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

by Dan Petrosini

  “Come on, Pete, calm down. Take it easy.”

  Vinny watched my head jerk back suddenly. Then my eyes rolled back, showing their whites. Vinny sprang off the couch, moved the coffee table out of harm’s way, and put the cushions on the floor. Then he grabbed the phone and punched in 911.

  The seizure lasted longer than the usual minute or two, and I was coming out of it when the EMT workers arrived. Vinny called the neurologist, who pinned the episode on the stress of my legal circumstances and recommended an overnight stay.

  As I slept, Vinny contemplated my possible guilt and what toll the stress of imprisonment would take on us.

  ***

  Luca grabbed a cup of coffee and was headed to the interview room when he was told to report to Sergeant Gesso.

  The detective poked his head in Gesso’s office. “What’s up, Sarge?”

  “What the hell are you up to?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gesso pounded the desk. “You know damn well what I mean! Why the hell is Johns taking up space in the interview room?”

  “Identity theft. He had Billy Wyatt’s license and sold it.”

  “Geez, Frank, you’re on a wild goose chase. Hill’s agreed to a plea.”

  “So, are we letting ID theft go now?”

  Gesso shot out of his chair. “Cut the bullshit, Luca! The Wyatt case is closed, you hear me? Closed!”

  “But this scumbag had Wyatt’s license. Where do you think he got it?”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass. I’m telling you to drop it, and that’s a direct order. You got that?”

  Luca’s eyes narrowed as he said, “Loud and clear, Sarge.”

  “You’re a good detective, Frank, but sometimes, I don’t know.” Gesso shook his head and sat back down. “Look, I’ll ask Bernie to follow up on this ID thing with Johns.” The sergeant extended a file. “I want you to take over the Spiro case. Kennedy is way too green for something like this.”

  Luca nodded, grabbed the file and turned on his heels instead of flinging his java, like he wanted to.

  Luca walked by the interview room and peered through the window. Johns looked a bit grayish to the detective but had put on a few pounds and was groomed as if he were making a court appearance. Luca resisted the urge to break a direct order and went to his office. He called the officer Gesso said would interview Johns and got to work on his new assignment.

  Right before Luca left for the day, Detective Bernie Kitloff filled him in on the interview. The officer told him that Johns had stuck to a story that he found the license on the street. When Kitloff pressed, he said he was with a guy named Tommy when he found it. Johns couldn’t tell him where to find this guy Tommy and gave a very vague description. Kitloff knew it smelled like week-old fish, but given the backlog of cases, the DA’s office said to release him.

  Chapter 33

  “Geez, Luc, you look like dog doo.”

  “Thanks, pal, it’s real nice to know you’re loved.”

  “Seriously, Frank, what’s going on?”

  Luca shrugged. “Not getting much sleep.”

  “Everything good with Debra?”

  “Yeah, not too bad, actually.”

  “So what’s keeping you up?”

  Luca sipped his morning coffee and said, “This Hill case—it’s eating at me.”

  “Shit, Frank, let it go, will ya?”

  “I don’t know, man, I just can’t.”

  “You think lying in bed ruminating on it is going to help?”

  Luca flashed a grin. “Well, actually, I’ve been keeping an eye on Johns.”

  “What? You’re tailing Johns?”

  Luca shrugged.

  Cremora shook his head. “You’re fucking crazy. You know that? Gesso will have your head when he finds out.”

  Luca cocked his head. “Can’t sleep anyway. What’s the big deal with keeping an eye on a repeat offender?”

  Cremora pointed his finger at his partner. “You better watch it. I don’t know, Luc, you’re obsessed with Johns.”

  “This creep is up to no good. I know it, and I’ll nail the bastard.”

  “Maybe, but how’s that gonna help the Hill kid?”

  “It may not, but you can’t argue the world will be better with that scumbag behind bars.”

  “Look, bro, all I’m saying is you gotta keep things in perspective. Sure the bastard should be off the streets, like a zillion others, but if you keep on pursuing it, you’re . . .”

