Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission
the press. And I mean nobody. I’ll fire any department employee who leaks this to the media. Understood?”
I nodded.
“Do you have enough help, or would you like me to assign additional, temporary staff?”
“With assistance from Lieutenant McConnell, we should be all right. But I appreciate the offer. I’ll let you know if we do need more help.”
“We’re going do the right thing and follow this wherever it takes us. If we’ve got a nest of crooked employees who would involve themselves in multiple murders, heaven only knows what else they might be capable of. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about it. But it is our mess and we are going to clean it up,” said Sloan.
“And I guess you understand, Sam, if we have a scandal the magnitude of what you believe, a lot of careers are going to be over—starting with mine. If these are prison employees, the shake-up will be like nothing the department has ever seen. There’ll be criminal indictments, forced retirements, and a lot of transfers.”
With that, he got up from his desk and walked to a window overlooking the employee parking lot. Gazing out the window with hands clasped behind his back, he muttered, “Keep me informed.”
I left his office without another word.
Chapter Forty
My cell phone rang. It was Vince Turner. Kate had assigned Vince and two other detectives to assist on the Allred surveillance. I passed him on to Burnham, who was relieved to have additional personnel for the stakeout. The extra help would make it possible to put at least two vehicles on Allred instead of one. That would reduce the likelihood of either losing him or having him make the tail.
I had no sooner gotten off the phone with Turner when it rang again. Thinking it was probably Kate, I picked up. It wasn’t. Instead, it was James Allen. He wasn’t a happy camper. “Two things, Sam. I wonder if you could tell me why Lt. McConnell didn’t make it to the meeting last night with Stoddard? And, unless I misunderstood, you were supposed to set up a meeting today and introduce me to Kate. Have you had a chance to do that?”
Not wanting to mention that Kate had spent much of last night assisting on the Sorensen murder investigation, I decided to lie to him. Actually, I lied twice. “To tell you the truth, Jim, I have no idea what Kate was up to last night. You’ll have to ask about that when you catch up with her. As for the meeting today, I gave her the message and she promised to call you to set it up. I’m a little surprised you haven’t heard from her. She’s probably just buried in paperwork. The day’s not over yet—I’m sure she’ll be in touch.” By now my nose had grown to something the size of Pinocchio’s.
“I’m not trying to sound impatient, but this meeting is important. My team needs immediate access to all the written documents pertaining to the investigation, including the forensic reports,” said Allen.
“That shouldn’t be a problem. In fact, Kate mentioned that she had somebody in her office working on that very thing.” Was that two lies or three?
“Glad to hear it. Sam, if you talk with her before I do, please ask her to call me ASAP. If I don’t hear something from her very soon, I’m afraid I’ll be forced to go directly to Hyrum.”
“I’ll pass it along.”
***
As I drove to the prison, I had an idea. I hadn’t thought to check Sorensen’s approved list of individuals with whom he could correspond. I had checked Sorensen’s telephone log and determined he hadn’t called out of the prison for almost a full week preceding his death.
Since we routinely monitor inmate phone calls (and inmates know this), the chance of his calling someone on his list and saying something about the forged suicide note was remote. But the possibility of sending something out undetected in a letter was a different matter entirely. We randomly skim and scan inmate mail unless it’s privileged correspondence coming from or going to a prisoner’s attorney. Slipping something into the body of a letter might go unnoticed.
Milo’s list of individuals with whom he was allowed to correspond contained four names. None was an attorney. The list included his two siblings with whom I had spoken the previous evening. The third name belonged to one of his former spouses. The last name belonged to an individual by the name of Lance Muller. Muller was listed as an old friend.
Department records showed that Sorensen had mailed a
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