by Kayt Miller
“You.”
I shake my head. “Not a good idea. I brought him in for the stalking. He’s not gonna talk to me. Where’s Trumbull?”
“He’s not coming in today.”
He’s off? In the middle of a murder investigation.
“Which means it’s either you or Finch.”
“Captain—”
“I’ll be in the booth if you run into trouble.”
Great.
“They’re bringing him down now, so get your ducks in a row, Golden.”
Fuck the ducks. He’s not giving me any time to prep for this. It’s not going to go well.
“By the way, I want Finch in there with ya. He needs to learn how to talk to suspects.”
Awesome.
“What were you doing in Kara’s apartment, Dylan?” I may as well start right off with that question because we need to know why he was there in the first place.
“I already told you. I went to get my stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“My stuff, man. I was crashing at her place.”
“Crashing?”
“Jesus, dude. She let me stay there.”
“I didn’t realize you knew Kara Becker. How long have you been staying with her?”
He shrugs. “A couple of weeks.”
“You had a key?” I assume because he didn’t break into the apartment. There was no damage to the door.
“Yeah, man. She gave me a key because I. Was. Staying. There.”
Wow, this kid is beyond belligerent. “Watch yourself,” I growl. I hate punks like this. “Were you seeing her… romantically?”
Dylan laughs. “You mean, was I fucking her?”
“If that’s how you’d prefer the question. Were you?”
He chuckles again. “You can’t say ‘fuck’ or something, dude?”
“Answer the question.”
Dylan makes a scoffing sound, and I roll my hand into a fist. Damn, I’d love to punch him. “Sure, we fucked a time or two, but we weren’t together, if you know what I mean.”
“Why not?”
“What the hell, man? What’s your obsession with my sex life?”
Now I laugh right along with Finch. But why is he laughing? “Asking you about your relationship with the deceased isn’t about your sex life, Mr. Forrester. It’s about who murdered her.”
“Fuck. It wasn’t me, man. I was partying that night. All night,” Dylan adds with a smirk.
“I see you’ve provided us with some names of people who can corroborate your whereabouts the night of the murder.”
He nods, then smiles.
“We’ll get them in here so they can answer some questions as well.”
His smile drops.
“So, back to my earlier question. Why weren’t you and Kara in a relationship?”
“She had too many irons in the fire, if you know what I mean.”
Irons? Interesting turn of a phrase, considering.
He continues, “No time for anything more than just a fuck or two. Same with me. I’m still in lo—I still have feelings for someone else.”
Tayler.
I nod. “Sure. I get it. Did you know they arrested Tayler Sorenson for Kara’s murder?”
“I’d heard something like that.” He shrugs.
“Do you think she did it?”
“Nah. She’s too….”
I wait for more, but he’s just sitting there, so I ask, “What? She’s too what?”
“Prissy. She’d never do something like that. It’d be too messy.”
Of all the reasons to think someone wouldn’t kill another person, that’s a first. “Too messy?”
“Yeah, you know, blood. Tayler wouldn’t be able to handle the mess.”
Funny thing about a crime of passion, people don’t think about the mess. Not until it’s too late. “What irons did Kara Becker have in the fire?”
From the expression on his face, I’d say he knows things that he’s not sure he should tell me.
“She’s gone, Dylan. This information could help us find her killer.” Assuming you’re not it, dickface.
“She… she needed money.”
I arch my brow. “Wasn’t her father helping her anymore?”
He shrugs. “She needed more money.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to get out of here. You know, head to California or some shit.”
And what was the source of this additional money?”
“I… I think she was using information she had on people to—”
“Blackmail?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Not really. She just knew stuff. People would pay her for the info.”
That’s blackmail, idiot. This makes no sense. “Give me an example.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Come on, Dylan. You know something.” I know he does.
“The only thing I remember was about some dude having an affair. She was going to tell if he didn’t pay.” Adding a little snort, he says, “And the dude had bank.”
Jesus. So the guy was loaded. “That’s called blackmail, Dylan.” And it breaks this case wide open. “Do you have a name?”
He shakes his head. “No. I had nothing to do with that shit.”
Deciding to change directions, I ask him, “When did you meet Kara?” He just stares at me quietly. Still thinking about the blackmail, perhaps. “Dylan?”
“I don’t remember.”
That’s not going to fly. “Was it last semester? Last year?”
Still nothing.
“Let’s try this. Where did you meet her?”
“Cy’s.” He pauses. “I think.”
Cy’s is Cy’s Roost, a popular college bar and hangout right next to the Iowa State University campus. The same place Robbi spotted Kara. It’s also owned by Tayler Sorenson’s boyfriend, Luke Green. “You met at Luke’s bar?”
He growls at my question, so I rephrase it. “Was this before Tayler began seeing Luke Green?”
“Yes. No.” Dylan shakes his head and replies angrily, “I don’t fucking remember.”
“Would you say you’ve known the victim for a year?” I wait for a reaction from him but get nothing. “Six months?”
“Jesus.” He starts fidgeting in his seat, clearly agitated. “Something like that. Yeah, about six or seven months.”
