Suburban Dicks

by Fabian Nicieza

  “She is a profiler,” he continued, “with experience having captured one of the most notorious killers in the history of New York City.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Andrea demurred.

  But Kenny continued, feeling far more comfortable talking about her accomplishments than his own failures. “She thinks the police are concealing something regarding the motive for Satkunananthan’s death, but we’re not sure what that might be yet. Andrea is here to listen to what you say, think about your home, your lives, and start to formulate, well, almost like a doctor’s diagnosis, for what might have happened.”

  The Sasmals looked at this odd pair sitting in their living room. Tharani exchanged an uncertain glance with his wife, and then asked, “How can we help?”

  Kenny breathed a sigh of relief. “An informed source within the police department told me Satkunananthan and your family were under investigation for the use or sale of drugs. I have found absolutely no evidence to support that claim.”

  Andrea smoothly jumped in, saying, “It seemed odd that a police source could be so easily contradicted.”

  “Well, then why would the police say that?” asked Sharda.

  “Several possible reasons, Mrs. Sasmal,” said Kenny. “They could have been deflecting from a possible motive or suspect they do have.”

  Andrea added, “Often the police want to steer the media in the wrong direction as a means of diverting attention from their true pursuit or to prevent a potential suspect from knowing they’re being pursued.”

  “So, I want to ask you once and I’ll never ask it again,” said Kenny. “To the best of your knowledge, was Satkunananthan or is anyone in your family involved in drugs?”

  “No,” said Tharani unequivocally.

  “Then we move forward,” said Kenny. “Has your family had any cause to generate ill will with neighbors or the business community?”

  Tharani said, “I have competitors and at times we are not pleasant with each other. I have won most of our battles, but I have lost some as well. It is business and certainly not worthy of murdering someone.”

  “And we understand that Satku might have been on the spectrum,” said Andrea.

  “They didn’t use such designations in Mumbai where he was born,” said Sharda. “Tharani’s sister merely said he was slow. We said we would take him in because the kind of work he could do here was much better than in India. But Satku never said a cross word to anyone.”

  “Which means no one should have wanted to harm him,” said Kenny.

  “But someone did,” said Andrea. “I don’t think it was robbery. The cash drawer was closed at the crime scene.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Tharani.

  Andrea explained her presence at the gas station and how what she had seen was contradicted by what the police had said.

  “So, if we rule out a drug deal gone wrong, a robbery, a personal family issue, then what do we have?” asked Kenny. After a prolonged silence, he said, “I don’t have the answer. Seriously, I was asking the question. What do we have?”

  “Have there been any bad encounters with the police or township?” Andrea asked.

  There was a momentary hesitation, but Tharani said, “We had some issues trying to obtain a pool permit, but I wouldn’t say the encounter was bad.”

  Kenny leaned back, having hoped for more. Andrea leaned forward, or as far forward as her pregnant stomach would allow. “Tell me a little about your family. When did you come here from—Mumbai, was it?”

  “Yes, Tharani and I met as children,” said Sharda. “We were wed when Tharani had finished university. We came to America in nineteen ninety-four before Sivang was born.”

  “And he manages your shipping and delivery business, right?” asked Kenny.

  “Yes,” she replied. “He graduated from Rutgers with a business degree and works for his father. Our youngest, Prisha, is a student at Rutgers. He will be an engineer.”

  “And neither of them have any problems that you know of?” asked Kenny.

  “As we have said, no,” said Tharani. “They are good boys.”

  “And Satkunananthan?” asked Andrea. “When did he come here?”

  “Four years ago?” Tharani said, looking to his wife for confirmation.

  “He was unable to finish secondary school because of his issues,” Tharani continued. “My sister asked if he could move here and of course we said yes.”

  “He’s worked at the gas station ever since? No green card issues?” asked Kenny.

  “No issues of any kind. We do everything legally,” Tharani answered. “Satku worked hard. He lived in the finished room above the garage. He watched television and played video games. He really had no friends, but no enemies.”

  Kenny looked at Andrea and shrugged slightly. He stood up, gathering his notebook and recorder. “All of this is on the record, you understand. If the police mention anything about drugs, I will use your quotes denying their claims.”

  “We understand,” Tharani said. He extended his hand; Kenny shook it.

  Andrea held both of Sharda’s hands in hers. “I’m so sorry we had to meet under these circumstances, but you have a lovely home.”

  “Thank you,” said Sharda. “And congratulations on the baby. Your first?”

  “My fifth,” Andrea laughed. Sharda didn’t know whether to be impressed or appalled.

  As they walked past a large window that looked out over the side yard, Andrea said, “You have so much property here. It’s beautiful.”

  “We like the privacy,” said Sharda. “It is hard to come by in West Windsor.”

  “I can see how a pool would have worked,” she said. “Shame.”

  Sharda shook her head slightly, with a bemused smile.

  “They claimed we had too much groundwater because of the creek nearby,” said Tharani, clearly still annoyed by that. “I hired an environmental firm to perform a study and they said it was perfectly suitable to build a pool.”

