Beneath the Depths

by Bruce Robert Coffin

  Rodriguez’s legs became wobbly then finally gave out. She dropped abruptly to the carpet like a rag doll and began to scream.

  Byron was stuck in traffic, listening to his stomach’s demanding growl and thinking he needed to take care of that basic human need when his cell rang. It was PPD dispatch.

  “Byron,” he said, answering it and hoping the call might provide answers.

  “Sarge, it’s Jeff in Dispatch. Sorry to bother you at lunchtime.”

  Byron grinned. Jeff in Dispatch was obviously new to the department and had no idea how rare a normal schedule was for him. Mealtime, nights, even weekends, meant nothing to the detective sergeant supervising CID’s Crimes Against Persons Unit. Lunchtime was just another time of day when people could do bad shit to one another. Murder being the ultimate bad shit. “What’s up, Jeff?”

  “The dispatcher didn’t want to put it out over the air, Sarge.”

  “Put what out?”

  “Patrol just confirmed another body.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Byron was standing on the sidewalk of the Vacationland Inn, outside the crime scene, formerly a hotel room, speaking with Dr. Ellis. “So, what do you think?” Byron asked Ellis as he watched LeRoyer’s car turn into the parking lot.

  “Another one, Sergeant? What are we running, a two for one? Hey, come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea. We could have a weekday special.”

  Byron continued. “Normally, I wouldn’t ask but—”

  “Ha! Sure you would, my boy. And I’d be disappointed if you didn’t. I’m still at the Maine Med morgue. I’ll grab my bag of tricks and be right over.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  Byron ended the call as LeRoyer was approaching on foot.

  “What the hell is going on in this godforsaken town, John?” LeRoyer said, looking just as disheveled but somewhat warmer than he had during their meeting several hours prior. “Tell me this isn’t related to the Ramsey case.”

  Byron shook his head. “I can’t. Candy the stripper, AKA Joanne Babbage, checked into this hotel last night. She won’t be checking out.” He waited while the lieutenant processed the news and began to pace in front of him.

  LeRoyer’s hands went right to his hair, combing it back, his trademark nervous tic. “We sure it’s a murder?” LeRoyer asked with a mildly hopeful tone.

  “Pretty sure, Marty. Unless you think Candy slashed her own throat.”

  “Stanton is gonna lose his shit,” LeRoyer said, as much to himself as to Byron. The lieutenant stopped pacing and took a deep breath. He turned to face Byron. “Okay, run it down for me.”

  “She checked in late last night. Paid cash. I sent Mel and Nuge out to grab up the night desk clerk at home. Dustin’s on video recovery. Diane is canvassing the nearby rooms with a couple of beat officers. And I’ve got Gabe processing his second murder scene of the morning.”

  LeRoyer’s cell rang. “Shit. It’s the chief.” He looked at Byron. “What the fuck am I supposed to tell him?”

  Byron wanted to tell the lieutenant that life as the Ass Chief under Stanton wasn’t likely to get any easier, but he resisted the urge. “Tell him we’re making progress.”

  Stevens and Nugent were just climbing the front stairs of the dated Deering split-level when a middle-aged woman appeared on the other side of the ripped screen door.

  “Yes?” the woman said. “May I help you?”

  Stevens took the lead. “Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Detective Stevens and this is Detective Nugent.” They both displayed their IDs. “Does Chris Miller live here?”

  The woman’s pleasant expression turned to worry. “He does. He’s my son. Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “No, ma’am,” Stevens said. “There’s been an incident at the hotel where he works. We need to speak with him.”

  “An incident?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, he works nights and he’s still sleeping. Can’t it wait?”

  “It’s important that we speak with him now, Mrs. Miller,” Nugent said.

  “May we come in?” Stevens asked.

  Miller hesitated a moment before unlocking the door, and pushed it open. “Come inside. I’ll go and get him.”

