“Sorry. I tried,” Spenser said. “I really tried.”
Amanda rolled her eyes but grinned. “Anyway, all that to say what Bo said sounds plausible. That’s just what creatives do sometimes. They shut out the world around them and go to some other plane to create their art.”
“That’s fair,” Spenser said. “But with all due respect to Aunt Yoli, we need to confirm Bo’s alibi, weak as it is, and either definitively include or exclude him from our suspect pool. We can’t simply take his word that he was in his apartment on another plane the whole time.”
“Speaking of suspects,” Amanda started. “Jacob was able to get through some of Hamill’s encrypted files. Apparently, there were more people angry with him for his steroid use than we first thought. There was a file filled with correspondence from angry clients—”
“Angry former clients,” Jacob corrected.
“Right. Angry former clients,” she agreed. “Anyway, I’ve spent most of the day running them down and talking to them.”
“Oh, speaking of the suspect pool, we can probably go ahead and knock Joel Russell off it,” Jacob mentioned. “I finished a background on him and there are no shady connections I could find. Ditto that on dark web chat rooms and his financials… nothing popped. I haven’t found anything connecting him to Hamill’s death. Like, at all. This guy really does just seem to be out there living his best life.”
“That’s great. Excellent work, guys. Really good stuff,” Spenser praised them. “Did you happen to learn anything new?”
“Of the four people I spoke with, bupkis. I didn’t get a bad hit off any of them. They were just angry about being betrayed. They were furious that they were working their butts off while their trainer was taking shortcuts. And I can’t say I blame them really,” she said.
“No, that makes sense. In their place, I’d probably be pretty pissed, too,” Spenser agreed. “How many more do you have on the list?”
“We’ve got five others that we should probably check out.”
“Okay, let’s divide up the list and have a go at them.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Amanda jotted down a few names and addresses on a piece of paper and handed it to Spenser. She looked it over then started to move for the door, hoping to talk to these people and get them either ruled in or out of the suspect pool before calling it a day. Amanda must have had the same thought because she got to her feet as well.
“Hey, wait up,” Jacob said.
They both turned. Jacob’s eyes were focused on his laptop screen and the tip of his tongue poked out the corner of his mouth as his fingers flew over the keyboard. Silence lingered in the air for a moment before he looked up at them.
“For whatever it’s worth, Bo posted some of his recording sessions on the days in question to his YouTube channel,” he said and gestured to the monitor on the wall.
The screen lit up as Jacob called up the sessions he was referring to. He hit play on the first clip, and they watched as Bo strummed out a tune, softly singing along with it. His lips twisted wryly as he stopped playing then turned to the camera.
“This is how the sausage is made, boys and girls,” he said. “You’re going to hit some wrong notes when you’re working with new material or find that some lyrics don’t quite fit with the intention of the song. That passage I just sang right there? It doesn’t quite convey what I wanted, so I’m going to have to rework the wording to improve the flow. If you want to be a working musician, this is the process you’re going to have to go through. And you’ll have to get used to the fact that no song is ever going to seem finished.
“If you’re a perfectionist, you need to abandon that mindset right now because no song is ever going to be perfect. If you’re worth your salt as an artist, you will always find ways to improve it. The trick is getting it to a point where you’re satisfied. You’ll probably never be happy over the moon, but you need to get to a place of satisfaction because, as an artist, that’s about the best you can hope for.”
Jacob hit a key to endthe clip and pointed to the screen. “The time stamp says that clip was posted right around the time Seth Hamill was dying on stage.”
Amanda pulled a face. “You know those things can be set to post at a predetermined time. That doesn’t prove anything.”
“I figured you’d be skeptical, so I dug a little deeper,” Jacob said. “These weren’t preset to drop at a specific time. These were posted when the time stamp says they were posted. And he’s got quite a few of these ‘making the sausage’ videos over that two-day time period.”
Amanda frowned. “Are we even sure the steroids were laced over that two-day time period, Sheriff? It could have been laced earlier.”
“Doubtful. There was only one bottle in his supply that had been used. If it had been tainted earlier, Hamill would have dosed himself and died earlier. It seems most likely the bottle was laced on the thirteenth or fourteenth, Hamill does himself, and dies the following day,” Spenser replied.
“Fair enough. But that still doesn’t prove Bo didn’t slip out of his apartment at some point to lace Hamill’s supply of Anadrol,” Amanda pointed out.
“No, it doesn’t,” Spenser replied evenly.
“I’ve also got activity on Bo’s debit card,” Jacob said. “He had deliveries from several food joints as well as a couple from Green Acres, the local dispensary.”
“That’s about the least surprising thing I’ve heard yet,” Spenser quipped.
“What do you think?” Amanda asked.
“Like you said, it doesn’t prove he didn’t slip out and lace Hamill’s steroids,” Spenser said. “But he didn’t hesitate to give up his prints and DNA. That, combined with not getting a bad hit off the guy, makes me think he’s not our killer. I tend to think he’s telling us the truth and that, like your Aunt Yoli, he locked himself away to do his music thing. But… we can’t quite take him off the suspect list just yet. Have his prints sent to Arbery for comparison to all the unknown prints he found in Hamill’s house.”
“On it, boss,” Jacob said.
“What about his DNA?” Amanda asked.
“We’ll sit on it for now. We’ll collect swabs from everybody else we talk to and if Arbery comes back with any foreign DNA, we’ll have samples to compare them to.”
“Copy that.”
Arbery hadn’t mentioned finding foreign DNA yet, but he was still processing everything he and his team had collected. The DNA they were going to collect might end up being superfluous. But Spenser would rather have too much evidence and not need it than need it and not have it. Worst case scenario was they trashed the samples they took.
“Okay, let’s get to it,” Spenser said.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