  “And you took that to the township?” asked Andrea.

  “Of course,” said Tharani. “They claimed that the study had no bearing on the decision of their township engineers.”

  “Did you talk to the engineers?” asked Andrea.

  “I called many times, but it didn’t change their minds.”

  Andrea struggled slightly with the porch steps, needing the handrail to manage them. They said their good-byes and the Sasmals closed the door behind them. Andrea strolled across the front lawn toward the side of the property. She looked past the fence surrounding the backyard and out over the field. Kenny stood on the sidewalk, preferring to avoid physical contact with nature whenever possible.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “I just want to look over the property,” she said. “I can’t even see where the creek is. It’s hundreds of yards away in the woods back there.”

  “So?”

  She plodded across the grass back toward him. “So, it makes no sense they would reject their pool permit.”

  She waddled past him toward her car.

  Confused and annoyed, Kenny got into the Prius. His text notification buzzed on his phone. It was a message from Janelle: The autopsy is in.

  14

  KENNY sat in the small briefing room of the Mercer County medical examiner’s office in Trenton. Only Victor Gonzalez from the Trenton Times and Noora Kapoor from the West Windsor–Plainsboro News had made it to the press conference. The county coroner, Jennifer Ito, walked into the room, followed by Lt. Wilson from the WWPD.

  Ito looked at the meager attendance with a trace of disappointment. She had hoped a murder in the suburbs would have drawn more interest than the crickets she played to during her usual Trenton gang activity updates. Coroners and forensic scientists really loved playing to a packed room. She opened a folder and glanced
at her notes.

  “Thank you for being here,” she started. “We have finished the preliminary autopsy report on the death of Satkunananthan Sasmal, male, age twenty-two, residing in West Windsor, New Jersey. The victim was killed by one bullet to the head. This bullet penetrated his skull, resulting in traumatic damage to the frontal and parietal lobes. The bullet did not exit the victim, but the resultant force burst the skull plating along the coronal suture. Bone shards projected from his skull with enough velocity that they cracked the glass of the gas pump behind him. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

  “A ballistic test is being conducted. Initial indications are that the weapon was fired at close range. The victim was believed to be standing no more than five to eight feet away from the robber when he shot. A partial ballistic analysis will be provided next Tuesday by three p.m. I turn it over to Lt. Wilson of the WWPD,” she finished.

  “Thank you, Ms. Ito,” said Wilson. “Though there have been no witnesses to the crime forthcoming, the police are approaching this as either a robbery or a drug deal that went bad. Drugs were found in the booth at the gas station and the victim was alleged to have engaged in drug-related activities. The West Windsor Police Department has set up a tips hotline for anyone who may have witnessed the crime or has information that could lead to the arrest of the perpetrator. That number is 1-800-WWT-IPS9.”

  She asked, “Are there any questions?”

  Noora raised her hand. “Did traffic cameras capture any images of the perpetrator’s car fleeing the scene?”

  “There are no cameras on that corner,” said Wilson. “Because Route 571 is a county highway, placements are the province of the state Department of Transportation.”

  “You said, ‘he,’ Lieutenant?” interrupted Kenny. “Was the shooter male?”

  Irritated, she said, “I misspoke. We don’t know the gender of the shooter.”

  “So, it’s a lone shooter?” asked Kenny, knowing it would grate on her.

  “The assumption is only one person pulled the trigger, Mr. Lee, yes,” she said with an edge. “We are proceeding under the assumption that someone was driving the car while the shooter committed the crime.”

  “The crime of robbery or the crime of murder?” asked Kenny.

  Flummoxed, Lt. Wilson said, “Perhaps both.” She looked toward Noora and Victor, desperate for a rescue. They had nothing.

  Kenny raised his hand again. “What kind of drugs were found in the station booth?”

  “Um,” Wilson stuttered, “I don’t have an analysis on that yet.”

  “Were they pills? Marijuana? Cocaine?” Kenny continued. “Some drugs are identifiable, even to the uninitiated, aren’t they, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You don’t know if they are identifiable to the uninitiated or you don’t know what drugs they were?” he pushed.

  “I—I don’t—we don’t know what drugs they are,” she said. “At this time.”

  He nodded again and scribbled some notes, which led her to cock an eyebrow. Little did she know he was doodling Spider-Man.

  “Any other questions?” Wilson asked, with a silent prayer that there wouldn’t be. Noora and Victor had none. They turned to Kenny, half hoping he would ask another and half desperately praying that he wouldn’t.

  Kenny said nothing.

  Relieved, Lt. Wilson gave a curt nod. “The autopsy report can be obtained upon request. The department will notify the media when the ballistic analysis and the drug analysis are completed. Thank you for your time.”

  Kenny grabbed the bullet points from Ito and walked out with Noora at his side.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  He shrugged. He hated fraternizing with reporters, much less sharing his thoughts on a story.

  Once they reached the parking lot, she said, “See you.”

  He waved his hand without turning back to her.

