Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

D EVINE WAS ON THE PHONE with Campbell all the way back to his hotel, explaining what had happened thus far, and his desire to stay in town to follow up on the situation.

“I knew this might turn out to be a lot more complicated than it was presented,” opined Campbell. “There was too much unknown about it. Nice to know my instincts are still clicking.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This FBI agent sounds like a nutjob. What’s your take on her?”

“She has her issues, for sure. But I don’t have a good read yet.”

“I’ll find out what I can about her from some of my Bureau contacts. And Odom?”

“Mature way beyond her years in some ways. She’s had a rough time of it. And I’m still not clear on why the Bureau took custody of her.”

“What info on Glass could this Rollins guy have had?”

“Don’t know. But the cop in charge of his murder investigation wants to know what I’m doing out here.”

Campbell said, “Go easy on that for now, Devine. I need to speak with our folks before you reveal anything. The local cops could screw something up.”

“And why did the Bureau even need me? Saxby could have escorted Betsy to the meeting with Glass.”

“This might have started out with you escorting someone, Devine. But now this is about you hanging around until this thing is resolved, which sounds like that’s what you want to do.”

“She asked for help, yes. I’m prepared to give it. This thing is so messed up, I can’t walk away in good conscience, sir.”

“But from all accounts, Glass is one mean son of a bitch, so you need to tread carefully.”

“He tries really hard not to look the part, which makes him even more dangerous. The real cowards act tough and then keel over dead when you make a fist.”

“ You have any idea why he wants the girl?”

“Not right now. If I do find out, it might even help the Bureau and DOJ, since they’re apparently losing witnesses on the RICO case at an unsustainable clip.”

“ If you find out the truth. And survive.”

“Right. But I’m pretty good at both.”

“Tread lightly with the locals and drag things out as much as possible.”

The two men spoke for another few minutes and then Devine clicked off, walked into his hotel, and rode the elevator to his room. He sat on the bed, glanced at his other jacket hanging on a peg, and saw a dead man’s blood still there. He put it in a plastic bag pulled from his closet, called housekeeping, and handed it off to them to clean the stain away, if they could. Too bad they couldn’t do the same to his memory of how it had come to be that way.

On the call he had also asked Campbell to dig up all he could on Dwayne and Alice Odom, and Perry Rollins. He didn’t expect to get anything right away so he figured he had time to do a little investigating on his own. But first, he had another call to make.

“Hello, Detective Braddock. How goes it?”

“It’ll either go well or not depending on what you’re about to tell me. And I expected your call this morning . The East Coast feds should have been awake for a while now keeping the world safe for democracy.”

“Sorry, I got tied up. You have time to meet? I don’t like doing this over the phone.”

“You think I’m recording this conversation?”

“Perish the thought.”

“There’s a coffee place I know.”

“In Seattle, really?” quipped Devine.

“One hour.” He gave Devine the address and ended the call.

Devine summoned an Uber, which he took to the Sand Bar. He got out and noted the yellow police tape strung across the front doors. A cop was on duty to guard the perimeter.

Devine walked up and held out his badge and creds. “I was here last night with Detective Braddock working on this case. Is he still around?”

Devine hoped not because he wanted to go over everything again, without the detective making inconvenient inquiries of him while he was doing some private sleuthing.

The young cop stared in silent reverence at the glittering DHS badge and accompanying federal credentials.

“No, he left about an hour ago. DHS, huh? Good place to work?” he asked. “I’ve been thinking about maybe… you know. Making the jump.”

“Serving your country is always a good thing in my book.”

The cop let him pass and Devine stopped to put on blue booties and nitrile gloves from twin boxes that had been set up on a table by the entrance.

He did the badge/cred waltz with another uniformed woman just inside the door, who took down his name and information for the logbook.

She said, “I remember you from yesterday. The fed?”

“The fed,” conceded Devine. “But a nice fed.”

She snorted. “That’s a good one.”

There was still plenty of activity going on with evidence techs scurrying here and there and a few bored-looking uniforms standing around sipping coffees and waiting to punch out.

The remains of Perry Rollins had been removed, but his blood still rested on the parquet dance floor, an ugly stain on a faded surface scratched by innumerable sets of drunken heels. Fairly soon, no one would remember how he died or anything else about the man.

I didn’t exactly like the guy, but pretty sure he deserved better than that.

Devine spied the same tech he had seen the previous night, the young woman who had been in the men’s room doing her forensic work.

He walked over and said, “I’m with DHS. I was here last night with Detective Braddock.”

