by Mike Markel
The chief nodded again.
“She phones me last night, tells me she was lying when she told us she didn’t want anything to do with the vic anymore. She was still doing him. In fact, she did him the night he died—at his apartment.”
“The boyfriend know about this?” the chief said.
“She swears no.”
“Have you got the forensics back on the vic’s apartment?”
“Probably later this morning,” I said.
“Hmm.” The chief was stroking his bottom lip. “We have the boyfriend’s prints and DNA, right, from his DUI and the vandalism?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“But not hers.”
“Just her prints,” Ryan said.
“When I talked with her last night,” I said, “I made it clear that she didn’t have an alibi and neither did her boyfriend, so we weren’t prepared to rule either of them out. What we’re working on now is whether the boyfriend tracked her down in the vic’s apartment and killed him, or whether she’s still lying to us and she lured the vic into bed so her boyfriend could kill him.”
“That would be risky, wouldn’t it? She could end up dead.”
“She’s not a deep thinker.”
The chief didn’t say anything. “Nobody else you like at this point?”
“The vic had a girlfriend,” I said, “another grad student, who said she broke up with him a month ago but who’s been phoning him a little more than we’d expect. But we like Tiffany and Brian more because we know Brian’s got a temper.”
“Okay, so her DNA will be all over the vic’s apartment, but we don’t have her on file. And we don’t know whether Brian left anything there.”
“When we interviewed him yesterday he told us we’re free to look. He seemed pretty confident we wouldn’t find anything,” I said.
“That could’ve been a bluff,” the chief said. “If you asked him for a sample, his reaction might tell you if he was there.”
“Since she’s already admitted to being there that night, there’s no reason to ask her for a sample. And we’ve already got his,” I said. I didn’t want to say, “So what’s the point of getting their DNA?”
“True,” the chief said, “but he might’ve forgotten that. We want them to know we’re looking at them hard. If we increase the pressure, they might start to jockey for position. Ask both of them at the same time,” the chief said.
“Tiffany might be smart enough to play along, since she knows her DNA won’t implicate her any more than what she told me last night,” I said. “Worse come to worst, she can admit she was still screwing Austin. Which is legal.”
“But Brian wouldn’t be able to explain his DNA being there,” the chief said. “The only explanation would be that he was there to kill Austin Sulenka. Or he ended up killing him. So Brian doesn’t have any other option. He has to claim he’s innocent and hope he didn’t leave any traces there.”
“We ask them at the same time and watch what happens,” I said. “If he starts shitting bricks, we know he was there. And he’ll try to figure out a way to put it on Tiffany.”
“Once Brian realizes he might be on the hook for the murder,” the chief said, “the two of them will turn on each other. She’ll try to put it on him because he already has a conviction and the RO, and he’ll say it was her. She was showing Brian how much she loved him—she was willing to kill Austin just to win Brian back. That’s what you’re really doing here: trying to split them up so that each one starts calculating how to get the best deal if their story falls apart.”
“Are you worried he might hurt her?”
He nodded his head. “That’s a possibility.” He thought a moment. “When you talked to her last night, did you tell her we could help her out?”
“Yeah, I said I could come over or send a patrol car.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t think she said anything, but she heard me.”
“Here’s how I look at it. She’s eighteen, right?”
“Nineteen, I think.”
“And she’s the one you like for the murder,” the chief said. “She and her boyfriend. Unless we can split them up, we’re never going to get anywhere. Let’s say we don’t get any forensics putting Brian there. She stays with her story that she was involved with Austin, that she’d never hurt him. Brian stays with his story that he wasn’t there. And we can’t make an arrest. We’ve got to make her decide whether to trust Brian or us. If she’s scared of Brian, she’s got your phone number.” The chief looked at me, then at Ryan. “Does that make sense?”
I looked at my watch: 8:21. I turned to Ryan, “Let’s go talk to them now. Maybe they haven’t left for the day.”
I felt a little better now that the chief okayed the plan to pressure her to flip on Brian. Like the chief said, if the two of them stuck to the game plan, we wouldn’t be able to make a move. But that theory made sense only if Tiffany and Brian were bright enough and calculating enough to sit down and agree to a plan—and then stick to it. What I was seeing, though, was that the two of them were quite stupid—and they were just making it up as they went along. If we pressured her to work with us and Brian figured it out, Tiffany would be in real danger.
The chief was right about one thing: they were both officially adults. We had offered Tiffany protection if she thought she needed it. That was the right thing to do. But we had no responsibility to go easy on her just because she was in over her head. It was all her doing. Our job was to solve the murder of Austin Sulenka. If she killed Austin or knew that Brian did—or they did it together—this was our best shot at breaking it open.
Then it hit me that maybe I felt a little better that the chief okayed the plan because it wouldn’t be all on me if Tiffany got hurt. I felt my stomach lurch, which I always do when I realize I’m bullshitting myself.
Chapter 13
“Got the swabs?” We were driving over to Brian and Tiffany’s apartment.
“Right here,” Ryan said, tapping his briefcase.