  He texted Andrea and she agreed to meet him at Van Nest Park on Cranbury Road. Kenny had loved that park since he was a kid because it was the site of the alien landing in the original War of the Worlds radio play. The lake marked the spot Orson Welles claimed the Martian ship had landed during the 1938 broadcast. The local farmers had taken to their fields with pitchforks and rifles to protect their children and crops from alien pillaging and anal probing, not necessarily in that order.

  They had made improvements to the park since Kenny had last been there. Andrea sat at a table under the covered picnic area as her kids ran around the new play set. It was an ergonomic, aerodynamic design that replaced the old clunky set of his youth. It was made of rubber and fiberglass, which made it softer and safer for little Johnny—or little Ditmil, as was the case in West Windsor—to scamper on. The lengths people now went to in order to protect kids from self-harm was frustrating to Kenny, who was a firm believer in allowing the human herd to thin itself out whenever possible. The kids saw him approaching and Sadie started singing, “Kenny, Kenny, bo-benny, bonana-fanna fo-fenny, fee fi mo-menny, Kenny!”

  He awkwardly gave them a wave, hoping they wouldn’t require any further attention or, God forbid, physical contact. He dropped the autopsy report on the picnic table in front of Andrea.

  “They like you,” she said. “Sadie, especially.”

  “We can plan the arranged marriage later, if you want,” he said, sitting down across from her. He ran through the details, his questions, and their answers. She shook her head in frustration.

  “They’re lying about the drugs,” she said. “And the cash register was not open, so unless Satku emptied it with a gun held on him and had the presence of mind to also close it after removing the money, there was no robbery either.” Looking at some of the details in the report, she continued, “They didn’t have a trajectory report done?”

  “Next week they said they’d have a ballistic report,” Kenny answered.

  “Not the same thing,” she said.

  “Why, what did you see?”

  “The bullet fractured the coronal suture,” she said, tapping the top of her head right behind her high forehead. “That’s up here.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you watch any television?” she asked. “Like, one of the eight thousand Law and Order episodes you can get? For the bullet to enter his forehead and shatter the coronal suture would indicate a severe upward angle of the shot.”

  She got up, leaning over the picnic table toward him. Her stomach protruded like she had an exercise ball under her shirt, and it kept her short arms at bay. She stretched with her right hand to touch the center of his forehead. It proved problematic, so she walked around the picnic table to him. She touched his forehead straight on. “If the shot comes straight at you like this, then the exit wound would be back here,” she continued, reaching her hand around the back of his head. “Conversely, if you’re sitting and I’m standing when I shoot you . . .” She made a gun out of her hand.

  Kenny uncomfortably heard the kids giggling, “Mommy is shooting Kenny!”

  “A downward angle would make the exit wound here at the posterior cranial fossa, closer to the top of your neck.”

  “And Satkunananthan?” Kenny asked.

  “The coronal suture spatter means the gunman was sitting down, likely in his car, and Satku was standing up.”

  “Okay, cool,” he said. “What else, Columbo?”

  “There was no driver,” she said. “The shooter was the driver.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The location of the nozzle on the ground indicated that Satku had expected a gas cap on the driver’s side rear of the car,” she said. “The head wound indicates the shooter was close.” She backed a step away from Kenny. “About here.”

  “Right where a gas station attendant would stand when facing someone who pulled into the island driver’s side facing the
pump.” Kenny nodded.

  “And the random spray of bullets was to cover up the kill shot,” she said.

  “You think?”

  “I know,” she said. “The shooter was too close to miss even if they had never fired a gun before in their life, but the angle and placement indicates a near-perfect kill shot. More importantly, Satkunananthan had wet himself from fear.”

  “Really?”

  “That was the wet spot on his pants and on the ground in front of his body,” she said. “It usually takes fifteen to twenty seconds for the body to trigger a fear-induced release of the bladder. So, it’s likely the shooter talked to Satku long enough for the fear to build up before shooting him.”

  “Piece of work,” said Kenny. “I didn’t even think to ask half of these questions,” he said in frustration.

  “Without a trajectory report, you wouldn’t even know what to ask,” she said.

  “You knew.”

  “Because I know what to look for before they tell me what they have,” she said. “The police aren’t incompetent, Kenny. They’re lying.”

  “All of them?” he asked, thinking of Benjamin.

  “No, probably not. But someone at the highest level is influencing the information they’re relaying to you.”

  “Highest level can really only be Dobeck—or Wilson, and she doesn’t strike me as the type,” he mused.

  “You know them better than I do,” she said. “You have to work that while I keep digging into my suspicions.”

  “Okay, but the only leverage I have at this point is he said/she said regarding the Sasmals’ use of drugs,” said Kenny.

  “You also have me. I was at the scene. I am a witness that can counter their claims.”

  “And you want to go on the record?” he asked, surprised.

  “No, but you can use me as leverage without revealing my name,” she said.

  “So, the first two cops on the scene were the mayor’s daughter and the new Indian kid,” Kenny said.

  “I wouldn’t start with them,” Andrea said. “I’d start in the middle because that fractures them in two different directions, up and down in the department. Then you go for the weakest link.”