Colt Crawford - Chapter 7 (Tuesday)

The drive north was uneventful. Given that it was early Sunday afternoon, the traffic was light and the pace was quick, just the way Colt and Krissy liked it. As Colt veered off of the 101 he came to a stop at a red light at the bottom of the ramp. The rest of the drive to the police department would be on slow-moving surface streets, so Colt reached down and pressed a small black button on the dashboard. With only the slightest hum, the car’s top automatically lowered itself into a tidy storage bin behind the rear seat. The warm winter sun almost made up for the cool ocean air that was blowing from the left side of the car. To compensate for the breeze, Colt reached down and turned the heater up to its highest setting. “That’s the way I like it,” he said glancing across the car toward Krissy.

“Top down, heater on,” Krissy replied. “Interesting.” Colt glanced over at her just as the light turned green. He saw a quick smile flash across her face and something told him that this was not going to be an ordinary day.

“Let’s pay Samantha a quick visit, then check on those phone records,” Krissy suggested.

After a brief stop at the hospital, Colt and Krissy found a sandwich shop and ordered a couple of subs to go. In the car once again for the short jaunt to the P.D. Colt began to piece things together. “So Samantha is a lawyer for some rich Beverly Hills snob. She stops by his house one day to drop off some legal documents and meets his live-in girlfriend, Mandy. They meet again at a party the snob was throwing a few weeks later and become friends.”

“I’m with you so far,” Krissy said.

“Then one day Mandy introduces Samantha to her brother, Creighton,” Colt continued as Krissy nodded her agreement. “Creighton is a creep of some sort, only we don’t know the exact variety of creephood that he comes from. Samantha gets attacked, presumably on purpose, and Creighton feels so bad about it that he tries to kill himself.”

“Allegedly,” Krissy added in her most sincere cop voice.

“So, if we can find a motive for Creighton wanting to hurt Samantha, then we have the missing link,” Colt concluded.

“Yes, but I don’t think he’s just going to tell us,” Krissy added. “But those phone records just might.” Colt steered the Beemer into the parking lot at the police station and flipped the transmission into park. Together he and Krissy marched in and made their way to Detective Malone’s cubicle. “Hey, Sanchez,” Krissy said. “Did you get those phone records I needed?”

“Catch,” Detective Sanchez said as he tossed a manilla envelope towards Krissy. Eager to start the process of combing over every number, Krissy, pried open the clasp and split the documents into two piles.

“You take half,” Krissy said tossing a stack to Colt. “Let me know what you find.” Colt began pouring over the numbers, plugging them into a reverse online directory. The task was tedious. Creighton had a home phone as well as a cell phone and apparently made a lot of calls in the last month. He eagerly chomped on the 12-inch hoagie he had picked up at the sandwich shop as his fingers zipped away at the ten-key pad on the computer he was using. His frantic data entry stopped when a familiar name flashed onto the screen.

“Now that’s interesting,” Colt said to himself. “Krissy, take a look at this.”