Love and hate crimes, p.12
Love & Hate Crimes, page 12
Her boss sounded like she was still half asleep, and Sidney could relate. She felt like she’d pulled an all-nighter.
“You’re right, and I’m so sorry to do this on such short notice.”
“What’s going on? Are you sick?”
“You remember me telling you about how Ike and I finally completed all the red tape to become foster parents?”
“Sure.”
“Well, we got our first foster at about 4:30 this morning.”
“Oh, you’re kidding! That was fast. They really push you right into the deep end, huh?”
“Well, it was actually a case that Ike was called to in the middle of the night. The boy’s parents were killed, and we think he saw that whole thing.”
“Oh, my gosh! Oh no.”
“Not that he’s old enough to articulate what he saw. He’s a toddler. At least two is all we know right now.”
“Oh, Sidney. Oh that poor baby.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m afraid that I need to stay home today to be here for him. I did bring the programs file home with me last night though, so I can—”
“Sidney, no,” Zoe interrupted her. “Don’t worry about work today. You just get settled into your new normal okay? You’re off tomorrow anyway, so just take the extra day. We’ll be fine here.”
“Thanks, Zoe.”
When they hung up, Sidney looked over at Greer still sleeping peacefully. Then she got back on her cellphone and looked up what to feed a two year old.
She was deep into that research when Ike stepped out of the bathroom and went straight to the walk-in closet to get dressed. He came out a few minutes later wearing a pair of dark blue pants and a lighter blue dress shirt.
“Whatcha doing?” Ike straightened the tie around his neck.
“Trying to figure out what two year olds eat for breakfast,” she replied before looking up at him. “Apparently the simple answer is basic big people food.”
Isaac held out his hands.
Sidney set her phone down and placed her hands in his, allowing him to pull her up and into his arms.
“Don’t overthink this thing, Sid. We will figure it all out.”
“I know we will. I just feel so unprepared.” She knew that she sounded like a broken record, but it was true. “We don’t even have any toys for him to play with.”
A strange expression passed over Ike’s much-too-handsome face and he held up a finger. The universal sign for ‘wait a minute.’
He stepped away and went back into the closet. He came out a second later holding the small blue teddybear that his grandad had returned to him the year before, and handed it to her.
Sidney smiled. “Your old bear.”
“Yeah. He can play with that while he’s here if he wants to.”
She looked up at her husband. “This is very sweet of you, baby. But if we’re going to really do this foster thing, we’re going to need to buy a few things. Like a car seat for starters. And a proper baby bed. Maybe we can fit one into the guest room?”
Her mind was suddenly spinning with all the things. She needed to make a list.
“Yeah, maybe.” Ike sounded just as distracted as she felt. “Hey, once the house is no longer a crime scene, I’ll go back in and see if I can’t get some of Greer’s things. How about that?”
Sidney sighed. “I guess that would be okay. But he may only be here for a short time. We’ll still need our own stuff.”
“Yeah, I know. But listen, I’m anxious to get to the station and see what Palmer and Driscoll were able to find out about Greer’s parents, so I’m going to go.”
“Okay. Make sure to get you something to eat, please. Don’t skip breakfast.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He kissed her again. A real one that she felt down in her toes. “I am really sorry for leaving you to deal with him all on your own.”
“It’ll be okay.” Sidney smiled. “Great training, right?”
“Right.” Isaac ran his thumb over her bottom lip before he leaned down and kissed her once more. “I love you.”
“I love you back.”
He clipped his badge to his waist, grabbed his gun from the lockbox on the closet shelf and then he winked at her on his way out the door.
Sidney sighed as she watched him leave. And she tried not to feel overwhelmed.
“I can do this.”
She could do this, couldn’t she?
She looked at Greer and tried to ignore the growing feeling of fear that was beginning to bubble in her belly. She could do this.
“You can do this, Sidney.” She said the words more forcefully this time.
If only she believed them that would be great.
She went into the bathroom. She should handle things before he woke up, right? That much she knew.
She was able to relieve herself, wash her face, and brush her teeth before she heard Greer whimpering. Still in her pajamas, she went back into the bedroom to find him sitting up in the middle of the bed.
“Hey there.” She smiled at him. “You’re awake.”
Greer started to tear up and he held out his arms to her.
Sidney’s heart melted.
She sat down on the bed and he crawled into her lap. She wrapped her arms around him and rocked him back and forth.
