First Murder (27 page)

“Let’s hope so. You never did run him down last night.” Ray still wanted to hear what Stuckey’s alibi was for yesterday afternoon at around 4:00, when Karen Hewes saw a mysterious man in her back yard.

“Stop the car.” Tony tapped Carol on the shoulder and made her jump. The scenery had changed and as she slowed and finally stopped the car on the narrow two-lane blacktop everyone looked around. Tony climbed out first. The others followed.

They were in the middle of a sprawling wind farm, surrounded by immense electricity generating windmills. Each gigantic structure pointed obediently in the same direction. Three bladed propellers, each easily ninety feet long, spun at the same speed—not in sync with each other, the machines weren’t aligned, but at the identical loping patient gait. It was as if the earth was whispering. It was hypnotic.

“Cool, huh?” Tony was grinning. He slowly turned around as he looked at the machines and said, “I don’t know why, but every time I see a herd of these things it makes me think of dinosaurs.”

“You know what? You’re right,” Kumpula said and slapped him on the back.

Darcy DuPree’s house was almost a half-mile off the tar road, an old farmstead surrounded by remnant towering elms. A caved-in barn and a rusted machine shed lay in ruins nearby. Tony pointed out three separate satellite dishes mounted on the gambrel roof. They waited in the car for a minute to see if any dogs patrolled the dismal brown yard.

DuPree didn’t answer the door right away despite Tony’s insistent knocking. A mean October wind raced over the harvested cornfields unchecked and found every gap in their clothing, used it to chill and irritate the four of them. Tony was using his fist like a hammer, making enough racket to rouse a dead man when DuPree finally opened the door.

“Yes?” Dupree was a tall man, easily six and a half feet tall, with flowing silver hair combed back and tamed with shiny oil that gave it a ropy texture. He wore rectangular black framed glasses. The lenses were so thick they made his eyes look grotesquely large. He had a thin build and was dressed in a blue satin jacket, sporting a colorful ascot. He would have been a handsome, older man except for the cartoonish eyes. Dupree answered the door as if he hadn’t been expecting them.

“Mr. Dupree?” Tony had his gold badge out and ready. Carol put a hand on his arm, keeping it down and out of sight.

“Hello Darcy,” Carol said, a forced insincere smile stuck on her face.

“Miss Carol.” Dupree had a squeaky whiny voice that didn’t match his patrician looks and a pronounced southern accent. He extended a slender, pinkish, long-fingered hand. Tony noticed Carol kept her gloves on when she allowed Dupree to take it. He also noticed that the tall man’s gaze never left Carol’s breasts. She was wearing a turtleneck under a bulky sweater but Dupree was staring as if she were naked.

“This is Detective de Luca, Sergeant Bankston, and our senior evidence technician, Mr. Kumpula.” She was brusque and businesslike with the introductions. “You spoke with Mr. Kumpula.”

“Please, please come in.” Dupree held the door wide and gestured. Carol shifted to Tony’s side, away from DuPree, and hugged his arm close when they passed him.

The living room was nothing short of elegant, a complete and shocking contrast to the dilapidated, decaying exterior of the old farmhouse. There were carved tables and fringed lampshades, red velvet covered chairs and a long upholstered sofa with dark wood lion’s heads on the arms. A small fire crackled behind a gleaming brass screen.

“Please, sit.” He made another sweeping gesture with his arm. “May I offer some refreshment?” Dupree was acting the perfect southern gentleman but looking only at Carol’s chest and backside, as if he were appraising a painting or piece of sculpture. Ray picked up on his staring. His face was set in a frown, eyes narrowed, nostrils flared. He projected an anger and displeasure he did not want Darcy DuPree to miss.

“Nice place.” Kumpula had a Stan Laurel smile working. Ray knew it was masking Jonny’s cataloging, that the evidence tech was taking everything in and filing it. He was paying particular attention to a room visible down the hall while DuPree was leering at Carol. A half open door revealed banks of computer equipment. Tiny yellowish lights blinked randomly on the stacked servers.

“Thanks, but we’re good.” Tony looked from Carol to Ray and back to Dupree. “We’re good.”

“Very well then, on to business I suppose.” Dupree settled deeply into a plush plum colored chair and stuck a cigarette into an ivory holder. Tony and Ray sat across from him, tense, on the edge of the sofa. Carol remained standing, arms crossed over her chest.

