Am I the Killer? - A Luca Mystery - Book 1

by Dan Petrosini

  “No signs of a struggle in here. Let’s check the rest of the place out.”

  They circled the living room, where the body was lying. Yesterday’s Asbury Park Press lay open on a velour sofa that showed wear. A marred coffee table hosted a half bottle of Bud, three remotes, and a crumb-filled plate. Luca looked around for a crumpled napkin but couldn’t locate one. They headed to the next room.

  No surprise, he thought, when they entered the galley kitchen where the sink was crowded with crusty dishes. A loaf of Wonder Bread and a can of tuna sat on the Formica countertop beside a butt-filled ashtray.

  “JJ, make a note. It was tuna the vic was dining on. It may help Fitch with nailing down a time of death.”

  Cremora nodded.

  An alcove off the kitchen held a washer and dryer and a door to a small yard.

  “O’Reilly!”

  The wiry responder slid into the kitchen. “What’s up, Luc?”

  “This door, was it open when you got here?”

  “Yeah, I told you, we didn’t touch anything but the TV.”

  Luca cocked his head at Cremora.

  “Get it dusted for prints.”

  Then he pulled out a pencil, pushed the door fully open with its eraser, and stepped onto a concrete pad.

  Luca eyed the unkempt yard. It wasn’t fenced but was shielded from the other houses by a mixture of overgrown holly and rhododendrons. Noting the trash cans and an old bicycle to his left and a rotting shed in the center, his eyes settled on two cans of beer and a pack of Marlboros sitting on a redwood table to the right. Examining the ground for any footprints, Luca changed his shoe covers and approached the patio furniture, carefully sidestepping several cigarette butts that littered the area. The rain had slowed to a faint drizzle, but the pack of cigarettes was soaked.

  Luca’s partner stepped into the yard.

  “Anything interesting?”

  Luca waved him over, saying, “Put on a new pair of bootees, J.”

  “Bench pulled out, so someone was sitting here. Just don’t know when or who.” Luca pointed to the butt that lay an inch or so away from the table’s edge. “Looks like it burned out on its own.”

  JJ looked closely at the burn mark and butt, nodding. “It’s a Marlboro.”

  They considered the two cans of beer, one used as an ashtray. Luca poked the other can with his pencil, testing its weight. He looked around the yard slowly, then declared, “Let’s bag up the butts and cans and check with the girlfriend on what brand her lover boy smoked.”

  ***

  Luca munched on a turkey hero as Cremora slapped his office door with a file.

  “Autopsy report.” He eyed the sandwich. “Maybe we’ll wait till you’re finished?”

  Luca shook his head, took a bite, wrapped the rest of the sub into a ball and tossed it in the garbage can.

  JJ came around Luca’s desk and plopped open the file. “No surprises. Death caused by trauma to the head with a blunt instrument. No other wounds.”

  Luca paged through the head shots. “Doc say what he was hit with?”

  “Could be a bat, pipe, something circular in nature. And no doubt he was hit from behind.”

  “The vic high on anything?”

  “Blood alcohol of .04, a little buzzed. He’s, or was, one hundred and seventy.”

  Luca read on. “Shit, nothing under the fingernails. What’s this about on the knuckles?”

  “Doc wasn’t sure. Said it could’ve happened on the way down.”

  “Maybe throwing a punch?”

  “He said no, but you were right on the TOD.”

  Luca smiled. “You mean, again?”

  JJ elbowed his partner. “Time of death was about fourteen hours before O’Reilly found him.”

  Luca sat back and stroked his chin. “Not much to go on, but we know he bought the farm about eight last night.”

  “I’ll check with the captain, see if the foot soldiers brought anything back from talking with the neighbors.”

  “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass,” Luca said, and then he cackled as he picked up the phone.

  Luca felt the customary pressure to make significant progress within days of the murder or risk the trail going cold. Looking for something to work with, he was going to push forensics hard for any clues they could reveal before he headed to an emergency meeting.

  ***

  Luca slid onto a bar stool next to his date. “Sorry, Deb.”