  Luca headed out the door.

  “Hey, where you going, Frank?”

  “I get nagged at home and don’t need any bullshit from you.” Luca slammed the door.

  Luca cut his lights and rolled to a stop a block away from Johns’ apartment. He sipped on a coffee as he waited in the dark. Luca had a gut feeling something would break tonight. It was the fourth day in a row that Johns hadn’t worked a menial job to earn the money needed to support his habit.

  The detective adjusted his seat for the fifth time as the third hour of observance passed. Luca began to wonder if Johns had slipped out somehow. It was now ten o’clock and no sight of Johns. Could someone have come earlier and they were holed up in his apartment, Luca wondered. Antsy, the detective pawed his cell phone and began punching in Johns’ home number when his eye caught a shadowy figure emerging from the basement stairs.

  Luca squinted, confirming it was Johns, who’d just lit a cigarette that the detective knew was a Newport. Luca slid down in his seat as Johns, in a hooded sweatshirt, puffed away, bouncing from foot to foot in the dark. Johns crushed out his butt as a car, whose lights were out, came around the corner. Luca’s heartbeat picked up as the old sedan pulled up and Johns leapt into the backseat.

  Luca slowly pulled out and trailed two blocks behind the car carrying Johns and his cohorts. The detective tried to place the profiles of the two guys in the car with Johns, believing he’d seen them before. The sedan put its lights on as he followed them across Route 36 and back into Keansburg.

  As the car headed toward what passed for a boardwalk and beach in Keansburg, Luca figured they were going to cop their drugs from Franklin, and that it would turn out to be another wasted night. The sedan failed to slow down at the notorious intersection where Franklin dealt his goods, and Luca’s spirit rose.

  Luca stayed a block behind as the sedan shut its lights and rolled to a stop by the run-down arcade. Luca slunk out of his car into a crouch and made his way closer as the three men hopped the amusement park’s chain-link fence. The detective knew the struggling amusement park had the day’s cash picked up by an armored car each night. So he wondered what their target could be. He watched them as they cut behind the bumper cars and disappeared from view.

  Luca picked up the smell of smoke as he scanned the area. He was about to call for reinforcements when he spied them walking down the asphalt path that led to the beach. The detective took cover by the rotting pier and watched them join two figures who were feeding sticks to a small bonfire.

  Luca observed the group greet each other and settle on the beach. When they starting passing around what he surmised was a drug-filled pipe, he knew he’d wasted yet another night and abandoned the surveillance.

  As Luca got back in his car, the realization he couldn’t save Peter Hill from going to prison occupied his thoughts. The detective wondered whether he would be able to shake the case, or if it would haunt him like the Barrow case.

  The day before Peter was to report to jail, his brother, Vinny, reached out to Luca again. In a near panic that the day of reckoning was upon them, a sympathetic Luca quickly agreed to meet with Vinny at their house after his shift.

  Vinny shook hands with Luca while Peter stayed glued to the television.

  “Hi Peter.” Luca dropped his extended hand when all he received back was a morose stare.

  “You remember Detective Luca, don’t you?”

  Peter nodded slightly.

  “It’s been a while. You look good, Peter.”
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  Vinny asked, “You want a cup of coffee, Detective?”

  “Sounds good.”

  Vinny made a pot of coffee as the small talk petered out. “I donno, I’m really worried for Peter.”

  Luca frowned and said, “It’s a tough situation. How’s he handling it?”

  “Nervous, I mean, who wouldn’t be?”

  “You know, it’s funny and all, I gotta say this is a first for me. Usually, on the cases I work, when the defendant goes to jail, it’s kinda like the validation of the investigation, the evidence, the whole thing, and really only then is when we guys in homicide get to move on. But here I, I mean, really, we, nobody really knows what went on here.”

  “It’s like some TV show, you know? You see these people cut deals to get some jail time rather than risk a long sentence, but it always seemed like bullshit in the real world. I mean, who would admit to something if they didn’t do it?”

