Magic City Murder Read online

  I chuckled. “Possibly. You interview first and if they have a crappy interview, you crank up the pressure and move to interrogating.”

  Noel thought for a minute. “I guess I don’t understand the difference.”

  “Interviewing is when I’m asking you what happened. Interrogating is when I tell you what happened and ask you why you did it,” I explained.

  “Oh, so one is gathering facts and the other one is throwing those facts in their face,” said Noel.

  “Umm,” I thought for a minute. “Not exactly, but for the purpose of this conversation, I’m going to say yeah that’s close enough.”

  Noel nodded. “I think I get it.”

  I chuckled again. “Good.” I looked over at him, he had his phone out but had not been playing on it. “Wow, no phone games, I’m proud of you.” I said.

  “I don’t play much, but I was taking pictures,” said Noel. He unlocked his cell phone and flipped through a few pictures of a late model black Ram pickup truck. “This truck passed by three times while you were in there,” he said.

  I put my fingers on his screen and zoomed in. I could make out a license plate. It started with a number 3 so I knew it was local. The generic number system for most regular license plates in Montana was to start with the number of the county in which the vehicle is registered. The number 3 was for Yellowstone county since Yellowstone was the third most populated in the state when the system was put into place. Number 1? Butte-Silverbow County. At one time Butte was the “Richest Hill on Earth,” and people from all over the world flocked to it for work.

  “Could be something,” I said. “Could be nothing. I’ll do some poking around and see if I can find who that plate belongs to.” I peered outside of the car to the houses across the street. I could tell one of the adjacent houses had a different doorbell than the others. “Hang here a sec,” I said to Noel.

  I got out of the car and walked towards the house. It was getting dark and instead of the orange glow one would usually see coming from the doorbell of the house, was a light blue light. I went up to the door and rang the doorbell. A moment later a voice came through the video doorbell. “Can I help you?” a male voice said.

  Holding up my private investigator credentials, I identified myself and asked to speak with them about their neighbor’s death. A second later the door opened. A white male in his mid-thirties with short brown hair opened the door. His droopy eyelids made him look half-asleep. Tattoos peaked out from under his shirt around his neck and wrist.

  “I was just wondering if you might have caught anything suspicious across the street on your doorbell camera last Monday,” I said.

  The man shook his head. “Nah, that thing doesn’t go off unless someone comes on my property. Otherwise, it’d be ringing constantly with people driving by.”

  I sighed. “Did you know your neighbor Stephanie very well?” I asked.

  The man shook his head quickly. “Nope, I did not.”

  His answer threw me for a second. He seemed like someone who would be more likely to use slang and contractions in sentences but for that answer he distinctly said, “I did not.” I gave him my card. “If you happen to go through the doorbell video anyway that night, I would appreciate it if you call me. If you find something of course.”

  He snatched the card quickly and nodded then closed the door.

  I returned to the car. Noel and I headed over to a restaurant downtown to give him a break from my cooking and the food at the Lion's Paw Tavern. We stopped at a little brew pub known for its Reubens. As he drove and followed the GPS on his phone, I called Polazzo.

  “Polazzo,” she said answering.

  “Hey, Rachel, John here. What’s going on with the York house?” I asked.

  The line was silence for a second. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Why isn’t it sealed?” I asked.

  Again, the line was silent for a time before she answered. “Look, John,” she said. “The PD has no interest in investigating this. I pleaded your case and told them about the pills in the throat, but unless the toxicology report says something, they don’t want to bother. The detectives are slammed right now and don’t have time to investigate something that looks like a suicide to them.”

  “Just as well,” I said. “Any forensic evidence is totally fucked at this point since the sister has been there drinking like a fish and stumbling around the place.”

  Polazzo sighed. “I’m sorry, it’s not my call.”

  I chuckled. “And here I thought you were the Coroner.”

