Once Bitten, Twice Dead Read online

  I emailed all that information to Detective Hoskins. It was up to him to follow up on it. I had done my part. I was pretty sure that Jesus had switched the guns. In my interview with him he had told me that besides the actual shows he also came to many of the rehearsals. He would be familiar with the on-stage routine. It seemed to me that a brother had killed a brother, but it was now up to Hoskins to get the evidence.

  If Hoskins ever did get the goods on Jesus I would have helped solve the second case that wasn’t really mine. Ironically both those cases involved brothers. I hope my brother, Trevor, would never become another case.

  As I added years and experience to my life, I was beginning to see that none of us live in a cocoon. Out of the blue, we can become strongly inter-connected with others, seemingly not by our own choice. But that’s what also makes life interesting.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  My inter-connection theory just got a boost when I got a call from my one-time nemesis, Phil Petrosky.

  “Stolle, it’s Petrosky.”

  “Phil do you have another buy-in for me where I have to risk my life—do you need my help again?” I was trying to match Phil’s usual flippant tone, I guess, to stay one step ahead of him. I would have to say that he certainly had been friendly lately. However, I still remembered the times he ragged on me.

  “No, I don’t need your help. Everything’s copasetic here. The Chief’s even been more sensitive toward his slaves here since he had gotten captured.”

  “So, Phil, I guess this is a social call.” Again, more sarcasm from me.

  “Well. . .uh. . .ah. . .it is. . .kinda.”

  “Phil, you sound serious.”

  “Can’t a guy be serious? I know most of my life I’m always kidding, but I am serious now. I want to ask you out.”

  Could I be hearing what I just heard?

  “All right, Phil, I’ll repeat what you just said, and you verify it. Then I’ll know I really heard it. You just said you wanted to ask me out.”

  “That’s right. How about it?”

  “Phil, you’re a good catch for somebody, but not me. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

  “O.K., O.K.—I’m sorry I asked.”

  “Phil. . .don’t be sorry.” But he had already hung up.

  I just sat there for a few minutes. The surprise would not leave me. The guy who had been so harsh to me, once upon a time, now wanted to go out with me? Did all that past sarcasm of Phil’s about me not solving those cases still bother me? I did still feel it, but I did have to admit that wasn’t the main thing. What wouldn’t quite go away was David leaving me. You connect to someone, and you get zapped. I didn’t want any more of that.

  Three days went by, and I decided I wasn’t going to live my life ruled by fear. I called Phil back. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Now, you’re playing with me.”

  “No, I’m not. Let’s go out.”

  “Fine. I’m. . .I’m glad you changed your mind.”

  Phil’s idea of an exciting date was to take me bowling. I did protest a little. “Phil I can’t bowl at all.”

  “Good—then I’ll beat you every game.”

  Now those were fighting words, so there we were at the Arcade Lanes, just off Route 322. “I have to warn you, Phil, I went out and practiced all afternoon. I’m ready to demolish you.”

  “Ohhh, I’m so scared. By the way, why did you change your mind?”

  “I think it was your winning personality, Phil.”

  “I thought that would eventually get you.”

  That day taught me something I had never realized: beneath Phil’s sarcasm there dwelt an actual sense of humor. During the course of our first game, he sent two balls between his legs down the alley toward the pins. Then he tried to bowl with his opposite hand and tossed the ball into the next alley, where it hit another ball half-way down. He did apologize to the lady next to us. Together both their balls had knocked down all the pins on her alley. Then he succeeded in bouncing a ball in and out of the gutter and getting a strike. By the time we finished that game, he had me sincerely laughing.

  I hadn’t been kidding about not being able to bowl well. I think this was only the third time I had ever set foot inside a bowling alley. My score of 79 for that first game reflected that. With all his clowning around, Phil didn’t do too much better with a 101.

  The second game started out with a miracle. The first two balls I rolled were strikes. Phil dramatically fell on the hardwood floor after my second strike. “I just fainted,” he said. By the end of the game I had 126 to 114 for Phil. He wasn’t that good even when he wasn’t fooling around.

  “Phil, why did you want to engage in a sport that you’re not too good at?”

  “Ms. Stolle, I’ll have you know that actually I’m an excellent bowler, but I am playing with two broken arms and just working through the pain.” Phil had again made me smile, something I hadn’t been doing too much of lately.

  “Winner of the next game, gets a free dinner,” Phil proclaimed right before the third game. This game I wasn’t quite so lucky, and Phil was just as bad as usual, so we were tied at 99 going into the last toss.

  Phil knocked down eight pins with his final ball. I had to get nine to win.

  Just as I was about to let go of the ball, my foot slipped—I almost fell, and the ball dropped out of my hand. But amazingly the ball was headed straight down the alley, and caused all the pins to vanish. I had a strike. I was the winner.

  But I shouldn’t have so looked forward to that “dinner” Phil promised. His elegant choice for haute cuisine was the Golden Arches. “What a wonderful restaurant you picked, Phil. This Big Mac is so tasty—just about as tasty as the other 7000 of these that I’ve had in my lifetime.”

