As much as I liked my truck, my department’s marked SUVs were faster and more comfortable, and they could transport far more gear to a crime scene. More than that, the department’s SUVs had their own laptops complete with 4G internet access. My connection at the station was faster, but it was hard to beat the convenience of a laptop on the road.
I sat in the front seat and used the laptop to look up the number for the Chicago Police Department’s liaison office. After I told the liaison officer the situation with Kushnir and Wilkinson, he transferred me to a lieutenant in the organized-crime division. I sipped my coffee and hummed along to terrible electronic music as I waited. After a few minutes, the lieutenant grunted and answered.
“Lieutenant Jim Cornell,” he said. “What do you need?”
“Lieutenant, this is Detective Joe Court with the St. Augustine County Sheriff’s Department in St. Augustine, Missouri. You got a minute to talk?”
“I might. What do you want?”
“I’m hoping you can fill in some gaps for me,” I said, allowing myself to sink into the warm, black upholstery of my SUV. “I’ve got three bodies on the ground here, and I ran into two guys from your area. Both carried firearms. They seemed shady. I thought you might have heard of them.”
He grunted. It was midafternoon, but he almost sounded as if he were hung over.
“Give me some names.”
I read him the names and waited while he typed. After a moment, he made a deep, throaty growl.
“We’ve got files on both gentlemen,” he said. “Are they still in town right now?”
“I’ve got an officer following them,” I said. “I assume so.”
“Tell your officer to back off,” said the lieutenant. “Dumb and Dumber are both hitters for a Ukrainian gang in town. They didn’t earn their nicknames for their sparkling judgment, and I doubt they’re in your area to see the sights.”
“Do they work in the pharmaceuticals industry?”
“They’re into anything that can make them money. Drugs, guns, girls, you name it. They don’t discriminate.”
“Is the name Reid Chemical familiar?”
He paused. “No. Not at all. Why?”
“Two of my victims worked there,” I said. “Anything else you can tell me about the bad guys?”
“If they’re in town, it’s not for their health.”
I snickered a little. “Somehow, I didn’t think they were here to go hiking. Thanks for your time.”
He grunted again, and I hung up. The moment I did, I called Trisha and asked her to warn Sasquatch about our bad guys. I wanted to assign an additional officer to sit in a car with him, but we didn’t have the manpower to allow that. As long as he kept his eyes open, he’d be okay. After that, I focused my attention on the laptop again.
Even with Kushnir and Wilkinson in town, Logan Reid was my primary suspect. According to the license bureau’s information, he was twenty-one, and he lived six miles outside the town of St. Augustine. If I had to guess, he lived with his parents.
I looked him up on Facebook, but the privacy settings on his profile were so tight I couldn’t see anything but his profile picture. A quick Google search, though, gave me what I needed. He was a member of the Sigma Iota fraternity at Waterford College. I knew the house well, having interviewed Chad Hamilton—June Wellman’s rapist—there. The fraternity’s recruitment board must have liked assholes.
I put my car in gear and headed out. As I had on my previous visit, I first stopped by the college’s Public Safety Office to let them know I was in the area. While there, I also showed them a picture of Laura Rojas on my phone. The officer at the front desk looked at her face and nodded.
“She’s familiar, but I’m not sure from where. I might have seen her around town. St. Augustine isn’t a big place.”
“Have you ever seen her with a student?”
He shook his head. “Couldn’t say. Our door is always open, but we don’t get to know many students.”
“How about Logan Reid? Did you get to know him?”
The officer cracked a smile and nodded. “We’ve picked him up three or four times for public intoxication. He’s over twenty-one, so we took him home and made sure he was safe.”
I nodded. “Have you ever found any weapons on him when you’ve picked him up?”
The officer hesitated. “Do you know something we don’t?”
“He’s a person of interest in a homicide I’m working.”
The officer raised his eyebrows and drew in a breath. “We catch students with guns occasionally, but nine times out of ten they’re hunting rifles. We don’t get too many handguns on campus, and if we find one on a student, he’s expelled. It doesn’t matter how much money his family gives to the school.”
“Has Logan ever gotten violent on campus?”
The officer shook his head. “No. He’s on alcohol probation, so if he had gotten into fights, too, we would have moved to have him expelled. We can’t have an angry drunk on campus.”
It was a big step from public intoxication to a triple homicide, but he had the motive. His mom owned Reid Chemical, and if Laura had found something incriminating about the company, his family stood to lose a lot of money. Still, I had a hard time pegging him as a murderer.
“Thank you for the background. I’ll talk to his fraternity brothers and see what I can find.”
“You want to search his room while you’re there?”
I hesitated and cocked my head to the side. “It’s a communal living environment, but I’d still need a search warrant for his room.”
“The university owns the building, and everyone who lives inside it signs a code of conduct before moving in. Since Logan’s on alcohol probation, we can search for alcohol. If we see something else during those searches, it should be admissible in court.”