  “Look, things work a little differently here. I heard about you and know you’re probably used to working with a blank checkbook but we have limited resources and we can’t spend the man hours on detectives following leads that don’t go anywhere when we have a backlog of robberies, assaults, and sex crimes.”

  I paused before answering. “Are you getting pressure to make this go away?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you when the tox screen comes through, John. Good night.” The line went dead.

  The toxicology results would take at least a month to get back. All in all, it was getting to be a depressing situation.

  Chapter 5

  The week went by quietly. I heard nothing more from Stephanie’s parents or Polazzo or the tattooed man across the street. I was going a little stir crazy. There was only so much fishing and snowshoeing that Noel and I could do. My sympathies were with him, he must have been bored to tears when he came to see me. Snow was falling heavily in Wyoming when it was time for Noel to go back home. I bought him an expensive last-minute ticket to Dallas and told him he would have a lot of explaining when he got back about why he has no car when his mom is having to pick him up from the airport.

  I dropped him off at the airport in Billings and drove by the York house. It was late afternoon, and no one seemed home. I parked a couple of houses down and watched for a bit. Kids were walking home from school. It reminded me of Noel when he was a few years younger. Time flies, but then again it had only been a few years since he was their age going to elementary school or maybe junior high.

  Noel had been a fairly easygoing child, always quiet. He preferred solitude rather than all of his time spent with friends or people in general. Noel did not shun human interaction completely, in fact, I think he enjoyed it if he could find a person with the same interests as him. He had a few friends back in Dallas who were all into gaming and computer stuff I did not understand. I had limped along with technology over the years but after I retired, I mostly shunned it. I was not keeping up with the latest smartphones, tablets, watches, or whatever the hell else those companies seemed to think I needed to have. I fit right in with the rest of the folks from Montana.

  You could tell the difference in someone who grew up in Montana and someone who had just moved for a job. Locals appreciated the outdoors year-round and were very disappointed when something kept them from enjoying a hike, a bike ride, hunting, or kayaking. I had given the latter a try and almost drowned myself in East Rosebud Lake. From then on, I kept my feet firmly on land.

  At the York house, I sat in my car and reclined the seat. Surveillance, watching, whatever you wanted to call it was always incredibly boring. During this time of the year, it was also fairly chilly. I did not want to leave the Jeep running because the exhaust emitting a fog would seem a little suspicious for a vehicle that never moved. I crossed my arms and yawned. I was not sure what I hoped to see, but I had not been in the area much, so I felt like I needed to put my finger on the pulse of the area a bit more.

  It was about an hour into my sitting around when I had decided it was too cold for this mess. I had reached my hand up to the ignition when something across the street caught my eye. A figure moved in a vehicle about a block from me. I realized someone had been in an SUV on the opposite side of the street, facing my direction the whole time. Another SUV pulled in and parked behind it, this one left its engine running. The SUV that had been there before started
up its engine as was apparent by the steaming exhaust.

  Stephanie’s neighbor from across the street who had looked sketchy and had been less than helpful emerged from his house and walked towards the sedan parked in his driveway. The two SUV’s I had been watching suddenly sped down the street and pulled in front of his driveway, blocking him off. I guessed there was at least one more vehicle behind the man’s house. Several armed men wearing vests and green uniforms jumped out and shouted at Stephanie’s neighbor. The man was visibly shaken and immediately threw up his hands and fell to his knees. I grabbed a pair of binoculars from my console to get a closer look at what was transpiring. Steadying my arms against the door of the Jeep, I could make out the identifiers on the vests of the armed men. I’ll be damned if the US Marshals didn’t just arrest that guy.

  Within minutes, he was sitting in the back of the first SUV with marshals roaming around the house. Four then came out a few minutes later. I guessed they had cleared the house for safety but had no warrant yet. The likeliest of stories was they had only recently located the neighbor who was probably a fugitive. A Billings Police Department patrol car showed up and the man was put in the back. The patrol car left while the SUVs stayed.

