The Detective's Curse

I was in the bathroom shaving the next morning.....I was thinking about this case....So far I had done as much as the original case Detective on the case and had discovered about as much as he had...which was nothing...

I heard Sepia stirring around downstairs....I smelled the aroma of a hot pot of coffee...I smelled sausages cooking in a frying pan and I heard her cracking eggs and stirring them in a bowl....I heard what sounded like her dicing green, red and yellow peppers and onions on a cutting board...She was making a western omelet for us....

If she was doing this kind of cooking this morning...It meant that she wasn't working today...I smiled..She and Bonita had just closed a deal on a house last week and both women had been pretty exhausted...They had had to deal with a pretty exhausting client from what they told me..

I finished shaving...brushed my teeth and put on my bathrobe.....I wasn't going to work either...Not at Morris Communications today....I had called Harry Charles and Sheila Jackson...I had no major meetings or business to attend to today...

Good...That gave me time to work on this case...

I walked downstairs and found Sepia in the kitchen in her matching white terry cloth bathrobe...six month's pregnant and still looking good...I kissed the back of her neck and turned her toward me and began kissing her right there in the kitchen...

"Ummmm, you better watch it now...You're going to start something we might not be able to finish.." she said softly as she continued to kiss me..

"You always say that.."I said..slowly easing out of her embrace...

"So what are you doing today?" she asked...

"Got to look up this Nate Deal guy.." I said.

"I suppose I can't come with huh?" she asked..

"No, not on this one..." I said....

I got dressed and put on my kevlar vest and trauma plate under my suit and got my .22 and ankle holster and my .38 smokeless...I wasn't taking any chances...

II-

Nathaniel Deal was a whole notha matter...I did some looking into his background...Born in New York City,educated in the New York City public schools until the 11th grade when he dropped out.. This guy had 25 arrests and that was just in New York City, before his 18th birthday...Juvenile detention...the works...
Burglary ,Armed Robbery, Grand Theft Larceny...Possession with intent to deliver, controlled substances...Assault...He was major..


He moved to Newark,New Jersey where he did two years for a heist and then was paroled...He was relatively clean until he did a federal bid for this armed truck heist...His partner or alleged partner..a woman!!
Lisa Crawley...

She was never charged and of course, when the FBI found him...He had 1.5 million on him in plastic trash can bags in his apartment....His car and the gun used in the hold up in which a guard was shot was never recovered....Neither was his partner who was of course murdered!!!

By the time her body was discovered...He was safely behind bars doing a dime in the Fed...He was paroled after five years....I was surprised that Detective Dominic Evans didn't interview him either before he got popped for the robbery or after he was paroled...

I called the Department of Public records in New York City and got them to fax me Nathaniel Deal's birth certificate and any medical records they had...which wasn't much!...

I next called the U.S. Customs house and got them to fax me Nathaniel Deal's Passport information...That gave me an address which I went to, only to find that this place was abandoned and that five different families had lived in this house since then...This meant that old Nate hadn't left the country anytime soon..I didn't suspect that he had...

I had a social security number and with that I got access to his bank account and home addresses...This led me ,Kool Kat,Clerow and Owen Todd to several different places...None that he had lived in recently and to about ten different straight jobs the man had held...the last one being last year...

His cell mate was a bust...I found his last known address....He was dead!  He had been killed during a hold up two years ago..This case was full of dead ends!

I visited several more addresses and several old girlfriends.. and I got lucky...I found an address...I also found a cell phone number...I put Peeping Tom on that....He had equipment from his days in the CIA that could triangulate his calls and find the tower and the area his calls were originating from...This jived with the address I had...This meant I wouldn't be going on a wild goose chase this time.

III-

"Kevin, I tell you...You take me to the nicest places.." laughed Kool Kat as we entered a housing project highrise......

"Oh come on Kools this aint so bad..." I laughed as we got on the elevator...Lockpick Johnson was with us..Clerow and Owen Todd were downstairs as lookouts...

"Yeah? I feel like I'm on Good Times...." he laughed as we approached the apartment of Nathaniel Deal...

I knocked on the door...There was no answer...and in fact...the door was ajar!

"Ohhh Ohhh, this don't look good Kev." said Lockpick Johnson...

