The Boy Who Cried Freebird

by Mitch Myers

  Ross can’t get over how unbelievably hot she is.

  Martinez also claimed that she called Alex Manning from her car, but he never answered the phone so she drove to work without him. She maintained that Manning was always erratic and him canceling plans didn’t particularly concern her—until Manning didn’t show up for their radio show.

  “Alex never missed a show in all the years that I knew him,” said Alesha Martinez.

  “But you do have a key to his apartment, don’t you?” Kowalt said bluntly.

  The question seemed to bother Alesha and her eyes narrowed. “Yes, I do,” she snapped, “and I don’t like the implication of your question. Do you think I’m enjoying any of this? Don’t you know what is happening? There are all sorts of conspiracy theories and that’s all anyone can talk about around here. Some people think I killed Alex and others are blaming Angie Madison. It’s all crazy!”

  Martinez continued her rant, “We’re not even sure if we should do the broadcast tomorrow, but what else can we do? Alex and I had a decade’s worth of history here, but I can’t do my job right now without looking like a bitch. The ironic thing is, Alex was the most malicious person of us all and he’s not here to take advantage of this mess. I’ve got to be ruthless or the sharks are going to eat me alive. Our show is a multimillion-dollar enterprise and it’s in total jeopardy—Detective, I did not kill Alex Manning!”

  Ross kept his head down and took notes. He was trying not to stare at Alesha.

  “Did Alex Manning have any enemies, Ms. Martinez?” asked Kowalt.

  Alesha sighed disdainfully. “I hope you’re not going to ask me to do your police work for you,” she said. “Alex and I were here for ten years and we dealt with the public almost every day. We made promo appearances and went to parties and hosted events all over the city. There are a ton of kooks out there—we even had stalkers and had to put out restraining orders. Alex had affairs and dumped people, invested in dubious ventures, and screwed over business associates. Sure, he had enemies; just look at the show’s transcripts.”

  Jim Kowalt responded without a hint of empathy, “Our records show that only two individuals ever threatened Alex Manning’s life and had restraining orders established as a result of those threats. These individuals now reside in other states and have been eliminated as suspects in this case. We believe the person who killed Alex Manning was a little closer in proximity. How well do you know Angie Madison?”

  “Not very well,” answered Martinez. “We all went out socially a few times when she was dating Alex. But anyone who listened to our show knows about Angie.”

  “S-s-so, Ms. Martinez,” stammered Ross. “Were you romantically involved with Mr. Manning?”

  “Detective,” she said curtly, “there was nothing romantic about my relationship with Alex Manning.”

  “Yes, but were you having sex with him?” countered Jim Kowalt.

  “Why is that always the million-dollar question?” Martinez spat back. “There are plenty of other reasons why somebody would want to kill Alex, I assure you. What’s the difference if we did or did not have sex? Can’t you guys ever get past the jealous lover thing?”

  “Well,” said Kowalt. “Isn’t it true that in the last few months you were trying to renegotiate your contract with this radio station, but that any change from your current arrangement required a written release from Alex Manning—a release that he hadn’t provided to you despite your repeated requests for him to do so?

  “Yes, that’s true,” she said indifferently.

  “Well,” continued Kowalt, “wasn’t this dispute one of the factors that had led to the tension between you and Mr. Manning prior to his murder? The tension that led to you confronting him on the air for his numerous character flaws, including but not restricted to his treatment of women in general, his treatment of Angie Madison in particular, and his temperament toward you, his longtime pal and loyal cohost?”

  “Yes, that was one of the factors,” she said less indifferently.

  “Well, where were you last night between ten o’clock and four in the morning?” asked Jim Kowalt.

  “With a friend,” she said defiantly.

  “Man, she’s hot,” thought Ross.

  Kowalt persisted, “Well, Ms. Martinez, will you please provide us with that person’s name and contact information so that we might confirm your whereabouts on the night of Alex Manning’s murder?”