  I exited the Jeep and slowly walked towards the marshals with my hands out and open. I introduced myself as a private investigator looking into a death that occurred across the street and just happened to be in the neighborhood. After a few raised eyebrows and finally nods of acceptance, I gave one of them my card and said I had a feeling they would be dumping the guy’s phone and to let me know if they happened across any video the night Stephanie died that might be of use.

  If anyone has a cell phone and they get arrested by a federal agency, odds are their phone will be dumped or downloaded by means of a sophisticated device. You may have heard of them used when Apple famously would not help the FBI crack a San Bernardino shooter’s phone in 2015. Long story short, they got into it by other means. I figured the marshals would either get the guy to consent to a search of his phone or would get a search warrant, they were easy to get especially on the state level. One way or another, the data would get dumped and analyzed. If you don’t want your phone searched because you’re concerned about your privacy and you’re involved in activities or associate with people where the searching would be a greater possibility, use a landline. I’ve never seen anyone hack into a rotary.

  The marshals assured me they would have a look at his phone and see what they could find, but I did not get my hopes up. Even if they found some video from the doorbell on the guy’s house, they did not know what they were looking for. Hell, I didn’t know what I was looking for.

  It wasn’t quite 5 o’clock so I decided to stop by a doctor’s office where Stephanie had worked. Between gulps of vodka, her sister Eve had mentioned that she had a part-time job at one of the local clinics as a medical assistant. Stephanie had apparently been aspiring to be a registered nurse.

  I pulled into the parking lot just as someone was flipping the sign on the front door to say closed. I tapped on the door with my badge and it opened. They probably assumed I was a cop until I gave the story of being a private investigator working for the York family. I left out the part about them probably never paying me and I was doing this because something about the whole situation bothered me for some reason I could not quite put my finger on.

  A blonde woman possibly in her 30s let me in. Her name tag said Becky. I guess she was a front desk person. She said the doctor was just finishing up with the last patient and could possibly meet with me. I paced around the waiting area of the small office. It was a drab place, no fancy decor. The smell in the room was one of age. Grandma’s house? Yeah, it smelled like that.

  Becky who let me in emerged from the back and said the doctor would see me in her office. I followed her back through the halls lined with wood paneling. This place definitely came from the 80s and sort of stayed there. When I entered the doctor’s office, I was a little dumbfounded to see who was sitting behind the desk. Instead of an old timer on the brink of retirement, it was actually a woman who was probably a little younger than me. She appeared to be of Asian descent and had numerous accolades framed and hanging on the wall.

  She smiled and stood. “Hi, Connie Yu,” she said.

  I grinned and shook her hand. “Thanks for seeing me, Dr. Yu, I know you’re about ready to close up here.”

  She waved a hand of dismissal. “No problem at all. We were all very shocked to hear about Stephanie.”

  I took out my notepad and pen. “Yes, it was very sudden. Did she seem to be the type who might take her own life?”

  Dr. Yu processed the question and her eyes gazed upwards and to the left as she did. “You mean did she seem depressed?”

  “Yeah, did she seem sad or ever mention anything that might be bothering her?”

  After a few moments, Dr. Yu’s eyes returned to mine and she shook her head. “No, she really did not. I had only known her a few months when I bought the practice, but she seemed like a normal college student.”

  That made sense. The doctor had likely bought the practice from the old codger I had expected to see behind the desk. No doubt in the months to come, the office would look very different.

  “Did she have a lot of friends?” I asked.

  Dr. Yu shrugged. “You know, I just don’t know. Stephanie mostly helped with filing and retrieving records part-time so even when she was here, I did not have a lot of interaction with her.”

  “What about her co-workers? Is there anyone she was close to who maybe she confided in?” I asked.

  Dr. Yu again shook her head. “I highly doubt it. At the moment, besides myself, there is Rebecca who works the front desk, and my nurse, Janet. They are all a little older than Stephanie was, so I doubt they had much in common.” There was a bit of condescension in her voice the way she described the other staff as if they were much more mature than Stephanie had been.

