Denny Miles and Miles Lukasky arrived at the station relatively early, as it was a Monday morning and there would be bound to be things to do and work with. Moon Lake generally benefitted from being a small town "isolated" in the mounts in a sense that they weren't in need of a large number of detectives. There were times when they were needed, and Miles and Lukasky were among the few detective officers the Moon Lake PD had on their roster, but most of the Moon Lake officers were pretty standard patrol officers. And many of the patrol officers were given at least some detective training once they took up station in Moon Lake. This had made cases, like the one with Alice Decrux one of the few cases where a real detective was needed.
The two hoped there wouldn't be too much waiting for them, which would let them look over any cold cases that they hadn't had time for earlier or had been simple "noise" complaints and so on. However, sitting on Lukasky's desk was a manila folder with the words: "Decrux - Threat" written on the tab. This made both of them blink with surprise, as they'd figured that with Alice Decrux killed late on Halloween night, any cases involving her would be closed for processing. There was in fact at least one officer that was assigned to go through things at the Decrux home as part of the cleanup for the old case with the rest being formalities in working with Decrux's lawyer and likely any heirs that she left her home and estate to. But with Alice Decrux dead, hitting her with new charges wouldn't work all that much.
"This has to be an old case... something not reported," Miles spoke as he watched his partner open the folder and begin to look the reports inside over.
Lukasky didn't immediately answer, though he privately thought the same way. However as he read through the report it some became clear that this wasn't an unreported old case but a new case. Some time after midnight the previous night someone had called Megan Decrux, made some allegation about the woman being like her mother or thinking herself better than her mother, and then fired a gun close enough to the phone so that Megan had heard it through the phone. The panicked women then called the police shortly after.
"No... this is a new one," Lukasky spoke as he passed the paperwork on to Miles, "and not only is the Decrux in question different... it's likely that she is the one being threatened."
Miles looked through the report as well and practically couldn't believe it, "... but... Megan Decrux has never done anything... at least other than keep her mother's family name."
"That could be part of it," Lukasky sighed, "her mother at the very least frustrated a lot of people around here for years and I'd wager that a fair number of the men she conned into child support payments hated her with a passion and hated it more that the cases where Statute 1A charges were filed were never proven. Now that Alice Decrux is gone... dealing with her children might be someone's ultimate act of revenge."
"So... where do we start?" Miles wondered.
"First, we check with Officer Strange," Lukasky answered, "unless you recognize the number." He waited for Miles to shake his head, "no" before continuing, "For as our tech officer... she can confirm if its a land-line, which I don't think it is or if its a cellphone and then what kind. From there, we'll visit with Ms. Decrux. See if she has any leads into who this threat might be."
They then made their from their shared office to another office on the other side of the station, with Lukasky knocking on the door. After a "come in" the two entered to find Officer Tara Strange seated behind her desk and sorting a few things as she did so.
"Ah... I can see Miles and Miles," the normal human officer chuckled to them, playing to a long running joke that the station had regarding the fact that Detective Miles' surname matched Detective Lukasky's first name. It was a joke that both detectives found old but couldn't convince the others to agree, and thus the joke went on. "This is with the new Decrux case, I take it?"
"Yes," Miles spoke, "how did you know..."
"I got an email from one of the station heads last night and found a report pointing to a threat made to a Megan Decrux with unknown phone number with the tag that you two would be assigned the case," Officer Strange answered, "So I got start my day looking through that."
"What did you find?" Lukasky asked.
"That this will be near impossible to track," Officer Strange answered, "It has a Washington State area code, which means it is from this state but its not a land line, which will limit the numbers in Moon Lake pretty heavily."
"But even with weres being nervous on new things," Miles commented, "just about everyone has a cellphone these days. If not for home use than when they're at work... and so on."
"But not many cellphones get great reception here," Lukasky commented, "something about the mountains interferes with their signals and thus only those with the strongest networks work well at all."
