The Cleanest Kill

by Rick Reed

  “Go ahead,” Jack said.

  “Okay. I talked to some of Max’s family a few days after he was killed and they didn’t remember seeing any damage to his car. It was a nice car and his dad said he took good care of it. I haven’t talked to any of the family for a long time and until this morning I guess I forgot Harry had the car restored and gave it to Reina. When I heard the run called in I was real close. I can tell you, seeing that car, the bullet holes, it brought back some memories.”

  “Do you have any idea why Olson didn’t do more?” Captain Franklin asked.

  “Don’t get me wrong. Olson was an okay detective, but not great. He made sergeant shortly after Max’s murder. At the time I thought that was because he was a Mason. Most of the detectives were Masons back then. A lot of the brass were too. Sorry, Captain. No offense.”

  “None taken, Sergeant,” Captain Franklin said.

  “And later?” Jack asked.

  “Later I was convinced Olson had made rank because he knew something about someone.”

  Jack let that go for the time being. “What made you keep investigating this?”

  “It was my first murder. So, yeah, I did some snooping around in the files and the more I snooped, the more I didn’t like the direction the case was taking. My reports were gone and the property sergeant wouldn’t tell me if the evidence I’d turned in was still there or if it had been sent to the state police lab. I was being shut out.”

  Jack waited for Mattingly to continue. From what Mattingly had hinted about Olson, there could be other reasons for the reports to be missing. On the other hand, Jack knew of detectives that kept a case locked in their desk to keep everyone out. Olson might not have wanted to put the files where anyone could read them. For that matter, he could still have them.

  “Did you ever find out what happened with the broken bottles or the tire tool?” Jack asked.

  Sergeant Mattingly answered, “No such luck.” He added, “I went to Max’s funeral service and talked to Harry. I’d bought a gun from him once so I knew who he was. We got to talking about the murder and he called Reina over. She told me about a fight between Max and Richard Dick at Rex Mundi the night Max was killed. I remembered seeing a Rex Mundi varsity jacket on the body in the car. Reina said Max left in his car and shortly after another car left going the same direction as Max. She recognized the driver as Richard Dick. She said the fight was between Max, Richard Dick, Carl Needham, and Dennis James. All of them were on the football team.”

  Amelia Day had told them about the fight and had given them the same names, but Jack kept this to himself for now.

  “We talked some more and Harry didn’t like what I told him. I left. A few days later I went to Rex Mundi and talked to the football coach—he’s deceased now too, by the way—and the coach told me Max and the other boys were on the varsity football team. He said Max had missed practice. He didn’t see him at all that night and heard the next day that he was dead. He couldn’t believe Max would commit suicide. He claimed he didn’t know about the fight during practice, but he wasn’t surprised.

  “When I was leaving the school, a teacher caught me and said she heard talk that Max had been in a fistfight at the practice. She told me it was because Max had his eye on a cheerleader, Ginger Purdie, who was Richard Dick’s girlfriend. She said there was bad blood between Max and Richard. I asked her who she’d heard this from and she wouldn’t tell me. I couldn’t exactly question all the students. I wasn’t even supposed to be there at the school. I was doing this on my own time, since I worked third shift. It’s all in here,” he said, indicating the binder on his lap.

  “We’ll get to that,” Jack said. “Tell me what Reina said about the fight.”

  “She said she saw Max down near the bleachers by the locker room area. He was watching the cheerleading practice. Richard came up behind and hit Max in the head with a football helmet hard enough to knock him down. Two of Richard’s friends were there. Carl Needham and Dennis James. She said they were all standing around him like the fight wasn’t over. Richard said, and I quote, ‘I’ll make you sorry, Max. Next time I’ll put you in the ground and not on it.’ Reina said that Max went to his car and had left his car keys in the locker room, so she gave him the extra set she carried for him. Richard and the others were coming toward Max and Max got in his car and left. A minute later Richard took off in his car and she thought he was going after Max.

