First Murder (10 page)

“First ride in a cop car?” Tony said, trying to make conversation.

“First time in the front seat.” Hong had a sheepish look on his face. Tony looked the obvious question at him. “Last year at Halloween. Some of us went to Madison for the party.”

Tony couldn’t help but grin. “That still going on?” He told David that
he
had partied on State Street back in his college days. It was good. They were bonding. Hong turned the conversation back to the missing roommate.

“What are you so interested in Sean for? You think he did it?”

Tony frowned. He was positive his questioning was slyer than it obviously was. “No. I’m just on alibi patrol. We like to know where everyone was. I’m the new guy. They put me on the low priority stuff, you know.”

“How do you like being a detective?” Hong asked. He seemed genuinely interested.

Tony smiled. “Yesterday was pretty cool. I got to meet Boom Boom Bork.”

“Who?”

Tony shook his head. Did the kid really not know who he was talking about? David’s face was blank. He had no clue. “Never mind.” Hong would never be an offensive lineman. “So, if I can find this auditorium where the film class is how would I recognize Stuckey?”

David laughed. “You wouldn’t. Not on this campus. He’s a white guy, early twenties, blondish hair, average height, average build, trying to grow some hair on his face. He’s probably wearing dirty jeans and a sweatshirt, carrying a backpack. Good luck, Tony.”

De Luca, on the campus now, scanned the crowds of students swirling along the sidewalks. He saw ten Sean Stuckey’s without even trying or turning his head.

“Unless he’s like, naked,” Hong said, out of the blue. “Then you’d recognize him.” He had a matter of fact look on his face, eyes wide, head cocked to one side, thin grin.

“Huh?” Tony flashed to the idea of scars or a tattoo…tattoos…and asked Hong what he meant.

“The guy has the biggest dinger I’ve ever seen.”

“Dinger?”

“Weenie.” Tony had a puzzled look on his face. “Penis?” Hey, pull over anywhere, this is good.”

Tony pulled to the curb and asked, just to be sure, “You’re telling me Sean Stuckey has a big dick?”

“Dude, he’s got a porn star dick, okay,” Hong looked a little sheepish, embarrassed even, and hurried to explain. “I just…this one time he came out of the bathroom naked. I thought ‘holy shit’. Hey, I’m not gay or anything like that, dude. I just noticed, you know.”

“Watch a lot of porn, do you?” Tony said with tease in his voice. The big Samoan kid was turning all kinds of shades of red. Tony chuckled and had to quickly explain to David that he wasn’t laughing at him.

“Life’s not all
Halo
and
Modern Warfare
and studying. Just sometimes. Everybody does it. Mostly it’s funny,” Hong said. He looked all kinds of anxious to get out of the car now. “I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”

The two of them looked at each other for a beat and then both laughed out loud.

“Okay, sometimes it’s like my brain isn’t even connected,” Hong said, still laughing a little. “When you asked how you could recognize him I, like, flashed on the fact that he looks like every third guy on campus...except for one little thing.”

Two grown men laughing out loud in an un-marked, but obvious, police cruiser bought more than a few turned heads and furrowed brows from passersby.

“Sadly, dude, this is not the first time my habit of free-association and mild case of ADD have gotten me in a bit of trouble,” Hong managed to work in between giggles. “Oh look, a bunny.”

“That’s going to make it a little hard to pick him out of a crowd, know what I mean?” Tony said.

“God, let’s hope so,” Hong said and took a great deep breath to try to get himself under control. “Maybe that’s why he has all the girlfriends and I’m on the seventh level of Halo already.”

Tony thanked him for the information, still chuckling a little. Hong thanked him for the ride and headed off into the churning crowd. Tony sat there for a minute trying to think of what this new tidbit of information meant; what bearing it could possibly have on Deanna Fredrickson’s murder.

He couldn’t think of a thing.

Then he wondered just how
big
…

R
ay and Carol caught up with Erika Hilgendorff at her office early on Wednesday morning. She greeted them at the receptionist’s desk wearing a phone headset. Someone, maybe Lakisha Marland, Ray tried to recall exactly who, had told him that Erika was small; small but not a midget. He silently corrected himself without prodding—not a ‘little person’. He hadn’t given it much thought. The woman standing in front of him was most pleasantly unique.

