Scott Wittenburg - The May Day Murders

“I have to agree with you there,” Sam said, knowing full well that he meant it. How the holy hell he was going to deal with all of this later, he didn’t have a clue. “Unfortunately, I have to go into town on some business now, so I’m going to try and move your car out of the way. Where are the keys?”

Shelley thought a moment before replying. “I left them in the ignition. I figured they probably wouldn’t get very far if somebody tried to steal it. But you can probably drive around it, Sam. It’s sort of off to the side in a ditch.”

Great, Sam thought. “Do you need to be anywhere in the next couple of hours or so?”

“No, I don’t have any plans.”

“Good. Then why don’t you just go back to sleep and I’ll take care of your car when I get back,” he suggested.

Shelley grinned. “I sort of hoped you would say that.”

Sam just smiled and said, “Okay. I’m going to take a quick shower then shove off. Just make yourself at home and I’ll call you if I’m going to be any longer than a couple of hours.”

“Thanks, Sam.” She sat up and gave him a kiss, the sheet falling down and exposing half of her luscious body. The kiss was short, but long enough to remind Sam of what had happened the night before.

“See you later,” he said, almost regretfully, before turning around and leaving the room.

Roger Hagstrom was standing beside his unmarked car when Sam pulled into the Smithtown Police parking lot. He pulled up beside his friend and rolled down the window.

“What’s shakin’?”

Roger came over to the Cherokee. He looked as though he’d been put through a wringer. “I need to get the hell out of here for a while. Had lunch yet?”

“Fuck, I haven’t even had breakfast yet!” Sam said.

“Let’s go over to the K amp;L, then,” Roger said as he walked around to the other side of the Jeep and got in.

Roger fumbled for a cigarette in his coat pocket, lit one up and looked over at Sam grimly. “Before you start grilling me, I’d better level with you first. Thompson’s in a real fucked up mood and just ordered me, in so many unpleasant words, to refrain from leaking police business to the press-referring of course to your ass. He’s at the end of his rope with the Bradley case and has decided to take it out on yours truly-like I’ve been just sitting around with my finger stuck up my ass all this time or something. Anyway, he has somehow managed to find out that I’ve let you have copies of the police reports and he’s ultra-pissed about that too. The chief is a real prick when he gets into this mode, as you well know. So, to make a long story short, we’re going to have to start being a little more discreet from here on out before the son of a bitch decides to fire my ass.”

“Great,” Sam groaned as he pulled out onto Court Street.

What Roger had just told him didn’t surprise him-it had happened a few times before in the past. The chief of police usually gave Roger Hagstrom considerable slack as far as Sam’s tagging along was concerned, but he had his limits. Especially when things weren’t going particularly well, as they apparently weren’t now.

“At any rate,” the detective continued, “I’ll start at the beginning. New York was a real bitch, any way you look at it. I met with the infamous Lieutenant Mancuso at his precinct and you might say that the two of us didn’t exactly hit it off together. The guy’s one of those arrogant Italian Stallion types who gets off on bossing everybody around, if you know what I mean. So here I am, Mister Small-Town Cop in the Big City, and Mancuso is constantly reminding me of my minor existence in the huge scheme of things-not in his words so much as in his goddamn condescending demeanor.

“Anyway, once we finally got down to business, he lightened up on me ever so little. I guess my natural charm and charisma eventually wore him down, eh? We went over our respective reports and theories on the Bradley and Hunt murders and then interrogated the witness who had claimed that he’d seen a man on the fire escape outside of what he believed to be Sara Hunt’s apartment on the night she was murdered. This guy lives across the alley from Sara’s apartment building-about a hundred yards away. He told us that he just happened to be looking out his window when he noticed a man climb out of the window and stand on the fire escape for a couple of minutes. He couldn’t see very well-it was late and pretty dark then-but he was able to make out some of the guy’s features.

“The man was fairly tall, about six-two, Caucasian, medium build, and had long, dark hair and a beard. He was wearing an overcoat, like a London Fog, and had a small carrying case of some kind slung over his shoulders-possibly a camera or binocular case. The man looked real suspicious, the guy said, because it seemed more than obvious that he didn’t want to be seen by anyone. He kept looking around nervously and kept his back glued to the wall. After a couple of minutes, the man went back inside and closed the window, then pulled down the blinds.

“The witness kept watching after the man had gone back inside. About a minute or so later, he saw several bright flashes of light come from the window-like a camera flash going off. He said that he observed five or six flashes within the span of a couple of minutes, then no more after that.”

“I knew it!” Sam exclaimed. “The bastard was taking pictures of the body, wasn’t he?”

Roger eyed him curiously. “Yeah, I’d say that’s a very strong possibility. Are you going to tell me now that you already had that figured out?”

Sam nodded excitedly. “I was comparing the crime scene photos of Marsha’s and Sara’s bodies yesterday evening and noticed how the positions were practically identical. Then it suddenly dawned on me that the killer had purposely arranged their bodies that way because he wanted an identically composed shot of each victim. I must admit that I was a little surprised nobody had noticed it before,” Sam added just a little too smugly.

Roger cast him a wry grin. “Hate to rain on your parade, buddy, but Mancuso had already made that very same observation prior to our interview with this guy. Gotta admit, I was pretty pissed off at myself for letting it slip by, but what the fuck? It gave Mancuso another feather in his cap while helping to boost my ratings as Mister Small-Town Cop at the same time,” Roger added acidly. “At any rate, this witness’s account more or less corroborated both yours and Mancuso’s hunch that the murderer might have taken some pictures at the scene.”

Sam could tell that his friend was taking his own oversight a little too hard, so he chose not to gloat. “The important thing is that we’re finally starting to get somewhere with this thing. But why in the hell did this witness take so long to come forth? This information surely would have helped a lot more a month ago,” Sam said as he pulled into the K amp;L Restaurant parking lot.

“Apparently he didn’t want to get involved at first, but his conscience eventually got the best of him. So he finally called the police-anonymously, I might add-and Mancuso managed to talk him into coming into the station to talk about it. You know, it never ceases to amaze me how people never want to get involved in a criminal investigation. One of the tenants in Sara Hunt’s apartment building also came forward with some pertinent information just recently, as a matter of fact.”

Sam pulled into a parking space and turned off the engine.

“What do you mean? Another late witness?”

Roger nodded. “Better late than never, I reckon. Anyway, Sara Hunt apparently had a nasty habit of turning up her stereo really loud whenever she listened to music, according to this neighbor of hers. On the night she was murdered, it had been cranked up to the max, so this guy, some crotchety old-timer who lived on Sara’s floor, started beating on Sara’s door and threatened to go tell the super if she didn’t turn it down. Sara had had run-ins with him before over her music and it soon became obvious to this guy that she wasn’t going to comply since she never responded and the music kept on blasting. So, he finally informed her through her door that he was going to get the super.