  She sipped her vodka. “I knew it was too good to be true.”

  “Aw, come on, Deb, it’s been crazy. The pressure is really on.”

  Debra frowned. “Same old story.”

  “No, it’s true. The brass is on our backs.”

  “Come on, Frank, I’m sitting here like some bimbo for almost two hours.” She shook her head. “You always put the job ahead of everything.”

  “That’s not fair. I’ve changed. It’s just that right now with the Wyatt kid murder and a shitload of assaults, the suits in Freehold want results.”

  Debra shrugged. “Guess after a couple of,” she fingered quotation marks, “dates, I got my hopes up too high.”

  Luca kissed her cheek. “No, this time it’s gonna be different. I’m telling you.” He smiled, boring his blue eyes into her. “You’ll see.”

  “It better be.” She looked at her watch. “Let’s get something to eat. I’m starved.”

  They ordered off the bar menu. All through dinner Luca worked at making this latest transgression fade away. He assured Debra that his proposal of moving back in with her was right for them. Fact was, he missed her terribly and wanted them to be a couple again. Knowing it was his fault, Luca had secretly vowed not to let the job define his life, and, maybe even more importantly, wouldn’t violate his marriage vows again, no matter what sexy tail came along.

  They had met when Luca was commuting as a junior at John Jay College, and the good-looking couple was inseparable. A whirlwind courtship ended with an engagement, and they married a month after he graduated from the academy.

  Anxious to prove himself as a rookie, Luca relished in the ‘low man on totem pole’ assignments and never complained, despite Debra’s growing protests. As a new bride, she wanted her husband home, but the overnight and weekend shifts left little time for any honeymoon period.

  Luca felt that trying to build a career benefited both of them and began resenting her complaints. A proverbial wall had gone up by their second anniversary, and things fell apart when Luca, a George Clooney look–alike, started receiving calls at home from a woman officer he found impossible to resist.

  The damage from his wandering took three years to fully mend. After a tentative restart, the couple enjoyed a two-year period whose bliss was shattered by a miscarriage. The couple regrouped, but Luca quickly became impatient with his wife’s anxiety over the loss. Restless, he began studying to become a detective.

  He passed on the first go-round and had been working in plainclothes for over a decade. Luca’s new career path got off to a rocky start on his second case when he and the lead investigative detective succumbed to pressure to solve the murder of a county official’s family member. The young man jailed for the crime, Dominick Barrow, hung himself, and the uproar exploded exponentially when another suspect confessed. Luca, as the junior officer and not wanting to make waves, hadn’t resisted in the effort to frame the kid, and he carried a heavy load of guilt over the case.

  Attempting to dislodge the guilt from the Barrow case, Luca began working way too much. Debra was understanding at first, giving him a lot of rope in the belief the guilt he felt drove him to work excessively. But as the years and cases passed, she reeled him in, and a couple of years later, the couple separated.

  Chapter 10

  Sergeant Richard Gesso led the hastily arranged gathering. Given it was midmorning on a Saturday, he had only a handful of officers to work with. The fit, sixty-something Gesso stepped in front of the blackboard.

  “We got another homic
ide to deal with.” He touched the end of his wide, black moustache. “Look, we need to wrap these up and wrap ’em up quickly. The community is scared, and, no surprise, the press is making us look bad again.” He lowered his voice a notch. “Frankly, I’m tired of getting heat from the county, not to mention the calls from every old lady within forty miles.”

  Gesso paused to pick up a sheet from the lectern and dug out his reading glasses.

  “Keansburg section again, second time this month.” He wagged his head. “Twenty-six-year-old male, William Wyatt. Head bashed in around seven last night. Forensics is collecting at the scene, and there’s a push from Freehold to get the autopsy done tonight.” Gesso pushed up his glasses and continued. “There are no suspects and no sign of a break-in, so he may have known his assailant.” Gesso peered over his glasses for a moment and resumed reading. “Wyatt lived alone. Girlfriend, a Mary Rourke, found him. She’s not ruled out, but Detective Luca’s gonna handle her.” He stopped reading. “Wyatt’s a local kid. Geez, I remember him as the quarterback for South. Led them to two state championships. Then the kid went to Rutgers but couldn’t make first team and dropped out.” He went back to his paper. “Wyatt went to DeVry and then got a job as a technician over at Philly’s in Hazlet a couple years ago. His parents moved down to South Carolina, so I’ll get the locals to interview them, see if anything pops up.”

