THE LALLYBROCH MURDERS

CHAPTER 7

Hank took a sip of his morning coffee, and as he placed the cup back on his desk, he spotted the smiling figure of junior detective Barry who was looking rather pleased with himself, walking over to his desk, ‘Good Morning Barry.’

‘It certainly could be sir.’

‘Ok,’ Hank chuckled, nodding his head for Barry to go on, but getting nothing.

‘I’ll bite, is there a specific reason for all this sudden optimism?’

‘Well, last night a couple of guys on the night - shift apprehended a 23 year old named Larry Fisher. Originally they stopped him for some rather erratic driving but immediately smelled alcohol on his breath.

They, of course, gave him a Breathalyzer which he then promptly failed so they brought him in, gave him a blood test, and chucked him in one of the cells to sleep it off.’ Hank glanced over at Liam, and Liam, feeling Hank’s eyes on him, only gave him a slight shrug, his attention more of the file in his hands.

‘AND?’ Hank waved his hand along with the question to keep the information coming.

‘Well, I was just looking at his blood results, not only is there enough alcohol in his system to put him away but the DNA we extracted from it also gave us a match on the hair sample we got from our second victim.’

Liam, whose ears perked up by the mentioning of the DNA matching, immediately dropped the file he was looking over and switched his attention back to the ongoing conversation.

Hank, meanwhile refilled his coffee cup, although he kept talking to Barry, ‘let’s go wake him up, I think we need a chat don’t you?’

‘Hmmm, I’d maybe wait a little yet, judging by the numbers in his system, he’s probably feeling a little worse for wear,’ Barry advised him.

‘Even better,’ Hank told him. ‘See, his mind won’t be so sharp so he’ll be less likely to hide anything from us.’ Hank sat his coffee down and nodded his head to Liam for him to follow.

Hank and Liam banged as loud as they could on the cell door, stirring the drunk driver as they opened it before entering his cell to fully wake him and lead him down into the Interview Room.

‘Can I at least get a Tylenol or something?’ he groaned, still somewhat dazed, dropping his head on the table.

‘I think we can manage that,’ Liam told him, nodding at the uniformed officer standing by the door who then disappeared and shortly returned with a small plastic cup half filled with water and a couple of small pills. As Larry was swallowing them, Hank pushed a photograph of the first victim in front of him.

‘Tell me, do you know who this is?’

‘No sorry,’ he said, rubbing his eyes and struggling to hold his head upright.

‘Look closely, we need to be absolutely certain.’

Hank pushed the picture even closer to him. Larry took another proper look and shook his head.

‘Nope, sorry, I’ve no idea who that is,’ Larry muttered again, while holding the palm of his hand against his forehead.

‘Ok, what about this one?’ Hank pushed another photo towards him and Larry smiled, almost raising a laugh.

‘I think you’ll find most people around here know who that is. That’s Travis Peterson; he’s a bit of a star for the college soccer team.’

‘Is that the only thing you know about him?’

‘Actually no, I’ve known him for a few years now. We went to the same high school, he was two years behind me, I think, but still made it onto the school team. Quite an achievement really; I always thought I was a decent player to be honest, even spent a bit of time with a college team but never quite got the deal I was after. Travis, though, was a step ahead, he was always something special; it’s no wonder the scouts are starting to take a look at him, this early on in the game. The boys got magic in his shoes.’

‘Have you had any contact with him recently?’ Liam asked from behind Larry this time.

‘Yeah, hopefully he’ll forgive me for saying this but while he’s a great soccer player, he’s not the brightest kid around and as a part of his scholarship he needs to maintain certain grades, so I’ve been helping him with his studies.’

‘You’re tutoring him?’ Liam asked, raising a brow.

‘Yeah, I’m helping him with whatever I can but math in particular. I’m in an engineering field now so it’s one of my stronger points.’

‘I see, so when did you last see him?’

‘Just over a week ago now,’ Larry said, wrinkling his brow as he tried to do the math in his head.

‘Could you be more specific?’

‘ERm, Wednesday, I think it was.’

‘And where was this?’ Hank crossed his arms as he sat across from the man at the table, taking over the questioning.

‘In the park, down by the river, he had an algebra paper due on Friday. Fairly basic stuff really but he just couldn’t get his head around the concept of it so I was helping him out with that.’

‘So you just helped him with his math and then left?’

‘No we had a bit of a kick around after. You see, a few of the other guys from the team came down and they were practicing some of the new plays their coach had come up with. We’d just finished with the studying and Travis was about to join them when a couple of them recognized me, which to be honest, gave me a bit of a buzz actually so when they asked me join in for a mess about, I couldn’t say no.’

‘A mess about? Like a throw and catch kind of thing?’ Liam asked, not having a clue what he was referring to.

‘To begin with, yes but after a while there were a couple of girls who sat around watching and some of the guys were showing off a little, so we ended up having a bit of a mini game. Travis was flirting with one; actually not that I blame him mind you because wow, she really had it going on if you know what I mean,’ Larry said, giving the detectives a wink.

‘How long did this mini game go on?’

‘I’m not really sure. Travis was showing off and we collided, kind of bashed heads a bit, nothing serious but I was feeling a bit woozy after so I made my excuses and left. I was bloody knackered anyway to be honest with you. I like to keep myself in shape but these guys were making me feel a little sluggish. Plus I was covered in sweat and wanted to get back and clean up a bit.’

‘Ok and you haven’t seen or heard from him since?’

‘No,’ Larry said with a slightly confused and quizzical look on his face.

‘I really thought he’d phone me this week to be honest, he still hadn’t quite grasped the algebra so we still had a bit of work to do on that. I just assumed he was busy, getting ready for the big Game coming up but thinking about it, the paper should have been done and handed in by now.’

‘Well, he certainly won’t be phoning you any time soon,’ Liam told him rather sorrowfully.

‘We discovered his dead body down by the park last Thursday morning.’

Larry had a look of total astonishment on his face. In truth, the exact response Liam and Hank were looking for.

‘Wait…what? I … ummm, you don’t think?’ Larry started, his gaze moving between the two, his speech stuttering as dawning came to his mind, but Liam interrupted him.

‘Ok,’ Liam started, not giving voice to the answer’s Larry wanted,

‘Well I see there’s a couple of uniformed officers outside; they probably want to talk to you about last night’s events so we’re going to hand you over to them now.’ With that Liam and Hank got up and left the room, while Larry closed his eyes and groaned knowing he was in big trouble.

Once the door closed, the two men started walking back to their desk, when Hank interrupted the silence, ‘What do you Think?’ he asked.

‘Seems quite genuine, I think. He’s probably telling the truth but maybe worth keeping an eye on him all the same.’