“What do we have here?” I said as I moved the tooth pick about in my mouth.

“A murder?” My partner said.

“A suicide?” I said looking at the gun in the victim’s lap.

“With blood splatter like this?” My partner said pointing to the ceiling.

It was a good point. Splatter should have been high, but straight up. No. This was murder.

“Motive?” I grunted.

“The victim is a lawyer - do we need more than that?”

My partner was just jaded from a bad divorce where is wife had a much better lawyer than he did. That kind of bias could poison an investigation. I make a mental note to talk to him later.

A plain clothes officer walks in, “coffee?” He offers us each a Timmies from a tray.

“Double double?” I ask.

“Is there anything else?” He responds with a smirk.

Back to the case.

“Suspects?” I ask my partner.

Shuffling through the papers on the victim’s desk my partner’s furrowed brow doesn’t give me hope of anything useful.

He pushes the papers aside and looks at the victim. “Does this seem like a crime of passion to you?”

I shrug. Murder usually is. He knows that though.

“Where are you going with this?”

“Does he have a girlfriend or spouse? Does he have a mistress? Does he have anything in his life other than work?”

“Does his dog count?”

He rolls his eyes at me.

“Can you have a crime of passion without some one to be passionate with?”

I nod my head. He is right. This SOB had no one but his dog.

“So what are we thinking? Client?”

He nods his head. Had to be a client.

I poke my head out the door and flag down the victim’s assistant.

“Could you get me a list of clients and why they were employing the victim?”

She nods.

“Do you want that list sent to the station?”

“Is it a big list?”

She shrugs her shoulders, “is a list of twenty big?”

“Do you have the station’s fax number?” I ask.

She nods. Tracking down twenty clients and seeing if any had motive. This could take a while. I could see my partner had the same thought.

“Should we grab some Thai on the way back to the station?”

My stomach was already grumbling. It was going to be another long day.