Kindred Killers: A Stanford Carter Murder Mystery

by Gary Starta

  Jay’s eyes hurt from the sunlight. He grabbed a pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment, got out of his car and headed toward the residence of Esteban Cruz, the man he suspected of identity theft.

  The dew of the grass moistened his shoes. They glistened in black under an unrelenting summer sky. He saw the dew drops as tears and hoped Lucy was keeping strong for him. If only there was a way he could point police in the right direction on this case, he could return to Lucy’s arms and take shelter there, possibly long enough to catch her with her guard down, and then he would propose marriage and finally begin his life. What a waste! Realizing his dream to be a cop had been nothing more than a school boy fantasy and that what he really wanted now was to take Lucy as his partner—even if had to quit being a PI and take a straight job to support her. He adjusted his glasses, picturing a rose-colored tint converting the black world he had lived in for the last three decades. I can do this. He had approached the front door. He viewed it as a threshold. I can spend my life with Lucy. I can save her from the blackness.

  When his eyes settled upon the front door he saw something was amiss. There were black smudge marks all along the white surface of the door as if somebody had used their foot to smash it in. He first suspected his client. Had the parents possibly acted rashly and confronted Esteban themselves? No. He could not picture his clients committing such a vulgar act. Closer inspection revealed the door was slightly ajar. Now his stomach felt as if it was dropping like when he was thirteen and Sid Auerbach forced him to ride a roller coaster on a dare. He felt sick and wished he were with Lucy right now. The duality of life… What he had always wanted he no longer desired. Yet he forced himself to knock upon the door. “Esteban Cruz?” he asked. “It’s the insurance company about your payment.” He waited a full minute, no response. He used his coat to push the door open so as not to leave prints. His eyes darted left and absorbed the destruction of Cruz’ living room. Tables were overturned. A lamp lied shattered on the floor. There was a fist size hole in the TV screen. His heart beat quickened and he wanted to turn and run from the house, because none of his cases ever put him in the direct path of violence. That was why he seldom carried a weapon. He cursed his folly. They could still be here, waiting behind that sofa. He shouted a lie, “Alright this is the police, come out with your hands up!” He heard nothing but the pounding of his heart in his ears. And then he grunted a derisive laugh at himself for behaving like such a pussy. If Sid were here he would really tear him a new asshole for being such a wimp. The thought of Sid angered him enough for him to regain some composure. He surveyed the house for more damage but found none. In Jay’s estimation, Esteban Cruz’ abductors found him in the living room watching TV. They terrorized him before taking him hostage. But who the hell would do such a thing? The kid was a scumbag, no doubt. Maybe somebody would lob a rock through a picture window—but an abduction?—that seemed a bit much. And then Jay recalled. He had prepped Sid about this investigation as well. He realized he needed to tell Carter about this and fast. Somebody in the neighborhood had probably already spotted him entering the house. It wouldn’t do any good to hightail it and run. It would just fuel Carter’s suspicions. He retrieved his cell phone from his coat packet and pondered.

  ***

  Carter watched Jill’s body movements. It told him she was very anxious about something. She twisted and turned, folded her arms, then unfolded them. His best guess was that it concerned Lucy. Maybe she somehow identified with this girl possibly seeing her as a victim. He was minutes away from confirmation that would tell him if the hair sample found on Cheryl Thomas’ clothing belonged to Lucy the streetwalker. Lab results had already resulted in one dead end this morning. Earlier, Jill confirmed she could find no footprint matching Tim Pressler’s on the Fenway High School football field, thus effectively eliminating him as a suspect. She had spent days on the task. And she could very well be frustrated about her failure to pin blame for Cheryl’s death on Tim. Maybe she saw Lucy as the one last victim she might be able to help. Odds were she had sympathized with Lucy as a result of working the undercover assignment. And she probably feared that if Tony Gelder found the hair to contain Lucy’s DNA, then any chance to save the hooker from her street life and Jay Fishburne died with the revelation. This was all supposition but Carter thought he had come to know his lover pretty well over the years. Carter did not feel this empathy made Jill any less of an investigator. It only confirmed Jill to be the compassionate woman he had fallen in love with.