"And I've checked the yellow pages for Moon Lake and the residences in the area that technically fall into Moon Lake's jurisdiction despite being outside the city limits," Officer Strange told them, "No matches. They're either land lines, which the number used isn't... it IS a cellphone of some kind, or the numbers don't match."
"Do you have anything we can use to narrow all this down?" Lukasky asked.
"I'm afraid not... based on what I'd know, I think this might actually be a burner phone," Officer Strange spoke, "you buy a phone with a set number of minutes and once they're consumed the phone and the number is spent."
"Can the number be tracked?" Miles wondered.
"If I knew the make, model, and provider of the phone," Officer Strange answered, "Sure. But right now all we have is the number. I can make some inquiries to local cellphone companies if they've sold burner phones with that number or regular cellphones... complete with plans for that number... but we may need a court order to get them to comply."
"And right now things are too vague to actually get these companies to divulge private information on potentially thousands to millions of customers in the state and general area," Miles sighed.
"For fear of hacking issues should these numbers get out," Officer Strange nodded.
"But if it's a burner phone... wouldn't that mean that the caller is outside Moon Lake?" Lukasky wondered, "supposedly their signal strength isn't that good. One of the things that relates to buying a phone you don't intend to keep."
"Possible... but also an unknown," Officer Strange answered, "Some of them can bounce a signal off of any nearby tower, regardless of who's system its on. Again... another part of being "temporary." Sorry."
Miles and Lukasky both sighed and then nodded. They gave Officer Strange at least a parting request that she update them if she either managed to get lucky with tracking the phone's number and getting a record of the buyer or some other means to potentially trace the signal and then made their way out for the second part of starting the investigation, talking with Megan Decrux, herself.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
They found Megan Decrux's apartment with some ease. Sitting across from the family grocery it ran in a sort of long rectangle down the street that would run down to the east side of the college further south. It was well maintained from what Miles and Lukasky could find as they made their way up to the floor on which Megan Decrux's residence was. They made note that building manager's residence was in the first door on the first floor, but for the moment with the fact that a gun shot was fired in the supposed call to Megan Decrux they doubted a resident of the apartment complex had actually made the call, but with no clear traces, that might be worth following up on just to make sure.
But the biggest thing was to get a few answers from Megan Decrux directly. The report they had detailed what happened and what Megan had reported that had been said to her and what her phone's "caller-ID" identified as the number of the caller, but there were still a lot of details to go over, such as any possible hints as to who would want to go after Megan Decrux. As the station new that the woman wasn't her mother and had never generated even a rumor that she was like her mother, but there was the family connection and about the only thing that Miles and Lukasky had to go on from that was that someone that Alice Decrux had hurt in the past was trying to get even. That was why they came to talk with her. Miles stood by quietly while Lukasky knocked on the door.
After a few moments, the door slowly opened a bit and both detectives could make out Megan Decrux trying to peer through the crack.
"Detectives Miles and Lukasky, ma'am," Miles spoke, "we're only here to ask a few questions about the threat made against you last night."
The door opened all the way and revealed a fully dressed woman. Megan's hair was pulled back into a pony tail and she was presently wearing some jeans and a tee-shirt, leaving the detectives to guess that she had some work of her own to do that wasn't in relation to her job at the college.
"Did you catch him?" Megan asked hopefully as the two detectives came in. Her voice was clearly nervous. She was trying to power through, but the nervousness was there.
“I’m afraid we’re only just getting started, ma’am,” Lukasky spoke, “as the report we got from the officer that answered your call didn’t say much beyond that you felt threatened by this call and what you told him. I trust… that things were at least quiet after that?”
“Quiet… but I was still a nervous wreck all through the night,” Megan sighed. "I've never tried to be like my mother... I've tried to get her to see the error of her ways. Is THAT wrong?"
"No, ma'am," Miles spoke, getting some sense that Megan was still highly nervous about what happened, "and some might even say that you've shown real caring and generosity in trying to reform someone that most others have given up on."
