“Tell me,” Grissom said, and Catherine filled him in, in detail.
Then Grissom took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “Let's do the scene and see if maybe we can find a way to get this guy.”
Catherine pointed to the floor. “If he's still using the same gun, these shell casings will be a great start.”
Expressing his agreement with a nod, he jerked his cell phone out and punched speed-dial. “. . . Jim, get over to Hyde's house, now. Someone just killed Marge Kostichek. . . . I know—maybe he's on his way home right now. . . . Not yet, we're doing that now.” He hit END, then turned to Catherine and Nick. “Find us what we need.”
Catherine was already bagging shell casings.
Grissom, clearly pissed, said, “I don't like murders on my watch.”
At the front doorway, O'Riley—keeping out of the way of the crime scene investigation—called Catherine over. Grissom came along.
O'Riley said to them, “I got a little good news—my man Tavo in L.A. just interviewed Joy Petty.”
Catherine and Grissom exchanged glances, the latter prompting, “And?”
“Seems the Kostichek woman took Joy in as a runaway, raised her like a daughter. Joy says her ‘mom’ considered Malachy Fortunato a ‘bad influence’—you know, a married man, a degenerate gambler, with the mob nipping at his heels. After Malachy disappeared, Joy says she was afraid the mob had killed him, so she took off, to protect herself.”
Grissom asked, “Where is Joy now?”
“Still there at the stationhouse with Tavo—my LAPD contact.”
“Have him take another run at her—but this time tell her about Marge's murder.”
Catherine glanced at Grissom quizzically.
“Yeah?” O'Riley said. “Why?”
But now Catherine had caught up with her boss, saying, “Because Joy might stop protecting her mom, if she knows her mom is dead . . . particularly if she knows how her mom died.”
O'Riley looked from one of them to the other. “No details spared?”
“None,” Grissom said. “The LAPD uses digital tape for their interviews, right?”
“I think so. I mean, we do.”
“Good. Tell your man Tavo I'm gonna want this interview sent up to our server, toot sweet, so we can download it.”
O'Riley nodded and ambled out.
Grissom pitched in with them, as they looked for footprints first. Nick used the electrostatic dust print lifter and pulled up a running-shoe print from the linoleum floor in the kitchen. Next they photographed the body, the living room, the kitchen and an open drawer that Catherine found in a back bedroom.
With Grissom's help, they fingerprinted everything the killer might have touched. While Nick did the flat surfaces, Catherine used Mikrosil to print the doorknobs, but she had seen the killer wearing gloves when she chased him. She didn't expect to get much and they didn't. She bagged all of Marge's shoes so they could later prove that none of them matched the print they got from the kitchen. Catherine found nothing in her search of the backyard or the alley. Then, shining her mini-flash on the top of the chain link fence, she saw something glimmer.
Moving closer, she found a few strands of black fiber and a small patch of blood. She snapped some photos and then, using a pair of wire cutters, snipped two of the ends off the top of the fence and deposited them in evidence bags.
She shared this with Grissom, who had spent much of his time in the house supervising their work, but also snooping around on his own.
“Come with me,” Grissom said, and in the kitchen he pointed out a knife almost out of its holder on the counter, and, on the floor, a few drops of blood and some strands of gray hair.
Then Catherine followed Grissom into the living room, where he pointed out a suspiciously clear area on the cluttered writing desk—had something been taken?
Now Grissom was staring, apparently at the wall.
“You think you know how this went down,” Catherine said, knowing that look.
“Yes,” he said.
The Deuce knew they would never let up now. All he could do was cover his tracks as much as possible. He'd seen the article in the Las Vegas Sun and knew they had stumbled onto Fortunato's mummified body. If the cops had that, how long until they found the woman?
The old woman didn't think he knew about the younger one, but he did. It was his business to know. The stripper had been sleeping with the mark, so damn right he knew about her. According to the phone book, the old woman, Kostichek, still lived where she always had. That made it easier. He had no idea where the stripper was, but he would find out. That was part of the reason for his visit to the old woman.