  Carter forced himself to keep his eyes off Jill as she finally took a seat and sipped a cup of green tea in the break room. He leafed through financial records. He could find no evidence that Therese Collins or Darryl Thomas paid a large sum of money to Jay Fishburne in the last three months. It effectively washed a theory that the private eye had been hired for murder.

  The intercom buzzed and Carter nearly leapt to his feet. He didn’t even have to hear the voice on the other end. It was Tony Gelder.

  Jill walked briskly to keep pace with Carter as he speed walked the hallway.

  “Wait, Stanford. I’ve been thinking about something.”

  Carter slowed, turned his head toward her and nodded. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’ve been wondering if Lucy had enough time to kill Donnie Cinelli. Our stakeout was only a mere block away from the attack. If she were in possession of a gun, she might have had time to retrieve it.”

  “I thought about that myself. But I’ve seen a tape. A merchant kept a video of all pedestrians coming to and from his store. It captured the murder, only the tape quality was grainy, furthermore, the blinding rain does nothing to help us distinguish any features of the killer, other than he or she was about six feet and wore a raincoat. But we do know from the tape that the man who turned him over was not responsible for the killing. Other than that, we only know Donnie Cinelli died from a bullet wound on the way to the hospital. Rain has washed away all other evidence and the swing shift has still not found the casing. I think we’re on our way to another unsolved murder.”

  “But Lucy is nearly six feet. We have to consider her.”

  “I will only consider her if Mr. Gelder tells me her hair was left on Cheryl Thomas’ belongings.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “Yes. That is what I hoped you’d say.”

  “You really want Lucy to be innocent, don’t you?”

  “It’s that obvious?” Jill tried to smile but it was forced. “I know we had to consider Lucy, but I don’t know—something in my gut tells me she has nothing to do with these murders.”

  “Sometimes instinct is correct, but it won’t convince a jury.”

  “Then do we have any suspects?”

  “Well, we can’t consider Mr. Fishburne, he was in our interrogation room at the time of the murder. Honestly, I don’t see how this murder connects to the . . . ”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry for using gut instinct. All crime solving begins with deduction. You’ve removed Lucy from the equation. Your intuition still might prove correct.”

  “But something in me—my gut—tells me these three murders are still connected someway—but how?”

  Carter took Jill’s arm and they resumed a hurried pace, but when they reached the lab, they could see the result on Gelder’s face.

  “No match for Lucy. In fact, no match for any suspect listed in any police database. I’m afraid the hair might have been part of a wig. And boss, that leaves us at an impasse.” Gelder frowned. Jill crossed her arms and exhaled a sigh.

  “Maybe not Mr. Gelder,” Carter said, eyes distant.

  Gelder’s expression begged for an explanation.

  “If our murderer used the wig as a disguise, we’re anywhere but at an impasse.”

  Jill and Gelder traded quizzical looks as Carter’s cell phone rang.

  Now it was Carter’s turn to look puzzled because when he answered he recognized the voice on the
other end and it was not anybody he had expected to hear from.

  Chapter 19

  Normally, hearing Caitlin Diggs’ voice on the other end of the phone would be quite comforting for Stanford Carter. He considered Diggs—recently resigned from the FBI—to be his best friend. They shared cases together when she worked as a special agent where she amassed the best arrest/conviction record of any agent—man or woman—in recent decades. Her open minded approach to investigation and her instinct to follow a hunch over FBI protocol never won her a legion of supporters in the bureau—and her recent discovery—that she possessed psychic abilities—had done nothing but further alienate her there. Choosing to become a private eye, Diggs recently relocated from DC to live in Salem.