Kool Kat pushed the door open and we both walked in...It smelled like hell...I had smelled this before...Like a decomposing body...

The television was on...It was blasting....and so was the radio....There was someone sitting on the couch in the living room with their back to us...

''Yo man, your door was open..are you Nathaniel Deal?" I said.

There was no answer....

"Kools, turn on a light." I said...

Kool Kat snapped on a light...and we saw a pool of blood by the couch...We walked around and there sitting on the couch with a neat hole in the middle of his forehead was Nathaniel Deal...he was very, very dead!!!!

"Oh Hell!" said Kool Kat...

"Somebody didn't want me to talk to him." I mused.

"Somebody made damn sure of that." said Kool Kat..

"You guys go on, get out of here....I'm calling the cops." I said.

IV-

Sometime later, the police showed up and the body was being removed from the highrise.....

Lt. Sissy Van Buren, Detectives Carlotta Rodriguez-Wallace, James "Jimmy"Barlow and Tyriq Pile were at the scene with uniformed policemen, crime scene investigators and photographers.....

"This was the guy who Lisa Crawley came here to Philly to meet up with after the Armored Car Heist.." I said.

"Nathaniel Deal...Yeah...He did a bid in the fed...but he got paroled and been clean for the past four years
Kev." said Tyriq...

"I wanted to interview him about Lisa Crawley....Her murder!! He was locked up by the time her body was found and you guys never found the rest of the money in that heist....I never got a chance to talk to him...I kind of liked him for the murder."I said.

"That was Dominic Evans unsolved case Rico....He never thought to interview this guy while he was in custody and never followed up once he was out." said Carlotta with consternation.

"Figures...If it was Dom's case...He dropped the ball on something..."said Tyriq..

"Dom? Dominic Evans?? We popped him last year for murder...I remember that prick when I was a uniformed cop." said Jimmy...

"So this kind of stalls your investigation of the Lisa Crawley murder doesn't it?" asked Sissy...

"Yeah in a big way." I said.

Just then, Detective "Duke" Baylor and his foxy wife, Forensic Investigator ,Dr. Hazel Hunter-Baylor appeared , flanked by three uniformed policemen...

"Kevin....We found an interesting car parked in the back.... A 1976 Ford Torino...The Elite...What's interesting about it is ,it was used in that Armored car heist in Newark..I ran the tags...That's the car the FBI couldn't find and that Deal claimed was stolen from him" he said.

''What?" I said.

"Judging by lividity...I'd say he's been dead for about 24 hours...How long were you searching for him?" asked Hazel...

"About two days."I said.

"You tell anybody you were looking for him?" asked Sissy...

"I talked to hundreds of people..I just found him tonight...and he was dead."I said.

"We recovered a bullet from his forehead."said Carlotta....

"It looks old, rusty."said Tyriq....

"I'm going to send it to the FBI lab and see what they say." said Hazel...

''Let me see that car..." I said.

The seven of us went in the back alley and looked at the car...I felt it...

"It's still hot...which means it was just bought here." I said...I looked up at the camera....."And our killer is probably on film and doesn't know it..."I said.

 Tyriq smiled..."That means it was just dropped off here." he said..motioning to a CSI guy to dust for prints.

 Jimmy went inside the car...He had on Nylon gloves and found a mirror...Carlotta smiled and put the mirror in the bag...

''We'll check this mirror for prints...Whoever was in this car was female." she said.

"What makes you think that Chica?" asked Sissy.

''Smell...This is high line perfume.."she said.

"And I don't know a woman alive who doesn't check her make up before she gets out of a car." I said.

Sissy smiled and shook her head,So did Carlotta...

"Stop by the office tomorrow Kevin...We just might have something for you.." she said.

"I think I know who our killer is...This is all making sense now...It was right there all the time..." I said.

"That's called the Detectives curse Kev" said Duke...

"The Detective's curse?" I asked.

''Yeah Kev...The clue, the answer was right in front of my nose." said Tyriq.

"While I was looking everywhere else....."laughed Sissy, finishing their sentence...

Carlotta laughed-"That was Dominic Evans all over." she said.

We all shared a laugh at that!

CONCLUSION NEXT