The Crawford Chronicles - Book 1

by Clayton Conrad

  Chapter 35

  “I hear you’re getting a new partner.”

  The voice brought Carol out of his private thoughts as he looked up and saw Detective Danny Lighthorse smiling down at him.

  “Not that I know of Danny, and if so, it’s news to me. Where’d you hear anything like that? The rumor mill, I suppose.”

  “You know how word gets around. It’s hard to keep anything a secret for long. There is a big shakeup at Metro, you know, everyone is getting shuffled around, some early retirements are in store also. I don’t know what happened out there because they are keeping it pretty close to the vest. Very hush-hush. The just of it is some of us here are going to Metro and some of Metro are coming here.”

  “I heard something along those lines, but I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in it,” Richards replied. “I’m sorry to put you off, chief, but I am due at the jail in 15 minutes. So I got to run.”

  Just then, patrolman Roland walked up, with a big smile on his young face. “Hey Carl, I hear you’re getting a partner. It must be nice to have someone you can put off on.”

  “Not now Roland, I haven’t got the time I’m late now.”

  “I just wanted to check in with you, that’s all. Far be it for me to stand in the way of your appointment, me being just a lowly sheriff, a peon and a nobody. Someday when I’m rich and famous, when I am the real chief around here, you will be humbled at my presence. Dick Tracy, Sherlock Holmes, and Sam Spade will have nothing over me. Like that famous prizefighter proclaimed, I am the greatest,” he shouted at Roland’s back as Carol hurried away down the aisle to the stairs. As he neared the stairs, a young rookie just out of the Academy was coming out of the locker room. He must have been all of 20 maybe 21 years old. Not looking where he was going, he bumped right into Richards.

  “Oh Jesus, I’m sorry sir,” he shouted and snapped to attention.

  “Son, you don’t have to snap to attention or call me sir. I’m Detective Richards, that’s all. Most around here just call me Carol.”

  “You’re detective Richards? Let me be the first one to congratulate you on your recent promotion,” he said with an enthusiastic smile. “And you are the one who just cracked that big case on the murdered millionaire’s daughter. Nice going, sir, nice going, indeed. But I’m still on probation and I got to run.”

  “Thank you. I think that I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he called out to the young patrolman’s back as the lad ran toward the squad-bay door for briefing.

  The jail was across the alley from the government building that housed the police station. And heading that way Richards had to pass the offices of the hierarchy officers and as he was hurrying past the open door of the Chief of police, cubbyhole of an excuse for an office, the chief spotted him in the hall heading back to the exit.

  “Richards, he shouted. “Hey Richards!”

  Carol stopped. When the chief of police calls, you listen, so having no other choice he ducked in the chief’s doorway.

  “I’m running late chief, can this wait? I’m supposed to be at the jail 10 minutes ago.”

  “Fuck the jail son, come on in here, I got some good news for you.”

  “Yeah, I’ve already heard. I’m getting a promotion of some kind and a partner sometime in the future.”

  “How in the hell did you find that out? In fact, I just hung up on a call from the commissioner.”

  “Well you know how word spreads around here. If you want to know anything just ask any beat cop, he will tell you.”

  “Anyway get your sorry ass in here and I will tell you the straight skinny.”

  Richards walked in as chief Statler indicated a chair with a casual wave of his hand. Statler was a relaxed sort of the guy, shirtsleeves rolled up, the collar of his shirt unbuttoned, his tie hanging loosely at his neck and his uniform jacket hanging on a hook by the door.

  “Well, you’re half right Carol as far as that goes. Excuse me,” he said and reached into his pocket and pulled out a clean white handkerchief. “I can’t seem to shake this cold,” he said after blowing his nose and replacing the handkerchief. “Had it for two weeks now. Damn thing. Anyway, Carol you’re getting a partner in the next few weeks, but I don’t know anything about a promotion. Not that you don’t deserve one. You being senior investigator in the squad. How long have you been with us, anyway? I know it’s been quite a while.”

  “Twenty three years this month chief. I was just this morning, adding them up. Well, I may as well tell you, I’m thinking of turning in my papers, retiring.”

  “You got to be shitting me Carl. You’re really pulling the plug? I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

  “Nothing is written in stone, but the thought passed through my mind. I’m still young enough where I can start another career in a different field. Where no one is shooting at me or trying to break my neck in some Street hassle. I’ve been there and done that.”

  “I’ll hate to see you go. Shit you’re like the mainstay around here. Anyway, I’ll let you get back to what- ever you were doing. I just want you to know I wish you the best and whatever decision you make.”

  Chapter 36

  Melvin Howard, a.k.a. Howie, sat in his orange prison jumpsuit at the scratched and beat up metal table. His court appointed attorney sat next to him as they waited patiently for someone to show up, so they could get on with things. Melvin Howard was a big man, over 60 with black hair cropped short, in what they call a flattop. His face was still a mass of stitched up cuts and bruises from his run-in with Clayton Crawford. His lawyer from the public defender’s office glanced at his watch for the hundredth time, and was cussing quietly to himself. “Listen, Melvin. If someone doesn’t come here soon, I’m going to have to postpone this meeting to another time.”