At first he thought of a poster he’d seen somewhere; in a bar or liquor store somewhere—a poster of a German girl, a
fraulien
, a St. Pauli girl. Erica had big hips, full breasts, long blond hair and sturdy arms; muscled, in Ray’s imagination, from serving giant steins of dark foamy beer. She was a robust looking woman with laugh lines crinkling at the corner of her eyes and a wide full mouth that looked like it was used to smiling.

She couldn’t have been over four and a half feet tall. He glanced down at her shoes and noticed she was wearing low heels. While she and Carol were getting introductions out of the way he took the opportunity to study her. She didn’t have large hands and arms or the exaggerated limbs suggesting dwarfism. Everything was in perfect proportion. It was just in miniature, as if she had been created on a slightly different scale. She led them to an unused meeting room for the interview.

“I had just about gotten over my early crying jag when you called to say you were on the way over.” It was a brave attempt at a smile, Ray noticed. He was going to let Carol be the lead on this interview.

“It’s rough, huh?” Carol leaned close, establishing a rapport.

“Losing one of your best friends? Goddamn right it’s rough.” A tissue magically appeared.

“We need to ask you a few questions.”

“Sunday night I was home alone. There was an old Bette Davis flick on. I’m a sucker for gray movies. I turned in early and was here in the office about 7:00, on the phones by 7:30. I sell insurance, commercial lines. Sometimes I can catch people early. Get their attention.” Carol looked over at Ray and frowned. She hadn’t asked a question.

Erika noticed Carol’s unease and explained. “I talked to Lakisha last night. She clued me into what you guys would be asking.”

“That’s maybe not so good,” Carol said. It came out terse and with a frosting of reprimand. Erika didn’t seem the least intimidated.

“What…that friends talk? What? You think we’re trying to get our stories straight? Get our alibi’s tight?” Ray just sat there, occasionally making a note.

Carol stiffened. “I’ll need some names to verify the morning calls.”

Erika produced a folded sheet of paper from her jacket pocket and tossed it in front of Carol, now bristling at the woman detective’s increasingly arrogant tone. “That’s Monday’s call log. Don’t embarrass me, honey.”

“Thank you.”

Erika continued. Carol’s attitude had worn off on her a bit. She was combative now. “I can’t think of a person in the world that would want to hurt Dee. It has to have been a robbery or something. Is there some serial killer out there you’re keeping out of the press?”

Ray looked up from his notes, eyebrows arched. They hadn’t tossed the idea of a serial killer around. There hadn’t been a true serial killer in the Twin Cities for as long as he could remember, not a real one. He tried to think of the writer’s name, the one who wrote all the crime novels that made it sound like the Twin Cities was spree-murder central, but couldn’t pull it out.

“No,” Carol said.

“She got along with everybody. I mean
everybody
. Always a kind word. The first person to step in to help. The fu…the world should have more Deanna Fredricksons.”

When Carol asked questions about the possibility of affairs Erica didn’t answer verbally. Instead she gave her interrogator a look that would have made most people retreat and fervently repent, at least that’s what Ray thought. He didn’t know if it was Erika’s personality or Carol’s that kept touching match to kindling, but it was time for him to step in.

“Ms. Hilgendorff, I’m immensely curious about the trips you took as a group. I don’t know why exactly.” His voice was soothing, low, and melodic like the music he liked to play, like the songs he sang. “I don’t normally share this information while we’re still interviewing family and friends, but we know you didn’t have anything to do with your friend’s death.”

Carol looked over with raised eyebrows. What did he mean telling this chick she wasn’t a possible suspect? Of course, they could lie up a storm as easily as the suspects if they wanted to—and often did. Not Ray so much, though.

“We’re up against such a wall here that I have to wonder if it isn’t something from somewhere else, from out of town.”

“What do you mean?” Erica was engaged again. The quills were laid back flat.

“Las Vegas or maybe Laughlin comes to mind. Maybe she crossed someone? There was some gambling.”

“Not a chance. Deanna didn’t gamble that much. Just slots. Lakisha and I play some cards. No…Dee just wanted to go to shows.”

“No troubles in Mexico? It can get pretty wild down there.” Ray was guessing at that. He’d never been south of the border in his life.

