Croaker: Grave Sins (Fey Croaker Book 2)

by Paul Bishop

  “I think old Sister Ruth got a kick out of dropping that bomb on us.”

  Ash steered the detective sedan up a freeway on-ramp.

  Fey was again turned with her back against the passenger door, her left leg bent at the knee and resting on the bench seat. As usual, she was breaking the law by not having her seat belt fastened. She smoothed the creases of her black slacks between two fingers. “Do you think it means anything?”

  “You mean the fact that Richard Kingston committed suicide by hanging himself?” Ash slid a pair of Ray Bans on to combat the sun. He checked his mirrors, looked over his left shoulder, and changed lanes.

  “Yeah – coupled with the fact that the murder victims were tied in such a way that they literally hung themselves.”

  Ash gave what passed for a shrug. “There could be a connection there, but it doesn’t appear that anyone has put the two scenarios together yet. You would have thought the press would have been all over it.”

  “Maybe not,” Fey said. “Sister Ruth said it was something the press didn’t know. I wonder why.”

  Ash checked his watch. “We’ve got time before meeting Tucker. Let’s see what the local PD can tell us.”

  The main San Diego Police station, headquartered at 1401 Broadway, was an unassuming building almost lost within the surrounds of downtown San Diego. Fey and Ash parked in a red zone along the front curb. They knew the radio microphone looped over the rearview mirror would keep them safe from tickets.

  At the front desk, Fey asked to see Gerard Montague, a San Diego homicide dick she’d met several times while networking at different homicide conventions. Five minutes later Montague hustled into the lobby to greet them and take them back to his office.

  “Coffee?” Montague offered as soon as they were inside. Both Fey and Ash accepted. Fey knew her daily coffee intake was far higher than was good, but you couldn’t eliminate all vices. After all, coffee seemed to have replaced cigarettes as the drug of choice in the work place. You couldn’t escape it anywhere you went. Instead of offering around smokes anymore, everyone felt obligated to offer coffee in order to facilitate conversation and encourage hospitality.

  Fey introduced Ash and the two men shook hands. Around them the buzz of activity in the San Diego Homicide Unit was like a soothing white noise – both familiar and reassuring. A cop could walk into any police station in the world and be at home.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Fey,” Montague said. He was a smallish, wiry man of Gallic extraction. His pencil-thin mustache and black, slicked back, hair made him look even more French. “They’ve certainly been putting you guys through your paces up there in LA.”

  “That’s why we came down here for a break,” Fey said.

  Montague gave a soft chuckle. “Well, I’ve got a couple of cases you could take over.”

  Fey shook her head. “Thanks, but no thanks. That wasn’t exactly what we had in mind.”

  “Then how can I help you?” Montague hooked his buttocks on the corner of his desk.

  “Richard Kingston,” Fey said. “Does the name ring any bells?”

  “Whoa,” Montague exclaimed, taken aback. “You didn’t tell me we were going to be running into JoJo Cullen territory.”

  “Then you know who Kingston is?” Ash asked.

  Montague turned his head to look at the FBI agent. He shrugged. “I certainly do – and so would anybody else around here who is any kind of a basketball fan. He was the head basketball coach at Mission Bay High School for years. And everyone knows the story of how he discovered JoJo and adopted him. The year Kingston’s two natural sons and JoJo all played together and took the high school state championship was incredible. It sure as hell won’t be forgotten around here for a long time.”

  “Actually,” Ash said, interrupting Montague’s verbal flow, “we’re more interested in the story of Kingston’s death.”

  The statement had the effect of throwing a bucket of cold water on the conversation.

  Montague placed a thin file on his desk. He had reluctantly retrieved it from a locked cabinet containing the unit’s murder books – blue binders containing all the reports pertaining to an individual case. Fey realized something odd was going on. Suicide reports weren’t routinely kept in with the murder books. As far as police investigations were concerned, suicide and murder had only death in common – otherwise, never the twain should meet.