"And regardless of your mother's issues... her crimes are not YOUR crimes and you shouldn't be held accountable for them," Lukasky spoke, "which is why we're here... trying to narrow down the suspects... or at least the possible suspects."
"We think that whoever called you likely had some connection to Decrux and was therefore hurt by your mother in some way," Miles spoke, "and we apply for a list of the child support cases your mother was involved in from the courts to try and narrow things down... but given all the rumors of her activities over the years, we really can't be sure as to how many men she seduced and settled with her outside of courts. Would you happen to know about any of them? Those your mother turned and then settled with outside of a formal lawsuit?"
"Like names and addresses?" Megan said slowly, "No... I don't know that. I know my mother slept around to use men to her advantage... and sometimes she actually found men that liked her and wanted to stay with her AFTER she found she was pregnant. I know those would be the cases where things were settled out of court... but I really don't know all the names or addresses. I've tried to keep some contact with half siblings and learn things from them... but many of us never really knew our own fathers and thus... well..."
"I see... did you know if your mother kept any records?" Lukasky asked, "as if to keep track of payments and so on?"
"If she did... she shredded them after the child turned eighteen and thus the child support payments stopped," Megan spoke, "I've never seen any... though... maybe she had some safe somewhere in her home that I was never able to get into."
"We may need to check that," Miles spoke Lukasky.
"Good... my mother left me pretty much everything," Megan spoke, "and there is a lot to go through at her home. And your department supposedly wants to check to make sure no Love Potion Number Nine was left behind. I would be happy to help..."
"She left you EVERYTHING?" Miles asked turning back to Megan.
"Pretty much," Megan answered, "It's left me with a lot of things I really don't know what to do with and caught me by surprise. I really didn't think my mother would have invested all that in me. Maybe it's because I've tried to get her to see the help she needed... but with all our fights, I would have thought she'd leave me OUT of the will."
Lukasky and Miles both looked to each other, as that could likely change their whole investigation as well. While Alice Decrux had only run a sweets shop, there were enough rumors that went around with her child support cases and the suspicion that much of this was deliberate on Decrux's part could well mean that Alice might have had some assets that were hidden. Or at least were hidden from Moon Lake's eyes to some degree. If Megan had been left anything valuable, that might make her a target for those that might simply want Alice's money. They likely wouldn't care about her past actions, but would play to them to try and get what was wanted, the money. Possibly because robbing "Alice Decrux" wouldn't be seen as a bad thing to some people. There was also the potential that someone else that Alice had had business dealings with had wanted the money, or even Decrux's lawyer, who always seemed to be on call whenever Alice got into trouble.
"We'll do our best to protect you, Ms. Decrux," Miles managed, "but our focus should be tracking down and figuring out who our possible suspects are. Do you have any list or any of the men that your mother had been with... any at all?"
"A handful... but most are probably those that already have their cases filed at the courthouse," Megan commented.
"We'll still take them, if you could write them down for us," Lukasky spoke, "if they match... we can discard them, if not... we'd have an additional lead. And then we can check your mother's house, if you were on your way there, anyway."
"Okay... hold on here... I think I have some in my address book," Megan spoke and moved toward the back of the apartment and where her bedroom was.
"Do we ask her on how many know about the will?" Miles whispered to Lukasky.
"Not at the moment," Lukasky answered, "Most may know she's dead... but I'd doubt many know about Alice's will and what it left. In this... someone who Alice wronged is likely still our prime suspect and is going after Megan because she's kept her mother's surname and is looking for some sort of revenge. If we hit any dead ends, we could always ask Alice's attorney, as he'd likely have some knowledge on Alice's business affairs to some degree... given how much of them required lawsuits for child support. And then the will could come up... see what he says to that."
"And the building? Or the possibility that someone in the pulled this on her?" Miles whispered.
"Right now we don't have anything... the report gave no indication of gunshots fired HERE at the time," Lukasky answered, "Nothing that would indicate for sure that the call was made here. And right now she seems so rattled... it might be best to give her some sense of safety."