Croaker: Grave Sins (Fey Croaker Book 2)

by Paul Bishop

  Fey nodded.

  “Typical,” Monk said. “Sex crimes has been quiet for a month, but the second Hop-Along goes on vacation the suspects come out to play.”

  “It’s like Hop knows it’s coming,” Fey agreed.

  “Why couldn’t it have waited until a decent hour.”

  Reentering the squad bay, Dick Morrison overheard Monk. “Because this might be big.”

  Fey sat up, alert. Morrison’s hunches usually paid big dividends.

  “Tell us,” she said.

  Morrison yawned. Fey pushed her cup of coffee in his direction. He waved it off. “Did you see the teletype from Santa Monica PD last week – suspect broke into the residence of a seventy-five-year old lady, raped her, then almost killed her by bashing her skull in.”

  “Yeah,” Fey said. “They had a caper with the same MO in Beverly Hills a month ago. Their victim was seventy-two. She survived...”

  “Barely,” said Monk, interrupting. “She certainly not lucid enough to identify anyone.”

  LAPD’s West Los Angeles Area was sandwiched neatly between the separate police jurisdictions of Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. Fey always read the other agencies teletypes looking for suspect information, or methods of operation, matching crimes in LAPD’s area. Suspects didn’t care about jurisdictions.

  “You think this guy is the suspect?” Fey asked. “Do we have another victim? Did she survive? What?”

  Dick held up both hands to stop the flow of words. “About twenty-one-hundred, we get an ADW there now call…Castle Heights address…mostly older residents who take care of their houses, despite bordering the hood.”

  Fey knew the area. She threw a warning glance at Monk. Both wanted Morrison to get on with the story, but Dick wouldn’t be rushed.

  “We’re met by the victim’s son. He’s in his forties. The victim is seventy-two. She’s half blind and has other health problems, but she’s mentally sharp.” He cleared his throat then continued. “The son had a blow-out with his wife. He ran back to momma’s to sleep and cool down. The front door was unlocked. He opens it and hears groaning coming from the kitchen. Thinking his mom is hurt, he runs inside.”

  “And...?” Fey urged. It was unlike Dick to be reluctant. What was coming had to be bad.

  Morrison shrugged. “When he gets into the kitchen, he sees his mother bent over the table with some guy putting it to her. Not only is this jerk raping his mom, he’s also hitting her in the back of the head with a motorcycle helmet.”

  Fey made a rude noise, anguish and disgust written on her face.

  “Yeah,” said Morrison, taking a deep breath. “The suspect spins around and smashes the helmet into the son’s face and flees. When the son picks himself up, mom is slumped on the floor, but she’s breathing. The son calls nine-one-one. The emergency operator sends the paramedics and puts out the call for us.”

  “How’d you come up with the suspect?” Fey asked.

  Morrison shrugged. “I had to get a little creative.”

  “It was brilliant,” John Bassett said. He was standing next to Morrison, idol worship on his face. Fey had seen the look before on the mugs of Dick’s trainees. Dick was their Messiah. “Incredible,” Bassett continued his zealot rhetoric.

  “Calm down, kid,” Morrison said. “Any good cop would have figured it out.”

  Fey knew different. Morrison was a savant when it came to turning nothing into something.

  “We followed the ambulance to the hospital,” Morrison said, continuing his narrative. “Mom regained consciousness and we interviewed her briefly when the doctor was done.” Morrison reached out and snagged Fey’s coffee cup, overcome by a cop’s constant need for caffeine.

  He took a healthy swallow. “Mom’s sight is so bad she couldn’t give us much of a physical description.”

  “What about the son?” Monk asked, trying to get Morrison to cut to the chase.

  “Let him tell it,” Fey said quietly.

  Morrison gave her a nod and turned his attention to Monk. “The son had been drinking and was shocked out of his socks when he saw what was happening. Getting smashed in the faced and dumped on his heavily padded butt didn’t help either. He couldn’t tell us if the suspect was an Indian chief or the Queen of Sheba.”

  Monk scowled, but kept his mouth shut.

