THE CLUB - ANGIE BARTONI CASE FILE

by Marshall Huffman

  THE CLUB

  Angie Bartoni

  Case File # 7

  By

  MW HUFFMAN

  The Club©2013

  By MW Huffman

  All rights reserved

  Thank you once again to my wife, Susan , for reading, tweaking, and pointing out inconsistencies in my books. I simply could not do this without her help.

  This book is dedicated to my daughters, Dominique and Cynthia and my son, Thomas. I love you guys a bunch.

  CLUB

  /Kleb/

  Noun :

  As association dedicated to a particular interest or activity.

  Verb :

  Go out to nightclubs

  THE CLUB©2013

  By MW HUFFMAN

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  OTHER BOOKS BY MW HUFFMAN

  THE END–BOOK I of The Event Series

  THE BEGINNING–BOOK II of The Event Series

  THE REVELATION–BOOK III of The Event Series

  The Second Civil War–BOOK I-A Nation Divided

  The Second Civil War–Book II-A Nation at War

  The Second Civil War–Book III–A Nation Healing

  Project BlueBolt – BOOK I – American Gulags

  Project BlueBolt – BOOK II - The Gulag Journal

  Project BlueBolt – BOOK III – American Uprising

  REVOLUTION

  THE BRINK

  CLOSE PROXIMITY

  BLACKSTAR

  CHIMERA

  WORLDS END

  SUN BURST

  Sins of the Fathers

  The Unfinished

  Angie Bartoni Case File # 1 - The Alphabet Murders

  Angie Bartoni Case File # 2 - Frost Bite

  Angie Bartoni Case File # 3 - Dead Aim

  Angie Bartoni Case File # 4 - What Goes Around

  Angie Bartoni Case File # 5 - Nothing to Lose

  Angie Bartoni Case File # 6 - Shadow Man

  Angie Bartoni Case File # 7 – The Club

  Angie Bartoni Case File # 8 – Shakespeare Murders

  Angie Bartoni Case File # 9 – One Too Many

  Angie Bartoni Case File #10 – Weak Link

  Angie Bartoni Case File #11 – Vanishing Act

  Angie Bartoni Case File #12 – Victim’s Advocate

  Angie Bartoni Case File #13 – Payback

  Angie Bartoni Case File #14 – Dead on Arrival

  The Logan Files - Blond Deception

  The Logan Files - Innocence and Avarice

  The Logan Files - The Deal Breaker

  The Logan Files – Pain Center

  Norris Files – Insurrection

  Norris Files - Silver2

  CHAPTER ONE

  2:15 a.m. Okay, if I get to sleep right now I can still get a five hours of sleep. 3:20 a.m. If I can get to sleep now I can still get almost four hours of sleep. 4:05 a.m., the hell with it, I might as well get up and do something constructive.

  Just as I was about to actually get up I guess I nodded off because the next thing I knew the alarm clock was going off. Well that really sucks pondwater. Now I was so tired I could barely drag my butt to the shower.

  I stood with my head leaning against the wall and let the hot water cascade over my body. I hate nights like that where you simply can’t turn your mind off. I relived every bad decision I had made not once but several times, like I needed reminded of them. My sleep pattern was getting so bad I had even considered going to a doctor about it but decided it wasn’t something anyone could really help me with.

  The fact that my phone didn’t ring gave me some hope that the day would be better. I’m a cop. Detective really, but that’s splitting hairs. I’m just a tad north of forty with brown hair, brown eyes and acceptable looks. I weigh one hundred and none of your business pounds. I don’t exactly have model looks but I couldn’t walk like that under any circumstances anyway. Actually, who really walks like that? Have you ever seen anyone strutting down the street that way? How stupid.

  I have some old fashioned rules that I pretty much live and die by. Well live by okay? I wear conservative clothing, slacks mostly, no low cut blouses, and reasonable shoes. I don’t try to beat up bad guys. I either let my partner handle that or I use my stun-gun. That fighting stuff is for movies and television. No woman in her right mind is going to take on some big thug.

  My partner, who took me almost a year to get used to, has turned out to be a pretty good guy. That leads to another rule of mine. No dating, romance, or even flirting with any cop. Ever. No way is that ever going to work out. Dan is a heck of a good looking hunk of man but to me, he is just my alter ego. He punches the big bullies out.

  I have some other quirky rules but I’m sure we will get to those as they crop up. Right now I’m looking at a tired woman in the mirror and wishing I had a couple of gallons of anti-wrinkle cream. Since I don’t use that stuff, I just put a cold washcloth on my face for a minute or so. I threw on a little powder and some light pink lip gloss. No bright red lips for me. That makes the person look like they have on those wax ones I used to wear during Halloween. Do those women really think that is attractive?

  One last look and out to my fairly new car. I now had a Austin Healy 3000 BJ8 after some nut job blew up my dearly loved TR6. The Healy fired right up and purred like a contented cat, if there is such a thing.

  Traffic was fairly light for a Monday morning. Usually it’s kind of crazy but I guess I hit it just right. Of course I was going in an hour earlier because I couldn’t sleep so maybe that had something to do with it.

