Again, she ignored the question. “Did he have an attorney with him?”
“He did not.”
“Is he a suspect?”
“In what?”
“In the murder of Kaiden Miles.”
“Murder?”
“Stop it.”
“Everyone is a suspect until I rule them out. I can say that at this time we are pursuing multiple lines of inquiry.”
“Will you keep me apprised of the situation?”
“We’ll cut a press release as soon as—and if—something changes.”
“Thank you, Detective,” she said.
“Thank you,” Punch said, and hung up. He was about to walk to the break room for a donut when Corporal Jensen stuck his head in the door. “Boss?”
“Yeah?”
“We got an ID on some of that DNA.”
“A match?”
“Yeah.”
Punch’s direct line rang. Caller ID indicated it was Sarah Penrose. He picked up. “That was fast,” he said. “Amazing, really.”
Sam was looking at a warranty deed when he heard what sounded like a ruckus outside his office door. Stepping to his window, he moved the shade so he could see clearly. Perhaps fifty mostly young people walked by, many of them carrying homemade signs and placards with messages depicting support for Kaiden Miles (“Kaiden We Won’t Forget!”), denouncing the investigation into his death (“Custer Cops Don’t Care About Gays!”), or attempting to drum up support for the cause (“Justice 4 Kaiden!”). He was thinking about demonstrations he’d observed in various far-flung foreign locales when Paul put his hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sam,” Paul said when Sam jumped at his touch. “What do you think?”
“Everybody has a right to assemble,” Sam said. “Some places don’t have that. I think I’d pick a warmer day, though,” he added, observing the heavy coats and scarves covering the marchers.
“Yeah. This is where I don’t want to be Buck Lucas,” Paul said. “It’s not enough you’ve got a dead college kid. Now you’ve got rabble-rousers bringing an angle to it. We don’t need that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, in this town everyone gets along. I don’t think anyone really cares who or what you sleep with. Haven’t had any issues with gay marriage. Our judges do ’em and no one bats an eye.”
“Well, there’s a history in Wyoming—you’ll grant that.”
“Okay, we’re not San Francisco or Minneapolis—but how long we gonna have to live with that?”
“Well, just a few years ago you had a judge refusing to perform gay weddings. And that kid got killed down in Laramie—what? Twenty years ago? So it really hasn’t been that long.”
“But no one here had anything to do with any of that!” Paul said.
“I know that. But, Paul, there are papers to sell and websites to get clicks on.”
“And you can say whatever you want about rural white people if you live on either coast.”
“I won’t argue with that,” Sam allowed. “I had folks in D.C. ask me if I rode a horse to school as a kid.”
“They think we’re all just a bunch of redneck mouth-breathers.”
“That either.”
“It ain’t fair, Sam,” Paul exclaimed. “It’s tearing this country apart!”
“Well, it isn’t doing us any favors.”
“Chief Lucas, this is President Beretta.”
“Hey, Vince, what’s going on?” Lucas asked. He was tired and cranky and worried about having a murdered college kid in a creek. “How can we help you?”
“My sources are telling me your investigator has been interviewing a number of my students.”
“He better be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve got a dead college student. Looks like he was killed on campus. At least, that’s where his body was found. So, the procedure would be to start by looking at people close to the victim, and then expanding from there—close to the victim in this case meaning dorm rats and others on campus.”
“What evidence does he have against Davonte?”
“You know I’m not going to answer that.”
“Well, can you assure me that your detective is not on some sort of wild goose chase?” Beretta asked.
“I can tell you that Detective Polson is the best we’ve got. What’s the issue? Seems like a couple of weeks ago you were urging me to hurry up and close this deal,” Lucas said. “Seems like you’d want me to solve this as soon as possible.”
“Well, I do, of course. But I just don’t know why you aren’t looking at some of the homeless downtown, checking the bars and places where methamphetamine is sold. You know, those kinds of people.”
“Well, unfortunately, the kind of people who murder college men are usually, normally, generally, and almost always other college men.”
“I understand, Chief,” Beretta said. “I don’t like it, but I understand it. Can you keep this quiet?”
“Can you give my men a place on campus to do interviews?”
“Maybe. I’d have to clear it with my board of directors, of course.”
“Of course,” Lucas said, smiling to himself.
“Sam, Paul, good to see you both,” Daniels said, extending his hand. They were at the county bar association’s fall gala. Most of the town’s attorneys had shown up with dates, and the booze and talk were flowing freely. Sam was reminded of formal army officer functions from days gone by. “The people’s choice for ‘Best Attorney’ ten years running now,” Daniels continued, looking at Paul and then Sam. “And the new title holder. That’s what we call a power firm.”
“Thank you, Judge.” Paul took the judge’s hand. “Very proud of my partner here. And I won’t lie. I kind of liked having that trophy in my office, but if it’s got to go, then at least we kept it in house. But I won where it really counts,” he said, looking at Jeannie and then at Sam.
Daniels had no idea what he meant, and turned to Sam, who was smiling tightly. “Sam, well done,” Daniels said, extending a hand. “No surprise from this end.”