“I remember you,” she said in a voice that Devine did not quite know how to take. “I’m Detective Beth Walker.”

She smiled so wide, it lit up her face and Devine’s at the same time. Now he knew exactly how to take her look.

“Travis Devine, Beth, nice to meet you.”

“Same here.”

She was around his age, with dirty blond hair and light blue eyes.

“So detectives pull this kind of duty?” he said, eyeing her scrubs.

“Makes them better detectives, at least that’s the principle, and I agree.”

“So were you able to dig up anything on the camera in the back hall?”

She opened an iPad and scrolled through some screens. “The camera is a piece of crap from the nineties with no bells and whistles. The video footage was grainy and glitchy as hell because they’ve recorded over the tape so many times. And we’re not even sure the time stamp is accurate because the electrical power kept pulsing and shorting it out. You would think everybody had heard of wireless digital cameras with cloud storage by now.” She looked up. “So I guess the answer is no.”

“Well, thanks for trying. Any luck with witnesses from last night?”

“I just checked in with the people conducting the interviews. So far, the first anyone says they saw of Rollins is when he came staggering out from the back hall. But the people involved would have already fled, I imagine. However, someone did say that they tried to use the bathroom around that time, but the door wouldn’t open.”

“Any ideas on that?”

“It was a push swing door without a lock because it had urinals and separate toilet stalls inside. We found some curious marks on the floor right near the door. I think a wedge of some sort was used to keep the door closed. The killer obviously would have done that so he could be in there alone with Rollins.”

“So the killer sees him go in there, waits till it clears out, and wedges the door shut. A crime of opportunity.”

“Right. He stabs him, removes the wedge, and runs for it.”

“But this place was packed. Someone should have seen something.”

“My experience has been that people just don’t want to get involved, particularly in a murder. If anyone did witness anything, they might have just run for it or tried their best to either misremember or forget what they saw. We also have some serious gang activity around here, and who wants to get sucked into that?”

“Braddock told me that he was familiar with the victim?”

“His priors are mostly petty stuff from way back. I can email you with them.” She once more graced him with a smile. “I’ll just need your contact info, Travis .”

He gave it, thanked her, and she moved on to keep doing her job, while Devine headed to the men’s room and eyed the space from the open doorway.

The blood trail had been marked with yellow cones. He stepped carefully around them and reached the last stall. He eased the door open and saw the yellow cone on the floor, directly in front of the toilet. The blood trail was particularly heavy at this point.

Devine glanced at the mirror hanging on the opposite wall and the sinks underneath.

Okay , he thought. Rollins was in the stall, probably hiding from me, not knowing last night is his last one. He opens the stall door and gets stabbed. The person then knifes him again just to make sure, turns, and leaves. Rollins, bleeding profusely, staggers out, holding his belly, and makes his way down the hall, to the dance floor, where he collapses and dies.

If the story about the wedge under the door held up, that would explain why no one saw anything inside the men’s room. Devine mentally kicked himself for not checking the space last night, but he had assumed Rollins had fled out the bar’s rear exit.

And the blood spatter indicated that whoever did stab Rollins should have had blood on him. How did people miss that? But then again, eyewitness accounts were the worst of all. And maybe the killer covered it up with something. And the witnesses here at the time were not exactly sober.

Devine finished looking around and nodded to Beth Walker as he was leaving. She held up her iPad. He smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. He passed by the young cop outside and walked along in the direction of where he’d be meeting Braddock in a few minutes.

He opened the email that Walker had just sent him, and reviewed the rap sheet for one Perry Rollins, deceased. Walker had been correct in saying that most of it was misdemeanors. But there was one that stood out. Years ago, in the Midwest, Rollins had been charged with being a Peeping Tom, and for attempted extortion. He had spied on a woman in her bathroom and taken pictures of her naked, and later tried to blackmail the woman into paying in return for the pictures. She knew him because he lived in the neighborhood.

What a nice guy , thought Devine. Rollins hadn’t deserved to be murdered, but he was clearly a scumball. He did his jail time and then was released. He must have then moved to the West Coast because his next arrest had been in Portland, Oregon, six months later on a shoplifting charge.

Devine wondered what information Rollins had that would explain why Glass wanted to adopt his niece. Maybe he could piggyback on Braddock’s investigation to find out.

Along the way to his meeting with Braddock he thought about how he could get as much help from the man as possible, while revealing as little as possible to the detective.

It would be tricky, but then pretty much everything Devine had ever done had been tricky.

But I’m still standing. At least for now.