  “Richard Kingston is one of San Diego’s lesser gods,” Montague said. He was sitting behind his desk now, three fingers perched on top of the suicide file. “His connection to JoJo Cullen elevates him even higher – JoJo being a major San Diego god.”

  “You have a point to make?” Fey asked. She wasn’t sure where Montague was headed. He had a reputation for being a straight shooter, and she could only hope that was true.

  “This is still fairly recent history. It all happened less than three years ago.”

  “Okay,” Fey said and waited.

  “Nobody likes their closet skeletons brought out into the light of the sun,” Montague said.

  Fey leaned forward in her chair. “Gerard,” she said, intensifying the exchange. “If there is something in that file that has a bearing on JoJo Cullen’s case, you can’t sit on it.”

  Montague still didn’t lift his perched fingers off the file.

  “Was there something questionable about Kingston’s suicide?”

  Ash asked.

  Montague seemed to come to a decision. He moved his fingers from the file and sent them off to massage the nape of his neck. “Officially, Richard Kingston didn’t commit suicide. Officially, he had an accident – a freak accident, but an accident.”

  Fey and Ash exchanged glances. Fey sat back and let Ash take the lead. “We were told he committed suicide by hanging himself.” Ash said slowly.

  “And where did you get that information?”

  “A nun told us.”

  “Sister Ruth?”

  Ash nodded silently.

  Montague sighed. “I knew she would let the cat out of the bag sooner or later. JoJo told her what he thought was the truth about his adopted father’s death and it seemed to fester inside of her.”

  “I don’t think nuns approve of lies,” Ash said.

  “That’s the point,” Montague said. “Kingston didn’t commit suicide either.”

  That got Fey’s attention. “What? I don’t understand.”

  Montague turned the file toward Fey and Ash. “The official story is that Kingston was home alone when he tripped down the stairs in his residence, became entangled with a drapery cord, was knocked unconscious when he hit the floor, and suffocated from the cord around his neck.”

  “That’s some freak accident,” Ash said after a moment’s silence.

  “The home is a dangerous place,” Montague said. “And there were a lot of high rollers out there who wanted Richard Kingston to remain a hero. The full truth was even kept from JoJo.”

  “What is the full truth?” Fey asked.

  Montague opened the file and slid out a sheaf of color photos. He spread them out on the desk as Fey and Ash stood to look at them.

  “John Q. Citizen probably wouldn’t recognize what was going on here,” Montague said. “But I’d wager you will.”

  Fey picked up one of the pictures. The snap showed a man naked except for a leather mask that fit completely over his head. The mask snapped tightly under the chin and had closed zipper openings over the eyes and mouth. The man was kneeling on the floor, one hand limp at his side. His other hand was resting near his exposed genitals.

  The man was slumped forward, suspended from falling to the floor by a thin cord wrapping around his neck and running back to the handle of the closed door behind him.

  “Auto-erotic death,” Fey said.

  “Nasty,” said Ash as he looked at the other photos.

  Auto-erotica was the sexual act of shutting off the blood to the brain by the use of a ligature while masturbating. Leaning forward against
the cord tied to the door handle, Richard Kingston would bring himself almost to the point of passing out as he manually brought himself to orgasm. The leather mask was an added way to intensify the claustrophobia of the act.

  Kingston had probably committed the act hundreds, maybe thousands of times, successfully. But one time, on the night JoJo’s UCLA team was eliminated from the Final Four championship, Kingston misjudged the process – he pushed the envelope too far and actually passed out. His body stayed slumped forward, supported by the cord around his neck, and Richard Kingston strangled himself.

  “The coroner’s finding of accidental death by strangulation wasn’t a lie,” Ash said. His tone was slightly flippant – dark humor being used to gloss over a horrifying situation.

  “Exactly,” Montague said, understanding Ash’s tone. “But it was thought best to keep the details to a minimum.”

  Fey was riffling through the pages of the death investigation. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  Montague gave her a sharp look. “What makes you say that?”

  She tossed the report pages back on the desk. “Auto-erotic death. It’s unusual, but not uncommon. Most homicide dicks would recognize it when they see it. I can understand not wanting to make the details public. It’s messy.”