  “I found Ginger Purdie and talked to her. She didn’t admit to seeing the fight or knowing anything about it. I didn’t believe her. Reina had told me that Ginger came up to Max after the fight and was fawning over him, asking if he was okay. Max made some cute remark and left. Reina said she must have seen the fight, but Ginger was Dick’s girl. I didn’t think she would tell the truth back then.”

  “Do you know where Ginger is now?”

  Mattingly said, “She moved to France after college. She married her French teacher and was going to teach English. Her parents told me she is a free spirit and they could hardly keep up with her. You might be able to find her, but I didn’t get much more out of her than what I’ve told you. Dick hated Max, they were fighting over her, and she didn’t see or hear anything. I’ve got the address and phone number for the parents from my contact back then.”

  “Do you know who saw Max last?” Jack asked.

  “That would be his sister, Reina. I didn’t get an opportunity to talk to her until Max’s funeral service. I didn’t want Olson knowing I was talking to people, since he was the investigating detective on the case. I hoped he wouldn’t talk to Reina and find out she’d talked to me.”

  Jack said, “Good work for a rookie.”

  “When I heard the names of the boys involved in the fight, I had a better idea why Detective Olson did what he did. Richard Dick’s father was Detective Captain Thomas Dick, retired now. I don’t think Captain Dick wanted to have his son involved in a murder inquiry.”

  “You seem to have something more to say,” Captain Franklin said.

  Mattingly was uncomfortable, so Franklin added, “Anything you say in here will stay between the four of us.”

  Mattingly said, “I didn’t mean to infer anything by what I said. If it was my kid, I’d want to keep him out of trouble too.”

  “What else did you find out?” Jack asked.

  “When I talked to Rex Mundi’s football coach, he said Richard was a standout quarterback. The coach thought he might even be recruited by one of the big universities with a full-ride scholarship, but he didn’t think that would ever happen because Richard’s father was grooming him for the police department.” He paused to let that sink in.

  He continued. “The other two boys were only involved in the fight at Rex Mundi as hecklers, as far as I could gather. One boy, Needham, is the son of a wealthy family; mother and father were doctors—surgeons—involved in local politics, charities, that sort of thing.”

  “And the other boy? Dennis James?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, Dennis. I remember him from back then as a little punk. I’ve heard his name over the years since. Nothing good. But nothing more than thefts, fights, drugs, that kind of stuff. I haven’t any idea what happened to Carl Needham and Richard Dick is—you know—a Deputy Chief now.”

  “What did you do next?”

  Mattingly was quiet, gathering his thoughts, then said, “Harry owned a gun shop downtown. Most of the cops knew him. He was a nice guy and he gave sweet deals to policemen. Guns, ammo, hunting equipment. He’d sell it at cost. Dirty Harry. That’s what we called him. You’d hear guys say, ‘I went down to Dirty Harry’s and got a new shotgun for X dollars.’ Stuff like that. That’s how I knew him.” He sat quietly again.

  Captain Franklin said, “We talked to Mrs. Day. She gave Jack and Liddell the documents you gave Harry.”

  Sergeant Mattingly steepled his fingers and put them under his chin. “I know I
wasn’t supposed to do that. I did it because no one here was answering Harry’s questions. And there were things missing from the records and crime scene hadn’t done squat. I checked with the property room sergeant and he said he couldn’t tell me anything about the evidence I had entered. I pressed him and he said he couldn’t find the things I put in evidence. He said maybe it had been checked out before it got to him. Maybe by Detective Olson.

  “Harry kept saying his son’s murder had been covered up. He knew about the fight at Rex Mundi and he was convinced Captain Dick was burying the investigation. Harry thought Richard Dick had killed his son.”

  “Did you think that too?” Jack asked. “That Max was killed by Richard Dick?”

