The East Avenue Murders (The Maude Rogers Crime Novels Book 1) (23 page)

“Giselle, are you in the house?” Joe yelled. “Giselle Farouk, open the door please. Your son is
concerned about your welfare.”

Turning his eyes to the uniformed officers, Joe nodded toward the back of the house and one of them broke away and stayed low under the windows, making for the back door. Joe yelled again, this time he got closer to the door, staying behind the solid barrier that the outside wall presented.

Silence greeted them, the kind of quiet that bodes no good. Joe wasted no more time. Grabbing the door knob he pushed inward, creating an opening. There was neither movement nor the sound of voices inside, just the mewling of a kitten somewhere in the house. Joe entered the place with his weapon ready, using the training he had practiced many times in the academy. Somehow the real thing felt different, frightening, the knowledge that someone could be pointing a weapon at his head making him afraid, yet he was determined to plunge headlong into the unknown.

The house was large, the front entry hallway leading into a great room where the family would gather, its array of couches and chairs presenting a warm welcome to guests. There was blood on the floor; a small puddle down the hall and several drops leading into a
nother large room. The dark red drops on the grouted tile were smeared by drag marks into the dining room where massive furniture was prepared to seat a small army.

In one of the
heavy chairs pulled away from the table sat Giselle Farouk, her head turned to one side. Dried rivulets of blood streaked the side of her face, her left ear was slashed and a large gash was cut into her left foot. She was bleeding from both cuts. A dull expression was on the woman’s face as she pointed toward the small breakfast nook across the wide hall, adjacent to the kitchen.

The officers, including Detective Joe Allen, moved with stealth toward the eating
area with its cheerful yellow-curtained window. On a cushioned bench seat surrounding the highly-shined plank board table lay Medawa Farouk, his head bashed in above the eyebrows. A large aluminum baseball bat lay nearby on the floor, the dent in the metal coated with dried blood.

One of the officers approached Farouk and checked for a pulse.
He shook his head at Joe. No pulse.

“Don’t touch anything.” Joe said then turned and made his way
back to Giselle. He stared at her for a minute.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” he asked. “You didn’t have to come here by yourself.”

“This is the bracelet,” she said, ignoring the question. She extended a hand that held a bloody scarf. “I found it in his sock drawer. I have not touched it since the woman stole it from the counter. Medawa returned home early and found me in the bedroom. I ran from him, but he grabbed Rashad’s baseball bat and came for me, wanting the bracelet that I had wrapped in my scarf. He swung the bat at me, but he missed, and it flew away from him into the kitchen.

“
Again I ran away. Medawa cursed and followed me, chasing me into the kitchen. He drew a knife from the drawer and cut my ear before I could get away. Quickly I picked up the bat from the floor and when he again came at me, I swung the bat with all my strength.

“
When the bat hit him in the head, Medawa fell to the floor, reaching again for me with the knife. My foot was there and he cut me but I got away and fell onto my side. My husband then crawled to the bench and pulled himself there to lie down. He was cursing me all the time. I became weak and stayed on the floor. Later I woke from being unconscious and tried to walk, but I could not pick up my foot. I tried to crawl to the front door but it was too far. Here is where I came to sit and pray. I thought Medawa would get up from the bench and kill me. I have waited here for him, praying that he would not wish to kill me for our children’s sake.”

Joe continued staring at the woman, wishing there was something he could say that would make it alright.

“Your children are taking a taxi to their grandmother’s and you need to go to the hospital. Afterwards we’ll talk about what happened. I’ll take the bracelet and see if we can get fingerprints from it. I’m really sorry Giselle.” Joe said helplessly.

The crew from the lab showed up shortly afterward and Joe watched the ambulance leave with the two bodies, one alive and one dead
-the dissolution of a marriage.

“I’m beat.” he told the officers there. “I’m going home.
Tomorrow is soon enough to think about this. Then, as an afterthought, “Who’s going to the hospital with her? Ask your sergeant. When you find out, have him call me at home. I need to know when to be in court for the inquest.”

Unlike Joe’s trip from Philadelphia back to Madison, Maude had someone to meet her flight when she came off the plane. Her partner was standing there, looking good, green eyes twinkling and a big smile on his face. She was really glad for a minute that no one else had been with her in George Grimble’s office. Never would have lived that one down. Joe had just enough foolishness in him that he would have used Grimble’s flirtation to get her goat for a long time. As it was, she was going to catch he
ck about Bill Page. If not today, then another day.

After she had left
the lawyer’s office, Maude had called Joe and talked to him about her discoveries in Oklahoma and he brought her up to date on the Diane Jones murder. Maude heard the guilt in his voice when he talked about Giselle Farouk, but she knew enough about men to listen and not make much of it. Instead, she congratulated him on his acute insight, his follow-up at the Farouk house, and the delicate line that he managed to walk finding Diane Jones’ killer. She reminded him that their job was to get closure for the victim’s families and sometimes other people made bad decisions that they had to live or die with. Joe listened to what she said and sighed.

“Thanks, partne
r. That’s what I needed to hear,” Joe had said.

