Bad Night at Dr. Dick’s
By A. L. Fahringer
“It’s going to be a hazy, hot, and humid night. Present temperature is 93 degrees, but it feels like 97. Keep those air conditioners running, folks.”
Cheerful weathermen on a hot July Saturday night really rub me the wrong way. Especially when I’m working Last Out, the midnight to 8:00 shift, my least favorite shift on a summer weekend, and filling in for a friend, no less. You never know what’s waiting when you walk into the Station.
“I’ll leave the air conditioner on for you, I promise,” I said to Francis Albert, my tuxedo cat, as I poured Meow Mix into his bowl. He just looked at me with that inscrutable look that cats get when they know they have the upper hand. You’d think he’d show some gratitude for being saved from the mean city streets, but not him. Still thought he should be out tomcatting around. Those days were over, probably for both of us—his thanks to expert snipping by a veterinarian, mine to expert snipping by a divorce lawyer.
I had a feeling this night would be a bad one as I drove downtown. All the dives were packed, and I knew tempers would flare soon enough. Just then, Glen Frey’s “You Belong to the City” popped up on the radio. A perfect accompaniment to the scene. I felt like I should be wearing a pastel t-shirt and sandals.
I paid special attention as I drove past the most popular of the dive bars, Poor Richard’s Tavern, better known as Dr. Dick’s. Its patriotic décor of murals featuring George Washington and Benjamin Franklin rarely inspired patriotic behavior among those who dared to enter within. Judging from the crowds both inside and outside its walls tonight, I ventured a guess that drinking beer was the only American tradition being celebrated.
"Hey, Lieutenant," Sergeant Pratt greeted me as I came into the Station. “We won’t be bored tonight. The heat is making everyone crazy. And there’s The Ambulance Chasers concert at The Urban Jungle to top everything off.”
“Oh no,” I groaned. The last time this band was in town we had to shut down half the bars downtown and had a record number of disorderly conduct arrests. And that was in the middle of winter!
“Do we have extra officers on duty tonight?”
Sergeant Pratt nodded. “The Captain called in as many as he could and extended some shifts to cover all possible situations.”
“I hope it’ll be enough,” I said and went into my office. I immediately sent off a nasty text to Lieutenant Ed O’Connor, my now former best friend who said he had an out-of-town emergency this week; the reason the Captain called me in from my usual Special Investigations Unit duty as a temporary fill-in.
It didn’t take long for arrests to come in. There were so many drunken brawls in and outside bars that only the bloodiest ones were brought in for booking. I ordered our men and women in uniform to break up fights rather than arrest the participants. It seemed to be the most prudent thing to do to save us from wasting time on lesser crimes and to focus on the more serious ones, like stabbings and shootings. And there were plenty of those that Saturday night. In ten minutes we had two stabbings, one major brawl at Lou’s Po’boy’s, and several shootings. The Rescue squads and Emergency Rooms were kept busy.
At 2:30 a call came in reporting “a lot of trouble at Dr. Dick’s.” What a surprise!
“Lieutenant,” Sergeant Pratt called out from the front desk, “I think this is something you should handle yourself. It involves The Ambulance Chasers.” Another big surprise. That band brings nothing but trouble.
“Ok, Sergeant. I’ll be right there.”
I walked into the interrogation room to see a small, bloodied, but smiling young man being held down by two of our larger police officers. “This is Joel Montgomery, Lieutenant,” said Officer Symon. “He had an altercation with Steve Conrad, the drummer of The Ambulance Chasers, and bit off part of his ear.”
This was way more than I had expected, even from a place like Dr. Dick’s. “I can’t wait to hear this,” I said as I closed the door to the room.
“Sir, he won’t open his mouth and spit out the ear,” reported Officer Symon.
“What!”
“We’ve been trying to pry open his mouth, and he won’t do it. Just keeps smiling.”
Oh, boy. This was turning out to be quite a night. “Give me the details of the whole episode. Then we’ll see about getting his mouth open.”
