Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

that besides Stimson, he’d made multiple calls to the homes of two additional department employees, each of whom was on duty at the North Point facility on the evening Sorensen was killed. Three calls had been made to Captain Steve Schumway and four to the home of Deputy Warden Bob Fuller. We also discovered a fifth call made to Fuller’s office at the prison.
    Kate leaned back in her chair and looked over at me before speaking. “You look like you’re about to puke. Can I get you anything?”
    “A new job would be nice,” I replied.
    “If this turns out to be as rotten as it smells, we could all be looking for work,” said Burnham with a mischievous smirk.
    “You might be right,” I said. The smirk disappeared.
    “We’ll need to cross-check Allred’s phone records against Fuller’s and Schumway’s, as well as against each other. That’s going to take some time,” I said.
    I looked over at Kate. She nodded. “Let’s do it. We need to wait for the lab results on Stimson’s clothing anyway. If the results come back positive, Webb will get a warrant for her charging murder one. And if anybody can get her to talk, it’ll be Webb and Gill. If she confesses, the others will fall like dominos.”
    “I’ve got an idea,” said Burnham. “I think we should intentionally try to spook Allred. It’s possible he made us today anyway. Why not make the surveillance obvious? Who knows. Maybe the guy panics and makes a mistake. We could sure make him awfully nervous.”
    “I don’t see much downside to that idea,” added Kate. “Worst-case scenario, the guy is innocent, and we’ve managed to royally piss off a member of the state Board of Pardons. How serious could that be?”
    Incredulous, I replied, “Serious enough.”
    “Just kidding,” said Kate.
    In truth, the idea made sense, and I couldn’t see much downside either. Perhaps raising Allred’s anxiety level by making the surveillance obvious would serve as a good primer for the interrogation to follow. It was about time to give Allred the opportunity to explain his sexual proclivities in the company of Levi Vogue, not to mention some very interesting telephone calls to a corrections officer who now happened to be the primary suspect in the murder of a prison inmate.

Chapter Forty-three
    I spent a restless night worrying about the investigation and my relationship with Kate, and feeling guilty that Sara wasn’t receiving enough of my time or attention. For the moment, I couldn’t help that. Unable to sleep, I got up early, left a note on the kitchen chalk board for Aunt June, and was in my office at department headquarters by seven.
    What I’d found most troubling was the apparent connection between Allred and three department employees who worked together at the prison. I wondered if the telephone records of the prison employees would corroborate the existence of some type of relationship between them, or if Allred’s records were an aberration that could somehow be written off as merely coincidental. I doubted that. And what about Carol Stimson? If the State Crime Lab connected her to the murder of a prison inmate, the implications seemed almost surreal.
    It didn’t take long for the news to arrive. Patti interrupted my dour thoughts to tell me Kate was on line one. “Good morning, Lieutenant McConnell. My telepathic inner voice told me it was you calling with good news,” I lied.
    “Sorry, Sam. Are you sitting down?”
    “Yes, and you’re about to ruin my morning, but go ahead.”
    “I just received a call from John Webb. He tried to call you earlier in your office at the prison, but when he couldn’t find you, he called me instead. I figured you might be at headquarters.
    “The lab report came in early this morning. They found trace amounts of blood that matched Sorensen’s blood type on one pant leg of Stimson’s uniform and on one of her uniform shoes. The DNA results just came back and showed a positive match to Sorensen. And that isn’t all. A hair and fibers expert compared a hair she found on Stimson’s dress shirt to samples of Sorensen’s removed from his head during the autopsy. She says it’s a match. John and Harvey are at the courthouse now meeting with Tom. There going to get a first degree murder warrant for her.”
    “I’m wondering why she hasn’t surfaced. I hope she hasn’t been tipped off. If she has, she’ll be on the run and damned hard to catch. If we can just find her, a confession would tie