Uncover Persona - Chapter 14

OTHER CHAPTERS | ALL STORY LIST

Janice and Harold hit the chief up first thing the next morning about getting a warrant for Carol Butler's text messages. The chief let them talk to the judge about the warrant based on the fact that Carol had identified the ring found in the casket as her husband's. The judge refused to give them a warrant because the information was retrieved illegally. Janice decided they would use the fact that Carol had gotten the text illegally as a threat to get her to give up the copies.

By the time they got back to the office from visiting the judge, they had found that they didn't need a warrant or threats. Carol had brought copies of the messages for them while they were gone.

There were a hundred or more pages of the texts printed off that covered the past year. Janice and Harold split them up and started going through them. Each of them carefully made notes of the different people who had sent Damon texts. Carol was right about the secretive, cryptic nature of the messages. Damon had acronyms for just about everyone who sent him texts on a regular basis. With some of them, it was very clear who they identified, while others were confusing.

Janice ran her fingers through her hair in frustration after about two hours of going over the list and then got up to fix a cup of coffee. When she came back, Harold was sitting back rubbing his eyes.

"I think we should have some underlings do this."

"We are the underlings," Janice said, plopping down in her chair. "Plus, an underling might overlook an important clue."

"Have you found any clues yet?"

"Maybe," Janice said and sipped her coffee. "I think I've narrowed down the list of people we can identify. I say we concentrate on the ones with the acronyms. I figure anyone who has a real name is not of any real concern. You agree?"

"Yeah," Harold nodded. He leaned down to the small cooler by his desk and took out a diet soda. "The people with real names must be just customers or people he doesn't deal with on a regular basis. He didn't get more than a handful of texts from any of those people, at least not on my sheets."

"Mine either," Janice said. She picked up her notes. "There are only a handful of people he got a lot of texts from. ASSJK, SJK, JN, and WACH. There are several from EMJKS and CAB too, but not really a lot, and those two are clearly Emily and Carol. You can tell by the texts. I think that WACH is Walter Chase and ASSJK is Ashley Sjveck because those texts are all very business-like and deal mostly with meetings. That leaves SJK and JN with whom Damon shared some very interesting and sexual texts."

Harold thought for a moment. "Did the ones from SJK stop?"

Janice looked through her list at the most recent dates. "Yes." She looked up at Harold. "The day Kenton Jenkins died."

Harold nodded. "SJK stood for Kenton Jenkins, but it was backward. S for the last letter in his last name, J for the first letter in his last name, and K for his first name, so JN must stand for Junior." He let out a long sigh, "But that doesn't get us any closer to figuring out who Junior is."

Janice ran her hands through her hair again and stared off toward the windows at the far side of the office. She ran over in her mind everything she had read in the texts, and nothing really jumped out. A thought came to her, and she jumped up, grabbing her purse. "Come on!"

"Where?" Harold asked, getting up more slowly.

"It just occurred to me that we never searched Kenton's office. There was nothing in the house that led us to believe the killer had been in the house, and I don't think he was. We had the phone, but he hadn't received any threatening texts, and the phone calls were to people we could trace the numbers back to. We only looked into the people we thought had reason to kill him or who were in the area. We didn't think to look into anyone else."

"That's right. There weren't any blocked numbers. We need to look at the text messages on Kenton's phone to compare them to these. Carol didn't give us the information on the phone messages, but she said all the sexual stuff had been sent in texts and that Damon always cleared them off his phone right away. If she hadn't been getting them too, they would be lost. Don't you think Kenton would have done the same thing?"

"Possibly, but let's hope there are a few left on it, or maybe our tech guys can pull something out of the phone's data chip." Janice took off for the parking lot with Harold right behind her. "I just hope Emily hasn't cleaned his office out yet," she said as she dialed Emily's number.

"Hi, Emily, this is Detective Janice Carter," She said when Emily picked. She listened to Emily for a moment and then said, "I'm fine, thank you for asking. Are you at home?" Another pause, "Great, do you mind if Detective Jones and I stop by for a few minutes? Great, we'll see you in a few minutes. "

"She's home?" Harold asked.

"She's on her way back from the store," Janice said. "She'll be back at the house soon."

"Do you think she'll care if we search Kenton's office?"

"Not unless she's afraid we'll find something to incriminate her? But no, I don't think she'll care." They had arrived in the parking lot, and Janice went straight to her car. "I'm driving this time."

Harold shrugged and got in the passenger side. "So, what do you think we need to look for?"

"Receipts for hotels and restaurants," Janice said, backing out of her parking spot. "Kenton should have kept stuff like that for tax purposes. We need to figure out where he was staying when he was in Atlanta and where he was at the night before he came home and raped Emily."

"You thinking he was with Junior or Damon?" Harold asked.

"I'm not sure. I'm getting a hunch that hasn't completely formed itself in my head yet, but I think we may be getting close to finally getting a real lead on this. Call the lab and see if there are text messages still on the phone. If there are, have them print them off, along with all the numbers either received or called, and see if there's any way to retrieve texts that have been deleted."

Emily and Sonja took the groceries into the house and started putting them away. Emily asked Sonja to start some coffee for the detectives, who were due to arrive any minute. She wondered what they could possibly want now. She'd told them everything she could about the entire murder and the days before and after.

Within minutes of the groceries getting put away, the two detectives arrived. Emily went to the front door and opened it before they had a chance to ring the doorbell. "Detective Carter, Detective Jones, it's good to see you again."

"Thank you, Emily," Janice said. Harold nodded.

Emily let them into the living room. "Can I offer you two some coffee?"

"Yes, that would be great," Harold said.

