First Murder

by Fred Limberg

  They waited for the waitress to refill their cups. She must have heard part of the conversation because she gave Stuckey a look that would have scared him if he’d seen it.

  “Well, King Louie, that was the dad…he went nuts. Got the lawyers working, hell, he even got me one. A good one. He hired some guys to track down the vids and buy ’em up. Broke up the servers. Word was he spent almost a million bucks to keep his kids out of jail, but mostly to keep the name Holtzman and his film company out of the press. Royal Cinematic Productions does not do porn. Yeah, right.”

  “And you?” Tony asked.

  Stuckey gave him a smart ass smile. “I was told to disappear. He laid enough money on me to start over out here and here I am.”

  “Interesting story,” Ray said. It was surprising how nearly it dovetailed with the story Carol had gotten from the woman in Los Angeles. Still, Ray thought, the best liars use a lot of truth to make their stories believable. He wondered if that was going on here.

  “It still doesn’t explain how I’ve got a very good witness that puts you in a bar with the Fredrickson woman.”

  “I don’t remember. Half the time I didn’t even know my name. Why didn’t she recognize me at her house, huh?”

  “And speaking of the house…” Tony was trying to bore a hole in Sean Stuckey with a dark stare. “How did your fingerprints get upstairs? You went over to watch TV. That’s in the basement.”

  “Upstairs?” For the first time Stuckey’s eyes started dancing, flitting from place to place, not really seeing anything—just flicking right and left.

  “Halftime. At halftime I had to piss. Everyone did. I went looking for a bathroom upstairs.”

  “You didn’t go looking for Deanna Fredrickson to let her know you remembered her? Shake her down for some money?”

  “I told you, dude, I needed to pee. Look, I’ve been very, uh…forthcoming here. Lighten up.” Ray put a hand on Tony’s arm.

  “That makes sense, right Tony. The prints were on the bathroom door, off the hallway.” Stuckey replayed the smart ass smile and waggled a finger at the detectives. “Nice try, guys. The bathroom was off the master bedroom. I remember leaning in, looking for the can. That’s where I must have left a print.”

  “Nice try, Sean. There’s a full bath off the hall before you even get to the bedroom.”

  “But detective, it was full of Hong at the time.” The attitude was back, Stuckey’s remorse and shame gone. “Look, you got anything else?”

  “Not right now.”

  Stuckey slid out of the booth and looked down at Bankston and de Luca. “Okay, I didn’t tell you everything about the web deal. I admit it. But I’ve got a fresh start going out here. I’m clean and mostly sober. I did not kill Scotty’s mom. I hope you find out who did. They should fry.”

  “You buy all that?” Tony asked Ray. He was leaning over the open car window. Ray had just taken him back to Angie’s dumpy apartment building and his truck.

  “Not all of it. He made some sense out of the upstairs print though.”

  Tony looked skeptical.

  “I mean, the woman wasn’t home.”

  “Yeah boss, but what if he left a note?”

  “You have suspicious mind, Detective de Luca.”

  “I also wonder if our film student can act with more than his pecker.”

  “Eerie. I just had the same idea.”

  “I have a good teacher.” Tony smiled. “Got a twenty on you, Ray? I need to pay Connie and I’m a little short.”

  Chapter 27

  Monday morning dawned cold and clear. Tony and Ray had a good angle on the Hewes’ house from where they were parked, patiently waiting for Gary Hewes to leave for work so they could have a quiet talk with Karen.

  After paying Connie her bounty, Tony headed home the night before with mixed emotions and disjointed thoughts both bothering and pleasing him. He had a long talk with the part time dog. Tony laid out what he knew about the murder and the evidence they had in hand. More and more the vane swung toward Sean Stuckey as the killer.

  A quick call to David Hong didn’t clear anything up. Hong remembered using the upstairs bathroom the afternoon they watched the game, but there were no fingerprints left behind. Hong never saw Stuckey upstairs at all. He pressed Tony to tell him why he wanted to know about it.

