The Eye Witness

Chapter - 21

Aptekin had everything ready for his surprise for the Bolat's, the only thing that he was missing was Serkan Bolat. His source told him that he was out of town. Aptekin just needed to wait for the bastard to surface, once he did, he would be ready. He could hardly wait.

The tech team had a wrecker hooking up the SUV when Engin and Leyla arrived at the condo building. Engin put on a pair of gloves to take a quick look inside. It had been recently detailed. He looked closely at the stitching on the seats and saw what appeared to be trace evidence of blood.

"Leyla? What does this look like to you?"

She put her flashlight on it, "Blood sir, do you want me to take a swab or leave it for the lab?"

"Leave it, let's head up to the condo."

Once in the condo the headed to the bedroom. The place was tidy overall, it looked like Tahir had a cleaning service.

"Check to see if there's a laundry basket and then let's start taking anything that looks like it matches the clothes that he was wearing. I'm going to check the bathroom."

"Why?" asked Leyla.

"He has to be treating that burn it was only a couple of days ago so it has to be pretty nasty still. I want to see if he has burn ointment, gauze. That kind of stuff. I want to get a look at it when we interview him."

Engin went through his cabinets, pulling out the burn ointment, gauze, and tape, putting it into evidence bags. He looked into the trash and found discarded bandages, he took the whole trash bag and placed it in an evidence bag. He tagged both for the evidence techs. Going back into the bedroom he found Leyla with a pile of clothes on the bed that matched the ones in the picture. Engin went into the closet to retrieve the laundry basket.

He proceeded to dump the basket on the floor, moving he clothes around with a pen, "Never mind Leyla, look here." He pulled up a pair of bloodstained jeans and a shirt, "What an idiot, he should have done laundry. Probably thought he wouldn't get caught." Engin bagged the shirt and jeans in another evidence bag for the tech's.

Engin placed a call to Ferit, "The knife on Fatma, what kind are we looking at?"

Ferit referred back to his report, "Something long and thin, probably a fileting knife of some kind."

"Not something with a retractable blade?"

"Not anything that I would have seen, no. Why do you ask?"

"We have a suspect and I am wondering if he would have been able to hide the knife on him."

"Not without cutting himself, check to see if he has a knife block in the kitchen. If there's one missing then it's likely that one. Photograph all the knives, it's probably a standard set, and send the picture to me."

"Will do." Engin went to the kitchen and took all the knives out of the knife block, two were missing. He took a photo and sent it to Ferit. He would see what Ferit came back with. Engin's guess is that the knife was at the bottom of the sea along with Fatma's tongue.

They made one last sweep through the condo on their own. The evidence techs were still at work but Engin and Leyla had gotten the main objects that they came for. "Engin, do we need to do the same thing at Bedo's?"

"We have the warrants, we can send the tech's there next, but if you looked at the videos he looked clean. Based on what Efe said I doubt he got anywhere near the crime scene. The techs will figure it out."

His phone pinged, the lawyers had shown up. "We need to get back anyways, the lawyers are at the station." He shot off a text to Serkan, 'lawyers for suspects at station, will be there in 20'.