Break the Silence (Detectives Kane and Alton)

“One thing: even if Wolfe rules her death as suicide, we need to find evidence and bring charges against her attackers. Seth Lyons is our main suspect.” Jenna’s face had become stone. “There is no consent issue here. Read the autopsy report. This girl had enough date-rape drugs in her system to render her unconscious for hours. I want these men found and charged.”

Kane met her gaze. “That’s a given.”

“So why focus on Seth Lyons?” Rowley lifted his gaze to Jenna. “He asked her to the party, but any one of the men at the party could’ve been responsible. She might have been part of an initiation like Webber suggested.”

“Not this time because Lyons was running the show. He invited her to the party and has a motive.” Jenna added the word to the whiteboard beside Seth Lyons’ name. “The guy she broke the date with, Phil Stein, had a fight with Lyons in the cafeteria at the college and flattened him with one punch. From an eyewitness account, Stein humiliated Lyons. It was no secret Stein was seeing Chrissie, so it gives Lyons a motive. Raping his girlfriend would be payback and we know Lyons and his friends don’t give an inch.”

“But we have no solid evidence to charge Lyons with rape.” Kane glanced down at his notes. “As you know from the files, the guys living at Lyons’ house all gave each other alibis for the night of the rape and they’ve sterilized the room we considered as the possible scene of the crime; however, they didn’t do the same for the rest of the house or the vehicle. Wolfe has hair samples from Jacobs and Devon but needs samples from the other people living at the house to see if they match those collected from the vehicle.”

“Also, her shoes are missing.” Jenna turned to look at Kane. “There’s a description of them in the file. The shoes might give us some trace evidence. It’s something I’ll add to a press release. Kane, I want you to contact the college to see if they’ve been turned in to lost-and-found.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kane made a note.

“Next, we had the unusual death of Alex Jacobs.” Jenna wrote his name on the whiteboard. “Wolfe is not convinced his death was a homicide; he thinks maybe a tragic accident.” She turned to face them. “The autopsy report will give you the reasons we are looking into this case as a possible homicide, and our investigation will center on the motive for killing him. Jacobs was a pivotal player on the football team, admired and liked as far as we believe, and then the janitor gave us some interesting information about Jacobs and some of the other members of the team. The group took part in a plan to remove Owen Jones from the team. Jacobs went to the coach and told him that Jones had attempted to sell them drugs. After a fight broke out between Jones, Lyons, and Jacobs, the coach benched Jones. Security carried out a search and found a crack pipe; Jones insists someone planted it, but the dean removed him from college for the entire semester.” She shrugged. “He’s back now, so I figure he has a motive for killing Jacobs. Don’t forget the fight at the rapids.”

“Then you should add Phil Stein as well.?

? Rowley gave Kane a direct look. “If he believes Jacobs was involved in Chrissie’s rape, he has a motive as well.”

Kane smiled. “You’re echoing my thoughts. We have another possible as well: Chrissie’s cousin, Steve Lowe. I figure as she was family, he has motive too, and we’ll need to discover his whereabouts during both TODs.”

“Yeah, but let’s stick to Jacobs’ death first or it gets confusing.” Jenna added the names to the list and the motives. “Lowe is a big guy and works part-time at the local feed store, so he will be lifting heavy weights all day. Both Jones and Stein are strong, muscular guys too; both are capable of holding the weight Jacobs was lifting, but I figure Stein is perhaps the only spotter Jacobs would trust. Lowe is an unknown quantity at the moment.”

“I’m not so sure.” Rowley shook his head. “You’d have to be part of a college football team to understand. Yeah, there might have been hard feelings between them but Jones is part of the team now, and if I planned to kill someone I’d make sure to get closer to my target and gain his trust.”

“Good point.” Jenna nodded in agreement and added Jones to the board. “Jones doesn’t have a solid alibi for the time Jacobs died.” She glanced at Kane. “We’ll go see Stein, Jones, and Lowe later and see what they have to say.”

Kane reached for his cup of coffee and took a sip. He glanced down at his notes again. “Okay, Wolfe hasn’t sent an autopsy report for Pete Devon yet because there are too many inconsistences for him to determine cause of death.”

He ran through the preliminary findings and then glanced up at Jenna. Seeing she had added all the pertinent information to the whiteboard, he turned to Rowley and Walters. “Here’s where it gets interesting. Both Jacobs and Devon died around the same time of night, in the same building, and the CCTV cameras went down at the same time both nights. Unfortunately, there’s not enough footage to discover if this is a regular occurrence, and the college security guards haven’t noticed anything unusual, so they are useless.”

“We’ve determined that if someone killed both men, they would’ve needed to have a considerable amount of strength, which again targets our suspects.” Jenna looked back at Kane. “Wolfe figures we should think out of the box with these cases. For instance, we’re including Chrissie’s rape in the two suspected murder cases because of the football team link and also looking at any enemies of the team or the coach.”

“Yeah.” Rowley nodded in agreement. “The coach has made a zillion enemies over the years. He’s tough and unforgiving.”

“I’d say there’d be a few people out to get his job too.” Walters’ gray brows furrowed. “If the team fails, the college will be looking at replacing him. It’s a matter of pride.”

“Which brings us back to our suspects.” Jenna sat in her office chair and leaned back. “All have a problem with the team. All want to get even. They may have different reasons but it’s the same result.”

Kane nodded. “Seems open and shut to me. Three suspects? My gut tells me there’s more to this and we’re missing something.” He pushed a takeout bag toward Jenna, noticing she hadn’t eaten anything or touched her coffee. “Do any of these guys know how to disable a CCTV camera, for instance? Has anything else happened with the team or the coach we’re not aware of?”

“Okay, Rowley, I’ll need you to run things here, but if you get any downtime, see what you can find out about rival teams, anything that could point to someone trying to destroy the team or any dirt you can dig up on the coach.” Jenna took a sip of her coffee and sighed. “That’s all we have for now.” She waved at the bags of food. “Grab what you want and we’ll all get back to work.”

Kane waited for them to go and looked at her. “You know what’s bothering me about all this?”

“What?” Jenna raised one eyebrow in question.

“If it’s payback against the team for whatever reason, why take out the lesser players first? All can be replaced by players on the bench.” Kane reached for a bag of sandwiches. “If it was me, my target would be Lyons, the star quarterback.”

“Hmm.” Jenna leaned back in her seat. “Maybe whoever staged the accidents is planning something special for Lyons?”

Thirty-One

For Jenna, writing out the facts in a case on the whiteboard centered her mind and put the priorities in order. She stared at the board. The three cases revolved around the football team but if they turned out to be murder, she needed to know what would trigger someone to kill the players? She finished her sandwich and took a sip of coffee before dragging her attention away from the whiteboard and looking at Kane. “What if I go left field and make a crazy assumption about these cases?”

“Give it to me.” Kane leaned on the desk and met her gaze.

Jenna nodded. “Okay, what if we’re looking at this all wrong?” She drummed her fingers on the table. “These college football teams are rivals and do weird things, like stealing each other’s mascots. I know there was some trouble with the team from Louan a couple of years ago.”