“It’s okay, baby Greer. I know you’ve been through something horrifying, but I promise you, it’s all going to be okay.”
He stopped whimpering and he looked up at her face as though he were studying her.
She studied him too.
He had an adorable little face with chubby, apple cheeks and the biggest blue-green eyes. Set against that soft, beige-brown skin and framed by the golden-brown curls he almost didn’t look real. Like a doll.
He reached up and placed one chubby little hand on her cheek.
Sidney smiled at him. “Are you hungry, hmm? You ready for breakfast, Greer?”
She could tell by the spark of recognition in his eyes that he understood what she was saying. Then he nodded.
“Yes? You’re hungry?”
He nodded again.
“Okay. Let’s go get you some breakfast. Can you walk?”
He nodded once more, and she set him on his feet and took him by the hand. They started for the bedroom door when he suddenly stopped and held himself.
“Pee pee.” He looked up at her with an urgent gaze.
“You have to pee pee?”
Another nod.
“Okay. Let’s go pee pee first.” She led him into the bathroom and realized they had no potty. As she helped him with the pull up she made a mental note to add a potty to the list she was going to make when she got a spare minute.
She picked him up and set him on the toilet. When he peed he looked up at her and said, “Good job?”
“Good job? Yeah, good job.” Sidney smiled at him, but her heart broke as she realized it must’ve been a ritual his mommy did with him when he successfully went potty.
She helped him wash his hands and then they went into the kitchen. She made scrambled eggs and toast with a queasy stomach.
Why was she so nervous? He was a little boy who needed looked after for a few days. She could do that, couldn’t she?
She glanced down at him and noticed that he watched her every movement from his sitting position on the kitchen floor.
When the food was done, she stacked two of the throw pillows from the sofa onto a dining chair and then set Greer there at the table. She served him some of the eggs and a slice of toast with butter and jelly, cut into squares. She added half a banana for good measure, and a small cup of milk.
She sat beside him with a plate of her own. Greer ate heartily, and Sidney smiled at his obvious healthy appetite.
She turned to her own plate but found that she could only stomach the toast. As she was finishing up Greer pointed to the floor.
“Kitty.”
Sidney looked down to see their fluffy brown-point Ragdoll cat staring up at Greer.
“Meow.”
“Yes. That’s my kitty. His name is Alfred Hitchcock. He’s very nice.”
Greer reached down with a piece of food pinched between his little fingers, and Alfred Hitchcock sniffed at it.
Sidney quickly intervened. “No, no. Kitties shouldn’t eat bananas.”
“Want mommy.”
The words came out of the blue, and Sidney’s gaze snapped to him. He was looking at her with big questioning eyes. A pointed dart pierced Sidney’s heart.
“Where mommy?”
“Um…” How should she answer that? “Your mommy’s not here right now.”
Greer’s little face tuned up like he was getting ready to cry, and she knew she had to do something to distract him.
“Are you ready for a bath?”
“Mommy Daddy hurt.”
Her heart fell.
Splat.
Right into her stomach.
She wiped the tear that hit her cheek.
“Yeah.” Her voice was soft. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Your mommy and daddy are hurt. But Isaac… you remember Isaac? The tall man who helped you? Um… he and I are going to take care of you for a few days, okay? And we won’t let anything happen to you.”
She had no idea how much of that he understood, or even if she was saying the right things. All she knew for certain was that her heart was breaking for this little boy who had lost everything in the middle of the night.
She stood, stacking their plates and carrying them to the kitchen. Then she went back to him.
“Come on, sweet boy.” She picked him up and settled him on her hip. “Let’s go get you washed up, okay? I think you got more jelly on your face than in your belly.”
She put on a smile and carried him to the guest bathroom since the tub in the master bath would be much too deep. She was grateful that the hospital had sent them home with some baby wash, shampoo, and lotion. But they were only small sample bottles and she knew they were going to need to go shopping soon.
Once Greer was bathed and wrapped in a fluffy towel she sat back on her haunches and silently cursed.
She had nothing at all to dress him in.
He was wearing a small hospital t-shirt and a generic pull up when they’d brought him home last night. Thankfully, the hospital had sent them home with two extra pull ups, but he had no clothes here.
Sidney stood and carried him across the hall to the master bedroom and set him down in the middle of the bed. Then she rooted around in her drawers for something, anything, that she could make work.
