Chapter 19 - Clues?
"Good morning, Lee," Saul Jackson chirped.
"If you say so. Any word on Rachael?"
"She made it through the night fine. I hear she even ate a good breakfast. How about you?"
"I haven't eaten anything since mess on Saturday night, if you want the truth of it. It's been coffee and scotch since then."
"I'll buy you breakfast after this. Here are some gloves. An N.C.I.S. photographer should be here in a minute. We'll wait for him."
"I wondered how legal we were keeping this."
"This is an evidentiary search. We'll properly preserve anything we find."
"We may not share it with the local police, however?"
Jackson didn't answer. Instead, he pulled out a set of lock picks.
Lee shook his head. "Why don't we just use these?" Lee inserted the house key correctly on the first try. He left it in the lock as they waited for the photographer. "You have any news on your end?"
"We'll have wedding photos later today. The M.E. matched the shell casing to the gun. Prints on the gun were not particularly helpful. A clean one belongs to a marine who's still in Saudi who probably packed the gun. Rachael's partials are all over the weapon including on the handle although those were the least clean of the prints. The handle was smudged."
"Someone with gloves?"
"It's possible, but there's no definitive evidence of that and Rachael could have easily done that on purpose. Otherwise, blood work confirmed the bride was pregnant. The M.E. also ran a tox screen for us. Official results will take a while, but he didn't see evidence of recent drug use in her blood, although he said urine tests could show older use."
"She definitely had been using before she was pregnant. I've had confirmation from a couple of sources, but I don't know if she continued. I don't even know that investigating that has a point except to smear her reputation."
"Might be the case. Might not. You never know where a fact might lead."
"Well, here's news. If you can accept the word of a drugged out girlfriend, it's possible that Mel's ex-boyfriend, a possible baby daddy, was at the wedding dressed like a waiter."
"You give it any credence?"
"I'd like to follow up. Of course, it would help if Ollie, blue eyes, blond hair, maybe works in movie business and may deal coke or weed had a last name."
"We'll talk to someone in the narcotics squad, see what they might know. Maybe he'll show up in the wedding pictures for a lucky break, although I can't see a photographer shooting decent pics of waiters for any reason."
"The photographer and half the guests were wearing tuxes too. I'm not certain I could have distinguished a waiter from an usher if you asked me."
"You can't distinguish Armani from polyester? You do know clothes make the man!"
"No, but try me at different kinds of kelp if you want to be impressed. More on topic, but of questionable import, Mel's father may be in financial trouble."
"We'll store that fact away for later too."
"Any leads on how Rachael's gun appeared?"
"We should have a facsimile copy of the delivery receipt later today."
"Delivery to where?"
"Right here."
"Damn. Do we know who took delivery?"
"I'm told the signature says R. MacAdam, but until we see it, we can't assess if it really is hers."
"Is it possible?"
"Yes. Roger checked her out of base care pretty regularly. The delivery date is a day she had been off base."
"I guess we'll have to ask Roger whether he ever left her alone in his apartment. She could have answered the door while he was in the head. He might never have known. What else?"
"So far the only thing we know about the backfiring vehicle was that it was a white panel van left parked and running near the side delivery entrance. We have no leads on who was driving it or what they delivered, if anything."
"Someone left it idling for a long time. Kind of suspicious in itself, isn't it?"
"Some delivery guys never cut the engine. Gas isn't coming out of their pockets so they don't bother. What's more suspicious is that the van was locked while left running. After the third backfire a hotel bellhop had figured out where the backfiring was coming from and tried to get in to stop it. He couldn't."
"Any hopes of identifying or locating it?"
"Not much progress so far, but we'll focus more on that today when the afternoon shift is back on duty at the hotel. It's possible there may be some useful surveillance video too. We'll also chat with the catering personnel and florist. Someone there had to see the van or who came or left in it. Oh, good, Walter's here. Let's get this started."
They confined the search of Roger's apartment to the common areas and the guest room where Melanie had stayed. That was sufficiently tedious as Walter photographed everything before and after Saul or Lee touched any surface, along with any items found deemed of possible interest.
Lee was surprised at how much a voyeur he felt searching through Melanie's things. He didn't see anything of obvious import, but observed that Melanie was a bit of a slob, possibly owing to having too many clothes and shoes for the available space. Receipts were also stuffed everywhere. He and Saul packed these up along with a raft of other papers to examine later in detail.
Only two items grabbed Lee's attention, although neither seemed to provide any explanation or motive for Melanie's murder. First, in Mel's dresser, stuffed beneath her underwear was a manila envelope holding a recently issued insurance policy on Roger's life in the amount of two million dollars. Lee wondered who paid for it, but saw no relevance to the investigation. Still, he had Walter photograph it before adding it to the box to be taken as potential evidence. Then, in the guest bathroom, Lee found two home pregnancy tests, one used with a plus mark and the other unused. Sadness overtook Lee. Mel may have been difficult, but she didn't deserve to die, and certainly her innocent child didn't. That said, something about the tableau niggled at Lee. He called Walter over to take a picture.
"That's kind of sad. Why do you want to photograph it? Trying to guilt someone out?"
"No, something just seems odd about it. If you got a positive test, would you keep a second test around?"
Walter shrugged. "Probably best to ask a woman about that."
"It's probably just me. Years in the Navy and on subs mean I don't keep what I don't need." Lee quietly finished out his search. He felt very down at the end.
"You look ready to collapse. Let's go get some food in you. I'll drive. Just leave Roger's car here for now."