Conflict of Interest

Chapter Fifteen

Jenn

"With all due respect, ma'am, we can't just go around volunteering information about people we may or may not have seen in the past few days."

I sighed, pulling my badge to knock some sense into the fellow detective in front of me. And I thought my jurisdiction had the most stubborn police in the country.

"Does this help?"

"Where did you get that?"

Unbelievable.

"My PD," I almost shouted. It made the accent come out a little more than usual and immediately I felt stupid.

"Your PD where?" he questioned, taking his time even moreso now because he wasn't liking my tone. "Texas?"

"Green Falls," I answered, ignoring his comments. "We're on a missing person right now and you, as an officer, should know all about obstruction of justice. So can I have some answers, please?"

"If you're from Green Falls then why are you here?"

"We triangulated the missing person's location by tracking the cell phone. It bounced off of three towers that put her in this neighborhood, two days ago."

"Do you have any other leads?"

"No."

"Then what the hell are you expecting to find?"

I sighed. "This is going nowhere, okay? Goodbye."

"I can try to help," he offered - now he offered - trying to coax me back. "If you tell me what your plans are."

"If this is going how we think it's going, this missing person is related to a string of open rape homicides for our jurisdiction. We're looking for the missing person, her statement, and then any scrap we can find. We find DNA, we run it through CODIS, we find prints, we run them through IAFIS. We just need something to go on, but if we don't find our missing person, we don't have that, and two rape homicides go cold. Now, I don't want that, and as a law enforcer, I imagine you don't want that either."

"I haven't seen the girl," he told me honestly. "But I have a suggestion. I just don't know if you'll want to hear it."

"Did you not hear me? I'm going on no leads. I don't care if the idea came to you in a dream, I'm in no position to pass up anyone's help."

"Okay, well, usually when we have a misper around here, we check with Oakland Liquor."

"Okay..." I began, not really getting it. "Why, exactly?"

"Because there's only one liquor store on this entire side of the city. Everyone from the east side uses the same joint, so, if your girl wanted to buy a bottle, they would have seen her. I mean, if she's of age. She looks like seventeen."

"She's thirty. Look, that's good, okay? Get me that address."

"Sure, Detective," he said, picking up a pen and paper without breaking the hostile look he was giving me. "You're welcome."

"Thank you," I conceded. "Okay?"

"Here," he said, handing me the paper. "Good luck."

"Yeah," I sighed, turning around without ceremony. "I'll need it."

***

Carrie

"The state requests that the defendant be remanded without bail."

"That's excessive."

"The defendant has the funds to--"

"My client requests that prejudice be not established based on his financial status. Given the prosecutor's history with wealthy business owners."