by Alec Peche
Jill sighed, "So we are nearly back to square one with no legitimate suspects for this shooting.”
The detective agreed, "So it would seem, unless there is some magical clue on the second candy bar wrapper.”
"Sam, when will you have those results back?" Jill queried.
"Later this afternoon. With the detective's permission, I'll e-mail you the results of the fingerprint analysis."
With another pained look, the detective nodded his approval.
"Let's head back to Marie's house and put our heads together on what we should do next," Jo nudged Jill and Angela. In her mind, there were no more clues to be found at the scene, so they may as well move on. They had been at the golf course for nearly two hours and she was itching to move on.
Chapter Eight
They arrived back at Marie’s house just in time for lunch. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day and they sat around Marie’s table in the comfortable sunny conditions. They knew that their enjoyment of sandwiches, friendships, and the weather was in deep contrast to Michelle’s day as she was likely planning her husband’s funeral.
"This case has been really interesting for me,” Angela commented. “I have never been at the scene of a crime let alone at the beginning of one of your investigations, Jill. I know we were at the scene of the crime in Belgium when Laura Peeters suffered from anaphylactic shock as a result of her nut allergy, but we weren't there when someone sneaked into the hospital to murder her. This is different. This time we were on the scene as the bullet was fired that killed Doug. It was so quick. I think for the first time, I have the same information that everyone else has on this team and it doesn't take medical knowledge to understand what happened to Doug. This was so straightforward and yet we have not a single suspect. I am mystified that we don't have a single suspect when it was an acquaintance that was murdered in my hometown where I feel like I know everyone and understand the world at large through the lens of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Does that make any sense?"
"I think that what you are feeling is the essence of why I set up my consulting business," Jill disclosed. "I enjoy the intellectual exercise of searching for a killer, but I'm also very angered that someone has the conceit to think they could get away with killing someone in such a cold blooded manner. While it seems like we don't have a single suspect and therefore we don't have a path to follow and gain information, we do have some snippets to tug on and see if they take us anywhere. I often chase these snippets into a dead end, but eventually they lead us to a killer. Because you guys don't join me at the beginning of these cases and because I am the point of contact, you have not had the opportunity to watch me analyze a crime scene and determine how you can help me solve the crime. That delay in joining me, hides from your view all of the dead ends I have chased to no avail. With this case you are seeing all of my false starts from the beginning."
"I am even more impressed with your detective skills now that I see how little you may have to work with to find a killer," Jo declared. "The only next step I can think of is to investigate the private finances of Doug and Michelle Easley."
Jill agreed, "We definitely want to do that, Jo. I am bothered by the candy bar wrapper. As a clue, the bright yellow and black of the wrapper is screaming at me to do further investigation. I think we can figure out who the teenager is whose prints are on that wrapper by doing a news search of local basketball teams. I want to investigate the teen and his family.”
“Really, a teenager?” Angela challenged.
“The wrapper is a loose end and you know how I hate loose ends. Due to the rain the night before we know those wrappers were dropped between whenever the rain completely stopped as there weren't any drops of rain falling off leaves and landing on the wrapper, and when Doug was murdered. So on a school day, why was a teenager running around in those woods dropping candy bar wrappers?"
"That's an interesting question," commented Jo.
"Let's look at who the basketball players are in the Green Bay Press Gazette sports section. We are looking for team that has a player whose last name is Haro and a second player who is six feet two inches tall. Our problem may be multiple players of that height, but let's see what we can find," suggested Jill.
Marie went to work searching the local newspaper for prep basketball information. The game was played over the winter and into early spring so she was searching the archive. In a few minutes she had the high school identified and they were all looking at the team players. One of Jill's questions was concerning the height of the teenager. He might have been six feet two inches during the start of fall basketball season, but he could have had a growth spurt and ended up at a different height; or likewise he could have entered this season at six feet and hit a growth spurt that would have added a few inches to his frame. So the real question was did the school record the players’ height at the start of the season or do they update the height as the player grew during the season?
In the end they had eight players that were either the exact height or might have had a growth spurt that affected their height. Each of the women took two players to research. Specifically they were looking for connections to Doug or his family. Doug's kids did not attend the high school in question so it appeared unlikely that the connection was at the student level.
“I need a little more direction here, Jill," asked Marie.
“I think we can read each kids’ Facebook or Instagram sites or whatever else they have going and find out about the kid’s family. I don’t think it is a kid to kid connection. I think if there is a connection - and remember this is a loose end we are chasing - it will be in the parents. So perhaps look for mention of socialization with the Easleys. Another angle is hiring or working with Doug and Michelle.
“The other thing we could do is skip the kids entirely and just focus on the parents of the eight kids. In fact why don’t we do that? It is kind of creepy to spy on the kids and based on the shot accuracy, planning, and video of the suspect, I don’t believe we have a teenage killer.”
“That sounds like a plan,” replied Marie. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll have the parent names. Of course we are now up to sixteen people whose backgrounds we need to look through.”
