Croaker: Chalk Whispers (A Detective Fey Croaker LAPD Novel Book 4)

by Paul Bishop

  “You'll have to excuse my partner,” Hammer said quickly before Rhonda could get in. “Clinical flatuance. It's a chronic personal problem.”

  “Gee, I'm sorry,” Chandra said, looking at Rhonda as if she were terminally ill. “Must make it tough getting dates.”

  Hammer had to bite the inside of his cheeks, especially as the comment seemed to be made in all concerned seriousness.

  “It's something I've learned to live with,” Rhonda said. She elbowed Hammer as she took the receipt from him. She held it out to Chandra. “I know you have a lot of customers, but do you remember the person who bought these items?”

  Chandra looked at the receipt. She nodded her head. “Yeah. This was the last day I worked. The guy bought this stuff as I was ending my shift. He was real cool looking. Buffed out, crew-cut, sunglasses.” She took the receipt and looked more closely. “I asked him if he was in the movies, kind of flirting, you know. He said he was a stunt man.” She snorted. “I told him he was full of crap, but he insisted. I asked him what films he'd been in. He reeled off a bunch of titles I never heard of before.”

  “Would you recognize him again?”

  Chandra shrugged. “What did he do?”

  Rhonda knew they were on the edge of a breakthrough. She shook off Chandra's question and asked, “Would you help us put together a composite drawing of the guy?”

  Chandra looked riveted. “I'll try. This is like in the movies, isn't it?”

  “Brought to you in wide screen Smell-O-Rama,” Hammer said.

  SEVENTEEN

  Brink was the first to voice what moments before had been unthinkable for Fey or Jenna Kavanaugh to contemplate. Brink had an advantage. He knew his original response to Fey had been because of her resemblance to his sister. He'd had time to consider the implications of the intense physical similarities between the two women, time to see the significance.

  “Looks as if somebody's momma wasn't exactly faithful to their daddy,” he said, amused as the two women looked at each other.

  “What are you talking about?” Jenna asked, obviously confused.

  Kavanaugh made introductions. “Jenna, this is Fey Croaker. She's an LAPD detective. Her father was dad's partner during his last years on the job. You probably remember him. He used to come by and play with us before driving dad to work.”

  “So?”

  “So?” Kavanaugh laughed. “Look at the two of you!”

  It was hard for the two women not to look at each other. Jenna Kavanaugh was a few years younger, a few pounds lighter, had smoother skin, and a more prominent, sharper nose. Beyond those points, the women were remarkably similar, same hair color and wave, same physical body shape and size, hands and fingers the same, same high cheekbones and piercing eyes. Even the wry twist to their mouths was the same.

  “This is too much,” Jenna Kavanaugh said. “Who are you?”

  Brink laughed.

  “My father was Garth Croaker. He started in the police academy with your dad in the late forties.” Fey held out her hand. Jenna Kavanaugh took it and held it. The women continued to examine each other.

  Jenna Kavanaugh finally broke the physical contact and turned to her brother. “Are you trying to tell me my father isn't my father?”

  Kavanaugh shrugged. “Or her father isn't her father. The resemblance is too strong.”

  “No way,” Jenna said, turning to look at Fey again.

  Fey felt the ground shifting beneath her. This wasn't possible. How could it be possible? Her only brother was dead. Her parents were dead. Ash was dead. She was an orphan. She didn't have anyone, didn't want anyone.

  “Can I sit down?” Fey asked.

  Brink took Fey's arm and led her to an armchair. She lowered herself into it.

  “Don't let him screw with your mind,” Jenna spoke up. “He's done it to me ever since we were kids.”

  Kavanaugh shrugged and sat opposite Fey. “If you say so, sister dear. Because you don't want to accept something doesn't mean it isn't true.” He steepled his fingers and asked Fey, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “A younger brother, Tommy. He's dead.”

  Kavanaugh raised his eyebrows.

  Fey caught herself looking at the expression, looking at Kavanaugh's size from a different perspective. There was something there, or was there?

