He rolled his shoulders, grabbed his mug, and headed to his desk. Treyson’s body would be at the front of the queue in the morgue. So, minus the toxicology and histology reports, the autopsy report should be ready tomorrow. It didn’t matter how much money you had; those damn tests took time. Real life didn’t work like the television crime shows where the reports were done as soon as the medical examiner had finished the autopsy. True, money had a way of making shit happen more rapidly, but it couldn’t make chemicals process any faster than nature allowed.
The amount of money the Treysons had could also make shit disappear. The hunt to find Samuel’s killer needed to be quick and efficient, especially if Samuel Treyson had enemies. Which led to the question–who would want Samuel Treyson dead? Between now and 3:30 this afternoon, he and Jordan were going to try to find out.
He maneuvered through the homicide bullpen. Actually, it wasn’t much of a pen, more a conglomeration of mismatched desks pushed together in the center of the large room. There were currently four whiteboards being used. He and Jordan had moved one board next to their desks and were using both sides. One side displayed the facts they had for the murder of an eighteen-year-old prostitute. The other side tracked the case of a gang related drive-by shooting. An APB had been issued for their primary suspect in the drive-by. Rival gangs and known players made investigations like this a common event. He and Jordan were well known to all the gangs who resided and fought over territory in the area of town designated as The Desert. Commission Street acted as a border for the largest gangland rivalry in the city. Destitution, hardship, and low-paying jobs highlighted those two neighborhoods. The good people who could, had already moved. The ones who couldn’t afford to move were paying the price. Unfortunately, more times than not, it was with their lives. Samuel Treyson and his ilk didn't frequent The Desert. The shoes the man wore probably cost more than most of these people earned, legal or not, in months. Samuel Treyson did not belong in that warehouse. Why had he been there?
His cell phone rang as he stood looking at the murder boards that stood as sentinels in the early morning quiet of the precinct. He palmed it without looking at the caller ID. “King.”
“Hey, Brock, we’ve got the initial swabs back and were able to confirm my findings against Jonas’.” Brock had seen Sean’s partner working in the warehouse, but he hadn’t had a chance to talk to him after the atom bomb also known as Samuel Treyson had detonated.
“What’s that mean to me? Was this the work of your arsonist?”
“It was arson, but not our serial arsonist. This was amateur hour compared to the guy we are tracking. I’m sending off the accelerant, but I think it is primarily gasoline. I'll let you know if they come back with anything different.”
“So, our killer is probably trying to get rid of evidence and the body with an inept arson attempt. Nukes the building but not the body." Inept was right.
“Yeah, that is what we’re thinking.”
“All right got it. Tell Jonas I said hey, and we really do need to get together.” He turned at the sound of someone else coming into the bullpen via the stairs. He dipped his chin and acknowledged another detective who headed into the break room.
“We do. I’ll send what I get back on the accelerant. Be safe.”
“You too.” He ended the call, dropped into his chair, and picked up the receiver on his desk phone. Punching the scratched plastic button that accessed an outside line, he punched the sequence of numbers he knew by heart.
“Assistant District Attorney Clifford Sand’s office. This is Miranda, may I help you?” As it always did, the soft low voice of Cliff’s longtime secretary greeted him.
“Hey Miranda, is he in?” He leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on his desk.
“Oh, hey Brock, he’s just left for a meeting. Can I have him give you a call? I know he wants to talk to you.”
“How do you know that?” He threw one of his many stress balls into the air and caught it as it came down. Somehow, he’d become a collector of the squishy toys.
“Because he asked me to remind him to call you after his meeting.” The “duh” was implied.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll be here at my desk for the foreseeable future.” He sighed the last comment. The stacks of paperwork on his desk that needed to be completed for the ongoing cases pretty much guaranteed that.
“It’s called job security,” Miranda teased.
“I’d gladly switch jobs if it meant dead bodies stopped popping up all over the place.”
"Ain't that the truth, honey. He shouldn't be too long. Maybe thirty minutes or so."
"Okay, say hi to Doug for me." Brock liked Miranda's husband and he was one hell of a mechanic. He owned a big shop, Alston Repair and Towing, on Belmont Avenue.
Grabbing his coffee cup, he hit the stairwell and trudged down to the basement to retrieve Treyson’s cell phone and an assortment of random receipts and business cards from his wallet.
“That was quick.” Sergeant Timmons, or “Pops” as he was known to the officers around the 13th, signed him into the evidence room by swiping his badge through the system.
“Yeah. Needed to clear my plan of action with the lawyers before I stepped off. Where is the inventory for the case?” The evidence intake desk was pristine. Pops was one anal son of a bitch, but that was why he lived down here in the hole.
“Processed and filed. What do you think I am, a slacker?” Pops called up the electronic version of the inventory with a few strokes of his fingers. “Tell me what you need, I’ll have it removed, get the chain of custody tags signed off and have it delivered to you.”
“Fuck, I think I’m in love with you, Pops.” He grabbed an available mouse and ticked the boxes next to the evidence he wanted to go over with Jordan before the man was pulled away from him and the case.
“Mrs. Timmons would be upset if I drifted from my lane.” The old guy gave him a wink.
“Yeah but think of the fun.” He laughed at Pops’ horrified expression and elevated his badge, swiping himself out of the room. The door buzzed open, and he headed back up the six flights of stairs.
After a pit stop at the break room for a warmup on his go-juice, heavy on the cream and sugar, he dropped his ass at his desk and leaned forward to grab the paper file compiled on the young prostitute. The cover snapped back, and he once again examined her sophomore high school picture, one of two pictures they had of Caitlyn Eliason, aka Star. His vision shifted to the whiteboard and fixed on the grainy, enhanced duplicate of her high school picture taped next to the crime scene photo of her corpse lying bloody and beaten in a filthy alley. Her pimp was the primary suspect, but as of now, several of his girls were covering for him. Jordan had been working last night with a couple of the guys from Vice trying to apply pressure. The working girls were terrified of Gino and with good reason. They didn’t want to end up dead like Star. “Being used, abused, and treated like shit is better than being dead.” Yeah, those words actually came out of the mouth of one of Gino’s working girls.
Which reminded him. He grabbed the middle desk drawer and yanked it. Damn it. Nothing happened. He grabbed the right top desk drawer, violently strong-armed it, and then shoved it back in. The desk moved several inches away from Jordan’s, but it popped the middle drawer open. He reached back and patted around until he felt the stack of business cards he wanted and reloaded his jacket with the cards. Tara McBride, Sean’s sister, was a social worker. She didn’t necessarily handle prostitutes, but if he could get the women to call her, she could plug them into programs. It was better to try to help than to do nothing and admit defeat like the women who worked the streets. He shoved the remaining stack back into the drawer and closed it before he reached for the folder on the drive-by.