Within ten minutes, Marie had located all eight sets of parent names. This was complicated by stepparents with two of the kids, so this added an additional four names to their research list. With five adults each, they all knuckled down and began their search. Marie had trained them in her process of doing background searches and while they weren’t as good or fast as her, it was a reasonable way to split the twenty names that needed research.
Soon silence reigned in the kitchen with the occasional clacking of keys. Two hours later they hadn’t found many connections to Doug and Michelle. Of the original twenty, fifteen had no connection that they could find. Marie went to work on the final five.
Jill worked with Angela and Jo to go back to the murder board and discuss where else they could go next.
“Let’s ask the reverse question - who couldn’t be the shooter?” suggested Jill.
“Well, it couldn’t be the four of us or the three golfers that were Doug’s partners,” Angela offered.
With a smile Jo added, “Or the foursome in front of us and behind Doug’s group. Didn’t Michelle have an alibi? Her children don’t have the shooter skills to have fired the gun. After that, except people with alibis, shooter suspects comprise a pretty large pool. How do we narrow it down?”
“I think we should focus on the usual suspects - the seven deadly sins. In particular I want to focus on greed, wrath, and lust. I think sloth, pride, envy and gluttony take a back seat in this case. I can’t tell you why, it just feels that way.
“Let’s talk about greed first. Who benefits financially from Doug’s death? I would assume Michelle and the children benefit. I would think that would be temporary. Doug is more valuable alive and earning an income, then dead with a life insurance policy. Another question worth following
is who does Doug have influence on financially. For example, as a physician he is in a private group and I would think he would influence the income of his fellow physicians in his group through scheduling among other things. Let’s find out what positions he holds to understand where he might have influence on other people’s incomes.”
“I’ll take those two questions,” Jo declared. “I deal with those questions in my day job, so let me see what I can find out.”
“Thanks Jo. Maybe Angela and I can take on the second question with a little help from Ann and Mary. Was he or Michelle having an affair? Did he make decisions at work or somewhere else in his life that angered people? Let’s see if we can get Ann and her mother over here this morning.”
“I’ll give them a call and see if they’re available,” Angela offered.
While Angela made the call, Jill walked over to Marie to see if she had found any interesting connections yet for the teenager’s parents. She had one more adult to research but the only connection so far had been an uncle of one teen who had also worked at Our Lady of Guadalupe hospital. Jill had to agree that it was a long shot. In a community geographically close to the hospital there was bound to be family members with ties to the hospital as it was one of the largest employers in town. Jill and Marie decided to ignore that connection for now, and Marie focused her attention on the research the final adult.
Jill returned to the search for lust or wrath angles just as Ann and Mary arrived.
“Good morning, ladies,” said Jill with a smile as they walked into Marie’s kitchen. “Did you find out anything through your connections?
“Good morning back to you all,” responded Ann with a smile. “You look like you have been hard at work on this mystery for a while.”
“Yes, we returned to the scene of the murder this morning to see if we could pick up any additional clues,” replied Angela. “Jo pretended to be Doug, while Jill was herself at the third hole tee box and I walked around the woods to determine where the shooter would have stood. Once we figured out the position of the shooter we called Detective Haro to come out and plaster some footprints we found in the woods. And remember that house located close to where the killer exited the woods the first time from last night? Well, it turns out that house is empty and for sale. We then searched the backside of the woods where we think the killer hid for most of the afternoon and found another candy bar wrapper that the police are fingerprinting. Also based on the height of the trees in the clearing, we figured the shooter to be about five feet eleven inches tall. Michelle is off the suspect list as she has an iron glad alibi according to the police.”
Jill picked up the story and continued, "So now we are working on the motive for this killing as a means to identify who the shooter was. We are focused on three of the seven deadly sins – greed, wrath, lust. Sometimes when the evidence leads you nowhere, you have to look to motive for new clues. Jo is trying to run down the greed angle; looking for who financially benefited from Doug's death. Angela and I were about to embark on the lust and wrath angles and figured you two would be very helpful. Have you heard of any affairs by Doug or Michelle? Have you heard of anyone that Doug blew up at or who is mad at Doug?"
Ann and Mary took a moment to think back to what they had learned in the previous twenty-four hours about Doug or the hospital.
"Doug seems to be a saint. I don't say that lightly,” Ann noted. “I couldn't find a single person that had something bad to say about him. It wasn't about not wanting to speak ill of the dead, he truly was a smart and caring individual. Based on what you told me about your visit to Michelle, I would almost say that many of the hospital folks are more devastated by his death then she was. People are just wearing their emotions on their sleeve about Doug at the moment.
“As for anger, again I didn't hear of a single episode of where Doug blew his cool and got mad at someone. To be fair, I didn't directly ask the question of ‘had you seen Doug mad at anyone?’ but no one brought it up in their conversation. Mom, did you hear anything from your sources?"
"Like you, dear, I heard no even mildly disparaging comments about Doug,” replied Mary. “Nor did I hear any rumors of an affair."