I wasn’t a lawyer, but I already knew a competent defense lawyer would tear that community code of conduct apart. At the same time, my lack of law degree might benefit me. The court couldn’t hold me to the same standard as an attorney. As long as I believed my search was legal, the prosecutors could argue I had searched in good faith.
“Let’s go find his booze.”
The officer—his name was Corey Sutton, I found out—and I walked to the Sigma Iota house. Unlike my previous visit, I didn’t need to ring the bell and hope someone would come out. As a university employee, Sutton had a key. He opened the door, and we walked into the lobby. We found a shirtless young man asleep on the couch with his hand inside his pants and a wisp of a smile on his face. As I shut the front door, the kid’s eyes fluttered open and landed on me. For a second, his smile broadened, but then he saw Officer Sutton and fell off the couch. I covered a snicker by coughing into my hand. “Don’t mind us,” said Sutton. “We’re visiting one of your buddies.”
He pushed himself up and jogged toward the stairwell, shouting that the police were in the lobby. Sutton looked at me.
“Something I said?”
I knew he meant it as a joke, but my shoulders tensed up, and my fingers and toes tingled with nerves. I hadn’t been upstairs yet, but I could imagine what the place would look like. Narrow corridors, doorways everywhere, debris on the floor.
In the police academy, we had trained to clear entire floors of apartment buildings, and every time, at least one person in the unit “died.” Only in a real situation, it wouldn’t be instructors hiding behind fire doors with paintball guns. In the field, death was permanent.
Sutton looked at me up and down. He wasn’t checking me out; instead, he looked curious.
“You okay, Detective?”
I nodded. “I’m annoyed that they know we’re coming, but there’s nothing we could have done about that. We should call in some backup in case somebody’s armed. I’d rather not get ambushed up there.”
He considered me and shook his head. “You ever been in a fraternity house?”
I glanced at him and then looked to the stairwell. “It’s been a while.”
Sutton looked toward the stairs. “He went up to tell his friends to hide their beer and weed. He’s not looking to start a fight.”
“True, but we’re going upstairs to search the room of a murder suspect. I’m not interested in getting shot in the back.”
“What do you propose?” he asked.
“Clear everybody out of the building and search for stragglers. Once we’ve cleared the house, we’ll search Logan’s room. Last time, I pulled the fire alarm to get everybody out. I’m not sure they’ll fall for that again.”
Sutton sighed and swore under his breath before getting on his radio to call for backup. It took almost fifteen minutes, but three more uniformed campus police officers arrived. When Officer Sutton told them what was going on, they looked at me as if I had suggested they climb Mount Everest in their underwear. One officer screwed up his face.
“You understand you’re asking us to eat a shit sandwich, right?” he asked. “If we go in there and clear them out, we’ll deal with the fallout for a week.”
“Then I’d suggest you get ready to eat shit, Officer,” I said. “This isn’t up for debate. You guys can help me out, or I’ll call my station and get my people here. I’ll warn you now, though: My team won’t be gentle. It’s your choice, but you’ll eat shit either way.”
Nobody said anything. Then Sutton looked at me.
“Is everybody at your station this vulgar?”
“I’m a little above average,” I said. The room plunged into silence once more. Sutton looked to his fellow officers.
“The detective is working a homicide, and there’s potential evidence in the building. Janet and I will take the second floor. Shelby and Bart can get the third. We will funnel the residents down the west stairwell to the ground floor, where they can assemble on the grass. We’re only interested in Logan Reid’s room, so make sure the boys know that.”
They nodded, although they still didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the job. I stayed in the lobby while they worked. The ceiling didn’t have a lot of soundproofing, so I heard every word the officers on the second floor said. They were cordial, but they were also firm. Nobody argued with them, which was nice to see.
After about fifteen minutes, Sutton came down the stairs to tell me the house was empty. I thanked him, and the two of us walked to the third floor to search. Logan Reid had a case of beer in his minifridge, and several bottles of vodka, rum, and gin in his closet. Officer Sutton had everything he needed to charge Logan with violating the school’s alcohol policy. Evidence for my case was scarcer.
The room was small, but Logan had stuffed three ratty couches and an enormous TV inside. I sat down in front of that TV after finding nothing in the entire room. That was when I felt the hard edge of a cell phone wedged between the couch cushions. I fished it out and found a Samsung Galaxy S9 cell phone.
I took my phone from my purse. Laura Rojas had received calls from dozens of numbers, most of which we had identified. A few, though, had gone to prepaid phones without subscriber information. I had called them but didn’t get an answer on any of them. Now, I wondered. I searched through my phone’s history until I found the block of numbers I needed. Then I dialed. On my third number, the phone I had found buzzed.
“Did you find something, Detective?” asked Sutton.
No judge in the world would let me look at that phone without a search warrant, but I might be able to get one now.
“Yeah. I found something good.”
A smile cracked Sutton’s lips.
“This wasn’t a waste, then.”
“Not at all,” I said. “Congratulations, Mr. Sutton. You brought me one step closer to bringing down a murderer.”