  “Nobody would have benefited,” Montague said, almost defensively.

  Fey waved a hand in dismissal. “I’m not criticizing. I’ve been there. I can even see burying the file – losing it somewhere in the great morass. But you kept the file close by. Locked up, but handy. You knew you could lay your hands on it at any time.”

  “I was the investigating detective on the case,” Montague said. “It was my first and only auto-erotic death encounter –”

  Fey cut in. “That’s not it. There’s something here you’re not happy about – and it’s more than initiating a scandal about Richard Kingston dying with his dick in his hand. I can sense it.”

  Ash moved over to stand beside Fey. Both detectives stared implacably at the third.

  “I have no proof,” Montague said eventually.

  “Of what?” Fey asked.

  “There was some slight bruising on Kingston’s shoulders. I could have been caused from anything,” Montague vacillated.

  “But you think they were caused how?” Fey asked, pushing the San Diego detective.

  “I think,” Montague started, stopped, and started again. “I think Kingston took himself to the edge of consciousness, and then somebody put their hands on his shoulders just long enough not to let him back off. The added pressure caused Kingston to lose consciousness and black out ...”

  “And then he was left to strangle,” Fey said, completing the scenario. Montague nodded.

  “Not accidental,” Ash said.

  “Not suicide,” Fey said.

  “No,” Montague agreed with a sigh. “Murder.”

  Chapter 51

  Fey and Ash were back on the road again. While Ash drove, Fey paged through the file on Richard Kingston’s death. Montague had been reluctant to part with it, but in the end had given up any thoughts of damage control as a lost cause.

  “This is getting uglier and uglier,” Fey said. She fanned out the photos of Richard Kingston as if they were a deck of cards, and held them in one hand. “Montague has a feeling this was more than an accident. If that’s true, the culprit couldn’t be JoJo. He was miles away in Indiana.”

  “So who does that leave?”

  Fey put the photos back in the file. “Beats me at this point,” she said. She looked at her watch. “What time are we supposed to meet Zelman Tucker?”

  “Fifteen minutes ago,” Ash replied.

  “Will he wait?”

  “Tucker? Are you kidding? The man would wait for hell to freeze over if he thought it would get him what he wanted.”

  Fey noticed that Ash was driving very aggressively – speeding to catch up to traffic, then reluctantly slowing down until he could break clear again. She put it down to his agitation over meeting Tucker.

  “What is it about this guy that irritates you so much?”

  “He’s a smoozer,” Ash said without hesitation. “There isn’t a sincere bone in his body. He makes money at the expense of other people’s misery.”

  “Sort of like us,” Fey said, echoing the words Tucker had once used against Ash.

  “No. Not like us at all. Tucker revels in the prurience of the misery. He enjoys it. He loves sticking his finger in and stirring up the pot. His passion is exposing the vulgarities of life.” Ash braked hard to avoid running up the tail pipe of a senior citizen in a ten-year old Cadillac. “We don’t do that. Our job is to seek the truth in the interest of justice – only that. Nothing more.”

  “Does the fact we have a loftier purpose make it any different?”

  “If it didn’t, neither of us would be doing it.” Ash cut his eyes at Fey for a second. “Wait a minute. You’re pulling my chain, aren’t you?”

  Fey gave a short laugh. “Pushing your buttons is like shooting cows with a cannon. You’re too easy.”

  “I resent that,” Ash said lightly. “I may be easy, but I’m not cheap.”

  Ash steered the detective sedan across three lanes of traffic, cutting off two good citizens in the process, and exited the freeway off ramp leading to Mission Bay.

  The Prince & The Pauper was an upscale restaurant with an outdoor eating patio and a view of the placid waters of the bay. The sun had burned off the mid-morning fog and put a soft warmth into the air.

  Though she had never met him, Fey spotted Tucker the second she and Ash stepped into the eating patio.

  “Good grief,” she said, looking at the journalist’s electric yellow plaid sports jacket. “His horse must be freezing.”

