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  The structure that housed Freehold Town Hall was a stone-faced edifice off bustling Main Street. As he traversed the building’s small plaza, his phone rang. He checked the number before answering.

  “Hey Paul, let me get back to you. I’m heading into a meeting with—”

  “What?”

  “Where?”

  “Damn! Who’s on it?”

  “Okay, I’ll get back as fast as possible.”

  Stanley hung up and hustled to his meeting.

  The news about the latest murder had already beaten him to the freeholders, and though the heat on him increased, Stanley was able to use it to support his cause for more funding. The freeholders agreed to bust the budget but made it crystal clear that results were needed, and quickly, or their political support for his reelection bid would be difficult to maintain.

  Chapter 9

  The patrol car that responded to the 911 call encountered a sobbing woman surrounded by neighbors standing outside despite a steady rain. The responding officers checked with the throng, drew their weapons, and entered the house.

  Sneakered feet were visible at the end of a small foyer. Eyes sweeping for possible threats, they inched toward the body belonging to the gym shoes. One officer kept guard while the other knelt on the brown carpet, trying to find a pulse on the body. He shook his head, wiping dried blood from his finger.

  The officers cleared the rest of the house, called for the homicide detectives, and secured the crime scene. A neighbor offered her Cape Cod house to the woman and onlookers as a refuge from the rain as they waited for the investigators.

  Lights flashing and wipers clearing windblown rain, Detective Frank Luca pulled onto Keansburg’s Seventh Street, joining four black and whites at number nine. He pulled up his collar and followed his partner, JJ Cremora, to the officer guarding the front door.

  “Hey, Luca, JJ, we got ourselves another nasty one. Poor guy had his head just about turned to pulp.”

  Luca grabbed the clipboard and signed in. “Who’s the responder?”

  The officer called inside. “O’Reilly, homicide’s here.”

  Luca’s blue eyes sparkled as he smiled. “O’Reilly again?”

  Middletown’s skinniest officer waved them in. “Come on in.”

  Luca put on bootees and stepped inside. “We gotta stop meeting like this, O’Reilly.”

  “And how.”

  “What do we got here?”

  “Male, late twenties, name’s William Wyatt. Looks like it was severe head trauma that punched his ticket.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Girlfriend.” He looked at his pad. “Name’s Mary Rourke. Says she found him lying right there.”

  The detectives exchanged glances and Detective Cremora asked, “Any signs of forced entry?”

  “Not that I saw, but we didn’t comb it over closely. We secured it and called in the cavalry. Oh, we shut the TV off.”

  Luca asked, “Coroner here?”

  “Nah, had something in Trenton this morning.”

  “Check on his ETA for me.”

  Police photographer, Stevie Gianelli, was busy snapping pictures of the body and the crime scene with his trusty old Nikon. He looked up at the detectives, winked a hello, and repositioned for another shot.

  “Gianelli, make sure you take a complete video as well, inside and out.”

  The photographer nodded. “Sure thing, handsome.”

  The detectives bent over and examined the victim. Lying on his stomach with his head turned to the left, Billy Wyatt, a man in his prime, had begun to stiffen. A fifteen-year veteran, Frank Luca had checked his emotions at the door.

  “No signs of a gunshot wound.”

  “Or knifing,” JJ added.

  Luca felt the victim’s leg and belly. “He’s pretty stiff and ice cold.”

  “What d’ya think, Luc?”

  “I don’t know, maybe twelve to fifteen hours.”

  “Looks like he was hit from behind, no?”

  “Yeah, maybe. When the doc gets here, he’ll see if there’re any bruises on the right side.”

  “His legs are tangled up.”

  “Could’ve gotten that way trying to get away.”

  “Other than the head, seems to be no other wounds. You see anything else?”

  Luca pulled out a magnifying glass and went over the body again.

  “Nothing under the fingernails that I can see either, but the doc will scrap ’em.”

  Cremora called out, “Yo, Gianelli, you get close-ups and all?”

  “It’s not my first day, bro.”