  “Mom said the suspect knocked on her front door,” Morrison continued. “When she opened it, the suspect forced his way inside, tearing the security chain from the frame. He hit mom in the head a couple of times with the motorcycle helmet, then dragged her into the kitchen and threw her over the table.”

  “Suspect must have known the victim lived alone.” Fey couldn’t help interjecting, but fortunately it didn’t stop Morrison’s flow.

  Morrison took another swallow of coffee. “Mom is out of it by this point,” he continued. “The suspect is hurting her bad, hitting her with the helmet while he’s raping her – like maybe he can’t get off unless he’s beating her.” He paused fractionally to change tacks. “I don’t know if he was trying to kill her, but he might have if the son hadn’t interrupted.”

  Morrison paused again.

  Fey looked at him expectantly. “Is there a big clue I’m missing?”

  John Bassett was squirming like a kid waiting for the ice cream truck to arrive. Morrison favored him with an indulgent smile. “You tell it, kid.”

  “The victim doesn’t see good, but she told us the suspect stunk of pizza.”

  “Pizza?” Fey asked. “What is that? Some new brand of manly cologne?”

  Bassett looked confused. “No. Pizza. Like in take-out. You know? Cheese with pepperoni and anchovies.”

  “She knows, kid. She’s pulling your chain,” Morrison said.

  “A little,” Fey said. She was punchy from lack of sleep.

  Morrison nodded for Bassett to continue.

  “Dick asks if she orders pizza to be delivered. She tells him she orders from Fratelli Pizza around the corner.”

  “You checked on the delivery guys,” Fey said to Morrison, seeing where Bassett was leading.

  Morrison finished off Fey’s coffee. “Fratelli’s is a chain. They’ve got six in this area.” Dick pointed toward the interview room. “This guy delivers part-time for four of them.”

  “Let me guess,” Fey said. “He works the Fratelli’s in Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and West LA.”

  “And Culver City,” Morrison confirmed. “I have a call in to Culver City PD to see if they have any matching crimes.”

  “How old is the suspect?” Fey asked.

  “Nineteen.”

  “Little old for a delivery boy, isn’t he?”

  Morrison shrugged. “I didn’t hire him. We drove to the Fratelli Pizza on La Cienega and Cadillac, talked to the manager, Donald Norman. I’ve known him a long time.”

  Morrison had known everyone in the division a long time.

  “He gives us the low-down on this creep named Darcy Wyatt. Rides a motorcycle to work. Keeps his helmet with him so it doesn’t get stolen.” Morrison yawned. “Most of the Fratelli Pizzas have their own delivery vans, but Norman makes his delivery guys use their own vehicles. Darcy doesn’t have a vehicle. When he works for Norman, he borrows a blue van from a cook at Fratelli’s named Kenny.”

  Bassett took over the story again. “While we’re talking to the manager, this Kenny guy starts yelling about Wyatt taking off on his motorcycle.”

  Morrison sat down. “Wyatt returned from a delivery run and was in the joint’s back room. He overheard us talking about him.” Morrison was making a tacit admission to screwing up by not being clairvoyant. “We might have lost him, but he laid the bike down going round the first corner. The idiot started to run, but I turned this young stud loose.” Morrison pointed at Bassett. “He had the guy roped and hog-tied in a three count.”

  Morrison lit a cigarette in direct violation of the department’s no smoking policy. He blew out a stream of grey smoke. Fey’s nostrils quivered with nico
tine yearning.

  He pointed the cigarette at Fey. “I asked Gillette to call you while we were at the hospital. I figured if this thing ties together, you’d want to get to him while the caper is fresh.”

  “Absolutely,” said Fey. She felt her tiredness dropping away. This is what she lived for. A chance to crack a big case. “The kid is right, Dick. It was a brilliant police work.”

  Morrison looked embarrassed.

  Fey looked at Monk. “You ready to do this?”

  “You have to ask?” Monk said.

  Morrison sucked more smoke into his lungs. “Crack this guy,” he said. “He needs to go down for a long, long time.”

  Chapter 3

  It was another forty-five minutes before Fey and Monk were actually prepared to begin interrogating Darcy Wyatt. During that time, they sped through the motions of gathering as much information as possible about their suspect and the cases in which he was thought to be involved.

