The Slowest Death

by Rick Reed

  “That’s good. Right?” Liddell asked. “We can trace them.”

  Tunney said, “You can try. It will take some time. First, you would have to get the figurines evaluated, dated, and start searching databases of auctions, antique dealers, and the whole nine yards to see if they ever carried such items. When we have all those names we search through all of the purchases and…you see where I’m going with this?”

  Jack waited for Chief Pope to make that decision. This would take manpower, time and money and EPD didn’t have any experience in such research.

  Chief Pope asked, “How fruitful do you think a search like that would be, Frank?”

  Tunney replied, “If it was my decision, Chief, I would hold up starting down that path until your investigation stalls. It’s a Hail Mary pass for sure. Even if you find the owner, these may be stolen. You will have to send a nationwide request out to ask other departments if such a theft was reported. Or it might point directly to the killer. Your call, Chief.”

  Jack broke the silence. “We’re not dead in the water yet, Chief. I’ve put out a BOLO on Sully and Mindy and Marty Crispino. Angelina is still working on backgrounds. I’m going to contact the Boston Police Department. With all the principals coming from Boston, the reason for the killings must have come from there. It’s on my list.” Jack didn’t have to say it was probably the end of his list. They were almost at the end of their rope.

  “I agree with Jack,” Tunney said. “This Marty Crispino stands out in my mind. What do you know about him?”

  “Very little,” Jack admitted. “Even Angelina seemed to get little on his background.”

  “We need to pick him up,” Captain Franklin suggested. “Can you run him through your system, Frank?”

  “I can, but your computer whiz, Angelina, has probably gotten everything I can.”

  “Crispino is staying at the same hotel you are, Frank,” Jack said.

  “Is he?”

  “Can we release those net-sushi things to Frank?” Liddell asked.

  Tunney smiled. “Netsuke. It’s pronounced neh-sook. I’d be happy to take possession and see what I can do with them.”

  “I’ll get them ready,” Walker said. “Chief?”

  “Chain of custody might be an issue.”

  Tunney said, “I’ve gotten permission to work this. I can do this officially. The FBI is always here when you need us.”

  “Do it,” Chief Pope said to Walker.

  Deputy Chief Richard Dick swept into the room. “What did I miss?”

  Chief Pope said, “Not anything important, Richard. How did the news conference go? Are you still on board with running that end of things?”

  Deputy Chief Dick said, “I will do whatever you want, Chief. I just wish I could have told them we have a distinguished FBI profiler involved in the investigation.”

  Chief Pope said, “Agent Tunney asked that we not do that just yet, Richard.”

  Tunney sat stone-faced while Chief Pope continued. “Right now, we’re thinking the killer is keeping pace with the news media reports, and that means you’re our only contact with him. We will feed him what we want. We don’t want to show our cards too soon.”

  “Absolutely, Chief.” Double Dick made as if to sit down and Chief Pope stood.

  “That’s it for now, gentlemen. Let’s get back to work,” Pope said.

  As they filed out of the room, Tunney took Jack’s arm. “I’m interested in Mr. Crispino. He bothers me. If you find him, would you allow me to be present at the interview?”

  “Sure, Frank,” Jack said. “Thanks for getting all that background on the monkeys. I think you are dead-on with your notion the monkeys are the killer’s signature. I know the legend of the wise monkeys from when I was a kid. There are four.”

  Tunney said, “I’m with you, Jack. If the killer is following a pattern, the next murder will be Speak No Evil or Do No Evil. Or maybe both.”

  Tunney left and Liddell said, “If we find Uncle Marty, what grounds do we have to pick him up and hold him? I know we can ask him to come downtown, but if push comes to shove, we can’t detain him for long.”

  “We’ll have to play it by ear.” He knew he’d never get a judge to issue a warrant based on a suspicion. They’d need more.