  Luca stiffened a bit and picked up his mug silently.

  “I’m not saying he did it, but some of the things he says. Shit, I don’t know what to believe. Sometimes I think he’s not telling everything, and then he does something weird that shows that he’s not playing with a full deck.”

  Luca leaned in. “What leads you to believe he may not be telling you everything?”

  Vinny shifted in his seat. “Uh, I don’t know, just kinda like a feeling I’m probably misreading.”

  Luca lowered his voice. “Look, you might as well get it off your chest. The reality is, nothing is gonna change at this point.”

  “But I thought you were looking at that Johns guy?”

  “You know I am. I’ve been watching him like a hawk, and on my own time, to boot. Shit, if the sarge found out, he’d run me out of the department.” Luca shook his head. “So tell me, what’s your gut telling you?”

  Vinny silently stared at his mug.

  “I just gotta know for my own sake if I’m wrong here, that’s all. You’ve cut your plea, and nothing’s gonna change that if he really did it.”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try me, give me something.”

  “I donno, like the time I found out that Billy had been murdered. I was down in Texas, and I called Pete, but he acted all weird about it. Said Billy was a bastard and deserved it. I got pissed. The guy’s been my friend my whole life. You know, I didn’t really think about Peter’s reaction in any other way, since he had the brain injury and all. Then after all the shit happened, I started thinking.”

  “Well, it seems natural to me. Any other incidents, things?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just that, I don’t know, it seems convenient, if you know what I mean. A lot of times he’s good and seems almost one-hundred percent normal, and then when he has to answer questions about all this, he shuts down.”

  Luca nodded. “What do you think it means?”

  “I really don’t know. Sometimes I think he could be hiding things, but you know, I asked the doctors, and they said when people with TBIs are under pressure they can blank out.”

  “I wonder if it’s the pressure of having to be questioned, or maybe coming to terms with what happened that night.”

  Vinny nodded. “That’s what I keep rolling around in my head. I just wanna know: Is my brother going to prison for something he did, or not?”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, he said he had a dream where he shot Billy.”

  Peter appeared in back of his brother. “Mom said not talk to about people behind their backs.”

  “We’re not talking about you. I mean, we are, but not in a bad way, just this whole fucking nightmare.”

  Luca noted that Peter wasn’t using a cane. “You look like you’re getting around better these days. That’s good, a good sign.”

  Vinny said, “Yeah, yeah, he’s really responding to the physical therapy.”

  “You gotta love it. Now that I can get around, I’ll be locked up.” Peter shook his head.

  “So, can you tell us what this, uh, facility it going to be like for Peter?”

  “Well, I’ve been there a couple of times over the years to interview inmates, and I don’t know what it’s like when the lights are out, but it’s as loose a place as I’ve seen.”

  “Hear that, Pete? It’s loose there and—”

  Peter interrupted. “What do you mean, the lights are out? They shut the lights?”

  “Uh, I meant to say, you know, after hours, at night. When I go there during the day, the inmates are doing their jobs, taking classes, you know, doing activities.”

  “What kinda jobs they have to do?”

  “I really don’t know, but a couple of times the guys I went to talk to were in the farming program there.”

  “Farming? Wow, that’d be good for you, Pete. You like gardening.”

  Peter stayed quiet as Luca went on to describe the place as best he could remember. Then he left the brothers to their last night together for a while.

  “What are you doing home at this hour?” Debra asked.

  Luca shrugged as he took his tie off.

  “You feel all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You sure, Frank?”

  “Yeah, geez, can’t a guy ever win? I stay late, and you get mad. I come home at a normal time and get grilled.”

  “Lighten up, Frank, you got to be pried away from the job.”

  Luca smirked and said, “Okay, uncle, you win.”

  “So what’s eating you?”

  Luca twisted off the top to a beer. “I don’t know, maybe it’s ’cause the Hill kid went to Bayside today.”

