Daddy's Little Killer

Chapter 18

Chapter 18 

 

My frustration level built to the breaking point and boiled over when I marched into an empty squad room at central and found the lock on my door had been jimmied open. The computer's hard drive was gone, torn out rather clumsily. Naturally, my search had been aborted in the process.

In the ill advised attempt to slow the progress of my investigation, Kelly and Varden had made a rookie mistake, one that told me more than Orion's suspicions had.

Whoever hired them had unfettered access to the police department. In lieu of the rickety elevator, I jogged down three flights of stairs to the information desk. A civilian employee I'd never met was on duty. Simms. I gazed at his weary face.

"Mr. Simms, my name is Helen Eriksson."

"Yeah, I heard."

"I'm curious where Detective Myre is. I was here earlier and he was in the squad room, and now he's gone."

"Myre went home at eleven."

"And who covers homicide after that?"

"They're on call, Dr. Eriksson. Didn't the chief give you any orientation today?"

Which chief? I smiled sheepishly. "We've got this big case, and in all the excitement..."

"Lowe pulled a Lowe," Simms shook his head and rifled around beneath the dilapidated countertop. "Let's see what I got in here. Ah, heck, it'd be easier if I just told you how it works around here. The detectives ordinarily are in the squad room, on active duty, from seven to four-thirty Monday through Friday. If something happens during off hours, they're on call, and dispatch pages them."

"Like Tuesday night at the Foster home."

"Exactly."

"Were you on duty last night, Simms?"

"Every night from eleven to seven, Wednesday through Sunday."

I glanced at my Rolex. Eleven twenty-seven.

Simms whistled. "That's a nice piece, Dr. Eriksson."

"Call me Helen," I mustered a friendly smile. "So if the detectives are typically here until four-thirty every day, why was Myre upstairs at nine when I went to my office?"

"Couldn't say," he shrugged. "It's not normal, that's for sure, and I'd bet my puny paycheck that the missus was having a fit that he wasn't home yet."

"Detective Myre is married?" Given his rumpled, generally unkempt appearance, I struggled to imagine the kind of woman who would marry him. The thought of his teeth was enough to make me shudder. He had the dentition of early stage meth-mouth and smelled like he existed on a diet of tuna and red onion with a dash of garlic thrown in for social purposes.

"Oh yeah. If you spend much time around the guy, you'll notice that the woman has him on a very short, tight leash."

"I'm not sure I know what that means."

"She calls him. Constantly. I picked up a day shift for Molly a couple of months ago, and I swear to God every time I saw him that day, he had the phone to his ear, promising Susan this that and the other. I don't know how the guy gets anything done."

"And you mentioned this to Molly?"

"She said that's Myre's typical day. He doesn't do a darn thing but talk on that phone and run errands for Rogers and Daltry."

Interesting. Rogers and Daltry seemed to exert a fair amount of control in the homicide unit. "Tell me, Mr. Simms. How many detectives work out of the homicide unit?"