“Well, sir, it seems as though Mr. Montgomery and the drummer, Mr. Conrad, have a long history, and not a good one. Well, one thing led to another, and they got into a fight, and Mr. Montgomery got Mr. Conrad’s ear in his mouth and bit down. He chomped off his ear lobe along with a diamond stud. Mr. Conrad screamed and had blood streaming down his neck and back. His bandmates grabbed a bottle of vodka from the bar and poured it on the wound, while Mr. Montgomery here ran out of Dr. Dick’s with the ear lobe in his mouth. Some bar patrons ran after him, grabbed him, and held him down until we arrived on the scene. We searched him for weapons and brought him in.”
“So, where’s the drummer now? Did he go to the hospital?”
“No, Sir,” put in the other officer, Officer Hanes. “His bandmates said he just wanted to go to his hotel room and bandage his ear. Some of them wanted to take him to the hospital and followed him to the door but couldn’t stop him. They came back and ordered drinks for everyone, and once news of the fight and free drinks broke out, Dr. Dick’s was even more crowded than before.”
“What hotel?” I asked.
“The Ritz Hilton, only a couple of blocks from Dr. Dick’s.”
“Get someone over to the hotel and bring the drummer in here right now,” I called out to Sergeant Pratt.
A quarter of an hour later, Sergeant Pratt stuck his head in the door and reported that the drummer had not returned to the hotel.
“Search the area around the bar. Maybe he passed out.”
The call came in not more than ten minutes later that Steve Conrad’s body was found among the trash bags behind Dr. Dick’s.
I had always thought of Dr. Dick’s as a crime scene, and now it really was. I started barking orders to Pratt. “Get the Crime Lab down there ASAP and clear out the area. Call all available homicide detectives to Dr. Dick’s and start interviewing. Tell the officers on the scene to get all reporters and their cameras out of there now! The last thing we need is an even bigger crowd.”
“I’ll tackle Mr. Montgomery myself,” I said.
I went back into the interrogation room and looked at Joel Montgomery’s bloody, smiling face. “Joel, Steve Conrad has died under mysterious circumstances, and since you’re the last one to have anything to do with him, I’m asking you for the last time to spit out his ear.”
The smile faded from his lips and his eyes widened in fear. “Officer Symon, get a glass,” I ordered. “Spit it out, Joel, now!”
He opened his mouth and spit. Out came a bloody ear lobe pierced by a diamond ear stud. “I didn’t do anything to him, Lieutenant, honest! I only bit off his ear.” His voice was whiny and set my teeth on edge, making it difficult not to pre-judge him.
“We’ve hated each other since first grade. He always bullied me, stole my lunch money, put me down in front of my friends, and last year stole my girlfriend. I finally had a chance to confront him tonight, and just lost it. After biting his ear, I felt great. King of the Hill and all that. I was going to take that ear and put it in a jar and post it on Instagram. He’d never bully me again. But I didn’t kill him! I’m not a violent person. I want to save lives, not take them.”
His statement seemed to be missing a few pages and did nothing to convince me of his innocence. “Book him on aggravated assault charges, Sergeant,” I said, “And put that ear on ice. I’m going over to Dr. Dick’s.”
The Captain called me on my way to Dr. Dick’s and told me to take charge of the investigation since this was a high-profile case. The old familiar energy of being out on a homicide case didn’t take long to emerge. I was back where I belonged. Special Investigations was fun, but nothing beat a good murder.
When I pulled up to the bar, I could see that our Crime Lab team had done a great job of clearing out the area. Yellow crime scene tape cordoned off Dr. Dick’s, but an ever-growing crowd was amassing on the surrounding streets.
Exhaust from multiple police vehicles plus their red and blue flashing lights only made the steamy air more visible. The Medical Examiner’s van was waiting at the alley entrance while the body was being examined. Calls coming over police radios added a sense of urgency. If I were directing a TV cop show, this is the scene I’d create. I walked into Dr. Dick’s.
“We’re saving the band interviews for you, Lieutenant,” was the greeting I got from George Franklin, the chief Homicide Detective on the scene.
George was one of the best detectives on the force, which is why I wanted him to join my Special Investigations Unit when it was created. He loved being in Homicide and turned me down. I was very happy to see him on this case and to have the opportunity to work with him again.
“Let me know what you have so far, George.”
“Steve Conrad, drummer for The Ambulance Chasers, missing one left ear lobe, appears to have been stabbed, found among garbage bags behind Dr. Dick’s. Seems to have staggered there after being stabbed and died.”
“And no one saw anything?”
