Croaker: Grave Sins (Fey Croaker Book 2)

by Paul Bishop

  Fey moved through to the garage. One side was obviously where Cullen parked his Jeep, but the other half was turned over to exercise machines and free weights.

  “Look at that,” Fey said in amazement.

  Ash and Cullen tracked where her finger was pointing. On the padded exercise bench was a roll of silver duct tape. Under the bench loops of white, quarter-inch rope lay innocently coiled next to a pile of clothing.

  “Bingo,” Groom said, his voice deep and troubled.

  Several hours of fruitless searching later, Fey agreed with both Ash and Groom that there was nothing more to be found. The clothing under the exercise bench had consisted of a tee-shirt, a pair of jeans, white sox, and a pair of size-nine Reeboks. In the back pocket of the jeans was a slim wallet containing three dollar bills and an ID card in the name of Wallace Hillman. The picture on the ID card matched the face of the young victim buried at the beach. The date of birth on the ID card had been obviously altered to show that Wallace was nineteen. Fey figured that sixteen was easily closer to the truth.

  The rest of the house was a blank. Other than the two rooms where Cullen appeared to live, the rest of the residence was a showplace. Fey figured the place was one of the complex’s model homes and Cullen had bought it outright, furniture and all. It had that kind of feel.

  Fey even went so far as to run pencil lead over a blank notepad by the den phone, but raised no lettering. So much for tips from the Hardy Boy’s Detective Handbook, she thought. Maybe next time she could come up with something using a Dick Tracy Crime Stopper.

  She picked up the phone and hit the redial button. Seven beeps and two rings later the other end was answered by the China Gardens restaurant.

  “Do you deliver?” Fey asked.

  “Thirty minutes,” came the reply.

  Fey thanked the other party and hung up. She looked at the phone’s memory buttons. There were five of them. Fey pushed the first one. China Gardens answered again. Fey hung up.

  She pressed the second memory button.

  A harried male voice answered, “Boffo Burgers, what can I get you?”

  “Do you deliver?”

  “You bet. What do you want?”

  “A million dollars, peace on earth, and a date with Mel Gibson,” Fey said and then hung up.

  Memory buttons three, four, and five were also fast food delivery services: Palisades Deli, Fratelli Pizza, and the Shoreline Market.

  “A man of varied tastes,” Fey told the others when she related the information.

  “A junk food junkie,” Ash said. “How the hell does he manage to stay in shape eating all that crap?”

  “Some people are lucky that way,” Groom said.

  “Yeah, but if he keeps putting that stuff in his body, along with all the dope and other stuff, his system is going to turn traitor at some point or another.”

  “Who knows?” Fey said. “Maybe his diet is a blessing in disguise. Prison food will be a step up.”

  She looked around at the room’s disarray again – the photos on the wall, the piled-up garbage. It was as if Cullen was some kind of big kid. Fey thought immediately of the three dead victims. Cullen maybe was a big kid, but he was also a bad one.

  “What do you think?” she asked Ash.

  “I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “What do you mean?” Groom asked, unbelievingly. “Talk about your slam dunk. We capture the suspect at the crime scene. We’ve got spontaneous statements. Rope and tape, matching those used on the victims, are recovered in the suspect’s residence along with the clothes and identification of the last victim.”

  Before Fey or Ash could find a valid argument, Fey’s cellular phone rang. She pulled it out of her purse and answered it. Brindle Jones was on the other end.

  “Cullen has rejoined the land of the living,” she reported. “The doctor is checking him over right now.”

  “Sit tight, we’re on our way,” Fey said. Excitement began to brew in the pit of her stomach. “Don’t let anyone near Cullen but the doctor. If Cullen talks to you fine, but don’t ask him any questions or tell him anything.”

  “No problem.”

  Fey closed the phone.

  “Let’s travel, boys. It’s time for tip-off.”

  Chapter 31

  The trip to County USC hospital jail ward was an obstacle course of heavy-morning commuter traffic, jackknifed trucks, stalled passenger vehicles, fender benders, and a wrong way Oriental driver who went up an off ramp and didn’t notice anything was wrong until he’d run seven oncoming cars off of the road.

