Prime Suspect

by A. W. Gray

  His vision blurred by his own tears, his brain swirling like a kaleidoscope, Everett screamed and charged.

  The man who had come through the door and was now bearing down on Lackey wasn’t normal. No way was he normal. He was squatty and powerfully built, with arms that hung practically to his knees, and had a sloping forehead and thinning hair. His lips were pulled back from crooked yellow teeth in a snarl. He wore a ripped khaki shirt and green army pants. He was growling. Jesus, thought Lackey, the guy is growling. Percy Hardin had raised up on all fours on the floor, and now said breathlessly, “Oh, Christ.”

  The apish man was quick as a cat and moved low to the ground like an express freight train. He carried a revolver in one hand, but made no move to raise the gun. He kept on coming, snarling and snorting. Lackey had just begun to lift his own .45 into firing position, when the wild man slammed into him like a strongside linebacker.

  Backward Lackey flew with the stumpy man’s weight propelling him. Pain stunned Lackey’s chest as he banged into the wall. The .45 slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor. The stumpy man’s gun went also, banging the wall and rebounding downward. Lackey fell on his side and rolled onto his back, the breath knocked from his lungs, and waited helplessly for the crazy to jump on top of him and finish him off. Lackey couldn’t move a muscle. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t . . .

  Nothing fell on top of him. Off to his right, Percy Hardin said, “No. No, please,” and followed that with a gargling sound.

  Lackey gritted his teeth, drew a painful breath, and sat up.

  Hardin was on his back with the stumpy man’s knees pinning his upper arms. The man’s powerful hands were around Hardin’s neck, throttling him, and Hardin’s face was turning purple. The crazy squeezed tighter and tighter, and lifted Hardin’s head to bang it down on the floor.

  Lackey decided to let Hardin die. The bastard deserved it, didn’t he? Just let that monkey-looking sonofabitch choke Hardin to death while Lackey searched the apartment for Nancy. She had to be here someplace. Jesus, she had to be.

  Lackey sighed. Hell, no, he couldn’t. Not even Percy Hardin, Lackey couldn’t sit by while the nutty bastard choked Hardin to death. The .45 lay just feet away, and Lackey now crawled over and picked the gun up. He raised into a kneeling position and held the .45 in both hands to level it at the crazy’s head.

  Lackey said, “Hey.” He was still short of breath and could barely get the word out of his mouth.

  The stumpy man ignored him and went on strangling Hardin, as if Lackey Ferguson wasn’t even there and it was just Hardin and the crazy, one on one. Hardin’s face was turning from purple to dark blue, and his eyes had rolled back in his head.

  Lackey said again, “Hey.”

  Still no sign that the crazy heard. The hands closed even tighter around Hardin’s throat.

  Lackey shot the stumpy man in the back. The .45 jumped and the recoil jerked Lackey’s hand toward the ceiling. The slug tore into the crazy just below the shoulderblade and exited through his chest. Red splattered across Hardin’s face and shoulders. The crazy’s insane face turned in Lackey’s direction and the hands relaxed their grip on Hardin’s neck. The stumpy man toppled sideways, rolled over, kicked his feet, and was still.

  Lackey stood and gingerly touched his ribs. He bent over the stumpy man and felt for a pulse. There was one faint beat, then nothing. The crazy’s eyes were wide open and stared at the ceiling.

  Hardin was coughing, his color going now from purple to red. He sat up holding his throat. “Christ,” he croaked. “Christ, he would have killed me.”

  Lackey sighted down the .45’s barrel and put Hardin’s nose between the crosshairs. “If Nancy’s not all right,” Lackey said, “you might just wish he had.”

  There were two dead people in the bedroom, a black man and a tiny white woman. Lackey didn’t bother to check for pulses. There was a gaping wound in the black man’s neck and another in his chest, over the heart. The back of the woman’s head was gone. Lackey averted his gaze from the corpses, skirted around them, and sat down on the bed beside Nancy.

  She looked to be asleep. Please let her be only asleep, Lackey thought. She was tied and gagged, and her eyes were softly closed. He reached behind her head to untie the cloth which held her gag in place. As he did, her lashes fluttered.