“Surprisingly, no. You’d think that with such a big crowd, this band, and the fight, someone would have paid attention. It reminds me of the bar fight in Star Wars after Obi-Wan cuts off the hand of that guy, and everyone acts like nothing happened. Even in Dr. Dick’s, no one wants to get involved.”
“What about surveillance cameras?”
“It turns out that the cameras are mostly for show. Apparently, what happens in Dr. Dick’s, stays in Dr. Dick’s. The one outside in the alley might have been working. The Crime Lab boys are checking it out now.”
Well, that wasn’t encouraging.
“Homicide’s questioning the bar patrons who were outside to see if they noticed Conrad leaving, and if so, who followed him,” George added.
“Where are the band members now?” I asked.
“Over there by the bar. Good luck.”
I looked over at the bar at the four men, probably in their early thirties, looking a little worse for wear, sitting on the bar stools. They all had that trendy one-day growth of beard that on most men looks stylish but on me looks like I woke up in the gutter after an all-night bender. Their hair was long, necessary, I guessed, for their performances. I wasn’t a fan of their music, but it was popular with the younger, edgier crowds. They were wearing what I assumed was their off-duty uniform: jeans and red t-shirts with an ambulance on the front.
As George and I walked over to the bar, I checked out the scene. It wasn’t a very pretty one. With the lights on, one could see why Dr. Dick’s deserved its reputation as the worst dive bar in town. Along with the sawdust (useful for soaking up beer and other fluids I didn’t want to think about), peanut shells, bugs (something else I didn’t want to think about), and other bar debris on the floor, were pieces of broken glass and blood all over the bar.
“Has this area been processed yet?” I asked.
George nodded. “Crime Lab took photos and samples of the blood. Who knew ears bled so much?”
“I assume they’ve also checked out the sawdust for blood, although who knows who it’s from in this place.” I shuddered inwardly. I counted my lucky stars that I never joined the forensics team. “What about all this glass?”
One of the band members spoke up. “It’s from the bottle of vodka we grabbed from the bar. We smashed the bottle and poured vodka on Steve’s ear. I guess it burned like hell ‘cause he screamed even louder than he did when it was bit off.”
“And you are…?”
“Ray Morgan, lead singer.” He had presence, that’s for sure. Lots of self-assurance. Probably necessary when you front a band called The Ambulance Chasers. “I’ll introduce you to the other band members.” He pointed to the one furthest to the left. “That’s Bill Reynolds, bass guitar.” The man next to him was introduced as the lead guitar, Pete Barnes. And the third member was the keyboardist, Lance Logan. “I’ll save you some time by letting you know that we’re all lawyers who got tired of the legal rat race and discovered that we were also musicians. So, we quit our day jobs, named ourselves The Ambulance Chasers as a jab at our former profession, and went on tour. Much to our surprise, we were an instant hit, and our albums and downloads have provided us with a comfortable income. We kept our law licenses just in case.”
Now, maybe that last sentence was just a statement of fact and not a warning or threat, but since these guys were lawyers, I was pretty sure it was the latter. But I couldn’t figure out why, since no one had been accused of anything. My old homicide investigation senses started to prickle, and I’m pretty sure George’s had too, from the look on his face. Maybe we needed to look at these guys a little closer. (Need I mention that I don’t like lawyers?)
“So, why don’t you tell us what happened from the beginning,” I said.
“That crazy guy, Joel Montgomery, has been bugging us ever since we started,” began Ray Morgan. “It seems that he and Steve had known each other since grade school and had grudges going back years. They had a fight when we played here last winter, but it didn’t go much beyond a couple of punches. He’s been trolling Steve on social media and indicated that something special would happen at the concert. Nothing happened there, so we knew that he’d probably show up here tonight, and we were ready for a fight. But we never expected him to bite off Steve’s ear!”
“Anyway, we’d been here for about an hour when Montgomery came strutting in like he owned the place, pushed through the crowd, and stopped right in front of Steve. Steve continued drinking and just ignored him, which seemed to get under Montgomery’s skin.”
“‘Look at me when I’m talking to you, Steve!’” he shouted. ‘I’ve had it with you and your bullying. You’re never going to forget this night. I have a special surprise in store for you.’ Then he started laughing like a lunatic in that high whiny voice of his.
