Chapter 8

Detective Alicia Ironsides came in the building at seven o’clock A.M. sharp. She was a creature of habit, which had its good points and bad. Her supervisors, during her working life, had loved it. She was dependable. She’d always show up and she’d always do things the way she’d been taught. Knowing what to expect out of someone is a quality most bosses appreciate, but it went double when she got into law enforcement. Even in the relatively small town where she first pinned on a badge, the administration knew what it was like to wonder just where some of your officers were, and just what they might be up to. Crime wasn’t rampant in Julian, but some of the less honest denizens were able to keep a police force of thirty officers and two detectives fairly busy.

Alicia was the junior detective, having been promoted to her position two years earlier when the former occupant of her desk chair bartered his five years of experience for a new job down in Enid, where they paid more. There wasn’t a test for having a gold badge in Julian, and persistent rumors within the force suggested that, if they hadn’t had a woman mayor at that time, a man would have been promoted, instead of her.

They sent her to school at the state police academy, and she loved it. She learned her lessons well and took them home with her. Her favorite thing was going into an interrogation of a man, looking small and sweet and easy to fool. They always lied to her, initially, and she always let them. Then, gradually, she’d ask questions that resulted in seemingly harmless answers. Eventually she’d use those answers to force them into changing their story. Presto. Honest people don’t have to change their story, because the truth can’t be changed. There was more than one man languishing in either the county jail or in one of the twenty-four state and three private correctional centers in Oklahoma, who rued the day he got into an interrogation room with Alicia Ironsides.

Maury Silvers was the senior detective in Julian. He only had three years of seniority, but seniority was seniority. That was one reason why some men on the force thought Alicia had jumped the line when she got chosen for detective. There were men who thought they should get it because they’d been there longer. They wouldn’t have believed it if told the reason they didn’t get the job was because they were sloppy in their work practices, or let their emotions get the better of them, or any of the other personal flaws that might cause their case to get tossed out of court. To put it simply, Alicia was viewed as a person who dotted her I’s and crossed her T’s and would not embarrass the chief.

In most things Maury didn’t use his seniority when it came to breaking up the work load. The only thing he hated was opening the mail. “The mail” included notes taken in after five in the evening and before he came in the next morning. That assumed he didn’t get called in while on call. He and Alicia worked a week on and a week off, in an on-call capacity. Only if there was a major case did they both work the same scene, and even then only during the initial phase, when the collection of evidence was critical so none got lost or compromised. There had only been one major case since Alicia moved up to detective status. That was when Clyde Hill’s dead body had been found in his house by his sister when he didn’t answer the phone. She’d found him naked, slumped against the door to his bedroom closet with a rope looped around his neck, and the term “screaming bloody murder” took on new meaning to the 911 operator that morning.

To the casual observer, it looked like Clyde committed suicide, since the rope went up and over the top of the door and the loose end was wrapped around the door knob. Wrapped - not tied. But that didn’t make sense, since he was sitting on the floor and not standing, or hanging. The rope was merely holding his torso upright. His sister screamed that he’d been tortured and murdered by a Mexican Cartel because he refused to sell drugs for them. The coroner said Clyde had died of asphyxiation, but there were no ligature marks around his neck. It was Alicia who had climbed up on a stepladder to examine the top of the door Clyde was found slumped against. She’d found grooves worn into the wood, where something the same diameter as the rope around his neck had rubbed. It had rubbed a lot to have caused those grooves. When Alicia told Maury and then the chief what she thought had happened, they called in the State Police to “assist” in the investigation. It was much more politically viable for the State Police to determine Clyde had died by accident, while masturbating and trying to heighten his orgasm by choking himself to the point of unconsciousness. Normally, once consciousness was lost, the hand holding the end of the rope would let go. The rope would whip around the knob and the pressure on the throat would cease, allowing the person to breathe normally and wake up. In this case, though, while the loose end whipped, it got tangled and stuck. The pressure had not released, and Clyde suffocated.

Yes, it was much better that someone at state level rather than local said it was an autoerotic death, and that Clyde was what most people in town would call a pervert of some kind.

Things had been routine, since then. Alicia handled routine cases of larceny, burglary, and the like, but nothing really exciting had happened for over a year.

It was Monday morning and the first thing Alicia did was go through the in box, where information that didn’t (appear to) rise to the level of calling in the on-call detective had collected. In this case, it would be things officers noticed while on patrol, or information given to the desk sergeant or a 911 operator, since the previous Friday night at five P.M.

Mostly it was slips of paper in the box, so the manila package stood out immediately. She picked it up and looked at the front.

“Evidence of a crime enclosed” was all that was written on it. There was no note explaining who had received the package, or when, or how.

It was taped up with what seemed like an inordinate amount of clear packing tape, and she had to cut one end with scissors to get into it. When she up-ended it, a single CD in a plain, clear jewel case slid out.

She peered into the empty envelope only to find it wasn’t empty. There was a piece of paper in it. Some instinct warned her to put on gloves, before pulling it out, and scanning it.

Then she put the CD in an evidence bag, the note in a separate evidence bag, and the manila envelope in its own evidence bag.

“Where are you?” Alicia asked Maury on the phone.