She found an old t-shirt that she never wore anymore because it had shrank in the dryer.
“This will do,” she mumbled to herself.
She applied lotion to his skin and then got him into a clean pull up and the t-shirt she’d found. It fit him like a nightgown, but it was the best she could do.
Didn’t make her feel any less inadequate though.
Greer pointed to something to the left and Sidney looked. Isaac’s blue teddybear was still sitting on his dresser. She snatched it from the dresser and then knelt down next to the bed and showed it to him.
“This is Beary Blue. You like him?”
Greer nodded, and she handed it to him. He hugged it tight. He looked so sad, and Sidney suddenly felt so incredibly overwhelmed. She grabbed her cellphone off the bed and dialed a number. It only rang once.
“Hey, Sid. What’s go—”
“I need your urgent help,” she cut Bree off, the sense of panic almost squeezing her throat.
“Sid?”
“I don’t know what the heck we were thinking, but now we’re in it, big time, and we have no supplies and he’s missing his mommy and Ike is at work and I’m here alone with him and I’m drowning!”
“Um—”
“Help!”
17
Coffee in hand and half a blueberry bagel hanging from his mouth, Isaac hurried across the pit headed for the unit boxes.
“Morning, Sarge,” Sasha Palmer called out as he whizzed past her desk.
“Hey.” Isaac didn’t slow down, but he did notice that both Sasha and her partner, Lynn Driscoll, grabbed their things and followed after him.
At the unit boxes, Ike collected the overnight reports so that he could prepare for the morning briefing. Then he dashed off to Gavin’s office. He glanced at Palmer and Driscoll when they entered the office two seconds later.
“You ladies got something for me on that slain couple from last night?” He stuffed the last bite of his bagel into his mouth and began looking over the overnight reports.
“Well first, I thought you’d like to know that you were right about the number of gunshots,” Sasha began. “We found a second shell casing behind the couch in the living room.”
Isaac nodded, unsurprised but validated.
“Also, we’ve been all through their financials, but there are no red flags there,” Sasha began. “Unless you consider the fact that the husband, Shane Buckley, is the son of a very prominent and wealthy businessman from right here in Cleveland.”
That information snagged Isaac’s attention, and he looked up at her. “Really?”
“Yep,” Sasha nodded, and he could tell from the expression on her face that she thought they’d hit on something significant. “The family’s rolling in it. Only you wouldn’t know that to look at Shane Buckley’s financials. Or the neighborhood he and his wife were living in.”
“And not only that,” Lynn chimed in. “But a further deep dive into Buckley’s family showed that Shane’s two younger siblings each came into a ten million dollar trust fund when they turned twenty-five. Shane was thirty-one.”
“So what happened to Shane’s trust fund?” Isaac stated, speaking to no one but himself.
“That’s the ten million dollar question,” Sasha replied. “We found no indication that he’d blown ten million dollars. In fact, there’s no indication that he’d ever had ten million. He and Cara were married five years and their financials read like any other young working class couple.”
“Now that is interesting,” Isaac said.
“Yeah, it is. A member of the Buckley family is expected to come in later today to ID Shane’s body. I’ve already given the ME’s office a notice to inform you when that happens. Maybe you could ask that family member about the trust fund discrepancies then.”
“All right. Why don’t you both leave your notes with me and I’ll speak to the family.”
Sasha set her notes on the desk. “You’ll be speaking with Clint Buckley. Local real estate tycoon.”
The information immediately brought something back to Isaac’s mind. He held up a hand. “Wait. As in Buckley Builders? That real estate developer with all the construction sites downtown?”
“That’s the one,” Lynn answered.
Isaac remembered that both Jasper Duke and Eric Bruce from the hate crime murders were employed by Buckley Builders.
That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?
“Okay here’s where it gets interesting.” His gaze bounced back and forth between them. “At least two of the suspects in the hate crime beatings turned murders are employed by Buckley Builders.”
“Son of a bitch,” Sasha said, sounding astounded. “You called it, Sarge. These cases are connected?”
Isaac shook his head. “No, that wasn’t even a hunch, that was just covering all the bases. And we haven’t confirmed that one has anything to do with the other. But it is too much of a coincidence to rule it out. Just keep it in mind as you investigate this case and I’ll do the same on my end.”
“Okay,” they answered in unison before heading for the door.