  Gesso surveyed the room again. “We gotta put the leather to the pavement. Johnson, you and O’Brien take four officers and cover Wyatt’s neighborhood. Door-to-door it, see if you can uncover anything, a car, someone on foot, something suspicious. You know the drill.”

  Two youthful detectives jumped up. “We got it, Sarge.”

  Gesso pointed to a map on an easel. “And be sure to check the houses on the street behind Wyatt’s. There’s a cul-de-sac backing up to Thompson Park where the stream is.”

  The detectives nodded and left as Gesso continued.

  “Mulligan, you and Griffin dig into his background, coworkers, any other family you can find, his girlfriend. Check that. Luca’s got her, unless you hear he was two-timing her. Talk with the people he went to school with. I want you talking to everyone, even his damn bowling buddies.” Gesso took his glasses off and gestured with them. “This was a brutal beating. Nothing seems to have been stolen. He was missing his wallet but had a wad of cash in his pocket. Who knows, maybe it was a revenge thing or something. So the rest of you keep your eyes and ears open on your patrols and lean on your contacts.” The sergeant put his glasses down. “Look, Stanley’s got the sheriff crawling up my ass already, so I’d appreciate some results here and pronto.”

  Arriving at the crime scene, uniformed officers fanned out, hitting the houses on the surrounding blocks, while Johnson and O’Brien covered the houses on Wyatt’s street. When neither next-door neighbor said they’d seen or heard anything unusual, they split up, with Johnson heading across the street to a brick-faced colonial. A woman in her forties wearing a blue housecoat answered the door.

  Johnson flashed his badge. “Ma’am, we’re canvassing the neighborhood for any information about last night’s incident. Were you home last night?”

  “It’s terrible. He was a good kid. Served in, uh, Iraq. No, it was Afghanistan. What a damn shame. His poor family.” She closed her eyes. “We’re frightened as can be. We have a seventeen-year-old daughter.”

  “Calm down, ma’am, there’s no reason to panic. Now, did you or anyone in your household see or hear anything unusual, anything at all, no matter how small a detail?”

  “Well, we, me and my husband, Mike, were watching TV, and, really, we didn’t hear anything. That’s the scary part, you know. It just seems like a normal night, but meanwhile, right across the street, a young man is killed. Why?”

  “So you and your husband,”—he looked at his notes—“Mike, didn’t hear or see anything unusual. No cars out front, nobody walking, no sounds, anything?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Anyone else live here?”

  “Yes, our daughter, Kathy. Her name’s Kathy.”

  “Was she home?”

  “No, she went with some friends to stay over at a girl who used to live in town.” She wagged her head. “Poor thing doesn’t even know what happened.” She looked at her watch. “It’s only eleven thirty. They said they’d be back around four.”

  “When she leave?”

  “Right after dinner. I made a tuna casserole. Her friend Patty picked her up.”

  “What time would that be?”

  “Around six thirty, seven.”

  “Okay, ma’am. Here’s my card. If you remember anything, let us know. Look, when you talk to your daughter, ask her if she saw anything, and call me.”

  At six o’clock the two cops headed back after interviewing nearly thirty neighbors. Two saw a tall man running through backyards. One woman estimated him to be in his mid-thirties, but another neighbor said he looked much older, maybe as old as fifty. They also collected three reports of a dark sedan driving slowly and a compact car parked in the dark on the road behind Wyatt’s home.

  There were four neighbors who weren’t home, but other than the tall-man sightings and the sedan, the foot soldiers were not hopeful that what they had would lead to a breakthrough.