We parked out on the street, walked up the stairs to the second floor, then over to number 204. I knocked hard.
Ryan put his ear up to the door and listened for a moment. “There’s someone in there.”
I put my shield around my neck. The door opened.
Tiffany was wearing a pair of men’s boxers and a tee shirt, no bra. She rubbed her eyes. “What do you guys want?” She was half asleep, too groggy to say it either hostile or polite.
“Good morning, Tiffany,” I said. “Did we wake you up?”
“Shhh,” she said. “You’ll wake up Brian. What do you want?” Now she was starting to tune in, maybe remember she’d called me last night.
“We want to wake up Brian.”
“What for?” She looked confused.
“We want to get DNA samples from the two of you.”
She came out into the hall, closing the door most of the way. “Can I talk to you in private over here?” she said, pointing down the hall.
“That’s okay, Tiffany. Detective Miner knows you called me last night. You can say whatever you want in front of him.”
“I thought we had an understanding, you know, when we talked last night. If Brian finds out I was still involved with Austin, that’s the end of us.”
“Yeah, I understand that, Tiffany, but my boss tells me we gotta move this along. You and Brian breaking up—that’s more of a problem for you than for me.”
“But I told you in confidence I was at Austin’s place.”
“That’s not how it works, Tiffany. You told me you’d lied to us earlier yesterday. Which, by the way, is a felony. Obstruction of justice.” That’s probably a stretch. But it got her attention. “I’m not interesting in messing up your relationship with Brian, but my top priority is figuring out who killed Austin Sulenka. You can tell Brian anything you want about where you were Sunday night. I’m fine with you telling him you were with your parents in Billings. But right now I’ve got you over
at Austin’s place four or five hours before he died—with no alibi for when he died. And I have no idea where the hell Brian was.”
“Are you gonna tell Brian I was at Austin’s place?”
“I don’t know what I’m gonna say. Like I said, I’m not interested in you and Brian—unless one of you, or both of you, killed Austin. If you didn’t do it, you might wanna start thinking about how to make me believe you.”
The door opened. Brian was wearing boxers and scratching an armpit. “What the fuck do you two want?” He had a nasty scowl on his face.
I gave him an official smile. “Good morning, Brian. Hope we didn’t wake you?”
“I said, ‘What the fuck do you two want?’”
“Hey, babe,” Tiffany said. “I’m sorry we woke you up.”
He gave her a pissed-off look, then turned back to me.
“We want your DNA, Brian,” I said. “Yours and Tiffany’s.”
“You got some kind of warrant?”
I shook my head. “No, we’re asking you to volunteer it.”
“Now, why would we want to do that?” Brian stepped out into the hall and walked up to me.
“How about we go inside the apartment, Brian, so we don’t wake up any of the neighbors?”
He stared at me for a few seconds, then turned and walked back into his apartment.
When the four of us were inside, I closed the door. “Here’s where we are, Brian. We’ve got a lot of forensic evidence from Austin Sulenka’s apartment. We need to rule you two out. Simple as that.”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”
I looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“You’re playing some kind of game. If you had any evidence I was over at that fucker’s place, you’d be arresting me right now, not waking me up to ask me some bullshit favor. Why the fuck should I do you a favor? And Tiffany? What are you asking her for? There’s no way in hell she’d be over there.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her, her eyes big, trying to figure out how to play it. “Are you sure of that, Brian?”
“Sure as I’m standing here right now.” He put his chin out, defending his girlfriend’s honor.
“Sure as you were last semester when you found out she was fucking Austin?”
His face contorted in rage, he started to move toward me.
“No, no,” Ryan said, stepping in and putting his finger on Brian’s chest. “You move one more inch toward the detective, I’ll take you down.”
Brian Hawser looked at Ryan’s cane and smirked. He thought about it a second, then stepped back.
“Look at it this way, Brian,” I said. “You weren’t at Austin’s apartment, no reason not to give us your DNA. Tiffany wasn’t there, no reason for her not to give us her DNA.”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” Brian said.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Now you’re just hurting my feelings.”
“Once we give you our DNA, what’s to stop you from planting it on something from his apartment?”
“Well, when the prosecutor files the case, he signs off on it,” I said. “You know, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, all of that. Besides, you’re kinda missing the point. We don’t work on commission. We have no reason to pin this thing on you just because you’re a scumbag. Which obviously you are. We’re interested in nailing you if you did it. That’s all.”
“You telling me you don’t lie all the time to frame someone for a crime they didn’t commit?”
“Like that time we arrested you for DUI when you hadn’t been drinking? Or for smashing in Austin’s car when you didn’t do that, either?”
He was shaking his head like there’s no point even talking to someone as stupid as me. “You know how to make the evidence say whatever the fuck you want it to say.”
“Okay, Brian, you think what you want to think. I’m not gonna spend any more time talking about how cops fabricate evidence. My partner and I came here to ask you and Tiffany for your DNA. I’ll just tell my chief you said no. Okay?”
He nodded.
