I know that it is the tenth of November and that I was going to start writing on the first. I wanted to share with you what I have written. This is the first chapter.

The clock read 1:33. Four rings, maybe five . . . six . . . seven.

“Yeah.”

“Detective Sammon?”

“Yeah.”

“We have a homicide.”

“Where?”

“4212 S. Larson Boulevard.”

“I’m on my way.”

I’ve developed my technique to the point I can dress and be out of the house in five, or ten minutes tops.

“Another murder?” my wife asked.

“Yeah.  I’ll call you later this morning, O.K.?”

“K.”

At 1:40 in the morning, most of the lights are blinking, but when you’re a cop, you don’t stop.  The dashboard clock blinked at 1:59 as I pulled in behind the third patrol car.

“Who was first on the scene?”

Sam Wise, a twenty-year veteran on the force answered.  “I was.”

“What’s the story?”

“Neighbor on the south saw a car pull away about midnight.  She thought it unusual.  Her husband came home after 1:00 and told her the front door was open and a light was on the inside.  He came over and saw drawers out and I had her call it in.  I found the body in the kitchen.”

“Burglary gone bad?”

“Looks that way.”

“Anyone else lives here?”

“A wife.  She’s out of town.  Neighbors don‘t know where.  We found an address book.  The wife‘s sister, Elaine Newton is in the book.”

Less than an hour later, Mr. Newton had called his wife at the hotel where she and her sister were.  They started on their way back.  All Nicole Freeman knew was that she needed to go to the local hospital to see her husband.  There had been a break-in at the house.

It’s part of the job, but not an easy part, to meet the family at the hospital and tell them the bad news and escort them to the morgue to identify the body.  Mrs. Freeman was genuinely surprised to hear and see that her husband was dead.  Or maybe she’s that good of an actress.

Nothing was unusual about this case.  Mrs. Freeman left two days earlier for a weeklong shopping trip with her sister and some friends.  Carl Freeman, the deceased, had worked until his usual 5:00 p.m. at a local factory.  He had prepared a frozen meal his wife left for him.  Worked in his shop till 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. Watched the news, and went to bed around 10:30.  The neighbor saw the lights go off while she read and waited for her husband to get home.  The late model car she saw left, could not be identified by anyone and no one saw the driver.

Mrs. Freeman did an inventory of the house.  All her jewelry was gone.  Most are not worth much.  The most interesting missing items were three guns.  One, a .38 pistol.  A single .38 slug was taken from Carl Freeman’s head.  Shot between the eyes.  Not the way most burglars would do it.  This case was going to be hard to solve.  Or was it?

When I went to my car at about 2:30 that afternoon, I found a note under the driver’s windshield wiper.  Addressed to “Detective Sammon” it read “FEX237 dirty brown 1998 Honda Civic.”

No one had seen anyone around my car when I inquired later.  I went back to the station.  David Wever was the owner of the 1998 Honda Civic with the FEX237 tags.  243 W. Main Street was the listed address.  The car was parked in front of the dilapidated house.  It smelled of everything you could imagine and so did Weber.

“Mr. Weber?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Detective Alan Sammon.”  I showed him my badge.

“Yeah, I’m Weber,” He didn’t seem concerned.

“Where were you last night?”

“Right Here?”

“All night?”

“Yeah.”

“Anyone with you?”

“Nope.”

“That your car?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it there all night with you?”

“Yeah.”

“You did not make a trip to Larson Boulevard about midnight?”   Did he just take a deep breath?

“Nope.  Stayed here all night.”

I wanted a search warrant but knew I had no chance.  No one could even I.D. the car, except the note writer.  I went back to my car.

Had Weber seen the note writer?  Maybe?  He had struck again.  The note said, “Patsy’s Bar from 10:30 to 11:30.”  I was headed up to the house again when I heard the back door slam.  I caught Mr. Weber before he could get all the way over a privacy fence in his backyard.

I cuffed him and called for backup.  White we waited, I read him his rights.  Then I asked if he would let us search the house.

“Hell, no!”

While I was going back to the station in my car, I requested a search warrant be issued on probable cause.  He had bolted after initial questioning.  That didn’t make him guilty of murder, but the judge thought he must be running from something.

David Weber sat in a holding cell with two other guys while I went to Patsy’s Bar and the uniforms searched the house.   Derek, the bouncer, and Bob, the bartender, knew Weber.  He was there last night and left with another man around 11:30. They could not give a good description of the other man.  I thought it might have been Carl Freeman.

Weber’s house had many items that did not appear to belong to Mr. Weber.  Why would a man who lives alone need twelve televisions, six-CD changers, and five DVD players?  Nothing found there matched any of the items missing from Freeman’s house.  No guns were in the house or the car.

I could only hold Weber for 24 hours without proof he committed a crime, but he helped me on that one.

“I know you left Patsy’s with Carl Freeman around 11:30 last night.”

“Is that the guy’s name?” was his response.  “All I know is he asked if I wanted to make a quick heist and I said sure.  He gave me the address in the parking lot and told me to take whatever I wanted.  I didn’t know he had killed a guy and wanted me to take the fall.”

I was surprised.  “So, the man at the bar wasn’t the guy we found dead at the house?”

“No.  That’s probably his wife’s boyfriend.  He told me to take whatever I wanted out of the house because the judge had just given it all to his wife in a divorce.  He had left the doors unlocked and no one was home.  It sounded too good to be true.”

“Had you seen the man at the bar before?”

“Not before last night.  He was there earlier and asked me to hang around.  Told me what he wanted me to do, but said he needed to be sure his wife and the boyfriend were gone.”

“When was that?”

“About 10:30”

“What was he driving?”

”Didn’t see.”

“Did you go back to the bar after you left the house?”  I knew the answer to this one.

“No.  I just went home.  It shook me up bad.”

I had him look at mug shots of locals and even some known contractors.  After the first hour, I thought it was hopeless, but then he spotted one.  A worldwide contractor known as Mike Richards, Richard Michaels, R. Mann, Manny, and the list went on.  No confirmed, true, identity.

I requested an Interpol search, filed the paperwork to hold David Weber as a material witness, and went home.

©Copyright 2022 by Charles Kensinger