He parked a couple of blocks away in the parking lot of a grocery store, no point in getting careless now. Taking his time, he walked a block and a half before cutting up the alley behind her house. Even though the sun had started to set, it still beat down on him, his black clothes absorbing the heat like a sponge, and he felt the sweat beginning to pool at the small of his back, behind his knees, and under his arms. A lighter color would have been cooler, but he knew he'd be here past dark and he might want to leave without being seen, so he wore the black.
He came up behind the house, pulling on black leather gloves as he edged closer. Looking around carefully, he tried to make sure no one saw him as he took the silencer from his pocket and screwed it on the handgun. Then he knocked lightly on her back door, stepping to one side so she would have to open both the inside door and the screen to see him. Reaching around, he knocked again, louder this time.
“Jesus jones, I'm coming!” she yelled.
The woman opened the door, said, “Who's there?” and then opened the screen and saw him.
She tried to pull the door shut, but he was much stronger, and jammed himself into the frame. Ducking back inside, she tried to close the inner door in his face, but again he overpowered her. She fell back against the stove, turned and reached for a knife from the block on the counter. He pressed the silenced snout of the automatic to her cheek and she froze.
Raising the noise-suppressed weapon, he cracked her across the face and she collapsed to the floor. Grabbing her by the hair, he dragged her, struggling, into the living room.
“Where is she?” he asked, crouching over her.
The old woman seemed confused. “Who?”
“The stripper—where is she?”
“Go to hell!”
Casually, he pulled a pair of garden clippers from his pocket. “I'm going to find out anyway. You can make this easy, or hard.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but her jaw set and she said nothing.
“Hard it is,” he said. Putting down the clippers, he picked up one of her scarves off the back of a chair. He gagged her with it, then picked up the clippers and closed them around the pinky of her left hand.
Tears running down her cheeks now, her sobs fighting to get out through the gag, she closed her eyes.
“This little piggy . . .” He tightened the clippers' grip on her finger, blood leaked out around the edges. “Are you sure it has to be this way?”
She said nothing, sobs still wracking her body.
“. . . goes to market.” The clippers closed with the angry crack of her fingertip snapping off.
Her scream was louder than he would have expected with the gag and she tried to crawl away, but he cuffed her alongside the head, grabbed a handful of hair and jerked her back. She wailed now, her right hand coming up to cup the left one as she watched blood stream down her hand.
Only risk was, he knew, she might pass out from pain and shock . . . but she was a tough old bird.
Batting away her good hand, he closed the clippers on her ring finger. “This little piggy stayed home . . . ready to tell me? Just nod.”
She shook her head, defiant, but this time she screamed into the gag before he did it. That didn't stop him. He heard the same crack and watched the fingertip fall to the floor.
“Ready now?”
&
nbsp; The old woman curled into a ball and tried to protect her hand, but he jerked her hand up, closed the clippers around the middle finger. Her eyes went wide and wild, and, using her good hand, she pointed toward the desk.
“What?” he asked.
She couldn't speak; the gag was bloody. She'd bit through her tongue, so taking the gag off would not aid clarity.
“You're telling me the information is in the desk?”
Weakly, she nodded.
He went to the desk and looked back at the old woman. He picked up piles of mail until lifting one rubber-banded stack of letters made the woman nod. Joy Petty, the return address said. Sticking the stack inside his shirt, he returned to the woman. She tried to crawl away but couldn't. Right on top of her, he fired a shot into the back of her head, then one inch below it, a second.
He had just removed the noise suppresser when a car door slammed outside and he saw a man and woman coming up the front stairs. They came to the front door and the man knocked. At first he did nothing. The man knocked again—and announced himself as the police!
Moving slightly to to his right, the killer fired through the door. Then a second shot. He moved back left, saw the woman aiming at the house and the man take off across the front yard. He fired once more at the running man, then the woman yelled—identifying them as police . . . big surprise.