“And how about you, Tiffany? We gonna make up evidence putting you at Austin Sulenka’s apartment?”
She was looking back and forth from me to Brian. She was trying to figure out what to do, but she wasn’t thinking fast enough. She seemed like she was going to start crying.
Brian said, “Don’t do it, babe. If they had anything on you, they’d have brought you in to the police station. Don’t cooperate. They get your DNA, you’ll never know what they do with it.”
“You know I wasn’t there, babe,” she said. “You know I was home. Let me just give them the DNA and it’ll be over.”
He folded his arms over his chest and half turned away from her. Now she started to cry and rushed over to him, putting her hands on his meaty forearms. “You know I wasn’t there,” she said between the tears. “They can’t say I was there if I wasn’t. Please, babe.”
He jerked his arms, breaking her grip on him. He didn’t say anything. And at that moment, I knew she was going to go along with him.
She turned to me, wiping the tears away. “You know I didn’t kill him. I can’t give you the DNA.” She walked back into the living room and collapsed onto the couch, her head in her hands.
“All right, Ryan, let’s go,” I said. “We gotta figure out where Brian was late Sunday night.” I walked over to the couch. Tiffany heard me come over and looked up. “You, too, Tiffany. Sunday night. Around midnight.”
Tiffany was crying, out of control, as Ryan and I walked past Brian and left the apartment.
“Well,” I said as we walked down the steps. The air was cool and dry. It was going to be a nice day. “That didn’t get us anywhere, did it?”
“How do you mean?” Ryan said.
“Ten minutes ago, we didn’t know whether Tiff and Bri had anything to do with killing Austin. And now, ten minutes later, we still don’t know.”
“True,” Ryan said, “but like the chief said, the point was to put the game in play. Which I think we did.”
“What do you expect is gonna happen next?”
He smiled as we got in the Charger. “I haven’t had quite enough time to figure it out, Karen.”
I turned the engine over, and we buckled our belts.
“It appears Tiffany is more frightened of losing Brian than she is of us,” Ryan said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I got that.”
“So nothing happens next. Brian’s happy because he persuaded Tiffany not to cooperate with us. Tiffany’s happy because she’s persuaded Brian that she’s not hiding anything from him. Nothing happens until we get the forensics from Robin. If it turns out Brian was over at Austin’s place, we arrest him, question the both of them, and we’ll know who killed Austin from who decides to deal with us first.”
“But if we can’t connect Brian to it,” I said, “that still doesn’t tell us whether Tiffany was freelancing. Her DNA will be all over his apartment—and his dick. She could have fallen in love with Austin, found out he betrayed her in a particularly humiliating way, and strangled him.”
“That’s very true,” Ryan said.
I pulled over to the curb. “Doesn’t that bother you?”
“That she might have fallen in love with a guy like Austin?”
“No, Holmes,” I said. “That we can’t tell if Tiffany killed him.”
Ryan turned to me and smiled. “Not particularly. Look at it this way, Karen. Do you think we’re dealing with a serial killer?”
“What?”
“I asked you a simple question: Do you think whoever killed Austin is going to kill again?”
“Like, guys with big dicks start dying left and right?”
“Well, it could be guys with big dicks, or guys who sleep with girls in their classes, or guys who are writing theses about Edgar Allan Poe. Don’t get hung up on his big dick. I’m asking you an abstract question. Do
you think whoever killed Austin is going to kill again because of some characteristic Austin shared with other potential victims, or do you think it was personal: the killer wanted Austin to die?”
“Why do you do this to me, Ryan?”
He laughed. “Okay, so you think it was personal. The killer wanted Austin to die for some reason.”
I just looked at him.
“That’s what I think, too, Karen. You see my point?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t realize you had a point. Should I expect it soon?”
“It’s really very simple. If the killer were going to kill again, the fact that we didn’t get any closer to determining if the killer was Tiffany Rhodes would be disappointing.”
“Because we’re giving her more time to kill again.”
“That’s right. But if you think the killer wanted to kill only Austin, the time element is not crucial, unless we’re concerned that the murderer is going to leave town—and head for Billings, for instance. But that doesn’t worry me. We’d track her down in Billings.”
“How about the city’s resources? Doesn’t it bother you if the city of Rawlings spends more time catching the killer?”
“Only if it costs the city more than it should have cost—because we made some mistakes, for example. But since we’re on salary, if it takes us three days rather than two days, it probably won’t cost the city an extra dime.”
“All right, how about this: wouldn’t you rather arrest the killer today rather than tomorrow. You know, just to be done with it?”
“Well,” he said, tapping his chin, “I guess there is some value in showing the citizenry that we’re extremely good at what we do.”
“It improves their confidence in us?”
“Exactly,” Ryan said. “But just between you and me, I’d rather it go three days than two.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it’s fun,” he said. “Plus, we get to have more chats like this one.”
I just shook my head. “All in all, I think I’d rather be talking to Brian.”
He laughed. “You’ve got a crush on me. You know you do. Admit it.”
“You’re delusional, you know that?”
