Once Bitten, Twice Dead Read online

  And Randall Procopius was an important person. He was a prominent stock trader who had survived the recent meltdown on Wall Street, and had even increased his profits during the crisis. As the recession had begun in America in the previous year Randall had advised his investors to buy some of “the cheap stuff,” such as Walmart, McDonalds, and Target. Then he also bought more into some of the reliable companies like Ford and Honda in the failing auto industry. These were companies that didn’t need a bailout. As a result he and his clients stayed afloat while others were drowning. At the time of his death, Procopius was said to be worth four hundred million dollars.

  Following Henry Gullick past those pillars and up the swirling staircase into Procopius’ mammoth bedroom, I wasn’t prepared for the grim sight that awaited me. The bedroom was as large as my entire apartment, and at first I didn’t notice the actual crime scene. Coming up the stairs, though, I had smelled the strong odor of barbeque, as if someone had picked the second floor at the location of their feast. At that time I didn’t know that the entrée selection for that meal would be Randall himself.

  As I entered the bedroom and walked past the four-poster with the fluffy yellow coverlet, I now was assaulted with an acrid smell. I looked to the far end of the room where the fireplace logs were still smoldering. As I approached that area I saw that one of the “logs” had an arm and a leg. Nothing else was recognizable in the shriveled piece.

  Henry spoke. “It looks like someone threw gasoline onto Procopius while he was still conscious, pushed him into the fireplace and then lit him up. I’m glad I wasn’t here to hear the screams of a man burning to death.”

  I didn’t want to, but now I looked more closely into the ashes. I couldn’t imagine that the blackened stick I viewed had ever been human.

  In our investigation, Henry and I wanted to discover that Procopius had gained his wealth by lying, cheating and stealing, but we found he had achieved his success mainly by intelligence and good planning. We couldn’t find one person who said a negative thing about him—Randall Procopius had the utmost respect in the business world. He had never married so no gold digger girlfriend or predator wife was around; and his immediate relatives were all dead themselves, with his parents and sister being killed in a plane crash three years earlier. Again, Henry and I were stymied.

  And just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, Carla Strand took a dive out of the 24th floor. We had another case.

  Ms. Strand for ten years had been an accomplished movie star, but then she branched out into cosmetics, perfumes, and a clothing line, building herself a business empire at the ripe old age of thirty nine. Her successful life had ended two days past her fortieth birthday when she plunged from her Manhattan high-rise apartment. A Jumper was the first thought of the early officers on the scene, but then the forensics people saw the scrapings on the balcony ledge and they matched the dust to what was underneath Ms. Strand’s fingernails. It became immediately apparent that she had been trying to hold onto the ledge to save her life. Someone had definitely helped Carla take her final leap, and Henry and I were called in. Carla was originally from Philly—the NYC people asked for our help.

  For the next two months Henry and I plodded through the people associated with Carla: first in Hollywood, and then in the ladies apparel and cosmetics industry, but we could find no one who had any kind of dislike for her. Apparently Carla had not clawed her way to the top in the movie industry, and similarly in the world of business she had the good taste to know what she wanted and the drive to know how to achieve it. Instead of backbiting and snide comments, all Henry and I got about Carla was praise and applause. No one seemed to even want to ever write a nasty note to her. There seemed to be some playing around by her, but nothing that left any kind of bitter aftertaste.

  I had been a cop for five months now, and I was involved in three cases all of which looked unsolvable. Here seemed to be no reason for any of those three people to have been killed. But at least I had Henry Gullick as my partner, a man, for all his personal twits, who had been a homicide investigator for nineteen years. So I still felt confidence, even though Henry didn’t talk much to me. That confidence evaporated on the first day of the month, four days ago.

  I don’t know if Henry had saved his surprise for me for that date, or whether it was just an accident that he delivered the bombshell on April Fool’s Day, but that’s when I got the news.

  “I’m retiring, Raven.”

  “What!!”

  “You heard me. In another month I’ll hit twenty years, and I’m going to catch up on some of that fishing I’ve been missing. I bought me a piece of land in Minnesota near Canada, and I’m going to jump into nature feet first.”

  Then my second shock came after those four weeks passed, when Henry came up to me and said, “You’ve been a great partner, Raven,” and gave me a hug. Here was a man now embracing me who had not said fifty words to me during our previous time together. But there was still one more surprise awaiting me.

  “I’m going to miss you, Henry,” which was a lie because there had been nothing to miss: No relationship, no connection. “Who’s going to be my partner, now?”

  Henry looked at me for a full thirty seconds with a strange grin on his face. I had never seen him smile. Uh, oh, was I going to get someone worse than Henry for a new partner? “Come on Henry, you can tell me—who am I going to get?”

  “No one.” Again Henry smiled, even wider.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I talked to Chief Brown and told him what a fine job you’ve been doing, so he and I both agreed that you’ve earned being on your own for awhile. Also the Department is over-budgeted for the year, and there’s been a hiring freeze.”

  Henry was saying all this like he was giving me a fantastic gift instead of actually kicking me in the balls if I had any.

