First Murder

by Fred Limberg

  Several what-ifs came to mind but he couldn’t voice them all. Not yet. “Carol? Do you think Marcy could come up with the dates each episode went online?”

  “I can ask her.”

  “What are you thinking, Tony?” Ray had ideas of his own, and one of them dovetailed with Tony’s question. He wanted to hear Tony work it through.

  “What if the bust wasn’t the first time he’d worked for the kids?”

  “This is getting very complicated.” Carol started gathering her files, talking while she did. “I’ll talk to Marcy again. When did the ‘Go Girls’ go to LA?”

  “Last Spring. Late April. I’ll get you the exact dates.” Ray said.

  “Do that. I might have another track. I’ve got to make a few calls. Can we get some money?” Ray knew that Carol meant money for a snitch. It was a front page, high profile, Murder 1 case. Money shouldn’t be a problem. But who would she want to bribe?

  Ray checked his watch. Tony would have to leave soon to match up with Stuckey at the film class. He decided he was going with him. It was time for Ray Bankston to meet Sean Stuckey.

  Ted and Vang were out still working the neighborhood, the morning survey today, and Carol had a plate full. Ray dialed the lab and talked to Jonny Kumpula briefly. He needed an extra body that knew how to work a camera.

  “We’re going to have to be careful with this one.” Ray, in the passenger seat this time, was happy to let Tony untangle the streets and parking problems on the campus. “I don’t want this fella’ to run on us.”

  “So you’re calling Stuckey a suspect now?” Tony asked. He was in his mind, but he wasn’t sure if he should make the point yet.

  “Not yet, but he’s of great interest to me. I need to meet him.”

  “You’re the boss. How far are you going to push him?”

  Ray didn’t answer. He just stared out the side window. He hadn’t decided how far yet, and it was too complicated to explain to his rookie partner in the short time they had. All they had so far were coincidences. Kumpula was fiddling with a Nikon in the back seat, a sophisticated digital camera with a high powered telephoto lens. Ray wanted some pictures of Sean Stuckey, and he didn’t want him to know they had them.

  Tony found parking and led them across campus. He knew he would have to keep a sharp eye out when class was over. There were two doors exiting the Fine Arts building. Kumpula was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, to better blend in with the crowd. He set up about 75 yards from where Ray and Tony were standing. The big telephoto would allow him to get a head shot at that range. He was having fun playing sniper.

  Stuckey emerged from the building, backpack slung over his shoulder, talking to a pretty, petite, dark haired woman. When Tony approached him and said, “Hi, Sean. Got a minute?” he didn’t recognize him at first, the blue suit and tie were a much different costume than what he had been wearing when he’d met him at the house. “Detective de Luca, remember?”

  The dark haired girl frowned and melted into the crowd. She didn’t want to have anything to do with ‘detective’ anybody no matter how cute he was.

  “You lying piece of shit!” Tony was surprised by the anger in Stuckey’s voice. “You said you were going to talk to Angie the next day. That was a chicken shit move.”

  Tony recalled the message from the Code-A-Phone. He put on one of Ray’s half smiles, thinking ‘gotcha, punk’, and shrugged. “Chill, man. It was still early and I can put in for all the overtime I want.” Tony didn’t want to antagonize him. “I just wanted her off my list.”

  “What do you want? I got another class.”

  Ray stepped up. He was wearing a very dark gray suit and an even darker pair of Ray-Bans. Stuckey eyed him, wary and suspicious.

  Tony, still smiling, said, “This is my boss, Detective Sergeant Bankston. He’s got a couple of questions for you.”

  Stuckey ignored Ray’s hand. “I got another class.”

  “We’ll walk with you.” Ray gestured, inviting Stuckey to lead the way, calling his bluff.

  Stuckey looked around as if he was getting his bearings, making a decision. “What questions?”

  “Your prints came back with a hit. Seems you had a little trouble out in California?”

  “Fucker! You said those were for comparison.” Stuckey glared at Tony.

  Tony shrugged, not threatened at all by the accusing tone. “That was your fault, Sean. You ducked me so long the lab sent them out with all the unknowns.” Stuckey didn’t need to know that once the LA connection was made the prints would have gone out anyway.

