Det. Winston looked down at the mess on the sidewalk and sipped slowly from his quadruple mocha. Blood and brains were certainly nothing new to the veteran. He remembered his first case though and how he puked for what seemed like a solid fifteen minutes. It went on and on ‘til well after there should have been nothing left. Over fifteen years later and nothing got his gorge up. Well almost nothing. That case had been at a local taqueria. He still couldn’t eat chile relleno without his stomach doing a slow roll left.
“So what do you think Lee?” Officer Annette Rowan stood at his left shoulder. Her voice sounded almost as good as she smelled. Too bad she was as ugly as the south end of a north bound horse. Still she was a great cop and five kids made it plain that her husband didn’t mind.
“I think that whoever did this was a pretty damn good shot and had great big brass ones.” He looked at her and smiled, wrinkles creasing his face in several places. “Beyond that my magical detective powers haven’t lead me to the killer yet.”
“Shit. And here I thought we could call it a night. You let me know if those powers kick in.” She nodded, returning his smile and turned to waive off some rubberneckers. The shooting had gone down at about five thirty according to the deceased’s body guards so by the time the cops arrived there was already something of a crowd. Thankfully the hired help knew enough about police procedure that they had cordoned off the area until the black and whites arrived. Now there were more than a few reporters all vying for a good shot for the front page.
He stepped back to let the coroner do her job and finished his coffee. It was getting more than a little bitter and even though he was in sight of his fifties and by all accounts in good shape he felt it more acutely than he did even five years ago. There wasn’t much more he could do here until the forensics people and regular cops did there thing. That wasn’t to say that he didn’t have plenty of work to do. More than a few people wanted Walter Owen dead, so narrowing them down could take a little time.
The man was pretty despicable if what little he knew was to be believed. And considering the fact that most of his bodyguards had seen the inside of the state penitentiary, Lee saw no reason not to believe most of it. He looked at his notepad. On it in block letters were written, “Slum lord. Loan shark. Mob connections? Check out transportation company.”
Granted at this point in Owen’s storied career he probably rarely got his hands dirty in any sort of personal way, but there were rumors about those occasional instances. If any of those were true then this killing was probably more about revenge than any sort of shady business dealing. His gut, and he always tried to listen to it, told him that this wasn’t about territory, power, or money. Since the department was strapped for manpower and he was all alone on this case for now his gut was his best partner. It couldn’t replace good police work though, so he got in his department issued sedan and drove back to the station.
Once there and parked in front of his PC with another mocha, he began to surf the files. What the department lacked in people it made up for in computer power. He had all the records that the city had at his fingertips. He also had practically unlimited access to SBI files. The chief also made sure that law enforcement city-wide new how to drive these little electronic boxes. An hour of digging and he had pieced together the things that were nibbling at the back of his brain.
Two years ago, Dexter “Twenty-fo’” Abraham had reported that Owen had a taste for children. According to his testimony a number of them had been seen getting into his silver Merc and then never showing up again. It was true that there had been quite a few missing persons reported around that time on the southeast side of town. Most of them were juveniles of various races between the ages of ten and thirteen. Unfortunately Mr. Abraham wasn’t exactly the most reliable witness and was testifying to beat a drug rap. Even worse, he had gotten himself shot while in the holding tank.
A former housekeeper of Owen’s had come forward of her own accord to report some strange goings on in his brownstone. The interpreter was able to get out of her that some sort of “black mass” took place there on a somewhat regular basis. She never saw what went on, but reported screaming, strange noises, and an “evil presence”. Lee didn’t have any religious leaning. To his mind there wasn’t enough evidence for any sort of supreme being and man was bad enough on his own without needing any evil spirit to influence his behavior. But the devil frequently made a good scapegoat for wrongdoings when you didn’t want to take personal responsibility for your own actions. In this case it looks like the detective in charge agreed with him. There was a nominal investigation which turned up absolutely nothing. A note indicated that the maid had been deported not much later.
Doug Bowers, a reporter for the Tribune, had done some digging into the wealthy man’s past and come up with some juicy gossip. There was apparently a history of mental illness, including a lengthy stay at a private institution as a youth. That one was interesting particularly considering that there had been a number of church buildings that had been torched very recently and they stopped right around the same time that his insanely rich parents had put junior in a padded room. Those same parents died in a suspicious poisoning incident two years later. Unfortunately for their son they had left all of their wealth to charity. He became a ward of the state and was every inch the self made man. The capper here was that Mr. Owen sued the paper and demanded that they fire Bowers. They did naturally and as happened with people that got in his way, the reporter hadn’t been heard from since.
Of course Lee didn’t care if the guy ate children, had massive Satanic orgies in his basement, or killed his parents. Owen was dead and as such, well out of the reach of any consequences. Dead was dead. What mattered was why he was killed and as much as his gut told him that these bits of history played into that none of that was proof either. It was fuel for the fire though. Tomorrow he would get the coroner’s report and the information on the crime scene, but he had a suspicion that none of that would pay off either. This was a clean hit, one shot one kill. None of the bodyguards had seen anything.
Part of Lee couldn’t really give a rat’s ass if he ever caught the person responsible. Owen was a complete waste of air and no one would mourn his loss. The law was the law though and the part of Lee that made him a detective wouldn’t stop until he had either made his arrest or was called off the case. He clicked off his desklamp, logged out of his computer and headed down to the garage. In spite of the caffeine, he was completely spent and a tired cop was not a good cop.