  “That’s right, Raven, the Chief wants you to stick with these three cases we’ve been on for at least the next few months. He and I both know you’ll eventually solve each one of them. Good luck, Raven.” I got another hug, and stood there at my desk with my mouth open.

  Now here I was with less than a half year’s experience tackling by myself three cases for which a twenty year veteran had not gathered in one clue.

  I want my mommy!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next morning I woke up and felt really good. Then I remembered the three cases I had, and I felt really bad.

  I had one advantage, though: my dad had always taught be to look on the bright side of things. So what bright side was there? Five minutes later, still lying in bed staring at the ceiling, I couldn’t think of any. But then again maybe there was one—I didn’t have Henry Gullick anymore as a partner.

  At the end of yesterday he had come into my working cubicle and handed me an envelope. There seemed to be a kind of card inside. “Don’t open this until tonight before you go to sleep,” he said, and walked out.

  That night, already worrying about what I was going to do the next day, I got my pajamas on and thought it was time to open the envelope. Possibly I could get some reassurance from Henry’s words. I forgot who I was dealing with. On the front part of the card was a dog squatting on the grass, doing its business. Inside, the words read: “You’ll feel better after this is over.”

  Maybe this was Henry’s way of trying to encourage me, but at that moment it made me feel ten times worse. It took me almost two hours to go to sleep as I kept mulling over the cases. I spent a restless night, feeling not like the dog but what was coming out of the dog. Now I was sure about my one positive thing—I didn’t have Henry anymore! I was on my own, and it was beginning to feel good. I didn’t have to follow Henry anymore, like some kind of lapdog. These were all my cases now. That thought suddenly caused a spurt of bile to rise up in my throat, as last night’s lasagna still hadn’t digested.

  What the hell was I going to do? Where would I start?

  Well, I certainly wasn’t going to solve any of these
cases lying here in bed. Later, in the shower, I began organizing myself. I’d better start with the first case—the cleaver murder of Ed Butcher. It was the longest unsolved case of the three. Yesterday before I left work Chief Brown had given me his own “pep talk.” He had said that the public and the press didn’t like cases that stayed open forever. “It makes other people think we’re inept idiots, Stolle. And we’re not,” Brown emphasized, “at least I’m not.”

  Thus, as this potential idiot, Raven Stolle, was toweling herself off, her feet were going to head toward Ed Butcher’s murder. (After getting some clothes on first—no one is comfortable with a naked investigator).

  I was going to follow some of the same steps that Henry had taken to see if I could get into greater depth with the case. Even though the guy never shared anything with me, he must have had some kind of reasoning for the way he had proceeded. And even if he didn’t have any reasoning behind his actions, what did I have to lose anyway? The important thing in the beginning was to actually begin. In terms of Henry’s card, then maybe I could eventually feel relief.

  My first stop, then, was to see Larabella, Ed’s wife. Henry had talked to her first.

  The Butchers lived two blocks from Ed’s main business, and despite what I knew of his wealth, it looked like the family was still struggling. The front screen door to Ed’s house was loose on its hinges; I could see bricks crumbling near the window sill, and apparently the doorbell didn’t work. After my third attempt pushing the button, I knocked softly and then had to knock loudly. The door was answered, not by Larabella but by a tall strapping youth I had never seen before. He took one look at me and shut the door in my face. It took a couple more knocks, but again the door opened, this time only a few inches, and that same thatch hair, high forehead, and wide eyes greeted me.

  “My mother told me not to open the door to strangers when she’s not here.”

  The problem was he had opened the door, and he had told me his mother wasn’t there. I apprised him of his mistake. “If your mother told you that, then why did you open the door?”

  “You do have a point there,” and he began to again shut the door.

  As the door was closing I managed to blurt out, “I’m Raven Stolle, homicide investigator for the Philly police.” The door had shut on my words, but then it opened.

  “Let me see some I.D.”

  I produced my police credentials which had a quite unflattering picture of me right after I had some dental work done.

  “How do I know this isn’t fake? There’s been three robberies in the neighborhood in the last month.”

  “You don’t know. You have to take the chance that I won’t take out my gun and shoot you.”

  The kid seemed to like this bit of adventure. “All right. Come on in. If my mother rags at me, I’ll say you forced your way in.”

  Even though the outside of the place looked rundown, inside was well done: a plush rug and the solid furniture were not cheap.

  “Here, sit on the couch. What exactly do you want? Why aren’t you out solving my father’s murder?”

  “You must be Roddy, Brian’s son.”

  “Don’t call me Roddy.”

  “Isn’t that your name? I saw it on the police report.”

  “That’s what it says on my birth certificate, but my friends call me Rock. ‘Roddy’ makes me feel like I’m in first grade. I only let my mother call me that.”

  “Couldn’t I call you Rocky since we’re in Philadelphia?”

  “That’s not even funny. ‘Rock’ is my name, or this interview is over.”

  “All right, Rock, let’s get down to business.”

  “Listen, I’ll save you the trouble of asking me any boring questions. I know who killed my dad.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  That did surprise me.