  “You sit right where you’re at, you turd, or I will break both your arms,” Howie snarled as he looked over at the uniformed cop standing by the door. “Cop or no cop,” he added. “I’ve got to talk with this detective, you hear, it’s important if we have to sit here all day. I am going to talk to him or else.”

  “Don’t you ever think you can threaten an officer of the court, you big dummy, you stupid asshole. I’ll walk out of here so fast your head will spin. Who do you think you are? I got a caseload that would choke a horse and if you think for one minute, I need your stupid threats. Well, think again. Besides, that Mr. Howard, you’re a three-time loser and you know what that means. It means you’re going up the river from the rest of your life. And I don’t think anything you’ve got to say will change those facts.”

  At that the door to the small interview room opened and detective Carol Richards walked in, carrying a battered brown leather briefcase that had seen many miles of hard road. “Let the games begin,” he said as he sat down at the table across from Howard and his lawyer.

  “It’s about time,” the lawyer snapped. “I’ve been waiting here for…”

  “Now Howie,” Richard said, completely ignoring the attorney. “I certainly hope you’re not wasting my time with more of your petty bullshit.”

  “You’re late,” Howie said, as he scowled at Richards. “How come you’re so late?”

  “I had a flat tire and my mother-in-law didn’t know how to fix it. Or the mailman went berserk and ran stark naked down the middle of the road, stopping traffic for miles. Take your pick. Now, what have you got that’s so important? Do you think that it can help you out of this mess you seem to have gotten yourself into.”

  “I know where Driscoll is buried. Don’t you think that’s worth something?”

  “That, my friend, won’t buy you a dollar cigar. We don’t need that, we got you wearing his wristwatch and the pawn ticket that was found in your house for the ring that he wore. That should be good enough for any jury to convict on. Tell me dummy, why in the hell would you keep that pawn ticket in the first place?”

  “I forgot about the damn thing, and besides I bought that watch and ring from a guy on the street and you can’t prove
that I didn’t.”

  “With your past history, Howie, there isn’t anyone going to believe anything you say. And besides that, you dumbshit, that’s just one of the charges against you. There are two or three others, and if you are convicted of just one of them, your ass is cooked. You’re a three-time loser. So you will be put away for life. With that cleared up, and we understand each other, please tell me what you got me down here for. What do you think you have that’s going to save your little weenie from spending the rest of your life behind bars?”

  Howard conferred with his lawyer for a moment before continuing. “You are writing off both deaths of the late senator’s former wives as accidents, right?”

  “Senator Harding, his former wives, what do they have to do with anything? Do I have written them down as accidents? You know something about them?” Richards replied. His eyebrows raised in newfound interest.

  “Well I’m telling you flat out that they were no accidents. What do you say about that, Mr. hotshot detective?”

  “Are you confessing to those murders?” Richards asked as he leaned a little forward his eyes narrowing his shoulders tense. Howie now had his full attention.

  “I ain’t saying no more. My deal is this, I’ll tell you what I know about the two deaths of the Senator’s wives and I may even show you where Driscoll is buried for a much lighter sentence and extra privileges while I’m in the joint. Stanley did everything you know. Then went and died leaving me to take this rap alone. Well fuck him. I don’t owe him Jack shit, do I?”

  The next day they met again in the same interview, only this time the chief of police and the court stenographer were present. Richards cleared his throat. He took some papers out of the old brown briefcase. The court stenographer set up her machine and chief Statler sat in quiet resignation, staring holes through Howard.

  “Okay. Howie,” Richards began. “The DA has agreed to cut your prison time down from life without parole to 25 years, with a chance of parole after 15 years, if you’re a good boy in there.”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me. Twenty years, I’ll be an old man before I get out of there. I’ll be…” He paused. Well he counted on his fingers. “I’ll be 63, you got to do better than that. Hey, come on, will you, and what about the extra privileges? What about them?”

  “The extra privileges are one of your pipedreams, I’m afraid,” chief Statler said. “I want you to realize this one thing, if nothing else. That this is just a one-time offer and once we leave this room, it will, in no way, be repeated. You better take advantage of it while you can. If it was up to me, you would get the full term, everything that the law calls for. So make up your mind.”

  Richards leaned back in his chair with a slight smile on his face. He noticed the beads of sweat that broke out on Howie’s forehead. “Well, what’s it going to be Howard? Fifteen to twenty, or life in prison without parole?”

  After conferring with his lawyer, Howie turned to face them. Taking a deep breath, wiping the sweat from his eyes, with a dirty rag he had removed from his pocket, he said. “Okay, first I got to see something in writing, as I don’t trust you cops. You’re a bunch of crooks, you know, just a bunch of damn crooks.”