  Once, twice, then a series of rapid flutters. Finally, Nancy opened her eyes. She gasped and flinched away from him; then recognition spread over her face, and her taut cheeks relaxed. He removed the cloth and gently removed the rags from her mouth. Her makeup was worn off and her lips were pale. As far as Lackey was concerned, she’d never looked better. He wordlessly kissed her mouth as he reached behind her to untie her hands.

  She said weakly, “Is he gone?”

  Lackey worked at the knot between her hands. “All over. All over, babe,” he said.

  She buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder. In seconds his shirt was wet, and her shoulders were shaking in rhythm with her sobs.

  Lackey tried once to take Nancy out of the bedroom while the bodies were still there. After two faltering steps, her gaze fell on the dead woman. Nancy screamed. After that, Lackey didn’t try to lead her outside again. He just sat on the bed with her and cradled her face between his shoulder and neck until uniformed paramedics had come with gurneys and the corpses were gone. It was a good three-quarters of an hour before the way was clear. Lackey didn’t care about the time; if it would keep Nancy from screaming anymore, he’d sit there and hold her for days. Finally, they went into the sitting room. Lackey kept his arm around her waist, and she leaned on him for support every step of the way.

  Betty Monroe was seated on the couch, talking a mile a minute to Henley and Morrison while Assistant D.A. Favor stood nearby with his arms folded. Percy Hardin sat on a straightbacked kitchen chair in the corner. His wrist was cuffed to one of the chair’s legs, which told Lackey all he needed to know about what Betty was telling the detectives. Betty was getting a whole lot more mileage out of her leg show with the cops than she had with Lackey; Henley and Morrison were practically drooling. She’ll do okay for herself, Lackey thought. Nancy was crying softly as he herded her in the direction of the exit.

  Two uniformed city cops were standing guard, and now stepped together, shoulder to shoulder, to block Lackey’s path. One of the policemen shot a quizzical glance in Favor’s direction.

  Favor pinched his own fat cheek. “We’re going to need to examine the girl. Did he, you know, molest her or anything?”

  An angry pulse jumped in Lackey’s neck and he opened his mouth to tell Favor off, but Nancy beat him to the punch. She raised her face from Lackey’s shoulder with sparks shooting from her eyes. “He didn’t,” she said to Favor. “And if he had, you wouldn’t touch me, anyway.”

  Favor met her gaze briefly, then folded his hands in front and regarded the floor. “Yeah, okay. Yeah, okay, let „em pass.”

  The cops stood aside. Lackey took Nancy by the arm and started to escort her over the threshold onto the landing.

  From the sofa, Morrison said, “Hey, Ferguson.”

  Lackey stopped and turned.

  Morrison grinned, formed a pistol with his thumb and forefinger and fired an imaginary shot. “No hard feelings, Ferguson. Just part of the job, huh?”

  Lackey didn’t answer. He marched Nancy out into the warm night air, led her down the steps and onto the sidewalk. Halfway down the walk he stopped and kissed her, and she kissed him back. After a final glance back toward the apartment, at the two cops still standing by the door, Lackey Ferguson picked up his lady and carried her away. He was practically running.

  We invite you to preview the forthcoming A.W. Gray novel, Killings, available in eBook from AudioGo.

  A custodian named Herbert Trevino, as he reported for four a.m. duty on the SMU campus, found the second victim under a tree. At five in the morning he told Dallas County Investigator Hardy Cole that the nude body of the girl would have gone unnoticed if
it hadn’t have been for the noise.

  “Wait a minute,” Cole said. “This is the first I’ve heard about any noise.” He was lean and angular, with a permanent what-you’re-telling-me’s-a-lot-of-bullshit set to his mouth, and at the moment was more than a little pissed over the call at his home at four in the morning. He hadn’t shaved and had wolfed down a doughnut and a cup of 7-Eleven coffee on his way to the campus.

  The custodian said, “That’s „cause this is the first time anybody ask me. All these cops tramping around here don’t do nothing „cept put up them barriers and then stand the fuck around. I try to tell them what happen three or four times, they just say, „wait a minute,’ and then throw some more cigarette butts down for me to clean up after.” He wore a gray broadcloth short-sleeved uniform and hard-toed work boots. His thick hair was graying, his weather-creased skin the color of a tamale wrapper.