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying it, Raven. Nothing but the best for my girl.”

  As much as Phil was a little unconventional, to put it mildly, when I got home that night, I had to admit that I had had a fun time. The smiling and laughing hadn’t damaged my face at all—I wanted to do more of it. So when Phil called again five days later, this time I was glad to say yes right away.

  Again, I probably made the same mistake of having Phil choose the entertainment. That’s why we were now at the circus. That’s right—the circus, with clowns, lions, and elephants. I had never been to the circus. I didn’t think it would be, but it was a delight. I loved the performances, especially the high wire trapeze act. “Aren’t they great, Phil,” I exclaimed at a girl flew through the air into the arms of her catcher.

  “Yeah, great.”

  Phil’s tone was odd.

  “What’s the matter, Phil?”

  “Actually, those people up there get me nervous.”

  “You could do that, up there, Phil. I think of you as a brave person.”

  “No, I couldn’t do that. Never.” Much anxiety had crept into his voice.

  “Phil, you’re really upset.”

  Later, at another one of Phil’s classy eating establishment, Wendy’s, he told me why had gotten so bothered. “One time in college, I was climbing with a couple of buddies of mine. We reached a chasm that was quite a gap we had to leap over to get to the other side and keep climbing. Myself and my one buddy made it. Then it was Claude Pinkins’ turn. I’ve always been sarcastic, and then was no exception. Claude was an overweight guy that I had met in my freshman Contemporary Lit. class. I liked him, and as with the people I liked, I made fun of him, also. He wasn’t so fat, but I called him Tubby. Maybe in my good soul, way deep down, I did want him to lose weight because he was always getting sick, coming down with colds and the flu. I thought a thinner Claude would be a healthier Claude.

  “Well, as I said, it was Tubby’s turn to jump. Brad and I had made it across easily, and so I didn’t really think it would be any trouble for Claude. But suddenly he got real afraid. Maybe Brad and I should have jumped back, and then returned the way we came. However, at that moment I had to be my good old sarcastic self. I had to mock Claud
e. I said something like, ‘With your weight, Tubby, you’ll float across. It’ll act like a parachute. No problem. Go ahead—jump.

  “He heeded my goading and leaped. Tubby didn’t even come close. He fell to his death. Maybe, Raven I’ve continued to be sarcastic to try to rub out that awful mistake I made years ago. After Selby came at me in the office because I was ragging on you, it did me some good. I vowed to stop the sarcasm. I haven’t fully succeeded, but I am getting better.

  “It is true what I said that I’m the most sarcastic toward the people I liked, so my ragging at you in the office made me first aware that I did like you. That’s why we’re enjoying these wonderful chicken nuggets and Frosty together.”

  Later, driving home, Phil admitted that before college had had also gone through another change. “When I was in high school, Raven, I hung around with a gang of bad characters. Most weekends we just looked for people to beat up. That’s the kind of entertainment we indulged in. One night, though, we almost killed a homeless man. Right then I decided I wanted out and told the others I wouldn’t be hanging with them anymore. ‘No one gets out, Petrosky.’ I was told. However, all that next week I didn’t go with them on their ‘hunts,’ as they called it.

  “That next Monday, on the way from football practice, the three of them jumped me. I was a pretty good fighter, and quickly I put two of them on the ground, but the third one clubbed me from behind with a metal rod he always carried with him. Then the three of them put me in the hospital. I guess that was the price I paid for leaving those boys. I took me a month to get back to school, and I never played high school football again. Both my knees are still bad. So, Raven, you’re going out with a guy who doesn’t have very good judgment.”

  “You had enough judgment, Phil, to get out of the group, and also you had enough conscience to be bothered by the Claude accident.”

  “Yeah, well maybe I’m not all bad.”

  “You’re pretty good, Phil,” and I smiled again. That smiling was getting to be a habit.

  As Phil was dropping me off at my house, the house David and I had thought we would spend our life together in—he put a hand on my shoulder. “I do like you a lot, Raven, but I know you and David were pretty serious together, and you’re probably still feeling his departure.”

  “It’s gradually going away.”

  “Well, I also experienced a split. I was married for four years.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I haven’t been advertising it. We were divorced before you joined the force. I wasn’t a very good husband. I didn’t run around on her, but that sarcasm didn’t ever quite leave me. I never hit her, but I think I abused her verbally. She finally said she’d had enough. So I guess both you and I have been burned.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “I want to keep going out with you if that’s O.K. I am attracted to you physically, but let’s go slow with that.”

  “I feel the same way. And probably you’re pretty ugly naked.”

  Phil had been so serious he almost didn’t smile.

  “You got me, Stolle. Now I know how my brand of humor feels.”

  “I didn’t mean it to hurt.”

  “That’s what I always said to myself, also.”

  “All right, Phil, we’ll declare a moratorium on sarcasm.”

  “Wait a minute.” Phil quickly got out of the car and went to his trunk. He came back with a shovel. “Get out, Raven”

  “Phil what are you doing?”

  “Let’s go into your back yard—I’ll show you.”