“You were kind of hard on me during the Olsen trial. I was wondering what was going on.” Sam was extremely anxious and didn’t want to be there, but had agreed to make a twenty-minute appearance at Paul’s insistence.
“You did fine. Probably woulda got an acquittal if Ann had disclosed evidence like she was required to, or if you hadn’t had your man testify,” Daniels said. “Oh well, who’s up for a drink?”
“I’m in,” Paul said.
“Sam?” Daniels asked.
“Don’t think so, Judge. Not at the top of my game.”
“Okay, your loss. I’m buying.”
Daniels headed for the bar with Paul and Jeannie in tow. Sam wandered the room, mingling as best he could. He desperately wanted a drink, and he was thinking about following the judge when he heard his name.
“Sam Johnstone, is it?” The question came from a small man with dark, curly hair. He was accompanied by a slim, dark-haired woman of about thirty-five. She was at least three inches taller than the man, and stunning.
“It is.” Sam extended a hand. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
“I’m President Vincent Beretta from Custer College. This is my wife, Lucy. We’re guests of our in-house counsel, Marilyn Easterling-Grabarkowitz. Do you know her?”
“No. I’m sure I would have remembered. Pleased to meet you.” Sam released Vincent’s hand and took Lucy’s. Hers was warm and soft. She had beautiful eyes, almost black.
“You’re an attorney,” she said, holding his hand tightly.
“Guilty as charged.”
“And a hero, I hear,” she added. She kept ahold of his hand.
“Not in my eyes.”
“How do you do it?” She let her fingers caress his palm as he extracted his hand.
“Do what, exactly?” He looked to Beretta, who was flushed.
“Defend guilty people.”
“Well, I try no
t to do that,” Sam said. “I try and defend only the good guys.” He smiled.
She smiled back at him over the rim of her wine glass. “How do you know who is good and who is not?”
“I give a pretty fair third degree.”
“Do you now?”
“Lucy, I think we’d best move along,” Beretta said, trying to break up the exchange. “I see Marilyn has cornered the mayor and her husband across the room. I want to introduce you.”
“Would you defend the boy’s killer?” Lucy asked Sam, freeing herself from her husband’s grasp. “My husband wants to see that gay boy’s killer brought to justice as soon as possible.”
“Well, that’s the job, right?”
“It’s the job, but it’s not going to happen again, is it Sam?” It was Paul, who was back from the bar with Jeannie. “Sam’s interested in expanding his practice, Mrs. Beretta. He’s looking to cash in on his newfound fame, right, Sam?”
Sam nodded slowly. “Well, yeah. But I’m always looking for an interesting situation.”
“But only if it covers the overhead, right?” Paul laughed tightly, then turned to Lucy. “Perhaps the college might find Sam of use?”
“Oh, I’m certain we could find a position for him.” Lucy let her eyes wander over Sam from head to toe. “I’d hate to see you defend that boy’s killer, though. That would be . . . against my interests. I must go. Vincent is beckoning,” she said, and was gone.
“I think that woman has a position in mind for you, all right, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the practice of law.” Jeannie had moved beside him and was whispering in his ear while Paul watched from several feet away.
“Really?” Sam said. “I thought she was . . . nice.”
“Sam Johnstone, I’m telling you right now,” she said. “Stay away from her, or she’ll peel you like a banana and eat you.”
“Who’s eating what?” Daniels asked. He had a fresh drink—a double, if Sam was right—and an unlit cigar in his mouth. Seeing no response, he asked, “Who’s up for some fresh air?”
“Me,” Sam said. “Getting a little warm in here, anyway.” He followed Daniels out the back door to the large deck.
Punch was again in conference with Rebecca Nice. She had skipped the preliminaries and was down to the business at hand. “What do you have?” she asked.
“Not enough,” Punch admitted. “Davonte was the last guy to see the victim alive, I think. He had some cuts and bruising on his fists—he’d definitely been in a scrap recently. He was into Miles for almost two grand in drugs.”
“Two grand! Where the hell does a college kid get that kind of money?” Nice asked.
“From what I can tell, his mom’s got money. And I think Miles figured he’d get paid by Davonte or his agent. If he didn’t, he could always threaten to go public.”
“Maybe he already did?”
“I’m looking into that.”
“Good. What else?”
“Not a lot. The cause of death was blunt force trauma on the back of his head. We haven’t found the weapon yet. Davonte’s a lot of things, but I don’t see the guy popping someone from behind. He’s more an in-your-face kind of guy.”
“We need to solve this one, Punch,” she said, standing and walking to her window. “I don’t need to tell you that with these idiots marching around calling us all homophobes, the city council and county commissioners are getting nervous. And now that you interviewed that black kid . . . well, supposedly national media is inbound as we speak. I’ve got a request for an interview in my inbox already.”
“Great,” Punch groused. “Look, I’m going to tell you up front I don’t expect we’re ever going to get a lot on anyone on this one. The scene is screwed. We think he died near there, but that snowstorm, then him lying in the water, the animals . . . well, altogether, it served to screw up the crime scene and to pretty much eliminate any sort of forensic stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ve got my guys looking at everything, of course, but I don’t have a good feeling,” Punch said. “I keep going back to having no weapon. And we’ve looked at what little video there is from every security camera and closed-circuit feed not only on campus but elsewhere, and we haven’t gotten squat from an evidentiary standpoint, other than Blair following Miles. That’s it.”