  Alesha Martinez looked alarmed and her voice became shrill, “I’d really rather not.”

  Ross suddenly came to life. Smiling, he leaned forward and cooed, “Please, Miss Martinez, Alesha. I guarantee you that this information will not be made available to anyone else. All we want to do is eliminate you as a suspect as soon as possible, and that’s it. I promise. We’ll respect your privacy.”

  Alesha Martinez looked unimpressed and said, “Don’t you understand that if my reputation gets any worse I could lose my job? There’s no real guarantee here, just your damn promise. I’m supposed to trust you? Why don’t you just put your tongue back in your mouth and give me a goddamn break.”

  Jim Kowalt leaned forward, softened his voice as best he could, and said, “You have my guarantee as well, Ms. Martinez. We’re just trying to solve this case and if you’re innocent, then you have nothing to worry about.”

  The woman gazed up at the ceiling for several moments. She blinked back some tears and said in a choked whisper, “Okay.”

  “Well,” repeated Detective Jim Kowalt, “who were you with last night between ten in the evening and four in the morning?”

  “Ace MacKay,” said Alesha Martinez.

  “Damn,” said Ross.

  Part Three

  Angie Madison didn’t have her own office; she worked out of a cubicle in the sales department. For privacy, the detectives met with her in one of the executive conference rooms. Madison was a leggy blonde, originally from Terre Haute, Indiana. She gave off a youthful, midwestern sort of innocence and looked Jim Kowalt straight in the eye. She was quite intelligent and possessed a rock-hard body with a flat stomach and well-defined thighs.

  Ross can’t get over how hot she is.

  Angie explained to the detectives that she had been working at the station as an ad salesperson for about eighteen months before dating Alex Manning. “He was the least likely person for me to ever have gone out with,” she said.

  “In what way?” asked Ross.

  Angie looked Ross straight in the eye and said, “He was a lot like my father, an overwhelming personality. Alex was very aggressive and his mind was very sharp. He sought out other people’s weaknesses and then exposed them.”

  “Well, why did you start having personal dialogues with Mr. Manning on the radio?” Kowalt asked.

  “The first time it happened it was just twenty or thirty seconds of him asking me out on a date,” she explained. “I didn’t even realize we were on the air until my girlfriend told me afterward.”

  Angie Madison blushed and said, “Discussing more personal things happened gradually. He’d call me on my cell phone while I was on the way to a meeting or something. I’ve always had this weird sense of humor and the audience liked me. It became like a game for Alex, he tried to catch me off guard or talk provocatively like he did with his other guests. That’s where I drew the line, but Alex was incorrigible.”

  “We understand that Mr. Manning broke up with you on the show and you took it pretty hard,” said Kowalt.

  “That’s not true, I broke up with him!” Angie Madison objected. “Then he called me the next day while he was doing the show and said that he didn’t want to see me anymore. It was like Paul McCartney claiming he was the one to quit the Beatles when it was really John Lennon! I was upset because he made it look like he was dumping me and it just wasn’t true.”

  “And Mr. Manning continued to disparage your reputation on his show after you’d stopped seeing each other,” added Kowalt.

  “That’s right,” said Angie. “I’d nev
er been so hurt and angered by a person in my life.”

  “Is that when you called up the show and told him to ‘fuck off ’ on the air?” asked Kowalt.

  “Yes, that’s when I called him and said that,” Madison answered.

  “And you told him that if he embarrassed you again that he’d regret it,” Kowalt reminded.

  “Yes, but he never said anything after I confronted him,” she said defensively. “He finally left me alone and that was the end of it.”

  Kowalt pressed further, “Well, didn’t your confrontation on the radio directly precede an even bigger argument between Mr. Manning and his cohost Alesha Martinez?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” said Madison. “But what does that have to do with anything? Alesha was just standing up for all women everywhere and I respect her for it.”

  Ross jumped in again, “Do you know Alesha very well?”

