Maxine Delacorda, head of the Crime Scene Investigation in Detroit would not usually be there after midnight.
When you get a chance, it said, stop by the closet.
“Oh God, I’m almost afraid,” Albert said. “What do you think she found?” Jill ran up the stairs with Albert trailing behind. “Slow down.”
“I can’t. I’m ready to collapse,” she said, going to the ante room.
“What’s up? And why are you here?”
“Mutt and Jeff have a case,” she said sarcastically, referring to another homicide team. “Have a seat. Your suspect; he is a suspect, is he not? Mr. Gupta? Anyway, Mr. Gupta gave up the password to his security system so I could get at the video in the rear of the building. What I can tell from your notes is that a young man in a Mustang invited your victim to sit in his car and the car disappeared from the field of view of the camera.”
“That’s correct,” Albert said.
“Okay, let me start up this thing,” she said, moving the mouse around. “Here you can see the car emerging from the left of the screen.”
“That’s the rear entrance,” Jill said, pointing to a door in the middle of the field.
The car pulled up alongside the back wall of the shop, stopping before the door.
“I tried to zoom in, but you can’t see much until they get out,” Maxine said. “It’s the action that takes place after they leave the car that caught my interest.”
Fast forwarding through a few minutes of video, she slowed it down when the driver’s side door opened and they watched Chris Burns come around to the passenger side. Opening the door, Allison Blumenthal slides out, and as clearly as if it were live, zips up her jeans and straightens her clothes.
“What time is it?” Jill said, stretching to check the time stamp.
“Five thirty,” Albert said.
Five thirty was the peak of rush hour, especially three days before Thanksgiving. The sun was down by then, cars with lights on bumper to bumper on the road, some lined up at the drive thru window. The area behind a donut shop would be the perfect place for a rendezvous.
Watching while the couple chatted, Chris stepped up to her, pressing her against the car. Wrapping her arms around his neck, they kissed for several minutes.
Suddenly, out of view of the camera, something or someone appeared that stunned Chris, and he jumped back, pushing Allison away in the same movement. Allison moved out of the camera range while Chris ran around to the front of his car, got in, and drove in reverse out of view.
“Yikes! What just happened?” Jill asked.
“Wait,” Maxine said. “Keeping that time stamp in mind, let’s go back to the parking lot in front. It’s rush hour, dinnertime, so people are stopping off for their last cup of the day. See? The line up is all the way to the street.
“At five thirty-five, this car, looks like an older model Olds or Buick, those cars all look the same to me, pulls in to the lot and sits there for a minute. Then the driver pulls around the line of cars at the drive thru, but doesn’t come out the exit.”
“So you’re saying the only place they could have gone was in back,” Albert said.
“Who drives an Olds?” Jill asked.
“Not the husband. He drives a new Escalade,” Albert said. “The wife has a newer SUV, and the victim drove a new sedan.”
“What does Mr. Gupta drive?” Maxine asked, as they flipped through the case file.
“A newer Infinity,” Albert said. “It’s impounded now.”
No one spoke for a few seconds.
“Why would anyone want Allison Blumenthal dead?” Jill asked.
“Faith Cooper has a motive,” Albert said. “Revenge for her husband’s unfaithfulness.”
“Or a crime of passion,” Jill said. “Maybe it was Ken Cooper who caught Allison having sex with Chris Burns in the front seat of his Mustang.”
“So he borrowed his grandmother’s old Oldsmobile to sneak up on her,” Albert said, sarcastically, shaking his head. “Not very likely.”
“Could be,” Jill said, giving him a little shove.
“Just to be sure, we need to find out what model cars their parents drive,” Albert said.
“Where’d you find the bullet?” Maxine asked.
“Right at the edge underneath the dumpster, which was empty,” Jill answered. “If the truck had come in the morning to empty it, the bullet could have been smashed.”
“I can’t wait to find out whose print is on that bullet casing,” Maxine said.
