Croaker: Grave Sins (Fey Croaker Book 2) Read online

  Croaker: Grave Sins

  A Detective Fey Croaker LAPD Novel

  Paul Bishop

  Croaker: Grave Sins

  A Detective Fey Croaker LAPD Novel

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2018 (as revised) Paul Bishop

  Wolfpack Publishing

  6032 Wheat Penny Avenue

  Las Vegas, NV 89122

  wolfpackpublishing.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-64119-434-1

  Contents

  Get your FREE copy of The Chicago Punch: A Short Story

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  A Look at Croaker: Tequila Mockingbird

  Books By Paul Bishop

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  About the Author

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  Author’s Note

  Grave Sins and the other original Fey Croaker novels are set in the late ‘90s. As such, the storylines represent the attitudes and technology relevant to the time period…

  Croaker: Grave Sins

  Prologue

  Los Angeles, 1996

  Darcy Wyatt spun the wheels of the blue delivery van onto the loose asphalt behind Fratelli Pizza. A lone streetlight illuminated an almost empty parking lot.

  Darcy had been gone longer than he’d intended and hoped the boss, Butt Wipe Norman, hadn’t noticed. He also hoped no more delivery orders had come in. Darcy was feeling pleasantly buzzed after his exertions. Sucking down a fat dubie of Kenny’s bitchin’ grass had also helped to soften the edges. Maybe when he and Kenny got off they could do a couple of six-packs and have some more giggles. Kenny was warped, but he was always good for laughs.

  The van stank of old pizza and sweat socks. Kenny never cleaned it, and the threadbare carpeting was covered in stains and filth. A stack of bondage magazines, a shovel, a basketball, and a raft of empty beer cans bounced around in the back, mingling with fast-food wrappers, dirty workout clothes, and junk.

  Unlike the other Fratelli Pizza restaurants where Darcy worked, Butt Wipe Norman was too cheap to pop for an official Fratellimobile for deliveries. Darcy didn’t have a car of his own, so whenever he got called to fill in for the regular delivery guy, Kenny and always let Darcy borrow his van for making deliveries while Kenny stayed and cooked more gut bombs.

  Darcy liked hanging with Kenny. Kenny said they were sort of like brothers. They both hated Norman – they actually hated anybody who ever amounted to anything – and were always talking about what they were going to do to Norman someday to mess him up.

  Darcy jammed the steering wheel gearshift into park and jumped out of the van. Reaching back inside, he used one hand to drag out two insulated pizza delivery packs. With his other hand, Darcy grabbed his motorcycle helmet. It was a full-face helmet, scuffed and scarred. He never left it with his cycle in case somebody ripped it off. It had other uses as well.

  Feeling loose, he pushed his way in through the back entrance to the restaurant.

  “Hey, hey, buddy,” he said when he spotted Kenny in the back hallway. “What’s happening?”

  “Shut up,” Kenny said urgently. He held a finger up to his lips.

  Darcy looked a little shocked. He’d never seen Kenny acting anything less than cool, but the guy was real agitated now. Darcy dumped the pizza insulators on a counter.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Cops.”

  Darcy glanced around as if he was looking for an escape. “How’d they find out?”

  “I don’t think they did, man. But you gotta get outta here. They’re asking about you.”

  “What am I gonna do?”

  “Take off, man. Just get on your bike and blow. I’ll cover for you.”

  “Cool. Thanks, man.”

  “We’re brothers, aren’t we?” Kenny held out an open palm and Darcy slapped it. “Get going, man.”

  Darcy pulled his helmet over his head and threw Kenny the keys to the blue van.

  Kenny stood watching as Darcy went out the rear door toward where he’d parked his motorcycle. When he heard the bike kick over, he turned and ran into the front of the restaurant. “Mr. Norman. Mr. Norman,” he yelled.

  A short, fat man with a thick black mustache turned away from talking with two uniformed police officers.

  “What-da-ya want?” Norman’s voice was an abrasive whine.

  “Darcy took off on his motorcycle.”

  The two cops turned as the noise of Darcy’s cycle roared.