"How about his fellow physicians?" asked Jill. "Was he well respected? Were there any arguments? Were there any rumblings from his practice about his management of the anesthesia group? Were there any comments about an unfair distribution of income in the group?"
"Again none that I heard," Ann stated. "Frankly there were comments about how hard he worked both as a leader and as a physician. I couldn’t find anyone who was angry with him or something he did.”
“And Michelle, any gossip from the interior design angle? Was someone mad at her? Was she having an affair?”
“I’m not as well connected to her side of this family. I have never been to her studio nor do I know anyone who has used her. That doesn’t mean that she is not successful - it’s just that she is on the east side of town and I and most of my friends are on the west side of town.”
“Ok, we’ll leave Michelle alone for now,” observed Jill. "So Doug never raised his voice to anyone nor was he observed to be in a shouting match with anyone recently. It appears that this likely has nothing to do with his personal life. I just don't sense that there is any woman out there, Michelle included, who lusted for or with Doug enough to generate the passion required for murder. This was no impulsive shooting; it took too much planning to leave us with so little evidence. So I guess we’re back to greed as the motive for Doug's murder.”
Angela advised, “Perhaps we should tell Ann and Mary about the candy bar angle and then get an update from Jo on the finances.”
“Good idea, Angela.” Looking over at Ann and Mary, Jill gestured at Angela and added, “As she mentioned earlier, we found two candy bar wrappers: one in the front of the woods close to where the shooter stood and another in the back of the woods where we think the shooter reentered that cluster of trees. We knew that both wrappers had to have been dropped on the day of the murder because there was no rain damage to the wrappers whatsoever. The police fingerprinted the first wrapper. Even as I explain this, it seems like a long shot,” noted Jill chagrined. “The first wrapper had prints leading to ten different people. As you can imagine during manufacturing and distribution, a candy bar might be touched by many different people before it ends up in the hands of the person that buys it. Of the ten people found on this wrapper, only two were in the fingerprint system so we don't even know who the other eight sets of fingerprints belong to. Of the two that we were able to match, one is a clerk at a convenience store that likely touched it as he stocked the items in an aisle, or he touched it at the time he ran up the purchase. The second print belonged to a teenager that plays on a basketball team with the detective’s son and the police have not released his name to us. We do not think we have a teenage killer behind the murder of Doug. It seems implausible given the accuracy required to fire the weapon that a teenager could fire the gun. The figure walking around the clearing doesn’t look like a teenager - all lanky and awkward.”
Angela suggested, “Jill, should we check a national weapons accuracy website to see if there are any Green Bay, De Pere, Ashwaubenon, or other cities’ shooters from this region of the state?”
“Great idea and then we can rule out the kid. We all have a bad taste in our mouths for even considering the kid,” replied Jill. “Why don’t you check that out - there must be a database with the National Rifle Association or maybe connected to the Olympics. Shooting is a medal sport for the Summer Olympics so there must be some kind of Junior Olympics that feeds the US team. Marie, did you find anything on that final adult?"
Marie looked up from her computer screen and replied, "No, the final adult checks out clean."
"Thanks, Marie,” noted Jill. "Jo, you have been looking at the financial impact of Doug's leadership at the hospital and in his private practice for the past half hour. Have you come across anything of significance?"
/> Jo looked over at Jill and gave her a one eyed squint, "yeah I've had a whole half an hour and guess what? I have no new information and don't bother asking again for another half an hour."
"I guess that's your way of telling me to be patient. You know that's not my skill set!"
Jo heaved a sigh and went back to her search on Doug's financial impact on other people's lives.
Jill looked over at Ann and Mary and said "you have both been very involved with Our Lady of Guadalupe. I'd like to understand more about the hospital. Can you tell me how it's organized? How many years has Doug been in a leadership role there? Have you ever heard of the hospital struggling with anyone? What do their finances look like? Tell me about any quality issues or patient satisfaction concerns that you've heard about. Finally, Ann, you presently serve on the board; what other roles have you and Mary served at the hospital? Sorry about all the questions, they are just spilling out of my brain."
"You asked me so many questions I'm likely to forget them all. So if I don't give you the information you want just ask me again," Ann imparted. “Let’s see, where to begin? Mom, why don’t you start by describing your role and any role that dad had at the hospital?"
"Your father and I go way back with the hospital. I think one of the two of us have been on the board, served on committees, or been a volunteer with the hospital for nearly forty-five years. Your father served the board for perhaps thirty years. I did it for five – it's not my cup of tea. No one has fun at these board meetings listening to reports about serious things. I couldn't wait to transfer the family's role on this board to you. I still do about two volunteer shifts a month; much less time than at my peak of volunteering where I probably served four days each week. I don't remember Doug's name coming up during my tenure at the hospital. Nor do I remember even a discussion about the anesthesia group or quality, but it has been probably at least five years since I was in a major meeting at the hospital. As all the contact I have now is my few volunteer shifts, I can’t think of any information I have that will add to this case.”