"Caroline and Danny were quite forthcoming when you met with them," Mariah replied. "If she knew about it, I think she would have said something already."
"I've thought about that too, but I need to ask anyway. Maybe she didn't think it was an issue at the time."
"If anyone knows it will be his best buddy," Knox said. "Guys don't always tell their girls everything, but their best friend always knows the dirty details."
"Then why didn't Theo tell me when we talked before?" Ryan asked.
Knox grinned. "Bro code, dude. You don't rat on your best bro when they're doing something that others might not approve of."
"Even if Theo thought that Brad might be in over his head?"
"We don't have any evidence of that," Knox pointed out. "If he knew Brad was gambling, and I bet that he did, he may not have realized how much Brad was gambling a day. Or he may have known but didn't think it was a big deal since Brad's own daddy wasn't worried about the money. No alarm bells were going off anywhere and no one thought this was a problem."
That was the truth. Not one person had been concerned about Brad. Everyone said that he'd been acting normally. Nothing was off.
Then he'd walked into a bar and never walked out. Disappeared for over ten years. And he wasn't giving up his secrets easily either.
"I know I just got here," Knox continued. "But how about we start from the beginning? Go over the whole case again. That's what Jared would tell us to do."
Knox had worked for Jared as a deputy years ago.
Jason and Logan would have agreed with Jared, too.
"Okay, let's do that," Ryan agreed, levering up to grab a couple more beers from the refrigerator, but then he remembered that this wasn't his damn apartment and that Mariah might die of boredom listening to them talk shop. "We can go back to my place to do it. I don't want to take over your evening, Mariah."
"Are you kidding? I want to hear you two work. I promise I'll be as quiet as a mouse and just watch, but please stay here."
Ryan shook his head. "If we stay, I want you to speak up. You were there that night at the bar and you were also there when I talked to Caroline and Danny. You're in this as much as I am."
She looked unsure but Knox was nodding in agreement.
"He's right," Knox said. "You were there. You were Brad's friend. You have insights that I don't have."
"So you're unbiased," Mariah replied. "That's a really good thing."
"True," he agreed. "But we need all the brain power we can get here."
They gathered around the kitchen island, Ryan's case file spread out on the granite.
"So let's start at the beginning," he said. "We were all at the bar that night. The camera at the front door caught each one of us arriving and leaving. Except for Brad. The camera never shows him leaving. Yet, his body was found in the lot next door, so clearly he did exit the building."
"But not necessarily on his own power," Knox replied. "He may have been carried out at a later time."
Mariah grimaced. "You mean that he was hidden in that bar for some length of time? Ick."
"Sorry, gruesome shit doesn't gross me out anymore," Knox said. "But yes, that is what I'm saying. They could have hidden him in a crawl space, a basement, or even the attic. Then when the cameras were off or no one was there, they moved his body."
Ryan tapped his finger on one of the evidence photos - the one of the metal pipe that had been lying next to Brad's body. "But we know from the autopsy that Brad was likely killed by a blow to the head with this pipe. A pipe from the construction site next door. That has me leaning that he was alive and at the site."
"That site was under construction for months," Mariah said. "Anyone could have taken that pipe from there."
Ryan scratched at his chin. "They could have brought it inside but I'm still leaning toward him being attacked outside. Inside a crowded bar is no place for a deadly fight that no one will notice. And let's make it clear that no one noticed Brad having any issues with anyone that night."
Knox unfolded the police drawing of the construction site. "So we're saying that we think that Brad was alive when he exited the bar and that he was killed here? Because that begs the question of how the hell did he get out of the building without anyone seeing him? You said yourself that the back door has an alarm on it."
Mariah pointed to the west side of the bar on the drawing. "There were windows along here. It would have been a tight fit but he could have gotten out through one of them."
Ryan seized onto that detail. "According to the bar staff, he wasn't there after they pushed everyone out to close, and they checked the office and bathrooms each night in case some drunk decides they don't want to go home. So I think that makes the crawl through a window theory a probable one."
"We can try watching the video again," Knox suggested. "I can try enhancing it as much as possible. We need to be sure that he didn't exit out of the front door."
"It's old and terrible quality," Ryan warned him. "But it's worth a shot. At this point, we can't afford to ignore anything."
"I'll take a look at it," Knox promised. "If I can enhance it slightly, we might be able to get Jared to run some facial recognition software on it. Maybe we'll get a hit on someone who worked for a bookie."
The chance was small but they had to take it. They weren't rolling in leads at the moment.
"The only question is why did he do that?" Mariah asked quietly. "Why would he crawl out of a window instead of going out the front door? It doesn't make any sense."
"Because there was something or someone outside of the front door that he didn't want to see," Knox replied. "I'm guessing he owed someone money."
Mariah shook her head. "Brad's parents gave him plenty of money, especially after he started college. They weren't even worried about how much he was spending. He could have paid his debts."
"Maybe he placed a big bet," Ryan said. "A bet bigger than any he'd placed before and he lost. To pay it back, he might have had to take a bigger withdrawal than usual and he was worried about his parents finding out about his hobby."
She didn't look convinced.
"I guess that's a possibility, but I still don't see Brad not being able to pay for it. You said yourself he had plenty of money in the bank and a credit line, too. He also had control of the trust fund from his grandparents, remember? He got that when he turned twenty-one. Technically, he had millions."
"You have a valid point," Ryan conceded. "But I still agree with Knox that there had to be a damn good reason that Brad didn't go out the front door. Fear would be my only guess there. Maybe his fear didn't have anything to do with his gambling. It could be a red herring, and there was something else going on."
Knox rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced. "I don't want to speak ill of your friend, but you did say he was something of a womanizer. Maybe he was running from a jealous boyfriend or husband. Hell, maybe he was just avoiding a woman that couldn't take a hint. I've been known to duck out of a bar when someone arrives that I was hoping not to see."