First Murder

by Fred Limberg

“So what else is he lying about?”

  Chapter 22

  The Red Door, three short blocks from the headquarters complex, features a long dark oak bar running the length of the room lined with comfortable upholstered stools. A dozen square tables, often pushed together for larger groups, take up most of the open floor in the middle. Ten booths with red soft-vinyl upholstery lit by solitary drop lamps, inviting more private conversation, line the other wall.

  Tony, Carol, and Ray, sitting in one of the booths, unanimously agreed that a drink was in order. It had been a long week of frustrating unanswered questions. Ray’s drink was scotch and soda. Tony nursed a beer, remembering the last night he’d been in The Red Door, accepting congratulations and hard liquor shots from well-wishers. Carol had a Manhattan in front of her and another already on order with Herve, the bartender.

  The bar wasn’t crowded yet, but Friday night had a reputation. Tony shared handshakes and backslaps with at least a dozen people asking how his first week with a gold badge had gone and had he caught any crooks yet. Two people asked if he’d seen Sue Ellen around, friends who had seen them leave together Monday night and suspected there was gossip to be harvested.

  Ray enjoyed seeing that his new partner was so popular and well liked. It paid to have friends in as many departments as possible. Ray sometimes wondered if anything of substance was ever accomplished without using your network, building favors, paying favors back, trading chips. He also noticed Carol bristle when well-wishers asked after Sue Ellen. It wasn’t a secret that she was his kin, but it wasn’t advertised either. He wasn’t even sure if Carol knew. They were finally allowed to talk among themselves.

  “Okay, straight up question.” Tony looked from Carol to Ray and back. “At this point can we call Stuckey our prime suspect?” Ray sipped his drink thoughtfully, looking somewhere over Tony’s head for the answer.

  “What was the motive?” Carol was staring into the nearly empty glass she was spinning between her palms. “All we have, really, is a shaky ID from the Bork woman.”

  “And the LA connection,” Tony was quick to add.

  “But what’s the motive? Money?” Carol asked, gesturing to Herve for her refill. “Blackmail? Extortion of some kind? Maybe the kid was involved with something out there, recognized Deanna, and was trying to shake her down.”

  “Shake her down for what?” Ray asked. “I don’t think Snow White ever did a stag film.”

  Carol patted Ray on the shoulder and said, “Actually, boss, there is one out there—complete with seven dwarves.”

  “No,” Tony said. “Just…no.” He took a sip from his glass. “Really?”

  “I have been in the smut squad way too long,” she sighed. Refill in hand, Carol continued, “Back to business. So Stuckey skips a class, goes to the house, demands money, they fight and he ends up stabbing her.”

  “For reasons completely unknown,” Tony sighed. “I love this new detective gig.”

  Ray stayed silent through the exchange and Carol’s speculations. He was grappling with the question of motive, too.

  Tony: “But if there was a fight wouldn’t the woman have had some defensive marks, a bruise or something? Fibers? Some DNA left somewhere?” Ray noticed that his new partner was already arguing against Carol’s wild theories…a good sign.

  “I think we have to be careful right now,” Ray finally joined in. “If we label young Stuckey as our prime suspect we’ll be keying in on him, working to prove he did it, and we might miss something else. Remember, everyone is a suspect until they’re cleared.”

  Carol started counting. She raised a finger each time she ticked off the suspects. “One. The husband. He’s stuck in airplane hell. Clear. Two, the kid…kids…they’re out.”

  “Three,” Tony joined in. “The roommates. Hong and Swenson. They have solid alibis.”

  “But not Stuckey,” Carol pointed out.

  Tony agreed. “Not Stuckey. Not yet anyway.”

  “Four, Lakisha Marland. Clear?”

  Carol looked over at Ray, who nodded once. “Clear. The time stamps on her computer matched up.” Tony looked a question at Ray. He hadn’t told him he’d talked with Lakisha again, or had gone to see her and checked out the computer. He wondered what else the old sly dog had been up to.

  “Tia Bork?” Carol held up another finger.

  “Cleared.”

  “Allyson Couts?”

