Ray looked over at Tony. He hadn’t fired the shot. Tony looked to the right over Ray’s shoulder.
Gary Hewes leaned into the doorway, a smoking rifle still to his shoulder, held down, pointed toward the floor at an angle. He was wearing the same limp pajamas. He also wore a smug satisfied smile. Tony whipped the pistol in his direction, took stance and aim.
“Drop the rifle!”
“Right fucking now!” Ray’s pistol was leveled too, his command voice as loud as the rifle shot.
“Okay. Okay.” Gary Hewes staggered slightly in the doorway and leaned the rifle against the wall. “Got the bastard, though. Got him.” He doubled over into a fit of coughing.
“On the floor!” Ray boomed, moving toward Hewes, pistol in his right hand, fishing under the back of his jacket with his left.
“What?” Hewes, still hacking, looked up at Ray.
Karen crawled over to Tony and was clutching his legs, smearing Stuckey’s blood and brain matter on them, still sobbing and mewling.
“On the floor! He dropped the knife you stupid motherfucker. On the floor!” Hewes dropped to his knees, uncomprehending. Ray forced him the rest of the way down, slammed his cheek into the cold hard tile and wrenched his hands behind him. “He dropped the knife.” Ray ratcheted the cuffs tight.
The front door crashed inward, ram battered open. Picture frames fell to the floor amid wood shards and splinters. Black clad figures poured in, more SWAT officers edged in the back door, automatic weapons tracked right and left, searching for a target.
“Clear!” Ray’s voice boomed again, waving them off.
“Clear! It’s all clear!” Tony shouted.
“What a fucking mess.” The captain was shaking his head, taking in the body on the floor, the blood, and the coughing figure handcuffed on the other side of the kitchen island. He ordered the SWAT team out, dodged the body and pooling blood, shrugged off the cloying hysterical woman and went over to Ray and Tony who were standing over Gary Hewes.
“What happened? You guys do that?” He jerked a thumb towards Stuckey’s body.
“No.”
“You arresting this guy?” The captain was looking down at Gary Hewes. Ray nodded. “What charge?”
“Let’s start with murder.”
“Murder?” Gary Hewes twisted on the floor, trying to get a look at the men standing over him. “Are you fucking nuts? The guy was going to kill my wife, for chrissakes.” The captain looked at Ray.
“We had it under control, Cap. Stuckey, that’s Stuckey over there, he’d dropped the knife. He wanted to talk. He was surrendering.” Ray’s breathing was deep with anger, controlled so the rage he felt didn’t complicate the situation any further.
Paramedics were ministering to Karen, one trying to calm her, the other looking for a wound. Karen, drenched in Sean Stuckey’s blood, was hysterical. Tony hauled Gary Hewes to his feet.
“Then this guy, the husband, lets loose with the deer rifle.” Ray pointed to the scoped long gun leaning against the wall.
“He was gonna kill her. I didn’t know he dropped the knife.”
“Captain, we’re going to have to sedate this woman to transport her.”
Karen struggled against the paramedics’ grasp. Her wails cast an eerie desperate pall over the scene. The captain nodded.
“How did you know he even had a knife?” Tony had a grip on Hewes’ arm and bodily turned him toward the body on the floor. “They were behind the counters. You couldn’t see them from the dining room. How did you know he had a fucking knife?” Hewes tried to turn away from Stuckey’s ruined body. Tony didn’t let him.
“I saw it, okay. And he said it.” Hewes jerked his head toward Ray.
“Not okay. How long were you out there?”
“De Luca, stand down.” The captain glanced around the kitchen. Karen Hewes was quieting, the sedative slowly taking hold. “Let’s take this party downtown, gentlemen. You’re arresting this guy, right?” Ray nodded. “Then we need to get him booked and Mirandized. Play by the rules.”
“How long were you out there, Gary? What did you hear?”
“I said stand down!” The captain’s face reddened. He ordered Ray and Tony out of the kitchen, told them to send a uniform in to collect the prisoner. His experienced eye didn’t see Hewes going down for murder, but he wasn’t going to let technicalities screw things up.
On the way out of the door Ray leaned over close to Tony’s ear.
“Nice try, partner.”
Chapter 32
Ray, Tony, and Carol stood shoulder to shoulder looking over the throng. Deanna Fredrickson’s funeral drew hundreds of people who wanted to pay their respects to the woman who had touched so many lives, people from the hospital and the library board, the soup kitchen at the homeless shelter and even some gym rats.
The ‘Go Girls’, all dressed in somber mournful black, clustered just behind the family. They whispered and daubed tissues, holding onto each other, not wanting to say goodbye to their friend and sister. Erika and Roxy were openly crying, their heads pressed together, arms around each other.
The family stood close together, holding hands, looking up at the polished wooden casket on the altar, closed now, with a large portrait of Deanna facing the gathered host. Tony realized they hadn’t seen or talked to Scott Fredrickson in several days. He didn’t look much better than the last time they’d met, still gray skinned and red eyed.
David Hong, his toothy smile terribly out of place in the sea of sadness, waved at Tony from across the cathedral. He and Hank Swenson were near the back of the church. Tony, stone faced, nodded in reply.
Missing from the scene were Karen and Gary Hewes. Deanna’s best friend was sedated at Regions hospital; still, according to reports, prone to frenzied episodes of screeching and wailing when the drugs wore down. Physically she was fine. Mentally? Ray suspected there was more in play than her recent ordeal but kept his misgivings close for the time being.
Gary Hewes was in jail, but not for long. His lawyers were massaging the judge and the DA’s office and the media for his release. The papers and the TV, reporting on information from Hewes’ attorney and ‘sources close to the investigation’ were hailing his desperate heroic measures in saving his wife from the knife wielding psychopath who was the prime suspect in the Deanna Fredrickson murder investigation.
The three detectives standing together in respectful silence were the investigation, not just ‘close to it’, and not one of them had given the media so much as a crumb.
Tony basked in the praise and congratulations of his fellow officers for closing his first murder in spectacular fashion. Six-plus years on the street and not once had he made the front page of the Trib or the Pioneer Press. They slapped his back and bought him drinks at The Red Door and teased about him being a super sleuth. He’d wallowed in it until Ray had a word with him.
It wasn’t until the casket had been lowered into the grave and the crowd departed that Ray could have a moment with Lakisha. At first Tony held back, intending to give his partner some privacy, but Ray motioned for him to join him.
“Tough day,” Ray said to Lakisha. He had his hands in his overcoat pockets. Lakisha stood close and laid her head on his chest, clutching her own coat closed tight against the cold breath of October’s gray finale. “How you holdin’ up?”
“I’m fine. I think I’m okay.” Ray draped a comforting arm across her shoulder. Lakisha looked up at him, at his solemn face, at his eyes looking off over the cemetery. Tony thought they looked good together and hoped Mr. Marland would stay wherever the hell he was for a long time.
“Is it true what the papers say?” she asked. “That young man Gary shot, did he murder Dee?”
“That’s what a lot of people think. What do you think, Tony?”