Royce swirled his finger above his head. “Rue, go with Bentley and Lawrence. I’ll wait here for Forensics and then meet up with you at Danny’s house in a bit.”
“You got it, Boss.” Rue took the trifolded warrant from Royce, and they left. From Kim’s house to Danny’s was a short two miles—hers on the northeast side of Forsyth Park and his on the west.
Rue didn’t expect to see Danny’s silver Camry in the driveway when they stopped along the curb. After all, the trip back from Wilmington would take four and a half hours, and Danny had been at that North Carolina pawnshop only an hour earlier. They had a good three hours or more to search Danny’s house before he ever showed up, if he was actually on his way home. They hoped to find the evidence they needed to lock him up for good.
“Okay, guys, I doubt that there’s a key lying around, but we can take five minutes to check,” Rue said. “After that, the door gets a boot or two.”
The three of them searched in the typical hiding places—under lawn décor, above the doorframe, on top of the porch light, and under the welcome mat. It was nowhere to be found. Because Rue was the largest of the three, he backed up, squared himself to the door, then charged it with the full force of his foot. The door flew open, and they were in.
Even though they knew Danny wasn’t home, Lawrence called out his name. It was procedure to call out that they had a warrant, and he did.
The house was silent.
Rue panned from left to right. After the foyer was a living room to the left, a dining room to the right, with the kitchen beyond that facing the backyard. A hallway to the left of the living room was likely where the bedrooms and bathrooms were located.
“Okay, don’t let anything get by us. Search every nook and cranny for something that’ll tell us why he planned these murders for Abraham to carry out and why he took over himself after killing his hired gun. Nothing is off the table. Something had to have snapped with Danny, and we’re here to find out what that was.”
Lawrence rubbed his forehead. “So are we just going to rip the house apart or search it methodically?”
“We’ll begin at the back and work our way forward. Let’s start in the bedrooms. Look under everything too. There may be a crawlspace opening under a rug, beneath a bed, or in a closet.”
Bentley shrugged. “I’ll take the spare bedroom and the bathroom. Lawrence, why don’t you take the office, and Rue, the master and bath?”
“Yep, good enough.” Devon headed down the hallway. “Yell out if you find something.”
They were deep in the thick of things when Royce arrived at eleven o’clock. So far, they had found paperwork in the office that could hold promising clues.
“Got anything, guys?” Royce asked.
“Sure do. Right this way, Boss,” Lawrence said. “From all appearances, Danny’s building was about to be foreclosed on, and it looks like he already lost his bail bond business license for malfeasance. Whatever reason that might be.”
“Interesting, and we’ll definitely check into that. Lead the way.”
They gathered in the office, where it seemed all things incriminating were located—or at least so far. On top of Danny’s desk were dozens of bills with “past due” stamped on the unopened envelopes, and the desk calendar had May 15 circled in yellow marker.
Royce tapped the date with his index finger. “I wonder what’s so important about that date.” He jerked his chin toward the computer. “Have you gotten into that yet?”
“Password protected.”
“We’ll bag it into evidence and pass it off to Tech. What else?”
“We haven’t even scratched the surface yet. That file cabinet is locked, but I bet there’s a good story inside,” Rue said.
Royce gave it a look. “No key in the desk?”
“Nope. Bet it’s on his key ring, though,” Lawrence said.
“Then break the lock. Bentley, go into the garage and see if you can find a hammer. That ought to take care of it.”
Bentley took off and was back within a few minutes. “Who wants the pleasure?”
Rue reached for the hammer. “He tried to kill my partner, so it’ll be my pleasure on Mitch’s behalf.”
Royce nodded, and Devon swung. The lock snapped off without much effort.
“Now, let’s see what made Danny lose control.”
Each of them grabbed stacks of folders and sat at the kitchen table.
“These are going to take hours if not days to go through,” Rue said. “Shouldn’t we put a BOLO out for his car and then search the rest of the house first?”
“Yeah, let’s do that. I issued the BOLO for all of Georgia as soon as I got that call from the pawnshop owner. That’ll involve the State Patrol, too, unless Danny is smart enough to drive the back roads home.”
“No matter what, he’ll be picked up the second he sets tires in Savannah,” Bentley said.
Royce nodded. “That’s a fact. Let’s get going on this house. Rue, you and Lawrence start taking those folders and the computer out to your cruiser and make sure you lock everything in the trunk.”
“Roger that.”
Minutes later, they resumed the search for evidence, each going back to the room they’d started in, and Royce began on the living room.
It didn’t take long before Rue called out to the others. “I’ve got something!” he yelled. “And it looks pretty important.”
The rest of them charged into the master bedroom to see what Devon had. They found him sitting on the bed, paging through what looked like a journal.
“What’s that?” Royce asked.
Rue shook his head. “You can’t make this shit up. Believe it or not, this is Abraham’s kill list and journal.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Royce said. “That’s enough to put the final nail in Danny’s coffin.”
Rue nodded. “It sure looks that way.”
Royce jerked his chin toward the hallway. “Bag that, and let’s get out of here. We’ve got plenty of evidence that we can go through at the station. I’ll have Patrol anchor here at the house in case Danny finds his way around the BOLO.”
Back at the precinct, everyone took time to eat lunch, then they gathered in the conference room. Another break wouldn’t likely happen until well after the night crew came in, if at all. Royce called Forensics in to print some of the damning documents as well as Abraham’s journal. They needed undeniable proof that the prints found matched Danny’s and Abraham’s.
Abraham’s impeccable records as a hired gun told much of the story. His log-in and account information for the dark web were right on the first page. Recording them was stupid on his part, but it was doubtful that he’d thought anyone other than himself would ever lay eyes or hands on them.
“Damn,” Rue said as he began to make sense of the entries. “It looks like Abraham’s career as an assassin went back a good five years. He probably has a boatload of money stashed in some bank account that should by all rights go to the victims’ families.”
“That’s going to take time to track down, Rue,” Royce said.
Devon nodded. “I know, and the crazy thing I can’t wrap my head around is why Danny would want his own sister murdered.”
“Or any of the others, but yeah, especially his own flesh and blood,” Lawrence said.
Bentley flipped the pages of the folder he’d just opened. “I’m sure some of these documents will give us those answers. Wait, what’s this?”
Everyone stopped what they were doing and gave Bentley their full attention.
Royce raised his brows. “What is it?”
“A copy of a life insurance policy from the parents. The only beneficiary shown was Kim. What the hell? I wonder if the will reflected the same?”
Rue rubbed his hands together. “The plot is thickening. Before long, we’ll have every puzzle piece in its place. Now we need to look for Kim’s life insurance policy and will, if she had one. If everything went to her, did she refuse to help out when the business went to shit? Did Danny have her killed to get his hands on all of the money?”
“Maybe,” Royce said, “but he’d have a hard time collecting it if he wasn’t listed on her bank account or any other legal documents as her beneficiary.” He looked at the desk calendar again. “And I’d still like to know why May 15 is circled. Rue, head back to Kim’s house. We’ll continue to work our way through this paperwork. You need to track down all of Kim’s important documents and see if you can find an attorney’s phone number or card anywhere in her house. The money may have been put into a trust. We don’t know yet, so bring everything you find back here. We’ll have to go through her documents, too, in order to make sense of things.”
Rue huffed. “Nothing killers do makes sense.”