Murder in the Magic City: A Micah Brantley Story, G.P. Sorrells [reading comprehension books TXT] 📗

enough along the stages of grief that the thought of a dead body no longer had the same effect on her as it once had. It wasn’t long before she looked into old investigations, thumbing through the files, hoping to see something new. A clue missed the first time around to tie it to something else. Or to help make more sense of a conviction besides the supposed perp just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Looks like you changed my mind after all,” Vivian whispered. She was thinking of Osteen, and all the times he swore up and down that seemingly untethered murders somehow had a correlation to another that they saw days or weeks down the road, as she thumbed through the file on the Edgar Jennings murder.

They could never solve that one. All they had to go on for the killer was a grainy still from a cheap video camera as he fled the scene of the crime. There wasn’t enough detail to even attempt to get a halfway decent character portrait of the suspect. The location of the murder, and the time of death, made finding witnesses all but impossible. She put the file down and grabbed another from a pile on her desk.

“Cagney, you slimy bastard.” She shook her head in disgust. “Can’t say I feel too bad about how things ended for you.” There were notes scribbled all about the pages within the file. Osteen’s handwriting. Vivian couldn’t find much order to the notes. Rather, it appeared Osteen would jot something down about the case whenever it came to him. The one constant was his incessant belief that something far more nefarious than a murder-suicide had taken place. But what? Double murder seemed the obvious answer, but there hadn’t been any viable suspects. If this were connected to Jennings, what was the common denominator?

Vivian laid the two files out on the desk in front of her and stared. She didn’t make a move for quite some time. Instead, she wracked her brain for any connection to the two men. Or the woman. Jennings and Cagney both had money, but to varying degrees. It didn’t seem likely that they traveled in the same social circles.

“Was it a love triangle?” Vivian wondered for about half a second. “Doubt it. Cagney probably had to pay the woman just for her to act as though he was anything more than a friend.”

Vivian twirled a pen around in her hand. She wasn’t certain either case had anything to do with the other, but Osteen’s last text message to her made it obvious that something tied them together. Plus a few others they knew nothing about. But what was it? Business dealings? Did they score booger sugar from the same dealer?

As though a lightbulb turned on in her mind, Vivian swiveled to face her computer and went to work searching for a connection. Something to tie Cagney and Jennings together while hopefully implicating an unknown third party. Castillo was the person Osteen had gone to meet, and more than likely responsible for his death, so he seemed like a perfect catalyst for the search.

She struck the keys in a melodic way that could have put her to sleep if she weren’t so laser focused. The steady tap—tap-tap—tapping of the keys, broken up periodically by a comically loud click from the mouse. Her search brought up clips of police reports and news stories referencing a drug bust in Castillo’s territory. It hadn’t implicated him directly, but there was no mistaking who the men taken into custody worked for.

“That’s some damn powerful motive if I’ve ever seen it.” Vivian sat back in the chair, exasperated. “How the hell could we miss that? Was I that focused on keeping things simple that I let something that easy slip by?” She shook her head and turned back to the computer, fingers in striking position of the keyboard. “Looks like Dan may have been onto something after all.” She stared silently for a moment, begging to her sub-conscious to keep her shit together. For now, at least. There would be time to let it all out later.

The connection to Jennings proved to be a bit more challenging to locate. Nothing at all seemed to link him with Cagney, or Cagney’s alleged killer. A connection to Castillo wasn’t immediately visible either.

“Let’s look at this thing at a more basic level,” Vivian said, louder than she meant to. No one else in the Precinct seemed to notice. She stared intently at the files, then back at the computer. “There’s no obvious connection like there was with Cagney, but that doesn’t mean we’re shit out of luck.”

“Keep talking to yourself, Viv, and people will think you’re crazy.”

She turned in time to see Detective Ernesto Alvarez rounding the corner on his way out of the building. He was smiling, trying somewhat in vain to cheer her up. “Thanks, Ernie,” she replied. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The person’s profile for Edgar Jennings was up on Vivian’s screen. She glanced at it once more, trying to make sense of the unknown. He had lived in Coral Gables. Graduated with a degree in Finance from the University of Miami about two decades ago. No prior arrests. Not even an unpaid parking fine. “Guy was a goddamn Boy Scout.” And then she saw it. The three words which seemed unimportant at first. An addendum to an otherwise dull life. Real Estate Agent.

“Hmm… that could be something.” Vivian clicked the link and waited for a secondary tab to load. Eventually, she saw a cookie-cutter splash page for the agency Jennings had worked for. She clicked through to the About Us tab, hoping to find a new breadcrumb for the trail. The topmost picture was a cheesy headshot of one, Edgar Jennings. “Well, I’ll be damned; he owned the place.” She skimmed his bio but stopped cold when her eyes met with a potentially wonderful surprise. Underneath the wall of text was a