Sonja brought out the coffee in a carafe with three coffee mugs, sugar, and creamer on a tray. She set it on the coffee table. "Would either of you prefer cream or milk with your coffee?"

"Do you have two percent milk?" Janice asked.

Sonja nodded, "I'll bring some right out."

"Please sit," Emily said, motioning to the couch across from her favorite winged back chair. "So, how can I help you today?"

"We were hoping you would let us go through Kenton's office. We're assuming he had a home office," Janice said.

"Oh yes," Emily nodded. "He pretty much lived in there when he was home. You are more than welcome to go through it." She looked away toward the fireplace." I haven't been in there since he passed. I didn't go in there before. He forbid me to go in there and usually kept it locked." She furrowed her brows. "It's probably locked now. Ashley asked to go through it to look for some legal papers they needed, but we forgot all about doing that when she was here the other night." Emily thought for a few more minutes, tapping her chin with her finger. "I can't remember seeing his keys lying around. Your lab might have them since they took his car."

"There's not a master key to the house?" Harold asked.

"Not that I'm aware of. Sonja!" Emily called to Sonja in the kitchen.

"Yes, ma'am?"Sonja said, coming out of the kitchen.

"Do you know if Fernando has a master key to all the rooms in the house?"

"I don't know, but I can call him and ask him."

"Please do." Emily looked back at the detectives. "If he doesn't, you are welcome to pick the lock or break it open. I'm not sure what you'll find, but if you think you might find something that will help you, you're welcome to do what you need to get into the room."

"Hopefully, we won't have to break in the door," Janice said.

Sonja came back with a small pitcher of milk. "Fernando said there isn't a master key to the house. Do you need anything else?"

"No, thank you, Sonja," Emily said with a smile for the older woman. She looked at the detectives who were making their coffee. "If you want to bring your coffee, let's head upstairs and take a look at the door to Kenton's office."

The three of them got up and went upstairs with Emily in the lead. The stairs were between the living room and foyer. At the top of the stairs, Emily pointed to a closed door next to the master bedroom. "That's it."

Harold tried the door, but it was locked. He took out his wallet and pulled out a credit card. He worked at the lock on the door with the credit card until the door finally popped open. A huge cherry wood desk, with an oversized leather chair behind it, was placed on the left-hand side of the room, with the drawers facing the wall. The desk faced the wall on the right, where a ninety-inch television hung on the wall.

"Wow," Harold said, staring at the television. "I bet watching football on that is fantastic."

Janice rolled her eyes. "Come on," she said, motioning for Harold to follow her to the desk. They both took out latex gloves and put them on.

Emily stood at the door, looking around the room. "No wonder he pretty much lived in here. It has everything he could need."

Janice looked up from the papers she'd start looking through. She looked around the room and really noticed how it was set up. Against the wall facing the door was a black leather couch that matched the leather chair behind the desk. A small black refrigerator was at the end of the couch by the wall with the television screen, and a black microwave was sitting on top of it. "Wow," Janice said and moved to the refrigerator. She opened the door. There were six Coronas, a bottle of tequila, and a bottle of vodka.

"Looky what we got here," Harold said, holding up a vial with white powder and a gold tube. "Looks just like the one we found in his coat."

"He did coke fairly often," Emily said. "I'm not sure what all else he took."

"You didn't ever party with him?" Harold asked.

"I tried it once, and I hated it. It made me feel crazed and uninhibited. I didn't like the feeling at all."

Janice saw the look of distaste on Emily's face and knew she was telling the truth. She looked around the room again. "There's not a file cabinet in here."

"No, I think Kenton kept everything on a computer file. He used that LandShark service regularly to get rid of paperwork," Emily said.

Harold went through each one of the drawers of the desk. He only found a few receipts for restaurants. There were several flash drives with labels on them. The labels were dated and coded. He found a few files in a bottom drawer. He took all of them out and leafed through them. They seemed to be land contracts, maybe the ones he was working on in eastern Tennessee. There were some contracts with individual people. There was a drawer with the typical office supplies: pens, pencils, stapler, etc., but other than that, there wasn't much in the drawers he'd been in. He had one more drawer, and that was the big drawer on the bottom left side of the desk. When he pulled on it, he found it locked. "Damn," he muttered. "Locked."

Harold took out his pocket knife and worked on prying the drawer open. It finally popped open, causing him to slice his finger. "Damn it!"

Emily rushed over. "Are you okay?"

Harold sucked on his finger. "Yeah, it just hurt like a bitch." He looked down at her. "Sorry about the language."

She laughed, "Don't even worry about it. I would have said worse if I'd done the same thing."

"Oh, my," Janice said as she rounded the desk and looked in the drawer. There were bags of pills, more vials of powder, and a gun.

"Oh my God!" Emily said, looking into the drawer.

"It's not quite enough to be dealing, but it looks like he had quite a habit," Janice said, picking up one of the bags of pills. She looked at Harold. "Ecstasy?"

"Looks like it to me," he said with a nod.

"Oh, and looky here," Janice said with a shake of her head. "We got some Roofies." She held up a bag of small green-gray pills.

"Roofies?" Emily said with a questioning look.

"Rohypnol, date rape drugs," Janice explained.

Emily put both hands to her mouth. "Oh my God! I think he's used those on me before. Don't they make you forget what happened?"

"Yep," Harold said. He didn't look up and was still fishing around in the drawer. "Humph," he said, looking up at Janice. He stood up and showed her what looked like a credit card.

Janice took the card from him. "Looks like an RFID card for a gated community." She turned to Emily. "Do you guys own any property in a gated community?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Emily said, looking up from the pile of drugs that the detectives had put on Kenton's desk. "But apparently, I'm not aware of a lot of things Kenton had going on."