked.
“Yes, we’ll be headed over there in a few minutes. He said there’s blood.”
“That’s right. On shower hooks in the bathroom and on the wall.”
Dalton left him to finish up and went to Bank’s desk. “I want to see the video again of the guy entering the building.”
Banks pulled it up on his monitor. After watching it again, Dalton said, “How could he have gotten in without anybody noticing he was an imposter?”
Shrugging, Banks said, “Well, he shouldn’t have, but whoever was at the desk probably saw Edwards’s ID and photo pop up on the computer when he used the card key and didn’t think anything else about it. He could’ve gotten distracted with paperwork. I’m gonna have a talk with all my crew at shift change and warn them about staying alert.”
“Well, I guess that’s all you can do. How about looking up Edwards’s auto information for me?”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” The jailer seemed eager to move on from the subject of the breach. He searched a database and found that Edwards owned a white, late model Chevy Malibu. Dalton wrote it down, along with the plate number. “Bring up video from the parking lot around midnight when Edwards’s car showed up.”
Banks found the footage and started it up. “That’s his car coming in now.” Though midnight, the lot and the access road were well lighted. The Chevy entered the driveway behind two other cars. The driver parked in a space away from the other two. After the guards got out and entered the building, he followed a few minutes later. As with the other videos, the driver held his head down, and the bill of the cap obscured his face. Several minutes passed before the man returned to the car. He got back in and sat there for a few minutes, maybe sending the text to the supervisor about being sick. It was obvious that the killer wanted the jail to think he was Edwards, even after getting away, maybe to buy more time. Dalton wondered if Edwards’s dead body was in the trunk and the killer needed get rid of it. “Can you back up and print a hard copy of the vehicle from the side and one that clearly shows the plate number?”
Banks did as he asked. Dalton phoned the watch commander and said, “I need an APB on a vehicle.” He gave him the information and Edwards’s address. “I think it was used to dispose of Edwards’s dead body and might be pretty close to his home. Ask the deputies to start there and work their way out.”
“You’ve been keeping my people pretty busy,” the watch commander said.
“Yeah, I guess I have. You got something better for them to do than track down a murderer?”
“Well, since you put it that way.”
After hanging up, Dalton drove out College Road and took a left on A1A, assuming the killer wouldn’t go right into Key West to dispose of a body. He came to a tattoo parlor, turned in, and went inside. A man about sixty years old with scraggly gray hair tied in a ponytail sat behind the counter. His arms were nearly black with ink. Dalton showed him his badge. “You have security video for traffic out front?”
The man gave him a wary look. “Maybe. Why do you want to know?”
“Nothing to do with your business. I’m looking for a car that might’ve gone by this place last night around midnight.”
The old guy shrugged. “Yeah, we got video.”
“Can I see it?”
“The owner ain’t here right now.”
After waiting a few beats, Dalton said, “I can get a warrant and take your security system to the sheriff’s office for analysis by our techs. Those guys find all kinds of stuff.”
Tattoo Man stared for a moment. “Okay, I get your drift. Let’s go to the back and I’ll show you what we have.” He sat down at a monitor and started up the video. The camera must have been mounted on the eave at the corner of the building, because it looked back toward the intersection of College Rd. Lighting was much dimmer than had been the case around the jail, but after a few minutes, the white Chevy came into view going north on A1A. Right after it passed by, another car followed.
“Run it back a minute or so,” Dalton said.
The man did as he asked, and before the Chevy drove into view again, Dalton spotted the second car sitting alongside the road, as if waiting. As soon as the Chevy appeared, the second car pulled out behind it. An accomplice? If so, it would mean the killer could dispose of the car anywhere north of Key West and get a ride back to his car. Unfortunately, the license plate of the second vehicle was never visible, and the light was too dim to see a person inside either vehicle.
“Run it back again and freeze
it on the car that just passed. I want you to print a hardcopy of it.”
Tattoo man sighed, but did as he asked. Dalton left the place thinking the mystery car looked familiar, but that didn’t mean much because it was a common style and color. He drove up the street to a service station and asked about looking at their security video. Upon viewing it, he learned that the Chevy and the mystery vehicle took a right on MacDonald Ave., which headed toward the Edwards address. That might have meant the killer was getting nervous and wanted to retrieve his own vehicle at Edward’s home before somebody discovered it. If so, the Chevy could be close by.