  Cole and Trevino were sitting in the front seat of Cole’s gray four-door county-owned Chevy, parked at the curb on Airline Road. Across the way, flashlight beams stabbed here and there as the University Park Police and the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department poked among the bushes and shrubs around the Fondren Science Building. In the distance, the dome atop Dallas Hall blotted out a large portion of the northwestern horizon. In another half hour, a late September dawn would streak the darkness with pink and gold.

  “Let’s get this straight,” Cole said. “You understand how important it is for me to get this right, huh?” He was bracing a steno pad on his thigh and had a flashlight clamped between his left arm and his rib cage. The flashlight’s beam was directed at the page on which Cole was taking notes.

  “I s’pose,” Trevino said. “I got some of my people wish them poleez would fuck around like this when they out off Harry Hines Boulevard hassling Mexican brothers.”

  “I ain’t here to talk about that,” Cole said. “You’re coming to work at four o’clock, right?”

  “Quarter to. Twen’y-six year I don’t be late a time. My wife, she let me off right over there.” Trevino pointed across the street, toward a row of old brick houses with tree-lined yards. The houses were built before World War II, without central air or heat. Most of them had rickety wooden floors which creaked underfoot and, in this Park Cities neighborhood, carried price tags of two hundred grand and up. Cole pictured his own home, a three-bedroom Fox & Jacobs which had run him forty-five thousand ten years earlier, and decided that for the money he’d made a better deal.

  “Okay,” Cole said. “So you came across Airline and crossed that little asphalt parking lot toward the science building. Notice anything out of line?”

  “No, man, not till I go up the walk toward the building. Around them big trees over there.”

  “And you say you heard a noise?”

  “That’s what I say, man,” Trevino said.

  “Well, man, what did it sound like?”

  “Like somebody giving somebody a blow job,” Trevino said.

  “Jesus Christ, I can’t put that in my report,” Cole said.

  “Well, lick-lick, slurp-slurp, then.”

  “A slurping noise?”

  “Yeah,” Trevino said.

  Cole held his pencil between his first and middle fingers and tapped it on the steering wheel. The a/c fan was on low; ice-cold air drifted from the vents. “One thing’s bothering me, Herbert,” Cole said. “This naked body was only five feet from the walk, and you say you didn’t see it?”

  “She was under the blanket,” Trevino said.

  “I don’t have any information on that.”

  “Man, you don’t got no information on chit.”

  “Listen, you want to talk about this downtown?” Cole said.

  “Huh? Well, what you asking about you don’t got no information on?”

  “Any blanket,” Cole said.

  “I done told you, man,” Trevino said. “Them fucking cops.”

  “The police took the blanket?”

  “Yeah. Prob’ly took a nap.”

  Cole wrote down the information, leaving out the witness’s opinion as to what the officers had done with the blanket. “So where were you when you first heard the slurping noise?” Cole said.

  “I just turn up the walk and go for the building,” Trevino said, pointing. “Maybe twen’y steps.”

  “Any idea what was making the noise?” Cole said.

  “Yeah. The dude under the blanket with the dead gorl.”

  Cole couldn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, then said, “Are you putting me on, Herbert?”

  “No, man, I telling you. I thought they was a couple of kids fucking on the lawn.”

  “„Engaged in sex,’” Cole said. “That’s what I’m writing down.”

  “Yeah, okay. I go over and I say to the blanket, „Hey, you can’t do that chit around here.’ That when the dude jump up and run off.”

  “Jesus Christ, you saw somebody?”

  “I told you, man, them fucking cops. They don’t listen,” Trevino said.

  “Well what did he look like?” Cole said.

  “I can’t tell. Eighty degrees, man, that dude had on a snowsuit. Had dark hair, maybe black or brown. Fucker run like hell.”

  “Let’s get back to the slurping noise,” Cole said. “Any idea what it was?”

  “Sure,” Trevino said. “It was the dude under the blanket. I ain’t lying, man, he was under there sucking all over that dead gorl.”

  Cole’s lips twisted as he pictured it, the guy crouched down underneath a blanket hungrily sucking at the lifeless flesh. “Lick-lick, slurp-slurp, huh?” Cole said.

