Kill For Me

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Authors: M. William Phelps
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that townhome together.” There was a look on Simmons’s face, as though he had a memory that made him laugh.
    “What is it?”
    “She gave me a toaster for my new apartment just recently,” Simmons added after thinking about it. “Then she made a joke to the effect that she might need to share the toaster with me…and I interpreted that to mean that she might be moving out of where she lived. I remember, clearly, her saying to me, ‘I’ll enlighten you later.’ But we never discussed the matter again.”
    Augello thanked Simmons. Took out a photo of Humphrey and asked Simmons if he recognized him.
    He took a hard look.
    “No.”
    Displaying a mug shot photo of Humphrey, his bald head and cocky half-smile prominent, Martin and Augello asked just about everyone in the bar if they had ever seen the guy or remembered him coming into the Green Iguana.
    Not one of them said yes.

13
    Near 7:30 P.M . on Sunday, July 6, 2003, Detective Scott “Ski” Golczewski was at his desk inside the PPPD squad room checking his voice mail. It had been a long day and night. Many of the detectives in the PPPD’s DU had been up well over twenty-four hours by now, working every lead they had. All of the anecdotal evidence the PPPD had collected thus far pointed to one man: Mr. Humphrey. That was no shock. It was cause for some excitement, sure. But not enough to be pumping fists in the air just yet. Ski had seen stranger things happen during an investigation. Like the time he had arrested a con man who was renting equipment, but instead of returning it, he was selling it. The guy had committed several other nonviolent crimes, too, and had been in trouble all his life. Seemed he was just your average con man out and about, taking whomever he could for however much he could get. Ski arrested the guy. Months later, Ski happened to hear that the guy had been found guilty and sentenced—that is, to 160 years behind bars.
    Indeed, the law was funny sometimes.
    One voice mail piqued Ski’s interest the moment he walked in and played it. The call was from a guy by the name of Jeff Erb, a special agent with the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco (AB&T). Kind of bizarre that an agency set up to regulate the sale of booze and cigarettes in the state was calling the PPPD about a murder case.
    “I have some info related to your homicide,” Jeff Erb said into Ski’s voice mail. “Give me a call.”
    Ski didn’t waste any time.
    “I know of a subject named Tracey Humphrey, whose real name is Timothy,” Erb said, “who was associated with Sandee Rozzo in the past and had possibly raped her.”
    There it was again—that damn name. Along with the rape case.
    “Continue,” Ski said.
    “I feel pretty strongly that Humphrey had something to do with this homicide in one way or another.”
    “No kidding.” Ski was interested. Here was a law enforcement brother talking about a hunch he had, which was based on some rather chilling information, Ski would soon find out.
    “I was introduced to the sexual battery case in Hillsborough County when a friend of mine (Sandee’s best friend’s fiancé) brought Miss Rozzo to me to report the sexual battery. Miss Rozzo told me she was raped and tortured over a period of two days back in 2002.” Erb added that Sandee looked pretty beat-up and was definitely shaken when she arrived at his office. It was quite obvious something violent had transpired. But, Erb told Ski, he explained to Sandee that his office—Erb was working for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) at the time—didn’t have jurisdiction over the case, so he advised Sandee where to go.
    “That’s great info, Jeff, thanks.”
    “There’s more.”
    “More?”
    “Yeah. A friend of Sandee’s called me yesterday.”
    Yesterday? Ski thought.
    “She told me,” Erb continued, “that Humphrey’s roommate [he gave Ski the name] recently found out where Sandee worked, at the Green Iguana. The friend told me that

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