  The older of the two cops was suddenly in action, dragging his partner with him out the front door. Kenny rocked back on his heels with a smug smile. He sure liked the reaction he’d started – it was almost as good as real giggles. Not really, but it was still pretty cool. If things went as planned, the real giggles would come later.

  Darcy wasn’t important. Even if the cops caught him, he didn’t know anything that could mess things up. But it had been fun manipulating Darcy’s kinks – pervert see, pervert do.

  Kenny figured throwing Darcy to the wolves was a good move. It got the dork out of the way and Kenny didn’t need the complications of killing him without a good reason.

  Chapter 1

  No rest for the wicked, Fey Croaker thought dropping her purse on her desk with
a loud thump. The shoulder strap snaked out and bounced off a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee. The hot liquid slopped out, immediately soaking into reports and paperwork scattered like abandoned confetti across the desk top.

  Fey looked at the mess, rolled her eyes, and tried to shake dark brown droplets off several of the disaster-struck documents. Giving the salvage work up as a lost cause, she threw the papers back on the desk and dropped down into her chair.

  “Get out of the wrong side of the bed this morning?” Monk Lawson asked as he entered the squad room from the back stairway. It was three in the morning and, except for Fey and Monk, the squad room was deserted.

  Fey scowled at the young black detective. “It’s not morning, it’s the middle of the night.”

  Monk laughed. “I hate these call-outs. I’d was barely asleep when my beeper went off.”

  “At least you got to sleep,” Fey said.

  “Out doing the town, were we?”

  Fey gave a weary shake of her head. “Not really.” Her tone of voice suggested trouble.

  “Relationship problems?”

  Fey shook her head, dismissing the subject of her personal life. “Always,” she said and forced a smile.

  Fey had been LAPD’s West Los Angeles Area Homicide Unit supervisor for almost four years. She wasn’t the department’s only female homicide detective, but she was the only female supervising a major divisional Homicide Unit.

  On several occasions, she’d paid the price for being a woman in the position, but she never backed down. She’d come too far, professionally and personally, to give up.

  Some of her co-workers believed she’d been given the position due to the department’s affirmative action movement. Fey didn’t much care if it was true or not. She’d match her unit’s clearance rate against any other division in the city.

  West LA’s detective squad room was located on the top floor of a two-story building. The front desk, the Watch Commander’s office, records, administrative offices, and a small jail were located on the ground floor. The station’s huge roll call room, locker rooms, and workout room were in the basement.

  Two stairways led from the ground floor to the detective division. The front stairway was for civilians and led to a small lobby. Behind the lobby was a hallway housing interrogation rooms, a victim’s interview room, the Homicide Unit’s incident room, and an area designated for the area computer statistics – CAD – team.

  The back stairway led from the center of the ground floor to the squad room’s back entrance. Vice and Narcotics had their own offices located appropriately across from the restrooms.

  A quarter of the squad room was walled off for the department’s Bunco-Forgery Division. The remaining expanse of open floor was used as the detective division’s work space. Various groups of desks were butted against each other like giant dominos. Each grouping represented a different fragment of the overall investigative case load – Burglary, Auto Theft, Juvenile, Robbery, Major Assault Crimes (MAC), Sex Crimes, and Homicide.

  Due to recent organizational imperatives, Fey had been given supervision of MAC and Sex Crimes on top of her unit’s homicide tasks. This meant far more paperwork and a more detectives to supervise. This translated into more personnel problems, and more call-outs – such as the one she and Monk were currently working.

  Fey had been in mid-shriek when the noise of her beeper had exploded across the angry, emotional battlefield of her relationship with Jake Travers.

  Fey had cursed. She’d slid out of bed and began rooting around in her purse to retrieve the offending pager. What had started out as a lovemaking session with Jake had rapidly deteriorated into a loud argument even before the preliminaries were over.

  Jake had pushed her buttons and she’d responded by pushing his. Passion had changed from lust to hurt, and hurt to anger, in seconds. Dripping with emotional blood, the spiked and dangerous rocks on which their relationship was floundering were as naked as their bodies.

  When she had looked at the number on the pager’s digital display, Fey knew the ongoing argument with Jake would have to wait. It wouldn’t go away, not until they had finished tearing each other apart, but it would wait.

