“Well, we got the analysis back from your friend at the crime lab and it looks like you were right,” Amanda reported. “The bottle of Anadrol you found in Hamill’s studio had been laced with tetrahydrozoline. Heavily. There seemed to be more of the eyedrops than actual steroids left in the bottle, so there is no question that when Hamill dosed himself, he pumped a lethal amount of it into himself.”
“Whoever laced the bottle wanted to make sure it was a done deal,” Spenser mused.
“That’s just diabolical,” Jacob said.
“Who hated this guy enough to do that?” Amanda asked.
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
Jacob tapped a few keys and put a picture of a man on the monitor. The man had a long, narrow face with a nose almost as prominent as his Adam’s apple, light brown hair that fell just below his shoulders, light caramel-colored eyes, and a cleft in a strong chin. It was obviously a booking photo, which meant the man had a record.
“Who am I looking at?” Spenser asked.
“This is Leonard Graham, aka Bo,” Jacob replied.
“Bo is thirty-six years old, he’s a bartender at the Whistle Stop, and according to his website, a longtime professional musician,” Amanda added.
“And he is not a fan of Seth Hamill at all,” Jacob said. “Hamill’s girlfriend was right. Bo has gone all in on the man, claiming that he’s a thief and a plagiarist. Here, watch.”
Jacob tapped a few keys, and the picture disappeared, replaced by a video. In the frame, Bo sat on a high stool in what appeared to be a recording studio, holding an acoustic guitar. Dressed in blue jeans with a large silver buckle, black boots, a blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a black Stetson atop his head, Bo was really working that cowboy image. The room he was in was dim, the walls all around him were soundproofed, and a microphone with a pop screen attached to it sat on a tripod in front of him. Bo strummed a few chords, then turned to the camera.
“Hey, y’all, Bo here. Thanks for tuning in today,” he said. “It’s now been a little over four months since I first tried to contact Seth Hamill about a song he’s claiming as his own, but in actuality, it is a song he stole from me.”
Bo picked out a soft cadence on the guitar, unintentionally creating a soft, soothing backdrop against the heat and venom in his voice. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, playing a little more, almost as if the music calmed him.
“Some of you have been on this journey with me since I started, so you already know,” he said, finally opening his eyes. “But for those of you who are new, let me give you a quick primer about the kind of disreputable hack Seth Hamill truly is.”
The picture cut to a music video of Bo playing a song titled “A Voice Like Honey.” It was a country tune that had twang to spare. It wasn’t her thing, but Spenser couldn’t deny that Bo had an engaging sound. If she’d been a country fan, she might like him. The video suddenly switched back to Bo in his studio, a quirky half-smile on his lips.
“That was my song, ‘A Voice Like Honey,’ which I wrote and recorded five years ago. Some of y’all have already it,” he said. “Now, watch this here.”
The picture cut to a video of Seth Hamill perched on a tall stool on stage in what looked like a small club. A spotlight speared him from above and gleamed brightly off the chrome microphone stand in front of him. He smiled out at the crowd.
“This here’s a new song I wanted to debut for you all tonight,” Hamill said. “I call it, ‘Sweeter than Honey.’”
Closing his eyes, he played a tune on his guitar that sounded a lot like Bo’s song. And the lyrics, though not an exact match, were strikingly similar. The video played for a minute, and the similarities between the two songs were too obvious to ignore. Finally, the video cut back to Bo in his studio.
“Did you catch that?” he asked. “He said he was debuting that song, right? Well, he debuted it some four years after I dropped mine.”
A still picture from the video we’d just watched popped back up on the screen. This time, Bo had highlighted the time and date stamp of the recording that sat discreetly in the lower right corner, which, according to what Spenser saw, showed that Hamill debuted that song just last year. Bo’s face popped back onto the screen, his expression tight, his eyes flickering with anger.
“Seth Hamill stole my work. He stole my music, and he stole my lyrics,” Bo declared. “Oh, he tweaked them a bit. Just enough that it allowed him to call it his own, but anybody with half a brain can put them songs up side by side and see they’re virtually identical. And ain’t nobody going to tell me I’m imagining this all. Watch both videos in full. Listen to the words as well as the music. It might not be note for note, but it might as well be.”
Bo bit off his words, and Spenser thought he might have been keeping himself from dropping an f-bomb or two. Or perhaps saying something that could land him in trouble. Bo took a beat to compose himself, then turned back to the camera.
“Rest assured, I’ll be looking to remedy this situation through legal channels,” he said. “Until then, I urge you all to boycott Seth Hamill’s shows. Don’t buy his albums, don’t download his music… let’s make our voices heard, people. Let’s make sure Seth gets the message that plagiarism is unacceptable. That it’s despicable and it won’t be tolerated. Help me out, guys. Thanks, and we’ll see you next time.”
The video cut out, and silence descended over the conference room for a moment as Spenser took a moment to digest everything they’d just seen.
“Well, I don’t think there’s any question that Seth lifted Bo’s music,” Amanda said.
Spenser shrugged. “Good luck proving that in court. I’m obviously not a lawyer, and I think the two songs are so similar that he probably did steal it, but the music and the lyrics have been changed just enough that it would make it almost impossible to win in court. All Seth has to say is that he sampled Bo’s music. I’ve read articles about copyright infringement cases like that, and just being similar isn’t enough, unfortunately.”
“And Bo gets the shaft,” Amanda said.
“Unfortunately, probably so,” Spenser replied. “But again, I’m not a lawyer, so take all that with a truckload of salt.”
“No, that sounds right. I’ve read articles about cases like that, too,” Jacob added. “It sucks for guys like Bo who are just trying to make a living doing something they love.”
“It’s got to hurt even more knowing Seth made a killing on that song. According to this, he added thousands of new subscribers to his platforms and had tens of thousands of downloads of that song,” Amanda read from her computer screen.
“That’s just wrong,” Jacob said.
“Very wrong,” Spenser said. “But also, could provide a pretty good motive for murder.”
“That’s very true,” Jacob conceded. “But does Bo really look like a guy who’d kill somebody? The guy is an artist—”
“Murderers come in all shapes and sizes,” Spenser reminded him.
“I can’t see him setting out to murder him. If he’s our guy, it seems more likely that he went to talk to Hamill and things just got out of hand,” Amanda offered.
“Unlikely. Hamill wasn’t killed in the heat of the moment,” Spenser said. “His death was methodical and planned out. It wasn’t spontaneous. Whoever killed Hamill meant to kill him.”
“Right. Of course,” Amanda said with an abashed grin.
“Okay, so what can you tell me about Bo Graham?” Spenser asked.
“He’s got a jacket,” Amanda said. “DUI, a couple of drunk and disorderlies, breaking and entering, and he caught an assault charge after a fight in a bar.”