“No problem,
” Maude had told him. “I’m glad to oblige.”

The trip the next morning from the airport to the
Cop Shop was strange for Maude with Joe driving her old assigned car. Seemed out of place for her to be sitting anywhere but the driver’s seat. Taking advantage of the freedom to sit, Maude pulled out one of her unfiltereds and lit up, savoring the smoke, her first cigarette in hours. She missed the old days when she could smoke on any public transportation, but with the new rules about smoking, most were smoke-free.

“Back to Dawson,” she said after a few drags, “Lieutenant Patterson may throw a fit but we have to go to Phoenix to get our man. Da
wson’s a murderer and I don’t believe for a minute that it’s going to be a cakewalk. He’ll make it as hard for us as possible. We’ll need to leave as soon as we can get packed. He has some kind of life there, and we need to know what he does besides killing and maiming people or peddling toilets and sinks.

“Okay Maude, I can get all of my reports done fast so I’m not the hold up in leaving. And you
aren’t
leaving me and going alone. That guy may be fixated on you, but I think he will kill you as quickly as he has anyone else if he knows you’re on his trail. You told me that ego is usually what traps serial killers-let’s hope he believes he can’t be caught. Should we call Phoenix PD and get them involved?” Joe asked, opening his window to get rid of the smoke from Maude’s cigarette.

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head, “
We’ll call Phoenix when we get there, and they might give us some help, but no sense in calling too early. They’ll want the collar if Dawson is in their town. Another thing to remember is this perp may have a large arsenal because guns and knives seem to be available to him when he needs them. If he operates out of a house, then he will have it protected and we could be easily picked off.” Maude continued thoughtfully, “I hope to live another day or two, at least long enough to retire from chasing piss ants who want to turn the world inside out and make it to their liking.”

“What do you intend to do when you retire, partner, move to Philly?” Joe asked with a straight face. “I know you made a new friend
out there.”

“You want to get that cute nose pulled off
from sticking it in my business; you’re on the right track.” Maude said. She turned to look out the window, extinguishing her butt in an empty soda bottle that had been left on the floor of the county car. “Besides, I kind of liked Philly.” she added.

They rode in silence for the next few minutes, each thinking about the ordeal to come. Maude had difficulty believing that her nemesis from Chicago had been identified
, and was on the way to being caught. Joe was thinking about his kids, hoping the trip out of town didn’t cause him to miss seeing them when Sheila arrived in Madison.

“Say Maude,” Joe ventured, “Why do you think Dawson kill
s women? You know, like the ones on East Avenue.”

“I
think he likes controlling them.” she said thoughtfully, “I think he loves them, loves watching them beg
him
for their lives. I don’t think he intends for them to die, but the damage he inflicts when he removes their body parts causes death. The mutilation of their breasts must have some significance, but we may never know what it is. Maybe a love-hate thing, or bad memories.

When he was a kid, Bobby Dawson was abused, I’m convinced of it, and I believe it was his mother who did it. All this psycho
stuff resulting from that has to be explained by someone smarter than me. What bothers me is where I come in. He wants to impress me, maybe wants my approval. I don’t know why. Three months, that’s all I spent with him. Maybe he loved me as kids do, just because.”

“I guess we’ll find out soon if any of that is true,” Joe said.

James Patterson was on a roll. His two detectives, Eberhart and Wheeler
, had busted a dope ring downtown while they were looking for a witness to another crime. The bust came by accident when the two detectives opened the door to an empty warehouse and surprised four Mexican nationals who were busy sorting packages of marijuana.

The four guys
began running, but Eberhart caught up with one of the slow ones, and got the story out of him. The guy said he didn’t speak English, but Eberhart knew some Spanish words and managed to figure out that the dope had come in the night before. Some local dealers had paid up front and were waiting for the shipment.

Detectives Eberhart and Wheeler had called the drug enforcement cops from the state and through their combined efforts with Madison’s criminal investigation unit, a big group of local dealers were now in the slammer. Patterson had been patted on the back by the Captain for his detective’s lucky find. He was definitely riding high. The business with the pawn shop owner and his wife was about to get closed out, so maybe Patterson might go to the head of the line for a Captain’s position down the road. Never hurt to move up in the Police Department.

The lieutenant’s office was quiet, people out taking care of business. Detective Rogers was due in soon and so was her partner, Joe Allen. Patterson had a fair streak in him even though sometimes all the political horse hockey, as he thought of it, put undue pressure on him to look the other way when one of his detectives was being set up by the brass.

Patterson didn’t know what had caused Rogers to be at the top of Captain Power
’s hit list, but it was getting old, the crap they did to her. Like the beater car she had to drive, and the latest thing, giving her a partner who had no experience in Homicide. Powers wanted her to quit and leave his department, but there were too many laws against overt firings of minority officers. So the Captain was subtle, insisting that Patterson give her the worst details whenever he could.

