Blood equity, p.2
Blood Equity, page 2
“Well, I guess, but I’m sure I’ll look the fool doing it.”
They ducked under the tape and moved out another thirty feet.
“No worries. Go ahead.” Mitch watched as Kenny did his best to imitate the woman.
Kenny came out from behind a large gravestone, walked stiff legged, flailed his arms, and stumbled toward Mitch. “I’m sure it wasn’t exactly right, but I’d describe her movements as being disoriented, yet she was stiff and twitchy, almost like she was angry.”
“Okay, that helps.” Mitch gave Kenny his card and said he would need a list of names of that night’s tour attendees. “I’ll need that list sent to my email address by morning.”
Kenny promised to take care of it through his company’s main office.
Mitch cupped his hand, held it to his mouth, and yelled to Jared. “Can you show Mr. Dupree out?”
“Sure thing, Detective Cannon.”
Mitch returned to the scene, and Billy and Martin had arrived. As they busied themselves snapping pictures, the ME waited his turn at Mitch’s side.
“If I had to guess, I’d say she ingested poison or overdosed on something,” Tapper said.
“Hmm… yet the group said she cried out for help. So maybe not a deliberate overdose, if that was the case?” Mitch asked.
“Maybe not.”
“How soon can you get the complete tox screen back?”
“Couple of days at the earliest given it’s a weekend.”
“Okay, thanks, Tapper. I’m going to have a word with that doctor who was part of the tour.”
Mitch and Devon dipped under the tape and walked to the man, who had taken a seat on a bench alongside a woman who was likely his wife. “Are you the doctor who rendered aid to the woman?”
“I am, but it was too late.” He stood and extended his hand. “Dr. Steven Bellamy.”
“Sure, and I’m Detective Cannon, and this is my partner”—Mitch pointed to his right—“Devon Rue.”
“Nice to meet you, Detectives.”
“So what did you notice about the woman when you rushed in to help her?” Devon asked.
“When she got closer, she appeared catatonic, yet she was sweating profusely and agitated. Her arms were flailing. That’s about all I saw other than her unusual way of walking before she collapsed face-first on the ground. I rolled her over and knew she was already gone. Her lips were taking on a blue tinge, and her eyes already had the death stare.”
“How did she sound when she asked for help?”
The doctor shook his head. “My wife, Jeanette, described it best—frantic and paranoid.”
“Okay, I guess that’s it.” Mitch passed a card to the doctor and thanked him then planted himself right behind Martin and Billy. “Print her yet?”
“Coming right up. You’ll know in under a minute unless she’s an unknown.”
Mitch huffed. “And that would be just my luck.” Mitch and Devon watched as Martin lifted the deceased woman’s hand, pressed her thumb against the portable fingerprint scanner, and waited for the results to come in.
“Uh-oh.” Martin now had Mitch’s full attention.
“What does that mean?”
“She’s a reporter for the Daily Sentinel.”
“The Savannah newspaper?”
Martin pushed off his knee and stood. “Yep, the very same.”
Mitch paced the path between graves. “What’s her name?”
“According to the ID on file, she’s Sunny Montag, age twenty-five, and lives on East Thirty-Second Street just off Cabell. Typical middle-class neighborhood.”
Mitch scratched his forehead. “Do reporters always have prints on file?”
Billy interjected with a sarcastic huff. “In this day and age? Newspaper boys delivering the weekly coupon flyers on their bicycles probably have to be printed.”
Mitch let out a long groan. “Okay, either she was following a hot story and got jammed up, or she has her own off-the-clock issues. Make sure her hands are bagged and call me when you’re done.” Mitch swirled his finger above his head. “Check out the area as best as you can. We’ll have officers comb it again in the daylight hours. For now, we’re heading to the precinct.”
“Copy that, Detective Cannon.”
Chapter 4
Sharing an office space made working cases easier. Mitch and Devon had been partners for six years and routinely bounced ideas, questions, and concerns off each other.
With steaming vending machine coffee on their desks, they dug in.
“So who the hell is Sunny Montag, what was she up to, and how did she end up in the cemetery a half block from the police station without being seen walking the street in that condition?”
Devon shook his head. “All good questions, but my question is, do we notify her family tonight or wait until morning?”
“Depends on what Sarge says, and that means we’re going to have to wake his ass up. If Sunny Montag committed suicide, then there isn’t an investigation to pursue, but if she was murdered, then it’s our case. Regardless, we’ll have to contact the Daily Sentinel first thing in the morning, find out who her boss was, and see what kind of story she was working on. Hopefully, people at the paper work the weekends.”
“So, what about Sarge?”
Mitch groaned. “Yeah, yeah, chicken shit. I’ll make the call.”
Sarge, as his officers and detectives fondly called him, was Sergeant Raleigh Royce, who’d been one of the sergeants at the Habersham station for the last nine years. He’d moved up the ranks during his thirty-year stint, beginning in Patrol then serving as a beat cop, a detective, and finally, the weekday sergeant at the precinct’s Violent Crimes/Homicide Division in Savannah, the city he’d lived in his entire life.
Devon grinned as Mitch made the call.