  “I didn’t. I mean, it just didn’t seem possible to me that three boys had committed a brutal murder and kept it quiet. Kids brag. But then you have to remember who his father was. Richard Dick could have easily gotten his hands on one of his father’s guns. Max’s dad owned a gun shop. Maybe Max brought the gun to the fight. One of them got it away from him and shot him.

  “Over the years I’ve ruled that notion out because of the mess in that car. No. The killing happened inside the car with Max in the driver’s seat. There had to be someone else in the car. I mean, the gun didn’t walk away on its own, did it? Someone took it.”

  “Did you tell Harry any of that?” Jack asked.

  “Harry wanted to blame someone. He would never consider the possibility that his son was shot with one of his own guns. I asked Harry once if he’d had any .50 caliber guns missing and he got really pissed at me. We didn’t have someone arrested, so he blamed it on the Dicks.”

  “When did you give all those files to Harry?” Jack asked.

  “Harry kept digging around. He would ask me to check the files from time to time for him. I did for a while. A couple of months before Harry was gunned down in his store, he talked me into checking on the progress of the investigation again. I made some inquiries and found out the state police lab had never received anything from Max’s case. They had no record of a .50 caliber shell casing—the one Olson found that night—being presented for ballistics. I checked with central records and the case file was still missing.

  “I got the Rex Mundi yearbook out, called the office at the school. The three boys had graduated but I talked the secretary into giving me addresses and phone numbers for the families. I called Carl Needham’s house and talked to his mother. She said Carl was in law school and they didn’t know how to reach him. She wouldn’t tell me what school and said I was to leave her son alone. I called Dennis James’s home. His father didn’t know and didn’t care where he was. He said to try the county jail. I did. He was a frequent flier. Drunk, disorderly, small-time drugs. He wasn’t in jail. I called Captain Dick’s, hoping to catch Richard. Captain Dick answered the phone. Dick Sr. wanted to know what I was doing. He reminded me I was a patrolman and not a detective. He said he’d bring his son in if detectives needed to talk to him. I’d heard that Richard Dick was due to be sworn in as an officer in the next few days and I told Captain Dick so. He suggested I tell my concerns to Detective Olson and he hung up on me.

  “I was about a month away from making sergeant, although I didn’t know that at the time of that call. I met with Olson. I was already in pretty deep, but like I said, I thought I had a responsibility to follow up. Harry was a good guy and I just wanted to show him that someone cared. Well, Detective Olson shut me down before I got the first word out of my mouth.”

  “How so?” Jack asked.

  “It came up that if someone was as sharp as I was—and a team player—that person would be put in for sergeant. He made it sound like if I wasn’t a team player I was the enemy of the police department. I reminded him that you needed five years of service to make sergeant’s rank. He said, ‘not necessarily.’ I’m ashamed to say it, but I dropped my investigation. My career was on the line. I had a family to think of. Max was dead and I couldn’t bring him back. At least that’s the way I justified it.”

  “You made sergeant early,” Jack said.

  “Yeah. About a month after I quit snooping, I was put in for promotion to sergeant. I went in front of the merit board along with two other patrolmen who each had over ten years on. I had less than five years on, but I got the promotion. Richard Dick was sworn in the next week.”

  “But you kept working the case after you made sergeant, right?” Jack asked.

  “Captain Dick was still around. Olson was still around. The Chief back then might as well have lived in Florida because he was never around. Always on vacation. Anyway, Harry made request after request to have the case reinvestigated and they placated him by saying Olson was talking to some unnamed witness or a possible suspect. They never told him how any of that turned out and he thought—even I thought—they were lying about Olson talking to anyone. No one to my knowledge ever took statements from the three boys involved in the fight that night. I knew all that, but I kept out of it.”

  “And then Harry was murdered,” Jack said and Mattingly’s face reddened.

  “And then Harry was murdered,” he said.

  Chapter 15

  Claudine Setera sat at a table in the far back corner of Duffy’s Tavern. The lighting in the bar was deliberately dim so the men at the bar could pick up the even dimmer women sitting at the tables, laughing hysterically at the men’s bad and raunchy jokes.