The CSI team was already in place when he arrived. He parked on the street outside the mobile home behind a sheriff’s cruiser. Inside, Crook said, “They bagged the shower hooks and swabbed the blood on the wall. They’re dusting for prints now. After the deputies arrived, I told them to guard the place and I talked with the neighbors. Nobody said they saw anything. They’re all working people who were asleep before midnight.”
Dalton told him about the security videos and showed him the image of the mystery car. “I think the driver might’ve been his partner. The car waited alongside the road until the Chevy came out of College Rd. from the jail and turned north on A1A, and then it followed. Both cars turned on MacDonald and headed this way. So I think the Chevy might be close around here.”
Crook said, “Huh, after Charles Chan died, he found somebody else to help with the dirty work.”
“This person might’ve been helping all along.”
“Well, I don’t know how we can identify the owner of that vehicle. There must be hundreds of similar cars in the Keys.”
Dalton nodded. “Yeah, it’s too bad we don’t have a plate number, but I think I’ve seen it somewhere since we’ve been investigating this case. I need to go back over my notes when we get back to the office.”
Tarver came by and said they were finishing up and would be leaving in a few minutes. “Somebody cleaned the shower, but we sprayed luminal and found some blood spatter. That tells me the man was attacked in the shower.”
“What about the blood on the wall?” Dalton asked. “You find any more there.”
“Yes, some small spatter. It didn’t appear to have been cleaned, so it probably was forgotten or went unnoticed.”
“Sounds like there were two attacks: one in the shower and one in the bedroom.”
Tarver nodded. “Yes, that’s my conclusion, too. I’ll try to send you my report later today.”
“Okay,” Dalton said. “I’m gonna take a drive and look for this guy’s vehicle.”
Crook said he would go along with him and they left. The neighborhood was a mixture of mobile homes and small houses. It was laid out in a rectangular grid that bordered a canal on the south end. They drove at a snail’s pace down the street until it ended, and then took the next street below it going back the other way. There were few places where the car could be hidden since the lots were small and most residents parked in front of their homes or in small carports. As they neared the canal, Dalton wondered if he might have guessed wrong. He knew the Chevy had come in that direction, but could have gone on beyond Edwards’s neighborhood.
At the end of the street next to the canal, they started back up the grid, retracing their search. At the third street from the canal, Crook said, “Back up. I think I saw something.” Dalton put the car in reverse and eased it back until Crook told him to stop. The house appeared vacant. Weeds stood a foot tall behind a fence that surrounded the front yard, and a For Sale sign lay on the ground next to the street. A vehicle was backed into a thicket of palmetto next to the house. Only the grill and a white front bumper were visible. They pushed through the foliage to the rear of the car and found Edwards’s license plate attached.
The driver’s door was unlocked, so Dalton stretched on vinyl gloves, opened it, and popped the trunk lid. As he pulled out of the vehicle, Crook said, “Call 911. Edwards is back here, and he’s alive.”
Chapter 15
EMTs arrived within a few minutes. They pulled Otto Edwards’s naked and unconscious body from the car’s trunk and strapped it onto a gurney. Dalton peered into the open trunk. The shower curtain lay there in a wad. Blood spatter and droplets of water glistened on its surface.
A couple of deputies had shown up with the rescue team, and Dalton asked them to follow the victim to the ER and stand guard. When they hurried off, he called Tarver and told him the situation.
“I’ll send somebody to look the car over. You think the guy’s going to live?”
“I hope so. EMTs are loading him into the truck now. He took a blow to the side of his head. Drugs could be a factor, too. The ER should be able to tell us more, but it might be a while.” Crook pushed through the brush and stared into the trunk. “Looks like Tarver was right about him being attacked in the shower.”
“Yes, it does,” Dalton said. “That means the blood on the hooks might belong to Edwards.” He wondered if his disappointment showed in his face.
“There’s still the blood on the wall. Maybe it belongs to the attacker.”
Dalton nodded. “Yeah, maybe. It could also be more of the victim’s blood. Let’s hope he survives so he can tell us what happened and ID the guy.”