  Fey drove the detective car with a lead foot and a total disregard for traffic conditions. The plain brown sedan sported blackwalls and more antennas than a bushel of Martians. The vehicle was considered dual purpose and was equipped with emergency lights and siren capabilities.

  When the traffic on the freeway ground to a halt, Fey pulled down the hinged red light, so that it showed through the windshield. With a flip of a switch, she activated the car’s light system and pulled onto the emergency shoulder.

  Scooting sideways to brace himself, Ash put a hand on the dashboard. “Hi-ho, Silver, away,” he said under his breath.

  “Don’t give me a bad time,” Fey said, hearing the comment, but not taking her eyes off the road. “Time is getting too short to be stranded on a temporary parking lot.”

  The car was permeated by a tension that was more than the mix of anticipation and exhilaration that usually accompanied a major ongoing investigation. Fey knew her time on the case was getting short. With a suspect as high profile as JoJo Cullen there was no way the Fey would be able to keep the case within her unit.

  Fey knew that there was no shame attached to Robbery-Homicide Division taking over a case. RHD had the manpower to assign detectives to the case for the long term, personnel that geographic divisions couldn’t afford. When the next murder went down in West Los Angeles, Fey’s unit had to be available to handle it. They couldn’t all be tied up proving that JoJo Cullen was a serial murderer. Just handling the press on this one was going to be a full time job for some detective.

  There was still something inside Fey, however, that drove her to complete as much of the case as she could before she had to turn it loose. If she was honest, it had nothing to do with being a woman in a man’s world. It had to do with professional pride – an attribute that was more often a curse than a blessing. There was a reason God declared pride as one of the seven deadly sins.

  Finally breaking free of the freeway logjam, Fey used every surface street shortcut she knew to get to the hospital. Once there, Fey parked in an empty ambulance zone and quickly hung the radio mike over the rear view mirror. Despite her acrobatics with the mike and having to grab her purse, she was still the first one out of the car. Quick strides propelled her toward the automatic glass doors of the entrance, and left Ash and Groom floundering in her wake.

  “Is she always this wired?” Ash asked Groom.

  “This is only second gear, man. You should see her when she really kicks in.” Groom followed Ash through the entrance. “I saw her in court once with a novice prosecutor. The case was going to hell in a big way. Fey was the investigating officer on the case and she was getting pissed.”

  “I can’t imagine she was pleased,” Ash said.

  “Not in the least. It was a sexual battery case. The defendant had a prior record for numerous indecent exposure arrests, but the evidence against him had always been too weak to get a filing. This time he’d actually put his hands under a victim’s blouse and grabbed her breasts. The identification was good and it looked as if it was a dead-bang case. The District Attorney, however, was dropping the ball big time, and Fey could see the jury wasn’t going to buy off on the case.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She had a coughing fit in the middle of the courtroom – almost prostrated herself across the prosecution table. The judge was forced to call a recess.” Still following Fey, Groom took off his glasses
and rubbed them with a cotton handkerchief. “As soon as the judge’s gavel declared the recess, Fey’s coughing disappears as if she’s undergone a laying on of hands at a revival meeting.”

  Ash snickered at the image.

  Groom’s lips thinned. “She stands up, grabs the DA by his tie and drags him out of the courtroom. In the lobby, she pulls him out of sight around a corner – as if he were a suspect she was going to let practice falling down.”

  “She must have exploded.”

  “It was unreal. She read this DA the riot act up one side and down the other. You would have thought the case was a gang rape instead of a simple come and run. She had a legal pad covered with questions that the DA should have been asking and instructions on how to plead the rest of the case. She jams it in the DA’s chest and tells him if he doesn’t pull his finger out of his butt and win the case, she’s going to shove a nightstick so far up his ass he won’t make noise when he farts.”

  “Colorful. What did the DA do?”

  Groom replaced his glasses. “I pulled my finger out and went back in and won the case.”