  “Clear, and thank the Lord. I’d hate to try to make a case against her.” Ray got a chuckle for the comment.

  “Erika Hilgendorff?”

  “The phone logs check out.”

  “Roxie Kennebrew?”

  “Clear.”

  “Hold on a minute.” Ray took a quick sip of his drink and gestured with it. “Maybe I’m just too old school, but when a woman comes right out and says she’s got the hot’s for the husband, I’m keeping that pot on the stove for a while.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Karen Hewes?” Tony tossed out.

  Ray immediately came back with, “Gary Hewes?”

  Carol hadn’t been at the interview but she’d read the notes. She knew Tony’d had to restrain the husband, Gary, and that Karen had visited the house the morning of the murder by her own admission. “I don’t know. Sure the guy’s a little possessive, but the woman was Deanna’s best friend. Everyone says so.”

  Ray and Tony shared a dark look. Best friend or not, neither of them would write the pair off…not yet.

  “As much as I hate to say it,” Ray sighed, “The Stuckey kid is the most intriguing of the bunch. This has something to do with the women. I’ve just got this feeling.”

  Tony noticed that at the far end of the bar a beeper went off. “I see what you’re saying. We need to flash his picture at the other “Go Girls” and see what reaction we get.”

  Another beeper started chirping, then another one. Several people were hustling out of the bar, cell phones clamped to their ears. Something was happening—something big. Ray reached out and snagged the arm of a CAP detective named Diamond. His worried look asked the question.

  “A bomb just went off over at the courthouse.”

  Diamond shrugged free and hustled out the door. Tony nudged Carol with his hip. She was sitting on the outside of the booth bench. While she scooted over to let him out, Tony shared a concerned look with Ray. The same thought was on both of their minds.

  Sue Ellen.

  It took until late in the evening to get the situation sorted out. It hadn’t been a very big bomb, not much of an explosion. Nobody was injured, beyond their pride. There were a lot of dirt smeared trouser knees in the crowd fleeing the scene, and a couple of urine stained crotches. Two lawyers near the blast were rattled enough to need attention from only one of the dozens of ambulances that had responded.

  Sue Ellen hadn’t been in the building. She had left early, her escorts grumbling while they lugged heavy boxes of files out to their Suburban. She planned to work through the weekend at the safe house. No one claimed responsibility for the explosion; not the Latin Kings, or the Islamic Jihad, or any of the thousands of others who could have carried a grudge against the court.

  But the Latin Kings’ threat was at the front of Tony’s mind. He knew they were ruthless enough to try something like bombing the courthouse, not worrying about killing or maiming innocent people as long as they managed to throw the looming trial into disarray. He tracked her down by cell phone. It took some persuading for the Deputy Marshal in charge of the security detail to allow Tony to visit the safe house.

  Sue Ellen laughed when he told her, sitting at the file covered kitchen table, that he felt like a teenager on a study date. Instead of Mom and Dad in the next room two serious men wearing guns were watching a movie. She laughed again when he told her he was definitely going to keep his hands to himself.

  “Pretty strange way to get a romance started.”

  Sue Ellen was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Her hair was slightly mussed. A pair of gl
asses were perched atop her head. Tony didn’t know she wore glasses. There were a lot of things he didn’t know about Sue Ellen and he was a little put out that it was proving difficult to further the investigation. The romance comment was damn encouraging, though.

  “I actually had a life when I was in uniform. Worked a shift, went home, went out…had a life.” Tony didn’t whine often, but this was a little frustrating.

  “It wouldn’t matter with this thing. It’s my problem, remember.” They were sitting close on hard backed chairs. Sue Ellen gently scratched the back of Tony’s neck.

  “What’s going on with it? Has anyone put any pressure on Garcia?”

  “No one can find him.”

  “I bet I could find him,” Tony growled.

  “The Gang Unit knows where to look.”

  “Not everywhere. I was inside, remember?”

  Sue Ellen gently grabbed the hair at the back of his head and turned Tony’s face to hers. “And then what, detective?”