  John Byron stood in the corner of the room, trying to stay out of the way while watching Dr. Ellis work. Byron saw the glint in Ellis’s eye. The doctor always got excited about anything gruesome. What made a man like Ellis? Byron couldn’t imagine doing what the doctor did for work every day. Years ago he’d asked him how he could dissect human bodies all day then go home and be able to take any physical pleasure in his wife. After careful consideration, Ellis had said, “My boy, there’s work and then there’s play. I try not to confuse the two.” Somehow he’d known the doc’s answer wouldn’t leave him feeling any more comfortable.

  Byron knew in his gut the three murders were connected, about that there was little doubt. What he didn’t know was how. Had Darius and Candy both been complicit in Ramsey’s murder? Were they both eliminated simply to keep the police from working their way back to the attorney’s killer? Or was something else entirely happening here?

  Fowler the gym rat was still in custody on the drug charges, ironic after Tomlinson, a major drug dealer, had gotten out so easily. Still, Fowler being in custody when the last two murders occurred combined with the ballistic evidence pretty much negated his involvement in any of it. Fowler had said he was just trying to impress his boyfriend by claiming he’d shut Ramsey up. Perhaps he had been telling the truth after all.

  Diane had told him that Candy was very convincing in that she had broken off her relationship with Ramsey. But had she? Tomlinson said Candy worked for the competition, selling drugs at the club for Alonzo Gutierrez, but when the drug guys picked him up to question him Gutierrez seemed shocked about the intel. According to Gutierrez, Tomlinson had been the club’s only supplier. The Unicorn was Tomlinson’s territory and unlike the Fox he wasn’t sharing that one. Was this about drugs? Was Ramsey’s involvement more than just as a customer? And if so, who else was involved? Someone from the firm perhaps. Branch or DeWitt?

  “Hey, Sarge,” a uniformed officer said, standing just outside the door to the room. “The K-9 is here.”

  Byron stepped outside to meet the dog’s handler. There was no mistaking the sounds of an excited German shepherd coming from a nearby black-and-white. Ginny Tozier’s K-9, Rico, was known as one of the best tracking dogs around. Tozier’s shepherd had once successfully tracked a robbery suspect for two miles in a wooded area of Windham. The suspect, who was tired and lost, finally gave up and waited for the officers to find him. About the only way a suspect could lose Rico was to get in a car and drive away.

  “Hey, Sarge,” Tozier said. “We’re ready when you are. I imagine I can’t enter the room.”

  “Not for a while, I’m afraid. You think you can track using the victim’s blood as a scent trigger?”

  “We can try it. You have anything you can bring out to Rico?”

  Five minutes later, the vocal and excited Rico was tugging his partner hard toward the Pine Tree Shopping Center. Byron watched them until they were out of sight before reentering the room.

  “Well, I’d say there’s no mystery here,” Ellis said as he peeled off his latex gloves and absently rubbed his stubbled chin. “Her assailant overpowered her then sliced her throat.”

  “Any chance the victim inflicted injury on the killer?” Byron asked.

  “Nothing under the nails. No defensive wounds on her hands. Looks like she was clobbered with something on the right side of her head. Most likely she either didn’t see it coming or didn’t have time to react. She probably collapsed on the bed, either dazed or unconscious, then the killer sliced her open, causing her to bleed out. That any help?”

  “It might have been,” Byron said. “If the security cameras functioned.”

  Byron stared at the body. Struck in the head as Ramsey had been. Only this time the killer used a knife instead of
a gun.

  “She’s naked,” Byron said. “Any sign of sexual assault?”

  Ellis shook his head. “No sign that she’d engaged in any sexual activity, forced or otherwise. How bad do you need me to post?”

  “On Tomlinson? Badly. This one, not so much. I need the bullets from Tomlinson’s body for comparison.”

  Ellis looked over at Pelligrosso. “You got enough gas in the tank, my boy?”

  Before the evidence tech could answer, Byron was summoned back to the door by the beat officer.

  “Sarge, I think the K-9 found something.”

  Stevens and Nugent sat across from Chris Miller, waiting for an answer to the question she had just posed. Miller appeared to be giving his answer careful consideration before verbalizing it. Miller’s mother pretended to be doing something housework-related in the next room, but Stevens knew she was listening closely.