  “You got it, man,” Herbert Trevino said.

  By seven a.m. a meeting had convened at the University Park police station, a red brick, Colonial-style building on McFarlin Boulevard. Ancient elm, sycamore, and weeping willow trees surrounded the building, and up and down the street rolling lawns fronted seventy-five-year-old homes the size of small English castles. Across the street from the station were four tennis courts which belonged to the city of University Park.

  The meeting took place in the police conference room adjacent to the municipal courtroom. Present and seated at the conference table were Dallas County Assistant D.A. Mclver Strange, Detective Ben Lewis and Captain Will Utley of the University Park police department, and Vernon “Shoesole” Traynor of the Dallas County coroner’s office. The last to come in was Hardy Cole, a day’s growth of beard on his face, wearing his plaid sport coat and slacks as though he’d rather be dressed in slouchy jeans and a T-shirt. Cole sat down.

  “Detective Cole,” Mclver Strange said. “Glad you could join us. By the way, who’s your tailor?” He was wearing a pressed navy suit, a white shirt with a starched collar, was round and soft like a formal penguin.

  Cole favored Strange with a shit-eating grin, scooted down in his chair, and propped his knee against the edge of the table. “Hi, Mac,” Cole said. “Early, ain’t it?”

  The two University Park cops exchanged glances. Captain Utley kept his gaze on the table as he said, “We haven’t talked to any newspaper people. We have to ask you. Before you do, check with us, huh?” Captain Utley was tall and thin and also wore a navy suit. He had short brown hair, neatly trimmed, with a hint of gray in his sideburns, and wore thick bifocals encased in dark plastic frames.

  Cole’s chin lifted slightly, then dropped. “Yeah, we know. Park Cities. Allah, Mohammed, and all that shit.”

  Detective Lewis was short and thick, in his thirties, with a wide face and a thin brown mustache. He folded his hands on the table. “We just work here, Hardy. Something you can’t do in this jurisdiction is play the tough monkey.”

  “Naw,” Cole said. “Frank Sinatra already did that. From Here to Eternity. Well I don’t work here, and what Fm interested in doing is busting one sick son of a bitch. If we got to use the papers, these uppity folks out here are just going to have to lump it.”

  “The mayor’s going to have something to say about that,” Lewis said.
“He does have a little stroke where you come from.”

  Cole snorted. “I don’t give a fuck about—”

  “Hardy.” Mac Strange lifted a hand, his eyes half closed as though he were bored. “Just knock it off. We can be here a week with all that. What we need to talk about here is that we’ve got a real doozy on our hands.”

  Utley looked relieved, glad to get around the conflict for the time being, at the same time showing by the twitch at the corner of his mouth that he knew the problem would come up again. “No doubt about it,” Utley said. “That first one could have been a drifter or somebody pissed off about something. This one makes it look like a bona fide nut case. So. So far, what’s anybody got?”

  Cole used the forefingers of each hand to rub his eyelids. “Oh, not much. Only that the body was originally under a blanket that nobody seems to know anything about. Oh, yeah, and the custodian that found the body just happened to see the guy, not that anybody bothered to ask him about it until an hour later. Just little shit like that.” He tossed a blink in Strange’s direction.

  “There’s a lot going on at a crime scene,” Lewis said, his gaze lowered.

  Mac Strange opened his mouth as if to say something, but Cole bulled ahead. “Look,” Cole said, then held up a hand, palm out, in Strange’s direction.

  “Hear me out, Mac.” Then, glancing alternately from Utley to Lewis and back again, “Listen, you guys got some facts to face. This ain’t exactly the corner of Oakland and Martin Luther King out here. You people don’t get many homicides. What you get is maybe some high school kids shitting in a bag and then setting it on fire and putting it on somebody’s front porch and ringing the doorbell. Somebody knocking up somebody’s underage daughter, if the guy don’t flash his bankroll around and grease a few palms to hush it up. What you’re into this time is some heavy bullshit. Well, when the next one comes down, how about calling us first, before your kiddie-cops get out there and mess up the scene. That might step on somebody’s toes, but if it does, it does.” He settled back with a defiant tilt to his chin.