MrBallen

The detective just didn't have anywhere near enough evidence to arrest Kurt, at least not yet.

At this point, the bomb squad was actually still searching the house for any additional bombs.

So the crime scene techs had not gotten in yet to begin to start looking for forensic evidence.

They actually hadn't even been able to remove Kem's body yet.

Shepard knew the day ahead was going to be very busy.

Other members of his team had spent the entire night canvassing the neighborhood and notifying and questioning Kem's family members.

And now Shepard was sure there was going to be quite a few interrogations for him to conduct.

He'd already been awake for 24 hours by this point, but he knew there was not going to be any sleep soon.

So he walked to the office coffee pot and poured himself a cup of coffee and stood there drinking it and thinking about how he was going to nail Kurt Simon for murder.

Meanwhile, the bombing itself was making huge news all across Illinois.

By about 9 a.m.

on Sunday morning, so less than 12 hours after the explosion, there were all these reporters milling around the front entrance of the police station and some were even going in and out of the lobby trying to talk to people and get any information.

And Detective Shepard knew this story was only going to get bigger because the Illinois State Bomb Squad had just called in the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or ATF, to help them process the scene.

And all that meant there was going to be an enormous amount of pressure on Shepard, who was leading the investigation.

And this pressure was especially stressful this morning because...

because the case he'd thought he'd had against Kem's fiance, Kurt Simon, was starting to fall apart.

In all their interviews with Kem's friends, everyone had said Kem and Kurt had a good relationship and were excited to start their life together.

The crime scene unit had searched Kurt's car, where neighbors claimed they had seen him place something in the trunk right after the explosion or manipulate something back there, you know, maybe a detonator.

But the crime scene techs had found nothing suspicious at all back there.

Shepard's partner had checked out Kurt's story that he had spent the entire week previous to the explosion in Iowa, where he lived, and he was moving here to Bloomington to live with Kem.