They waited around until one of Tarver’s CSI crew arrived and had scanned over the vehicle. He told them he would have it towed to the county lot so they could give it a good examination. When the tow truck came and hooked it up, Dalton and Crook left and headed to the ER.
They found the doctor who had attended Edwards’s wounds and asked about his condition. “He’s still unconscious,” the doctor said. “The head wound doesn’t appear very serious, and probably not what’s keeping him under. I’m thinking he’s been drugged, so we’re testing his blood.”
Dalton gave him one of his cards and asked him to call when Edwards regained consciousness. He and Crook headed toward the office and got a sandwich on the way to eat at their desks. Before starting on the reports, Dalton checked email and ate his sandwich. Tarver’s message concerning the Blake Owen crime scene didn’t indicate anything beyond what he’d told him earlier: no blood, only the victim’s fingerprints.
He started a William Chan murder file and documented what had happened at the jail and at the Edwards residence. As he finished up, Tarver called and told him they’d found some minute blood spatter on the bedspread. “I’m guessing it’s the same as that on the wall, but we won’t know for sure if it’s different from that of the victim until we get DNA results.”
“Can you put a priority on it?”
“I’ll ask, and we can speed it up by hand-delivering it to the lab.”
The killer had evaded the law after committing four murders and attempting to murder a jail guard. He had left no fingerprints or other evidence that could identify him. Dalton thought he might have gotten careless with Edwards, and was hopeful the blood would help identify him.
If it was the perpetrator’s blood, unless he had committed a felony and his DNA was on file, they would still have to compare it against samples from suspects. They could sample everyone’s DNA who had attended the party. That would be a good start, but maybe they could narrow it down first. He pulled out the Riley Gunn file and went over the names of people they had interviewed.
While still at the crime scene, he had spoken with Ana Kovich, the housekeeper. She seemed genuinely distraught over her boss’s death, and Dalton hadn’t thought any more about her. Crook found that she had overstayed her visa, but that didn’t make her a murderer.
Colin Casey, the first party attendee to be interviewed, had an alibi with Marilyn Coe. She had left the party with him and slept at his home the rest of the night. After revealing that she was an agent with the DEA, she had told Dalton that Casey had a suspicious history with a radical group in Ireland, and had fled to the US after a murder in the UK. He had a good motive for murdering Gunn; he was over-extended and needed money. Gunn’s insurance policy would net him
$1 million. Gunn’s safe may have contained a lot of cash. The video from Hess’s phone showed William Chan offering the killer a potentially lucrative drug distribution territory.
As far as Dalton was concerned, Casey was at the top of the list, even though Marilyn Coe had provided him an alibi. Dalton believed her, but thought she could be mistaken, since she had slept in a different room. They needed a DNA swab from him.
Buddy had interviewed Alan Sheffield and his party date. They alibied each other, and Dalton and Buddy talked with them two more times. Sheffield seemed a little slippery, and seemed to be less than forthcoming when asked about Eon Harbor. He and his date had been drinking heavily the night of the party, and were also inebriated the first two times detectives had spoken with them. He had a motive for killing Gunn, too; he wanted more prominence in the band, and Riley held him back. Maybe he thought he could become the face of Redgunn if Riley wasn’t in the picture. Though not at the top of the list, they needed a swab from him, too.
Dalton had spoken with Gunn’s lawyer, Hilda Wright. She was far down the list of potential suspects, because it had been established that the killer was a tall person and probably a man. Both Dalton and Buddy interviewed the brothers from Canada. They wanted to produce a record for the band and seemed to have nothing to gain, and a lot to lose, by killing Gunn.
Though Jimmy Earl had not attended the party, Dalton had spoken with him at length at his home and in the sheriff’s office. He didn’t have a solid alibi, but Dalton was pretty sure he didn’t kill Gunn. His vintage Camaro had been left in a vacant lot near the murder scene with the victim’s blood inside, as if it had broken down. That looked bad for Earl, but there was a problem: someone had intentionally disabled the car, and that smelled like an attempted frame.
While not considered a suspect, Jack Ringo had admitted to doing favors for William Chan, and even considered a position to head up Chan’s security. Dalton suspected the position required Ringo to maintain his status as a police detective. So, that didn’t make him a killer, but would cause him a lot of grief if known by higher-ups. He would like to get a swab from him, too, but would need more evidence before opening that can of worms.