Detective Ln; An Adam Ruzek Love Story

Grasping for Salvation

Yn's POV

 "What do we got on the victim" Voight asked. "Richard Dowd, he went by Richie. He was a senior at Lakeside. Captain of the lacrosse team and winner of the dean's award for academic excellence" Jay said. "Priors?" "Not unless getting early admission to Yale is a crime these days" I say. "That was Maury down in Ballistics. He says that when the techs turned Dowd over, a bullet fell out of his hoodie" Erin said. "Run down, check it out" Voight said. "Maury says he wants to speak to you in person." "Right. Run point till I get back" Voight said. A little while after Voight left, the rest of the team entered the office.

"No abrasions, no contusions, no defensive wounds. The only injuries were consistent with a dead man fall and on top of that, his hoodie was zipped and his jewelry was intact" Erin said. "Any other physical evidence at the scene" I ask. "Richie's iPhone was found in his pocket, but it needs a thumbprint to unlock it" Jay said. "We can subpoena the provider, but it's gonna take a
while to get the call logs and the texts, the emails. No exigent circumstances, that's what the phone guy's gonna say. There's no imminent threat, no flight risk, that sort of thing" Adam said.

"Can I see that" Al asked and gestured to the file folder in Adam's hands. Adam nodded and handed it over. "Hey, where's Voight" Kevin asked. "He still at Ballistics? Haven't heard from him" Erin replied. "That three digit code on his account number, that's a family plan. So if it's in his father's name, he can give us access to it" Al said. "Al, you still got it. Everyone, Al's still got
it. Did you hear that? Erin, tweet that out. Al's still got it. The world should know" Adam said.
"You think Frank Dowd's ready to talk" Jay asked. "Let's find out" Al said. A little bit after Jay and Al left, Adam went down to the morgue to take another look at the body.

A while later, when the team had regrouped, Adam had more things to share. "Our DOA Richie Dowd's got quite the photo collection on his phone. Most of them are this girl, right here" Adam said and put a photo on the whiteboard.  "In very few of the photos does she have any clothes on." "Her face is partially obscured in all these" Al said. "Yeah, that's about the only thing you can't see" Adam said. "Yeah, so me and Ruz haven't ID'd the girl yet, but we did a reverse Google Image search, found out that somebody's been posting the exact same pics on a revenge porn website" Kevin said.

"Looks like our golden boy's not so perfect after all" I say. "Well, so now we have a motive. All we need to do is find out who she is, where she's at, who she runs with" Al said. "I'm wondering if we can take the partial shots of her face, put them together, make a composite image, and run it through facial recognition" Adam said. "Yeah, that's definitely worth a shot" Kevin said. "I got a buddy at OCD Tech. I bet they'd help out" Jay said.

"Guys, I got something" Erin said and pulled out a smaller white board. "Seventeen years ago, Voight worked a murder case in the neighborhood he grew up in. The victim was a friend of his,
owned a corner store in Bridgeport. Nick Ruffalo." She put up a guy's picture on the board. "At the time, they thought the shooter was this guy, Terrance Valentine." Another picture was added to the board. "Ballistics just confirmed that they had the murder weapon wrong. The gun that shot Ruffalo is the same gun that we recovered from the Dowd crime scene last night."
"Where's Valentine now" Jay asked. "He's in prison. Voight helped put him there" Al said. "We gotta figure out who killed Richie Dowd so that Voight can figure out how that gun was used in the Ruffalo murder, which is starting to look like a real wobbly conviction right now" Erin said.

Jay's connection at OCD finally got back to us with a full picture and name of the girl on Richie's phone. "This is Jo Jo McKinnon. She goes to Kennedy Park East. She's 18, no criminal history, parents are divorced. Her dad has primary custody. His name's Raymond McKinnon. He lives at 4044 North Saber" Jay said. "All right, the sooner we move on this the better. A CI just texted me. Apparently Frank Dowd's put out a reward on the street for information on his son's killer" Al said. "How much" I ask. "15 grand. Guys are coming out of the woodwork." "All right, Adam, Yn, you guys go see if Jo Jo's willing to talk" Erin said. I nodded and grabbed my coat before heading out with Adam.