Police Report

Andrea sat at the desk and laid the folder containing Kyle's police report down in front of her.

Ordinarily, Andrea would receive documents relating to her clients' cases digitally, either by email or more often through the department's internal case management system. Sometimes physical paperwork couldn't be avoided, as testified by Jacquelyn's office, but in general there was a push to do as much as possible electronically.

It was therefore something of an unusual experience to be sitting down at a desk in the police precinct with a folder full of physical papers.

The Desk Sergeant she had spoken to had offered to forward everything to her by email, and truth be told it probably would have made it to her office before she did. However, she didn't want to wait that long, and besides which, there were other things she would probably need to do in person at the precinct anyway.

Andrea paused, not yet opening the folder. In a way, this was her last chance, her last chance to walk away and not know anything more about the case. Strictly speaking, she hadn't been completely accurate when she had told Kyle that public defenders could just choose not to take a case… but if she put up enough of a fuss, she knew Jacquelyn would reassign it.

On the other hand… it also wasn't quite true that if she knew anything about the case, that she could be compelled to testify. McCabe would certainly argue that attorney-client privilege existed regarding whatever he had talked to Kyle about. Andrea could do the same, even if she didn't end up taking the case.

'...So really… there's no reason not to at least find out more…' she thought.

She opened the folder and began reading.

The first few pages of the report were regarding the original missing persons report. Beatrix Davenport, aged 22, had been a college student at Barnes College, on the west side of the city. A final year political science major, she lived off-campus in an apartment with a roommate who was currently on a vacation to Europe.

Andrea flipped through pages with information on the apartment, address, roommate's name. It looked like the police had managed to contact the roommate, but as she'd been out of the country the entire time, there wasn't much she had been able to contribute to the investigation.

Beatrix had been at classes on the previous Friday, as well as at a party that evening. She didn't attend any of her classes on Monday, which no-one thought much of except her younger sister, Yasmine Davenport, who was also a student at Barnes and attended some of the same classes. Yasmine had reported Beatrix missing Monday evening.

'There's not actually any time requirement for someone to have been missing to file a report,' thought Andrea, 'but that's kind of quick to assume the worst.' Once again Andrea thought back to her college days, and how often she had known people to cut classes for days at a time without concern.

'Maybe Yasmine was more overprotective of her sister, or maybe Beatrix wasn't the kind of person to skip class unannounced.' Andrea thought. On reflection, she decided that 'overprotective' was probably the wrong word given that Yasmine's concern turned out to be completely justified.

Regardless of Yasmine's quick reactions to her sister's disappearance, it still wasn't clear to Andrea how it had ended up as such a big news story so quickly. The TV stations had been reporting the story from at least Tuesday, if not earlier.

Andrea wasn't sure if that was significant, but she made a note to follow up on the question if the police report didn't end up shedding any light on the matter. She supposed that Beatrix could have gone missing sometime on Monday or as early as late Friday evening. Andrea made another note to see if anyone had seen her anywhere over the weekend.

There was a transcript of the police interview with Yasmine, as well as several of Beatrix's friends, school counselor, and a couple of her professors. None of it was particularly noteworthy. Beatrix was a good student, no prior arrests, nothing to suggest that she would be the kind of girl to get herself into trouble.

There were two separate mentions from two different friends that they had heard she had a new boyfriend recently, but that none of them had met him. He was marked in the police report as a person of interest.

'I'll bet he is,' thought Andrea. 'When a woman is the victim of foul play, it's the husband or boyfriend nine times out of ten.' Andrea wasn't sure if that was the actual statistic, but it was certainly more often than not. She could testify of that from just the cases she had been involved in personally.

Andrea flicked through the pages looking for mentions of the boyfriend to see if there were more details. Everything the police had been able to find was very vague. He was older, or at least older than Beatrix, which didn't exactly narrow it down. He worked downtown, some kind of professional, but his exact job was unknown.

From the description of some of the gifts and such that Beatrix had told her friends he had treated her to, it sounded like he had a good amount of money.

Andrea thought he sounded like something of a sugar-daddy. 'Depending on how wealthy her background is, that might not narrow things down much either. Compared to the average college student, almost anyone with a full-time job would feel wealthy.'

The boyfriend might not have anything to do with the murder, but it was all too easy to picture an older guy using his money and maturity to flatter an unsuspecting college girl and lure her into his clutches.

…Did that sound like something Kyle would do? The description did fit… Kyle was just the kind of guy a college girl looking for an older man might go for; handsome, successful, a few years older, enough to feel mature and experienced, but still young enough to still be sexy and attractive…

…But then a description that vague would apply to tens of thousands of men.

Andrea read on. There were notes about other locations Beatrix had been known to frequent, bars, clubs, restaurants and so on. The police had been very thorough in their attempt to locate Beatrix or her mysterious boyfriend with what little they had to go on. It was hard for Andrea to see where she might be able to find anything that hadn't already–

"Excuse me, Miss… I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

Andrea turned to see the Desk Sergeant from earlier with a cup of steaming coffee in each hand.