“Every one of the suspects has a gun registered to them except for Chris Burns,” Albert said. “They’ve been collected, and now we just wait.”
“Chris’s parents seemed pretty involved. Daddy especially,” Jill said.
“What would Chris Burn’s motive be?” Albert asked.
“Protecting his favorite teacher’s honor,” Jill said.
“Protecting her while he banged the husband’s girlfriend,” Albert replied. “Faith Cooper said he’d admitted following the couple. Who knows what he said to Allison to lure her into the car?”
“It looked consensual to me,” Jill said.
“Maybe the driver of the Olds was someone he set up beforehand,” Maxine added. “Get rid of the girlfriend so the wife is protected.”
“I don’t know,” Jill said, stretching. “It appears they were pretty surprised when whomever it was pulled up. Chris shoved Allison away. And I’m not sure Chris Burns is smart enough to cook up an elaborate murder plan.
“Let’s look at the video again, and then we’d better talk to the husband.”
It was almost twenty-four hours since they’d been called out. Going to the window over their desks, she looked out and could see a hint of light along the horizon. Still energized by the amount of evidence they’d uncovered, mostly due to Mr. Gupta’s video cameras, from experience she knew that later Tuesday, she’d pay for lack of sleep.
“Thanksgiving is in two days,” Albert said. “The turkey countdown.”
“Ugh,” Jill replied. “I keep saying I’ll be an adult this year and contribute, and then I go to my dad’s empty handed. I don’t even help to set the table.”
“It’s not like you’ve been sitting around watching crime shows on TV.”
“I hope we can give Allison Blumenthal’s family closure before the holidays,” Jill said. “Not that it will make it easier for them to grieve her, but at least they’ll know what happened to her.
“We have everyone involved with her murder, as far as we know, here in the station. The clock’s ticking.”
“What do you want to do?” Albert asked, looking at his watch.
Maxine stuck her head out of the door. “You’re not going to believe what I just found,” she said.
Walking back to the ante room, they stood behind her chair as she maneuvered the video, speeding it in reverse. The time stamp said ten PM.
“Watch,” she said, excited. “This looks like the store owner leaving the back of the store. He comes out with trash bags and throws them in the dumpster first.”
“The trash company must have emptied early Monday morning,” Albert said.
“When he turns around, he sees something that stops him in his tracks. Unfortunately, whatever it is is out of range of the camera. He runs forward, out of the field of vision. Then, he runs back inside the store. Now he comes back out with something dark in his hands, disappeared out of view, and a minute later runs back inside.”
“What do you think he is doing?” Jill asked.
“He ran in the direction where you found the blood soaked earth,” Albert said.
“Oh, right. So maybe he was covering up a body with whatever that was in his arms.”
“Wait. Fast forward to midnight,” Maxine said, switching to a front parking lot camera. “You can’t see the car, but the lights sweep in an arc, and then if I switch to the back, here they come, same time, and pull behind the store
to the back door. Watch! He’s doing something to his trunk with what appears to be newspaper. See how he shakes out the folds and layers them?”
Synchronized, they lean forward to observe Mr. Gupta do whatever it is he’s doing, close the trunk of the car, go back inside the store, come out wiping his hands on something, and the car backing up out of view. They see him in the front cameras again, headed in the direction of the street where Allison Blumenthal’s body was found.
Fast forwarding to an hour later, they watch the car reappear in the front parking lot, pull up to the dark building and out of view. In the back camera, the car drives up to the dumpster. The man they are assuming is Mr. Gupta gets out, runs around to the trunk and opens it, then removes a large bundle of something. He then returns to the store and brings out a vacuum and spends half an hour vacuuming out the trunk, and then returning the vacuum to the store.
“We need that vacuum,” Maxine said.
Soon, Mr. Gupta exits the rear door with what looks like a hose draped over his arm and they watch as he hooks it up to a spigot, fills a bucket and proceeds to scrub the pavement from the dumpster to out of the field of vision of the camera.