  “I’d shoot him. The man is messing with my love life. I’ll just shoot him. Couple ‘a times.”

  Sue Ellen laughed softly before she used the hand behind Tony’s head to pull him closer.

  “Okay,” she said after a long lingering kiss.

  “Okay what?”

  “Go find him and shoot him. Quick.” She kissed him again.

  “Can we get rid of those guys?” Tony motioned with his head toward the door to the living room.

  “No,” Sue Ellen sighed. “I already asked. And no, I’d feel weird with them out here in the living room.”

  “So would I,” Tony confessed.

  “But I’m working on something.”

  “What? A break out?”

  Sue Ellen untangled herself and scooted the chair a few inches over. “If it works out you’ll be the first to know. Let’s uh…not make things worse right now though, okay?”

  “You’re right.” He rubbed his face with both hands.

  “So, tell me about your case. How’s the investigation going?”

  “We were talking about it over at The Red Door when every pager in the metro went off. Truthfully, we don’t even have a good suspect yet.” Sue Ellen knew that sometimes cases just couldn’t be made. She felt bad that Tony’s first one might end up like that…an unsolved.

  “There’s this connection to a trip to LA, kinda’ sorta’. One of the son’s roommates was out there when this group of women, they call themselves the ‘Go Girls’, were out there last spring.”

  “Why are you looking at that?”

  “There was an incident at a strip club.”

  “The women were stripping?”

  “No. The other way around.”

  “The roommate was stripping for the women?”

  “Well…no, not exactly.”

  “You don’t have much is what you’re saying.”

  “We got some porn,” Tony offered. It sounded like an apology.

  “The roommate?”

  “He’s got what you’d call a…a hum-dinger. His alibi’s real shaky, and his prints are in the system for a bust out there. They’re also in the house, but not in the kitchen.”

  Sue Ellen had her prosecutor hat on now but no idea what Tony meant by a humdinger. “You can put him with the women?”

  “Sort of. One of them thinks she saw him out there, but not at the club. He wasn’t one of the dancers.”

  “How do you know?”

  “One of the ladies took a few pictures.”

  “And you’ve checked them out?” Tony nodded. Then he laughed at a thought.

  “What?”

  “I haven’t seen so many foot long hot dogs since the State Fair.” Sue Ellen laughed too, even though she still didn’t get the joke.

  “You have a lot of work to do on this one, Tony. What does Ray think?”

  “We’re going to show the six-packs to the other ladies tomorrow, as many as we can track down. See if they recognize the guy.”

  “Is there any remote possibility that one of these women witnessed the murder? Think hard. It’s important,” Sue Ellen commanded.

  Tony obeyed. He couldn’t possibly think of any of Deanna’s friends witnessing the stabbing. Karen Hewes told them she’d been at the house that morning and hadn’t seen anything. No witnesses…no way. “No. I don’t see it.”

  “You could just show them the one picture. You aren’t probing a witness for identification. You’re trying to make a link, a better link, between this guy and the women. If they recognize him you might have something. You don’t need to use a lineup.”

  “So why’s Ray so hell bent on doing it this way then?” Tony asked.

  “Uncle Rayford has a blind spot. He wants his evidence to be so perfect he goes too far sometimes. That’s my guess.”

  “So you wouldn’t need the lineups in court if you were prosecuting the case?”

  “Tony.” Sue Ellen shook her head. “You’re a million miles from the courtroom.”

  Chapter 23

  That Saturday morning never did actually dawn through October clouds that were low and wet. It was like a damp gray blanket had been draped over the city. It grudgingly revealed itself, detail by detail, but by 9:30 still hadn’t satisfied the streetlights’ electric eyes. They were still on while Tony and Ray drove to Erika Hilgendorf’s house in Roseville, an old first ring suburb just north of St. Paul. She was glad to have them stop by, she’d said, anxious for them to catch her up on the investigation.

  Ray didn’t tell her it was more a case of them doing the asking. Erica would figure that out pretty quickly.

  Bruno greeted them at the door. Bruno, a Great Pyrenees, shaggy and snow white, outweighed the petite woman by at least twenty pounds…maybe even thirty.