  It had been five years since they first met. She had been assigned to take over Carter’s investigation of a rash of serial murders at that time. The then mayor, Art Schroeder, had lost confidence in Carter’s ability to stop the killings during Boston’s celebrated 375th anniversary. Revenue, always important to mayors and an anniversary, attracts tourists from around the globe. But the murders created an exception. It had prompted Schroeder to all but fire Carter at the time and call in the FBI. But it had hardly been Carter’s fault. The investigation found that not one but three murderers were responsible. And what began as random killings had progressed into something more than evil intent, but evil design. It was when Diggs joined the investigation that Carter discovered a crime family had been behind the latest murder, guising it as a serial to force the mayor’s hand on a zoning issue. The family—headed by Vito Lamperti—were considered ‘the’ crime family of New England—leaving mobsters like the Cinelli’s feeling like runners up in a devil contest. Vito had believed he had outwitted the Mayor, threatening to expose Schroeder’s affair with screen siren Eva Davies. To keep their silence, the Mayor was supposed to rezone a tract of land necessary for the Lamperti’s to build a huge condominium development. Yet the plan backfired when Schroeder, refusing to be coerced, announced on TV that he would not rezone land marked as open space and that he would come clean with his affair. What made this frank announcement most notable—other than it was coming out of the mouth of a politician—was that Agent Diggs had become a hostage to the Lamperti’s during this landmark press event. She was being held captive in the same secluded area where Schroeder was making his announcement—a wooded section of Middlesex Fells Park. With cameras rolling, TV history was being made. The Lamperti’s, unaware that their hostage was an agent, believed they had kidnapped an employee of the mayor’s office they had planned to set up for the latest murder. Diggs, employing FBI combat training, managed to thwart her abductor, literally blowing her head off in the process. And as this made-for-TV event transpired, Carter and Jill came to Diggs’ rescue managing to save her. Yet they could not help the mayor from being gunned downed by a few of Lamperti’s storm troopers. Hiding in the woods, the mobsters, guised in combat camouflage, descended upon the scene, killing the mayor in mid sentence as camera crews and reporters fled for cover. Diggs, Carter and Jill—who managed to walk away from the shootout with only minor injuries— believed the massacre had brought an end to the killing spree. Yet, actress Eva Davies, devastated by the mayor’s death, took matters into her own hands hours later, gunning down Vito Lamperti’s young brother in cold blood, adding one more death to the spree. She subsequently drove her car off a bridge well aware her life was over, realizing the Lamperti’s surely would have had her killed whether she went to prison or not.

  And now Carter, in a nanosecond of time, reflected upon how the recent rash of murders compared to the scenario of five years ago. Some of the elements were the same: A string of murders possibly done by a serial killer—Fishburne; the involvement of a crime family—the Cinelli’s; and the makings of a doomed and desperate love affair between Fishburne and a streetwalker. So when Carter heard Diggs’ voice, he feared for her safety, that somehow she had become involved in this case, and even though Diggs was no longer an agent, she was still capable of surprising Carter as a very intuitive investigator—FBI agent or not.

  “Stanford, I apologize for the interruption,” Diggs began.

  Carter couldn’t conceal a smile despite his unease. He put the call on speakerphone. Jill sensed who the friend was on the line. She began to smile as well, leaving Gelder alone to wallow in utter and complete confusion.

  “No, never an interruption, Agent—ooh—I mean Caitlin; sorry, old habits die hard.”

  “No problem. I’ve had a hard time coming to grips with the change myself,” Diggs explained. “It’s been six months since I quit the FBI yet it feels more like six weeks.”

  “So are you settling in all right?”

  “Yes, your favorite cat and I are doing well in our new home. Although it’s like living in a warehouse, I’ve barely unpacked. Celeste is jumping from box-to-box as we speak which gives me a great excuse not to unpack them.”

  Celeste, a Tonkinese, had originally been Carter’s pet, but he had given the cat to Diggs feeling she needed a companion to cope with the death of her longtime FBI partner, Geoffrey McAllister. Carter’s respect and admiration for Diggs was obviously apparent in his body posture and tone of voice. Gelder observed Carter giggling at the mention of the cat. He poked Jill in the ribs and whispered to her, “You’ve got to tell me about Carter and this cat sometime. Sounds like you weren’t his first love.”

  Jill playacted, putting on an exaggerated frown for Gelder; meanwhile, Carter lost in his conversation, appeared oblivious to the antics.

  “So I take it this call isn’t just a social one,” Carter said, forcing a more serious tone.