“Mexico was actually pretty tame. We did the beach thing a lot. We snorkeled and some of us even went scuba diving. The instructions were pretty basic. We didn’t go very deep.”

“But it’s a tourist town. No nightlife?”

“Two words, detective: cruise ships. Jesus, they’d dock in the morning and spew thousands of people out into the streets. And not just one ship at a time. The bars were so crammed at night you couldn’t turn around.”

“I see.” He paid attention to his pad for a few seconds. “Then there was LA.”

“Then there was LA,” Erika sighed. If Ray hadn’t known better he would have said he’d heard an audible click right then. He felt a dramatic change in her tone. “Some of us had more fun in LA than others.”

“Trouble?” It looked to Ray like she was trying to make up her mind to tell tales. He hoped she would.

“Shopping. Rodeo Drive. Beverly Hills. Some of us work for a living. Some of us can’t afford Hermes and Prada and fucking Gucci.”

“You were jealous of each other’s money? Of Deanna’s Visa Card?” Ray winced when Carol said that. Erika Hilgendorff turned her head in Carol’s direction slowly but she was clearly addressing Ray.

“We take these trips for different reasons. Deanna just wanted to have fun, see new things and do new things. Lakisha always seems to be on a mission to bankrupt Mr. Marland. Roxie gets to drink without having Ken on her ass about it. Karen just wants to get some breathing room. Let her hair down. Me, I just want to hang with my friends. A lot like Deanna did.” She turned back to Ray.

“I’m the only single one in the group, well…except Ally. I think LA was my last trip though. With Deanna’s death we may not ever go again anyway. It’s hard to explain.” She shot a quick glare in Carol’s direction. “It isn’t all about the money.”

Finally!
Ray cheered silently…some
friction
!

“Since I’m the only single one, some of the ladies in the group have been taking it on themselves to get me laid. They wouldn’t dare do it themselves. Deanna was
Snow White
. She never pushed, but Karen and Roxie are getting to be a pain in the ass. Like, they do all this flirting and egging guys on and then turn ’em loose on me.”

Ray nodded, pretending to understand what she meant. “That could be awkward, I suppose.”

“Damn straight it is. Christ, one night…the last night in LA they roped me into going to this strip club with them.”

“Strip club?”

“In Los Angeles they have strip clubs for women, Detective Bankston. You don’t get out much, do you?”

She didn’t mean it as an insult and sort of laughed the comment off. Ray was a little stung by it though. He’d gotten out plenty, maybe not so much the last few years, but he’d been a regular at the Motown Studio in Detroit since the late 70’s. He’d spent time in the clubs in Chicago and St. Louis. He’d sung in Memphis for the gang at Stax records…not really his thing, but he knew some of the session players. What did this chick know about
Rafe
Bankston? He kept the emotion off his face. He was working. She was talking.

“It was disgusting. I was thinking maybe we’d see some hunky guys like the Chippendales, but
noooo
. They had guys on stage with their wangs out, with erections, and women would go up on stage and…it was disgusting.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Karen almost dragged me up there. She tried to. To tell you the truth, Detective, I think she wanted to jump up there and blow one of those guys, but she was too chicken.” Ray was caught without a response to what she said. That didn’t happen often. Carol stepped right in.

“Get out! I’ve heard about those places but I never thought they were real.” Carol’s regular gig for years had been in the Sex Crimes Unit. She knew
all
about those places. She’d seen the videos too often, snatches of them at least.

“They’re real…real sicko.”

“What did you do?”

“I got the hell out of there. Dee and I grabbed Karen and Roxie. Rox was so shit faced I don’t think she knew what she was doing. That was it. We were out of there.”

Ray had another question. “Was Lakisha Marland there that night?”

“Sure.” Erica turned to look at him. “She was strange that night. She wasn’t one of them egging me on, she never does that, but she was taking in the whole thing like it was some kind of bizarre movie to her. That’s what she said later. It was like a surreal movie.”

“You were angry with Karen?”

“God damn right I was,” Erica huffed.

“Were you angry with Deanna?”

“Hell no.”

“Because she was helping you get out…get them out of there?”

“That’s right.”

“How’s your relationship with Karen Hewes now?”