  Ash laughed out loud. “You’re kidding? You?”

  “Yep. She also left a lasting impression on the jury. Part of the evidence in the case was the defendant’s trousers. When he was arrested, the trousers were covered with semen from the orgasm he’d had when he touched the victim.”

  “Euuuu,” Ash made a disgusted sound and wrinkled his nose.

  “Exactly,” said Groom. “So, while I’m introducing them into evidence, the male bailiff’s holding the semen-covered trousers by two fingers at arm’s length. The semen is dry, of course, but the bailiff is still treating the trousers as if they were radioactive.” Groom held out his own arm in imitation. “Watching this reaction, Fey leans back in her chair and says – just loud enough for the women on the jury to hear – ‘Typical man. They won’t even touch the stuff, but they expect us to swallow it.’“

  Several nurses turned to look as Ash laughed out loud.

  JoJo Cullen might be awake, but whether he would talk or not was another question.

  News mavens had collected in the jail ward’s lobby located on the floor above the county hospital. Fey and her companions had plowed through the reporters and camera people in a flying wedge with Fey leading the way. They made no comments and relied on the uniformed sheriffs, who staffed the ward, to time their entry through the security doors to keep the press from following them through.

  Once inside, the trio identified themselves to the jail ward watch commander and to Dr. Amos Fallon, the MD who had been treating JoJo.

  Fey knew Fallon from previous encounters in the jail ward. He wore thick glasses and a spotless white smock. He was also so short that when Fey looked down at him, she felt she was looking at an aerial photo of a human being.

  “Cullen has a mild concussion, but nothing that will do him any permanent damage,” Fallon told her when she inquired. “He also has a collection of superficial bruises and abrasions, but nothing worse than he’d pick up in an NBA game.”

  “Nothing to indicate the officers used excessive force?” Groom asked the question, trying to anticipate future problems.

  “Not as far as I can tell. The injuries are consistent with what I was told happened.”

  More concerned about losing valuable evidence, Fey asked, “Did you take blood, hair combings –”

  “– fingernail scrapings, and everything else. A full work up,” Fallon interrupted her. “You know me, Fey. I could do a work-up like this in my sleep.”

  “I know,” Fey told him. “But this one is going to have everyone jumping through hoops.”

  “I figured that out when you had the court order faxed over almost before the body got here. We’ve had stars down here before –”

  “And we’ve been burned before,” Fey said. “I don’t want that to happen this time around.”

  “I understand,” Fallon said. “Do you want to talk to him on the ward or in an interview room?”

  “If he’s up to it, let’s do it in an interview room. The ward has too many interested ears.”

  Fallon pushed his thick glasses up his nose and scurried away.

  “How do you want to play this?” Groom asked Fey as the watch commander unlocked the door of an interview room for them.

  “It’s hard to tell,” Fey said entering the small room followed by Groom and Ash. A small table was surrounded by four chairs. Fey sat down and faced Ash. “You’ve interviewed serial killers before,” she said to him. “What do you think?”

  Ash remained standing as Groom took the seat next to Fey. “You’re going to have to remain flexible until you get a feel for this character. If he is the killer of these young boys, he won’t feel remorse or guilt. It’s not like interviewing your regular run-of-the-mill murderer. A serial killer with a sociopathic personality is not going to react in the same way as somebody who has acted in the heat of passion, or even somebody who has killed for more routine motivations such as revenge or greed.”

  Before they could discuss the situation further, the interview room door opened and Dr. Fallon pushed JoJo through in a wheelchair. Brindle Jones followed in behind. The small room was suddenly overcrowded.

  Fallon took his leave, and Fey introduced herself to JoJo. The clothing he had been wearing at the beach had been taken for evidence, and he was left wearing a hospital smock. Even sitting down and draped in the unflattering gown, JoJo was a huge muscular presence. He seemed to fill the room all by himself.

  Recognizing that there were too many people in the room to do an effective interview, Brindle excused herself and slipped out. Ash remained silent, standing to one side of JoJo. His eyes were hooded, almost as if he was about to fall asleep, and he had crossed his arms over his chest. Leaning back into the corner he seemed to fade into the paint work.