“Hey, Sarge, it’s Cannon. Yeah, I know what time it is since I’m sitting in my office alongside Rue. Yep, a DB, but Tapper doesn’t know the cause of death yet. He’s still in the field. He’s leaning toward it being an overdose, but tox will take a few days. There’s blood on the body, too, but until she’s on the table, he can’t tell where all of it came from. Martin and Billy are still working the scene. Do we wait or contact the next of kin now without any real answers?” Mitch shot Devon the middle finger since the last three times they’d had to wake up their boss, Mitch had made the call. Devon always argued that since Mitch was the senior detective, he should take on that responsibility. “Yeah, she’s notable. A reporter at the Daily Sentinel. Okay, will do. You coming in this morning? All right. See you then.” Mitch placed the receiver on the base and rocked back in his chair.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“What are we supposed to do?”
Mitch downed his coffee and stood. “Let’s go. Looks like her parents are about to have a really shitty night.”
“What are we supposed to say other than their daughter is dead?”
“Nothing. We don’t have any information to tell them yet, and even if her death is drug-related, we don’t know if she died by her own hand or someone else’s.”
“Meaning, unless it’s deemed a homicide, we won’t even be on the case.”
“Exactly, but the blood has me curious.” Mitch clicked his key fob as they crossed the parking lot to his Corvette.
“And if there’s DNA under her nails, we should know if it was a suicide or a homicide within the next twenty-four hours.”
Mitch pointed his chin at Devon as he turned the key in the ignition. “Pull up that address and lead the way.”
They reached East Thirty-Second Street and Cabell fifteen minutes later. Two houses in from the intersection stood a ranch-style brick home with the porch light on. The house number, 2056, was illuminated next to the garage’s coach lamp. Devon checked his notes and nodded, confirming that it was the correct address. Phil and Marlene Montag were about to wake up to the worst news of their lives.
“Ready to do this?” Mitch grabbed the handle and pushed the driver’s door open.
Devon shook his head. “I’m never ready to give people bad news, but it has to be done.”
They took the sidewalk to the front door, where Mitch rang the bell. Less than a minute later, an interior light went on, and a man pulled the sheer curtain aside on the left sidelight and peered out.
With his badge already facing the window, Mitch called out to the man through the glass. “Mr. Montag? Savannah Police Department. May we come in?”
They heard what sounded like a dead bolt turning then a chain lock sliding to the side. The door creaked open, and in the background, a woman’s voice called out to her husband.
“Phil, what on earth is going on out there?”
“You may want your wife to join you, sir,” Devon said.
A woman who looked to be around fifty, like her husband, appeared from the hallway, and she wore a bathrobe. She’d just cinched the belt around her waist. “What is it? What’s happened?” Her eyes had already teared up. “Is it Sunny?”
“Ma’am, may we sit down somewhere and talk?”
Phil pointed at the small living room to their right. “In here. Please, have a seat.”
The detectives sat side by side on the couch, and the husband and wife faced them, each on a recliner on the opposite side of the coffee table.
“Mr. and Mrs. Montag, we regret to inform you that your daughter, Sunny, is dead.”
Marlene covered her ears and wailed. “No, no, no! Take it back. She isn’t dead. She can’t be dead. She was fine when she left here tonight.”
“Ma’am, when did Sunny leave, and where did she go?”
Phil wrapped his arms around his wife as she spoke. “She left right after supper, around seven o’clock. She wanted to eat some of my fried chicken before she went out. She always loved that meal—chicken, fried potatoes, and corn on the cob.” Marlene wiped her eyes then continued. “She only said she was going out and would see us in the morning.”
“Do you know what she was working on at the newspaper?” Devon asked.
Phil nodded. “Sure. She was focused on the growing drug problems in town. She’d found out that even in the safest, most well-patrolled areas, drugs were still prevalent. She always made us so proud when we read her articles, and I believe this one was going to be aired on the local news.” Phil grabbed a tissue and blew his nose. “What happened, Detectives? Why is our daughter dead? Did she have a car accident?”
“No, sir, and at this point, we have no idea what happened. She passed away at about twelve thirty a.m. Our medical examiner won’t know why she died until he conducts the autopsy and does a toxicology screening. You said she left home after supper. Does she have her own car?”
“Yes, of course. She absolutely needed a car for all the places she had to go for her job,” Marlene said.
Mitch took notes. “And what kind of car did she have?”
“A blue Honda Accord.”
“Year and plate number would help, if you know it,” Devon said.
Phil rubbed his brow. “Um, it’s a 2017, but I don’t know the plate number. I can’t think.”
Mitch held up his hand. “Not a problem. We’ll check the DMV records. Was the car in her name?”
“Yes,” Phil said. “If she wasn’t with her car, then how and where was she found?”
Mitch let out a long breath. “She was noticed by a tour group in the Colonial Park Cemetery. In hindsight, she might have been trying to get to our precinct but didn’t make it in time. Our station is on the corner of that same block.”
“She was cutting through the cemetery? From where?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we don’t have any answers yet. That’s just a theory on my part given the proximity from where she was found to our station.”
Phil wiped his eyes with the back of his pajama sleeve. “So where is she? When can we see her?”