  “Did you not understand the question, Mr. Miller?” Stevens asked.

  “You’re asking if I knew the woman who paid for the hotel room,” Miller said, squirming in his chair and glancing toward the room occupied by his mother. “No. I didn’t know her.”

  Nugent raised an eyebrow. “So you’d never seen her before?”

  Miller swallowed nervously. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Why are you being coy with us, Mr. Miller?” Stevens asked.

  “I’m not. It’s just—I don’t want to get in trouble with my boss.”

  “How would admitting that you’d seen Ms. Babbage before get you into trouble with your boss?” Stevens asked. “Was she a regular?”

  Miller nodded.

  “Was she usually with a different man every time?”

  Miller nodded again.

  “Did you know what she was doing?”

  Before he could nod a third time, Nugent jumped in. “Speak up, young man. Did you know she was taking these men to the hotel to have sex for money?”

  “Yes,” Miller said weakly, casting another glance toward the next room.

  Stevens’s cell buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Tran. “Only one camera off-line. The one covering the vic’s room.” She frowned and held it up for Nugent to read.

  “Figures,” Nugent said.

  Stevens clipped the cell to her belt and returned her attention to Miller. “Did you see the person she was with last night?”

  “No. She came in alone.”

  “Tell us about your security cameras,” Nugent said.

  Miller’s pale face turned a shade whiter. “What about them?”

  “It looks as though only one of them is broken,” Stevens said. “Is it a coincidence that you gave Ms. Babbage a passkey to one of the rooms with no surveillance?”

  Stalling, Miller toyed with something atop the table that looked like a bread crumb. He shook his head.

  Nugent cleared his throat.

  “No,” Miller said.

  “How long has that camera been broken?” Stevens asked.

  “It’s not broken. It’s unplugged.”

  “By whom?” Stevens asked.

  “Was it you?” Nugent said, intentionally making his tone accusatory.

  “No. I swear I didn’t—”

  “Then who?” Nugent said.

  “I don’t know. It was like that when I started working there.”

  “How many people know that those rooms aren’t videotaped?” Stevens said.

  “I don’t know. But all the girls from the Unicorn know. They ask for those rooms when they come in.”

  Byron held the padlock while Pelligrosso screwed the hasp onto the doorframe with a small electric driver. The decision had been made to delay the autopsies after bloody clothes, believed to belong to Babbage’s killer, were located in a nearby dumpster. Byron handed him the lock as his cell rang. It was Stevens.

  “How’d you make out with Miller?” Byron asked.

  “It was tough getting him to admit anything with Mommy sharking about but he finally came clean. The girls from the Unicorn, including our vic, have been using the rooms for extra money.”

  “Did he see who Babbage was with?” Byron asked hopefully.

  “No. Said she checked in alone.”

  Byron wasn’t at all surprised. If the owners of the hotel could count on filling the rooms regularly, it wouldn’t matter to them if they were being rented by prostitutes or partying teenagers. A dollar was still a dollar. But none of that was important. What was important was the fact that the girls all knew about the lack of video coverage, and if the girls all knew, it was likely that others did too. Like maybe the murderer. “Will he give us a signed statement?”

  “On our way to 109 with him now.”

  “Thanks, Mel.” Byron was pocketing his phone when Diane returned.

  “Any luck?”

  “On the canvass? Nada. But I just got a call from one of the supervisors at County. Darius was bailed out by an attorney.”

  “Who?”

  “Gerald DeWitt.”

  Byron sent Diane and Tran to the Unicorn in hopes of finding out who Babbage might have met up with before checking into the no-tell motel. But Byron had a phone call to make. It was time to rattle some cages, he thought. And no better cage to start with than the one belonging to the person responsible for Tomlinson’s bail. Gerald DeWitt.