  Kavanaugh seemed to read her mind. “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe we're also related.”

  “Don't even go there,” Fey said. She thought about the erotic impulses she'd had watching Kavanaugh carve the stone. She couldn't feel that way about a half-brother, could she?

  “What did your brother look like?” Kavanaugh asked.

  “Small, wiry,” Fey said without thinking the statement through. Then she caught the insinuation. “Like your father.”

  Kavanaugh laughed again. “What a little den of wife swapping we're conjuring up.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Fey said. “Your sister and I look a little bit alike. What's the big deal?”

  “A little bit alike?” Kavanaugh was incredulous. “That's the same as saying country music songs are only a little bit alike.”

  “They're not.”

  “If you play any of them backwards, you get your wife back, your dog back, your pick-up truck back, and you get out of jail.”

  “I'm still confused,” Jenna said. “Why did you come to see Brink?”

  Fey explained about the codicil in Ellis Kavanaugh's will leaving her two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars. “I want to know where the money came from and why it had been sitting in a lawyer's office for thirty years.”

  Kavanaugh and his sister looked at each other. “Any ideas?” he asked her.

  “Daddy didn't have that kind of money,” Jenna said. “If he did, he would have gambled it away.”

  “Where did Ellis live?” Fey asked.

  Kavanaugh twitched his head indicating a direction. “He had a crash pad in the Oakwood projects.”

  “You're kidding?” Oakwood was a notorious gang zone in LAPD's Pacific Area. Fey knew there were a number of retired folks who also lived there, but not by choice. “Have you been there since Ellis died?”

  Kavanaugh and Jenna shook their heads. “There's no reason to go there. It's a dive. A dump. He had nothing of value, couldn't have living there. He lived on his pension, forty percent of his salary from thirty years ago after mother gets half. I learned the hard way I couldn't give him money. He'd gamble it away. It was an addiction. He couldn't stay away from the horses. He survived, nothing else.”

  “He'd become a nut case,” Jenna chimed in. “He was over the edge. A conspiracy fanatic, part of the tin-foil helmet brigade, thought there were x-rays from outer space invading his brain.”

  “Shut up, Jenna.” Kavanaugh showed his first flash of temper. “He wasn't crazy.” It was an obvious sore point. Guilt got to everyone. So did the fear you would end up like your parents.

  “Would you mind if I went to his place and looked around?” Fey asked.

  Kavanaugh and Jenna exchanged glances. “I’ve no objection,” Kavanaugh said. “But I’d be interested to come with you.”

  ***

  Ellis Kavanaugh's apartment wasn't as bad as Fey had imagined given the area and what she had been led to believe about the man. The cheap studio apartment in the rundown complex of stucco buildings was dank and nasty, but Ellis had been reasonably tidy. His few clothes were folded, and everything was stored with military-type precision. Fey had seen the same habits in ex-cons. It came from having so little in life what you had become ornamental.

  There were several bent, but clean pots and pans on a counter near a hotplate. In the small bathroom there was a chipped sink containing a knife, a fork, and a spoon. The toilet next to the sink was clean, but rust stained. A pile of racing pages sat on the floor.

  The characteristic of the main room was the books. They were stacked everywhere. Mostly paperbacks with lurid science fiction covers. The few hardbacks had no dust co
vers and were scattered around without apparent pattern.

  The room was dominated by a double bed and a battered armchair. A small television sat on the floor next to a portable radio and a cheap VCR. All the comforts, Fey thought.

  Driving with Jenna and Brink to the location there had been no further speculation regarding parentage. Their talk had been general, a time period when strangers who have a token bond begin exploring the edges of their new relationship.

  Parking in a battered asphalt lot outside the complex, Brink produced a key to the apartment and led the way inside. While Fey looked through the books and paltry possessions, Brink and Jenna appeared to be in a trance. Their father was recently dead. It was clear his passing affected them in ways they were still discovering.