Most of the time Patterson could avoid helping Powers vendetta against Maude, but the woman had plenty of grounds for a harassment suit against them if she wanted to go that path.
The business with the warrant-serve on East Avenue; now, that was a pure case of it. The address was a drug place as bad as it gets. Just so happens she found bodies there. Patterson knew that Maude was a darn good detective, but no amount of talking convinced the Captain. He seemed dead set against her. 

Looking up from the desk, Patterson saw the two detectives coming in the door. He couldn’t help but admire Maude Rogers. She was a class act, never afraid to say what was on her mind, but no whiner. She also worked smarter than anyone he knew.

“Detectives,” the lieutenant said, “what have you got for me?”

“We located him and need to go get him.” Maude said, plopping d
own in one of the office chairs.

“What, another trip?” Patterson
asked. “The city manager is going to cut my balls off when he gets the bills for all this.”

“Yeah, I know,” Maude said
gloomily. “But we got no choice Boss. He’s hiding out in Phoenix and we have to get him before he kills someone else.”

“Tell me why we d
on’t turn this over to the Feds,” Patterson knew Maude’s reasons, but wanted to hear it from her.

“The
y would be grateful to take the case from us now that we have identified the perp. Forget that we have time and city money invested in this, you’ll get nothing from them except a big kiss-off when they say “we’ll take it from here”. They won’t even keep us in the loop, just feed our glorious Captain some crumbs to make him feel important and snub their noses at our department.”

“Can we get this done in-house?” Patterson asked quietly.

About that time Joe spoke up, “Lieutenant, my partner is a key player in this maniac’s plans. If we give this case away, the perp may go underground and we’ll be seeing his work next month, or next year. Fact is from what I know of this type of killer,
they
don’t stop. They are
stopped!
I know I’m a rookie, compared to you and to Maude, but some of my time in CID was studying his kind of criminal. One of the places I hung out was in the Forensics of Aberrant Behavior. I learned a few things.
And Boss, from what I have seen of this guy’s work, he’s just getting started.”

Patterson chewed his lip for a minute. “Okay,” he said, “but you need help. I’ll see if I can pull some strings with Phoenix PD and get some of their people lined up. We helped them a few months back when they had to come here to pick up some escaped convicts
from their jail. Our guys did a lot of the work getting the cons back behind bars. We have some jurisdiction issues already with this guy. He’s going to wear out his tail if we catch him, going back and forth to court in all the cities where he committed crimes.”

“With any luck, he won’t ever make it to court.” Maude said briefly.

“Detective,” the lieutenant answered, “I didn’t hear you say that, and I don’t want to not hear you say that again. Get my meaning?”

“Yeah, I got it.
We’ll bring him in if it’s at all possible.” Maude nodded.

“Okay,
now get going. Catch this peckerwood,” Patterson said, dismissing the two detectives before he changed his mind. “But if you can’t do the job,” he added, “we
are
calling the Feds.”

Watching Maude and
Joe make the arrangements to fly to Phoenix, James Patterson thought about Captain Powers and the stuff he had forced on Maude. This was her chance to prove that she was better than all the men who wanted her badge, and her lieutenant wasn’t going to stand in the way.

Before leaving town, Maude had a duty to perform which involved a trip across town to the jail.
She needed to interview the drug dealer, ‘Boy’ Parker. He was being held in lock-up on charges of Aggravated Assault on a Police Officer and Possession of Illegal Drugs. Maude wanted to talk to Boy, hoping to get information from him about what he saw in the East Avenue building. She believed Boy might have witnessed something that could be used as evidence against Robert Dawson. There was also the kid Maurice and his family. She needed to know what happened to them.

The long jail corridor where the more dangerous criminals were kept was in a three
-tiered brown building with a few bullet-proof windows covered with bars. Prisoners had to have a certain amount of sunlight every day and the windows allowed natural light inside the building. Because Boy was charged with assaulting two police officers, he got the cook’s tour of the brown building.

Maude had prior knowledge of Boy Parker, from three different times she had busted him with
a dimes worth of rock cocaine. Minor charges, but given enough time he would rack up the bitch, or an automatic twenty five years in state prison. Skinny drug pushers didn’t like going to state because they weren’t treated well by those hulks who spent most hours of their day building muscle mass that made them king of the yard. Boy would become Girl in state prison.

“Boy, what the heck did you think you were doing, hitting me with a sap? You cockroach. You owe me plenty for that. Whatever they do to you is not enough.” Maude said, sitting across the table from the long legged man that Maurice had no doubt seen. “Do you have a brown hat?”

“Why do you want to know?
” the convict asked suspiciously

“Just answer my question be
fore I put a knot on your head. You stinking slime. What if you’d have given me a concussion? By the way, I have my phone’s recorder going so you better not lie.” Maude was acting a whole lot madder than she really felt. “I’m going to testify against you and see that you get the max sentence. Piece of no good human flesh, hitting an old lady when she wasn’t looking.”

“I’m sorry Detective Rogers. I wasn’t th
inking. Didn’t mean to hurt you,” Boy said, hanging his head.

“Bull
corn, you meant to knock me out. And you did. I bled for a week from behind my ear,” Maude said, the lie coming easy. “Anyway, Boy, answer my question. Do you have a brown hat?”