  Chapter 29

  Jack and Liddell went to their office. Most people think murder investigations are worked in the field. Car chases. Gunfights. Foot chases. More gunfights. Roughing up witnesses. Sex with hookers. Bribing Johnny the shoeshine boy. In the real world, drinking coffee in the office, eating donuts, making phone calls, reading reports and sometimes going door to door to door are the real winners. Television shows have given people a mistaken impression that if a case isn’t solved in the first twenty-four hours, the trail goes cold. In Jack’s world, that was horseshit. You work until you have the bastard’s throat in your hands and he goes cold.

  Liddell made a fresh pot of coffee. Jack called the Boston Police Department. So far, Jack had listened to three foreign languages before being prompted to press ‘4’ for English. He was told to pick from a menu for departments, prompted to punch in the extension if he knew it, select the word that most closely described his reason for calling, and press ‘1’ or wait on the line for the next operator. He left the speakerphone on during this to let Liddell share the joy. At least there wasn’t Muzak or advertising.

  “I think we could have walked to Boston as fast, pod’na,” Liddell remarked.

  “At least the machine nazi didn’t ask us to take a short ‘satisfaction survey’ at the end of the call,” Jack said.

  Liddell pretended to snore.

  A woman’s voice came on the line. “Police Department.”

  “This is Detective Murphy, Evansville Police Department in Indiana,” Jack said. “I need to talk to one of your detectives.”

  “We got a bunch of them. Who do you want?”

  “Preferably someone familiar with Vincent Sullis and/or Franco ‘Sonny’ Caparelli,” Jack said.

  The woman said, “I think Captain Baumeyer is the guy you want.”

  “Can I speak to Captain Baumeyer please?” Jack asked.

  “No.”

  “Can I ask why not?” Jack asked.

  “’Cause he’s not in.”

  “She reminds you of Little Casket, doesn’t she pod’na?” Liddell said.

  “What was that?” the woman asked.

  “That’s my partner,” Jack said. “He’s talking to the undertaker. Can I talk to someone in the detectives’ office?”

  “You’re talking to the detectives’ office,” she said.

  “Are you a detective?” Jack asked testily.

  She snorted and the line clicked. Jack thought she’d hung up. She hadn’t.

  A slightly friendlier voice answered. “Detective Yankowski.”

  “Detective Yankowski, I’m Detective Jack Murphy from Evansville Police Department. I’m on speakerphone along with my partner, Detective Blanchard.”

  “Where’s Evansville?” Yankowski asked.

  Jack was wrong. He wasn’t friendlier. He sounded like a smartass. “Indiana. You know? John Cougar Mellencamp. ‘Small Town.’”

  “Never heard of any of them. What can I do for you, Murphy?”

  “We’re working a couple of murders, and I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Okay.”

  “One of our murder victims is an ex-Boston PD detective, Franco Caparelli.”

  “Sonny?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Do you have some time? If not, I can call you back.”

  “I got time. Let me get some coffee first.”

  Yankowski raised his voice. “Millie. We got any coffee brewed?”

  “You want me to drink it for you too, Dick?”

  Liddell said under his breath, “Dick Yank
owski?”

  Yankowski said, “That’s right. Dick. I’ve heard it all, Detective Blanchard. Dick Yank-off-ski. Dick Yanker. My mom and dad had a sense of humor. Give me a second. Millie thinks she’s the captain instead of the secretary.” He said this last in a loud voice.

  Jack and Liddell took advantage of the wait and refilled their coffees. Yankowski came back on the line and said, “Okay. Shoot.”

  Jack told Yankowski about the Caparelli murder scene and the autopsy findings, holding back nothing. He waited to see what Yankowski had to say about Caparelli before he told the detective about Knight’s murder, or about Uncle Marty.

  Yankowski said, “I always suspected Caparelli was in bed with the wrong people. I heard he got a job working for the Feds in Evansville.”

  “Yeah. Caparelli was part of a Federal Drug Task Force,” Jack said.

  “Figures,” Yankowski said. “Was he still living with Mindy?”

  “You know her?”