“So, around the time you were stalking Tayler, you met Kara?”
“I wasn’t fucking stalking her,” he growls, angrily.
Ignoring his false claim, I rephrase. “You met at Cy’s Roost around the time you were trying to get back together with Tayler?”
He leans forward in his chair, runs a hand into his hair, and pulls at it. Hard. “What the hell… fuck, man. Yes. What’s the big deal?”
He’s getting more and more twitchy. Interesting. “Just want to be sure I’ve got all the information I need.”
“For what?” Dylan’s out of his seat and pounding on the table now.
Finch races to the other side of the table and places a hand on Dylan’s shoulder and neck, shouting, “Sit the fuck down.”
Dylan flops back into his chair and does that thing with his hair again. “Man, I don’t get it. What’d I do wrong?”
“You entered an apartment that’s considered a crime scene.”
“I told you. Jesus. I needed my shit.”
“Uh-huh.” I look down at the inventory sheet from Kara Becker’s apartment. “What were you looking for exactly?”
“My shit.”
“So you’ve said.” I push the sheet in front of him. “Which of these items were you looking for?”
I bet Finch a hundred bucks I knew what he was after. I’m just waiting for him to tell me he needed his bag of weed and pot paraphernalia that was sitting on Kara’s coffee table. While it’s legal in some states, Iowa isn’t one of them. Not yet, anyway.
He leans over and reads through the list. When he gets to the alphabetized M section, he looks up at m
e. “It’s for medicinal purposes.”
“Iowa doesn’t have medical marijuana.” We’ve got cannabidiol, but it’s only for specific diagnoses.
“Shit.” Dylan drags his hand through his hair again. Then, like a lightbulb just flashed in his head, he looks up at me and smiles. Pointing at the page, he says, “The weed wasn’t mine. It was Kara’s.”
Wow, that’s a shitty thing to do. Blame the victim. “Well, if that wasn’t it, then what ‘shit’ were you looking for?”
He glances down at the list of items from Kara Becker’s apartment. “My toiletries.”
“Uh-huh.” I push my chair back and stand. Looking at the rookie, I say, “Finch, take him back to the holding cell.”
“What!” Dylan screeches. “Why can’t I leave? I was just getting my shit.”
Ignoring him, I step out of the room and spot the captain drinking a cup of coffee and staring at the two-way glass. Once the door shuts, he smiles. “Nice job, Golden.”
I’m not sure what was so ‘nice’ about that. “I didn’t get much.”
“We now know he and Becker were friends for longer than a couple of weeks.”
Which is odd. How and why did the two of them decide to be friends? One hated Quinn, the other was obsessed with Tayler.
The captain makes a humming noise before he asks, “What would Becker get out of befriending someone like that dipshit Forrester?”
That’s an interesting question. “She hated Quinn. Quinn and Tayler are best friends. My guess? She had more plans to make Quinn’s life uncomfortable.”
“You should have asked him about that.” The captain is right.
I turn and peer through the glass, watching as Finch escorts Dylan from the room. Before I have the chance to think it through, I open the door back up. “Dylan?”
He stops and turns, anger written all over his face. “What?”
“Did Kara approach you first, or was it the other way around?”
He blinks at me.
“When you met at Cy’s for the first time. Did she approach you?”
“Yeah.” He nods. “Yeah, she did.”
“I need you to think about this. Did she know who you were?” He’s staring at me. “Do you remember what she said to you?”
Dylan raises his head and lowers it slowly. “She asked me….” He swallows visibly. “She asked me if I wanted to get Tayler back.”
Okay. This is getting weird. “What did she mean?”
Turning toward me, Dylan steps back into the room. “She said she’d help me get Tayler back.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“And did she? Help you?”
The look on Dylan’s face reminds me of the times my little brother was caught doing something he shouldn’t have been. “She did surveillance.”
“Surveillance?”
“On Tayler. She took the photos. Most of ’em.”
“She was in Ames? Helping you?” Her dad promised he’d do his best to keep Kara out of Ames after the incidents with Quinn Maxwell. It was either that or Quinn was going to press charges. “Was she staying in her apartment at that time?”
“Off and on. Her dad made her come home sometimes.”
So Dad knew. Interesting.
If his daughter weren’t dead, I’d have him in here to answer a few questions. But now’s not the time for that.
“Thanks, Dylan.” I turn to head back into the booth.
“Can I leave now?” His voice is calmer than before.
“That’s up to the captain. I’ll see what I can do.”
“All right.”
When I hear the door click closed, I move into the booth with the captain as he mutters, “That little girl was up to no good.”
I know he’s referring to Kara, and I think he’s right. “Did you hear Dylan say she had ‘a bunch of irons in the fire’?” I shake my head. “Blackmail.”
The captain nods and chews on what looks to be a cookie. Where’d he get a cookie? “You’ll need to go through her place with a fine-tooth comb. See if she’s got anything there that can help us figure out who she was extracting money from.”
“Me? What about Trumbull?”
“He’s got some personal, er, stuff going on.”