“We need to go to her now.” Marlene leapt from the recliner.
“Ma’am, that isn’t possible. Our medical examiner is going to take her to the county morgue, perform an autopsy and a tox screen, and then possibly tomorrow, you’ll be able to make an ID. We have to determine if her death was an accident first or a—”
“Murder? You think somebody murdered our Sunny?” Marlene burst into tears again. “She was perfect. She’s never done anything wrong. Who would murder her?”
“Ma’am,” Devon said, “it’s too early to know her cause of death. Please give us until tomorrow to learn more. Until then, we’ll need a list of her friends’ and acquaintances’ names.”
“They would all be on her phone,” Marlene said.
“There wasn’t a phone or a purse found at the site.”
Marlene grasped her husband’s hand. “But she always had her phone with her.”
Mitch shrugged. “I’m sorry, but there wasn’t anything there except Sunny herself.”
After jotting down the names of Sunny’s friends that Mr. and Mrs. Montag knew from memory, Mitch and Devon stood to leave. Mitch handed them two of his cards. “Write your phone numbers on the back of one, and I’ll call you as soon as we have news to report.”
They walked to the door and stepped out to the porch. “Again, you have our deepest condolences, and we’ll be in touch.”
Back in the Corvette, the detectives plopped down on the car seats, each with a groan.
“That was tough,” Devon said.
“It always is.”
It was after three a.m. by the time they returned to the precinct. Mitch went through Sunny’s work history and reviewed her recent stories.
After pulling her DMV records, getting the plate number for her car, and putting out a BOLO on it, Devon started matching phone numbers to the names of friends from the list Sunny’s parents had given them. “Guess three o’clock is as good a time as any to wake people up.”
Mitch tapped his pen against the desk calendar. “It’s got to be done.”
Devon had a list of fifteen names. Some were work acquaintances, and some were personal friends. He began calling all of them then made notes next to their names. He asked a few simple questions and, unless the conversation warranted more, moved on to the next. By four thirty, he had spoken to all fifteen.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” Mitch asked.
“Six were work friends, and nine were personal friends, people she either grew up with or met in college. Two were people we should interview in-depth, face-to-face. Sounded like very close personal friends.”
“And the work friends?”
“Several knew what she was working on but weren’t aware that she might have been working the story after hours too.”
“So what is the story?”
“The current resurgence of K2 in Savannah even though it was outlawed in 2012. I looked it up since I hadn’t heard anything about it as of late. Its heyday was primarily from 2016 through 2018 and then the big bust in 2019. I thought it was over and done with, but supposedly, it’s coming back strong. Entirely black market sales.”
“Black market sales of anything usually leads to trouble, and Narcotics and Vice would know more about that than we do. I’ll give them a call. So, her current project was to investigate K2, and that bit of information came from a reliable coworker?”
Devon shrugged. “Just a coworker. No idea how reliable, but I’d still confirm it with her supervisor before I’d consider it factual information.”
“Yep, and we will come eight o’clock when someone starts answering the phones. The problem with the K2 theory is that K2 isn’t a deadly drug, per se. I could understand the zombie effect, but the agitation doesn’t fit one hundred percent, and then why was she bloody? Where’s her car? None of it adds up to a K2 overdose, either self-inflicted or against her will. How do you force someone to smoke or vape a synthetic cannabinoid?”
“No idea, pal, but I have heard people have ingested it in liquid form too.”
“Sounds like you know more about it than I do. For now, let’s see what Narcotics has to say. Maybe they can give us an updated lesson on K2.”
Chapter 5
After learning from Narcotics that Savannah had a resurgence of K2—or Spice, the street name—Mitch was still on the fence. They’d told him it was more of a nuisance drug than anything else. People got high, walked around like zombies, passed out, and woke up to start it all over again. There had been reports of fights and robberies running rampant, but that was in the worst areas of town, where homelessness and drug sales were prevalent. The crimes happened with or without K2 in the mix, yet sustained K2 use could go either way—zombies walking around in a daze or opportunistic people robbing and battering others for money or drugs. Synthetic drugs were illegal in Georgia, but Mitch was reminded of the large bust that had taken place in 2019. Once again, their use was on the rise.
Mitch rocked back his chair and stared at the ceiling. “Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We should wait for the tox report to come back before we assume anything.”
“But that’ll take a few days,” Devon said.
“I know. Meanwhile, there’s still the chance of DNA to follow up on.”
Devon pushed away from his desk. “Want a vending machine sweet roll as long as I’m heading that way? The growling in my stomach is interfering with my thinking.” Devon stood up, stretched, and walked to the door.
“Yeah, anything is fine, but whatever you pick, bring me two of them.”
“Copy that.”
Mitch checked the time. The sun was up, but there was still two hours to go before anyone at the Daily Sentinel’s administrative offices would answer the phones. When he’d tried earlier, he got a prerecorded message stating the time the office opened.
He closed his eyes and replayed the scene in the cemetery as Kenny had laid it out. Sunny had come up behind him from the east. “And that means she wasn’t walking toward the precinct.”
Devon reentered the room with his hands full of sugary snacks. “You talking to yourself?”