“I believe I have something you want and you, sir,” he turned to Kumpula, “have something I have long sought.”

Carol desperately wanted to know what Kumpula was bartering with the old pervert but Jonny, still hiding behind his idiot grin, wasn’t letting on.

“You realize the quality isn’t so good. It was originally on 16 millimeter film and not professionally done.” He took a CD case from his side pocket. DuPree’s cartoon eyes got even larger and the pink tip of his tongue was visible at the corner of his mouth.

“Oh yes. Oh yes. May I ask how you came to have a copy?” Dupree snubbed out the cigarette and leaned forward.

“That’s not important.”

“But I must be sure…”

Kumpula stood and interrupted Dupree. He waved the CD case toward the hallway and the room full of computers and said, “Let’s take a peek. Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.” Kumpula’s smile faltered when DuPree giggled.

“Oh I like that.” DuPree stood, wringing his hands together. “I’ll show you mine.” He giggled again and led Kumpula down the hallway. Jonny looked back once, and he wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked a little bit scared.

“This is just creepy,” Tony said to Carol once Dupree and Kumpula were out of earshot.

“Why do you think I brought all of you guys along?” She laughed nervously and took out a cigarette.

“I wonder what Kumpula has to trade? He’s not into this stuff is he?” Tony directed the question more to Ray, who had known him longer.

“Kump comes across all kinds of things,” was all the answer he gave. They heard Darcy DuPree’s high pitched giggle from behind the door at the end of the hall.

“Why isn’t this guy in jail?” Tony walked over and peered around the corner of another doorway into a kitchen that could have been featured in a 1950’s era magazine.

“It’s not like we haven’t tried.” Carol shrugged. “At least he’s out here in the sticks where he can’t do much harm.”

“Why out here?” Tony stuck his hands in his pockets. He really didn’t want to touch anything. The kitchen table was covered in slick glossy porn magazines.

“This is the old family place.”

“Huh? The guy sounds like he’s straight off of Bourbon Street.”

Carol smiled and shook her head. “Nope, born and raised right here. We have quite a file on him.”

Another giggle echoed down the hallway. Ray was staring out the front window, across the desolate yard and the beaten down cornfield that stretched almost to the horizon. Tony joined him by the window.

“And we’re here why, exactly?”

“We don’t know exactly. Carol has a hunch there’s a further connection between Stuckey and the ‘Go Girls’. She’s real curious about the ‘bonus tracks’, whatever that might mean. So am I.”

“You think there’s a link?”

Ray turned his head slowly from the window and nodded. “I think it’s possible.”

They both turned when they heard the door from the computer room crash open. Kumpula was striding purposefully down the hallway. He had a CD case in one hand.

He headed directly for the front door, not pausing or breaking stride. He grabbed the knob and said loudly over his shoulder, “Let’s go kids, now!”

Carol hurried behind him and didn’t look back. Ray followed. Tony glanced down the hall.

The door was wide open. Tony caught a brief glimpse of Darcy DuPree, both hands fumbling with the front of his pants, his attention wholly on whatever image was flickering on an unseen monitor. He was laughing in his high irritating whiny voice, looking off across the room.

As soon as Tony hit the seat Carol dropped the car into gear and flung gravel and dust as she tore out of the farmyard toward the road.

Tony looked over at Kumpula. “What happened?”

“That is a sick, sick man.” Tony saw Carol’s eyes in the rearview mirror, the deep furrows on her brow.

“Stop the car!” Kumpula commanded.

Carol braked hard, throwing them all forward. Jonny got out of the backseat and pulled an oversized semi-automatic from beneath his jacket. He leaned on the car’s roof and sighted on the power line where it was connected to a tall pole by the side of the driveway. It only took three shots for the power line to drop, sparking and arcing into the ditch. Two more shots separated the phone line. Kumpula holstered the gun and got back in the car.

The smile was back. Ray and Carol turned to look over the seat, amused looks on both of their faces.

“Why?” Tony asked.

“Guy’s an asshole,” Kumpula replied. “I hope it fried the servers.”

“But you got the episodes?”

“I got ’em.” He pulled a CD case from his pocket. “
Ur MoM is so Hott
, episodes 1 thru 6 and the bonus tracks. I left him with a lovely parting gift.”