  The veteran detective pored over the corpse and inserted his gloved fingers in the victim’s back pockets.

  “No wallet. JJ, lift the body a bit. I want to check the front pockets.”

  Luca grunted as he fished out a set of car keys from the right pocket. Cremora lifted the left side of the body enough for Luca to probe the other pocket. He came up with a fistful of cash.

  Cremora said, “Guess that rules out robbery.”

  “Maybe.”

  Luca put the cash in an evidence bag, and they stood over the victim for a couple of minutes before Luca took a final survey of the room and corpse.

  “No signs of a struggle in here. Let’s check the rest of the place out.”

  They circled the living room, where the body was lying. Yesterday’s Asbury Park Press lay open on a velour sofa showing wear. A marred coffee table hosted a half bottle of Bud, three remotes, and a crumb-filled plate. Luca looked for a crumpled napkin but couldn’t locate one. They headed to the next room.

  No surprise, he thought, when they entered the galley kitchen where the sink was crowded with crusty dishes. A loaf of Wonder Bread and a can of tuna sat on the Formica countertop beside a butt-filled ashtray.

  “JJ, make a note. It was tuna the victim was dining on. It may help Fitch with nailing down a time of death.”

  Cremora nodded.

  An alcove off the kitchen held a washer and dryer and a door to a small yard.

  “O’Reilly!”

  The wiry responder slid into the kitchen. “What’s up, Luc?”

  “This door—was it open when you got here?”

  “Yeah. I told you, we didn’t touch anything but the TV.”

  Luca cocked his head at Cremora.

  “Get it dusted for prints.”

  Then he pulled out a pencil, pushed the door fully open with its eraser, and stepped onto a concrete pad.

  Luca eyed the unkempt yard. It wasn’t fenced but was shielded from the other houses by a mixture of overgrown holly and rhododendrons. Noting the trash cans and an old bicycle to his left and a rotting shed in the center, his eyes settled on two cans of beer and a pack of Marlboros on a redwood table to the right. Examining the ground for footprints, Luca changed his shoe covers and approached the patio furniture, carefully sidestepping several cigarette butts littering the area. The rain had slowed to a faint drizzle, but the pack of cigarettes was soaked.

  Luca’s partner stepped into the yard.

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Put on a new pair of bootees, J. The bench pulled out, someone was sitting here. Just don’t know when or who.” Luca pointed to the butt that lay an inch or so away from the table’s edge. “Looks like it burned out on its own.”

  JJ looked closely at the burn mark and butt, nodding. “It’s a Marlboro.”

  They considered the two cans of beer, one used as an ashtray. Luca poked the other can with his pencil, testing its weight. He looked around the yard slowly, declaring, “Let’s bag up the butts and cans, and check with the girlfriend on what brand her lover boy smoked.”

  ***

  Luca munched on a turkey hero as Cremora slapped his office door with a file.

  “Autopsy report.” He eyed the sandwich. “Maybe we’ll wait till you’re finished?”

  Luca took a bite, wrapped the rest of the sub into a ball and tossed it in the garbage can.

  JJ
came around Luca’s desk and plopped open the file. “No surprises. Death caused by trauma to the head with a blunt instrument. No other wounds.”

  Luca paged through the headshots. “Doc say what he was hit with?”

  “Could be a bat, pipe, something circular in nature. And no doubt he was hit from behind.”

  “The vic high on anything?”

  “Blood alcohol of .04, a little buzzed. He’s, or was, one hundred and seventy.”

  Luca read on. “Shit, nothing under the fingernails. What’s this about the knuckles?”

  “Doc wasn’t sure. Said it could’ve happened on the way down.”

  “Maybe throwing a punch?”

  “He said no, but you were right on the TOD.”

  “You mean, again?”

  JJ elbowed his partner. “Time of death was about fourteen hours before O’Reilly found him.”

  “Not much to go on, but we know he bought the farm about eight last night.”

  “I’ll check with the captain, see if the foot soldiers brought anything back from talking with the neighbors.”