  “I have everything all typed up and ready for signature,” Richard said, and slid the paper across the table toward Howard. Howard glanced at it and passed it to the lawyer who examined the document thoroughly, then nodded his head.

  “What we’re going to do now is called Q&A. Question and answer, where we ask the questions and you give us the answers,” Richards said, explaining the procedure.

  “Question. Tell us about Betty Harding, all you know about her death.”

  “Well Lester called Stanley one night, A while back.”

  “When you say Lester, you mean who?”

  “Why Lester Howard, who do you think? He’s the big cheese in that outfit. What he says goes, you know. Anyway, Lester called Stanley, I can’t give you the dates, it’s been too long ago. Lester said that Mrs. Betty L. Harding was getting to be too much. That’s what he called her. Mrs. Betty L Harding. So he goes on and says it would be a terrible shame if something terrible happened to her while she is out on her boat sometime soon. Well, Stanley and me both knew what he was really saying without really saying it. You know.”

  “How is it that Lester Howard came to know you and Stanley so well?”

  “Well hell, he was Stanley’s lawyer, a couple of times, way back when he was with the public defender’s office. He got him off both times, too. He kept in touch with us. Afterwards, you know. He would call us from time to time when he had a problem. That’s what he called it, “a problem.” So me and Stanley would have to go straighten this problem out for him. You know.”

  “How do you mean when you say had to straighten out this problem?”

  “We broke a few legs now and then, maybe an arm or two, nothing serious. You understand, just the usual stuff.”

  “So continue what you were saying about the problem Lester Howard was having with Mrs. Harding.”

  “Not much more to say. Stanley was in the Army once, so he knows all about that kind of shit you know, bombs and stuff. I think he used a monkey with TNT and shit like that, you know. So, one night we drove out to the marina where she kept her boat and slipped over the fence. We slept past the night watchman, who was watching the late show on TV, or something. While I kept look out, somehow, the next day, when she used it, well kaboom, and no more problem.

  “Why wasn’t the Senator with his wife on the boat?”

  “Lester fixed it so the Senator was called away at the last minute, you know.”

  “Tell us about the Senator’s second wife’s death.”

  “We didn’t have any part of that one because Lester took care of that on his own. You see she had a bad ticker for a long time, you know. So all Lester had to do was to make her have a fatal heart attack. He slipped something in her medicine that caused that one. So anyway, no more problem from that corner, you know.”

  “I’m confused. Wasn’t there an autopsy made on Mrs. Harding’s body?”

  “Now everyone knew she had a bad heart and Lester made sure that everything went his way. No one suspected anything wrong. End of story. Just another problem solved.”

  “How do you know this as a fact?”

  “He let us know that one time that he took care of that problem his self.”

  “What about the Senator, did he have a hand in any of this?”

  “No, he didn’t know squat, poor dumb bastard. Now Lester was the real brains behind everything. He figured with his brains and the Senator’s charisma, they could go all the way to the White House.”

  “What do you know about the death of Mrs. Clayton Wellington Crawford?”

  “Well Lester called Stanley and says he has another problem for us to handle. There was this big shindig out at the Senator’s hunting lodge one night. Lester tells us to sneak into the parking lot and take the Crawford woman’s car. The keys would be under the floormat. It was easy enough to spot because he is a bright red Lamborghini convertible. Anyway, we were to take the car and meet Lester at the back entrance to the estate. Well he was there waiting for us with her setting in the front seat of his pickup. She was really out of it. You know, really zoned in never never land. Lester said he gave her enough to kill a horse and she was still mumbling and whining about something. I picked her up. She weighed hardly nothing, so anyway, I throw her in the trunk of the Lambo, and Lester and me drove off. We stopped to pick up our van we left parked on the side of the road and continued on deep into the mountains. We find a spot so we pull off the road, you know. Then we put the doll behind the wheel and shove it off the road into this ravine. End of story.”

  “What about Stephen Driscoll, what do you know about his disappearance.”

  “That was just another problem. Lester called and says that this guy is making too much noise about his dead girlfriend. Lester wants that he should be made to listen to the voice of
reason. You don’t want him dead. He says there’s been too many killed already, says for us just to scare him a little, so he’ll stop making so much noise about his dead girlfriend. Wel,l I guess we leaned on him a little too hard, because the asshole ups and dies on us right there, for hardly no reason. Afterwards we fit him with a pair of cement shoes and tossed him in the bay. End of story.”

  “What about Clayton Crawford, what do you know about the assault on him?”

  “That prick! I’m still thinking about suing his ass. Just look what he did to my face, would you?! Next time we meet, I won’t be so gentle with him as I was the first time. Lester calls and tells us to have a serious talk with this Crawford guy. He’s making a big pest of himself and bothering a lot of important people. So that’s what we do. He is supposed to be so tough with his karate shit and all, he wasn’t so tough, was he?”