“One more thing,” Isaac said, and they both turned back. “Did this tycoon give any indication that he’d be collecting his toddler grandson anytime soon?”
“No. And I found that odd,” Sasha said, walking back toward him. “He actually never even asked about the baby once.”
“How is the little guy this morning?” Lynn asked.
“He was still sleeping when I left, so I’m not really sure. But I guess I need to call Sid and make her aware that the kid’s family may want to see him this afternoon. I should probably inform the case worker too. She’ll no doubt want to speak with him about who’ll take custody of the boy.”
Those words made him wonder about the other half of Greer’s family.
“Has the wife’s family been notified as well?”
“They have,” Lynn nodded. “The grandmother is coming in later today as well to ID Cara Buckley. The name is Irene Willis. The ME should notify you of that too.”
“Okay. Good work, ladies. Go home and get some rest.”
They left the office and Isaac got to work running the morning briefing.
When that was over, he went back to the office and poured over Sasha’s and Lynn’s notes on the Buckley family and on Shane and Cara’s financials. There was also information on Cara Buckley’s family.
Apparently her parents were killed in a car accident when she was eight years old. A car accident that Cara alone survived. She was raised by her mom’s parents after that, a Lyle and Irene Willis.
Isaac found it interesting that Cara survived that accident when she was a child. What a heck of a legacy for little Greer Thomas to be repeating — surviving an attack that killed his parents, and being raised by grandparents instead.
Something about that chain of events was so tragic.
He pulled out his cellphone and placed a call to Ms. Hunter, giving her the names of both of Greer Thomas’ two sets of grandparents, along with the contact information listed in Sasha’s file.
When that was done he finally got to work on his own case, going over the notes of their search of Eric Bruce’s place the day before. He had a manifest of each of the items they’d removed as evidence, and when he read over the list of items his gaze suddenly snagged on the picture frame. There was something about that photo that drew Isaac’s attention.
He had to see it again.
He left the office and went up to the fifth floor to the forensics lab. He stood in the doorway of the busy lab and scanned the area, searching for Lt. Harry Alvin. He spotted him across the big, open space, at the back of the lab.
Isaac let out a frustrated sigh and then pulled his arms in tight before entering fully. He navigated the busy lab as quickly as he could without touching anyone.
“You’re right, and I’m so sorry to do this on such short notice.”
“What’s going on? Are you sick?”
“You remember me telling you about how Ike and I finally completed all the red tape to become foster parents?”
“Sure.”
“Well, we got our first foster at about 4:30 this morning.”
“Oh, you’re kidding! That was fast. They really push you right into the deep end, huh?”
“Well, it was actually a case that Ike was called to in the middle of the night. The boy’s parents were killed, and we think he saw that whole thing.”
“Oh, my gosh! Oh no.”
“Not that he’s old enough to articulate what he saw. He’s a toddler. At least two is all we know right now.”
“Oh, Sidney. Oh that poor baby.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m afraid that I need to stay home today to be here for him. I did bring the programs file home with me last night though, so I can—”
“Sidney, no,” Zoe interrupted her. “Don’t worry about work today. You just get settled into your new normal okay? You’re off tomorrow anyway, so just take the extra day. We’ll be fine here.”
“Thanks, Zoe.”
When they hung up, Sidney looked over at Greer still sleeping peacefully. Then she got back on her cellphone and looked up what to feed a two year old.
She was deep into that research when Ike stepped out of the bathroom and went straight to the walk-in closet to get dressed. He came out a few minutes later wearing a pair of dark blue pants and a lighter blue dress shirt.
“Whatcha doing?” Ike straightened the tie around his neck.
“Trying to figure out what two year olds eat for breakfast,” she replied before looking up at him. “Apparently the simple answer is basic big people food.”
Isaac held out his hands.
Sidney set her phone down and placed her hands in his, allowing him to pull her up and into his arms.
“Don’t overthink this thing, Sid. We will figure it all out.”
“I know we will. I just feel so unprepared.” She knew that she sounded like a broken record, but it was true. “We don’t even have any toys for him to play with.”
A strange expression passed over Ike’s much-too-handsome face and he held up a finger. The universal sign for ‘wait a minute.’
He stepped away and went back into the closet. He came out a second later holding the small blue teddybear that his grandad had returned to him the year before, and handed it to her.
Sidney smiled. “Your old bear.”