  “Who walks who?” Tony chuckled as Bruno grudgingly let them enter. Very protective of his mistress, his eyes never left the detectives for the entire visit. Tony made a conscious effort to avoid any fast moves.

  “Oh, I walk him. He’s a big baby.” Tony nodded, thinking ‘sure you do, uh huh’. “The leash is just a prop.” Tony was about to make a joke about a saddle but Ray headed him off. He produced the picture of Sean Stuckey that Kumpula had updated and passed it over to Erika.

  “Is this the guy who killed Deanna?” There was fire and anger in the small woman’s eyes. She studied the picture closely, holding it up to the front window of the living room for better light.

  “No, this is just someone we’re interested in.”

  “Why?” She jiggled the picture at Ray. “If you don’t think he did it then he must know something, right, like a witness or something.”

  “Have you ever seen this man? Do you recognize him?”

  “Recognize him? This kid?” The comment made Tony wonder again how old Erica was. The ‘Go Girls’ all had a talent, or at least a technique, for shaving years off. She gave the picture another hard look. “Nope. Never saw him before.”

  Tony gave Ray a sidelong glance before he said, “It might not have been here in the Cities.” They had battled earlier about using the photo line-up. Tony had won that one. The skirmish for mentioning LA was fought to a standstill and remained unresolved.

  “Tony…”

  “It might have been in Los Angeles last spring. The night you all went to the uh…club.” At first Tony thought she wasn’t embarrassed by his mention of the strip joint. Her stance was still aggressive. Her posture was confident and businesslike, but Tony noticed the tops of her ears redden slightly and a pale pink tinge of color crept into her cheeks. The room was warm. No chilled breeze had crept in.

  “You think he was one of the dancers?” She studied the picture again, then closed her eyes and tilted her head back. After a minute she looked back at the photo. “Nope. I can’t place him. Sorry.” She handed the picture back.

  “No need to apologize,” Ray assured her. “If you haven’t seen him, you haven’t seen him.”

  “If you want to know the truth, the only thing I was
looking for in that damned place was an exit sign as soon as those guys started wagging their tallywhackers.” She let out a nervous laugh. It didn’t fool Bruno, Tony guessed, when the big white dog started rumbling.

  “I didn’t speak to Roxie or Karen for a week. I don’t know what they were thinking.” Ray was searching for his next question when Tony spoke up.

  “We met Gary.” Maybe it was the way he said it, or maybe it was that Erica had some idea of what they would have thought of the guy. She smirked at the comment.

  “Real peach, huh?”

  “He, ah…he’s protective.”

  “Bruno baby is protective. Gary’s a freak.” Tony tried to remember who had used the words Gary and leash in the same sentence.

  “You two don’t get along I take it.”

  “We get along fine. If I enter a room he leaves or I kick his ass.” Gary Hewes was over six feet tall and Tony knew he had thick ropy muscles. He didn’t know quite how to use them, but he couldn’t see little Erica Hilgendorff kicking anybody’s ass.

  “Check this out.” She and Bruno led them to a small bedroom that had been converted into a home office.

  Two walls were lined with shelves and the shelves were full of trophies. Tony looked closely at some of them. Karate trophies. Ju-Jitsu matches. Full contact Tae Kwon Do.

  There were photos too, all of them with little Erica Hilgendorff wearing a black sash and standing on one of the raised platforms, usually the tallest one with the first place trophy in her arms. Tony suspected that if you managed to get past Bruno your troubles were just beginning.

  “Like I said, we get along fine.”

  Ray was leaning in the doorway, a serious look on his face. “I don’t know if I’ve asked you this, but did Karen and Deanna ever fight?”

  Erica didn’t hesitate with her answer. “No. Never. Those two were like sisters, you know. Why do you ask?” It irritated Ray that this woman was always probing for the reason behind his questions. “Oh…I get it. Maybe they were having a problem and Gary went over to straighten Deanna out and it got a little out of hand.”

  Ray wondered for the ten thousandth time why everyone in an investigation wanted to be a detective.