  “Would you have considered Stephanie to be immature?” I asked. Sometimes the best way is to be blunt.

  Dr. Yu smirked and nodded as her eyes cast downward. She looked up and said, “Yes, I suppose one could say that she was a little immature, from what I knew of her at least. We see patients for half a day on Saturdays and I could always count on her showing up late and complaining about a headache.”

  “So, she was hungover?” I asked.

  “She certainly seemed to be,” said Dr. Yu. “I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, but she definitely seemed to subscribe to the college student lifestyle on the weekends.”

  I nodded and made some notes. With as much Scotch as I drank, maybe I was a college kid at heart. “Did she have anyone you might consider an enemy? Someone maybe she argued with or didn’t get along with?” I asked.

  Dr. Yu shook her head. “No, I do not know of anyone who would fit that profile. Though, I was not familiar with anyone who associated with Stephanie outside of this office.”

  “Anything else you think I should know? I am doing this on behalf of her family and if there’s anything you can think of that might help bring some closure to them, it would be greatly appreciated.”

  The almond eyes of Dr. Yu were friendly but offered no insight. She shrugged. “I wish there was more I could say, but I cannot think of anything. If you have a card, I will be sure to contact you if anything comes to mind.”

  I hated when people asked for my card and assured me they would get back to me. That meant they were trying to get me out of the door. But I gave her my card and shook her hand while thanking her for her time.

  “One more thing that I was curious about,” I said. Motioning to the wall of degrees and awards I asked, “How does a well-respected doctor such as yourself end up in Billings?” I asked.

  Dr. Yu looked up and to her right as she considered her answer, gave an uncomfortable smile and her voice was a slightly higher pitch when she said, “I wanted to make an impact in an underserved community and I really enjoy ski
ing.”

  I grinned and nodded. “Sounds like a great fit then,” I said.

  The doctor grinned uncomfortably and nodded.

  I left the office and headed back home. The doctor had lied to me, so I made a note to look her up when I got back to my cabin. I had a feeling there was much more to her story than she was willing to divulge to me.

  Back at my cabin, I was munching on pizza while running Dr. Connie Yu through Google. A few sites mentioned her as having worked in Chicago previously. I looked up her medical license information for Illinois. Most people don’t realize that any medical board disciplinary action is public record and a lot of it is available online. I poked around until I found the right place on the website and found what I was looking for.

  Dr. Yu had been disciplined by the Illinois State Board of Medical Examiners in 2014 for a series of misdiagnoses of patients. She had been suspended and ordered to go through some kind of counseling. The order was very vague in parts and redacted in others. From what I could gather, it almost sounded like the doctor had some sort of nervous breakdown.

  Typically, when people move from another state to Montana and talk about a slower pace or outdoor stuff, they mention something about their family also having an influence. If she had said she did not want to raise her kids in Chicago and wanted a safer place for them, I would have probably believed her and moved on.

  I went through a few of my open-source databases and found that Dr. Yu had gone through a divorce around the time of her board suspension and also had several civil judgements against her. Apparently, several of her patients had got together and filed a class action lawsuit. Her husband was an attorney. I’m guessing after the lawsuit and the divorce, she must have come out okay enough to buy the clinic in Billings. Given the limited healthcare options in Montana, the board here was probably happy to have a doctor with a pulse and gave her a medical license.

  Nothing on the surface seemed too fishy about Dr. Yu other than she was probably a bad doctor. I was typing away on a report to record the day’s activities when I remembered my notebook in the Jeep. I stepped outside to retrieve and realized there was a yellow note under the rear windshield wiper. Apparently, since it was dark, I had not noticed it on the drive back to Roscoe. The name Becky and a phone number were written in black marker. I went back inside, dialing my cellphone as I closed the door behind me.