Croaker: Kill Me Again (Fey Croaker Book 1)

by Paul Bishop

  The confrontation began in anger with ranting and raving on both sides. Forgiveness and understanding were concepts neither was willing to extend.

  Fey's anger at Cordell for his physical attacks paled by comparison to her anger over the memories his treatment had refreshed of her father's abuses.

  Cordell's desperation over the tumor within his head was as fierce and frustrating as ever. His warped senses perceived Fey as the tumor's living manifestation.

  Each saw the other as the perpetrator of abuse.

  But each had something the other needed and wanted more than revenge. Joining forces to fight a common enemy, they struck a bargain binding them in common hatred.

  Cordell knew he was going to die quickly from the malignant walnut in his brain. His bargain with Fey kept him in the game a little longer, providing him with the irony and demented pleasure of taking someone down with him.

  Fey would handle her disgust over bargaining with Cordell after her other agenda was achieved. Only then would she know if the price she was paying with her soul would be worth the cost.

  In the interrogation room, surrounded by the other players in the farce, the two co-conspirators were fulfilling the agreed obligations of their devil's pact.

  Janice Ryder turned her head toward Cordell, surprised at his outburst.

  Cordell smiled mockingly. “Don't look shocked,” he told her. “I should have known you wouldn't help me without an ulterior motive.”

  Janice turned back to Fey. “I'm not here to answer questions. I suggest we focus on my client.”

  “Let's stay with your involvement,” Cordell said. His voice was husky.

  Fey wondered if he was going to explode. She was unsure of how far to let him run, but he would be difficult to stop.

  “Tell me you didn't set me up after you sprung me from the joint,” Cordell continued. “Look me in the eyes and tell me. I'll believe you. I'll believe anything a woman tells me.”

  Ryder snapped at him. “I suppose you believe whatever yarn this woman detective has spun?”

  “Why not?” Cordell asked. “She ain't helping me from the goodness of her heart. Ten years in prison teaches you the only way to get respect is by kicking ass. She's kicked mine—twice!”

  Fey decided to take back control. “When you were paroled in San Francisco, Cordell, whose idea was it for you to move to Los Angeles?”

  “Hers,” Cordell said, jerking a thump toward Janice Ryder.

  “I don't have to sit here for this.” Janice Ryder said. She stood up and grabbed her purse from the table. “I've done all I can, Mr. Cordell. You’re on your own.”

  “Sit down!” Fey said, her tone brooking no argument.

  “Am I under arrest?” Ryder asked.

  “Not at this moment,” Fey said.

  “Then I'm leaving.”

  “No, you're not,” Fey told her. “You are not under arrest, but you are legally detained pending further immediate and ongoing investigation.” Fey glanced at Jake, who nodded his concurrence.

  Janice Ryder sat.

  The interrogation room was beginning to heat up with the presence of too many bodies and rising emotions.

  “Ms. Ryder was responsible for your relocating in Los Angeles?” Fey rephrased her question to Cordell.

  “Yeah. She cleared it with the parole board.”

  “Were you aware she had located your wife—the woman you were supposed to have murdered?”

  “No. I figured she was still alive, but I didn't know where.”

  “Did Ms. Ryder tell you the woman who got you sent to prison was the same woman who murdered her father?”

  “No.”

  Janice Ryder made to jump start, but Fey froze her with a glance.

  “Did you tell Ms. Ryder you wanted to find your wife?” Fey asked Cordell.

  “Yeah. I told her when she first came to see me in prison.”

  “What happened when you got to L.A.?”

  Cordell scratched his casted arm. “She told me she'd tracked down a woman who might be my wife.”

  “Did you ask her how?”

  “I didn't care.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “She took me to an apartment building in Beverly Hills. We parked on the street until a woman came and got into a car.”

  “Was that woman your wife?”

