Free Death of a Bankster by David Bishop

why this misrepresentation was necessary.”
    “Thank you, sir. My next report will come as scheduled.”

Chapter 8
    Maddie spent part of Tuesday morning reviewing and bringing together the reports from Bill Molitor’s evidence work at the Crawford home. Another hunk of time was absorbed by a detectives’ meeting called by her boss, Lieutenant Adam Harrison. These meetings, which were held about once a week, were used, in part, to provide each detective the opportunity to maintain a superficial familiarity with the cases being worked by the other detectives. Maddie knew these meetings were worthwhile, but frustrating because they absorbed an hour or so of each detective’s time away from the cases each were working.
    When Maddie’s turn came, Adam Harrison asked her about the sting she had planned for today at two in the afternoon. “Is that set? Is it going to work?”
    “Yes sir. We fully expect it will. The Phoenix Suns have cooperated by letting us use their name and a friendly leasing agent is letting us set up in a vacant storefront. The Suns are providing paraphernalia so it all looks cool. Officer Gonzales is a real camera buff. He’s been going along, playing the cameraman for the Suns publicity department. He’ll take pictures of our suspect when he comes to pick up the two free Suns season tickets he thinks he’s won.”
    “Seems like a lot of work for a simple arrest,” one of the detectives said.
    “We haven’t been able to find this guy. One person told us he’s a real Suns fan and the witness who saw him run from the scene of the murder said he wore a Suns’ t-shirt. Detective Martin and I have been going around with Officer Gonzales carrying his camera. We lightly canvassed the apartment which is his last known residence, and went to his last known job. We passed out a couple free tickets, courtesy of the Suns, along with some signed autographed pictures of a few players. We had cards from the Suns publicity department made up with the number on a blind cell phone I’m carrying. We spread it around his old neighborhood and job that this was all we were going to do. If we didn’t hear from the suspect by five yesterday we’d draw another name to see who got the tickets.”
    “And?”
    “The suspect called me yesterday. He couldn’t meet then, but he agreed to be at our made-up Suns publicity office at two today. The guy’s a big Suns’ fan. He should be there.”
    “Greed’s a wonderful thing,” Amun Grant said.
    Maddie shook her head. “He said he wouldn’t miss it for anything. We plan to deliver him a ticket for a seat and a bed in a stadium he won’t be leaving for many seasons.”
    “That’s what I call imaginative police work. Good job, Sergeant.” Then Lieutenant Harrison moved on. “People killing people never go out of season. We rely on it for job security.” After the polite chuckles died out, Harrison said, “Now, Sergeant Richards, update us on this Crawford case you just picked up.”
    “The No-Corpse Murder,” Sergeant Doyle Brackett said with the disrespectful tone he used for most everything he said to women. Brackett loved the needle, but never more than when he used it to poke one of the female officers.
    Maddie swallowed her desire to toss her coffee in Brackett’s face and kept her composure, at least outwardly. “Other than the blood traces that confirmed someone had bled on the ceramic tile foyer of his home, Bill Molitor’s people found little in the way of physical evidence. The prints they did find in the office in their home were traced back to Paige or Sam Crawford, Paige’s mother, Barbara Davis, or the neighbor, Carla Roth, who was there at the time of the alleged murder. All of these people provided their prints for the purpose of our identifying the latents. We’re currently working on linking the blood traces found to Sam Crawford specifically. Bottom line: we believe this went down the way the witnesses reported, but as of this moment