Amanda turned to her. “What about them?”
“I don’t think Anadrol is easy to get. Can we track where he was buying them from?”
“Unless he’s buying them in a dark parking lot and paying cash for them, we should be able to find out,” Jacob said.
“He’s probably doing what everybody does these days and buying them online,” Amanda offered. “You can get pretty much anything online.”
“I’m looking into his financials,” Jacob said. “Give me one minute.”
The tap-tap-tap of Jacob’s fingers flying over his keyboard filled the conference room as Spenser quietly waited for him to dig something up. His brow furrowed as he stared at his screen, concentrating hard as he worked.
“You’re right that he wasn’t popular with everybody,” Amanda said.
“What do you mean?”
“I found a couple of blog posts from disgruntled fans,” she said. “They said Hamill is a fraud and a fake—which kind of seems redundant to me.”
“And what inspired these tirades?”
“They don’t say. It seems like they’re simply airing general personal attacks.”
Spenser tapped the pen against her bottom lip. “That doesn’t help, unfortunately.”
“I’ll see if I can get an IP address and figure out where these clowns are when I’m done here, boss,” Jacob said without looking up from his screen.
“It looks like one of the same people who put up those blog posts hit the gym’s Yelp page,” Amanda said. “Lots of vitriolic reviews claiming Hamill is a fraud… again, with nothing specific, more general angry ranting.”
“What makes you think it’s the same people?” Spenser asked.
“Same phrasing and punctuation mistakes. It’s too coincidental to not be the same person.”
“Unfortunately, until we know who this guy is, we can’t find out what his specific beef is,” Spenser said. “It may be nothing at all.”
“But it could be something.”
“Maybe. We won’t know until we figure out who he is.”
“Just need a little time,” Jacob said.
“Not pressuring you,” Spenser told him.
“Not yet, anyway,” Amanda added.
“Okay, well, I can take one thing off my plate,” Jacob crowed. “I found a recurring monthly charge on Hamill’s financials over the last eight months. It tracks to a UK-based company called Sherex. They’re a drug and supplement company. I haven’t browsed their online catalog yet, but if I were to take a guess, I’d say that’s where he was getting his Anadrol.”
“Can confirm,” Amanda said. “They sell the stuff.”
“Okay, so he was buying steroids from a company based overseas,” Spenser said, trying to work it out in her head. “Could it have been a bad product? Who knows where these companies get it from?”
“I’ll check them out,” Amanda jumped in. “I’ll be the curious consumer who wants to know more about Sherex’s products.”
Jacob glanced at her skeptically. “You think they’ll be honest with you?”
“I think if they’re confident about their products, they’ll be happy to boast where they source from,” Amanda told him. “Haven’t you ever seen Consumer Reports?”
“I try to avoid watching too much TV, especially crime cases,” he said dryly. “At least I have ever since I started working here. I get enough real-life murder and drama hanging out with you guys. But okay, I see your point.”
Spenser laughed. “You would not have made it working with me back in the day.”
“Back in the day, I’m pretty sure you would have been trying to lock me up,” Jacob said, referring to his days as a black hat hacker. Allegedly.
“You might be right,” Spenser replied. “But anyways, to be fair, until we know for sure, we can’t get locked into one thing. Calling somebody a fraud can encompass a lot of different things. This may just be an accident with a bad product, but we need to stay open to the idea that his steroid use may have played only a secondary role in his death.”
“Fair enough,” Amanda said. “I’ll contact Sherex.”
“Great. Jacob, get to work tracking down Hamill’s cell phone records, as well as the person who left those angry messages,” she replied and turned to Amanda. “Based off the calls and messages, I think we have enough for a search. So, looks like we’re going to take a field trip.”
“Go ahead and seal off the house,” Spenser said to Deputy Lane Summers. “We are now considering this an active crime scene.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Spenser watched as the deputy began winding yellow tape around the square columns that held the roof up over the porch of the small, craftsman-style home. The exterior was forest green with deep, rich brown trim around the windows and door frame. A pair of deck chairs stained dark with green cushions flanked a matching table stationed between them, and a colorful welcome mat stood in front of the door. The yard was minimally landscaped but neatly kept, and a concrete walk led from the street to the three stairs up to the porch, then wound around to the side of the house and disappeared behind the gate.
Satisfied that Summers had the front of the house all buttoned up, Spenser turned and walked inside. The interior of Hamill’s house was done in soft earth tones and was spartan. He clearly believed in a minimalistic, almost monastic, lifestyle. She snapped on a pair of black nitrile gloves, then walked around the living room. It held one couch, one coffee table, and a flatscreen TV set atop a narrow wooden credenza that was pushed against the wall. Generic artistic prints and black and white photographs, the sort that come in stock when you buy the cheap frames, hung on the walls. Nothing about the main room of Hamill’s house conveyed any sense of his personality. It was almost antiseptic.