  Fey walked slowly around the room. A row of framed photographs along a built-in counter showed Brink and Jenna in various stages of growing up. Propped against the wall was a framed, glass covered, memorabilia display, which cops called a shadow box.

  Mounted inside were Ellis Kavanaugh's service revolver, his police whistle, his hat badge, service pins, and other ephemera related to the job. Fey stared at the box. She had seen enough of them over the years, but there was something missing from this one. What was it?

  There was no badge, but that was normal. Until recently, the department insisted badges were the property of the city and were to be returned at the end of employment. Many officers lost their badges shortly before retirement, but they still didn't show up in shadow boxes. You couldn't display what was either lost or, if found and not returned, stolen. If not the badge, then what? Fey stared at the box, not knowing why she felt it was important.

  Jenna moved to sit on the bed, picking up her father's pillow and hugging it to her chest. She let out a sigh. It was not quite a sob, no tears, but an exhalation of grief. Fey turned to look at her.

  “Got it,” she said, snapping her fingers.

  Brink and Jenna looked at Fey to see what she was talking about.

  “There,” Fey said, pointing to where Ellis' pillow had been. She reached over and snagged what appeared to be a slender piece of old-fashioned brass about four inches long, which had been hidden under the pillow. “It's a call box key.” She held it out. “It should have been in his shadow box.”

  “A call box key?” Jenna asked, confused.

  “For a police telephone call box,” Fey told her. “Years ago, when I first came on the job, before communications became computerized, there was a call box system throughout the city. They were all painted blue with a logo of a phone and a lightning bolt on the front.”

  “Yeah,” Brink said. “I remember the key hanging from Dad's uniform belt.”

  “They still issue the keys in the academy,” Fey said. “But the phones have long since disappeared. The call boxes themselves have become collectors' items. They were notorious hiding places for bottles of booze, throw-down guns, and other illicit property. The keys were generic. They fit all the boxes.” Fey tossed the key up and down in her hand. “The call box system was being replaced when I came on the job. I don't think there's any around anymore. Certainly none in working order. I wonder what made him treat this as special?”

  “You can't think it's special because it was under his pillow.” Brink said. “Jenna's right. Dad wasn't together mentally. There was probably no logical reason for him to put the key there. It must have been something that only made sense in his mind. He was obsessive about inconsequential things.”

  Fey was skeptical. “Everything in this room except for the books is in its proper place. Maybe the key was as well.”

  A title of a book on the edge of the armchair caught Fey's eye. Sexual Abuse of Children. It was a standard tome used by sex crimes detectives. Fey picked it up and saw Ellis had highlighted passages throughout the text.

  She rummaged around in the pile of books next to the armchair and found they were all books on child abuse, sexual molest, and dissertations on the effects of child pornography. Two in particular had been extensively highlighted, Children of the Silence and Hidden Rage.

  The former was an expose of organized trips to Thailand for those interested in sex with children. The latter was a private, small press publication instructing parents what to do when they believed their children were being molested and traditional courts wouldn't, or couldn't, do anything.

  Fey flipped through the first book and found a surprise. Inserted between the pages were two photographs. The first was a police academy class graduation photo from 1948. Fey picked out her father and Ellis with help from the second photo. It was a shot of newly minted officers Ellis Kavanaugh and Garth Croaker with their arms around each other's shoulders.

  Fey took a shallow breath.

  Not wanting to go where her memories were taking her, Fey began to leaf through the second book and found a bigger surprise. In the text, Bianca Flynn was quoted liberally. When her name appeared, Ellis had not only highlighted it in yellow, but circled it in red.

  EIGHTEEN

  Fourteen-year-old Judy Brenner was working in Fey's backyard when Fey arrived home. Currently wearing a man's plaid shirt over jeans and battered cowboy boots, Judy started taking care of Fey's horses, Thieftaker and Constable, when her sister Lori had gone off to college. She was smoking a cigarette as she mucked out the stalls.