  “Mindy was a troll,” Yankowski said. “She hung around cop bars, precinct parking lots, that kind of thing.” He didn’t have to tell Jack the reason for that. It was obvious she was a police groupie. “She was hooked up with Sully—excuse me, I mean Detective Vincent Sullis—who introduced them. He was also one of ours, but he’s gone over to the enemy camp. Sonny fell in love with Mindy. You know how some guys are always trying to fix hookers? Sonny was that kind of guy. Generous and desperate. He wanted to marry her, get her off the streets. Were they married?” he asked.

  “No. Cohabiting,” Jack said.

  “Yeah? What a pair. And I’m not just referring to her tits. Did she tell you Sonny bought them for her?”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Jack said. “She bragged about it like she’d gotten a Harvard degree. Let me warm this sludge and I’ll be right back.”

  They all filled up on brain fuel and resumed the conversation.

  “Okay,” Yankowski said, and slurped loudly. “I can get records on all of this, but I’ll just tell you what I can remember if that’ll do ya?”

  “Sounds good,” Jack said.

  “Sonny Caparelli was with BPD about fifteen, sixteen years. He was good. He made detective quick and was partnered with Sully in the Vice Unit. They both went to other units but it was during their time in Vice that the rumors started. They were good at their job. Maybe a little too good, if you know what I mean?”

  “How’s that?” Jack asked.

  “There were rumors that they were both on the pad—Big Bobby Touhey’s pad,” Yankowski said.

  “Let me guess. Sonny and Sully were busting Big Bobby Touhey’s competition,” Jack said.

  “You must be a detective,” Yankowski said. “Sonny transferred to Narcotics and Sully stayed in Vice, but he gave Sonny tips on dealers. Anyway, after a few of these big busts the other units started talking. Some of it was petty jealousy, but even the outside agencies were talking, Sheriff Narcotics, State Trooper Narcotics, DEA. No one, and I mean no one’s sources had come up with any information close to what Sonny and Sully seemed to be getting. No one could guess who their snitch was. Of course, most cops keep their friends close, snitches even closer.”

  “So, what happened to them?” Jack asked. “Why did they resign?”

  “A little over five years ago, Sonny and Sully worked a homicide. The Homicide Unit guys didn’t raise a stink about two Vice detectives working a murder because Sonny and Sully were rising stars. They did one hell of a job on other cases. The victim was a twenty-year-old woman, found mutilated, burned to a crisp inside a big construction bin. The killer must have used ten gallons of gasoline on her. The coroner had a devil of a time determining the cause of death. Officially, cause of death was attributed to the fire, but she had some deep stab wounds—chipped the bone in one thigh, broke a rib—that kind of stuff. She may have been sexually assaulted. Her breasts were gone, her genitalia was destroyed. The coroner thought she’d been sliced and diced before she was burned. Soot in her lungs indicated she was still alive when she was set on fire.”

  “So how did Sonny and Sully tie into this?” Jack asked.

  “Hey, you called me. Let me finish.”

  “Sorry,” Jack said.

  “You’re forgiven. The original call came in from a phone booth. Anonymous. The run was dispatched and Sonny volunteered to take it,” Yankowski continued. “Said he was close. He was there even before the fire department. The body was so badly burned the coroner couldn’t give us much, like I said. We couldn’t identify her for a while and she was going to be a Jane Doe. Missing Persons took a report a couple of days later from a woman saying her college roommate was missing. Missing Persons swore they told Sonny. Sonny didn’t follow up for weeks. The missing person report worked its way up the chain of command and Captain Baumeyer gave it to Sonny.”

  “At the time, it was still Sonny’s case so he had to talk to the roommate. His report said she didn’t know when her roommate went missing, and that she thought the girl was going clubbing in Boston.”

  “In his report, Sonny had information the victim was dating a boyfriend the family didn’t approve of, but he couldn’t get the guy’s name. Sonny said he was getting a DNA sample to compare the missing girl with the dead one. Anyway, the case sat on Sonny’s desk for a couple of weeks and he added follow-up reports that said absolutely nothing. It went unsolved for a couple of months.

