Roger Stelljes - First Case

“Did your boyfriend find out about it?”

“I don’t think so. I never told him and I really hope he doesn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I think he is going to propose.”

“How do you know that?”

“I picked up his gym bag the other day and the zipper was open. Everything fell out and one of the things that fell out was a felt ring box. I didn’t look inside but…”

“…You think that’s what it is.”

She nodded. “What I did with Gordon was fun, a guilty pleasure perhaps, but also a huge mistake. I haven’t been with a lot of men and he was really good looking and I have to admit the sex was pretty hot. He knew what he was doing and I’ll freely admit I enjoyed it, but it was wrong.”

“So where were you last night between midnight and two a.m.?”

“I was at my apartment with my boyfriend. It’s a secured building with video cameras. I’m sure it will show you the time I came home and that neither I nor my boyfriend left.”

One look at Cassidy Burrows told Mac that Oliver didn’t have a type, other than she had to be a woman and willing. Whereas Genevieve Mathis was the antithesis of look at me, Cassidy Burrows was all about that. She was dressed less than conservatively with a short thigh high pink skirt revealing her thin legs and a plunging neck line that displayed her ample topside. Mac looked to his right at his partner, who appeared to be undressing Burrows in his own right. Mac gave him a dirty look.

“It’s been a long day,” Lich growled as he sat back and let his eyes drift elsewhere.

Burrows knew why she was in the conference room and didn’t beat around the Busch, taking Mac and Lich aback with her bluntness: “Do you think my husband killed Gordon?”

“Why don’t you tell us?” Mac said. “Do you know where he was last night between midnight and two a.m.?”

“I don’t know, he moved out two weeks ago,” Burrows answered. “But I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Is it because of what happened between you and Gordon Oliver?” Lich inquired.

“That’s certainly part of it.” Burrows related that her husband was moody and temperamental to begin with and it only got worse when he drank. He also had a criminal record.

“Criminal record, what did he do?”

“Bar fight. A long time ago. He nearly killed a guy.”

“Why?”

“The way the guy looked at me.”

Mac and Lich shared a look. Mac continued, “So knowing this about your husband, that he beat a guy to a pulp for looking at you wrong at a bar, you nevertheless slept with Gordon Oliver?”

Burrows shrugged. “Gordon Oliver was merely a symptom of the problems I had in my marriage. My husband and I haven’t been happy together for a long time. At least I haven’t been and if he were honest with himself he would admit the same. At some point I realized my marriage was over and Gordon Oliver was a good looking guy who was available, interested and there were no strings attached. I don’t regret it in the least.”

“How long did you and Oliver sleep together?” Mac asked.

“We didn’t sleep detective, we had sex.”

Mac shook his head, “Right. How long then, or rather perhaps, how often did you and Mr. Oliver get together for sex?”

“Over a two-month period, probably a dozen or so times. It would be a night here and there. Once in his pickup truck. There were a couple of nooners at the Holiday Inn off of 94 east of downtown. Gordon was a good lay and I liked it.”

“Your husband came after Oliver pretty good,” Mac said. “Confronting him here at the firm, at The Mahogany, even threatened to kill him once from what we hear.”

“That’s all true.” Burrows related what she knew about the confrontation at The Mahogany as well as when her husband called Gordon at three in the morning threatening to kill him. “That’s when I told him to get out,” Burrows said. “I haven’t spoken to him in a week and haven’t seen him in two, so I have no idea where he was last night.”

“Where were you last night between midnight and two a.m.?”

“I was with a friend.”

“What kind of friend?” Lich asked and Mac snorted, knowing exactly where his own sex crazed partner was going.

“A man, Alexander Burrows. I spent the night at his place.”

“Burrows?” Mac asked. “This wouldn’t happen to be a relation to your husband?”

“His younger brother.”

“H… h… his younger brother, I… see,” Mac was in disbelief. He needed a few seconds to compose himself. “Soooo… let me get this straight. Your alibi is that you were sleeping with your husband’s younger brother?”

“It is,” Cassidy Burrows wasn’t the least bit embarrassed or apologetic.

Mac pinched the bridge of his nose and Lich turned away, doing everything he could to avoid laughing. Mac steered into safer territory, taking down information about where Burrows’s husband worked, where he was living and where they were likely to find him. They both cautioned her to not contact her husband.

After Burrows left the room, Lich said to Mac: “Did we really just sit through that?”

“You can’t make that shit up,” Mac said shaking his head. “She is a piece of work.”

“I’d say if Martin Burrows didn’t kill Gordon Oliver, he might kill his brother,” Lich cracked.

“Or her,” Mac said. “And I’m not sure I could blame him.”

“What do you think?” Lich asked as they got ready to leave the conference room. “Does Martin Burrows look good for this?”

“I think we need to be careful.”

“Why?”

“Because Burrows looks exactly that, but that’s almost too easy.”

“What’s wrong with easy, I love easy,” Lich quipped.

Mac snorted. “You have to love easy. I mean, look at your suit.”

“This will not end well for you!”

Having finished at the law firm, at least for now, Mac and Lich stopped into the Department of Public Safety to check in with their captain. After briefing him on the status of the case and their one good suspect, they pulled information on Martin Burrows.

Five years ago Martin Burrows spent six months in jail for his role in a bar fight. Apparently Burrows started the fight as his wife had said. He went in with fists and when his combatant answered with a stiletto knife, Burrows broke the end off of a beer bottle and stabbed the man in the abdomen. The man lived and had brandished the knife which apparently had served to mitigate Burrows’s sentence.

A review of Burrows’s license information revealed he was six foot three, two hundred twenty pounds. His DMV photo gave the appearance of a man not to be trifled with. His square head sat on a neck that looked like a tree trunk. Burrows wore his hair high and tight with a small thin beard sculpted around his mouth. His brown eyes glared menacingly out of the picture. “I think we’ll want a little back-up when we go see this guy,” Mac cautioned.

Mac’s cell phone buzzed and it was Jack Coonan. He spoke to Coonan for a moment and hung up. Mac jotted down some notes.

“So what’s the Doc have to say?” Lich asked.

“He says his initial assessment at the scene looks correct. The contusion to Oliver’s temple is what killed him. The contusion led to temporal bleeding. Like Coonan said, without immediate medical treatment, the wound was fatal. But that’s not what was interesting.”

“What was?”

“You remember the contusion on the back of his head?”

“Yeah, on the back right side,” Dick answered, grabbing the spot on the back right of his head.

“Exactly,” Mac replied. “Coonan says the wound to the back of the head was made by a descending blow by someone taller.”