  I think I did trust Phil, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  He began digging at the far corner of my fence. He scooped up three shovelfuls.

  “Now we bury it,” he said.

  “Bury what?”

  “Our sarcasm. There it goes into the hole,” he said pointing at the ground. He then covered the hole back up.

  After Phil left that night, I went back out to that fence and looked down at the fresh earth. I felt really good.

  CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

  Two days later Phil called again. He started in right away to explain. “I’m not calling for a date, Raven.”

  My heart sank. Here comes the zap. “Are you saying you don’t want to go out with me anymore, Phil?”

  “I see what you’re thinking. I definitely want to keep going out with you. . .and keep going out with you. . .and keep. . .”

  “All right, Phil. I get it. Then why are you calling?”

  “It’s my sister, Sophia. I just found something about her yesterday.”

  “Tell me.”

  “There’s a big gap in years between us—she’s just twenty. It took a while for my parents to discover sex again after the shock of having me. But, anyway, Sophia came to me yesterday, and she said she’s in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Remember that story I told you about that bad-ass gang I hung around with in high school?”

  “The guys that put you in the hospital?”

  “They’re the ones. It must be genetic because Sophia has gotten herself in similar trouble. There’s one final destination worse than the hospital, and I think Sophia might be on her way there.”

  “She could be killed? What kind of group is this?”

  “It’s a butch group of girls that Sophia’s been palling around with this last year. From what she told me yesterday, they’re pretty primitive. The leader, especially, likes violence. I should have paid more attention to Sophia when she was growing up. My parents were always working, and I guess Sophia didn’t get much of a foundation of respect. These girls to me sound like barbarians, but Sophia seems to have accepted their ethics. She told me yesterday that what this group, and she, have been doing this last year has been shoplifting from the area stores.”

  “Not good.”

  “Definitely not good. But finally Sophia seems to have had a change of heart. She wants to get out of that group, just like I had the desire to, years ago. The guys in my gang beat me up when I tried to leave, but in Sophia’s gang, they all carry knives. She had to carry one also. And that leader means business—her name is Sellica Tomkins, and she rules with an iron fist. Sophia said one time a member of the group talked back to Sellica, and, without a moment’s hesitation, she pulled out her knife and stabbed the girl in the chest. That girl still doesn’t breathe well today. Sellica could kill as easily as most people shake hands. Sophia is very much afraid of her.

  “I’m sorry to involve you at all, Raven, but I didn’t know who to tell.”

  “I’m glad you told me, Phil. Let’s meet somewhere to discuss this.”

  In honor of Phil’s choices of excellent cuisine, I picked a Burger King, and we both sipped a chocolate shake, trying to decide what to do.

  “Both of us are experienced cops, Raven, we should be able to figure something out.”

  “From what you’ve told me about Sellica and her group, they’re very skilled with the shoplifting.”

  “Yes, Sophia says it’s all planned out ahead of time. They each arrive separately into a store like Hollister’s, J. Crew, or American Eagle—they’ve cased the place earlier in the week—and then one girl will do the blocking, shielding the ‘grabber’ from the video camera while another girl distracts the clerk. The grabber has bought an item from another store and has that price tag in the bag she’s carried into the store. While everyone is distracted and the camera is blocked she loads three or four items from this store into that same bag.

  “There still are many stores that don’t use security strips on their items, but also Sellica has found a way to unlock those strips. So sometimes the grabber will go into a dressing room with her full bag—very few stores do a good job of policing their dressing rooms—and once inside the dressing room she will unlock the strips, and then exit the store with her bag full of their merchandise. It seems that Sellica has a boyfriend that she gives the merchandise to, and he unloads it at a profit. Sellica is the only o
ne who shares in that profit—the other girls seem to be in it for the excitement. Sellica is a full-blown professional thief, and the other girls and Sophia just follow her lead. Sellica rarely does any of the actual stealing, and so she protects herself there. She just waits for the other girls to bring her the booty.”

  “Like you said, Phil, we are law enforcement people, but we can’t just go marching into this. We have to catch Sellica’s group in the act, and there’s also the large problem of endangering Sophia while we do it. But maybe I can switch over to the other side of the law for awhile.”

  “What’s brewing in that devious brain of yours, Raven?”

  “Let me get another chocolate shake, and I’ll tell you.”

  A day later I was in the Exton Mall, sitting at a table near a Chinese take-out place. I was wearing my worst ripped jeans, and my midriff blouse from high school that just barely fit me now. It’s the blouse with the food stains that won’t come out. I usually use it to wash my hair, and so there’s also plenty of hair coloring on it. In high school I changed my hair color about every three days. Today I had ruffled my hair and mixed a little green dye into it. I was a mess, but maybe just right for Sellica and her group.

  Sophia had told Phil the approximate location of where that group usually sat in the food court. It was where they could watch the mall security guards as they made their rounds so they could notice if there was any variance in their patterns. At the moment, Sellica’s group of three was now only a table away from me. Usually the group was four, but in line with our plan Sophia had told Sellica she was too sick to come with them today. So it was just Sellica and two of her cohorts.