“That’s probably how your bullet casing got moved around,” Maxine said.
“We have enough to arrest him,” Jill said.
“I’ll ask for the warrant,” Albert replied. “Maxine, thank you so much. Jill, do you want to talk to the husband?”
“I don’t, but I will,” Jill answered, trying to stifle a yawn. “Then I have to run home and freshen up.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” Maxine moaned, yawning. “Then I’ll feel like I have to, and I planned on stinking all day.”
“Your office reeks of death,” Albert said. “How’d they know if it was you?”
“Goodbye,” Jill said, laughing as she walked to the staircase.
No sign of Chris Burns’ mother and father in the reception area, Jill hoped they’d gone home after learning their son was going to spend the night in a holding cell.
In Room #3, Jill saw Ken Cooper sitting in a chair, leaning against the wall, sleeping with his mouth open. Carefully turning the knob, she shoved it open with enough force that it hit the desk behind it, startling Mr. Cooper.
“Oh, gosh sorry,” Jill said, her usual kind demeanor forgotten momentarily.
Looking at her watch, she couldn’t believe that it was almost seven. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked, stalling. Maybe coffee would help her regroup, even if she had to drink it with Ken Cooper.
“No. I just want to get this over with,” he said.
“Sure, no problem,” Jill replied. “You know about Miss Blumenthal, is that right?”
“Yes!” he screamed, bursting into tears.
Resting his head in his hands, Jill waited, stifling a yawn again. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Just ask me what you want to know,” he sobbed. “I don’t have anything to tell. I enjoyed being with her, I liked her, she was a great assistant at work, we had fun together away from the office. But I didn’t love her, I wasn’t leaving my wife for Allison, and I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you want to know.”
Flipping through papers, Jill saw that he was located hiding in his sailboat. “Why’d you go to the boat?” she asked.
“I wasn’t sure what had happened to Allison, and I couldn’t face Faith.”
“Did you know Faith and Allison met on Sunday?”
Looking up at her, it was evident he did not. “We were together all evening and she never mentioned a word. Allison was mad at me, so I didn’t give it a second thought when she didn’t get in touch. I texted her once, to apologize, then I’d accidentally sent her a text that was meant for my wife. I know it sounds like I’m a piece of shit, but I really did care about her.”
Dropping his head in his hands again, crying, Jill figured his response was a combination of sincere remorse and exhaustion. Outside of being a cad, she didn’t think he was a murderer but had to go through the motions regardless.
“Now that she’s dead, are you going to look for a replacement?”
Watching the interview from the hallway, Albert swooned while the rest of the onlookers started to laugh. “Your girl is in rare form,” one of the detectives said.
“Maybe I’d better give her a hand,” Albert said, hand on the door knob.
Knocking first, he turned the handle and slowly opened it so he didn’t hit her chair. Leaning forward, he offered his hand to Ken Cooper.
“I’m just asking Mr. Cooper here what his plans for the future are,” Jill said. “Did you know Allison’s friends?”
“Not really. We kept our relationship quiet outside of the office. Everyone at the firm suspected there was something going on, but I’m a partner. I can do what I want.”
Bristling, his arrogance was even a bit much for Albert.
“Mr. Cooper, you didn’t slip away to gas up your car or pick up dinner for your wife’s parents Sunday night, did you?” he asked.
“No. My car never left their driveway. It has a tracking device that will tell you everywhere I’ve been for, well since I bought it last month.”
“When’s the last time you fired your gun?” Jill asked.
“Last year,” he said. “It’s in a safe, under the seat of my car. Faith has the same set up.”
“We’ve already got it,” Jill said, standing up. “You’re free to go, Mr. Cooper. Don’t go far, though.”
They left the room as a group, Ken Cooper leaving without more conversation.
“I’m going home,” Jill said.