  “She'd changed some in ten years, but I still recognized Miriam. Ryder told me Miriam was now calling herself Monica Blake—but she was the same old Miriam.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What did I do? I wanted to kill her. This time for real.”

  “Did you?”

  “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wanted money first. Miriam and Roark ripped off a million bucks in insurance when I got sent down. I wanted my share.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went to her fancy apartment and confronted Miriam. It was worth ten years in jail when I saw the look on her face. Scared her out of her skin.”

  “Then?” Fey encouraged. She was surprised Cordell was being this open, but he had nothing to lose.

  “She was my wife. It had been ten long years. I screwed her.”

  Fey felt her stomach roll thinking about what Miranda Goodwinter had faced. But the dead were dead. It only mattered now in the context of dubious justice.

  Cordell continued his story. “When we were done, I told her I wanted what I was due. She and Roark got a million bucks while I was sitting in jail. I wanted the million. If she didn't have it, I was going to kill her right then.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she'd give me two million if I let her live. Who was I to argue? I was going to take the money and kill her anyway. I'd learned about bearer bonds in jail. I told her it was how I wanted the money. I followed her to the bank the next morning, watched her go in. When she came out, she had a receipt showing she ordered the bonds. I followed again in the afternoon to get the bonds. This time, she didn't come out. I thought I had the exits covered, but she slipped by me and I never saw her again.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went back to the halfway house. A couple of weeks went by. Then you were banging on my door and chasing me out windows.”

  There was an extended silence in the room.

  “Are you trying to prove I had Mr. Cordell murder Miranda Goodwinter?” Janice Ryder asked with contempt.

  “I believe it's what you originally had in mind,” Fey said. “But I don't believe it’s the way it happened. When Monica Blake slipped out of the bank and became Miranda Goodwinter, not only did Cordell lose track of her, but so did you. It took a lot of years, but somehow, you managed to track down the woman—your stepmother—who you believed murdered your father. When you identified her as Miriam Cordell, you also discovered Isaac Cordell was in jail for her murder. You had found the perfect weapon. Your plan fell apart when Cordell let Monica Blake get away. You were stumped, but when we arrested Cordell, you came to his defense thinking he had somehow tracked his wife down again and killed her again.”

  “You can't prove anything.”

  Fey laughed. “I don't need to prove anything. I can produce a paper trail showing Miranda Goodwinter was a black widow killer of long standing. I could probably prove she was your stepmother. Cordell's business partner dying in a car crash—in the same way and same place your father died—prove all of Miranda Goodwinter's identities were connected.

  “By circumstantial evidence I can also show your intentions regarding your client, which will be enough to prove them to the Bar Association and get your law license yanked. However, I do not need to prove anything in court because neither you nor Cordell murdered the woman.”

  There was silence again.

  Janice Ryder spoke. “Then what are we all doing here?”

  Fey stood up, hoping her timing was right. She walked behind Cordell and Ryder to open the blind on the window, revealing the squad bay.


  She glanced out.

  Sitting at Fey’s desk, bracketed by Hatch and Monk, was Colby's father.

  Hatch saw Fey looking and gave her a thumbs-up. He lifted a clear evidence bag off the desk. Fey could see it contained a wood chisel. She turned back to the interior of the interrogation room and stared directly into the eyes of her partner leaning against the back wall.

  “You want to tell us about it, Colby? Or do we need to give your daddy the third degree?”

  Chapter 41

  Colby's face was chalk white. For a moment, Fey thought he was going to faint.

  “How did you know?” he asked simply, his voice a disembodied echo.

  “A fingerprint left in the blood and a pathologist who wasn't afraid to change his original assessment of the murder weapon. But those things would never have been caught if you hadn't stupidly overplayed your hand,”

  Fey knew she had one chance to turn Colby. If she let him off the ropes for a second, he'd gather his wits and clam up. She had to push hard and fast. “You tried to cover yourself too many ways. You were shoving on me right from the start of the investigation. I originally put your actions down to a personality conflict, but you were pushing too may buttons. I finally began to wonder why.”

