A Death in the Family

Chapter 11

Douglas smiled grimly when the search warrant with the judge's signature crossed his desk the next morning.

"It's go time!" He told Cumberbatch when his partner came into his office, bearing his usual cup of coffee.

After that, Cumberbatch needed no further details-yet.

"So what exactly are we looking for?" Cumberbatch asked when they went to serve the warrant.

"Anything." Douglas replied gravely. "Anything that ties him to Lara... Particularly those art supplies."

Douglas wasn't expecting much even if Spinelli was home, but the man wasn't that bright. That would've been giving him way too much credit.

They knocked on the door and waited an appropriate amount of time before the flushed looking landlord waiting patiently with the master key behind them. Taping the search warrant to the door Douglas and Cumberbatch began their search. The search wasn't as easy as Douglas had anticipated, the small apartment was a pigsty and looked like a hurricane had hit it.

"Well cleanliness is an exactly his strong point." Cumberbatch muttered as they made their way through the dilapidated living area, through the kitchen and into the equally cramped and cluttered bedroom.

They looked everywhere, even under the thin, stained mattress. They were about to leave when Douglas saw the shoes in the closet. A single pair of white running shoes that had several smudges across the white canvas.

He pointed.

"Take those, might be worth something if my hunches are correct. Heck, take them all! Might as well check everything. Those shoes got to be here somewhere. I don't think he tossed them."

Searching the apartment took less than 15 minutes and they were just walking out when Douglas saw something else. There, on the table, in a coffee mug were parts of a broken pencil and they looked used. He nodded at Cumberbatch who extracted another evidence bag. If there was one thing he had learned it was always the little things that solved a case.

Spinelli found himself once again the interrogation room, this time, however, he had no snappy comeback.

When the sergeant came in he only gave him a baleful stare.

"What? Nothing to say today?" The sergeant asked though Spinelli didn't think he expected a response. "Well I got plenty to say to you."

The sergeant sat across from him, throwing a handful papers down in front of him as he did so.

"Well I got to hand it to you, you gave me a run for my money, but clearly not well enough."

Spinelli raised his eyebrows.

"So you didn't think it would ever be traced back to you?"

Again, the sergeant sounded like he didn't expect an answer, so he continued.

"Once we had the DNA it was easy enough. The question was, was it you or your stepbrother?"

"Well how would you know it was me?" Spinelli asked finally speaking for the first time since Douglas had entered the room. "With or without my DNA you couldn't trace any of that stuff back to me."

Spinelli tried to sound confident, he couldn't let the cops see him sweat.

"You'd be right on that, but we did our homework. How would you come in contact with the substances we found on your shoes and especially the type of pencil we founded your apartment. You don't strike me as the artsy type Spinelli."

Spinelli snorted.

"You said you had seen Lara Dooley before, which leads me to believe you had been in the location before and you had crossed paths earlier. Am I right?"

Without waiting for a response Douglas continued.

"Now for your motive, that was tricky one. The only thing that presented itself was that you saw her sketches of you as a way that she could identify you and you wanted her out the way, so the next time you cross paths you assaulted her knocking all her supplies to the ground. In your struggle the graphite and charcoal got on your shoes. Also you stepped on a pencil which you picked up afterwards and took it with you so it wouldn't be traced back to you. However it was traced back to you mostly because it was in plain sight on your apartment kitchen table."

"That don't explain how she knew all that stuff!" Spinelli spat. "Nosy woman, sticking her nose in things that were none of her business!"

"We may never know," Douglas replied mildly, "that's the funny part about it."

They never got a straight answer out of Spinelli, but at least he admitted to being there and the evidence and DNA showed he had been in contact with Lara Dooley (possibly more than once) and her possessions. With this information Spinelli was arrested and charged with murder, based on his record he would be held without bail.

Afterwards, Sergeant Douglas sighed, now he had to tell the family they had a suspect in custody then he had to get everything to the DA to get ready for the trial.

He ran a hand down his worn face.

Now came the hard part.