“Oh, yeah? What?”

“He’ll find out when they fix his power and he has to do a hard boot on the system. Sorry, Carol.”

“For what?”

“You won’t be getting any more dirty movies from Darcy DuPree. The little computer worm I left in his system is going to eat them all up. Damn viruses.”

They all got a good laugh and kept it going for most of the ride back to the Cities, but in the back of his mind Tony was afraid of what they might, or might not see on the dirty movies they had in hand.

S
ix hours. That’s how long the four of them had spent together in the car. Ray made sure they used the return trip productively. He guided and suggested and cajoled them while they discussed the case. They revisited the Fredrickson’s kitchen with Deanna’s sprawled bloody and lifeless body on the floor. They talked about the ‘Go Girls’—their looks, their attitudes, and their personalities.

And they talked at length about Sean Stuckey. It was Tony who pointed out that for all the conjecture about Stuckey they had very little face time with the guy. They touched on the husband and son and on the roommates, again deciding they had nothing to do with the murder.

No amount of pleading could induce Kumpula to reveal what he had traded to DuPree for the ‘
Ur MoM’
episodes.

The four of them were brain weary and talked out when they arrived back at headquarters. Kumpula vanished. Carol led Ray and Tony to the Sex Crime Unit’s computer lab. There were various stations set up cabled to a tall stack of servers, linked powerful computers they used to track pedophiles across the World Wide Web. She steered them to a side desk. A lonely desktop computer with an oversized monitor sat waiting, unattached to the system.

“Meet Sol,” she said as she powered the computer up.

“Sol?”

“Short for ‘solitary’. What Kump did to DuPree, planting the bug…you wouldn’t believe some of the shit out there.” She gestured toward the stack of servers. “We learned the hard way. Anything that might be infected goes through Sol first.” The monitor flickered to life.

“So if it’s a system crasher it just nukes the one PC?” Tony nodded thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t have thought of that but it makes sense.”

“Sol gets a lot of attention. This is Sol 22 by the way. Twenty one others have given their lives in the line of service. One thing we do is capture cookies and source codes for viruses on old Solly here. Then the geeks can protect the servers when we apply power to a problem.” Carol inserted the disc while Ray and Tony dragged extra chairs over.

“Are you pissed that Kumpula fried your snitch’s computers?”

“Not really. He’s probably got a backup data dump off site or in the cloud.” Carol shrugged. “It’ll take him a while to get back in business, though. Ready for the show?” Tony and Ray both grimaced. Neither of them was looking forward to it.

Episode 1 came to life. As advertised, the lone camera was hidden, or was positioned to suggest that it was, and there were no stage lights used. It looked like a poorly done home video. A young man, not Sean Stuckey, led an obviously drunk woman who could have been in her late thirties or early forties to a sofa and began kissing and fondling her. The camera man, or boy, could be heard talking, whispering urgently to someone off screen. Amateur hour.

“I think we can fast forward through this one,” Ray said dryly.

Carol looked over her shoulder at him. “Your boy might make a cameo appearance.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Ray was right, it didn’t matter. The woman wasn’t one of the ‘Go Girls’.

Episode 2 was very similar in some respects. More room lights had been added and turned on. A different young man urged yet another, older woman; this one could have been fifty, to the sofa. This woman wasn’t drunk. She was excited and eager and pawed at his clothes even before they fell to the couch. She dug at his pants. Tony thought she looked disappointed when she pulled a normal sized penis out of his trousers.

“Next!” Ray announced just as the woman’s head began lowering to the victim’s lap.

“Two down, four to go.” Tony was embarrassed and trying to joke his way out of it.

By Episode 3 the nasty little-boy producers had almost gotten their act together, Tony thought. There were more lamps, but still not enough and not positioned well. Episode 3 had a title screen.
Ur MoM is so Hott
! It also had a star.

Sean Stuckey entered the screen with his arm around the ample waist of one of the ugliest women Tony had ever seen in his life.

“Wow,” Carol said. “Where did they find her?”

“Don’t do it, Sean,” Tony said to the monitor. “Where’s your pride, man?”

“Maybe she’ll turn into a frog.”

“It’d be an improvement.”

Tony and Carol were laughing, pointing at the video image of Stuckey kissing the woman. They could tell he was working hard at trying to look like he was having fun. The ugly woman looked like she was in heaven.