  “No, not very well,” she replied. “We all went out socially a few times when I was dating Alex.”

  Jim Kowalt remained focused and terse. “Did you continue to communicate with Alex Manning after your breakup?”

  “Not really,” she answered. “I was very angry with Alex and didn’t want to have anything to do with him.”

  Jim Kowalt frowned and said, “Well, the phone records show that Alex Manning called you at home last night around six-thirty and that the two of you were on the line for about twenty minutes.”

  “He called me!” Angie Madison screeched. “I just answered my phone, is that a crime?”

  “Well, what did the two of you discuss on the phone for twenty minutes?” asked Kowalt.

  “Alex wanted to reconcile, he said he wanted me back!” she shouted. “I didn’t say yes but I didn’t hang up on him, either. He kept asking me to come over to his place. Finally, I told him I had to get off the phone and would call him back but I didn’t. I turned off the ringer, took a Xanax, and watched TV until I fell asleep.”

  “Well, tell me, Ms. Madison,” Kowalt said. “Do you have a key to Mr. Manning’s apartment in your possession?”

  Angie Madison started crying, “Yes! Yes! I still have the key; I was going to mail it back to him. So I forgot! Is that a crime?” She looked imploringly at Ross and said, “That doesn’t mean that I would kill anybody. You don’t think I killed Alex—do you?”

  But Jim Kowalt sprang to his feet, handed Angie Madison his card, thanked her for her time, and hustled Ross out of the conference room before he could say a word.

  The two detectives went directly over to Ace MacKay’s radio station. Upon arriving, they were escorted to a large waiting room outside of his office.

  Ace had tousled hair, a small goatee, and was wearing a Velvet Underground T-shirt underneath a worn-looking leather jacket. Ace gave the impression that he was very busy and that there were several projects demanding his immediate attention. He seemed to have a very short attention span.

  Ace MacKay also seemed to be in a very good mood, apparently due to the publicity he’d been getting since Manning’s demise became public.

  “Let’s make it quick, gentlemen,” he said boisterously. “I have several interviews after this. I guess everyone wants to know what old Ace thinks about poor Alex Manning getting whacked.”

  Jim Kowalt got straight down to business and said, “Mr. MacKay, we understand that you and the deceased had a strong dislike for each other.”

  Ace didn’t even blink and answered, “What was there about him not to dislike? Alex was an on-air asshole, same as me. But he was an asshole off the air, too. My listeners always enjoyed it when I made Alex look bad, which was easy to do. Gentlemen, it was both my professional and personal pleasure to hate Alex Manning.”

  “Well,” Kowalt observed, “your feud with Mr. Manning has certainly been good for your career and now his murder has brought you into the national spotlight.”

  “You bet,” Ace said gleefully, “and tomorrow we’re going to do ‘The Worst of Alex Manning’ and play all of the low-down nasty things that jerk ever said to me.”

  “We understand that you were with Alesha Martinez at the time of the murder,” offered Ross.

  “That’s coming out now, huh?” Ace said in an unconcerned voice. “I’ve only been sleeping with her for a couple months and told her that it would be impossible to keep it a secret. The woman’s obsessed with her public image but as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing wrong with a little extra notoriety.”

  Ace began chuckling and paced his office excitedly. “Hey, I guess I don’t have to worry about keeping our secret if you guys know about it,” he said. “This just keeps getting better. Now I can really spice up my interviews tonight.”

  “But we promised Ms. Martinez our complete discretion on this matter,” Ross said. “So don’t start making this part of your media spiel. Okay, Ace?”

  MacKay’s eyes got wide and he said, “What, are you threatening me, Detective? Are you telling me that I can’t talk about my personal life if I feel like it? So what if our affair becomes common knowledge before Alesha is ready to deal with it?”

  “You’re pretty nonchalant about this whole thing, aren’t you, Mr. MacKay?” said Jim Kowalt.