“Yeah. He can play with that while he’s here if he wants to.”
She looked up at her husband. “This is very sweet of you, baby. But if we’re going to really do this foster thing, we’re going to need to buy a few things. Like a car seat for starters. And a proper baby bed. Maybe we can fit one into the guest room?”
Her mind was suddenly spinning with all the things. She needed to make a list.
“Yeah, maybe.” Ike sounded just as distracted as she felt. “Hey, once the house is no longer a crime scene, I’ll go back in and see if I can’t get some of Greer’s things. How about that?”
Sidney sighed. “I guess that would be okay. But he may only be here for a short time. We’ll still need our own stuff.”
“Yeah, I know. But listen, I’m anxious to get to the station and see what Palmer and Driscoll were able to find out about Greer’s parents, so I’m going to go.”
“Okay. Make sure to get you something to eat, please. Don’t skip breakfast.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He kissed her again. A real one that she felt down in her toes. “I am really sorry for leaving you to deal with him all on your own.”
“It’ll be okay.” Sidney smiled. “Great training, right?”
“Right.” Isaac ran his thumb over her bottom lip before he leaned down and kissed her once more. “I love you.”
“I love you back.”
He clipped his badge to his waist, grabbed his gun from the lockbox on the closet shelf and then he winked at her on his way out the door.
Sidney sighed as she watched him leave. And she tried not to feel overwhelmed.
“I can do this.”
She could do this, couldn’t she?
She looked at Greer and tried to ignore the growing feeling of fear that was beginning to bubble in her belly. She could do this.
“You can do this, Sidney.” She said the words more forcefully this time.
If only she believed them that would be great.
She went into the bathroom. She should handle things before he woke up, right? That much she knew.
She was able to relieve herself, wash her face, and brush her teeth before she heard Greer whimpering. Still in her pajamas, she went back into the bedroom to find him sitting up in the middle of the bed.
“Hey there.” She smiled at him. “You’re awake.”
Greer started to tear up and he held out his arms to her.
Sidney’s heart melted.
She sat down on the bed and he crawled into her lap. She wrapped her arms around him and rocked him back and forth.
“It’s okay, baby Greer. I know you’ve been through something horrifying, but I promise you, it’s all going to be okay.”
He stopped whimpering and he looked up at her face as though he were studying her.
She studied him too.
He had an adorable little face with chubby, apple cheeks and the biggest blue-green eyes. Set against that soft, beige-brown skin and framed by the golden-brown curls he almost didn’t look real. Like a doll.
He reached up and placed one chubby little hand on her cheek.
Sidney smiled at him. “Are you hungry, hmm? You ready for breakfast, Greer?”
She could tell by the spark of recognition in his eyes that he understood what she was saying. Then he nodded.
“Yes? You’re hungry?”
He nodded again.
“Okay. Let’s go get you some breakfast. Can you walk?”
He nodded once more, and she set him on his feet and took him by the hand. They started for the bedroom door when he suddenly stopped and held himself.
“Pee pee.” He looked up at her with an urgent gaze.
“You have to pee pee?”
Another nod.
“Okay. Let’s go pee pee first.” She led him into the bathroom and realized they had no potty. As she helped him with the pull up she made a mental note to add a potty to the list she was going to make when she got a spare minute.
She picked him up and set him on the toilet. When he peed he looked up at her and said, “Good job?”
“Good job? Yeah, good job.” Sidney smiled at him, but her heart broke as she realized it must’ve been a ritual his mommy did with him when he successfully went potty.
She helped him wash his hands and then they went into the kitchen. She made scrambled eggs and toast with a queasy stomach.
Why was she so nervous? He was a little boy who needed looked after for a few days. She could do that, couldn’t she?
She glanced down at him and noticed that he watched her every movement from his sitting position on the kitchen floor.
When the food was done, she stacked two of the throw pillows from the sofa onto a dining chair and then set Greer there at the table. She served him some of the eggs and a slice of toast with butter and jelly, cut into squares. She added half a banana for good measure, and a small cup of milk.
She sat beside him with a plate of her own. Greer ate heartily, and Sidney smiled at his obvious healthy appetite.
She turned to her own plate but found that she could only stomach the toast. As she was finishing up Greer pointed to the floor.
“Kitty.”
Sidney looked down to see their fluffy brown-point Ragdoll cat staring up at Greer.
