“But a homicide is different, someone has been murdered.”
While on a long drive for a hunting trip when he was perhaps fourteen or fifteen, unsure if being a cop was what he wanted in life, Mac McRyan asked his dad how he delivered the news to a family that they had lost a loved one. Simon McRyan was a gregarious, outgoing, larger than life personality who knew how to fill a room with fun and laughter. He could make a funny quip about anything and often, when making a serious point, he would start off with some humorous anecdote to soften the impending lesson. However, for this question from his son, Simon McRyan sat in silence for a number of minutes, looking out the windshield, deep in thought, before he carefully answered the question.
Mac’s dad quietly said that before he ever informed the next of kin, he always tried to put himself in the shoes of the family and how they would want to be told the news and what they would want to hear from the policeman that was giving them the news. The most important thing was to make an investment in the victim. Then his father looked him straight in the eye and said: “Son, this is the most important thing. If you become a cop, if you work homicides, you speak for the dead. That is the job. You become their voice. That is the obligation and it is a heavy one. It is an obligation that not everyone can carry. If you become a cop and you become a detective and you want to work homicides, you will have to ask yourself if you can carry that burden. If you can, then you can talk to the family because then you have that investment in the case. You will say: ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ and it will mean something to the family. They will trust that you will do everything you can to solve it and give them an answer, closure and maybe even a sense of justice.”
Mac thought about those words all the way back to the station. The ride allowed him to clear his mind before he made the call; the phone call that changes everything for a family. Lich had managed to find out that Gordon Oliver was from Wichita, Kansas. His father had died two years ago but he was survived by his mother. She was about to hear the news that she’d lost another man in her life. To make matters worse, Mac would have to deliver the news over the phone which didn’t seem right but was unavoidable.
He did the best he could with Janice Oliver.
Mrs. Oliver hadn’t spoken with her son in a week, other than via a few e-mails. Her son hadn’t mentioned any problems with anyone at work or anyplace else for that matter. He enjoyed his work and seemed happy. Mrs. Oliver didn’t have any information that seemed helpful. Mac told her he would be in touch with more information as it developed and that she should call him if she thought of anything. He took down a list of other family members to contact. After he hung up, he sat in his desk chair for a minute to collect himself. It had been a difficult conversation.
Lich had been sitting at his own desk twenty feet away, keeping a respectful distance while he listened in. When Mac hung up Lich left his desk for the breakroom. He came back with a cup of coffee for himself and his partner and said, “All in all, Mac, you did pretty well there.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s different than when you’re on patrol. In those cases, it was an accident, right?”
Mac nodded.
Lich continued, “In those cases, it’s an unfortunate set of circumstances, and the victim has died. It was an accident. But a homicide is different, someone has been murdered. It was intentional. The victim is still dead, but a homicide, that just hits people differently. It makes them ask why?”
Mac looked down for a moment and then pushed himself out of his desk chair, “Then let’s go figure out why Gordon Oliver was murdered.”
Their first stop was Gordon Oliver’s condo, which was a lofted apartment on the far eastern edge of downtown St. Paul, an area called Lowertown. The building, called The Parker Lofts, was a converted warehouse that was subdivided into condos. Oliver had a second floor unit. Mac and Lich, along with two crime scene techs, were let into the unit by the building manager.
The building was a secure building, requiring a key to get in. The front entrance to the apartment, as well as its parking garage, was monitored by video cameras. The manager said he would pull the camera footage to see if anyone unusual entered the building, particularly after midnight.
The loft was approximately one thousand square feet. The floor plan was open, with a kitchen opening into a large open living area that contained a leather sectional couch and easy chair situated around a large area rug and glass rectangular coffee table. The furniture framed a viewing area for the fireplace and a flat screen television. The bedroom and bathroom were positioned down a narrow hallway that ran behind the kitchen.
There was a standard amount of disorganization that evidenced it was occupied by a single, young professional male who worked long hours. The wool blanket on the couch wasn’t folded, there were four different bowls and three glasses in the kitchen sink, there were four pairs of shoes, three dress and one tennis, strewn on the floor mat by the door. The bed in the bedroom was unmade, his toiletries were spread across the vanity in the bathroom and papers were strewn across the small dining table near the kitchen.
“The place looks disorganized, but it doesn’t look like anyone ransacked the place,” Lich observed.
“No it doesn’t, although we need to review the video footage from the front door and garage to be sure,” Mac answered and jotted down a reminder. He perused the loose papers on the small table, a combination of work papers, legal briefs and cases and a few bills, one for cable and another for his cell phone. A red toolbox sat just to the side of the table and Mac smiled, thinking of the bartender’s statement, “You gotta use all the tools in the toolbox.” Of course, that referred to Oliver’s penchant to chase skirts.
Mac and Lich spent time knocking on a few doors but none of Oliver’s neighbors heard anything or were aware of any problems.