  Stuckey’s reply was nearly a whine. “My phone got crunched. I showed you.” Ray stooped down to tie a shoe. Tony noticed it wasn’t untied, then realized he was giving their ‘sniper’ a clear shot.

  “Here’s the thing, Mr. Stuckey.” Ray’s tone was matter of fact, not threatening at all unless you were hiding something. “Your alibi’s a little shaky. Your girlfriend aside, no one can put you in the film class Monday morning. Not for sure.”

  “I was here.”

  Tony edged closer into Stuckey’s space, glaring back now, telling him ‘playtime’s over’ with his eyes. “You told me the wrong movie, Sean. I checked.”

  “So I was wrong about the movie. Big fucking deal. We watch three of them a week.” Neither Tony nor Ray said anything. Stuckey moved away from Tony and paced for a minute. He was agitated. He finally sighed and stood directly in front of the two detectives, shifting an angry look from one to the other.

  “I did not kill Scotty’s mom. I met the woman once, at their house. We went over to watch some football. She and Scotty’s dad were there for like, five minutes, if that. They said hello and left. The bullshit out in LA has nothing to do with this shit. I was in class Monday. That’s it. I’m done talking to you.” Stuckey turned, hitched up his backpack, and strode off.

  Back in the car, Kumpula proudly showed off his work with the camera. Several good head shots of Sean Stuckey flashed across the tiny screen.

  “Do you think he was lying? You’ve spent the most face time with him.” Ray was starting to trust his new partner’s observations.

  “His phone was busted, I saw that. And he could have been in the class and just mixed up the movies. I noticed you didn’t front him on the prints upstairs.”

  Ray smiled. “It’s not time yet. I want to work these pictures first. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Yeah, he’s lying,” Tony said. “I just don’t know about what yet.”

  Kumpula leaned over the seat with the camera. “So what do you think?” There was a picture of Stuckey’s jeans on the screen focused on his crotch. Both Ray and Tony gave him a disgusted look.

  “What? This is the guy supposed to have a big wiener, right? Whadda’ ya’ think?”

  Chapter 21

  Kumpula had prints of Sean Stuckey’s photo for them in short order, a head shot with a neutral expression for them to show around. Tony and Ray used the time to take a look at the pictures on the disc Lakisha Marland had given them from the club in LA. Both of them were quiet while they scrolled through the images. Both of them were embarrassed. Carol strolled by, taking a short break from talking to Marcy in LA and making other calls. One glance at the images on the monitor sent her back to her desk and the phones, shaking her head and muttering.

  Ray had Jonny make up a set of six photos, five young white males in their twenties and Sean Stuckey. It was common practice to show a witness a six-pack, as the set was known, but Tony was puzzled why the senior detective was going to all the trouble. All they wanted to know was if any of the ‘Go Girls’ had ever seen Stuckey before. He guessed Ray had his reasons.

  They caught up with Tia Bork at home. When they showed her the six photos she studied them closely. The liquor was nowhere in sight and neither was Boom Boom.

  She tapped the stack of pictures with a manicured nail. “One of these guys is a suspect, right?”

  “Right now just a person of some interest.” Ra
y kept using that term. In Tony’s mind Stuckey a suspect for damn sure, but he kept it to himself.

  “What kind of interest?” The look on Tia’s face asked if Deanna’s murderer was in the photo spread.

  “I can’t answer that at this point,” Ray said. “What we really need to know right now is if you recognize any of these men.”

  “Here in the cities or on one of the trips? You were very curious about the trips.”

  “Anywhere.”

  Tia studied the pictures again. Finally she sighed and set them back down. “No. I don’t remember ever seeing any of these guys. Not anywhere.”

  “Maybe in LA?” Tony suggested. Ray’s head snapped to him, nostrils flared. The move was so abrupt, so obviously angry that Tia noticed.

  Tony raised his hands in surrender. “What?” He honestly didn’t know what he’d done wrong. All he’d done was point Tia Bork toward the place they thought she might have run into Stuckey.