“Steve snickered and said something like, ‘Yeah, put up or shut up, you little twerp. What’re you gonna do, poke me with your finger?’ He sneered at Montgomery. ‘Hell, you’re so wimpy you couldn’t even keep your girlfriend. Taking her from you was a piece of cake. She was real happy to have a real man if you know what I mean. If you don’t get out of my sight right now, I’ll make sure YOU never forget this night.’ Then he flipped Montgomery the bird and leaned back against the bar.
“Well, that really set Montgomery off. He started hopping up and down and getting more and more agitated. Then, all of a sudden, he lunged at Steve, jumped on him and grabbed him by his hair, yanked his head back, and bit off his ear. I had no idea someone that puny could be so strong.”
The keyboardist, Lance Logan, spoke up. “Steve screamed, and Montgomery ran off. Some of the guys in the bar chased him outside and grabbed him and held him for the cops. We stayed with Steve. There was a roll of paper towels under the bar that we used as bandages and then soaked with vodka to disinfect the wound. We all were pretty drunk and shocked and in a hurry and couldn’t get the bottle open so I smashed it on the bar. That’s where the pieces of glass came from.”
“Steve wasn’t pleasant under the best circumstances, and this made him nastier than usual,” continued Ray Morgan. “He pushed us aside and said he just wanted to go back to the hotel. He muttered something about suing the bar and the band and putting Montgomery behind bars for the rest of his life. In his defense, he did have a lot to drink tonight, but he was crazy with pain and anger.”
“Why would he want to sue the band,” George interrupted. “Didn’t you all get along?”
I had also picked up on that statement, but George beat me to the question. As I said before, he was a great detective.
“Steve had this notion that he was the founder of the band and therefore controlled our agenda and was entitled to most of the profits,” Bill Reynolds, the bass guitarist added. The other band members snorted at this statement.
“Not true, of course. Steve was a mean bully and always tried to push us around,” Ray Morgan added. “He conveniently forgot that we drew up an ironclad agreement when we formed the band. We all get a say in everything we do and share equally in any money we make.”
“But, he claimed to have found a loophole that gave him control. Also not true,” he went on. “Our contract was so tight that if any of us wanted to leave the group or wanted to throw someone out of it, we all would have to agree and sign over one-fifth of our assets to the one leaving. And, you’ll find this out eventually, but we all wanted to get rid of Steve.”
“But not by murdering him!” shouted Lance Logan. “Legally. By terms of our contract.”
“And how did Steve feel about this?” I asked.
“Well, actually, Lieutenant, he didn’t know. We were working behind the scenes on the best way to do it,” Ray Morgan looked troubled. “I think that tonight he may have had an inkling that something was in the works. His performance at the concert was off, and his mood was way worse than ever.”
“So, basically, his demise tonight was a blessing in disguise for you,” said George.
They all looked quite shocked at this statement, but I could tell that the thought had occurred to each one of them, although they immediately put on their lawyer faces.
“Steve was our friend, and although we’ve been going through some bad times, none of us wanted this to happen to him.” This came from Pete Barnes, the lead guitarist. “He didn’t deserve to die this way.”
“Someone thought so,” I said. I’d had just about enough of these guys. Someone was lying. I just had to find out who. The AC in Dr. Dick’s was barely working, I was starting to feel the heat, notice the smells, and my patience was wearing thin. “I see that some of you have blood on your clothes and have cuts on your arms and hands. How did that happen?”
“As I said, we smashed the bottle of vodka on the bar, shooting pieces of glass on us, and I grabbed the jagged edge of the bottle, cutting my hand,” said Lance Logan. “I didn’t notice if the others got cut, but there was a lot of confusion. Steve was bleeding a lot, and so was I. I wrapped my hand with paper towels and worked on Steve’s ear.”
“Hmm,” I muttered and walked away. I called George over. “Don’t you think that’s a lot of blood just from a torn ear lobe and a couple of cut hands and arms? I wonder if Steve had other injuries before he left the bar. Maybe he was stabbed here, not outside.”
“Could be, I suppose,” agreed George. “But, then, how did he make it to the back alley without leaving a blood trail?”
“Bled internally? Anyway, I want a thorough check of the entire bar and found all the pieces of broken glass. See if any are missing or are exceptionally bloody. I also want the band members’ wounds processed, and fingerprint them all. I don’t trust any of them one bit.”
