Case by Case Love

Chapter 20: Coming up Empty

Hank walks up to the Intelligence Unit floor at the 21st and makes his way to where the white board was. He looks at the photo that had been placed on the board from various members within the unit. 

There was one of Clark Henderson, the business owner who was now dead. There were photos of the bomb that Jay had disarmed. There were photos of the office buildings, and the aftermath of the bombs. He didn't even look at the image of the victims affected by what happened, knowing Jay was certainly in the section. They had actually placed his image at the top simply based on the theory behind the reason for Clark's death.

His eyes focused on the image at the top of the board, as he thought back to the conversation that had happened at the hospital the day before. It had been almost 24 hours since everything took place, around 12 since he had the conversation with Jay at the hospital. 

Paul Downey was the name of the employee that Jay had identified as the suspect from the series of file images shown. He was a 30 year old employed by Clark Henderson's accountant firm for three years. He had no priors listed on his file that were concerning, except armed robbery at the age of 21. 

They had visited his residence and there was nothing to be found at the apartment. He was not there, and living alone left nobody else. His neighbours also had no answers to where he could possibly be. They searched through paperwork and files that were there, but found nothing of concern in regards to the business. 

"Does anybody have anything?" Hank questions as he looks to each of the Intelligence Unit members that sat at their respective desks, heads buried in each their computer or a file on their desk. While everyone had left the office late last night, sleep was not something had by them due to concerns over Jay's safety and lack of direction with the investigation. "You do not just fall off the face of the earth and not be found. Somebody has to know where Mr. Downey is. How has he not been located? We have every single officer in the state looking for him! Where is he? Why do we not know about him? What did Mr. Henderson's family say? What did his fellow employees say? Where's Mr. Downey's family? How do we not have any answers?!?" 

"I spoke with the employees and one of them mentioned Mr. Downey had an argument with Mr. Henderson about a week before the bombing took place," Kim starts as she recalled her conversation with an employee named Rita, who was Clark's secretary. "She said the argument took place in Mr. Henderson's office with the door shut. She could not make out the details of what they were discussing due to the door being shut. However, she stated it was in relation to a decision by Mr. Henderson resulting in Mr. Downey losing out on money  - lots of money. She said there were some female names mentioned. Now getting anymore details would require access to the company files..." 

"Mr. Henderson was murdered, Mr. Downey tried to blow up the city of Chicago, and Jay is currently a target of his...." Kim could already tell where Hank was going with that as she held up the sheet of paper that she had been filling out before sharing the details she had learned. They weren't all just sitting in the office doing nothing.

"Currently working on filing a search warrant to open up those files for the reasons you stated. It should be confidential information, but danger to the public and other should warrant a  release of employee names." Hailey shakes her head as she sits back, knowing that was going to take all day to get filed and approved. They were just wasting time with the process. 

"Wouldn't the secretary know some of the clients by name?" Hailey suggests, wondering if a second conversation with Rita involving another officer could lead a reveal of a possible client that caused the disagreement. It was worth trying anything than sitting around right now. "I've tried running phone records in hopes of finding any family or associates of Mr. Downey, but nothing is coming up." 

"I'll take another run at Rita when I am done filing this," Kim comments, before going back to filling in the blanks on the form. She actually felt guilty she hadn't thought about doing that herself. Why was she gullible to people's reactions more often than not? 

"Kevin, Adam?" Hank asks the other two detectives in the room, the frustration still evident in his voice. Sure, they had an idea of the reason for the disagreement -but that led them no where closer to finding Mr. Downey or closing this case. They never found themselves this lost a whole day into a case. "I know you have been scouring street pods from the scene and any security footage. There has to be something. You cannot tell me in a big high dollar spot those high tech security cameras lost track of them. Mr. Henderson's neighbourhood alone should give us an idea of Mr. Downey's direction." 

"The cameras downtown were too damaged by the explosion that nothing is remaining," Kevin reveals, having tried contacting not just the city, but every business in the near area in hopes of finding anything they could use. "I was able to track him on pods from downtown to his apartment after it happened. He is then seen making his way to Mr. Henderson's through spotty footage. While we have him leaving, he eventually goes off the grid. That's the coordinates we have sent out to officers as they conduct their search for his location. They were unable to find anything last night, but returned to the area this morning." 

"And Mr. Henderson's brother told Adam and I that he never spoke of business outside of the workplace at any family functions," Hailey concludes the round of information sharing.

Hank's eyes don't leave the board as he stares at the image of the suspect, disgust filling him in the lack of answers - or it seemed energy from his detectives as they seemingly sat around the room on their asses in his mind while Jay was laid up in the hospital.

"Let's keep working it," he states as he finally turns to face his team. "Talk to your CIs. Talk to every person that could possibly be connected to these two. Talk to your witnesses again. Talk to their associates, again. Ask the secretary a different set of questions. We need to find him before he finds Jay. I don't think I need to say it again how damn important it is that you guys do your jobs."