  For months Jake had been pressing Fey for more commitment than she was willing to give. With three marriages behind her, Fey was never going to place herself in the same situation again.

  While Jake had not had the political strength to win election as the District Attorney during the past year, he was still considered a fast-rising star. Political clout was again amassing behind him, but there was much maneuvering ahead. Jake and Fey had been lovers for several years, but he now needed the respectability of marriage for the sake of political correctness.

  Fey didn’t think it was a good enough reason to place herself back into indenture. There was no doubt Jake loved her – as she loved him – but love wasn’t enough for Fey.

  Marriage was about constant compromise, not love, and Fey was no longer willing to compromise. She had achieved her own autonomy. She didn’t need Jake, or anyone else, to make her complete. Nor was she going to simply be a part of someone else’s life puzzle.

  While Fey called the station Watch Commander, Jake climbed into his clothes, and left without another word. Fey kept her naked back turned while she talked on the phone, purposely keeping the conversation going until Jake was gone.

  When she heard the slam of her front door, Fey told the Watch Commander, Terry Gillette, she was on her way in. She hung up the phone and breathed a sigh of relief. To her mind, getting called out in the middle of the night was preferable to dealing with a long term relationship crumbling around her shoulders.

  Twenty minutes later, she was on her way to the West Los Angeles Area station.

  Chapter 2

  Monk Lawson sat down at his desk, the right edge butting against the front edge of Fey’s. “What’s the scoop?” Monk asked. “All Gillette told me was to get here fast because you were on the warpath.”

  “Warpath is too polite,” Fey shook her head. “He probably said, she’s on the rag, so get your black ass to the station and deal with her.”

  Monk’s grin displayed a perfect row of small ivories. “Close. He actually said, how can you trust something that bleeds for seven days and doesn’t die. You think we should sue him for racial prejudice and sexism?”

  “Too easy. Be like shooting cows with a sniper scope. Let’s take our frustrations out on a suspect. We may even solve a crime.”

  “As long as it doesn’t interfere with shuffling paperwork,” Monk said.

  Their banter stopped when two uniformed officers entered with a tall, lanky, handcuffed prisoner between them.

  Fey placed the suspect’s age between sixteen and eighteen. Long, dirty, blond hair hung limp around his acne-scarred face. He wore a beat-up black leather jacket with metal studs over a once white t-shirt, greasy jeans, and motorcycle boots.

  Dick Morrison, the senior uniform officer, held a white motorcycle helmet Fey figured belonged to the suspects outfit.

  “Where do you want him?” Morrison asked. He shifted hands with the motorcycle helmet. Fey had known Dick for a long time and admired his consistent record of outstanding self-initiated arrests. He was the type of officer who had an instinct for being at the right place at the right time. He had over twenty-five years on the job, most of them spent working PM Watch patrol.

  John Bassett, the officer with Morrison, was the latest of the uncountable rookies Morrison had trained to stay alive on the street.

  “Stick him in an interview room, Dick,” Fey said. “I heard you had to take him to the ER.”

  “Santa Monica Hospital. Same place we took the victim.”

  Morrison pushed hair away from the suspect’s face. A stretch of road rash ran down from the left ear to jaw line. “Twenty-two stitches,” Morrison said, pointing to the jagged cut over the suspect’s left eyebrow. “Laid his bike down trying to get away.”

  “I wasn’t trying to get away,
” the suspect said. “I didn’t know you were behind me.”

  “Then you’re blind and deaf as well as stupid and guilty,” Morrison said. “Come on.” He took hold of the suspect’s arm, escorting him to the interrogation room.

  “Take the cuffs off when you put him inside. Then lock the door on your way out – let him marinate.” Fey called after him.

  After the suspect had disappeared into the interview room, Monk again asked, “What’s the situation?”

  Fey took a sip of too hot coffee. “Morrison and his partner think this guy is a rape suspect. Morrison asked for detectives to interrogate.”

  “We get the call-out because Hop-Along is on vacation?”

  Max Cassidy, otherwise known as Hop-Along, was assigned to Fey as the squad’s sex crimes investigator.