FIRST STEP MURDER

by H. R. Whidden

  “Hey friend you really look wasted, let me give you a hand.”

  He took his keys and opened his car door and sat him in the driver’s seat. Faxon called the police and waited a few minutes then started the car put it in drive and shut the door. The BMW slowly moved forward and ran into a parked car down the street just as the patrol car pulled up.

  Faxon watched as the officer helped Jason Frisch out of his car and into the back of the patrol car. In a little while a wrecker pulled up and towed his car and the officer took Jason to holding. It took till the next morning before he woke and found out he had been charged with a DUI and his car impounded. He called his wife worried that he hadn’t come home last night, she took the girls to school and then went to the bondsman’s office and Jason got out. Still fuzzy about what had happened.

  He got a lawyer, and a court date was set, it was two days later when he got out of work and walked to his rental car, the BMW still hadn’t been repaired. As he approached the car in the parking garage he noticed a man leaning against his driver’s door.

  “Can I help you,” Jason asked?

  “You’ve had the most unfortunate few days Jason. I found it necessary to get your attention, your really are a piece of work. You’ve cheated on your wife, a good woman, and then you’ve stalked the prostitute you were paying for sex and harassed her clients,” Faxon said.

  “You son of a bitch,” he swung at Faxon. He easily ducked the punch and hit him in the side. Jason doubled over and dropped his briefcase fighting to catch his breath.

  “You’re out of your league here, you brought this on yourself Jason, and you think you have problems now? You ever contact Barbie again and I’ll make your life is a living hell. If I could set you up like I did think about what I could do if I really wanted to. One more thing if I ever even hear that you’ve cheated on your wife again, well you know.”

  Jason Frisch was still on his hands and knees, as Faxon walked away, another job done. Barbie paid him a thousand dollars, not even half what he would have charged for a job that complicated. She had agreed to free haircuts for a year and advice about women if he wanted it.

  Two days later he waited until he saw Susan Frisch come out of her office and walk to Ophelia’s Café. He got out and followed her in, and she stood as soon as soon as she saw him. She hugged his neck and kissed his cheek, and then they sat down.

  “I was hoping to see you again.”

  They had lunch and talked, Susan told him about her husband’s unfortunate accident and how much money it had cost him in court fees, lawyer fees, and fines. She related that he had been more attentive to her and the girls they were looking forward to a trip to Disney World soon. She kissed his cheek when their lunch was over and he promised to see her again.

  Faxon sat at the bar that evening waiting on Amanda the receptionist from Clark and Beck, it was their second date and he’d promised to take her to the park to see an open air play, then dinner. After she came in they had a drink at the bar, but just before leaving his cell phone rang.

  “Faxon, James Cullen here, I have something for you. You asked if I ran into anything about the Marine Group to let you know.”

  “Don’t tell me another related murder?”

  “No, how about a murder that hasn’t happened yet,” James asked?

  “Ok, you’ve got my attention. I don’t suppose there’s a paying client for me is there?”

  There’s a building on Medford St. its zoned commercial, the owner is a man named Parker Doss. He hasn’t made any money on it in years but he’s owned it for a long time. One of his best friends died about a year ago in a bad car crash, with a drunk driver. This guy owned a construction company and I hear they made an unofficial agreement to get the property rezoned and tear down the old building, then build a residential building. Well the old man has refused to sell to anyone with the intention of having the friend’s daughter that took over her father’s business help him with the rezoning and construction. Here’s the rub, I have a friend in the zoning department and he said The Marine Group is making an offer on the building with the stipulation that the rezoning goes through for residential. He said they have a lot of pull with someone and it’s likely to go through, depending on the sale of the property. I smell a suicide coming. The old man’s daughter wants him to sell.”

  Faxon said goodbye. “I promise Amanda, no more calls. It was a reporter friend of mine. He works for the Boston Herald, he thinks someone’s going to commit suicide, or be murdered.”

  “You know when you told me you were a private detective I thought it was just chasing cheating husbands around, not murder.”

  After the play and dinner he took her home, she kissed him at the door, after explaining the three date rule.

  Back to the bar he sat on the end stool and William got him his favorite beer. Not ten minutes later Amy Lindsey, AKA stalker bitch, walked up and sat beside him.

  “She’s pretty, too bad you struck out. You know if you need someone to help you with your needs I already know what you like and I’m certainly willing.”

  “Damn, you followed us? How long is it going to be before you move on to stalking someone else? I’ll never sleep with you again Amy, there’s nothing you could do to make me want to be with you.”

  “Damn-it Faxon I got my nose done for you,” she was raising her voice, “I lost weight for you, I got a boob job for you, you ungrateful son of a bitch, you’ll never find anyone to love you more than me.”

  William had already called the police.

  “What about our two kids?”

  “You’re crazy, we don’t have any kids,” Faxon said.

  “We’d have two if you’d just screw me, come on Faxon you know you want to, we’ve done it before, and you loved it.”

  Two officers came in and escorted her out of the bar. Everyone was looking at Faxon. Three different waitresses came up to him saying they’d tell their customers the woman is disturbed.

