“You met him this morning. De Luca.”
“I guess.”
“We’re done for now. We’ll want to stay in touch, Mr. Fredrickson.”
“The house?”
“I’ll let you know. It’s a crime scene. We need to control access right now.” Ray left unsaid that they might want to search further into some nooks and crannies uninterrupted.
“I need…I guess I need to make some arrangements. Her body…”
“Don’t worry about that right now, sir,” Carol replied too quickly. “It won’t be released until after the autopsy, and we may need to keep it available even after that, in case something comes up and they need to go back in.” A moan escaped Scott Fredrickson’s mouth, oozed from his soul, low and sad and pained. He melted down, back onto the rumpled bed, an arm laid across his eyes and wept.
Ray lowered his head and shook it slowly. Carol could have said a dozen other things. Television showed too much of the grisly parts of their work. They waited patiently, respectfully, while the man on the bed regained some control. Ray figured he was nowhere near cried out.
After a long minute he mumbled a question through the hands now covering his face. “Do you have to?”
“Yes, sir,” Ray answered softly. “We do.”
“Well then…” Fredrickson took a deep breath and sat up and dragged a sleeve across his wet red eyes.
“I’ll call you later.” Ray said softly. He stepped over and laid what he hoped was a reassuring hand on Scott’s shoulder.
“I’m frightened, Detective Bankston. Frightened.” Ray said nothing, just looked in the man’s eyes and waited for him to go on.
“Somebody she knew, maybe someone we both know, they killed Deanna, and I don’t have any idea who or why. I’m frightened.”
Ray gripped the man’s shoulder firmly. “That’s what we’re all working on. I’ll call later.”
Chapter 7
Tony went back to headquarters, parked himself at what he guessed was his new desk, and started making phone calls. Scotty Fredrickson’s alibi checked out. So did Swenson’s. He tried Sean Stuckey’s cell phone every fifteen minutes. All he got was voice mail. He left messages the first two times.
Ray and Carol rolled in just after noon. Carol was polite but chippy. Tony guessed her attitude had to do with their encounter earlier and shrugged it off. Ray was thoughtful and curious what Tony had learned from the son and the roommates.
Ray again directed Carol to match up with Vang Pao and get on the hospital and gym interviews. She snatched up her purse and stalked out. Ray knew she wanted to get to the women friends, the ‘Go Girls’. He did too, but there were other things to do first.
He showed Tony how to fill out the interview forms for the case file. Ray didn’t mind that the file was actually created electronically, just so long as copies were printed and kept in the case folder. He didn’t care to sit for hours squinting at a computer screen, opening windows, searching sub-folders and clicking keys. He liked to feel the paper, read real words in black and white, and occasionally make notes. He hoped Tony would adopt the habit.
Tony took a call from the morgue and transferred it to Ray after the person calling insisted. They’d never heard of a Detective de Luca, they wanted Sergeant Bankston. His attention was split then. He tried to hear what Ray was saying while he transferred notes from his pad to the interview log form on the screen. The keyboard knew he was a little pissed, the way he was punching the keys with authority.
Ray, making notes, the phone handset clamped in a hunched shoulder, said “uh huh” a number of times. The call went on for a while and eventually Tony quit trying to follow Ray’s end. He’d find out soon enough what the coroner had to say so he concentrated on his own notes, carefully transcribing what Scott Jr. had said and what Swenson and David Hong had said. Tony wondered if he should make notes of their body language. He didn’t know. Ray was still on the phone with the coroner and he couldn’t ask. Another line rang. They’d probably want Sergeant fricking Bankston too, he fumed.
“Homicide, de Luca”
“Hey man.” It was a cheery voice, almost familiar. He tried to place it. “It’s Kumpula. Forget me already?”
“Jonny. What’s up?”
“Ray around?” Tony frowned and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. Here we go again.
“He’s on with the coroner right now. Want to hold?” Tony almost managed to keep the attitude out of his voice.
“Hell no. Look, I’ve got a problem. You can help me here.”
“I’ll do what I can. What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got so many fuckin’ fingerprints we’re going crazy down here.” Kumpula sounded frustrated.
“Any on the knife?” Tony sat up straighter and grabbed a pen.
“Yep.”
Tony felt the adrenaline squirt right into his bloodstream. His heart rate downshifted and revved to near the red line. “Whose? Whose are they?” Ray turned to look at him. He’d shouted the question.
“Whoa, podna’…down boy. I thought the same thing, first off. It was the vic’s prints, man. The woman grabbed the knife after she was stabbed. If there were others they got smudged. Hers were smudged too, like she dragged her hand down the hilt.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. My feelings exactly. Look, all you guys out on the street start printing the people you interview, okay. I’m not kidding. We’ve got close to two dozen different sets. We’re going to run all of them through AFIS but it’ll take time. Get me some comparison prints, okay?”
“Will do.” Tony replied. He was sure Ray would agree. “Anything promising yet?”
“Get me some comps, Tony. That’ll help.”
“Okay. Will do. You still want Ray? He’s off now.”
“What for? Gotta go. Comps, baby. I need comps!” The line went dead. Tony grinned. At least Kumpula wasn’t treating him like a newbie. He leaned back in his chair to enjoy it for a moment.
“Good news?” Ray had a pair of cheaters on, glasses with small rectangular tortoise shell frames that perched on the end of his nose. He looked over them at Tony.
“Uh…not really.”
“Kumpula?”
“Yeah.” Tony straightened back up in the chair and lost the smile. “There were prints on the knife hilt but they were the vic’s.” Rays face hardened. He let out a short sigh before he looked away.
“Do me a favor, Tony.”
“Sure. Anything.”
“Don’t refer to the deceased as ‘the vic’ anymore. The word is victim. Her name was Deanna Fredrickson. It isn’t respectful.”
Tony didn’t expect that. On the street they were all vics and perps. It might be a hard habit to break, he thought. Then he remembered catching himself when he was talking to the boys earlier. Maybe it wouldn’t be too hard.
“I’ll try, Ray.”
“I’ll appreciate it. What else did he have to say?”
“He’s got a shi…big pile of prints. Lots of different sets. Lots of people. He wants us to print anyone of interest, people we interview.”
Ray pursed his lips before replying. “That’ll make things interesting. I was thinking of doing it anyway.”
“How so?”
“Well, we can ask for their prints, but it takes a judge or an arrest to make ’em give them up if they don’t want to. Just like DNA samples.”
“That is interesting.” Tony thought about it for a minute. If someone didn’t want to give up their prints for comparison there would have to be a reason-a damn good one. That could lead to all sorts of compelling conversations.
“When we get a break run down to the lab and get everyone a kit.”
“Don’t you mean a scanner?” Tony was a gear junkie and thought the electronic fingerprint modules were very cool gadgets. He knew the department had a number of them; surely enough for the Homicide teams. It would save a lot of time and mess.
“Nope. I want ’em inked.” Ray watched Tony try to work out for himself why he’d want to use the old fashioned method.