  “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.” Luca said, picking up the phone.

  Luca felt the customary pressure to make significant progress within days of the murder or risk the trail going cold. Looking for something to work with, he was going to push forensics hard for any clues they could reveal before he headed to an emergency meeting.

  ***

  Luca slid onto a barstool next to his date. “Sorry, Deb.”

  She sipped her vodka. “I knew it was too good to be true.”

  “Aw, come on, Deb. It’s been crazy. The pressure is really on.”

  Debra frowned. “Same old story.”

  “No, it’s true. The brass is on our backs.”

  “Come on, Frank. I’m sitting here like some bimbo for almost two hours.” She shook her head. “You always put the job ahead of everything.”

  “That’s not fair. I’ve changed. It’s just that right now with the Wyatt kid murder and a shitload of assaults, the suits in Freehold want results.”

  “Guess after a couple of,” she fingered quotation marks, “dates, I got my hopes up too high.”

  Luca kissed her cheek. “No, this time it’s gonna be different. I’m telling you.” He bored his blue eyes into her. “You’ll see.”

  “It better be. Let’s get something to eat. I’m starved.”

  They ordered off the bar menu. All through dinner Luca worked at making this latest transgression fade away. He assured Debra that his proposal of moving back in with her was right for them. Fact was, he missed her terribly and wanted them to be a couple again. Knowing it was his fault, Luca had secretly vowed not to let the job define his life, and maybe even more importantly, wouldn’t violate his marriage vows again, no matter what sexy tail came along.

  They had met when Luca was commuting as a junior at John Jay College, and the good-looking couple was inseparable. A whirlwind courtship ended with an engagement, and they married a month after he graduated from the academy.

  Anxious to prove himself as a rookie, Luca relished the "low man on the totem pole" assignments and never complained, despite Debra’s protests. As a new bride, she wanted her husband home, but the overnight and weekend shifts left little time for a honeymoon period.

  Luca felt that trying to build a career benefitted both of them and began resenting her complaints. A proverbial wall had gone up by their second anniversary, and things fell apart when Luca, a George Clooney lookalike, started receiving calls at home from a woman officer he found impossible to resist.

  The damage from his wandering took three years to fully mend. After a tentative restart, the couple enjoyed a two-year period whose bliss was shattered by a miscarriage. The couple regrouped, but Luca quickly became impatient with his wife’s anxiety over the loss. Restless, he began studying to become a detective.

  He passed on the first go-round and had been working in plainclothes for over a decade. Luca’s new career path got off to a rocky start on his first case when he and the lead investigative detective succumbed to pressure to solve the murder of a county official’s family member. The young man jailed for the crime, Dominick Barrow, hung himself, and the uproar exploded exponentially when another suspect confessed. Luca, the junior officer, didn’t want to make waves in the efforts to frame the kid, and carried a heavy load of guilt over the case.

  Attempting to dislodge the guilt from the Barrow case, Luca began working way too much. Debra was understanding at first, believing the guilt he felt drove him to work excessively. But as the years and cases passed, she tired and the couple separated.

  Chapter 10

  Sergeant Richard Gesso led the hastily arranged gathering. Given it was midmorning on a Saturday, he had only a handful of officers to work with. The fit, sixty-something Gesso stepped in front of the blackboard.

  “We got another homicide to deal with.” He touched the end of his wide, black moustache. “We need to wrap these up and wrap ’em up quickly. The community is scared, and no surprise, the press is making us look bad again.” He lowered his voice a notch. “Frankly, I’m tired of getting heat from the county, not to mention the calls from every old lady within forty miles.”

  Gesso paused to pick up a sheet from the lectern and dug out his reading glasses.