  With the heat rising on the police force, O’Brien and Johnson were working Sunday and went back to hit the neighbors they missed. They pulled up to a brown ranch whose rear yard backed up to Wyatt’s. A potbellied man, sporting a stained tee shirt, opened the door.

  O’Brien held his badge out. “Good morning, mind if we ask you a couple of questions about what happened behind you?”

  “Figured you boys would come ’round. Damn terrible thing.” He stepped outside. “Wyatt was a nice kid an’ all, but they fought like cats and dogs.”

  “Who?”

  He popped a cigarette in his mouth. “The girlfriend and Billy.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He struck a match and lit his smoke. “Well, I hear ’em going at it from the back porch. The wife, she don’t let me smoke inside, so I gotta come out back.”

  “Did you hear anything, any fighting, on Friday, May fifteenth?”

  The neighbor took a deep drag and shook his head. “It was raining, and the wind was blowing that night.” He lowered his voice and pointed to a hanging chime. “I remember, ’cause my old lady’s damn chimes were clanging away. One of these days I’m going to rip ’em down.”

  “But on other nights you stated you heard them fighting?”

  “Sometimes, depends on what else is going on. You know, sometimes these kids on these motorcycles, they’re so damn loud I can’t hear my own thinking.”

  “Was there anything else about that night you remember?”

  He blew smoke through his nose. “Well, now that you say it, that kid Jimmy Johns, heck, he ain’t no kid now, but he used to go to school with my boy Tommy.”

  When he took another deep drag on his cigarette, O’Brien prodded, “Go on, what about him?”

  “Well, I seen him cutting through my yard.”

  “What direction was he moving?”

  The neighbor pointed. “Kinda on an angle, moving this way.”

  “So, coming from Wyatt’s street?”

  “Seemed like it was that way.”

  “So how do you know it was this guy Johns?”

  “Shit, I know it was him. I had him doing some yard work. My wife had run into him, and he was down on his luck, so we had him come, you know, take out some of the brush and all, about six months ago.” He shook his head. “You know, the bastard had the balls to steal some of my old lady’s Hummels when he came in to use the john.”

  “I see. Did you file a report at the time?”

  “Nah, poor kid’s just desperate. Besides, she got too many of them things anyways.”

  “Do you know where this Jimmy John kid lives?”

  “It’s Johns, Jimmy Johns. Don’t know e
xactly, but the kid’s from Keansburg. I think around Second Street or so. They used to be over on Bay Avenue when his momma was alive.”

  O’Brien took a description of Johns from the neighbor and continued pounding doors.

  The neighbor whose daughter had gone out around the time in question called O’Brien, and the cop stopped off to interview the kid on his way home.

  O’Brien was shown into their small living room and took a seat in what must have been the father’s recliner, as both mother and daughter perched themselves on a plaid sofa. There were so many tchotchkes in the room that the place looked like a flea market stand.

  “So, Kathy, I’d like you to take your time and try to recall anything you may have seen, heard, or even smelled the night in question,” he said.

  “Well, it’s not really much, probably nothing, but my mother keeps hounding me.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Well, sometimes even the smallest things can be helpful.” O’Brien flipped open his notepad. “Shall we?”

  The kid popped a piece of gum in her mouth. “Well, my girlfriend Patty, Patty Shields, she lives over in Fox Run. Well, she was coming to pick me up. She has her license already, and her parents got her a car already.” She glanced at her mother, and when she tilted her head, her ponytail lay on her shoulder.

  “Okay, go on.”

  “So like, she came, I think like six thirty or so, and when I was getting in the car, another car came up like real fast and kinda like screeched, no, not screeched, but like came to a stop, like real fast and all. But that’s it. We didn’t see anything ’cause we left then.”

  “Okay, so where did this car stop?”

  “Across the street by that poor guy’s house.” She stopped smacking her gum and looked into her lap.

  “In front? Directly in front of the Wyatt house?”

  “I guess so.” She pulled on her ponytail.

  “Take a second and think about it. Where were you when it pulled up?”

  “In front of my house, by Patty’s car.”

  “Did, uh, your friend stop right in front of your house?”

  She nodded. “Basically.”