  “You know Faxon the owner said if this continued he’d make you find another place to live,” William said.

  “I think I’m gonna have to find another way to take care of this, maybe see if I can put pressure on her family, she may have a sister or parent’s that knows she’s disturbed. Listen don’t tell the boss yet, give me a few days to see if I can have the crazy bitch instituted or something.”

  The next day Faxon called his friend Lew Kirin, the hacker, he had him do a personal background check on Amy Lindsey. He had taken photos of her cheating husband over a year ago, so he had his name, and their address. That had been where he had slept with her the only time, it was after her divorce and she had asked him to come by and have dinner. He had too much to drink and after all she was an attractive woman. After, what he thought would be a one night stand, became a constant stalking, bizarre scenes at the bar leading to her second arrest now.

  It didn’t take Lew long to give him what he needed, Amy had quit her job after the divorce, she still lived in the same house in a nice community outside of town. She had a sister that was married and lived in the same community, and a brother that wasn’t married and lived in an apartment in the Boston city limits. Faxon drove to the sister’s house outside of town first hoping she was a stay at home mom.

  He knocked on the door instead of using the door chime and after a moment an attractive woman opened.

  “Oh my God, Faxon Bennett, please come in. My sister talks about you all the time. I’ve asked her a hundred times for the two of you to come to dinner.”

  Amy’s sister was under the impression that they lived together and that he was busy all the time was the excuse for him not being around. It took thirty minutes for him to explain what had happened from her sister’s divorce to the incident the day before.

  “I’m so shocked, I’m not sure what I can do Mr. Bennett my sister has always been strong willed, I’ll take your advice and look into the family care act to get her some professional help.”

  “I’m afraid
that if the family won’t step in Amy will end up in jail.”

  By the time Faxon got back to town he went by the brother’s house, he found the building and the condo on the third floor and rang the bell. An obviously gay man came to the door.

  “Can I help you sweetheart?”

  “Do you have a Sister named Amy Lindsey?”

  “Sure, what’s that crazy bitch done now?”

  Faxon was invited in and again had to explain the situation to the brother, it seemed she had a similar experience with a man before she married.

  “I should have recognized you darling, Amy has your pictures all over her house, she’s quiet obsessed.”

  “I think if you and your sister would file a petition under the family care act you could get her the help she needs, they’ll keep her for thirty days then evaluate her stability. Look I think it would keep her out of jail.”

  “I promise Faxon sweetheart, I’ll get together with my sister and we’ll have Amy institutionalized, I’m so sorry I had no idea she had been causing you so much trouble.”

  Faxon felt a lot better about his meeting with Amy’s brother and sister, he was sure there may not be another incident at Ned Devan’s now. He stayed in his room that evening and most of the next day. He got a call from Amanda but turned down an opportunity to see her that evening. At 8:00 pm he went to the bar and ordered dinner and a beer. He found himself constantly checking the room for the stalker bitch. His cell phone rang and he hoped it was a job even a cheating husband right now would take his mind off a possible confrontation with Amy Lindsey.

  “Bennett, Detective Walker here, I’m down on Park Street, James Cullen’s down here and he thought I should call you. He said he told you there was going to be an incident with a man named Parker Doss.”

  “Don’t tell me he committed suicide?”

  “Nothing as obvious as that, he was shot in the head, come on down and I’ll fill you in.”

  Faxon drove to Park Street as fast as he could. He had to park down the road from the scene, and was met by James Cullen. He was there to get the story for his crime article.

  “I told you this was going to happen, although I thought they’d use a little more finesse than they did.”

  “It’s proving it James, and they believe they can’t be implicated in this,” Faxon said. “Let’s go see John.”

  They got his attention and he let them come over closer to the scene. “Messed him up pretty good,” the Detective said, he pulled back the sheet that covered the top half of the man’s body and the back of his head was gone.

  “Rifle wound, I dug the slug out of the wall over there about a foot off the ground. If he was standing here then the shooter must have been in that building.”

  The Detective pointed to a building at least five hundred yards away.

  “Damn good shot,” Faxon said. “Can you tell what kind of rifle by the slug?”

  “Too damaged, I’ll have the guys at the lab see if they can identify it. Any guesses?”

  “Yea, military, an M40, when are you going to check the shooter’s building?”

  “I have to wait till the coroner takes the body. Ya, you can come with me, but it’s likely the guys a pro and picked up his brass and probably left no evidence,” Detective Walker said.

  The most obvious building was a well know elite hotel building, John and Faxon went to the front desk, and James tagged along to see if there was any more to the story even though he knew there was only so much he could put in his article. A hotel security man went with them to the unoccupied rooms on the floors that could possibly be used for the shot but it became obvious that the easiest thing for the shooter to do was go up to the roof.

  The four of them rode the elevator up, the only access was through a locked door and with a flashlight John examined it before the guard used his key.

  “Yea, it’s been picked,” John said.

  The guard opened the door and they walked out onto the roof. “If you find anything don’t touch it, we may be able to get finger prints.”

