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  DEATH HAMPTON

  Introducing Detective Jericho

  Walter Marks

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Top Tier Lit

  New York, NY

  (c)2014

  All rights reserved.

  Also by Walter Marks

  Dangerous Behavior

  The Battle of Jericho (Coming Soon)

  For Joan,

  my love, my mate, my helpmate.

  “Fear death by water.”

  - T.S. Eliot “The Wasteland

  CHAPTER 1

  Midnight. The intruder tried the sliding glass door on the deck of the beach house. It was open.

  How accommodating of her, he thought.

  He wore dark glasses over a stocking mask. His squashed nose and flattened ears made him look like a being from outer space. His tongue darted across his lips, exposed by a hole in the stocking. He had cut the hole to make breathing easier, and because he liked to use his mouth on them.

  He stepped inside. In the bright moonlight shining through an angled bay window, he found his way easily. He could see, up a flight of stairs, a slant of light coming from the door of her bedroom. He took out his automatic pistol. What he liked about the gun was that it forced instant compliance; no screams, no arguments.

  As he climbed the stairs he could hear recorded string quartet music through her door — Mozart or Haydn, he could never tell the damn difference.

  The top step creaked loudly and he froze, alert to any sound. Satisfied he hadn’t lost the element of surprise, he moved forward.

  The woman was lying on a pinewood bed, reading Vanity Fair by the light of a bedside lamp. Its soft pink bulb made her look like a shining angel — no, more like the Good Fairy, with long blond hair, and an air of sweetness radiating from her lovely face.

  Now for the part he loved best. The entrance.

  “Don’t move and don’t make a sound.”

  She looked up and her mouth fell open.

  “I will not shoot you if you do what I say. Disobey me and you’re dead. Nod your head if you understand.”

  The woman’s head moved up and down like a bobble head doll. Her eyes widened as he took out two sets of handcuffs.

  “My husband will be — ”

  “I told you to shut up. Your husband flew into the city this afternoon. I saw him get on the plane.”

  The intruder enjoyed her look of dismay. He could read her mind — My God. He’s planned all this in advance. He’s going to do whatever he wants. Then he’ll kill me. Maybe — maybe if I just cooperate, he’ll let me live. That’s my only hope. Try to play along, give in. Survive.

  “All right, Susannah, or perhaps I should say, um, Sweetie, since we’ll soon be on intimate terms — ”

  Jesus, he even knows my name.

  “Please put your hands up on either side of the headboard. That’s good, Sweetie.”

  He handcuffed Susannah’s wrists to the bed, just below the wooden ball finials. She looked perfect, her arms stretched out like a pitiful supplicant.

  He placed his gun on a bureau. From his pocket he pulled out a roll of duct tape, slipped it over his index finger, and twirled it.

  “I prefer not to gag you,” he said, “because what I’m about to do may provoke groans of pleasure, which I would enjoy hearing. But scream for help and you will suffer in ways you cannot imagine. Clear?”

  Susannah nodded.

  “Let’s dispense with this fiddle music,’” he said, turning off the CD player near her bed.

  The intruder took hold of the summer-weight cotton quilt and slowly pulled it off her. She was naked except for her rose-patterned white panties. She had a dancer’s body; small breasts, muscled belly, narrow hips, and long, elegant legs suggesting both grace and power.

  He looked at her with admiration, then hooked his fingers over the top of her panties.

  “Raise up,” he said. “...Do it!”

  Hesitantly she lifted her pelvis so he could maneuver the panties under her buttocks and down over her hips.

  He went to the foot of the bed and spread apart Susannah’s tense but unresisting thighs.

  Bending over, he stuck out his tongue and formed it into a delicate point.

  She shuddered and moaned in disgust.

  Then he began.

  CHAPTER 2

  Burton Lloyd Cascadden whipped his fiberglass fishing rod, sending the red/yellow Gotcha jig out two hundred feet, splashing into the roiling surf. The powerful rip current seized the lure, and the rod bent as if a fifty-pound striper had taken the hook. He let the monofilament play out till it slackened, then he reeled it in with short jerks, hoping some predator fish would mistake the jig for a crippled herring. He’d been at it for two futile hours.

  Burt was a big man, with a muscular build and a large belly which was hard to the touch, indicating dangerous visceral fat. But because it was hard, Burt considered it manly. His eyes, hidden by sunglasses, were bloodshot. He had a blunt nose and full lips, which would’ve been called bee-stung, were he a woman.

  Burt wore a black baseball hat, a black Polo shirt, and spandex swimming briefs, which bulged at the crotch. He was proud of his package, but that pride was tempered by his dirty little secret; his equipment was dysfunctional. He’d tried the little blue pills, but all he got was splitting headaches and bluish vision. The only way Burt could achieve tumescence was by playing his Games.