He heard the man shout something from behind their black SUV. Firing through the front window now, he blew out the truck's driver's side window. An encroaching siren, told him there was no point in hanging around here waiting for them to surround him. He pulled on his hood, got to the back door, opened it quietly, then taking a deep breath, took off at a sprint across the backyard.
He thought he heard footsteps advancing behind him, but he couldn't be sure. He vaulted a neighbor's chain link fence, the top of it cutting into his hand. The sudden pain stopped him, but only for a second. Seeing a silhouette running toward him, he turned and took off across the yard jumping the front fence, and then he was gone.
After two hours, they had worked the scene thoroughly, pausing only to watch as the EMTs loaded Marge Kostichek's body onto a gurney and wheeled her out.
Grissom, at the writing table, had found two more bundles of letters from Joy Petty, which Nick bagged, saying, “This guy is starting to piss me off.”
“Nobody likes to get shot at, Nick,” Grissom said.
“But it's like he's always one jump ahead of us.”
Catherine said, “He just reads the Sun, is all.”
But a cloud drifted across Grissom's face.
Catherine said, “What?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just a feeling.”
She gave him a small wry smile. “I thought you didn't believe in feelings—just evidence.”
“This feeling grows out some piece of evidence,” he said, “or anyway, something I already know, that I just haven't given proper weight. But I will.”
O'Riley bounded in. “My buddy Tavo called. He got a videotape statement of Joy Petty saying that Marge Kostichek hired the Deuce to kill Malachy Fortunato.”
Grissom and Catherine exchanged wide-eyed glances.
“Just that simple?” Nick asked.
“It's not all good news,” O'Riley said. “Joy Petty's in the wind.”
“What?” Grissom snapped.
O'Riley shrugged. “She asked to use the john. She wasn't a suspect, she wasn't even a witness—just a citizen cooperating of her own free will. She smelled the danger. She's gone.”
“Have they checked her house yet?”
“Yes. All her clothes were gone, she even took her cat. Like she'd been ready for this day for years.”
She had been, Catherine thought.
Grissom asked, sharply, “Well, are they looking for her? She's an accessory after the fact.”
“Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't know what kind of priority they put on this—it's not their case. This was just a favor Tavo was doing me.”
“Get your friend on the phone now, Sergeant,” Grissom said. “We're heading back to home base and in half an hour, I want to be able to download that interview. We need to see this for ourselves.”
“I'll try.”
“Don't try. Do it.”
In just under forty-five minutes, Grissom had assembled Catherine, Nick and O'Riley in his office.
On the computer screen was the image of an interrogation room. Across the table from the camera sat a fortyish woman with shoulder-length black hair, brown eyes and a steeply angled face.
Though the interrogating officer wasn't in the picture, his voice now came through the speaker. “State your name.”
O'Riley whispered, “That's my buddy Tavo.”
The woman on screen was already saying, “Joy Petty.”
Grissom shushed O'Riley.
The off-camera Tavo asked, “Your address?”
She gave an address in Lakewood.
“You are here of your own volition without coercion?”
She nodded.
“Say yes or no, please.”
“Yes, I'm sorry. Yes, I'm here of my own volition, without no coercion.”
As they watched, the woman before them grew more agitated. She took a pack of cigarettes from her purse.
Tavo must have been looking at his notes, because she had it lighted before he said, “No smoking, please.”
With a smirk, she stubbed the cigarette out in a black ashtray in front of her.
“You've used other names during your life, correct?”
“Yes. Joy Starr, Joy Luck, and several more other stage names. They called me Monica Leigh in the Swank layout; that's a magazine. The name I was given at birth was Monica Petty.”
Without even thinking about it, she lit another cigarette and took a deep drag. Tavo said nothing. She took a second drag, blew it out through her nose and finally realized she was smoking where she shouldn't be and blotted out the second butt in the ashtray.
