Free Kill For Me by M. William Phelps

Tony was more than willing to give up his fingerprints and another DNA sample so the PPPD could eliminate him forensically (and completely) from the case. It was standard procedure at this point. They knew Tony had no more killed Sandee than any of her neighbors or coworkers; but they had to cross Tony off the list, or there would be trouble down the road when they tried to make a case stick against whoever was ultimately—and hopefully—going to be arrested and tried.
    “Mr. Ponicall was very cooperative and he gave us consent to take elimination fingerprints and also obtain DNA swabbing,” Ski said in his report, describing that meeting with Tony.
    Cops will always come in on the side of the innocent not having any reservations whatsoever about helping with an investigation, with or without a lawyer’s consent. The truth is the truth—no matter how you stack it up. If a guy has nothing to hide, he has no problem doing whatever is asked of him, within reason, obviously. Tony Ponicall proved that.
    Ski met with Joan Hallmark, who acted as the liaison between the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and the FDLE forensic labs. Hallmark printed out what Ski called a “master list” of the evidence the lab had developed up until that point of the investigation: from bullet fragments to Sandee Rozzo’s bloodied, cutoff shorts and T-shirt, to the shell casings found at the crime scene, along with many of the fingerprints located inside and outside Sandee’s BMW.
    All of this evidence was going to play a part in where the investigation was headed. It needed to be filed in a proper manner, and Ski was confident that Hallmark’s lab was doing that. More important, however, the list was going to help Ski and the PPPD work through the case, step by step.
    A map, essentially.
    As he was on his way back to the squad room, Ski made contact with Sandee’s best friend, Amber Kellogg (pseudonym). Amber’s fiancé had been the guy who had reached out to Jeff Erb.
    By 6:30 P.M . on July 7, Amber was sitting across from Ski inside a small room at the PPPD. She said she had known Sandee for about six years. She was devastated by her friend’s death. Amber said she couldn’t believe it at first. Then, when she sat down and had time to collect her thoughts and think about things, little bits and pieces of Sandee’s life she had known about became larger pieces of a murder. Amber believed that she and Sandee both knew who had authored this crime.
    “Tracey Humphrey.”
    Discussing the sexual battery case, Amber went through what Sandee had told her about that two-day terror-filled weekend she claimed to have spent with Humphrey. When she was finished, Amber came out with it, saying, “If anyone was going to do Sandee harm, it would have been Humphrey….”
    Wherever Sandee worked, Amber said, at a variety of times (after the alleged sexual assault and kidnapping), strange calls would come into that particular place of employment. Men, generally, but occasionally a female, would call and ask if Sandee Rozzo worked there. As soon as they got the answer, the caller would hang up.
    Amber said she was certain “that was Tracey Humphrey sending Sandee a direct message.”
    Sandee had told Amber she knew it was Humphrey.
    More than trying to intimidate Sandee, Amber pointed out, it was also Humphrey’s way of trying to find out where Sandee worked at any given time.
    Again and again, no matter how Ski and the PPPD lined it up, it appeared that Humphrey had wanted Sandee Rozzo dead and gone before she could testify in a sexual battery case that he feared would send him to prison for no fewer than ten years.
    For Homicide Division cops, was there a better motive for murder?

14
    At 3:00 P.M . on July 8, 2003, Ski and his partner, Detective Mike Lynch, took a ride over to the Athletic Club in Brandon. It was time to speak with Humphrey and see what the big man had to say for himself. Ski and Lynch were not going to be accusing Humphrey of