  As the sky lightened some, I realized it looked like we may be in for some winter weather. The clouds looked heavy with snow and I noticed the temperature was hovering around 33 degrees. I was glad the Healy had a good heater. That is one thing the TR6 did not have. You could keep the frost off but that was about it. The Healy could cook you if you wanted it to.

  Parking was easy at this time of the morning as well. I always parked as far away from other cars as possible. Too many idiots throw their doors open without thinking about anyone else’s car.

  Our station had been built around the time the Romans were in power from the looks of it. The architecture is early disaster mixed with late ugly. There is nothing redeeming about it.

  “Gonna snow Bartoni. You might want to check out an SUV before they are all gone. That doodle-bug ain’t gonna get you around for crap,” Sargent Allen said when I came in.

  “It will do just fine. It can handle anything the weather throws at it.”

  He just laughed. Upstairs, only Stillwell remained in the squad room. He is not one of my favorite people on this or any other planet. He ignored me which was fine by me. I put my gun in the drawer of my standard issue desk. You can read that as cheap and crappy, and went to get a Diet Coke and two packs of coconut donuts.

  I spent the next twenty-five minutes finishing some delinquent reports that Captain McGregor had been bitching about for the past week. Boy was he going to be surprised.

  I was zipping through them when the phone rang. I looked around for Stillwell since I was technically not on duty, but he was nowhere to be seen. Nothing new about that.

  “Detective Bartoni.”

  “I need to report a murder.”

  “Have you called 911 yet?”

  “No. I wanted to report it directly to the police.”

  “Where did this murder take place?”

  “2313 Randolph Place.”

  “Who was murdered?”

  “My wife.”

  “Who murdered her?”

  “I don’t really know. I just found her.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Doctor Gill Rotelli”
>
  “Where are you right now?”

  “In the bedroom.”

  “Do not touch anything. Do not move. We are on our way.”

  “I’ll be here,” he said and hung up.

  No emotion, no stress, no anything. I stopped at the desk and had Sargent Allen get things moving with patrol cars on the way, the CSI boys and girls on notice, and of course the ME’s office.

  **

  Doctor Rotelli lived in an obscenely large mansion that could have housed a third world country. Cop cars were already on the scene when I pulled up.

  The obligatory yellow tape was already starting to go up around the place. That ought to make the neighbors happy. I can hear it now, ‘that simply will not do. We have restrictions against that sort of thing’.

  “Detective Bartoni,” I told the guy at the entrance to the place. What? No moat? I’m shocked. How crass. I parked and walked up to the massive front doors. Two policemen were standing on duty there and nodded.

  “You got a really strange one this time Detective.”

  “They are all strange in their own way,” I said.

  I put on gloves and pushed the door open. I was half expecting to catch the stench of death but to my surprise it smelled pleasantly normal.

  The place was huge. I’m pretty sure I could have driven my car in the foyer and still had room to hold a dance. Guessing, I decided the bedrooms were probably on the second floor. I climbed the stairs, checking out the pictures that lined the wall. Every one of them seemed to be of whom I was pretty sure was the deceased Mrs. Rotelli.

  “Doctor Rotelli?” I shouted out.

  “Back here,” his voice drifted from one of the bedrooms. I counted eight bedrooms on this floor alone. There was still another floor above this. Either they had a hell of a lot of kids or were flaunting their money. I voted for the latter.

  Mr. Rotelli was sitting on the edge of the bed. I assumed the body on the floor belonged to the late Mrs. Rotelli. She was dressed in a latex body suit that molded to her physique. In fact it looked like it had been painted on. You could tell it hadn’t been painted only by the rips where the knife had cut through. She was also starting to get ripe.

  “You said not to move,” he said, still with no emotion.

  “Okay, you can come on out now. Just don’t touch anything.”

  He stood up like a robot and walked over to the door and stepped into the hall. This guy was decidedly strange. I took a step into the room and just looked around. The most obvious thing besides her dress was the knife sticking out of her stomach. I couldn’t be sure from the door but it looked like she had been stabbed more than once. She had been definitely a looker at one time. Right now she wasn’t quite as attractive.

  I decided to just wait until the ME and the CSI team arrived before I did anything further with the former Mrs. Rotelli. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Doctor Rotelli, why don’t you come down with me and we can talk in the front room.”

  “Yes. I suppose that would be good,” he said.

  What was with this guy? I mean I’ve seen a lot of spouses when they find a loved one dead but they are usually full of emotion or at least fake it.

  He led me to a humongous room that I guess was either the front room or a ballroom. It, like Doctor Rotelli, was strange. A small screen television placed on a card table and two cheap plastic chairs were the only furniture in the room. It was bizarre to say the least. Maybe they had just moved in or were remodeling.

  “Doctor Rotelli why don’t you tell me what you know about this. Take your time and think of anything you can remember. Every single detail is important.”

  “Well, I came home and found her just like you saw her.”