  One of the men at least twenty years her senior had come to her table with two mugs of beer. She told him she was meeting her husband, a policeman, and the drunk had moved on, saying, “Your loss, bitch.” She thought she would have to go home and take a bath to get the odor of stale beer, piss, and cigar smoke out of her hair. The back door opened. letting sunlight in. The man coming through the door of the bar wasn’t her husband, but he did draw everyone’s attention, especially one of the drunk women.

  “Ms. Setera,” Deputy Chief Richard Dick said. He pulled a seat near her and sat stiff-backed, lacing his hands on the tabletop. He had changed into street clothes, which for Double Dick was a handmade Italian suit with a name and shoes with a price tag to match. His dad had taught him not to waste money on substandard clothing. The price of Dick’s clothes closet could feed a small nation.

  “Deputy Chief,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

  “Well, we have some important issues to discuss.”

  “Like?”

  Dick leaned toward her. “We can deal with this investigation to each other’s benefit.”

  Claudine gave her Cheshire cat smile. “Detective Murphy and I were discussing much the same point earlier,” she lied.

  Dick sat up straight again and his palms lay flat on the table. He cleared his throat. “I’m innocent of any perceived wrongdoing, Ms. Setera. When this is over you won’t want to have been on the wrong side. I think you’ll want to work with me instead of against me.”

  “I may,” she said. “Work with you, that is.”

  Dick’s posture relaxed slightly.

  “I mean, I may if you can convince me of the benefit to my station. I’m sitting on a national news story here. Why would I give that up?”

  “Because I’m being unjustly targeted by the current Chief of Police and the thugs he’s assigned to investigate me.”

  “Do you mean Jack Murphy and Liddell Blanchard?”

  Dick gave a disgusted grunt as an answer.

  “Are they investigating you specifically for a thirty-seven-year-old unsolved murder? Are you saying you’re a suspect in Max Day’s murder? Or are you saying you’re a suspect in Reina Day’s assault? Or both?”

  “Pah!” he said. “I’m not saying anything of the sort. If I’m a suspect in anything it’s a lie and a travesty of justice. It’s a deliberate attempt to besmirch my spotless reputation and attempt to stop the inevitable.”

  “And the inevitable is?”

 
; “I will be Chief of Police.” Dick held his head high.

  “Just to be clear: Are you asking me not to interview Detective Murphy and Blanchard?”

  “On the contrary, Claudine. I may call you Claudine, may I not?”

  “Yes, you may, if I can call you Richard.”

  “Claudine, I encourage you to do your job. If that includes interviewing Murphy or his sidekick, then by all means, do so. But I want you to keep me informed, so to speak.”

  “So to speak,” she said.

  “Yes,” Dick said. “It will benefit us both, but mostly you.”

  “Me?”

  “You will know who the real killer is. That is, if Murphy can find them. If he can solve this case. And frankly, I don’t think he’s up to the task. He’s an arrogant blowhard and not a very good detective in my opinion and—” Dick stopped mid-sentence. “This is all off the record, by the way.”

  “Of course, Richard.”

  “I think we will be close friends after I’m Chief. Let me tell you something off the record.”

  “You’re off the record,” Claudine said.

  “I’m thinking of creating my own press corps. Every agency with power over people’s lives has a responsibility to keep their charges—the citizens—informed. We can best do that if we work together. The media and the police. Imagine how that would benefit the citizens of Evansville?”

  “And you.”

  Dick straightened his tie and smoothed the front of his shirt. “Yes. Me. But I’m thinking of the city. Cato’s campaign ran on transparency of government. I assure you she will support my decision to bring the media onboard.”

  Claudine smiled genuinely. She knew Dick was right about the mayor-elect working more closely with the news media. And Dick was hoping to garner a little limelight for himself with a little ass-kissing all around.