AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Homewood
The two victims were secured to chairs and then shot execution style—in the back of the head. With no exit wounds, the weapon was likely a .22. Something small caliber and intended for up close work. The typical MO for these types of kills. The medical examiner and the Crime Scene Unit had been summoned.
Detective Kerri Devlin turned her full attention back to the responding officer as he described the events that had occurred before she and her partner received the call.
“Tara McGill arrived on the scene at nine thirty to prepare for opening at ten. She entered through the rear exit.” Officer Eugene Franklin gestured to the door at the back of the stockroom. “According to McGill, all employees come and go this way. Once inside, shediscovered the owner, Leonard ‘Leo’ Kurtz”—Franklin pointed his notepad to the older victim, sixty to sixty-five maybe, seated nearest him—“and the other male victim just as you see them.”
“You ID’d the other guy yet?” Luke Falco, Kerri’s partner, asked.
Franklin nodded. “This is where things get interesting.”
Though the second victim looked vaguely familiar, Kerri couldn’t place him. Young, late twenties or early thirties maybe. Unlike the older vic, who wore dark-blue trousers and a lighter-blue button-down open to the center of his chest, where gold chains dangled, victim number two wore a business suit—the kind that wouldn’t be found on some rack in just any department store. Frankly, the man didn’t actually look like the type to drop by a smoke shop, but then you never knew. With all the bad press about vaping, maybe some millennials were turning to custom-made, organic tobaccos. In any case, Leo’s was the place to shop in the greater Birmingham area. The oldest tobacconist in the state, in fact. Everyone who was anyone who had a fetish for tobacco, cigars, pipes, and/or fine liquors came to Leo’s. The city’s elite, mostly the old guard, kept the business thriving.
Kerri lifted her gaze to Franklin’s. “How interesting?”
“As in”—the uni’s eyebrows reared up his forehead—“he’s that new DDA everyone’s talking about. The rich one from up north.” He indicated the dead guy in question. “Detectives, meet Asher Walsh, deputy district attorney, Jefferson County.”
“Well I’ll be damned.” Falco shot Kerri a look that said:So this is why we’re here.
“That’s pretty damned interesting,” Kerri agreed, surprised she hadn’t recognized him. Then again, with his head dropped forward, the mask of death had bulged and discolored his facial features.
Her partner was right; Walsh was definitely the reason MID had been called. The Major Investigations Division wasn’t just another part of Birmingham PD homicide. The division comprised the top detectives from BPD as well as the surrounding communities,including Homewood, Mountain Brook, Vestavia, and Hoover. Their job was to handle the investigations that impacted more than a single jurisdiction—the high-profile cases to which the powers that be wanted undivided attention provided by handpicked assets from across the greater Birmingham area.
Cases like this one.
Kerri crouched and took a closer look at the vic’s face. With his chin to chest and body in a seated position, hands secured behind his back, ankles bound to the chair legs, it wasn’t easy to estimate time of death. Judging by the lividity in the downturned face and along what she could see of the throat, he’d been dead possibly ten hours or more. And he’d died exactly where he was, seated in this ladder-back chair in the stockroom of an establishment with deep roots in local history.
Kerri hadn’t met Walsh personally. She’d seen the news about him joining the DA’s office. The son of wealthy Bostonians. Harvard educated. After a stint clerking for the Massachusetts supreme judicial court, rather than go into practice in his father’s prestigious firm, he had accepted a position in Birmingham, Alabama. According to the national and local media, it was a major coup for Birmingham and an up yours to his domineering father.
Now, a mere six months later, he was dead.
“What the hell did you get yourself into, Mr.Walsh?” she murmured before pushing to her feet. She turned to Falco. “One of us should let the LT know.”
Lieutenant Dontrelle Brooks was not going to be happy to hear the news. As with Walsh’s arrival in Birmingham, his abrupt departure would make national headlines. The theories about his death would get messy. Something else that usually went along with the sorts of cases assigned to their division.
“I’ll call him,” Falco offered.
“I’ll interview the employee who found the bodies.” Kerri was more than happy for her partner to brief the LT.
“The ME is on his way,” Franklin said to Kerri as Falco headed for the door that led into the front retail shop.
Kerri nodded. “What about cell phones?”
“We found the shop owner’s cell phone behind the bar,” Franklin explained, “but if Walsh was carrying one, we haven’t found it yet.”
He was a DDA; he would have a cell phone. It was only a matter of finding it. Unless, of course, the shooter had taken it. In that case they’d have to wait for his phone records, which would be requested as a matter of standard protocol.
“Thanks, Franklin. Keep looking for that phone. We have boots on the ground going from door to door?” She’d asked the responding officer to call for additional backup in hopes of getting on top of the situation sooner rather than later.
“Yes, ma’am,” he assured her. “No hits so far. Most of the shops along this block close earlier than this one and weren’t open until just a few minutes ago, so no customers in the parking lots or employees hanging around outside. At least none we’ve found.”
She gave him a nod and turned back to the victims. The shop had closed at ten last night. If her estimation on time of death was anywhere near accurate, the murders hadn’t occurred until well after the shop closed. With the rest of the shops in the area already shuttered for the night, there might not be any witnesses at all. They could hope for security cam footage, but there were never any guarantees with these older shops and neighborhoods.
“I’m ready to talk to McGill.”
Franklin jerked his head toward the door that separated the stockroom from the public space beyond. “She’s at the bar.”
“Make sure the outside perimeter remains secure now that the other shops are open for business, and let Detective Falco know when the ME arrives.”