  “How much do you know?” Colby was beginning to shake.

  “Most of it,” Fey said. “Between what I can prove, what I know, and what I can guess, I'd say your dad was scheduled to be Miranda Goodwinter's next victim—until Isaac Cordell reappeared on the scene, causing her to dump everything and run.”

  Colby slid his back slowly down the wall until his buttocks touched the floor, his knees rising in front of him as if they could protect him from the onslaught of the truth.

  “Dad had dated occasionally since my mother died. He even had a few steady girlfriends. But he was obsessed with Miranda Goodwinter. She cast a spell over him he couldn't shake.” Colby's voice came forth in muffled tones. His head was down. Fey thought he might be crying.

  “Where did your father meet Goodwinter?” Fey asked.

  She had to play this right. A veteran of hundreds of interrogations, she knew Colby would only give her as much as he thought was safe or what she already knew. She hoped it would be enough.

  Cops rarely made good crooks. It didn't mean there weren't crooked cops. It did mean, however, the handful of bent coppers—those who made every other cop look bad—rarely had the true lack of conscience to be effective liars.

  “He met her at an antique toy show. Dad was there with a display of his original toy designs. There were a lot of well-heeled collectors, and Dad's stuff was in demand. She thought if all these rich guys were throwing money at Dad, he must be richer than any of them.”

  “But he wasn't?”

  Colby shook his head. “Not anymore. He has enough to get by, but the big money was gone years ago. I don't think she realized all Dad was doing at the show was selling off a few originals to make ends meet. There was no demand for any of his new stuff.”

  “He started seeing Miranda Goodwinter on a regular basis?”

  “Yeah, but he knew her as Monica Blake. It was cool at first. Dad was acting as if he were a teenager...” he trailed off.

  “But something soured you on the deal?” Fey encouraged.

  “I ran a check on Monica Blake. You know how it is?” Colby said, looking up for the first time. “As a cop, you check out your new neighbors, or the kid who's dating your daughter. You don't take chances.”

  “Monica Blake didn't check out?”

  “Only so far. She didn't have any kind of history I could trace.”

  “Did you tell your father?”

  “Yeah. He got pissed off. Told me he was old enough to know what he was doing. It caused a big rift between us.”

  “Did you try checking further?”

  “Not until Dad told me she'd disappeared on him.”

  “It must have been when she was confronted by Cordell and decided to run,” Fey said.

  Colby nodded his head. “I knew nothing about Cordell, but. Dad was acting strange. He was out all night and would not tell me where he'd been.”

  “Let me guess,” Fey said. “You followed him one night?”

  Colby nodded. “The night he killed her. He told me later he'd gone to the apartment where she used to live, trying to find out what happened to her. She came back to the complex while he was still there, parked on the street. She didn't see him, but he saw her. He followed her to the new townhome she leased as Miranda Goodwinter.

  “For a couple of weeks, Dad drove to the new townhome and watched her place. He got to know the guards—told them he was thinking of buying a place inside. They let him go in and out thinking he was a harmless old man.”

  Colby snuffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Nobody in the room said anything. Everyone was waiting for more. Eventually, it came.

  “The first night I followed him, I parked outside the complex and climbed over an exterior wall. I found his car, but it was too late. Dad had finally worked up the nerve to confront the woman he knew as Monica Blake. I waited by his car because I didn't know which townhome he was in. When he finally came out, he had blood on him, and I knew the worst had happened.”

  “He had the murder weapon with him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A wood chisel?”

  “One of his original set. He refused to let me get rid of it. Said he'd turn himself in and confess if I did.”

  “Did he want to turn himself in and confess?”

  “He was a foolish old man. I couldn't let him. He is my father.” Colby hung his head again.

  “Instead, you got yourself assigned to the murder investigation to run a cover-up,” Fey said.