  Boof wasn’t impressed. Tony was confused. True, none of Stuckey’s alibis were solid but there was a rational reasonable excuse in every instance. He could have simply confused the movies and been in class the morning of the murder. He could have innocently used the master bath that Sunday afternoon. Tony was looking forward to talking with Karen Hewes. Maybe she had a puzzle piece squirreled away. Boof was looking forward to another biscuit.

  And then, when Tony finally crawled into bed he smelled Sue Ellen. He smelled her perfume on the pillows and her sweat and musk on the sheets. He finally drifted off to sleep letting thoughts of the woman push the thoughts of the murder from his tired mind.

  Ray was very quiet and thoughtful while they watched for Gary Hewes’ departure. He didn’t volunteer where he went after the talk with Stuckey. Tony respected him enough not to ask. It seemed that they took turns checking their watches every five minutes or so. As 8:30 came and went Ray commented that the fella’ ought to be heading to work any time now. When 8:45 rolled past Tony wondered aloud if the dude was maybe out of town or something. There was no activity at the house. The shades were drawn. A rolled newspaper waited on the front walk.

  At 9:00 Ray started squirming in his seat, complaining. They had been there for over two hours. At 9:20 Tony said that enough was enough. Ten minutes later Ray agreed.

  Karen answered the door after the first knock, surprised that it was the two detectives. She let them in and directed them to the large oak table they had sat at before. She was dressed in a light blue warm up suit and shiny white running shoes. Her hair was shiny and well brushed, framing her face perfectly and she wore her makeup well, not heavy or garish—just a hint of blush and lipstick and accented eyes.

  Tony kept a wary eye on the doorway, expecting her husband to come charging in again, challenging him, making things much more difficult than they needed to be.

  “I apologize again for my husband the other day,” Karen said. She glanced over at the doorway too.

  “Is he home?” Ray asked. The answer came from the doorway, a voice echoed down the stairs.

  “Who’s down there, Karen? Is someone down there?” The questions tailed off into a fit of juicy coughing.

  “Gary’s got the flu. He’s been snorting and hacking all weekend.”

  “Mmm, that’s a shame.” Ray said, not meaning it.

  “I’m starting to get worried. He’s so weak.” She looked to the doorway again. Tony couldn’t decide if it was concern on her face or fear.

  “We have a few more questions if you have the time.”

  “Honeeeey? Bring me some water.” Gary Hewes was screwing up the interview from his damn sick bed, Tony fumed.

  “Why don’t you see to him,” Ray suggested.

  Karen raised a hand and waved off the suggestion. “He’ll be fine. You said it was just a few questions. It won’t take long, will it?”

  “If you’re sure,” Ray offered while pulling a picture from his coat pocket. He laid the photo of Sean Stuckey on the table. Ray and Tony both saw it immediately, the change in the woman’s expression. Karen Hewes’ eyes tightened. She clasped her hands together tightly on the tabletop, so tight her knuckles whitened. They both noticed her jaw muscles clenching and relaxing and tightening again.

  “Honeeey?” Gary’s pleading echoed pitifully down the stairwell and through the door. Her head snapped in that direction, her visage giving way to fear…panic almost.

  “Do you recognize this man?” Ray was a portrait of calm, his half-smile aimed at the desperate woman. Tony felt like he was watching a tennis match, his head swiveling from the scene at the table to the doorway and back. Karen pushed up
from her chair.

  “No. I’ve never seen this person.” She went to the kitchen, to the coffee maker and poured a mug full. “My manners.” She croaked out a bitter laugh. “Can I get you a cup?”

  Tony shook his head but Ray said, “please”.

  “Karen, goddamn it!” Upstairs, Gary’s yelling dissolved into another fit of coughing. Karen’s hand trembled while she poured Ray’s coffee. The hacking sounds continued to bounce off the stairwell walls.

  “You see, we have some interest in this person.” Ray tapped the photograph. “He might have some connection to Mrs. Fredrickson’s murder.” Tony noticed that Ray wasn’t letting out any details, wasn’t mentioning Lakisha’s observations or the fact that they knew Stuckey had been in LA in April.

