“Morning, Tracie,” Ben said. “Is there anyone around who isn’t too busy and could do a quick processing of a piece of evidence for fingerprints?”
“No such thing as a ‘quick processing,’” she admonished. “And there’s also no such thing as ‘isn’t too busy’ around here. We do have a backlog of cases to work, you know.”
He gave her a placating smile. “Sure, but I’m always super nice to y’all, and deserve to be bumped ahead of those other rude bastards.”
She snorted, but went ahead and picked up her phone and punched a button. “Hey, Detective Roth is here and wants to kiss your ass because he needs something done right damn now. You want me to tell him to get screwed?”
I blinked in surprise, but Tracie caught my eye and winked. “Gotcha,” she said into the phone, then hung up. “Sean said you’ll owe him lunch,” she told Ben, “but he’ll come do it.”
“Perfect,” he said. “He can put it on my tab.”
Less than a minute later the red-haired tech opened the secured door. “Oh, hi there, Angel. Hi, Ben. Come on in. This is just one item, right?” He gave Ben a look filled with distrust. “Not like the time that you had fifty-three beer cans?”>“Am I that obvious?”
“Nah. I just know how I’d feel if someone pulled that shit on me.” He gave a rude snort, shook his head. “Frat prank? I don’t know about that.”
“It wasn’t a frat prank,” I said. “Derrel, that was no college punk. I know the cops have no reason to believe me, but I’m not making this up.”
“I don’t believe for one second that you’re making any of this up.”
“I know, and you have no idea how much that means to me,” I said earnestly. “Here’s what I was thinking: The dude who wrote that damn article was getting off on how horrible it was for the family when the remains of their loved ones weren’t cared for and guarded properly. But…has the next of kin for poor Mr. Norman Kearny shown up?”
He leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head. “Y’know, funny thing, that. I’ve been trying to track them down, and it’s looking more and more like Mr. Kearny didn’t have any. Next of kin, that is. Widower, no kids as far as I can tell. Not a peep from any of his coworkers, either.”
“There’s something weird about this whole thing,” I insisted. “There has to be a reason that asshole stole that body.”
“I’m with you, Angel, but I don’t think there’s much doubt that this victim was simply a security guard who tripped on some stairs. I have all of the background checks and info that the lab had on file, and it all says that this guy really was Norman Kearny.”
“Well, what if the personnel file was tampered with?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “You don’t think that’s veering hard into conspiracy-theory territory?”
I made a sour face. “I know how it sounds, but I think that there has to be some sort of thing going on for it to be worth holding me up at gunpoint to steal the body.”
Derrel grimaced. “True. Unfortunately I have no idea how we could find out if the personnel file was altered. If we still had the body we could run the prints or check dental records, but…” He spread his hands and shrugged.
I sat up straight. “Derrel, I’m fucking brilliant.”
He gave me an amused smile. “Well, I’ve known that for a while, but what makes you think so?”
“I put his watch in the property safe,” I said with a grin. “We can have that fingerprinted.”
He nodded slowly, an approving gleam in his eye. “That could work, since we don’t have the actual body to verify the prints.” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. Two p.m. “I have court in half an hour, but I’ll talk to the folks in Investigations in the morning.”
“I could take the watch over there now,” I said, probably too eagerly.
He smiled. “Impatient much?”
I didn’t smile back. “Derrel, there are people who think I was involved. My name is plastered all over the paper, and I’m really afraid I’m going to lose my job.” I gulped. “And I really need this job.” My voice cracked on the last part, and I wasn’t even trying to be dramatic.
His expression softened. “I know you do. And I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all this. I just…I don’t want you to get your hopes up too far about that watch suddenly answering all the questions.”
I nodded stiffly. “I know. But it’s worth a shot, right?”
“Right.” He gave me a kind smile. “I’ll go get that watch out of the safe for you. Let me know what you find out.”
Derrel retrieved the watch in its plastic bag for me, then left to go to court. I sat in the office, dithering and angsting for several minutes while I wondered whether I was truly being an overly paranoid idiot with my conspiracy theory. Finally I sighed, picked up the phone and put in a call to Detective Ben Roth, relieved that it was his case. At least he consistently treated me like a person—unlike some of the other detectives at the sheriff’s office. If this had been Abadie’s case, I’d have probably chickened out.
“Detective Roth,” came the gruff answer a few seconds later.