Page 27 of To Die For

“I remember you,” she said in a voice that Devine did not quite know how to take. “I’m Detective Beth Walker.”

She smiled so wide, it lit up her face and Devine’s at the same time. Now he knew exactly how to take her look.

“Travis Devine, Beth, nice to meet you.”

“Same here.”

She was around his age, with dirty blond hair and light blue eyes.

“Sodetectivespull this kind of duty?” he said, eyeing her scrubs.

“Makes them better detectives, at least that’s the principle, and I agree.”

“So were you able to dig up anything on the camera in the back hall?”

She opened an iPad and scrolled through some screens. “The camera is a piece of crap from the nineties with no bells and whistles. The video footage was grainy and glitchy as hell because they’ve recorded over the tape so many times. And we’re not even sure the time stamp is accurate because the electrical power kept pulsing and shorting it out. You would think everybody had heard of wireless digital cameras with cloud storage by now.” She looked up. “So I guess the answer is no.”

“Well, thanks for trying. Any luck with witnesses from last night?”

“I just checked in with the people conducting the interviews. So far, the first anyone says they saw of Rollins is when he came staggering out from the back hall. But the people involved would have already fled, I imagine. However, someone did say that they tried to use the bathroom around that time, but the door wouldn’t open.”

“Any ideas on that?”

“It was a push swing door without a lock because it had urinals and separate toilet stalls inside. We found some curious marks on the floor right near the door. I think a wedge of some sort was used to keep the door closed. The killer obviously would have done that so he could be in there alone with Rollins.”

“So the killer sees him go in there, waits till it clears out, and wedges the door shut. A crime of opportunity.”

“Right. He stabs him, removes the wedge, and runs for it.”

“But this place was packed. Someone should have seen something.”

“My experience has been that people just don’t want to get involved, particularly in a murder. If anyone did witness anything, they might have just run for it or tried their best to either misremember or forget what they saw. We also have some serious gang activity around here, and who wants to get sucked into that?”

“Braddock told me that he was familiar with the victim?”

“His priors are mostly petty stuff from way back. I can email you with them.” She once more graced him with a smile. “I’ll just need your contact info,Travis.”

He gave it, thanked her, and she moved on to keep doing her job, while Devine headed to the men’s room and eyed the space from the open doorway.

The blood trail had been marked with yellow cones. He stepped carefully around them and reached the last stall. He eased the door open and saw the yellow cone on the floor, directly in front of the toilet. The blood trail was particularly heavy at this point.

Devine glanced at the mirror hanging on the opposite wall and the sinks underneath.

Okay, he thought.Rollins was in the stall, probably hiding from me, not knowing last night is his last one. He opens the stall door and gets stabbed. The person then knifes him again just to make sure, turns, and leaves. Rollins, bleeding profusely, staggers out, holding his belly, and makes his way down the hall, to the dance floor, where he collapses and dies.

If the story about the wedge under the door held up, that wouldexplain why no one saw anything inside the men’s room. Devine mentally kicked himself for not checking the space last night, but he had assumed Rollins had fled out the bar’s rear exit.

And the blood spatter indicated that whoeverdidstab Rollins should have had blood on him. How did people miss that? But then again,eyewitnessaccounts were the worst of all. And maybe the killer covered it up with something. And the witnesses here at the time were not exactly sober.

Devine finished looking around and nodded to Beth Walker as he was leaving. She held up her iPad. He smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. He passed by the young cop outside and walked along in the direction of where he’d be meeting Braddock in a few minutes.

He opened the email that Walker had just sent him, and reviewed the rap sheet for one Perry Rollins, deceased. Walker had been correct in saying that most of it was misdemeanors. But there was one that stood out. Years ago, in the Midwest, Rollins had been charged with being a Peeping Tom, and for attempted extortion. He had spied on a woman in her bathroom and taken pictures of her naked, and later tried to blackmail the woman into paying in return for the pictures. She knew him because he lived in the neighborhood.

What a nice guy, thought Devine. Rollins hadn’t deserved to be murdered, but he was clearly a scumball. He did his jail time and then was released. He must have then moved to the West Coast because his next arrest had been in Portland, Oregon, six months later on a shoplifting charge.

Devine wondered what information Rollins had that would explain why Glass wanted to adopt his niece. Maybe he could piggyback on Braddock’s investigation to find out.

Along the way to his meeting with Braddock he thought about how he could get as much help from the man as possible, while revealing as little as possible to the detective.

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