  “I got involved because the roommate was a friend of a friend of my wife. The friend told my wife that Missy’s mother called Sonny almost every day, but he told her the case was dead in the water. Missy’s mother must have believed Sonny. I never got to talk to the mother because she died before I got the case.

  “When I took over the case, I talked to the roommate and she denied saying any of what Sonny had in his reports. She said Missy—the victim’s name was Missy Schwindel—never went ‘clubbing.’ Missy didn’t drink alcohol or go to parties on campus. She told me Missy wasn’t dating anyone or she would have known. Missy was totally focused on school. Missy had no family left after her mother died. She never knew her father.”

  “Sonny never really worked the murder,” Jack said.

  “Turned out that Sonny had only talked to the roommate on the telephone and she called him. He never collected anything for DNA comparison. I took this to Captain Baumeyer, and he reassigned the case to me, unofficially in case I didn’t turn up anything. Sonny was still a star and the captain didn’t want to start a pissing match.”

  “I went to the roommate’s place and collected several samples from stuff that belonged to the victim. We sent it off to the lab and got a match. I talked to one of the uniforms that was on scene that night and they said Sonny was there, and Sully was there too. Sully wasn’t mentioned in any of the reports, but wherever you found Sonny, you found Sully.”

  “What happened?” Jack asked.

  “The captain got IA involved after we got the DNA match. They were already looking at Sonny and Sully with a magnifying glass. The case was officially assigned to me, and I started working it hard.”

  Jack took out a notebook and pen. This had all happened before Sonny and Sully left the Boston PD. Sully had recently told Mrs. Knight and Judge Knight’s law clerk he needed to speak to the judge because of what happened in Boston. Was this what he was referring to?

  Yankowski said, “Internal Affairs ran down a guy that saw Sonny and Sully at a bar, drunk off their asses on one of the nights Sonny was supposedly talking to the victim’s roommate. The witness was a bartender at a club that most cops avoid because of its reputation. He remembered the date because he knew Sonny and Sully and they were giving him a hard time that night. Translation, they were shaking him down for drugs or money or both. The bar is a regular hangout for some of Big Bobby Touhey’s cronies. I don’t know how IA found this guy, but they were excited. They had caught Sonny in a lie and maybe tied him and
Sully to Big Bobby.”

  “Did that ever go anywhere?” Jack asked.

  “Not really. Circumstantial evidence at best, and no one wanted to get in disfavor with Big Bobby. Or Sully for that matter. Sully was kind of a loose cannon. The witness—the bartender—recanted his story. He didn’t see anything because he was drunk himself. Couldn’t have seen shit if it was on him. He didn’t know what day it was and so forth.”

  “Convenient,” Liddell mused.

  “Exactly. But IA never let up on Sonny and Sully. Out of the blue, a guy comes in to the station and asks for me. He says he wants to confess. He claimed he was hopped up on drugs when he killed the girl. He told me she was walking down by the overpass. He thought her car might have broken down. He made a pass, she seemed to be willing, but he got a little rough and she changed her mind. He admitted to raping her. She threatened to call the cops, so he stabbed her. He panicked. He supposedly didn’t remember anything about slicing and dicing her breasts, but the Assistant D.A. figured it could be because he was high on drugs. The guy had a long record for drugs and sexual assault.

  “Anyway, he said he put her in a big trash bin and set her on fire. I asked where he got that much gasoline and he told me he went to a gas station and borrowed a can. Of course, he couldn’t remember where the gas station was. I checked every place he could have gotten the gasoline and no one had loaned a gas can to this guy. I asked him why he was coming forward, and he said his conscience was bothering him.”

  “Did you believe him?” Jack asked.

  “Didn’t matter. He was convicted by a jury of twelve fine citizens and sentenced to five years.”

  “Five years!” Liddell said.

  “Yeah,” Yankowski said. “Sam never was a believer in long sentences, and that was the plea deal he made.”

  “Sam?” Jack asked.

  “Deputy District Attorney Sam Knight. We called him “Plea Deal Sam.” I’m glad that asshole is gone,” Yankowski said.