  “He’s too cheap to put a blanket on a horse,” Ash told her.

  Tucker spotted both detectives and stood up. Under the electric yellow plaid was a canary yellow polo shirt with the top button done up. The shirt was tucked into a pair of softer yellow slacks with a white belt and white tennis shoes. Tucker waived animatedly, getting the attention of every diner on the patio.

  “What’s the matter?” Fey asked. “Does he think we can’t see him?”

  Walking toward the table, Fey tried to see beyond the garish clothing. Tucker was younger than she had expected – early to mid-twenties. His carrot red hair was brush cut, and he had more freckles than Opie. His body, however, was lean, clearly muscular even under his clothing.

  Ash had taken Fey’s elbow in his hand and moved in close to her. “Don’t play this guy for a fool,” he said near her ear. “He’s a piranha.”

  “Hey! Good to see you, Ash, my man.” Tucker said. He reached out, grabbed Ash’s reluctant hand, and shook it up and down like he was pumping for water.

  “Tucker,” Ash said. “If you don’t cool it, it won’t matter what you’ve got. I’m outta here.”

  Tucker held up both hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. I’ll cut the shtick.” He turned to Fey. “Detective Croaker, I presume?”

  “You presume again and I’ll have to pop you one,” Fey said. She knew Ash hated the guy, but there was something that appealed to her about him. He acted the goofball, but Fey could read between the lines.

  Tucker laughed at Fey’s comeback. “Hey! You and I are gonna be pals. I can tell that already.”

  There were two other people sitting at the table behind Tucker. Such was the force of the journalist’s personality that their presence had barely registered.

  Tucker turned to introduce them. “This is Etta Carson,” he said, indicating an older black woman. She was heavy, enveloping the chair straining beneath her. The mass of her body was covered by a blue and purple muumuu. A small hat perched on her head, and her hands were grasped together in her lap. A pair of short white gloves sprouted from between her fingers. She smiled at Fey and Ash and shook hands limply.

  “And this is Dr. Frank Logan,” Tucker said, completing the introductions.
The doctor was a big man. Older than Etta Carson, his broad shoulders would never be described as stooped. He wore a well-cut, gray suit with a carnation pinned to the lapel. His full head of hair was the same color as his suit, and was sprayed into obedience. Three small skin tags clustered together under the right rim of his heavy, black framed glasses.

  Everyone sat down and busied themselves with ordering and arranging napkins and silverware.

  “Okay, Tucker,” Ash said when their waiter moved away. “What’s this all about?”

  “We had a deal,” Tucker said. “You told me that if I came up with a break in the case, you’d –”

  “I know what I said,” Ash interrupted. “Just tell me what you’ve got.”

  For a moment, Tucker’s face lost its friendly, kid next door look. “We still have a deal, or do I go elsewhere with this?”

  “Where else are you going to go?”

  Tucker’s mask of civility slipped back into place. “I can take what I’ve got to Devon Wyatt. And believe me, that’s something you don’t want me to do.”

  Ash sipped from his water glass. “Alright.”

  “Deal?” Tucker asked.

  “Yeah, yeah. Deal.” Ash’s frustration was clear.

  The waiter chose that moment to return with salads and drinks.

  “Etta Carson knew Hallie Cullen, JoJo’s mother,” Tucker said, when everyone was resettled.

  “I was her social worker,” Etta Carson said. Her voice was tinged with the south. “Thirty-five years with the Department of Social Services,” she continued. “Or whatever they’re calling it these days. Knew a whole lot of Hallie Cullens in my time. Always on to them to use some form of birth control, but they never did.”

  “Was Hallie Cullen a prostitute?” Ash asked.

  “She was a heroin addict. What do you think? I did what I could for her – kept her in a place to stay, food stamps. She wasn’t stupid, but she was stubborn, and she did have the monkey on her back bad.”

  In the silence that followed that statement, Tucker pointed at his other guest. “Dr. Logan was the obstetrician who delivered JoJo.”