“Meow.”
“Yes. That’s my kitty. His name is Alfred Hitchcock. He’s very nice.”
Greer reached down with a piece of food pinched between his little fingers, and Alfred Hitchcock sniffed at it.
Sidney quickly intervened. “No, no. Kitties shouldn’t eat bananas.”
“Want mommy.”
The words came out of the blue, and Sidney’s gaze snapped to him. He was looking at her with big questioning eyes. A pointed dart pierced Sidney’s heart.
“Where mommy?”
“Um…” How should she answer that? “Your mommy’s not here right now.”
Greer’s little face tuned up like he was getting ready to cry, and she knew she had to do something to distract him.
“Are you ready for a bath?”
“Mommy Daddy hurt.”
Her heart fell.
Splat.
Right into her stomach.
She wiped the tear that hit her cheek.
“Yeah.” Her voice was soft. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Your mommy and daddy are hurt. But Isaac… you remember Isaac? The tall man who helped you? Um… he and I are going to take care of you for a few days, okay? And we won’t let anything happen to you.”
She had no idea how much of that he understood, or even if she was saying the right things. All she knew for certain was that her heart was breaking for this little boy who had lost everything in the middle of the night.
She stood, stacking their plates and carrying them to the kitchen. Then she went back to him.
“Come on, sweet boy.” She picked him up and settled him on her hip. “Let’s go get you washed up, okay? I think you got more jelly on your face than in your belly.”
She put on a smile and carried him to the guest bathroom since the tub in the master bath would be much too deep. She was grateful that the hospital had sent them home with some baby wash, shampoo, and lotion. But they were only small sample bottles and she knew they were going to need to go shopping soon.
Once Greer was bathed and wrapped in a fluffy towel she sat back on her haunches and silently cursed.
She had nothing at all to dress him in.
He was wearing a small hospital t-shirt and a generic pull up when they’d brought him home last night. Thankfully, the hospital had sent them home with two extra pull ups, but he had no clothes here.
Sidney stood and carried him across the hall to the master bedroom and set him down in the middle of the bed. Then she rooted around in her drawers for something, anything, that she could make work.
She found an old t-shirt that she never wore anymore because it had shrank in the dryer.
“This will do,” she mumbled to herself.
She applied lotion to his skin and then got him into a clean pull up and the t-shirt she’d found. It fit him like a nightgown, but it was the best she could do.
Didn’t make her feel any less inadequate though.
Greer pointed to something to the left and Sidney looked. Isaac’s blue teddybear was still sitting on his dresser. She snatched it from the dresser and then knelt down next to the bed and showed it to him.
“This is Beary Blue. You like him?”
Greer nodded, and she handed it to him. He hugged it tight. He looked so sad, and Sidney suddenly felt so incredibly overwhelmed. She grabbed her cellphone off the bed and dialed a number. It only rang once.
“Hey, Sid. What’s go—”
“I need your urgent help,” she cut Bree off, the sense of panic almost squeezing her throat.
“Sid?”
“I don’t know what the heck we were thinking, but now we’re in it, big time, and we have no supplies and he’s missing his mommy and Ike is at work and I’m here alone with him and I’m drowning!”
“Um—”
“Help!”
17
Coffee in hand and half a blueberry bagel hanging from his mouth, Isaac hurried across the pit headed for the unit boxes.
“Morning, Sarge,” Sasha Palmer called out as he whizzed past her desk.
“Hey.” Isaac didn’t slow down, but he did notice that both Sasha and her partner, Lynn Driscoll, grabbed their things and followed after him.
At the unit boxes, Ike collected the overnight reports so that he could prepare for the morning briefing. Then he dashed off to Gavin’s office. He glanced at Palmer and Driscoll when they entered the office two seconds later.
“You ladies got something for me on that slain couple from last night?” He stuffed the last bite of his bagel into his mouth and began looking over the overnight reports.
“Well first, I thought you’d like to know that you were right about the number of gunshots,” Sasha began. “We found a second shell casing behind the couch in the living room.”
Isaac nodded, unsurprised but validated.
“Also, we’ve been all through their financials, but there are no red flags there,” Sasha began. “Unless you consider the fact that the husband, Shane Buckley, is the son of a very prominent and wealthy businessman from right here in Cleveland.”
That information snagged Isaac’s attention, and he looked up at her. “Really?”