“Ah, stabbed with a shard of Smirnoff.” George smiled. “It’s possible, but I don’t think any weapon was found in or around the body.”
“Let’s see if the medical examiner has had a chance to examine the body. Hopefully, the weapon is still in him. I’m going out for some air and to check out the alley.” I went outside, and almost immediately wanted to go back inside. The air was so heavy with humidity you could see it, and the alley smelled worse than inside Dr. Dick’s.
Another Homicide Detective, Jake Harrison, came up to me, followed by a large man wearing a Poor Richard’s Tavern t-shirt. “This is Mike Malone, the bartender,” he said. “He has a lot to say about the band and the fight that I think you should hear.”
“Over here to my car. We may as well be somewhere cool,” I said. I wanted to be comfortable when I heard his story. I started the car and welcomed the blast of air conditioning and immediately felt better. “That’s one of the greatest inventions of all time, no doubt about it,” I exclaimed. “Now, Mr. Malone, let’s hear what you have to say.”
“I’ve seen a lot of bad dudes in my years at Dr. Dick’s, but none as bad as this band. Trouble follows them everywhere they go. I’m sure you remember last winter? They may be hot-shot lawyers, but to me, they were just punks out for trouble. They must have been fighting even before they came to the bar ‘cause all of them were in really foul tempers, cursing at each other, and obviously drunk. They were having an angry discussion, to put it mildly, about their performance. I guess the drummer, the guy that got his ear bit off and died, was way off in his drumming, and that threw the rest of the band off. They were furious, and then one of them said the band would be better off without him. Well, that led to even more cursing and yelling, and some legal mumbo-jumbo from all of them. By the time Joel came in, they weren’t speaking to each other and were quite drunk. No wonder the drummer got into that fight with him. But the last thing I expected was the ear thing. I didn't think the little dude had it in him.”
“Wait, do you know Montgomery?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. He comes in here almost every night after his shift for a drink or two.”
“Where does he work?”
“He’s an EMT at Franklin Ambulance Service just down the street. Pretty strong, too, for such a little guy. That’s why it took a couple of guys to hold him down until the police came.”
I made a mental note of that information and told Malone to continue. “Tell me about the fight.”
“Joel and the drummer really got into a war of words and gestures, and it got really hot, and then the drummer gave Joel the finger. I guess that was the final straw, ‘cause he yelled and jumped on the drummer. Pushed him back, grabbed his hair, and chomped down on his ear, all Mike Tyson-like. Had to hold onto him for balance, I guess, but then he jumped off, and ran out of the bar. The drummer was screaming and bleeding, and everyone was in shock. I grabbed the roll of paper towels I keep behind the bar and handed it to one of the band. Another one grabbed a nearby bottle of vodka and smashed it on the bar to open it. I don't know why since the bottle was already open. They’d been drinking out of it all night. I think he cut his hand when he did that, ‘cause he was bleeding. There was a lot of blood by then. The drummer kept screaming that he was in a lot of pain and wanted to go back to the hotel. He kind of staggered out. I thought he was just drunk and maybe lost his balance on account of losing his ear. The band followed him to the door but came back without him. Ordered drinks for everyone and seemed sobered up.
“Did you happen to notice if the victim had any reactions to anything besides getting his ear bitten off?” I asked. “Like being stabbed?”
Malone thought about it for a minute, and then said he couldn’t be sure since there was so much going on. “He did keep yelling that he was in pain, but I think everyone assumed it was from his ear. But, now that you mention it, there was a lot of blood. That one band dude cut his hand and got that blood all over the bar and anyone close to him. But, no, I couldn’t tell if anything else happened to him. Sorry.”
“Thanks,” I said as he left the car.
Just then, my phone rang. “Medical Examiner” flashed on the screen. I hoped he had something good to report. “Hey, Sam. Got some news for me?”
“I’ve got news, Jim, but I’m not sure you’re going to like it. Preliminary examination shows one major stab wound between his ribs on the left side. Didn’t kill him immediately, but it didn’t take long. There was another stab wound just under his left shoulder blade. Not too deep, but it also caused a lot of bleeding. And a smaller stab wound in his right side. Also not deep, but it bled a lot, too. That one had some slivers of glass in it.”
“Like, say, from a bottle of vodka?” I asked.