“Damn,” she said. “I don’t like the sound of that at all.”
“Well, it’s worse, really. I mean, Davonte had a reason to kill him, but don’t forget the victim was a CI. If word had gotten out about that, we’d be up to our asses in suspects.”
She opened her desk drawer, then a small bottle of antacids, and swallowed two. “Did it?”
“Not as far as I can tell. No indication that anyone knew.”
“So, assuming that’s the case, Blair remains our best suspect?”
“Well, him and whoever was supplying Miles, because we know Miles had been shorted two thousand dollars by Davonte, and I don’t think Miles was independently wealthy, so he definitely owed someone.”
“Any ideas?” she asked.
“A guy named Trent Gustafson. But I think he’s got a pretty solid alibi.”
“What is that?”
“Spent the night with Paul Norquist’s kid.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Really?” she asked. “Well, whatever.” She nodded in the direction of the protesters marching outside the justice center. “Punch, can you hear those idiots outside?” When Punch nodded, she continued. “Find me a suspect, or the shit is going to hit the fan.”
“I know. I’m waiting for a final opinion from the tech guys who are looking at the phones I had subpoenaed. I’m hoping that will shed some light on the situation and maybe tell us a little more about what Miles was doing, and where, and maybe with whom, around the time he bought it.”
“Good.”
“And I’ve got a call in to the lab. There was a watch cap on the scene we think belonged to Miles. I had it checked for DNA. I’ve had Davonte and some others swabbed. If that comes back a match, we might have something.”
“What’s he say?”
“Says no reason for his DNA to be on the cap.”
“So if his DNA is on that cap—”
“Well,” Punch said. “He’ll have some explaining to do.”
“If that happens, arrest his ass,” she said. “Right, wrong, or indifferent, we gotta get this done.”
Sam was in the courthouse to pick up distribution and to meet with Cathy on a case involving one of his clients. He’d been retained by the woman’s sister after his client had been busted for breaking into people’s homes and stealing their cats, taking them home and adding to her growing menagerie. According to the affidavit of probable cause, when the cops had raided her apartment, they’d discovered more than sixty felines in the filthy home. Due in large part to the obvious mental illness involved, Cathy had made him a reasonable offer, and he was in a pretty good mood as he walked by Downs’s office—so much so that when he saw Veronica at her desk, he decided to stop in.
“Hi,” he said, standing just inside the door. His heart was pounding.
“Hi,” she said. She was working on a file of some sort.
“I wanted to apologize,” he said. “I got scared and—”
“You got drunk and beat up Levi,” she snapped. “You almost killed him!”
“Veronica, he was pushing me!” he said. “I asked him to stop. Before you saw us, he’d been bullying me in the line. I was defending myself.”
She didn’t look up from the file. “You were drinking, which you promised you wouldn’t do. And then you beat up one of my friends. Sam, I am so embarrassed I can’t even go anywhere.”
“Why? You didn’t do anything.”
“I brought you. That’s what I did.”
Sam stared hard at her for a long moment. “Well, you won’t make that mistake twice, now will you?” He turned and left the office.
Seconds later Downs exited her office. Sh
e looked at Veronica and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Judge.”
“Was that Sam Johnstone I heard out here?”
“Yes,” Veronica said, and sniffed.
“What did he want?”
“He was just stopping in to see a file.”
“Okay, well, if he had any sense, he’d be stopping in to see you,” Downs said. “You two seem pretty compatible to me.”
Punch was at his desk eating a sandwich when Jensen knocked on the door. “Boss, I got the state crime lab on line two.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. They got something.”
“I’m listening,” Punch said, taking another bite of his BLT.
“They matched Blair’s DNA to some of that on the hat.”
Punch finished swallowing and took a gulp of coffee. “Send ’em through,” he said. When the phone rang, he answered it eagerly. “Polson.”
“This is Amanda Desmond. I’m a forensic scientist with the Wyoming state crime lab.”
“Outstanding,” Punch replied, wiping crumbs from the top of his desk and setting a yellow legal pad in front of himself. “What can you tell me?”
“I’m the technician assigned to look for DNA on that hat your guys sent down.”
“So, what can you tell me?” he asked. He was hoping for something definitive.
“I can tell you that the hat has DNA consistent with at least two of the samples you sent me.”
“Whose?”
“The victim,” she began. “No doubts there. The other one I can be fairly certain about is from a . . . Davonte Blair.”
Punch felt his heart skip a beat. “You sure?”
“Of course. I did the tests myself.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Punch said. “This is important.”
“All my tests are important,” she snapped.
He took a deep breath. “Uh, yeah. So, anything else I should know?”
“The DNA on the cap came from a mixture. So, there is a little more statistical uncertainty than might otherwise be the case. I have to remind you that, given the few cells I had to analyze, I cannot say that the DNA was not a secondary transfer.”
One and Done (Sam Johnstone Book 2) Page 11