The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  Lusk turned to Scanlon. “Get us a copy of this confession Al,” he said. “And run a background on Teddy Crane.”

  “Are you going to be around for the next few days, Mr. Bragg?” he said, to me.

  “I don’t know. I have enough for the story I came for, so I’ll be heading out soon.” I fished out one of my business cards and handed it to Lusk. “But, I’d like to keep up with your progress and stay in the loop if you’ll allow me.”

  Lusk stuck my card in his pocket, climbed out and opened the rear door for us.

  “You can count on us being in touch,” he said as I got out. “We’ll probably want you back here at some point. Either to ask you more questions, or to testify.

  The CSI people came out of the bushes carrying Jamal zipped up in a black body bag on a stretcher. Two of them hurried ahead to remove a gurney from the van and wheel it out on the tarmac. They loaded Jamal's body on it, lifted it back into the van and shut the doors.

  Alvin and I stood solemnly and watched.

  A hundred feet down the road a news van from a TV station stopped along the shoulder, and a blonde in a short dress with a lot of leg showing got out, followed by a bearded man in a tan safari shirt with a camera on his shoulder.

  “There’s one other thing I’d like to ask,” I said to Lusk.

  “Who’s going to tell Mrs. Johnson before it makes the evening news?”

  Lusk glanced at the approaching news crew, then back at me.

  “We will,” he said. “As soon as we leave here.”

  I could see in his face how much he didn’t look forward to that.

  The news crew was making a beeline toward us, the blonde ready with a microphone in hand and a cameraman right behind her. Lusk walked toward them, palms forward to halt their progress before they could point the camera at the crime scene.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Alvin and I walked back to my Jeep. When we got in, he looked over at me and said, “Take me to my car, I got to go tell Aunt Millie about this myself. I don’t want no policeman breaking it to her. Then I’ll go see Taylor and tell him. Rather have them hearing it from family.”

  I pointed the Jeep back to Natasha’s place where Alvin’s car was.

  “You think these peckerwoods are good enough to catch the motherfucker that did this?” Alvin asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Depends on what kind of evidence they find, I guess.”

  “Or somebody talks,” Alvin said, with a fierce look.

  “And I know you’ve got ideas on how to make that happen,” I said.

  “A few of em’ downright medieval,” He replied. “I’ll leave you out if you want.”

  “How about we try some non-violent tactics first,” I said.

  “Like what?” Alvin said. “Kroll’s vet can’t do any more confessing lying in the morgue. So what’s our next step, boss man, non-violently speaking?”

  “It’s what I said. “We let it all play out. The confession. Its effect on Kroll. What we said to Teddy. Finding Jamal’s body will add to the mix. Maybe now the cops will turn up the pressure and something will break.”

  “My way would be quicker,” he said. “Just ask those cats at Abu Ghraib.”

  “There’s also Jamal’s journal,” I said. “It’s got to be somewhere. A friend of Jamal’s, Ronnie Dill, is looking for it, and I’ll check back with him. If Jamal hid it somewhere other than in his mama’s house, Ronnie Dill is our best shot to find Jamal’s hiding place.”

  Alvin continued to show a lack of enthusiasm at my suggestions.

  “We need to stay close to the cops,” I said. “I want them to keep us advised on their progress. Since we represent the family, they owe us that.”

  “Staying close to cops is your job,” Alvin said. “I got no experience in that.”

  I caught him looking at me.

  “We still got a promise to keep,” he said.

  “I know, Alvin, I know. If nothing else works, we’ll grab Wilson Kroll and Teddy Crane and beat the truth out of them.”

  Alvin grinned that scary grin.

  Natasha’s SUV was gone when we got to her bungalow. I hoped she’d left the door unlocked like she usually did. I needed to get my stuff.

  “I’ll call Natasha and tell her about Jamal,” I said to Alvin. “You go take care of Millie and Taylor Johnson.”

  “Probably take a couple of days,” Alvin said. “They gonna’ need somebody to help with funeral arrangements and the like. But I’ll stay in touch.”

  “Tell them how sorry I am,” I said. “I’ll come and see them when I can.