Half-annoyed, half-curious, she asked, “Why is there a goddamnn ashtray if we're not allowed to smoke?”
“It's just always been there,” Tavo told her.
For several minutes Tavo elicited from her the story of Marge Kostichek taking in her in as a runaway, raising her like a daughter (albeit a daughter who worked in her strip club). Catherine wondered if a sexual relationship might have developed between the women, but the officer didn't ask anything along those lines.
Finally, Tavo lowered the boom. “Ms. Petty, I'm afraid I have bad news for you.”
“What? What is this about, anyway? What is this really about?”
“Marge Kostichek was murdered this evening.”
“No . . . no, you're just saying that to . . .”
Tavo assured her he was telling the truth. “I'm afraid it was a brutal slaying, Ms. Petty.”
Her lip was trembling. “Tell me. Tell me. . . . I have a right to know.”
Tavo told her.
“Ms. Petty—do you know who killed Malachy Fortunato in Las Vegas in nineteen hundred eighty-five?”
“I . . . I know what they call him.”
“And what is that?”
“The Deuce. Because of those two head wounds, like Marge got.”
“The Deuce is a professional killer?”
“Yes. I don't know his name, otherwise.”
“Do you know who hired him?”
“. . . I . . . know who hired him, yes.”
“Who?”
The woman seemed fine for a moment, then she collapsed, her head dropping to the table as long, angry sobs erupted from her. Tavo's hand came into the picture, touched her arm. The gesture seemed to give her strength and she wrestled to control her emotions.
“I've . . . I'm sorry.” A sob halted her, but she composed herself again and said, “I loved him, but Malachy was not a strong man. He didn't have the strength to choose between his wife or me. And neither of us would give him up, either. He had a tender touch, Malachy. But he was selfish, and weak, too�
��that's what led him to embezzle from the Sandmound, you know . . . the casino where he worked.”
Tavo said nothing, letting her tell it in her own time, in her own way.
“I stripped at a bar called Swingers. I'd been there since the owner, Marge Kostichek, took me in when I was fifteen. Marge knew that once the mob found out Mal was embezzling they'd kill him, and anybody who had anything to do with him. So, she beat them to the punch.
“She hired this guy who did these mob hits. I don't know how she knew about him, how to contact him; I heard Swingers was a money laundry for some mob guys . . . I just heard that, you know . . . so maybe that was how. Anyway, hiring this guy cost her most of the money she'd saved over the years. The rest she gave to me along with a bus ticket to L.A.”
“Excuse me, Ms. Petty—I want to remind you that I did advise you of your rights.”
“I know you did. See, I didn't know Marge did it, till years later. I thought . . . I thought the mobsters had Malachy killed. And Marge told me I was in danger, too, and put me on that bus. And I went willingly. I was scared shitless, believe me.”
“So . . . you stayed in touch with Marge over the years?”
“Yes—we wrote to each other regularly. She even came out to visit a few times.”
“Have you been back to Las Vegas?”
“I'm not that brave.”
“So how did you come to find out the truth?”
“Maybe five years later, when she visited me. I was in Reseda at the time. We spent a long evening, drinking, reminiscing . . . and she spilled her guts. I think she felt guilty about it. I think she'd been carrying it around, and she told me how about, and cried and cried and begged me to forgive her.”
“Did you?”
“Sure. She did it to save me, she thought—those mobsters mighta killed me, too, and Mal's wife . . . I mean, if they thought one of us was in on it, the embezzling?”
“I see.”
“Do you? End of the day, I loved her a hell of a lot more than I did that candy ass Malachy. . . . Listen, Officer—I need to use the restroom.”
And that was the end of the taped interview.
O'Riley covered for his pal Tavo in L.A. “Hey, she wasn't under arrest or anything. She came in voluntarily. He let his guard down. By the time he got a female officer to check the john, and hunted down his partner, they were fifteen minutes behind her, easy.”
Double Dealer Page 18