“Couldn’t say for sure until I see the bottle in question. The fatal wound was from a short, thin blade, not glass. The wound in his shoulder blade was from something jagged, but thin, maybe glass, maybe a serrated knife. He died from the wound between his ribs, but the other wounds contributed to the blood loss. That’s all I’ve got so far. I’ll let you know as soon as I get anything else.”
“Thanks, Sam. Looks like we might have a Murder on the Orient Express scene on our hands. I’ll get samples of the vodka bottle over to you now.”
As I slowly left the car, Jake came out of the alley followed by one of the Crime Lab team who was holding a plastic bag with something inside.
“Lieutenant, I think we may have found the murder weapon,” he said. “It was under one of the garbage bags behind Dr. Dick’s.”
“Is that a scalpel?” I had been expecting something like this ever since I found out that Joel Montgomery was an EMT. Maybe biting Conrad’s ear was just a cover for murder.
“It appears to be,” said the Crime Lab tech. “We’ll process it immediately and let you know what we find.”
“Process the glass from that vodka bottle at the same time. See what, if any, of the glass shards could have been used as weapons. I’m going back inside to re-question the band.”
I reluctantly reentered Dr. Dick’s.
While I had been outside, the Crime Lab had picked up the broken glass, processed the wounds on Lance Logan’s hand and bandaged it, and checked out the wounds on the other band members.
“So, do you guys have anything else to say? Like, about the fight you all were having before and during your arrival at Dr. Dick’s? Where you basically told Conrad to drop dead?”
All four of them immediately put on their lawyer faces again and said nothing. (Did I mention how much I hate lawyers?) “We have witnesses to your fight, so you can lawyer up all you want, but the truth will come out.”
They looked at each other, and then Ray Morgan spoke up. “Yeah, we were having a disagreement. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a fight. Steve’s playing was off tonight and we were all mad as hell. Words may have been said, but none of us told him to drop dead.”
“Be that as it may, you all had good reasons to see the end of Steve Conrad. We’ll continue this discussion down at Homicide. These officers will escort you there now.”
As they were led out of Dr. Dick's, George joined me. “I’m so happy to leave this place,” he said. “I’ll see you in a few.” And with that, he left me alone in that awful place.
George had worked with me often enough to know that I needed some uninterrupted time to reconstruct the crime scene in my mind and work out a solution, no matter how bizarre it seemed. I “put on my Sherlock hat,” as my fellow detectives always said. And this was a very bizarre crime indeed, and I'm not just referring to the ear incident.
Going by the statements of participants and witnesses, I put myself into the events of the evening, paying attention to the locations and movements of everyone. Several things still puzzled me. Number one was the scalpel. When did Montgomery stab Conrad—yes, I was sure Montgomery stabbed him—and how did it end up in the alley? Number two was the smashed vodka bottle. Why?
The solution hit me with a jolt. If I was correct, and I was almost positive I was, this was a case of hot- and cold-blooded murder, one of the worst I’d ever seen. I put in a call to Sergeant Pratt to transfer Joel Montgomery to Homicide. I said I was heading there now.
I decided to interview Joel Montgomery first. George joined me in the interrogation room, and since this was the first time he’d seen Montgomery, he couldn’t hide the surprise on his face. He looked even smaller behind the table in the interrogation room, if that was possible. He was dwarfed by the officer standing behind him. He still had traces of blood on his face.
“Hello, Joel,” I began. “I’m not going to beat around the bush. We found the scalpel, and it’s got your fingerprints all over it. Do you want to tell us how you murdered Steve Conrad?”
“I didn’t kill him, I swear!” he squeaked out. “He was alive when I left the bar.”
“So, did the scalpel decide to stab him on its own?” George asked.
“I only wanted his ear, honest,” Joel said. “I admit that I came into Dr. Dick’s with a scalpel, but it was to cut off his ear, not stab him. I flashed the scalpel at him just before he flipped me the bird, but he just laughed. So, I jumped on him, and he moved, and I lost my balance, and the scalpel went into his side. He let out a yell, and I decided to use the opportunity to get his ear anyway. I have very sharp teeth, you know.” And then he opened his mouth, showing two rows of very pointy teeth.