  Alvin nodded, got out and went to his car.

  I walked to Natasha’s front door, tried it, and it opened. Natasha was a trusting soul; it was an admirable quality. I wondered how much of a dent Teddy Crane would put in it when she found out his true nature.

  I called Natasha and got her voicemail. I deliberated leaving the news about Jamal, but decided it wasn’t something to leave as a message. I’d keep calling until I reached her.

  Then I called Kelly and I told her about finding Jamal.

  “When are you coming home?” was all she asked.

  “As soon as I can,” I said, but I didn’t tell her there was one thing I wanted to do first. I wanted to take one more run at Teddy Crane. I didn’t tell Alvin, either, I wanted to try to reason with Teddy without Alvin there threatening to water-board him. Teddy must know it was over for him, and the best thing was to give himself up and cooperate before Kroll and his high priced lawyers beat him to it and concocted a story placing all the blame on him. I wasn’t Teddy’s enemy now; Wilson Kroll was.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  With my bag in the Jeep, I headed for the back side of Hogback Mountain, hoping Teddy would be home. I knew if I called first, he wouldn’t be by the time I got there.

  I found Natasha’s SUV out front of Teddy's place. She wouldn’t make my job any easier being here if she tried to stick up for Teddy. But she’d get to hear the news about Jamal along with Teddy, so if I told her what Sam Squires said in his confession, maybe she’d start taking Teddy's role in things more seriously.

  Teddy’s SUV and motorcycle were both parked in the open garage, so they were both here. I went over to the front of the SUV and examined the front end and bumper. There was nothing as obvious as bloodstains on it, but there were many dents, scratches, and scrapes from a dozen old altercations with objects Teddy hadn’t managed to avoid. I couldn’t tell if any of them was due to a collision with a seventeen-year-old boy. Maybe the cops could if I got them to look at it.

  I walked up to his door and rang the bell. A chime sounded from somewhere inside. No one came, so I rang it again, and pounded the door. I was beginning to get a bad feeling.

  I tried the door and found it unlocked, went in through the foyer and into a two-story great room and almost stumbled over a body on the hardwood floor. It was Natasha. She lay face down, a pool of blood spreading beneath her. A large exit wound bloodied her back, with another bullet hole in the back of her head. Her purse and car keys lay by her hand, evidence someone must have shot her as she was entering the house. They had then walked over and given her the coup de grâce in the head.

  Across the great room, a tall window looked out on the forested slopes of Hogback Mountain. A pleasant sight—except for Teddy Crane, who lay on his side on a large Navaho rug, the back of his head blown out. I should have checked, but I somehow knew no one else was in the house. Death had come and gone swiftly, leaving the house eerily quiet.

  I got my phone out and dialed nine-one-one.

  For the second time in one day, I was grilled by the police. This time it began at the scene of the crime and finished in a conference room in the Greenville Sheriff’s Office on McGee Street in downtown Greenville. Two County Detectives, a City Detective, a SLED agent, and a woman from the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, or NCAVC—the FBI being so fond of acronyms—joined me. I’d seen none of
them before.

  Neither Detective Lusk or Scanlon from Jamal’s murder were there, and I told these cops that they might want to give them a call as they had an interest in Teddy Crane, too. I don’t know if they did. Lusk and Scanlon never showed up.

  It was a gang-bang that lasted for hours. I told them everything I knew and most of what I suspected. I began by telling them who I was, what I was doing in the Dark Corner generally, and at Teddy’s place in particular. Along with my usual identification, driver’s license, etcetera, they examined my press credentials, something the cops at Jamal’s crime scene didn’t do. They asked a lot of questions about Teddy and Natasha, who they were to each other, whether they were involved romantically, and things like that. I did my best to tell them. They also asked the same things of me.

  They weren’t telling me much about what they thought had happened or relaying any details I hadn’t already figured out the moment I arrived. They were intent on asking questions, not answering them. At first, their attitude toward me wasn’t so much as a witness, I realized, but more as a suspect. I guess it was too unusual for someone to discover three murders in one day, and they had to get that out of the way first. I’d done my best to explain how my presence at both scenes was plausible, and after a while, they seemed to accept that.