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” Ace responded. “I didn’t murder anyone. Besides, everybody knows what a hateful person Alex Manning was. Do we all have to act sad just because someone finally got around to killing him?”

  “Well, Ms. Martinez claims that you were together at her house on the night of the murder,” said Kowalt. “This would provide both of you with an alibi, for now. Care to confirm her story?”

  “Of course,” he answered. “I was there, and that’s a fact. But I can’t say for certain if the same goes for Alesha.”

  “What do you mean by that?” asked Ross.

  Ace seemed pleased as he explained, “What I mean is that I was at her house, yes. But I was sleeping very soundly from eleven at night until three-thirty in the morning and can’t say with any certainty that Alesha was in bed next to me. I mean, who knows where she was? I was dead asleep and all I can say is that I can’t vouch for her.”

  “Damn,” thought Ross as Jim Kowalt jumped up and handed Ace MacKay his card.

  Part Four

  The two detectives drove back to the precinct. Again there was silence. Ross didn’t know what to say about the strange unfolding of the murder mystery. He waited for some direction to come from his partner.

  Jim Kowalt pulled his unmarked squad car up to the precinct HQ. He turned to Ross and said firmly, “Well, rookie, now comes the hard part so don’t screw this up. It’s 7:45, which means that you have just about two hours to examine the ‘jewel case’ and the ‘track listing.’ Forensics says that there were no fingerprints or DNA on the disc besides those of Manning himself.

  “So what I want you to do is this,” Kowalt continued. “You need to analyze the evidence from a musical perspective. See if there were any messages in the songs or anything else that you can come up with. I need you to develop at least a couple different hypotheses as to the identity of the murderer. Then I want you to meet me at the scene of the crime tonight at 10:00.”

  Jim Kowalt conveyed a covert attitude as he described the next stage of his plan. “After we’re set up in the victim’s home, I’m going to have the ‘four AMs’ all brought there, by themselves. We may need to stall them once they arrive, so be ready to discuss the clues from the CD in some detail.”

  Ross became nervous at the prospect of confronting the four suspects again, especially so soon and all together. “Are you sure we’re really ready for this?” he asked. “It feels rushed to me. Besides, how are you even going to get them all to show up, let alone without counsel?”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Kowalt said. “Just be ready to do some fast talking. It’ll be a surprise and there will probably be some panicking when everyone arrives. But we can’t wait until tomorrow—we have to gather all of the suspects together at the scene of the crime tonight.”

>   Ross got out of the car and started walking toward the police station. Kowalt opened the window on the passenger side, leaned over, and shouted, “Don’t screw this up, rookie! And remember—be there by ten o’clock sharp!”

  Ross was frantic when he finally sat down at his desk with the CD and jewel case. He checked the clock on the wall and became anxious about his deadline. “This is crazy,” he thought. “What does he expect me to do in just two hours?”

  It was then that Ross finally looked at the track listing on the back of the jewel case. He gasped at what he saw.

  Part Five

  Ross returned to the scene of the crime just five minutes before ten o’clock. He’d rushed like hell to get there and his heart was pounding as he tapped on the front door of Alex Manning’s apartment.

  Jim Kowalt cracked open the door and literally pulled Ross inside.

  “You just made it, rookie,” he said. “Well, how did you do with your ‘mix-tape’? Any leads?”

  “Actually, I—” Ross was cut off in midsentence by the senior detective.

  “No time for that now,” Kowalt exclaimed. “The ‘four AMs’ will be here any minute! Just get yourself ready to confront the suspects. All hell is going to break loose if we don’t handle things right.”

  “But, I—” Ross floundered.

  Kowalt interrupted again, “Don’t worry about a thing, rookie. I’ll be backing you up the whole time. Just keep talking until I give you the signal.”

  “What signal?” Ross asked.

  Jim Kowalt had already turned his back on the young detective and was tinkering with the stereo in the victim’s front room. “Crap,” he muttered. “Where’s the auto-repeat on this damn CD player?”