Both George and I shuddered at this revelation, as Joel continued. “Since I accomplished what I came for, I ran out of there. But he was still alive, and anyone there can swear to it. His screams could be heard all the way out of the bar and down the street.”
“Ah, but you as an EMT knew when the scalpel came out, he’d bleed to death immediately, didn’t you?” I asked.
Joel started crying. “I save lives, not take them. I felt really bad about the stabbing, but I figured someone there would know enough not to take out the scalpel and would call 911. It’s not my fault that they didn’t. But the world is better off now that Conrad’s dead, believe me.”
Boy, talk about shifting the blame! “Get him out of here,” I told the officer, “and get him booked for murder. We’ll let the DA decide which degree.”
Now to tackle the band of lawyers. This was going to be tricky.
They’d all been processed when they were brought into Homicide, and it was determined that both guitarists had no cuts and only minimal blood on them, so they gave their statements and were released on their own recognizance. That left Ray Morgan and Lance Logan, both of whom I disliked immensely.
We decided to interview them together hoping one of them would slip up, but then again, they were lawyers.
“So, what kind of law did you practice?” I asked when we were all seated in the room.
“Both Lance and I, medical malpractice,” Ray Morgan replied. “Bill and Pete, corporate law, and Steve, contracts.”
“Hmm, so when Steve said he found a loophole, he probably did,” said George.
Both band members looked at each other and then at us. Finally, Ray Morgan spoke up. “We didn’t think it was a loophole, just an oversight regarding the rights to our music. The contract only needed a little tweaking.”
“But Steve wouldn’t have any of it, that POS,” put in Lance Logan. “He wanted all the royalties for himself, and to cut us out of any profits we were all entitled to. That’s what our fight tonight was about, besides his rotten performance.”
“So, when you two saw that scalpel flash in Joel Montgomery’s hand tonight and then saw it go into Steve’s ribs, both of you immediately came up with a solution to your problem by letting Steve die, didn’t you?” I couldn't keep the disgust and horror out of my voice.
They both turned impassive faces toward me as I continued.
“I found it very suspicious that you smashed an already open bottle of vodka to open it, and conveniently cut your hand to, perhaps, provide more blood as a cover for something more sinister. You decided to help him along by stabbing him with glass shards, but making it look like he was hit by flying glass.”
“I’m assuming you, Lance, used a longer, jagged piece of glass to stab Steve in his left shoulder while pouring vodka on his ear. That was likely the cause of the loud scream everyone mentioned, not vodka on his ear. And you deliberately cut your hand to hide any traces of Steve’s blood.”
Lance Logan just laughed aloud at this statement and shook his head.
“And, you, Ray, followed Steve out of Dr. Dick’s showing concern, but as you patted him on the back, you stabbed him with another piece of glass, but this time, some slivers stayed. I’m sure we’ll find your fingerprints all over them.”
“And when Steve got outside, in his pain and agony, he pulled out the scalpel and died just as you two hoped he would.”
Ray Morgan also laughed and shook his head. “You’re really stretching to find a solution, aren’t you Lieutenant? We never saw Montgomery stab Steve. We only saw him bite off his ear.”
“If that were the case, both of you would be showing some elements of surprise or shock at my statement and would be calling for Montgomery’s head. But neither of you has, so I presume that you already knew. You two were sitting closest to Steve and could see the scalpel in Montgomery’s hand quite clearly and saw it go into his side. You also knew that he would soon bleed to death so you didn’t try to stop him or call 911. This is cold-hearted, cold-blooded murder at its worst. Better get yourselves a good lawyer.”
And with that parting shot, I walked out leaving the booking and other details to George.
It was now 8 a.m., the end of my shift. I called Sergeant Pratt to check out and headed home. The city streets were deserted of the denizens of the night and were now filling up with the usual Sunday morning workforce and churchgoers. Dr. Dick’s was still surrounded by yellow police tape. I hoped it would stay closed for good, but I knew that was a futile wish. It would probably reopen and be more popular than ever. Hell, they’d probably even leave the bloodstains on the bar for “atmosphere.”
The House of the Rising Sun started playing on the radio. Yep, a perfect end to a hot night in a hot city.
Francis Albert greeted me as I opened my front door, complaining as he led me to his bowl in the kitchen.
“You don’t know how good you have it, Francis,” I said as I followed him, “until you’ve had a bad night at Dr. Dick’s.”