  “Doctor. I need a little more than that. You came home from where and what time?”

  “I came home from a medical convention in Miami. I arrived at 10:10 p.m. last night. My wife was supposed to pick me up. I figured she was just running late so I waited. I called her several times but she didn’t answer. That is not unusual. I forbid her to talk on her cell and drive. I waited until 10:45 p.m. and then decided to get a cab. She has never forgotten before but I guess there is always a first time.”

  “What cab company?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It was white with some sort of blue writing.”

  “Metro.’

  “If you say so. It is about a thirty minute ride. I got home at around 11:20 p.m.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “When did you find her?”

  “Oh. Just shortly before I called you.”

  “At 7:30 a.m.?”

  “I guess. Something like that.”

  “Doctor Rotelli, you are telling me that you came home from a trip to Miami, your wife didn’t pick you up as you had expected and you didn’t think that was odd enough to find out why?”

  “Well, I did think it was odd but you have to understand our relationship,” he said looking down at his hands.

  “And what is that relationship?”

  “We...ah, maintain separate lives. I mean she is legally my wife but we don’t exactly live together like husband and wife. I maintain my residence on the third floor. Hers is on the second floor.”

  “Still, why wouldn’t you have at least checked in, if nothing more to find out why she didn’t pick you up?”

  “I didn’t want to disturb her.”

  “You didn’t want to disturb her,” I repeated.

  I was just about to say something I would probably regret later when Dan and the ME walked in.

  “Nice décor. You help with this?” Doctor Sorenson said in his usual droll manor.

  “It’s the new minimalist approach. You need to get with the times.”

  “I have, in the pay category,” he said.

  “Haven’t we all. Second floor, in the back. Even you can’t miss her. She is the one with the knife sticking out of her stomach,” I said and immediately regretted being so flippant with Doctor Rotelli setting there. He didn’t seem to even notice.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I spent the next five minutes bringing Dan up to speed and had him stay with Doctor Rotelli while I went up to talk to the ME.

  “So what do you think?” I asked.

  “Dead.”

  “Humph. I thought as much.”

  “You’re getting better Bartoni. A couple of years ago you would have tried to interrogate her.”

  “We don’t interrogate any longer. We interview.”

  “The difference being?”

  “Hell if I know,” I said honestly.

  “Lot of rage in this.”

  “Yeah. How many wounds?”

  “Maybe ten. Plus the word carved into her stomach.”

  “Word?”

  “Yeah,” the ME said, wiping some of the blood off of her stomach.

  You could clearly read the word. It wasn’t a nice one and my mother would wash my mouth with soap if I repeated it. It started with C and ended with T and definitely wasn’t Cart or Colt.

  “What else?”

  “Right handed, two different knives were used. A big one to make the incisions and a smaller one to carve the word C...”

  “I can read,” I said.

  “Sorry. Anyway judging from the condition of the body and temperature I estimate that she has been dead for six or seven hours.”

  “So around midnight?”

  “Closer to 1:00 a.m.”

  “Well that certainly opens a can of worms.”

  “Maybe more than you know,” Sorenson said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I recognize the good Doctor and his wife. She has a rather unsavory character.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It has been rumored that she provides certain services for some very rich and powerful people in this town. Both men and women. Seems she is an equal opportunity businesswoman,” he said.

  “What kind of services?”

  “Have you looked a
round in the house yet? From what I heard, and this is just supposition you understand, possibly just cheap shots, but the basement is very interesting.”

  “The basement?”

  “Check it out.”

  “You can bet on it,” I said.

  “You can go on. The crime lab folks will be here any minute. Once they get their dirty pictures I’ll send for you.”

  “Thanks doc,” I replied.

  I really liked Doctor Sorenson. He was old and crochety but he was one of the best MEs I have ever worked with. When you went to court you could be assured that he had his ducks in a row and the defense attorney wasn’t going to gain any points. In fact they hated it when he was the one testifying.

  **

  I had one of the officers stay with Doctor Rotelli while I gathered Dan and we went on a scavenger hunt for this basement that evidently was famous in certain circles.

  As strange as it may seem it took us a while to locate the basement. We were almost ready to go and ask the doctor where it was when Dan stumbled upon it. He had flipped on a light switch and a side panel slid open leading to a set of stairs.

  “What the hell?”

  “Pretty damn weird like everything else,” I replied.

  Another light switch turned on the lights along the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a row of switches. Dan turned them all on and the basement was flooded in light. We both did a double take. There were theater type chairs sloping down to a center stage.

  “What the hell is this place?”

  “I don’t think it’s a movie theater,” I told him.

  “What goes on here then?”

  “Sex shows would be my best guess.”

  “Sex shows? You mean people actually come here for a show? I don’t get it. You can rent a movie for five bucks. I doubt they charge that for this place,” Dan said.

  “I have a feeling it’s more than just your usual sex show. I’m getting the feeling that we have stumbled onto something that is going to cause a lot of embarrassment for some heavy hitters.”

  “Oh crap Bartoni. Please don’t tell me we are getting ready to screw the pooch.”