  Tia looked at the pictures again. “LA?” Her brow furrowed before she looked back up. “The club thing?”

  “Detective de Luca shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Why not?” Tia was still searching the faces in the photos. “Okay, you know, I might have seen this guy out there.”

  She pulled one of the photos from the stack and placed the others face down. It was the picture of Sean Stuckey.

  Tony reasoned he was already in trouble with Ray so he pressed ahead. “At the club?”

  Tia laughed out loud. “At the club we weren’t exactly looking at their faces.” Hers was getting a shade of pink to it. “No. Not at the club. Look, I’m really not sure, but I might have seen this guy out there. Lose the beard. Spike the hair a little…give it a little style… I might have seen him.”

  “The whole point of the photo line-up is to let the witness make the ID. You can’t lead them, Tony, no matter how much you want to.” Ray lit into him before the car was even started. “You can have the whole thing thrown out if you don’t do it by the numbers.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “You led the Bork woman. You suggested LA. That’s leading the witness. It’s a tainted identification. A sharp lawyer will chew your ass for that.”

  Ray was angrier than Tony had seen him before. He guessed that Ray had learned this the hard way, that when he was green he’d lost a case because he screwed up an ID. He knew Ray was a perfectionist and that he wanted his evidence pure and unimpeachable, but Tony didn’t think he’d done everything wrong, not completely. He was also surprised he’d gotten a cuss word out of his partner. Well…ass anyway.

  “Fine.” Tony had an idea. He was going to let Ray get it all out of his system before he told him what he had in mind.

  “You always use a six-pack. Always! You can’t be planting faces in people’s heads.” Ray lectured, still angry.

  “I said fine.”

  “You get into court and the defense lawyers will pick and probe and slice away exactly how you do things and it can cost the DA a case.”

  “I’ve been on the stand before, Ray. I know how it works.”

  “Not from a lead detective’s point of view you don’t.”

  “You’re right.” Tony was doing his best to let Ray get back to an even keel.

  “So do it my way. Got it?” Ray started the car. He was coming down.

  “Absolutely. No leading witnesses in a six-pack ID.”

  “That’s right.”

  Ray backed the car out of the drive and started making his way toward Edina and Erika Hilgendorf’s office, hoping to catch her in. They drove in silence.

  While Ray concentrated on the traffic Tony worked on his idea, tried to come up with the best way to approach his cranky partner. “I don’t think we should front the Hilgendorf woman yet.” Good or bad, Tony decided to pitch his idea. Ray drove on in silence, glancing only once at Tony, and he wasn’t smiling. “I think we should go back to the lab.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Tia told us what Stuckey might have looked like last year. He had the LA thing going. No facial hair. Some spike to the hair. He doesn’t exactly look like that now. He just looks grungy.” Traffic was heavy and for once in his life Tony was thankful for it.

  Ray had to keep his eyes and part of his mind on the road. “Okay, give me all of it.”

  “I didn’t lead Tia Bork to Stuckey. I lead her to LA.” Tony waited for the explosion. He expected Ray to tell him in a loud voice that leading was leading and not to parse words. He cringed slightly, waiting for it.

  “Go on.” Ray’s measured, even-toned response made him worry even more. Was the old guy setting him up for something, he wondered.

  “Once she had the locale she picked the guy out, or almost did. I think we should get Kumpula or someone in the lab to Photoshop the guy. Clean up his facial hair. Give him a surfer doo.”

  “And put him back in the six-pack like that?”

  “Yeah. And mention LA right from the start.”

  “I’m not so sure about doing that.”

  Tony had him halfway there, he reckoned. “Why not? It’s where the ‘Go Girls’ and Stuckey intersect, other than he’s young Scott’s roommate.”

  “Are you saying Stuckey met Deanna Fredrickson in LA and followed her here to the Twin Cities? Managed to place himself in the same house as her son?” Ray didn’t see conspiracy like that in the case, not a bit. “That he was stalking her?”

  “Not at all, Ray. All I’m saying is that’s where it intersects and that connection should be exploited. We don’t have much else.”

  Ray snorted. “We don’t have anything else.”