  They all walked over to the low knee wall and looked out and down at the spot where Parker Doss had been shot. John was right there were no empty ejected shells from a rifle, if there had been the shooter picked it up. Faxon noticed two small marks on top of the wall and determined they were from a stand that steadied the rifle. With the flashlight John noticed two places on the rooftop where the dirt was gone, he suspected the shooter knelt, and then to the right of the mark on top of the wall was a faint print where the man put his hand down before aiming and taking the shot.

  “Ok this is it, he shot from here, wow look how far that is, I’m not an expert or anything but wouldn’t that make this guy one hell of a marksman,” James said.

  “You do know you can’t put any of this in your article, right,” John said. “Certain information has to be kept confidential.”

  “Yea, yea, I’m just saying, look how far that is away, what the hell?”

  “We get it James,” Faxon said. “John, I’ll bet that when you get the report on that slug it’s from a Remington. And the guy that made this shot is probably one of maybe three or four ex-military snipers on the whole east coast that could make that shot.”

  “So you’re a private detective and a psychic too.”

  “Damn John, The Marine Company, the three guys at the docks, the tattoos, the freighter Desert Sun. Ex-marines privately hired as security to a Saudi that’s listed as CEO of the Marine group, possibly money laundering that’s financing the purchase of real estate, and the murder of anyone that refuses to sell.”

  “And we can’t prove a damn thing,” the detective said.

  “Shit this is huge,” James said.

  “There’s got to be someone else behind this, the Saudi, Kasam Rashid Kolmani, he’s not running all these ex-military guys, someone has control over them, someone that could convince them to commit murder.”

  The next day around noon Faxon got a call from John and confirmed that the bullet was shot from a Remington, a round used by the military in an M40a modified sniper rifle, accurate up to 900 meters. John was going to quietly check gun registrations but Faxon told him that wouldn’t do any good. Whoever was behind this had cover maybe from the top levels of the military.

  Faxon called Lew Kirin, “Lew I’ve got another job for you, I need you to research records for a Marine Seal sniper with the most credited kills living on the East coast.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Harper had been working out in the gym every morning, recommitted to her physical condition. After that she went to the local self-defense class, where an old friend of her fathers that had originally taught her Karate worked her out, she was also expert with staff and knife.

  Next was a daily stop at the gun range where she shot expert round after round with her Walther PPK 9mm, It was a gun her father carried with him all the time. It was small and slim, easy to conceal and shoot.

  Today she went to the office, and her first stop was the front desk to talk to Kate. She had stayed out of work for a week because of her arm, the compound fracture of the radius was healing well, and her fiberglass cast wasn’t too obstructive.

  “Harper I can ride, I mean if you still would like me to come with you I could work out and show you this won’t stop me from competing.” She knocked on the cast. “That is if you trust me?”

  “Maybe next event Kate, there’s the Lake Placid Horse Show, coming up and that’d give you enough time to work out with Brave. You’ve seen him he’s the 10yr old chestnut Warmblood gelding. That is if you don’t mind riding hunter class again?”

  “I don’t mind at all, I know it was a pretty bad experience Harper, but I don’t see you as the kind of person that would let the son of a bitch, whoever it was that killed Tao, make you give up. And I don’t want to be that person either, my father doesn’t want me to compete again but I’m not a quitter.”

  “I’m not going to stop competing Kate, and if you want to literally g
et back up on that horse then I’m not the one that’s going to stop you.”

  Harper had scheduled a meeting with Sam Shepard, the General Manager of the Company. She carried the tube with the blueprints her father had made down the hall to his office. Robert wasn’t there today, he was in the city looking at recently purchased commercial building that a major company was going to take down and build it was being rezoned residential. The door was open and Sam stood up and hugged her.

  “Hey, Danger, what you up to today,” said Sam. It was what her father sometimes called Harper. It nearly made her cry.

  “Thanks for taking the time to meet with me Sam. I haven’t been called Danger since, well since dad. I wanted to show you something I found at the house.”

  “Harper, you can talk to me anytime you want to. I miss your dad. Ok, show me what you got there?

  Harper spread the blue prints out on Sam’s desk, and she gave him time to look them over before they talked.

  “Wow, this is some project, great design, I’m going to guess that this was Clayton’s idea of building on that downtown property?”

  “I found it in his office when I cleaned it out. It was behind some books on one of the shelves. The Lewis Center, how am I supposed to ignore this?”

  “Listen Harper when you and Robert were arguing last week, I wanted to come in there and tell him to shut the hell up. Then I thought he had a point when he said Clayton didn’t have any plans for the property. Robert’s done a pretty good job since your dad died, he’s gotten a lot of projects, with your help, believe me that hasn’t gone unnoticed. We’re being pushed to the very limits of our capabilities the company has never been so productive. But to take on a project this big would take all our assets, we’d have to stop everything we’re doing, and then there’s the money?”

  “It’s right here Sam, if we can get permitted we can pre-sell the condo units to finance the project, hell The Tromp Group does that all the time.”

  “Harper even if we had the funds, and that would mean getting the permitting pre-approved, we don’t have the men or the equipment, that’s a cost that wasn’t figured into the estimate of the construction.”