  Colby didn't reply.

  “Touching,” said Fey, then lost her temper. Jumping around the table, she bent down, grabbed Colby by his collar, and dragged him upright. It was unclear who was more surprised, the other observers in the room or Colby. “You smug, self-serving bastard,” Fey screamed into Colby's face. “You want us to believe you did this to save your poor father. There is a lot more to this than a cover-up. I was getting too close, wasn't I? Not to your father, but to you. So, you tried to kill me!”

  “Take it easy, Fey,” Jake said. He reached out to restrain her.

  “Keep your hands off me,” Fey yelled at him.

  Even though Colby was supporting his own weight, Fey was still holding him by the front of his shirt, pressing him against the wall.

  “When we found out about Monica Blake's financial affairs, we found two million dollars in bearer bonds had taken a walk.” Fey nodded her head in Cordell's direction. “Cordell didn't get the bonds, even though he made her get them out of the bank. They had to be somewhere else.”

  She banged Colby against the wall. “I'm betting you found them in the townhome, while cleaning up after your father, and decided to keep them for yourself.” Fey slammed Colby back into the wall again. “You must have missed the stash in the dryer or it also would have been gone.”

  “Fey!” Jake yelled, but he didn't move toward her.

  “You slimy piece of gutter wash,” Fey said to Colby, her face right up next to his. “You knew I was going to keep hammering away until I found those bonds, didn't you? It's the first rule of investigation, money, money, who's got the money? You follow the trail of the money and it will lead you to your suspect.” Spittle was forming in the comers of Fey's mouth.

  “You used your trick photography to get me thrown off the case,” she continued. “But you still weren't happy. You knew sooner or later I'd get back, so you decided to kill me off. I knew it wasn't Cordell who threw the gasoline bomb into the horse box. He wanted a piece of me up close and personal. He wasn't about to miss out on doing away with me face-to-face. I thought about it for the rest of the night, and I began to think about you.”

  “You'll never prove it!” Colby said. The look on his face changed.

  Fey dropped her hands fr
om Colby's shirt and backed away smiling. “At least you've stopped being the put-upon son defending his poor old dad.” Her own voice was calm. “It didn't suit you.”

  “Nobody will believe you,” Colby told her.

  “Yes they will,” she said. “I have an eyewitness.”

  Colby's eyes darted around the room. Cordell was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Funny, ain't it?” Cordell said. “Me, the prime witness for the prosecution.” He let loose a huge laugh. “I was hiding in the bougainvillea at the back of Croaker's property waiting for my chance to get her. I saw the whole thing. I was pissed 'cause I thought you'd ruined my fun.” Cordell laughed again. “I'm going to plead guilty to attacking Croaker, so I can be inside waiting for you. We're going to have good times.”

  Fey opened the door to the interrogation room. She called for Hatch and Monk. “Get Colby's sorry ass out of here and book him,” she said when they approached.

  Chapter 42

  The Gunnery was a small, quiet bar a dozen blocks from West Los Angeles station. In a large double booth in the rear of the establishment, Fey was holding forth while Hatch, Monk, Jake, Mike Cahill, Card MacGregor, and Kyle Craven sat in leather seats and coaxed her through the fine points of the case again.

  “There were a lot of little things,” Fey said. “I didn't start to put them together until Colby tried to burn me out in the horse box.”

  “How could you be sure it wasn't Cordell who threw the gasoline bomb?” Mike asked.

  Fey shook her head. “I never even considered it. You weren't there in the alley when Cordell was trying to beat the crap out of me. I saw the madness in him. I knew if he got another chance at me, he wouldn't do it from a distance. Cordell wanted to strike out at the system. I represented the system to him, so he wanted to personally destroy me. When I talked to him in the cells, it was easy to turn his anger toward Colby, to get him to tell me about seeing Colby throw the gasoline bomb. Cordell didn't care who he took down as long as he could have a personal role in doing it.”