  “So we go back to the lab?” Tony said evenly, doing an invisible victory dance in the car seat.

  “We go back to the lab.”

  Kumpula told them he needed what was left of the afternoon to do a good job on the composite. Ray didn’t think it made much sense to chase around on a Friday night with a pile of pictures so they decided to check in with Carol and call it a day.

  Carol Offord was smiling when they got back up to the squad room. Tony hoped she had something concrete. What she had was more like gold. “I found one!” She was almost bouncing in her seat.

  “One what?” Tony perched on the edge of her desk.

  “One of the ‘Ur MoM’ episodes. Well, part of one.” Tony grinned. Ray looked skeptical.

  “Where?”

  “Here. Well, over in Sex Crimes. I was whining to Jerry Horace, one of the guys over there I’ve worked with. He remembered the title from a sting last year. His crew took down that kiddie-porn ring, remember?” Ray remembered. He had been part of the bust but not out in front. Tony vaguely remembered it from the news.

  “So Jerry goes down to evidence and pulls the guy’s computer, the one we confiscated. He found me a clip.” She waved a CD at them. “I haven’t seen it yet.”

  Carol slipped the disc into a computer and called up the media player. A fuzzy still image appeared. To the right was a legend that read, ‘Ur MoM is so Hott #6’. A bright green time stamp blinked 2:20. The clip was only a couple of minutes long. She grimaced and looked to Tony and Ray before hitting the play button. Ray nodded. The image came into focus.

  “Whoa!”

  Tony’s eyes widened and his mouth went dumb-look slack. An older woman, thoroughly into her 40s, was sitting on a couch between two younger men. She had medium length black hair, snow white skin, and an obviously store bought pair of boobs, size XL. It was so obvious it looked comical to Tony. She was buck-naked and had her legs spread apart. Ray was squinting. Tony couldn’t decide if he was scrutinizing the video or trying to block the image out.

  The woman was giving an enthusiastic blowjob to the man to her right, well…trying to, Tony reckoned. Her left hand could almost encircle the guy’s erect penis. She was stroking it in time with her bobbing head. Both men’s heads were tilted back, unrecognizable. The image flickered and changed. Now the woman was facing the camera, bouncing up and down
on one of the men’s huge members. The woman was the star. The giant penises were just props.

  The two minutes dragged on for two hours, it seemed. The scene shifted again. One man mounted her from behind and was thrusting away while she tried to keep the other’s dick in her mouth. Raw nasty sex flashed on the screen but Tony didn’t feel the slightest bit of titillation or excitement. The camera panned to show the look of tortured pleasure on one of the men’s faces, the one getting the blowjob—just a quick camera tilt to the face and back to the action.

  “Gotcha!” Tony reached toward the screen, meaning to tap on Sean Stuckey’s distorted face. The camera panned down so quickly he ended up tapping on the image of Stuckey’s erect penis.

  Carol and Ray burst out in loud raucous laughter when Tony jerked his hand back. It didn’t matter if they were trying to break the tension or having some fun at his expense. Tony joined them. The scene shifted and Carol hit the off button. They’d seen enough. They’d seen too much.

  “Good Lord,” Ray sputtered. “Sorry Tony, but I’ve been needing a laugh like this for some time.”

  Carol wiped a finger under one eye, getting her own laughter under control. “You want to wash up?”

  Tony just shook his head, still wearing a ‘yeah—you got me good there’ smile, but he was thinking it wasn’t all that funny.

  “That was our boy, Sean.” Tony was trying to get them back to the reason they’d played the clip.

  “It sure was.” Ray was back to serious now, even though he wore a cockeyed grin. “Lordy.”

  Tony looked over at Carol and smiled. “I can think of several inappropriate questions right now.”

  “No. No. And NO!” Carol said, still chuckling. “Leave it at that.” Tony nodded. He was too mannered to ever voice the questions and Carol was the wrong person to ask.

  “Well, we learned one thing,” Ray said. His tone was serious. Tony bit off the wise crack he was about to make and asked ‘what’ instead.

  “That was episode 6. Stuckey said he was only in the last one, number 7.”