With everyone doing their job, Rue and I returned to the precinct. We needed to compare contacts in John Keller’s phone with Brandon’s. I didn’t believe it was a coincidence that both men looked to be killed in nearly the same manner. They hadn’t been shot or stabbed, but their faces and heads were destroyed beyond recognition.
As I sat at my desk, I thought about Devon’s earlier statement. “How did you phrase what you said about the person who killed Brandon?”
He shrugged. “Hell, I don’t remember.”
“I said something about Brandon not being scrawny, and then you said—”
“Oh yeah. I said whoever killed him must have been tougher and bigger than Brandon.”
“That’s right.” I rattled my fingers on the desk. “What if our killer, aka mystery man, followed the tow truck to Brandon’s house and killed him.”
“Why and how? He didn’t have a vehicle, plus it would have been nearly impossible to get past the officers who were searching for him.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Yeah, I suppose. I’d like to know how he slipped out of the area, though, and where he is now.”
“And that’s the million-dollar question.”
I called down to the evidence locker and said I was on my way. I needed John’s phone. After signing in, collecting the phone, and signing out, I returned to our floor and my desk. There, I stretched gloves over my fingers then opened the evidence bag Martin had given me before we left Brandon’s house. He had already printed Brandon’s phone and bagged it.
I handed the phone to Rue. “You read off his contacts, and I’ll compare the names to John’s.”
“Yep, that’ll work.” Devon read the names aloud and looked at me after each one. “Nothing?”
“Nope. Believe me, if any matched, I’d be yelling it out.”
Brandon had only twelve contacts—not many by most standards—and none matched John’s.
“Well, that was a bust. I thought we might be onto something.” I stared at the ceiling. “I’m out of ideas, Devon. We’ve talked to everyone, compared friends and phone contacts, compared manners of death, and still nothing and no prints.”
“Yeah, Kim and the pawnshop owners were killed with a nine-millimeter handgun that likely had a silencer attached to it. Brandon and John were beaten to death. Different killers? I can’t even say that for sure.”
Seconds later, my desk phone rang. I hoped it was Royce calling with a task for us. “Cannon speaking.”
“Detective Cannon, it’s Officer Petrie calling.”
“Yep. What’s up, Petrie?”
“I have a lead.”
I was stunned and didn’t quite know what he meant. “A lead? Where and for whom?”
“Here, at Brandon’s place. A woman three houses down, I’m pretty sure a squatter, originally said she didn’t see anything, so I continued on. Later, as I was heading back to the crime scene, she called out from the abandoned house. I looked over, and she waved me toward her. I think she was afraid to be seen talking to the police with all the bystanders around.”
“Get to the point, Petrie. What did she tell you?”
“Sorry. She said she was sure it was late in the day because she felt hungry. A man climbed out of a green truck, crossed the street, and went to Brandon’s house. The man who lived there let him in, and then the visitor left about ten minutes later.”
“Description, Petrie! How did she describe him?”
“As tall with black hair.”
“Son of a bitch! How did he get a vehicle so fast, and how did he know where Brandon lived? Why would he kill Brandon anyway?”
“Are you asking me that, sir?”
“No, it’s a rhetorical question. Stay put, Petrie. We’re heading back.” I hung up and rushed out of the office with Rue on my heels.
“So it was him?”
“It sounds that way. I want to interview the woman myself to see if she seems credible.”
“She has to be. She described him exactly how he is.”
I burst through Royce’s door without knocking. There wasn’t time for formalities.
“What the—”
I cut him off. “Boss, a woman witnessed the mystery man going into Brandon’s house. He killed him and possibly John Keller too.”
Royce held up his hands. “Slow down, Mitch. Find out what she saw, and we’ll put the puzzle pieces together. We can’t go off half-cocked without proof. We need that before we can convict anyone. Call me after you talk to her.”
“Will do.”
Rue and I raced to the crime scene and met up with Petrie, who was waiting outside Brandon’s front door.
“Lead the way!” I yelled as we exited the cruiser.
Petrie pointed across the street and three houses down. “She was in there.”
“Is she still?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I assume so.”
I charged into the broken-down house and called out. Nobody answered. I flipped the light switch on and off—nothing. “There’s no lights in here, no electricity.” I yelled out again and used my phone’s flashlight to see. The windows had been boarded up, and the interior of the house was dark. Finally, I heard a groan from a back room. We followed the sound and found her, well on her way to a heroin high. The syringe was still in her arm. “Damn it. Call 911 and get an ambulance out here. I need her statement, and she has to be coherent to give it.”
Within ten minutes, an ambulance arrived and the woman was loaded into it. She was going to Mercy Hospital for the night.
I approached one of the EMTs. “Don’t let anybody other than law enforcement into her room. Can you give her Narcan to reverse the heroin and then nothing else, not even an aspirin? We need to interview her tomorrow, and all the drugs have to be out of her system when we do.”
“I’ll call ahead for the attending’s permission.”
I nodded a thanks then turned to Petrie. “I need to know every word she said to you both times you spoke to her.”
“I’ll do my best.”
I jerked my chin toward Brandon’s house. “Who’s still inside?”
“Just Forensics. Tapper and Terry left with Brandon’s body about a half hour ago.”
“Then let’s talk in there.”
Rue, Petrie, and I went inside and made sure to stay out of Martin and Billy’s way. We walked into the kitchen, but the foul odor made me change my mind about staying there.
“Let’s sit in our cruiser instead. The air is much fresher outside.”
Petrie climbed into the back, and Rue and I sat in the front.
“Now, start with the first time you talked to her.”
“Yeah, sure. I walked up to the house and saw that the front door was open, so I entered and called out. She stumbled out from somewhere down the hall, and I identified myself and asked if she lived there. Her reply was sometimes. I assume she meant when she needed to crash somewhere, she went there. I asked if she’d been there yesterday, and she said she had. That’s when I asked if she’d seen any stranger go inside the house across the street. She told me she hadn’t seen anything.”
“That’s when you continued on?” Rue asked.
“Yep, I finished off that side of the block even though most houses were empty. I noticed the other officers heading back, so I figured we were done. As I passed the house she was in for the second time, she was watching from the entryway and called out to me. That’s when she told me the truth. Maybe the gawkers and officers in the area scared her earlier. I’m not sure.”
“Okay, and she definitely said a green truck and a tall man with black hair?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Good job, Petrie. Now we just have to wait until her system is free of drugs. She should be coherent enough in the morning to give us another statement. Hopefully, it’ll match what she told you earlier.”
Rue spoke up. “Meanwhile, we’ll start checking the DMV database for green trucks.”