  They asked a lot of questions about Alvin. It seemed that they were checking into his background thoroughly. I told them that regardless of his history, whatever it was, he was with me all day and had gone straight from Jamal’s murder scene to Millie Johnson’s to inform her of her son’s death.

  I wanted to call Kelly but It took a while to get permission. I told her not to look for me anytime soon, the cops were questioning me again. I wasn’t allowed to tell her about Teddy and Natasha, and a detective made sure of that by standing by the phone with a finger on the hang-up button if I tried. So, I had to let her believe they were still talking to me about Jamal’s murder.

  The cops finally arrived at a mutual assessment of what had happened. Someone shot Teddy Crane, execution style—one in the head, up close. Natasha came in unexpectedly and got shot for it, once in the mid-trunk, once in the head. She was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  I had them get a copy of Sam Squire’s confession and go through it, telling them that my number one “person of interest” in Teddy and Natasha’s murders was Wilson Kroll, who had reasons to shut Teddy up. I told them that I was at Teddy’s home to get him to confess to his part before Kroll could concoct his version of a story that would lay it all on Teddy.

  When they learned of Kroll’s Cleveland Mob connections, they wanted to know “why not them?” I told them that if anything, Kroll would kill Teddy to keep the mob from learning what Teddy knew.

  My second suggestion was Eddie Smoke. Teddy’s drugs and call girl connection with him could be bad for Smoke if it came out. I suspected that if Kroll had Mr. Kennedy’s lawyer beaten up, he’d had Teddy get Eddie Smoke and his gang of thugs to do it. Neither Smoke nor Kroll would want that to get out. The city cops seemed to know who Smoke was, and there were raised eyebrows at the mention of his name.

  I grieved for Natasha throughout the entire questioning. She had helped me, hurt me, and was a pain in the ass, but I’d grown to like her. A lot. She was one of a kind. I’d told her that Teddy was bad for her, but I never realized just how bad. He got her killed.

  They kept coming back at me with more questions about Teddy, and what I knew, or even suspected about him. I took them through the attack on me by the polo-mallet-wielding-masked rider at the steeplechase track and even showed them the stitches still in my scalp to prove it. I also told them how convinced I was that it was Teddy on that horse, perhaps at Kroll’s behest, but they seemed only interested in how much of a grudge I might have held against Teddy. They began to lose interest—until I described the mask. Then it was like they all refocused on me like I’d just showed up and they’d never seen me before. They made me describe the mask to them again.

  The County Detective turned to the FBI lady and gave her a questioning look. “Should we call Mosely Smith?” he asked her.

  “I’m doing it now,” she said, grabbed her smartphone and left the room. The rest of them began studying their fingernails, the table, the floor—anything it seemed, to avoid looking at me.

  “Did I do something to break up the party?” I asked.

  “There’s someone else that we need in on this,” the County Detective said.

  “Who is Mosely Smith?” I asked. I’d heard that name somewhere.

  The FBI lady returned before anyone could answer.

  “We got lucky,” she said. “Smith is still in town, and he’s on his way.”

  “Let’s all take a little break until he gets here,” the County Detective said. “I could use a bathroom break and a chance to stretch my legs.” He looked at me and said, “You probably could, too. But don’t leave the building. Smith’s going to be very interested in talking to you.”

  He got up and left the room along with everyone else but the FBI lady. She sat texting something on her smartphone.

  “Who is Mosely Smith?” I asked her. “Why do I know that name?”

  “She didn’t look up, her thumbs still working hard at texting. “He’s an FBI Agent.”

  “I would advise you to take that bathroom break, Mr. Bragg,” she said. “You’re probably going to be here a lot longer than you expected.”

  Suddenly it hit me. Agent Mosely Smith was the name of the agent-in-charge of the Carolina Stalker serial killer case. I’d seen him on TV.

  But why the hell would he want to question me?