  “Keansburg section again, second time this month.” He wagged his head. “Twenty-six-year-old male, William Wyatt. Head bashed in last night. Forensics is collecting at the scene, and there’s a push from Freehold to get the autopsy done tonight.” Gesso pushed up his glasses and continued. “There are no suspects and no sign of a break-in, so he may have known his assailant.” Gesso peered over his glasses before continuing. “Wyatt lived alone. Girlfriend, a Mary Rourke, found him. She’s not ruled out. Detective Luca’s gonna handle her.” He stopped reading. “Wyatt’s a local kid. Geez, I remember him as the quarterback for South. Led them to two state championships. Then the kid went to Rutgers but couldn’t make first team and dropped out.” He went back to his paper. “Wyatt went to DeVry and then got a job as a technician over at Philly’s in Hazlet a couple years ago. His parents moved down to South Carolina, so I’ll get the locals to interview them, see if anything comes up.”

  Gesso surveyed the room. “We gotta put the leather to the pavement. Johnson, you and O’Brien take four officers and cover Wyatt’s neighborhood. Door-to-door it; see if you can uncover anything: a car, someone on foot, something suspicious. You know the drill.”

  Two youthful detectives jumped up. “We got it, Sarge.”

  Gesso pointed to a map on an easel. “And be sure to check the houses on the street behind Wyatt’s. There’s a cul-de-sac backing up to Thompson Park where the stream is.”

  The detectives nodded and left. Gesso continued.

  “Mulligan, you and Griffin dig into his background: coworkers, any family you can find, his girlfriend. Check that. Luca’s got her, unless you hear he was two-timing her. Talk with the people he went to school with. I want you talking to everyone, even his bowling buddies.” Gesso took his glasses off and gestured with them. “This was a brutal beating. Nothing seems to have been stolen. He was missing his wallet but had a wad of cash in his pocket. Who knows, maybe it was a revenge thing or something. So, the rest of you keep your eyes and ears open on your patrols and lean on your contacts. Look, Stanley’s got the sheriff crawling up my ass already, so I’d appreciate some results here and pronto.”

  ***

  Arriving at the crime scene, uniformed officers fanned out, hitting the houses on the surrounding blocks, while Johnson and O’Brien covered the houses on Wyatt’s street. When neither next-door neighbor said they’d seen nor heard anything unusual, they split up, with Johnson heading across the street to a brick-faced colonial. A woman in her forties in a blue housecoat answered the door.

  Johnson flashed his badge. “Ma’am, we’re canvassing the neighborhood for any information about last night’s incident. We
re you home last night?”

  “It’s terrible. He was a good kid. Served in, uh, Iraq. No, it was Afghanistan. What a damn shame. His poor family.” She closed her eyes. “We’re frightened as can be. We have a seventeen-year-old daughter.”

  “Calm down, ma’am. There’s no reason to panic. Now, did you or anyone in your household see or hear anything unusual, anything at all, no matter how small a detail?”

  “Well, we—me and my husband, Mike—were watching TV, and really, we didn’t hear anything. That’s the scary part, you know. It just seems like a normal night, but meanwhile, right across the street, a young man is killed. Why?”

  “So you and your husband”—he looked at his notes—“Mike, didn’t hear or see anything unusual. No cars out front, nobody walking, no sounds, anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Anyone else live here?”

  “Yes, our daughter Kathy. Her name’s Kathy.”

  “Was she home?”

  “No, she went with some friends to stay over at a girl's who used to live in town.” She wagged her head. “Poor thing doesn’t even know what happened.” She looked at her watch. “It’s only eleven thirty. They said they’d be back around four.”

  “When she leave?”

  “Right after dinner. I made a tuna casserole. Her friend, Patty, picked her up.”

  “What time would that be?”

  “Around six thirty, seven.”

  “Okay, ma’am. Here’s my card. If you remember anything, let us know. Look, when you talk to your daughter, ask her if she saw anything, and call me.”

  At six o’clock the two cops headed back after interviewing nearly thirty neighbors. Two saw a tall man running through backyards. One woman estimated him to be in his mid-thirties, but another neighbor said he looked much older, maybe as old as fifty. They also collected three reports of a dark sedan driving slowly and a compact car parked in the dark on the road behind Wyatt’s home.