  Fey was glad to see her. Judy was a change from the people, the stresses, and the situations Fey dealt with all day. She needed space and time away from the job to put things into perspective. Something Judy and the horses could provide.

  Fey didn't know where any of the information she was gathering was leading, but the more she uncovered, the more there appeared to be an unlikely link between Ellis Kavanaugh and Bianca Flynn.

  “Your mother will kill you if she catches you smoking,” Fey said to her young friend.

  “Not a chance,” Judy told her. “If she smells it on me, I tell her it was you smoking and the smell got on me.”

  “Thanks a lot. It's bad enough being a reformed smoker without being blamed for continuing to smoke.”

  “You gonna tell on me?”

  Fey shook her head. “Not a chance, kid. I need you around. Can't afford for you to be grounded.”

  “You won't be able to afford my bill, if you don't pay me sometime soon.”

  Fey laughed and took her checkbook out of her shoulder bag. Did I have a mouth on me like that when I was her age? she wondered. Where do these kids get their confidence?

  Fey handed over a check. “How about saddling up and we'll take a trail ride? I need to get away from things for a while.”

  “Sure,” Judy said, going for the saddles as Fey went inside to change.

  Fey wanted to chastise Judy for smoking around the barn, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Every kid needed a mother, but they only needed one mother.

  Fey changed into a sweatshirt and Wrangler jeans. Real cowboys didn't wear Levis because the seam on the inside of the pant legs rubbed thighs raw. She hummed to herself, purposely not letting her conscious mind form troubling thoughts. There were no worthwhile conclusions to be reached with the limited information she possessed. Better to let the subconscious sift through the detritus of clues, half-connections, emotions, guilt, anger, and impossibilities.

  Experience had taught her to trust her subconscious to nudge her toward the missing links the conscious mind would recognize as solid evidence. Sometimes, of course, the subconscious let the conscious mind take a long time before grudgingly putting the pieces together.

  Fey poured a fifty-fifty concoction of vodka and Seven-up into a plastic drinking bottle, and went outside to help finish preparing the horses. She didn't want to think about the possibilities of infidelity leading to half-sisters and maybe half-brothers. She was getting used to being alone. She didn't want to start feeling again.

  She really didn't want to be related to Brink Kavanaugh. What she wanted was to have him jump her bones.

  He couldn't be her half-br
other.

  Nah. No way.

  ***

  Rhonda finished breast feeding Penny and laid her gently down in her crib. She then pumped her breasts so her mother, who took care of Penny during the day, could feed her later. It was exhausting, but there was also something satisfying in the process.

  The day had also been satisfying in many respects. They had located Willetta and the staple gun. A willingness to look foolish, along with hard slog and attention to detail, had turned up the saw and the receipt in the dumpster. And amazingly, Chandra, the clerk from the Dollar Hardware Emporium, had come up with a serviceable composite of the man who bought the staple gun and other items.

  Hammer was a whiz with the computerized Smith & Wesson composite program installed on his laptop, but producing a good composite was a team effort between the operator and the witness. If the witness had a hazy recollection or an inability to articulate the differences in a suspect's features, any resulting composite was worthless.

  Luckily, Chandra had been star struck by her customer's good looks and his supposed Hollywood connections. But luck was part of the game, and you made your own by pushing hard and never giving up. For most detectives, finding the receipt in the first place would have been impossible, but not for Hammer and Nails. It was why they were who they were.

  Hammer translated Chandra's memories of the suspect into the beginnings of a composite by using the examples provided as part of the basic computer program. Chandra chose from examples of hairstyles, face shapes, noses, lips, chins, and eyes to form a basic picture. It was then Hammer's job to use various shape changing options, shading, and free drawing to fine tune the composite and individualize it.

  The process took two hours, but when Hammer was done, Chandra was convinced the face staring back at her from the computer screen was the same as the man who'd bought a few innocent hardware items from her. She still didn't know what all the fuss was about, but she'd been happy to be the center of attention. It gave her something to talk about during her next lunch hour.