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Finally, Special Agent Mosely Smith arrived. Everyone returned to the conference room, and he took over the questioning. Smith was a middle-aged man with a chocolate brown complexion who carried himself like an ex-athlete. His biceps filled the sleeves of the jacket he was wearing, and my bet was that his waistline was probably about the same size it was when he played whatever sport he played when he was much younger.

  “Mr. Bragg, you said you were attacked a few nights ago by someone on horseback, wearing a mask, and he hit you with a polo mallet.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Describe the mask again,” he said.

  “It was one of those ‘Guy Fawkes-Anonymous masks’ that the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protestors wore,” I said, and described it in detail.

  He sat quietly as if he was visualizing my description. “You told us that you think the man murdered today, this Teddy Crane, was your attacker. Do you stand by that?”

  “I can’t prove it a hundred percent, but yes. As I said, the guy was wearing a mask, and I never saw his face. But he was Teddy’s size, and shape, skilled at competitive jumping like Teddy was, and he was also wearing a coat like I’ve seen Teddy wear. And, he was one of two people who had a reason to try to stop me from finding out what happened to Jamal Johnson.”

  “Who is the other one?” Smith asked.

  “Wilson Kroll, the horse breeder who accused Jamal Johnson of shooting his horse, and for whom Teddy Crane occasionally worked. But Kroll doesn’t fit the description of my masked attacker. Kroll is short and stocky. Crane was tall and thin. However, Kroll might have paid Teddy to do it.”

  “Do you have any hard proof that Crane had anything to do with the Johnson boy’s death?” Agent Smith asked.

  “No. What I have is all circumstantial or hearsay. Teddy supplied drugs and prostitutes to Wilson Kroll’s sex parties but lied to me about even knowing him. He did other things for Kroll, too. Kroll’s veterinarian implied that Teddy shot Kroll’s horse and framed Jamal Johnson for it. I believe he was capable of doing other things for the man. Like killing Jamal because the kid knew things that could ruin Kroll.”

  “Prostitutes?” Mosely Smith said. “Tell me about that.”

  “Alvin Brown, Jamal’s cousin, and I followed Teddy when he picked up a carload of call girls from a guy in West Greenville
named Eddie Smoke. Teddy delivered them to Kroll’s party Friday night. That’s why I added Smoke to my list of suspects for Teddy’s murder. Teddy knew a lot about Smoke’s illegal activities. Now he’ll never talk about them.”

  "We're well aware of Eddie Smoke," a detective pitched in. “A local Hood into all kinds of things. He’ll eventually fuck up, and we’ll get him.”

  Smith looked at him, then motioned for me to continue.

  "At the party,” I went on, “We saw a man wearing that mask peering through a bedroom window watching a guest fornicate with one of these prostitutes. It was Teddy Crane, I’m sure. He was wearing the mask my attacker wore, and the same long coat Teddy wore earlier that day when he picked up the hookers. It’s Crane’s trademark outfit, and he wears it often. He thinks it’s cool. The coat is an old cowboy duster like they wore out west in the 1800s.”

  “Did he return these girls to Greenville later?”

  “I assume he did, but I didn’t stick around. I’d seen what I wanted to see and proved what I wanted to prove—that Teddy Crane was a drug pusher and a pimp and had an illicit business connection with Wilson Kroll. The peeping tom bit was an added insight into the character of the man.”

  “So, Mr. Bragg,” Smith said. “Do you think Crane was capable of murder?”

  “If he’s the one who hit me with the polo mallet, yes. Look, Agent Smith,” I said. “I’m trying to cooperate here, but it’s time I got some answers. Why all the questions about the mask, and what does it have to do with you? I know who you are. I saw you on TV. You’re the agent in charge of the Carolina Stalker serial killer case.”

  “More like the agent to blame,” he said, “since I can’t seem to catch the guy.”

  He sat back and studied me. “Mr. Bragg, I’m going to tell you something, but I’m going to ask you not to repeat it. You could seriously jeopardize the investigation if you do. Especially if what you’ve told me, and what I suspect, doesn’t pan out. Can I trust you not to be the one to spill this to the press—or, since I know what you do for a living and who you’re sleeping with, neither she nor you will break the story yourselves?”