Sam rapped on the door frame before entering. A visitors badge hung from the collar of her sweater. “Am I interrupting?” The room looked like a morgue. She hadn’t seen that many sullen faces since the last Chicago Bears winless season. “There were ‘Hi Sams’ all around in a tone that sounded less than enthusiastic.
“Hope you got something mind blowing, Sam, ‘cause we are just about out of bullets.” Robinson stood and walked over to close the door. He took Sam’s coat from her and tossed it on the back of a chair.
“Poor babies. Are you stuck?” Sam smiled as the three men growled. She pulled a picture of Gary from her tote bag. She had stopped by an Office Max and had the photo from the college newspaper enlarged. She placed it on the whiteboard next to Austin’s and Matt’s photos. “I like your little bullet magnets.” Sam grabbed a red marker and wrote Gary Staples below the photo. The three men sat up a little straighter. Before they could ask, Sam told them about her phone conversation with Amber Daughtry and the fractured relationship between the three men. Sam saved the best for last.
“Everything Matt and Austin learned about hypnosis, they learned from the best.” She tapped Gary’s photo with the closed end of the felt tip pen.
“And where do we find Mister Staples?” Robinson asked.
“Hey, do you want me to do everything?”
“Hell, yeah,” Frank said with a chuckle. “That’s why the department is paying you those big bucks.”
Jake studied the board with skepticism, trying to connect the dots. “Even if we found this Staples guy, what could he tell us? He’s obviously not a current employee because I don’t remember seeing his name on the list from Morning Glory.”
“Maybe he can tell us how Austin and Matt could hypnotize someone to kill herself. Maybe there’s some added step even my therapist is unaware of. Amber wasn’t sure where Gary was living now, but she did confirm that he was from Danville, Illinois.”
“Oh, hell. If he’s still living with mom, he’s our number one suspect.” Robinson punched a button on the intercom and asked for someone to run a report on Gary Staples.
Sam spent the next thirty minutes filling them in on her conversation with Viola Williams and how Gary Staples, Matt and Austin might have been responsible for her losing her job. “She lives with her niece in Merrillville, Indiana and had been unable to get another teaching job after losing her job at Reed.”
There was a rap on the door. Andy Brainard entered and handed a print out to Frank. “I made several copies,” Andy said. Frank thanked him and closed the door.
The room was silent as everyone reviewed the report on Gary Staples. Gary had used his accounting degree to work for a retail business in Chicago. After three years with the firm, he opened his own accounting business, doing mainly tax accounting.
“He seemed to be doing good, although his marriage only lasted three years.” Robinson flipped the last page over, not expecting the report to have ended so abruptly. “Staples dropped off the face of the earth right after the divorce.”
“Can’t be that unusual. Maybe he pitched a tent on a beach somewhere to drown his sorrows.” Frank took another look at the photo of an obese Gary Staples. “Might need a pretty big beach.”
“Hey. Ain’t nothing wrong with a little meat on the bones,” Robinson said. Although the captain tipped the scales way past two hundred, his bulk was mainly muscle.
“It’s probably genetic,” Sam offered. “I think it was rather crude of Revere and Bordeau to discriminate against someone because he didn’t meet their financial and cosmetic requirements. Makes me want to lock both of them up.”
“Okay, people.” Robinson stood and stretched, a sign that the meeting was over. “Sam, stay home and rest. Frank, follow up on Missus Staples. I’m gonna have Andy and Maury continue with those tapes from Bailey’s. Jake, try to pick up the trail on Gary Staples. Maybe he’s buried in a grave somewhere, compliments of his two buddies.”
There was another knock at the door, then Andy stuck his head in. “Can I show you something?”
They clustered around Andy’s desk where a monitor displayed a still shot from Bailey’s. He took a seat and pressed a button. “This didn’t seem to be much of an altercation the victim had with a customer but I recognized the customer from the photos on your board.” He touched another button and paused the video. “There.”
“What do you see?” Robinson leaned forward, trying to take in all of the activity in the bar.
Jake pointed at the screen. “Isn’t that Austin Revere?”
<><>
Go home and rest. “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.” Sam studied the photo of Gary Staples. Even though his face looked bloated and his body resembled the Michelin Man, there was something about him that bothered her. She had hoped to join Jake and Frank to watch the good doctors sweat but something about the photo nagged at her. Instead, she found herself at Headquarters on the elevator to Beast’s lair when Chief Dennis Murphy climbed on and made a cursory glance of her injuries.
Once the elevator started moving, he pounded the red button bringing the elevator to a halt.
“What the hell happened, Sam?”
“This?” Sam touched her forehead, then winced. “I would think the grapevine fed you all the information.”
“Do you remember anything? What the guy smelled like? Liquor? Nauseating cologne like Schuler’s chief of staff wears?”
“You think the mayor had something to do with it?”
“I don’t know. He’s pretty driven when it comes to getting what he wants so I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Sam had to admit. There was a long list of suspects. She suddenly felt light-headed and before she could reach for the railing to hold onto, Murphy grabbed her in a fatherly hug.
“Dammit, Sam. We are going to catch this guy.”
Sam was having a hard time hating her nemesis. Ever since she saw the other side of Murphy after working to clear him of suspicion of murder, he was fast becoming a replacement for the father she lost when she was five years old.
“Benny put a rush on the DNA sample.” She peeled herself away from him as Murphy set the elevator back in motion.
“I already spoke to Benny. I told him those results are for my eyes only. I don’t want Jake shooting first and asking questions later.” The elevator doors opened and Murphy exited as quickly as he had appeared.
The mayor and his chief of staff. The list kept growing. Everything had happened so fast Sam hadn’t had time to think of the scent of aftershave or cologne. All she remembered was the smell of oil and dirt from the parking lot. Her attacker wore gloves. She remember that much. Expensive leather coat or a pullover? She didn’t know. When she was a cop she could never understand why victims couldn’t be more specific about details and now she understood. At least she remembered the deck shoes and that he wore a ski mask because the fabric scratched against her ear.
“Are you getting off or are you going to just ride the elevator all day?” Beast asked.
Sam looked up, startled that the elevator had arrived so quickly. “Sorry. I was lost in thought as usual.” She followed him down the dimly lit hallway to his equally dimly lit office.
His gaze drifted from the dark circles under her eyes to the adhesive strips on her forehead. “Who did you piss off?”
“Jeez, why do people always think I’m the instigator?”
“Your reputation is known far and wide.”
“I watch CSI so I know you can age a child to see what he would look like today. But can you take this photo and make him lose about one hundred and fifty pounds?”
Beast took the photo from her. “Wow. He’s definitely due for a diet. Sure. When do you need it by?”
Sam had hoped yesterday would be a good response but she glanced at three different monitors, each clicking and spewing data. “Whenever you have a spare minute. Can you attach it to an email?” She handed him her business card.
“So, is this the guy who roughed you up?”
“I don’t think so. I would have felt three hundred plus pounds slamming into me.”
“After I put him on a diet, you may have second thoughts.”