  DeWitt had readily agreed to meet. He told Byron he was at the office getting caught up on some pressing business and would meet him there. Byron, who had some pressing business of his own, sat across from DeWitt in the attorney’s corner office, on the eighth floor of the Emerson Building, waiting for an answer to his question.

  “Sergeant, if you’re asking me if I bailed Mr. Tomlinson from jail, the answer is yes. You already know that.”

  “The question is why?” Byron said. “Why would one of the senior partners in one of the biggest law firms north of Boston go personally to the county jail and bail out a piece of shit like Darius Tomlinson?”

  “That piece of shit, as you so eloquently put it, Sergeant, was a client of Paul Ramsey.”

  “So you took him on as your personal client after Ramsey died?”

  “He was a client of Paul’s, but our firm still represents Mr. Tomlinson. I was merely posting his bail. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?”

  “Did he telephone you directly?”

  “No. I received a call from a third party asking me to help facilitate his release.”

  “Who called you?” Byron asked, pen poised at the ready above his notepad.

  DeWitt’s lips spread into a grin. “Sergeant Byron, we both know I’m under no obligation to answer that question.”

  “Because I know the number Darius called from the jail. It’s a TracFone. Untraceable. You’re telling me it’s not your phone?”

  “I’m telling you that I’m not obligated to answer that. Besides, last I knew, it isn’t a crime to provide a person charged with bail money. Has there been some change in the statutes of which I’m unaware?”

  “No, bailing someone out isn’t a crime. As long as the provider of that bail isn’t also facilitating the suspect’s demise.”

  “Are you accusing me of murdering Mr. Tomlinson?”

  “I’m saying it’s quite a coincidence that you’d post bail for Darius, someone you’ve never been in contact with, and that he’d end up murdered less than twenty-four hours later. Doesn’t that strike you as a bit odd, Gerry?”

  DeWitt shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “Mr. Tomlinson was suspected of drug dealing, isn’t that right?”

  “He was.”

  “Well, I have no information to support your suspicion, but let’s assume for a moment that he was involved in drug trafficking—as I understand it, that is a very dangerous line of work to be in.”

  “You’re speculating that Darius was killed by a rival dealer?”

  “I am merely offering up a possibility for your consideration.”

  “I can see you’re all torn up about it.”

  “All I
can tell you for certain is that I had nothing to do with the murder of Darius Tomlinson. In fact, I was home with my wife when he was killed.”

  Byron studied him for a beat. “All that means is that you didn’t pull the trigger.”

  “Think whatever you like, Sergeant. But we’re finished here.”

  Byron drove back to 109 pissed off. He knew DeWitt would continue to dance around any attempt the police made at uncovering the facts surrounding Tomlinson’s death. Guys like DeWitt always used legal loopholes to avoid doing anything that might actually assist the police in finding a killer, even if the victim was a client, then publicly criticize them when they couldn’t solve the case.

  Byron was normally very astute at reading people, but he hadn’t been able to get a good read on DeWitt, and it was bothering him. Was DeWitt hiding something? Or was he just doing what came natural to a guy who made his living getting bad guys out of trouble?

  He parked the unmarked in front of 109, in one of the police-business-only spaces, behind a rust-colored minivan displaying Tennessee plates, a plethora of bumper stickers, and a broken passenger window. He was already playing a familiar scene inside his head. The angry owner complaining to a desk officer about the break-in and missing items. As if it was good sense to leave valuables in an unattended vehicle in Tennessee. Maine wasn’t the only state with a drug problem. Crossing the lobby, he listened to the middle-aged husband and wife at the counter berate the officer, who likely wasn’t even on the clock when the break-in occurred, for their shortsightedness. Byron wondered if the irate couple had any idea that there were bigger problems in the world than their missing property. Problems like the unsolved murder of Paul Ramsey. As the complaints of the Tennessee tourists faded into background noise, Byron punched in the passcode to the security door and stepped inside.

  Byron found Diane typing her supplement in the CID conference room.

  “How’d it go with DeWitt?” she asked.

  “How do you think?” Byron said as he fell back into a chair and closed his eyes.

  “That good, huh?”