  “Oh my.” Karen made a point of not looking at the picture again and held her head high. She didn’t allow her eyes to drift down to it. The coughing finally stopped. Tony wondered if the guy had horked up a lung.

  “What kind of connection?” she finally asked.

  “We’re not sure just yet.” It occurred to Ray that he was telling her the truth. They weren’t sure what the connection was.

  “Is there any danger? Am I…are we in any danger?” There was desperation in her voice. Karen backed from the table as if the picture laying there threatened her. Her right hand was high on her chest with her fingers touching her throat.

  Tony was studying her face. He was trying to make sense of the change that had come over it, the change from fear to...what?

  She looked like she’d just had a revelation.

  “You guys!” Gary lurched into the doorway, leaning heavily on the jamb. He had on limp pale blue pajamas and a striped robe. His skin was gray and ashen. His eyes were red rimmed and painful looking. He coughed thickly, a deep chest rumble. Tony stood up, not to confront him, but to retreat from the spray when Gary sneezed repeatedly.

  “They just have a few questions.” Karen went to her husband, seemingly unafraid of his disease. “It’s okay, honey.” She gave him her shoulder to lean on and led him to the table. Ray stood to gain some distance as well.

  “What’s this shit about danger? Who’s in danger?” The question gurgled out of Gary’s chest. He spied the picture on the table and picked it up. “Who’s this?”

  “Just a guy. They want to know if I’ve ever see him?” Karen sat close to Gary and patted his chest, trying to calm him. She still wouldn’t look at the photograph again.

  “Well, have you?” Gary coughed out. He filched a sodden wad of tissue from the robe pocket and blew into it.

  “No. Never.”

  “There you go detectives. She’s never seen him. Who is he anyway?”

  “Someone we came across in the course of the investigation,” Ray said, still not giving anything up.

  “Is it possible he killed Deanna?” Karen lowered her head to her husband’s chest. She was letting him protect her now, Tony thought.

  “There hasn’t been an arrest.”

  “Well, there you go. Anything else?” Gary Hewes was doing all the asking and answering for his wife again. Ray looked to Tony and shook his head.

  “Not right now. Thank you for the coffee. I hope you feel better soon, Mr. Hewes.” Both detectives moved toward the door.

  “Hey, you forgot your picture,” Gary called after them. Tony scrunched his face. Hewes had sneezed and coughed all over it. He wasn’t going to touch it. No way in hell.

  “You keep it,” Ray said. “We’ve got others.”

  Tony was very careful not to touch his face with his hands and warned Ray not to either. “Plague house.”

  Ray chuckled, but he didn’t touch anything but the steering wheel.

  “I wasn’t going to touch that picture, no way,” Tony declared.

  “Doesn’t matter. I was going to leave it there anyway. That was a very interesting encounter.”

  “She lied.”

  “Damn straight she lied, and she knows that we know she lied.” Ray was agitated, fired up enough to cuss. “I have some more questions for that woman.”

  “Maybe the husband will croak.”

  “Be serious, Tony.”

  “I am serious, Ray. That dude’s in tough shape. Maybe a trip to the hospital, anyway.”

  “She knows something. Something about Stuckey.”

  “She saw him at the bar. Lakisha is certain.” Tony was flipping through his notebook, scanning pages near the front. Ray kept quiet, curious what the young detective was searching for, what he might have remembered.

  “Got it! She lied all right.” Tony tapped his notebook. “Deanna and Karen were at the house one time, the boy’s place. Not long ago, either. Hong said he and Stuckey were playing video games. The women were looking for Scotty.”

  “Any other notes? Did he say it looked like they recognized each other?”

  “Nope.”

  “You plan on asking him about it? Hong?”

  Tony thought for a minute “I do…but I need some advice. How do I quiz the roommate without him getting more suspicious about Stuckey? He’s already making noises when I ask more questions.”

  “He’s a good kid, this David Hong?”

  “Seems to be. Yeah, he’s all right.”

  “Let me talk to him. I’ve run into this before. Let’s give him a tour of the station, bring him in.”