  Fey and Groom sat across from JoJo who watched them both through large, spaniels’ eyes. His face was moon-shaped, with full lips emphasizing a wide mouth. His black, curly hair was close cropped, and his skin color was a blend of light browns and yellows.

  Fey let a silence fall as she mentally searched for the first key to twist. She felt slightly unbalanced. JoJo was an intimidating presence combining both size and star power – charisma.

  Before she could say anything further, the magnetic presence in front of her suddenly crumbled. Tears flooded from JoJo’s eyes as if driven by a monsoon. The big man slid out of the wheelchair onto the floor, curling up into a fetal position, crying and wailing.

  “JoJo –” Fey said standing up.

  A pitiful wail came from the form on the floor. “I just want to play ball again.”

  Chapter 32

  It took Dr. Fallon and three burly sheriffs’ deputies to manhandle JoJo into the wheelchair and maneuver him back to bed in the main jail ward. JoJo didn’t fight them, but he didn’t help them either. In essence, he was a limp Baby Huey, a ton of Jell-O constantly sliding away from whatever was used to support him or prop him up.

  The only cohesive statement JoJo had made was the one about playing ball again. Everything after that was a mish-mash of babbling and blubbering. Fey picked up the repeated words “Brother” and “love,” but could make no sense of the context. When asked, Dr. Fallon denied giving any kind of drugs to JoJo that would promote the kind of psychotic reaction they were all observing.

  “Shock,” Fallon said, as if that explained everything. He had a sedative-filled syringe in his tiny hand. With no ceremony, he pulled back JoJo’s gown and jabbed it in the exposed portion of buttocks.

  “Well,” said Fey when JoJo was eventually wheeled from the room. “That wasn’t quite what I expected. How the hell the man we just saw became an athletic legend, is beyond me. He’s freaked out.”

  “Do you buy it?” Groom asked.

  “Beats me,” Fey said. “How about you, Ash?”

  Ash peeled himself away from the corner of the room as if he were an Egyptian mummy coming back
to life. “I don’t know enough yet to form an opinion.”

  “Now there’s a good cop-out,” Fey said. “Just give me your gut instinct.”

  “Okay. I don’t like it,” Ash said. The tic under his eye was suddenly more pronounced, and Ash put a finger up to touch it. The tic continued.

  Observing the effort to control the involuntary action gave Fey the feeling that the tic was something new to Ash, something he wanted to hide.

  “You think he’s faking it?” Groom inquired, bringing Ash’s attention back to the issue at hand.

  “I didn’t say that.” Ash’s eyes hooded over again, as if he were doing an internal examination. “I said I didn’t like JoJo’s reaction, and I don’t. I’m just not sure what it is that I don’t like. The man is being hailed as the next Magic Johnson. He’s won almost every conceivable athletic award basketball has to offer. He’s brilliant on the court, but the question really lies in what he’s like off the court.”

  “I agree,” said Fey. “The whole scenario is uncomfortable.”

  “What do you mean?” Groom looked puzzled. “I would have thought you’d be over the moon. You can’t honestly believe there’s a conspiracy in all this?”

  Neither Fey nor Ash responded.

  Groom shook his head in frustration. “Come on. This isn’t an episode of Murder, She Wrote. Angela Lansbury isn’t going to come rushing in at the last second and prove somebody else did this.”

  Fey shrugged. “You’re right. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time in police work, the easy answer is the correct one. But I don’t know. Maybe this time it’s the point one percent.”

  “How can it be?” Groom was getting frustrated. He needed support on this if he was going to get a solid conviction. “I know I gave your people a bad time when we discussed the probable cause for the search warrants, but I wasn’t doing anything more than making sure we were all on the same page of music. And since then the case has become even tighter. We’ve recovered the victim’s clothing and ID at JoJo’s residence. We’ve also got rope and tape from JoJo’s garage that will more than likely match that from the victim. I’ve filed and won murder cases on far less evidence.”