I arch my brow and wait for more.
He sighs. “His wife’s fucking around on him. His head isn’t in the game.”
“And?” What does this all mean to me?
“And congratulations,” he deadpans. “You’re now the detective in charge of this case.”
“But—”
“Now get to work.” And with that, he’s up and out of the booth before I can say another word.
I sure as hell hope I get a raise for this.
Chapter Eight
Gage
Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—Finch gets assigned to help me with the case since Detective Trumbull is AWOL. The captain decided to release Dylan, warning him to stay away from Kara Becker’s apartment. Hopefully he passed along the same advice as it relates to Tayler. She’s out on bail thanks to Luke, so Dylan needs to stay far away from her as well. And with the new information from Forrester, Tayler has a good shot at fighting the charges. Hopefully her lawyer’s good enough to see the evidence against Tayler is circumstantial at best. With Dylan’s knowledge about Kara attempting to blackmail at least one person, her chances are even better.
That’s where Finch and I start off our day—trying to figure out who Kara was extorting by searching her apartment again. The initial search was more superficial. The team gathered fibers, got fingerprints from every surface, took a multitude of photographs, etc. Now Finch and I are going through her place with a fine-tooth comb, and while we’re here, Detective Dan has decided to put in a day’s work as well. He’s going through all of Becker’s social media accounts, phone records including text messages, and the stuff we got from her car, including a journal she had in her glove box.
“Sir,” Finch says from her bedroom. I gave him the task of going through that room, making sure not to leave any stone unturned because you’d be surprised where people hide stuff. Example: The freezer is a common hiding place, as are the backs and bottoms of drawers.
“Yeah?” I say from the kitchen.
“Found something.”
Stepping into the bedroom, my feet sound like I’m walking on dry leaves thanks to the shoe covers I’ve got on. Rubber gloves and a hair covering help round out the outfit. “Whatcha got?”
Finch has the mattress pushed off the bed. It’s now leaning against the wall. He points to the platform bed, where a manila envelope, one about nine by eleven inches, has been hidden between two boards. He’s right. He found something.
“Let’s take photos before you extract it.” Pulling my phone from my back pocket, I take pics of the slats on the platform then back up and take more shots from different angles. “Okay.” I nod.
I watch as Finch carefully tugs at the corner until it slides free. Bending the metal closure, he opens the top and peers inside. “Photos.” He turns the envelope over, the contents landing on the bed frame. As he leans in, I step closer. Using his gloved hand, Finch spreads them out farther so we can see each one.
Finch speaks first. “Weird that these are printed out.” On photo paper, no less. “These days, it’s all digital files.”
“Hmm. True. For effect, maybe.”
“Huh?”
I stare down at six eight-by ten-inch photos. Three include images of a man and a woman. You can’t see the woman, only her arms and legs, but it’s obvious what they’re doing. “You know, I bet she printed them off so she could mail them or show them without having her camera or phone grabbed. Plus, a hard copy is going to have more impact. For effect,” I repeat so he understands what I mean.
“So, who are they?”
“No idea.” I lean closer to the images. “The guy’s older.” I point to the hair.
“
They’re in some kind of office.” Finch looks up at me, then back down. “There’s a desk and some bookshelves.”
“Yep.” And it’s obvious what they’re doing since the man’s pants are down around his ankles.
Finch pushes the top three photos aside to reveal two images of Tayler with Luke. They’re kissing in one and holding hands in another. I bet those pissed off Dylan. The last image has the same effect on me because this one is of Quinn Maxwell. She’s sitting alone in what looks like the HUB on the Iowa State’s central campus. She’s looking at a book as she bites into something, a pastry of some kind. Standing up to my full height, I tell Finch to “Bag and tag everything including the envelope” before adding, “We’ll need fingerprints done on that.” I turn to head back into the kitchen but stop. “Good job, Finch. Let’s keep going.”
“Right, sir.”
Sir? That’s the second time he’s called me that. Maybe I was wrong about Finch.
As I’m about to return to my kitchen search, a knock sounds on the door. Without thinking, I step up and open it. “Daisy?”
“Oh, um…,” she starts nervously. “I, uh, saw you go into her apartment. I thought I’d see if you needed anything.”
I blink a few times, wondering if that’s all this woman does—watches out her door. “No. I think we’re good.”
“Oh. Right.” She titters nervously. “It’s just… I made some cookies.”
“Cookies?” says the guy I thought “wasn’t so bad” a minute ago. Poking his head out from the bedroom, Finch sees Daisy and smiles, and it pisses me off. “Did you say cookies?”
“I did.” Why is she smiling at Finch? “When you take a break, just knock on my door and I’ll have some ready for you.”
“Awesome.” Finch’s huge smile is ridiculous.
Shutting the door, I glare at him. “You act like you’ve never had food before.” The jackass.
“Homemade cookies?” He smiles again. “I haven’t had homemade cookies in months.”
Come to think of it, neither have I.
“Just keep working,” I grunt.
“Then we get cookies, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I mumble. “Then we get cookies.”