  Two sleepy detectives, one from Santa Monica PD and the other from Beverly Hills PD, were pulled from warm beds by Fey’s telephone calls. Once their initial grouchiness was conquered, both quickly cooperated. The rapes in their areas were hot priorities, especially the one from Santa Monica where the victim was the mother of a local VIP. The detectives were more than happy to do anything they could to get their blotters cleared. Having LAPD take over the investigations would get them off the hot seat and leave them free to get onto other pressing cases.

  “Can you talk to your victims first thing and find out if they ever ordered pizza from the local Fratelli Pizza?” Fey had asked both detectives, receiving an affirmative reply.

  After she’d hung up, Fey called across to Monk. He was sitting down in front of the NECS terminals at the far side of the squad room.

  “Got one new piece of information not in the teletypes,” she said.

  “Does it fit in with our case?”

  “Yes. Both Cavin from Beverly Hills and Gann from Santa Monica told me their victims were blind, or as close to being blind as to make no difference.”

  “Morrison said the same about our victim.”

  “Exactly.”

  “This jerk certainly knows how to pick ‘em. If they can’t see him, they can’t identify him.”

  “But he gets caught due to his cologne – Eau de Pizza.”

  “It’s a cruel world,” Monk replied.

  Shortly after Fey talked with Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, Dick Morrison received a call from a Culver City Sergeant named Olivo. Olivo had checked out Morrison’s earlier request and found two similar cases in Culver City during the past month. Both victims were over seventy and had been raped and severely beaten. Neither had been able to provide any kind of useful description of her assailant as both suffered from cataracts. Messages had been left for the concerned Culver City detective to get back to Fey or Monk as soon as he came in to start his shift.

  Monk got busy waving his magic fingers over the NECS terminal keyboard. “Look at this,” he said to Fey, as he pressed the print button. With an impatient grab, he tore free a sheaf of computer printouts and brought them over to Fey.

  Fey picked up a pair of reading glasses from her desk. She slipped them on and peered at Darcy Wyatt’s juvenile rap sheet.

  “Here,” Monk said pointing. “He’s got a couple of kiddy things – vandalism, loitering, petty theft – but he’s also got a prior rape arrest.”

  The disposition of the rape case showed it had been dismissed in the interest of justice.

  “Nothing since he became an adult?” Fey asked.

  Monk handed her another printout. “Only a couple of traffic warrants.”

  “What about the dismissal on the rape case?”

  Monk went over to a series of file cabinets and rummaged through one of the drawers. Grunting with approval, he pulled out a buff colored envelope with Darcy Wyatt’s name on the front. He slid out several reports and shuffled through them. “It occurred in our area two years ago,” Monk told Fey, handing her the juvenile arrest folder. “The Sex Crimes Unit was still being supervised by the Juvenile Unit back then, so you probably weren’t even made aware of it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Fey said. She pawed through the arrest folder. “I do remember hearing something. Wasn’t this the caper where the kid living at Vista Del Sur was caught trying to rape the grandmother of one of the other kids living at the same place?” Vista Del Sur was a residential program for wayward children of the rich and famous.

  Fey pulled a follow-up report from the file and read through it quickly. “The case was cleared other. The DA refused to file.” She read a little further. “The victim was uncooperative for some reason and the suspect walked.”

  “Sounds like the victim and her family were paid off,” Monk said.

  “Sounds about right for Vista Del Sur,” Fey agreed.

  Located in the exclusive Pacific Palisades area, the residential program had a tendency to handle many incidents under the table or in-house.

  “It takes big-time bucks to keep a kid at Vista.”

  “Even bigger bucks to cover up a rape case.”

  “Any idea who his parents are?”

  Monk took a closer look at the juvenile rap sheet. “Mother is listed as deceased. Father is Hiram Wyatt.”

  “The Hiram Wyatt?”

  “Who is the Hiram Wyatt, as compared to plain run of the mill Hiram Wyatt?”

  “The Hiram Wyatt is a top celebrity defense lawyer. A big shot with a major liberal agenda.”