"Miss Mason," she replied, giving him a smile. She preferred Ms to Miss, but outside of court, she didn't worry about correcting people most of the time. She certainly wasn't ready for people to start calling her Ma'am.

The sergeant offered her one of the cups of coffee. "I was just clocking off, and I thought you might appreciate a little something to keep you going," he said.

Andrea took it gratefully, taking a sip. It was hot and strong… and that was about all the positive things you could say about it. 'Even the vending machine coffee at the office was better than this!' she thought. She still appreciated the gesture and thanked the sergeant, wishing him a good afternoon as he headed out.

Andrea turned back to the police report. The next section related to how Beatrix had been discovered dead.

There was a transcript for a 911 call the previous evening originating from the Castilian Building, stating that they had heard shouting and screaming from a nearby residence. The call had been logged as a potential case of domestic violence, and a pair of officers on patrol nearby had been dispatched to investigate.

'Castillian…' The name sounded familiar to Andrea, but the report only included the addresses, no outside photos to confirm it was the building she was thinking of. She pulled up a map on her phone and dropped into street view. As she thought, the Castilian was a monolith of blue tinted glass.

She was familiar with the building from her trips to the park, it was one of the tallest buildings in the area. When it had been first constructed, it had been the tallest residential-only building in the city, though it had since been surpassed.

'Looks like Kyle really must be rich,' Andrea thought. 'The rent in that place has to be crazy expensive.' Luxury apartments in such an exclusive location overlooking the park… his rent was probably five or ten times as expensive as hers. He probably had an incredible view…

The thought sent Andrea seeking through the report again. The 911 call said that it had come from an apartment on the 51st floor. It took some digging through the building's website and apartment listings for Andrea to confirm her suspicion.

In the Castilian Building, everything above the 50th floor wasn't luxury apartments… it was luxury condominiums, purchased by their residents for astronomical prices rather than rented.

OK… turned out that Kyle's rent wasn't higher than hers after all… he didn't pay rent at all, he just had enough money to pay however many millions his condo had cost to buy outright.

'He's not just rich… he's filthy rich!'

So many of the 'Tims' Andrea knew went out of their way to show off how rich and successful they were. Kyle hadn't ever seemed any different. He had a large wardrobe of expensive clothes, a luxury watch, often talked loudly about what fancy restaurant or exclusive nightspot he had been to recently… Just like all the Tims did.

While most of them probably were making very good money, Andrea had always assumed it was still way less than they were trying to imply. So she just dismissed their posturing as background noise and ignored it. And she had thought Kyle was no different.

But this… Andrea wasn't expecting this.

It had to be family money. There was no way he could afford this on a lawyer's salary, you'd need to be a senior partner like McCabe to afford a place like this. So either his family was a lot richer than he was, or he was making serious money on the side… doing what? What made that kind of money? Stock market trading? Novel writing? Drug dealing?

…Hired assassin?

Andrea shook her head. She was being silly and getting distracted. She didn't need to be wasting time fantasizing about how wealthy Kyle was or how he got his money.

If she was honest with herself, she was stalling a little. Because she knew what was coming soon in the police report. Though the paperwork was neatly stacked, she could tell that she would be getting to the crime scene photos soon, and she didn't like to think about what she would see.

She pressed on. The responding officers had filed a report after the arrest detailing what they had done and seen. It was all very brusk and factual, starting with a timeline breaking down the order of events with 24-hour timestamps indicating the timing of each entry.

21:09 - Received dispatch regarding domestic at 111 N Fischer Ave, Unit 5104

21:14 - Arrived at lobby of Castilian Building. Internal security accompanied to express elevator

21:21 - Arrived at Unit 5104, requested entry from resident, Mr K Wynn

21:29 - After discussion with K Wynn, requested permission to inspect other rooms of residence

21:32 - Discovered remains of victim in guest bedroom

21:33 - Subdued K Wynn and took suspect into custody

There were lengthier testimonies from both officers providing additional detail, as well as reference numbers for the bodycam footage. Andrea would have to review that later.

So to summarize, the call had come in a little after 9pm, the officers had taken a few minutes to arrive, a few more to get up to Kyle's condo, whereupon he happily let them in, and even gave them permission to look around the apartment so they could discover the dead body he had there.

…Kyle's behavior certainly didn't sound like what you would expect from someone who was a murderer. But what else was Andrea supposed to believe, that he somehow had a murdered girl in his apartment and didn't know it?

Andrea knew what would be on the next page. Taking a deep breath, she started flipping through the crime scene photos.

It didn't take her long to wish she hadn't drunk that coffee. She felt like her stomach wanted to turn itself inside out. Page after page after page of graphic images of death.

Andrea closed the folder and took a deep breath. There was more, but she had the basics of the case now. There would be time to go over it in more detail later.

Since her stomach was already turned, she should probably cut to the chase and arrange another meeting she wasn't looking forward to.

It was time for her to visit the morgue.