Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

the Caucasian gangs. And if the killing was gang-ordered, the perp would’ve been an active gang member or a gang member wannabe.
    “And another thing. In the unlikely event a gang hired Watts to do Vogue and then decided to eliminate Watts, they wouldn’t have staged it to look like a suicide. He’d have gotten whacked just like Vogue in some kind of drive-by or street hit. That’s their signature. It’s how they do business,” I said.
    Kate sighed. “That leaves Sue Ann Winkler, the Starlite Motel, and the prostitution ring John Merchant talked about when he was singing at the hospital. I’ve had the feeling that there’s still something bothering you about that whole mess.”
    “I know I’m probably grasping at straws, but yeah, something is bothering me. We know that Vogue was involved in some unusual sexual practices—group sex and voyeurism for starters. Just who is the guy Sue Ann told us about, the mystery man with the tattoo on his arm that Vogue brought back to the motel for the three-way action? We’ve never identified him. Is it possible that Vogue was killed because he learned something about that place he wasn’t supposed to know? I think we should lean all over everybody associated with the Starlite Motel until we determine whether they had anything to do with his murder. I know it’s a long shot.”
    She shrugged. “It’s hard for me to reconcile the notion that a prostitution ring would get involved in contract murder. It doesn’t make sense unless they’re involved in something else a lot more sinister. I think it’s a long shot, but no, I don’t have any better ideas at the moment.
    “In the morning, I’ll have Vince pull their business license and any incorporation papers that may exist, and see what our vice people know about the place. It might be worthwhile to have a couple of teams set up visual surveillance near the motel for a few days and monitor the traffic going in and out. If the motel is a front for an organized prostitution ring or maybe a drug house, there ought to be plenty of people coming and going at all times of the day and night.
    “The best shot we’ve got right now is to try to identify the guy who wrote the suicide note. He’s our direct link to whoever hired Watts to kill Levi. I’ll get the list from the forgery guys in the morning. Then we’ll start running people down. That okay?”
    “Fine,” I replied. “I’ll send an e-mail to every probation and parole officer in the state soliciting names of any first-rate forgers. We’ll probably end up with some of the same people, but it should give us a fairly complete list.”

Chapter Twenty-seven
    I slept in the next morning and didn’t arrive at the office until after nine o’clock. There was a message from Kate asking me to call her as soon as I got in. It seemed that Clarence Puffer and Hyrum Locke had gone out to the Vogue home right after our meeting with Chief Hansen to diplomatically advise Mrs. Vogue that there was good news and bad news. The good news: clearly, Levi Vogue’s murderer had been identified. The bad news: the killer had also been murdered.
    Apparently, the meeting with Margaret Vogue hadn’t gone all that well and resulted in her scurrying to see the family patriarch, Richard Vogue III. When Hansen arrived at his office the next morning, he found a terse message from Papa Vogue asking that all future developments in the case come directly to him, not Margaret. Further, his message requested an immediate meeting with Lt. McConnell and “that guy from the corrections department” who had been working on the case with her.
    At this point, Hansen made a serious blunder. For reasons known only to him, he dispatched Puffer and Locke to the corporate headquarters of Vogue Chemicals, only to have them unceremoniously rebuffed at the front door by an aide to Vogue. By the time Locke and Puffer returned to Salt Lake P.D. headquarters, an angry Richard Vogue had placed a telephone call to Mayor Baldwin. Following that age-old administrative principle that all shit runs downhill, Baldwin promptly called Hansen into his office and chewed on him for about an hour.
    I suppose that only someone with my acerbic sense of humor could appreciate the events of the morning involving Locke and Puffer. As I drove to police headquarters to pick up Kate for our visit with Richard Vogue, it occurred to me that this had to be an extremely stressful time for the entire Vogue family, and to have