“Yep,” Sasha nodded, and he could tell from the expression on her face that she thought they’d hit on something significant. “The family’s rolling in it. Only you wouldn’t know that to look at Shane Buckley’s financials. Or the neighborhood he and his wife were living in.”
“And not only that,” Lynn chimed in. “But a further deep dive into Buckley’s family showed that Shane’s two younger siblings each came into a ten million dollar trust fund when they turned twenty-five. Shane was thirty-one.”
“So what happened to Shane’s trust fund?” Isaac stated, speaking to no one but himself.
“That’s the ten million dollar question,” Sasha replied. “We found no indication that he’d blown ten million dollars. In fact, there’s no indication that he’d ever had ten million. He and Cara were married five years and their financials read like any other young working class couple.”
“Now that is interesting,” Isaac said.
“Yeah, it is. A member of the Buckley family is expected to come in later today to ID Shane’s body. I’ve already given the ME’s office a notice to inform you when that happens. Maybe you could ask that family member about the trust fund discrepancies then.”
“All right. Why don’t you both leave your notes with me and I’ll speak to the family.”
Sasha set her notes on the desk. “You’ll be speaking with Clint Buckley. Local real estate tycoon.”
The information immediately brought something back to Isaac’s mind. He held up a hand. “Wait. As in Buckley Builders? That real estate developer with all the construction sites downtown?”
“That’s the one,” Lynn answered.
Isaac remembered that both Jasper Duke and Eric Bruce from the hate crime murders were employed by Buckley Builders.
That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?
“Okay here’s where it gets interesting.” His gaze bounced back and forth between them. “At least two of the suspects in the hate crime beatings turned murders are employed by Buckley Builders.”
“Son of a bitch,” Sasha said, sounding astounded. “You called it, Sarge. These cases are connected?”
Isaac shook his head. “No, that wasn’t even a hunch, that was just covering all the bases. And we haven’t confirmed that one has anything to do with the other. But it is too much of a coincidence to rule it out. Just keep it in mind as you investigate this case and I’ll do the same on my end.”
“Okay,” they answered in unison before heading for the door.
“One more thing,” Isaac said, and they both turned back. “Did this tycoon give any indication that he’d be collecting his toddler grandson anytime soon?”
“No. And I found that odd,” Sasha said, walking back toward him. “He actually never even asked about the baby once.”
“How is the little guy this morning?” Lynn asked.
“He was still sleeping when I left, so I’m not really sure. But I guess I need to call Sid and make her aware that the kid’s family may want to see him this afternoon. I should probably inform the case worker too. She’ll no doubt want to speak with him about who’ll take custody of the boy.”
Those words made him wonder about the other half of Greer’s family.
“Has the wife’s family been notified as well?”
“They have,” Lynn nodded. “The grandmother is coming in later today as well to ID Cara Buckley. The name is Irene Willis. The ME should notify you of that too.”
“Okay. Good work, ladies. Go home and get some rest.”
They left the office and Isaac got to work running the morning briefing.
When that was over, he went back to the office and poured over Sasha’s and Lynn’s notes on the Buckley family and on Shane and Cara’s financials. There was also information on Cara Buckley’s family.
Apparently her parents were killed in a car accident when she was eight years old. A car accident that Cara alone survived. She was raised by her mom’s parents after that, a Lyle and Irene Willis.
Isaac found it interesting that Cara survived that accident when she was a child. What a heck of a legacy for little Greer Thomas to be repeating — surviving an attack that killed his parents, and being raised by grandparents instead.
Something about that chain of events was so tragic.
He pulled out his cellphone and placed a call to Ms. Hunter, giving her the names of both of Greer Thomas’ two sets of grandparents, along with the contact information listed in Sasha’s file.
When that was done he finally got to work on his own case, going over the notes of their search of Eric Bruce’s place the day before. He had a manifest of each of the items they’d removed as evidence, and when he read over the list of items his gaze suddenly snagged on the picture frame. There was something about that photo that drew Isaac’s attention.
He had to see it again.
He left the office and went up to the fifth floor to the forensics lab. He stood in the doorway of the busy lab and scanned the area, searching for Lt. Harry Alvin. He spotted him across the big, open space, at the back of the lab.
Isaac let out a frustrated sigh and then pulled his arms in tight before entering fully. He navigated the busy lab as quickly as he could without touching anyone.