  “I know who you mean,” Monk said, nodding his head in belated recognition. “If you’re in trouble, and you’re mega-rich, he’ll get you off or cut the best deal your money can buy. If he’s Darcy Wyatt’s father, what is Darcy doing working as a pizza delivery boy?”

  Fey shrugged. “Sounds like a family split. Maybe the kid has been so much trouble growing up daddy has cut him off.”

  “If we arrest his kid for rape, you think daddy will come running?

  “Hard to say.” Fey said. “Maybe.”

  “I’d hate to see the little dip walk away again.”

  “He’s an adult this time…Different rules.”

  Twice since Wyatt had been put in the interrogation room Fey had checked on him. The first time, she let Bassett take Wyatt to the bathroom. The second time, she provided Wyatt with a cup of coffee.

  On neither occasion was Fey being nice. Wyatt was obviously street smart. If Fey was going to get a confession out of him, she needed to move him through the preliminaries of the interrogation without him screaming for a lawyer. If Wyatt thought she was weak or a goody-two-shoes, he might think he could pull the wool over her eyes and decide to go things alone.

  Fey set the printouts and the juvenile arrest package down on her desk. She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. Monk was still standing beside her.

  He decided it was his turn and asked, “You ready?”

  “Let me get a fresh cup of coffee and we’ll start dancing.”

  When it came to interrogations, Monk knew Fey was one of the best. She knew all the moves. It was a rare case when she couldn’t get a suspect to cop-out.

  “You lead and I’ll follow,” Monk said, defining their roles for the interrogation process. “I always like learning a couple of new steps.”

  Fey took a deep breath to gear herself up. “Let’s hope we don’t step on too many toes.”

  Chapter 4

  “I swear, Ash. You are the most depressing person I’ve ever met. Don’t you ever smile?”

  Ash watched as Holly hooked the back of her lacy, black brassiere and bounced off the bed to pull on the rest of her clothes. She was angry, and an angry Holly was a beautiful Holly. Beautiful and dangerous.

  She’d been with Ash three months this time. A month longer than normal. He’d known it couldn’t last. It never did with Holly, and he’d been anticipating the explosion for over two weeks. In many ways it was a relief.

  “Aren’t you going to say an
ything?” she asked, turning to flash her eyes at him.

  Propped up against his pillows, legs tangled in sheets still warm from lovemaking, Ash knew there wasn’t anything he could say to make her stay. So, he remained silent. He learned long ago the best way to win an argument was to refuse to engage. If you don’t play, you can’t lose.

  The down side was you couldn’t win either.

  The sound of crickets spilled through a slightly open window, and a warm breeze tickled across Ash’s naked skin. The warm Santa Ana breeze was not unusual for Southern California. Neither was Holly leaving Ash’s bed in a snit after lovemaking. She was a concert violinist, as tightly-strung as her instrument and far more temperamental.

  Ash could find no rhyme or reason for Holly’s tantrums beyond her own self-destructive tendencies. The most achingly beautiful woman he had ever met, she was both brilliant and pitiful.

  When she flowed her bow across the strings of her violin, her concentration and mastery were absolute. Her music had brought worldwide concert hall audiences close to rapture. She brought the same intensity to her lovemaking, but never to the sustaining of a relationship. It was there the needed emotions were missing from her makeup. She was the edge of an intensely honed razor with one disastrous jagged nick in the blade. A flawed masterpiece.

  Ash knew Holly saw in him a reflection of herself. His own obsession and skills on par with her own, albeit in a totally different venue. His black depression a distorted reflection of her own emotional insecurities.

  Ash didn’t love Holly. If he had, her dramatic exits from his life would be more anguish than he could stand. As she used him to exorcise her own demons, he used her to keep the blackness of his own despair at bay. He had hunted monsters all his life, vanquishing them from the real world, but adding each of them to the dark pit of his own psyche. Holly provided a light in the darkness.

  Since they met five years earlier, she would blow into his life whenever she needed a dose of stability, and then out again when she’d had her fill. The incongruity of the situation didn’t escape Ash, since he wasn’t particularly noted for being stable himself. Compared to Holly, however, he was the Rock of Gibraltar.