“We have our warrant for Mr. Gupta,” Albert said. “Accessory to the crime of murder, tampering with evidence, desecration of a dead body.”
“Did you talk to him?” Jill asked.
“No, I was waiting for you,” he said, referring to the case file. “How about an update first? Ken Cooper’s fingerprints are on file because he has a conceal carry permit, and that’s his partial print on the casing. And bad news for Chris Burns; it was his sperm inside of Allison Blumenthal.”
“Well, we sort of figured they were screwing around in his car,” she replied.
“Literally,” Albert said.
“Let’s get this over with,” Jill said.
Albert followed her back to the holding area. Mr. Gupta was snoozing on a cot, but when he heard the detectives murmuring, he sprung up.
“I have to get to my shop!”
“Well, I hate to tell you buddy, but you’re not going anywhere,” Albert said, starting to read his rights.
“I told you I didn’t kill her,” he said.
“When you’re ready to talk, we’ll listen,” Jill replied.
“I want my lawyer present,” he said.
“Of course,” Albert said.
As they turned to leave, Chris Burns cried out. “What about me?”
“Are you ready to talk?” Jill asked. “We have some pretty incriminating video. Looks like you and our murder victim got to know each other pretty well behind the donut shop.”
Struggling to keep his expression neutral, Chris Burns grabbed the bars of his cell. “I didn’t kill her,” he said.
“But you know who did, right?” Jill asked. “We saw you surprised by the arrival of someone who might have killed Allison Blumenthal.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it!”
“Right,” Albert replied, getting up close. “No one killed her. She ended up in the street with her brains blown out and your sperm inside of her, however. Can you tell me anything about that?”
Defeated, Chris wanted to talk to them, regardless of what it exposed. He was tired and wanted to go home. “I’ll talk,” he said.
Signaling for the guard to unlock the cell, the detectives stood aside waiting for Chris to come out. It happened so fast, Jill later said she didn’t understand what she was seeing. Twisting away from the detectives, Chris lun
ged for the guard’s gun and almost succeeded in getting it out of its holster. Pouncing on him, Jill swung her arms and legs around him, tackling him to the ground.
“No offense, Jill, but you look like a chimpanzee riding on that kid’s back,” Albert said, helping her subdue Chris Burns.
“Who gives a shit!” the guard called out, struggling with the detectives. “Detective saved my life.”
“If you were innocent before, you just got yourself in a shit load of trouble,” Albert yelled at Chris, giving him a little shake.
“Chris! What are you thinking?” Jill asked, panting, handcuffing him behind his back.
They pulled him up off the floor and dragged him crying to the interrogation room.
“I’m scared!” he cried.
“We know that,” Jill said. “If you didn’t kill her, and we don’t think you did, you can tell us the truth, and you’ll be okay. I promise you that.”
“Except for assaulting a police officer like you did that guard just now,” Albert said. “Your ass is going to be in a sling for that little action.”
Sitting down, they waited until he calmed down.
“How did you know Allison?” Albert asked. “We want the truth.”
“I followed Mr. Cooper to see what he was doing. I like Mrs. Cooper, and it pissed me off that he upset her.”
“You and Mrs. Cooper didn’t mess around like you said, did you?” Jill asked.
“No, I lied.”
“When you followed Mr. Cooper that first time, what happened next?”
“He went to Allison’s apartment. I waited, and in a while they came out together. I followed them to a restaurant.”
“Was that the only time you followed them?”
“No, I pretty much did it everyday,” he answered.
“When was the first time you met Allison?” Jill asked.
“I went to her apartment,” he said. “It was after Mrs. Cooper found out the truth.”
Jill was dying to shoot a glance at Albert but controlled it.
“How’d that come about?” she asked.
“I hung around outside the Cooper’s house, listening to them fight. She was crying. Doors slammed, but I didn’t hear him say much.
The Donut Shop Murder Page 8