“It’s only seven-thirty,” groaned Maury. “Technically, we don’t have to be in the office until eight. You know, you set a real bad example by always getting there an hour early.”

“We have a new case,” she said, ignoring his protestations. “At least I think we have a new case, and if it’s true, it’s a big case.”

“You think we have a new case?”

“I’ve bagged and tagged the evidence, but I haven’t examined it, yet,” she said.

“You haven’t examined the evidence,” he repeated.

“Just fucking get in here. We need to look at it together.”

“Why?”

“Would you just please get in here, Maury?” she groaned. “This could blow up and I don’t want to be alone if it does.”

“Just the dozen and a black coffee,” Alicia heard Maury say with the phone away from his face. He was obviously talking to the clerk at the Donut Hut, on Main Street.

“Maury!” she yelled into the phone. “Forget the fucking donuts. Get in here!”

“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” he said into the phone. “What’s this big case all about, anyway?”

She lowered her voice to a whisper.

“It’s being alleged that the principal of the high school has raped at least four of his female students. Is that worth forgetting the fucking donuts?”

“That’s stupid,” said Maury. “Don’t do anything. I’ll be right there.”

“I bagged everything to protect prints,” said Alicia. The three evidence bags were laid out on top of Maury’s desk.

“This has to be a hoax,” said Maury. He’d read the note three times. All it said was, “The following girls have been raped multiple times, under threat of blackmail, by Murdock Stevens in his office at school.” Then there were four names listed. “Did you look at the CD?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a DVD, not a CD,” said Alicia.

“Did you look at the DVD?” Maury asked, sarcasm entering his voice.

“No. I protected it for prints, first.”

“So you have no idea what’s on it, assuming anything is on it. It’s probably music videos. There’s no way in the world that Murdock Stevens is raping high school girls.”

“And you know this because?” Alicia’s voice was calm.

“Haven’t you seen his wife?”

“I’ve seen her running, but I’ve never met her, “ said Alicia.

“What did she look like when you saw her running?” asked Maury.

“Healthy. Why?”

“Why? Because she’s quite possibly the best looking woman in this town. She could be a model. She’s fricking gorgeous.”

“Does your wife agree with that assessment?” asked Alicia.

“You leave my wife out of this. I’m telling you, no man who had a wife like that to go home to would look twice at some giddy high school girl,” he said.

“Okay. I’ll dust everything for prints and then look at the music videos. You can go on about your business,” said Alicia.

Her tone of voice made the hairs on the back of Maury’s neck stand up. He liked her. She was a good detective and a good partner. If he wasn’t married, he might be interested, but he kept things professional. He knew her well enough to recognize she had just gotten stubborn, and when she got stubborn, she was like a dog with a bone.

“Don’t get snippy,” he said. “I’m just saying it looks unlikely that that note is anything except some kid trying to get revenge for being given detention. Of course we’ll look at it further. I’m just saying don’t get your hopes up. That’s all.”

“You think my hopes are up that four girls have been repeatedly raped?” Now Alicia’s voice rose an octave.

“No!” blurted the senior detective. “Of course not. That’s not what I meant.” He changed the subject to get things back on track. “How do you want to do the prints?”

“We’ll have to send the paper to the state lab. We can’t do ninhydrin, here. We could dust the jewel case and the DVD itself. Or we could use super glue on the case, but I wouldn’t fume the disk itself. Deposits on the surface of the disk might make it unplayable.”

“Good,” said Maury. “I agree. The first thing to do is make a copy of the disk, though. We have to do that before we do anything else that might alter it.”

“Can we do that here?” she asked. She looked around.

“I’ll talk to Sheila,” said Maury. “She’s kind of a techie. Meanwhile you get the chamber ready for the CD case.”

Alicia went to the twenty gallon aquarium they used for developing prints on objects using the fumes of heated super glue. The interior sides of the glass were crusted with white deposits, where someone had touched the glass and then used the chamber. There was a sixty watt light bulb permanently mounted at one end of the box, with the bottom half of a soft drink can covering it. She got the bottle of cyanoacrylate from the shelf and put ten drops in the indentation on the bottom of the can. There were various things in the bottom of the tank that could be used to support an object while it was being exposed to the fumes. She took the the silver disk out of the jewel case and put it in another evidence bag. Then she used four thumb tacks with the points facing up to support the open jewel case. She turned the light bulb on and put the cover for the tank back on.

Maury was still talking to Sheila, so Alicia took the bag containing the DVD to her desk. Shelia Long was the department records clerk and evidence custodian.

“I think I know how to make a copy, but I should try it once with something else before we do it to the real evidence,” said Sheila to Maury as Alicia walked up.

“You got anything to try it with?”

“Not here,” she said.

“Well go get something,” said Maury.

“I have things to do,” said the woman. “What’s the big rush?”

“This disk,” said Alica, tipping the open case so Sheila could see it, “is reputed to contain evidence that an important person in this town has committed an ugly and dangerous crime. We have to copy it because what we need to examine is the copy, not the original. The original needs to be maintained unaltered in the evidence room for court.”

“Assuming it’s a legitimate crime,” said Maury. “She’s right, though. We need to see what’s on that disk sooner rather than later.”

“Okay, then, you go get me what I need,” said Sheila. “I need writable disks, and something to copy.”

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