  “Arrest him?” Tony was a cop. That’s what ‘bring him in’ usually meant.

  “Recruit him,” Ray said. “We need a spy.”

  Chapter 28

  Key’s Café on Raymond Avenue is a small place with big food. Tony and David Hong met Ray there after the lunch throng thinned out. The hot roast beef special was gone but there was still baked turkey with all the fixings, Thanksgiving in October. A practice run. David appreciated it.

  Ray sipped his coffee, the café’s custom McGarvey blend, set the heavy cup down, and said, “We need your help, David.”

  “This has to do with Sean, right? He had something to do with Missus F’s murder, didn’t he?” David herded the last of the gravy onto the last of his homemade roll.

  “I’ll tell you the truth. At this point we’re not sure, not sure at all. Before I get into it we need to come to an understanding.”

  Tony wondered how much of their suspicions Ray was going to share with this young man and what kind of understanding Ray was proposing.

  David grinned. A drop of cranberry sauce was stuck in the corner of his mouth. “I ask too many questions, don’t I?”

  “Curiosity is a natural thing,” Ray said, pointing at the corner of his own half-smile. Hong took the hint. “I question everything, but that’s my job. Detective de Luca is a curious sort too.”

  “Look, ask me whatever you want. I won’t let on to Sean that I’ve talked to you. I don’t even like the guy.”

  “Do you dislike him?” It was Ray’s show but Tony had to ask the question, had to butt in. If Hong had a score to settle with Stuckey he might remember things in a different light and that could lead them down a wrong path.

  “No. He’s just a guy, a roomie. We don’t hang together. We just live in the same house. He’s not around much.” David shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “This is what it is, David. We have a few questions for you, very pointed questions, and as soon as we ask them a whole lot of things are going to start banging around in your head. I can’t tell you where we are in the investigation, but you’re going to think it’s heading in a certain direction.”

  Hong nodded. He understood what Ray was getting at.

  “Tony says you’re a good guy, that we can trust you. Can we trust you not to say anything to Stuckey about these things?”

  “I haven’t yet.” David smiled again. There was a brief intermission while the waitress cleared the empty plates. She asked if they wanted more coffee and tempted them with the news that an apple pie had just come out of the oven. Tony and David gave in to that temptation.

  “No, you
haven’t. Tony?” Ray looked over seeking his partner’s approval.

  “David, a while back you told me that Mrs. Fredrickson and a friend of hers, Mrs. Hewes came by the house looking for Scotty.”

  “Yeah. Karen.”

  “Karen. And you mentioned that Sean was there. You were gaming or something.” David looked out over the nearly empty restaurant, thinking. The waitress dropped off two enormous slices of steaming apple pie and topped off all their coffees.

  “Sure. I remember. Now that you mention it, it was a little weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Sean, he was like, ignoring her. Karen. She’s hard to ignore.”

  “Attractive woman.” Tony nodded in agreement.

  “Scotty’s mom had gone straight back to the kitchen. I don’t know why, but Karen was just standing at the side of the couch scoping out Sean.”

  “Scoping him out?”

  “Staring at him.”

  “Did they talk to each other?”

  “No. I think she was about to say something but Scotty’s mom yelled at her from the kitchen and she never did. She went to the kitchen and then they split right away. Barely said goodbye.”

  “And Sean never acknowledged her?”

  “Like I said, he just played the game. In my opinion he was ignoring her, but he might have just been into it, you know.” Tony made some notes. Ray asked the next question.

  “Has Sean ever talked about living in Los Angeles, what he did out there?” David chewed while he thought about it.

  “Not really. He says he’s here on scholarship. He doesn’t have a job but he’s always got money.”

  “Is he into drugs that you know of?” Tony thought David flinched at the question.

  “He looks a little strung out sometimes. He keeps some pretty crazy hours.”

  “Crazy how?”

  “I don’t know.” Another shrug. “He comes in at like three or four, goes out that late too, sometimes.”

  “He ever say where he’s going?”

  “Nah. Like I said, he keeps to himself a lot.” Tony put his hand on the big Samoan kid’s shoulder.