Fred Limberg - First Murder

It took a while.

Professor Galbraith had no idea who Sean Stuckey was. He rarely attended the ‘History’ screenings, leaving the task to his TAs, graduate students who were working part time while they pursued their advanced degrees and were, Tony thought, as arrogant and unhelpful as the professor. Tony and Ray tracked them down one by one, by phone and in person.

They finally cornered their last prey hiding in a dark room full of editing equipment. His name was Gordon. He was editing a documentary of some kind. Flickering video images of people in lab coats talking earnestly were pointing at pictures of Earth on the TV monitor. A tinny dialogue ran underneath. It promised the end of the world as we know it every thirty seconds or so.

Gordon had been working the ‘ History ’ lecture Monday.

They’d screened Mr. Smith Goes to Washington that morning. No one took attendance for the class, he explained. You either mastered the material or not. There were over two hundred students registered for the class. He estimated that they almost never had more than a hundred and fifty in the lecture hall.

It surprised them both when they learned that Gordon knew who Stuckey was. He knew he was a transfer student from UCLA and shared Stuckey’s opinion that the U had screwed him out of a bunch of credits. Stuckey had taken a similar, harder class out west but the credits didn’t transfer for some reason. They’d had coffee once or twice after class. Gordon didn’t remember seeing him Monday but hadn’t been looking for him. He could have been there, he told them.

Sean Stuckey doesn’t have much of an alibi, Tony thought.

Tony spent the drive time back to the station buried his notes, trying to get everything straight for the session later in the afternoon, the case review. When the car stopped he looked up, surprised. They were parked in front of a clothing store.

He followed Ray inside, watched him shake hands with the men and women there. They knew him. This was where Ray bought the nice suits and jackets he was famous for. The haberdashery had a smell. It smelled like wool and linen. It smelled of mild tasteful men’s scents. It smelled of talcum and shoe leather and the toasty smell of a hot iron on cotton.

Ray chatted while a small bald man groped Tony, quietly relaying numbers to another small bald man. They measured his arms and neck, his chest and his waist twice. He gave Ray a questioning look across the store. Ray had his half-smile working and turned to the small bald men. He pointed toward a rack of suits.

Tony was ushered into a large dressing room and stripped to his boxers. The room was very warm. He was surrounded by mirrors. He tried on a blue suit, a dark navy single breasted jacket and gently pleated trousers. He slipped into a grey chalk stripe double breasted. The fabric felt like a whisper on his legs. The small bald men made marks on the cuffs and scurried to another room further back.

Ray shook his head at a brown suit and it vanished. Shirts appeared. Ties were paraded one after another. Tony would nod yes. Ray would shake his head no. A dark charcoal gray-almost-black sports jacket appeared. It fit like Sue Ellen, naked in his arms. Got to have that one, Tony thought. The small bald men looked nervous when he tried it on over the shoulder holster rig. The jacket hung just fine.

Black slacks and a jacket reflected from the mirrors. Tony felt pampered. He felt sleek. He’d never had clothes like this, had never been fit. He imagined walking up to Sue Ellen’s door, decked out like this, ready to take her to the Dakota to hear Rafe Bankston sing with Joel Shapiras’s quartet.

Trousers were brought out from the back. A plump woman with pins tucked like toothpicks in the corner of her mouth watched him slip on one pair after the other and made him turn around. Twice she grabbed at the fabric at his rump and clucked.

Plastic wrapped hangars appeared. Shirt boxes were stacked on the counter. Ties were gently folded in tissue paper and bagged. Tony surrendered his Visa Card. Fifteen hundred and eighty bucks later he and Ray were back in the car and headed for St. Paul. Tony was wearing the charcoal gray sport coat. The blue jacket with the hangar pleats was in the trash bin back at the store.

He thanked Ray several times.

Ray told him he was welcome.

Carol noticed the sport coat right away. De Luca looked good striding into the squad room behind Ray. She went over to him and rubbed the fabric. Tony thought he heard her purr. Vang and Ted showed up minutes later. The team was assembled.

Just as Ray was getting their attention and Carol was passing out her notes Jonny Kumpula banged into the room. He had stack of thick folders under one arm and was carrying a half-full jug of electric blue Gatorade.

“Hey everybody!” Kumpula grinned. Ray knew that grin meant he had something interesting.

“I would like to thank those of you who turned in your fingerprint cards promptly. They helped a lot.” Kumpula rifled through the folders, found the one he wanted, and looked up. “What? You guys just go ahead. I’ll raise my hand.”

“Why don’t you go first, Kump.” Whatever science Kumpula had in his files and notes would help later. Ray was afraid they didn’t have much to discuss otherwise.

“Okay. Lots of prints. No fibers we could find. No juices. It’s all detailed in the file.” He patted it, smiling. “I got some other stuff, though. You want the highlight reel?”

“Please.”

“Okay. The mister’s in the system. Scott Fredrickson spent a year and a day in the Ramsey County workhouse in…let me see…1977.” Tony sat straighter in his chair. “I called up the case. He pled guilty to assault third, knocked down from attempted murder.” They all knew that assault in the third degree meant it involved a weapon of some sort. “He beat the crap out of his wife. There were pictures.”

“Deanna?” The question slipped out of Tony’s mouth, but everyone else had it ready.

“Apparently the first wife…a Marjorie.” Ray’s eyes were locked on Kumpula.

“The weapon?”

“A lamp. He hit her with a lamp after he hit her several times with his fists.” Tony wanted to start writing down notes right then, record first impressions of the information, get some immediate questions on paper so he wouldn’t lose them. No one else was writing anything down, he noticed, so he set his pen back on the desk.

“Anything since then?”

Kumpula flipped a page. “Nope, not even a traffic citation.”

“Okay. What else?”

“You’re gonna love this one. Okay, de Luca doesn’t get me a comp card for the roommate, Stuckey. Not right away. So I’d put all the mystery prints out there, right? I got a hit on Stuckey this morning. If I’d had the comp card I might not have put it out on AFIS, least not right away.”

“Let me guess, LA?”

The LA trip was well documented. Sean Stuckey had transferred from UCLA, the University of California/Los Angeles. Tony hadn’t had a chance to share that with anyone but Ray as yet, and that only in passing. He thought this was damn interesting.

“Yup. LA. But it’s a weird deal. Very weird.”

“Define weird.” Ray said. He knew that ‘ Kumpula ’ weird could be another person’s truly bizarre.

“What I could pull up-he was arrested, okay, and booked. Then the case was dropped. Well, not dropped, exactly. It’s murky. I’m confused.”

“What was the charge?”

“See, that’s part of it. The charge was sexual misconduct. We don’t have anything like that here.”

Now it was Carol’s turn to sit up straighter. Her previous assignment had been in the Sex Crimes Unit. Minnesota didn’t have a ‘sexual misconduct’ charge. She wasn’t sure what that meant in California.