  “No. Unfortunately, it isn’t. I just experienced a dream vision.” But before she explained the vision, she felt compelled to start her story from the beginning. “I tried to go through the proper channels, but your Captain Eldridge said he didn’t need any help from a psychic. When I pressed him on this, he said the lab was under enough attack from the press and that consulting a psychic could only mean one thing, desperation. I pity you, Stanford.”

  Carter didn’t have to say a word. It was as if he shared a telepathic conduit with Diggs in some respects, both investigators abhorred closed-minded supervisors and he knew exactly why Caitlin was offering her pity.

  “So I don’t want to intrude on your investigation, I mean—Capt. Eldridge said you’re not even handling the Cinelli case, he told me someone by the name of Sajak is running it.”

  “Hey, hold your contempt for him.” Carter joked, he heard Diggs’ voice dripping with it. “He’s a newbie, but he’s competent newbie.”

  “So I was just wondering if you have any leads, because I saw a man in my vision.”

  Carter paused.

  “Oh, you’re probably wondering how I experienced this.” Carter knew Diggs could only experience dream visions of a subject if she had come into contact with the person or the belongings of the person. “I was dining out, enjoying some Italian cuisine at Alfredo’s. I figured I needed a break from packing—or at least prepping myself to unpack.” She laughed.

  “We all heard the commotion outside. Every patron, even the owner scrambled outside to see what was going, and we saw Donnie Cinelli being loaded into an ambulance. I touched the gurney they were carrying him on. You know morally, I shouldn’t have done that being a private investigator and all, but I was never the kind of gal you could tell: look but don’t touch.” She laughed again. Gelder arched an eyebrow, doing his best Spock impression.

  “And so you’ve seen Donnie’s murderer?”

  “I believe so. I don’t know how the family tracked down the killer so fast. But he appeared to be a Hispanic man, possibly late twenties. I saw him on his knees before some men that definitely look like they’ve spent some time in waste management if you know what I mean.”

  “I do, Caitlin. But to be more accurate, these kind of men work as contractors for the state, paving roads.”

  “Well I’m sure that wo
uld make for some very good Jimmy Hoffa stories—they certainly have access to cement.”

  “And did you see them putting the body in concrete?” Carter asked.

  “No,” Diggs said, prompting Carter to furrow his brows in confusion.

  Jill and Gelder raised their hands to their mouths.

  “But I did see the man’s death, and something tells me this portion of my dream vision was in real time because I could see a clock on a table. It had a digital readout of 6:17 a.m. He was put into a burlap sack after being shot in the back of the head. Then the ‘contractor’ men began wrapping rope around the sack. And I could see the men rocking as they did this, indicating they were on a boat.”

  “Meaning if your dream vision was in real time, the killers had probably already dumped the body into the Atlantic Ocean.”

  “That would be my guess,” Diggs said. “My vision ended there, but then another one began.”

  “And so it appeared the mob found the killer before us, but that leaves me wondering how?” Carter said, scratching his chin, apparently too lost in thought to ask Diggs to continue. It was then that Jill nudged her elbow into Carter’s ribs. Her expression screamed at Carter: ask about her next vision.”

  Carter smiled. He took pleasure not in Jill’s gesturing but in Jill’s desire to learn more about Diggs’ dream. She was open-minded enough to consider all sources of information. Carter’s smile ebbed and faded with a sad realization that it would be hard to lose her as a member of what he considered to be his team.

  “So Caitlin, I apologize for my lapse. We’re at a loss as to how the Cinelli’s found Donnie’s killer so soon.”

  “I don’t know either. But I think it connects to some guy who hangs out a small bar in the city. The next part of my vision appears to happen in the future, possibly tonight, because it’s dusk, and a black van is coursing through the bar’s parking lot like some kind of shark—besides, if this had happened in the past it would be all over the news. Suffice to say, the van lurches to a stop and men in black ski masks jump out with automatic weapons. They fire upon a man. He looks baby-faced about thirty with some kind of strange redness on one side of his face. His eyes are bulging open with horror. I don’t see him actually getting hit because the dream suddenly begins to fog up.”