  “I know you feel bad about it, Frank, but you worked like the devil to save the kid. Who knows, maybe he did it anyway.”

  Luca took a long guzzle. “Tell me about it. Last night, even his brother was giving me the vibe he wasn’t so sure either.”

  “So maybe it worked out in the end.”

  Luca shrugged. “Maybe, but you know me and my gut feelings.”

  “Just so happens that I can fix the belly thing. I made turkey meatballs this afternoon.”

  Luca smiled and said, “Things are looking up.”

  “Go grab a bottle of wine while I get dinner started.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “And Frank?”

  “Yeah?”

  She tilted her head. “Shut your phone off tonight, okay?”

  ***

  Luca strolled into the office and set down his coffee.

  “Where you been, man? I called you a bunch of times.”

  Luca dug out his phone. “Shit! I shut it off last night. You know, Deb and me. . .”

  Cremora raised both palms. “I don’t need details.”

  Luca smiled and took his jacket off.

  “So you don’t know?”

  “Know what? I’m a detective J, but I don’t read minds, bro.”

  “They got Johns, man! Caught him red-handed in cold-blooded murder.”

  Luca leaned forward. “What? Don’t play with me.”

  “Last night Johns broke into a house on Foster Street, beat the owner with a bat, I think, killing him. The poor bastard’s wife came down screaming, and Johns took off out the front door and ran right into a cop.”

  “A cop?”

  “Seems Cinicola, you know him, he works vice in Middletown, was out walking his dog and heard the woman scream.”

  “Walking a dog at two in the morning?”

  “Crazy, I know, but the dog had some stomach problem and was shitting all over the house.”

  Luca jumped out of his seat. “We gotta get this case.”

  Cremora shook his head. “Gesso gave it to Duro already.”

  “You kidding me? After all the work I, er, we put in?”

  “Frank, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re obsessed with Johns.”

  “Obsessed? You still think so, even after last night?”

  “You were right, okay? But
that don’t change the fact that Gesso didn’t like the way you were going about it, and if you ask me, he gave it to Duro as a result. From what I know, it’s an open-and-shut case.”

  “They got Johns for sure? On murder?”

  “Red-handed. The wife ID’d him, and Cinicola got him dripping in evidence.”

  “He had the murder weapon on him?”

  “Yup, and best of all, Johns was carrying a thirty-eight revolver, to boot.”

  Luca shook his head. “Holy shit, man, he’s really done.”

  “You got that right. It’s a death penalty case now.”

  Luca fell back into his seat. “Geez, it’s kinda unreal. We’ve been trailing this guy, and it falls in our laps.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it falling into our laps. He beat a man dead in front of his wife.”

  “Where they holding him?”

  “He’s being arraigned this morning. Why?”

  “Man, I’d love to talk with that arrogant bastard.”

  “You better stay out of it, Frank!”

  ***

  “Home early again?” Debra asked.

  Luca smiled. “Yup, let’s go out. I feel like celebrating.”

  “Really? What’s up?”

  “You’re not gonna believe it, but that bastard Jimmy Johns was arrested for murder last night.”

  “Oh my God. Was he the guy who killed that poor guy on Foster Street?”

  “Yeah, that was him, and it’s a good thing this creep’s finally off the street.”

  “You and JJ handling the case?”

  Luca shook his head. “Nah, they gave it to Duro.”

  “Oh? Well, now that this guy’s behind bars, I guess you’ll be stopping your midnight rambling.”

  Luca leaned his cheek on his hands. “I’ll be sleeping like a baby by ten.”

  “Yeah, sure, until the next case gets in your craw.”

  “We going out, or what?”

  Chapter 34

  Luca bounced into Duro’s office. “Yo Matty, how’s it going?”

  Duro looked up from his monitor. “Nothin’ new, up to my ears in cow shit.”

  “How you doing with the Johns case?”

  “Pretty straightforward, for a change. The mother jumper’s gonna fry, Frankie boy.”

  “Let’s hope so. Guess you did a search?”