Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

direct employee link to the murders of Watts and Sorensen. The question now was what to do next?
    Stimson had been on duty at North Point at the time of Sorensen’s murder. Webb’s partner, Harvey Gill, had interviewed her on the evening of the murder. Stimson told him that she had spent most of her shift prior to the murder performing routine patrol activities in the North Point housing units and the prison industry shop areas. A number of inmates and staff employed in the furniture plant confirmed seeing her in the shop sometime around four o’clock in the afternoon. As to her specific whereabouts at the time of the murder, Stimson claimed that she was making the rounds inside the Purgatory Housing Unit, visiting inmates in their cells prior to a mandatory count. She’d even written a disciplinary citation to an inmate for failure to turn the volume down on his box. Inmates in adjoining houses had complained about the noise and Stimson had warned him to turn it down or shut it off. The inmate had done neither and received a ticket. Gill had corroborated her story by examining the ticket and placing a copy of it in the murder book.
    We agreed to meet in my office at the prison in one hour. Webb suggested we involve a member of the prosecuting attorney’s office. Kate offered to bring Stoddard along.
    During the intervening hour, I examined the personnel file of Officer Carol Stimson. On a professional level, I was more than a little familiar with her reputation. She had been employed by the department for just over four years. She’d managed to complete a year of probationary employment without incident. After transferring from the women’s prison to her present North Point assignment three years ago, she’d even received a couple of letters of commendation from Deputy Warden Bob Fuller. She had also been the subject of two internal investigations carried out by my office—investigations that probably solidified in her mind my reputation as the department’s chief headhunter.
    Two different inmates alleged that she had used excessive force against them. In the first incident, the inmate recanted his story and the charge was dismissed. However, in the second complaint, which occurred just a few weeks after the first incident, Stimson and another officer were accused of beating an inmate for refusal to obey an order. The SIB investigated the matter and concluded that the charge was true. The inmate victim had sustained numerous cuts and bruises that required an overnight stay in the prison infirmary. I recommended that she be fired and the case referred to the D.A.’s office for possible criminal prosecution. She appealed my recommendation through the correctional officers union and ultimately got off with a two-week suspension and a letter of reprimand in her personnel file. The incident cost her a promotion to the rank of sergeant, something she blamed on me. Suffice to say, I was no longer on her Christmas card list. While I was able to reassure Denise Muller that she and her husband were not in danger, I wondered, given my history with Stimson, if the same could be said about me.
    I quickly checked voice-mail messages. Sue Ann Winkler had called and left a very testy message about the vice raid at the Starlite Motel that resulted in the arrest of her mother and step-father. She made some rather unflattering references to my family lineage. I made a mental note to call her later.
    The next message was from a noticeably angry James Allen. He’d heard about the murder of Sorensen on the local news and demanded to know if Milo’s murder was in any way connected to the death of Vogue. He had also discovered that Kate had spent much of the previous evening at the Utah State Prison working with yours truly. He’d caught me red handed lying to him and he sounded genuinely pissed. I couldn’t blame him. He ended the call by informing me that he had reluctantly placed two phone calls, one to Hyrum Locke, and the other to Richard Vogue, to report what he described as a deliberate stall. It looked to me like the charade was over, and I’d probably wind up on the receiving end of a butt-chewing from Sloan once the word filtered back to him.
    I then listened to a message from Steve Schumway deploring what he considered to be attacks on the integrity of his employees by Webb and Gill. He demanded to know what was going on and asked that I call him immediately. This message was a bigger priority than the one from