  “Please tell me what you know, Rock, and together we can solve this case in just a few minutes.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. It’s bad enough all my teachers are. I do know who killed Dad.”

  I waited.

  “It was Aronimus.”

  “Who??” I had not heard that name before in this case. In fact I had never heard anyone ever having that name. “Who exactly is Aronimus?”

  “He likes to be called Ari. Ari Felder. He’s my dad’s older brother.”

  “Why do you think he killed your dad?”

  “He’s always been jealous of Dad’s success. Ari works part-time for K-Mart—that’s his only job. He’s had drinking and drug problems. And the day before my dad died, he and Ari were having an argument out in the backyard.”

  “What was the argument about?”

  “I don’t know—all I could hear was the yelling. When I went out back to see what the problem was, Ari stomped past me muttering, “I could kill the bastard.”

  “People do say that when they’re angry.”

  “You didn’t see the look in his eyes.”

  “Where does Ari live?”

  “I’ll get you his address.” Rock went into the kitchen, and I heard drawers opening and closing. He came back empty-handed. “You can find it yourself. You’re the investigator.”

  “By the way, Rock, I’ve been on this case awhile. Why didn’t we ever interview you?”

  “I was on a field trip at one of those dull museums. My mom told me you were here.”

  “Then why didn’t you call and give us this information??”

  “I knew if you were any good, you’d be back and then I could tell you.”

  The reasoning of a teen-ager was the reasoning of a teen-ager, but possibly it was more thinking than Henry Gullick had done on the case. I was pretty sure Henry knew that Ed Butcher had a son because we had the fact of the expensive birthday party, but my partner had never had us go back to talk with the boy. It seemed that retirement was strongly crowding out the other areas of Henry’s brain, and he really wasn’t caring too much about these three cases. Besides he had this “great” partner who could take over for him and solve everything. So far I had not gotten much further than Henry did.

  However, onward to Aronimus Felder.

  The address I eventually came up for him led me to a totally decrepit section of town. The Butchers’ place looked like a palace compared to where Ari lived. I could only describe his hovel as a hovel. It stood by the side of an empty lot filled with trash, and the actual structure looked like it had been put up in twenty minutes by some kids pretending it was a fort. Actually I think it belonged to the house next door, as some kind of shed.

  I didn’t want to knock too loudly to cause a collapse, but it seemed no one was home. I peered in through the dusty side window and saw pizza boxes and newspapers scattered about. There seemed to be a table, chair, and mattress, but that was about all I could see. I checked with the people next door and the wife told me, “Yeah Ari lives there. We saw him sitting on the curb one night in the rain. When we spoke to him, he said he had just lost his job and had no place to stay. We rented him the garage, and he pays us $20 a month. At least he pays us some of the months. We put some old furniture in there from our basement. He has a TV and a sofa and some other stuff. Sometimes when he looks particularly destitute we invite him in for a meal. I can always see, though, that he hates our charity.”

  “I hear he does have a current job.”

  “He does, but why do you want to talk with him?”

  “I explained about Ed Butcher’s murder.”

  “Yeah, Ari did mention that.”

  “What did he say about it?”

  “Good riddance.” Those were his only words.”

  The lady then gave me the address of the K-Mart where Ari worked. “Go easy on him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Ari’s seemed depressed lately. Sometimes late at night I can hear him yelling in the garage.”

  “Who’s he yelling at?”

  “That’s just it—there’s no one there. He has no friends. I think he’s having a breakdown.”


  The K-Mart was only minutes away, and I did locate Aronimus Felder but I wished I hadn’t.

  The manager directed me to Aisle 5 where a short squat man was placing boxes of Captain Crunch on the shelves. I said, “Are you Ari Felder?” He didn’t look up, but kept putting each box meticulously one-by-one on the shelf as if the fate of the world depended on the placing. In reaching for the next shelf he accidentally nudged one of the boxes on the lower boards—instantly he went to straighten it out, taking almost a minute to do so. I waited two more minutes, and then my patience gave out. “I know you’re Ari Felder.”

  Still staring at the boxes, Ari replied, “If you knew who I was, why did you ask?”

  “I want to talk to you about your brother’s murder.”

  My words did produce a response. Ari rose up, and before I could react, punched me square in the face. I fell back into a display of canned corn, knocking perhaps fifty cans onto the floor. Ari then proceeded to jump on me. Despite being known as “the weaker sex,” most women I knew fought very well, and besides as a teen I had taken some self-defense classes. In a matter of fifteen seconds Ari was subdued and handcuffed.

  He was still fuming. I could hardly hold him. “Why did you do that, Ari?” He gave a kind of mewing sound. My nose felt sore, but hopefully not broken. Ari did not pack a strong wallop. He suddenly went limp, and I had to catch him to keep him from tumbling to the floor. He hadn’t fainted, but now he began to cry.

  “Please don’t tell the manager what I just did. I’ve lost two other jobs this month. I have to keep this one.” A customer had seen our altercation, and at the moment I heard the store manager being paged over the loud-speaker. Without too much thought I unhooked Ari from the handcuffs and let go of him.