  But recently even the Games weren’t working. Last night, he’d come up with a new, more intense one — “The Intruder”. He was sure it would do the trick. Everything started out fine. His heart pounding with excitement as he acted out the scenario — pulling on the stocking mask, breaking into the house, surprising his victim and watching her face as she confronted her deepest fear — violation by a depraved sex fiend.

  But then it happened — he got the feeling that Susannah was acting. Just acting. And all his Games depended on her creating a reality for him. She was supposed to moan with pleasure. But last night — she seemed to be moaning out of annoyance. That totally killed his hard-on.

  Burt had gotten really pissed off, but it was late and he was too tired to start yelling and screaming. So he un-cuffed her and went to his own bedroom, hoping to get some sleep. But angst over his sexual failure and a problematic business deal kept his mind racing, and he tossed and turned till dawn.

  When Burt got up he knew one thing: Susannah was turning into what all women eventually became — a hostile bitch.

  He was starting to feel unstable again. He recognized the signs. A shrink once suggested the hallucinogens he’d done in his twenties, when he’d run off to India, had produced a chronic chemical imbalance in his brain. But Burt knew the real cause of his distress. From now on his wife was going to have to shape up. Or else.

  Susannah Cascadden was in the kitchen making coffee. Images of last night blazed in her mind; Burt in his stocking mask, his mouth on her, his gross body, her revulsion and shame at participating in this new humiliating fantasy.

  In a rage she pushed down hard on the plunger of the French press. It resisted, then shot to the bottom of the carafe, spritzing coffee and grounds all over the granite countertop.

  She groaned and slapped both hands over her eyes, as if to deny the existence of the sloppy mess. Then she grabbed a kitchen sponge and started cleaning it up, wishing it were that easy to clean up the mess she’d made of her life.

  One year ago Susannah was at a real low point. She’d just passed her twenty-seventh birthday and her life’s goal seemed out of reach. Twenty-seven is young to consider yourself a failure — unless you want to be a dancer.

  Dancing had been Susanna
h’s childhood dream. She took ballet, tap, and jazz classes in Metairie, the New Orleans suburb where she was raised, but she discovered her true calling when she attended Tulane University. The head of the dance department was an acolyte of Martha Graham, and the first time Susannah experienced the Graham Technique — the rugged floor work, the fierce pelvic movements, the method of breathing and impulse control called Contraction and Release — she was hooked.

  After Tulane, Susannah went to New York determined to become a dancer. She took classes at the Graham school for a couple of years, while waiting tables at night. She hoped to get into the company, but they were hiring fewer dancers because of cutbacks in federal arts funding. One night, after a particularly demanding class, Takiko, the teacher and keeper of the Graham flame, took Susannah out for a drink and gave her the devastating news: “Sorry, Susannah. You’re just not strong enough to make the company.”

  Then Burt Cascadden came into her life.

  He sat at a table in the restaurant, with a silver haired gentleman.

  Burt did some cornball flirting with her, saying that someone that pretty had to be an actress. Susannah said she was a dancer, then told a whopper by claiming she’d been in the Martha Graham Company till a knee injury forced her to retire. She was immediately ashamed of lying — it was very unlike her — but she had felt the need to build herself up, her life being so crummy at the moment.

  After her shift, Susannah got an urgent voicemail message from her mother Ethel. Her father, a boorish, chain smoking car salesman, was in the hospital with stage IV lung cancer, metastasized to his lymph nodes. He needed costly experimental therapy that his insurance wouldn’t cover. In a voice choked with emotion, her mom begged for help.

  Susannah had $3,000 in savings. She promised she’d wire it right away. Susannah disliked her father but wanted to be there for her mom.

  “Is Edgar chipping in?” Susannah asked.

  “You know your brother’s a tightwad. And with four kids he’s got a perfect cop-out.”

  Susannah sighed and promised she’d work overtime and send more money soon.

  A few nights later, Burt Cascadden returned to the restaurant alone. He said he had tickets for the Paul Taylor Dance Company. They were doing Arden Court, which he felt was Taylor’s most significant work.

  Susannah didn’t usually date customers, but she was lonely and depressed and the guy obviously had a real knowledge of dance, so she agreed.

  After the performance Burt took her to Devi, a trendy Bangladeshi restaurant in Flatiron. Speaking to the waiter in Hindi, he ordered a selection of kormas, biryanis and tandooris.

  He explained to Susannah that after college, the death of his boyhood idol John Lennon inspired him to go to India for spiritual enlightenment. He’d spent three years in Benares studying yoga chakras at the feet of Swami Nittiya Vivekanda, and learned to practice Pranayama (keeping bodily forces under control), Dharana (concentration of mind and will), and Samadhi (self-hypnosis leading to a state of ecstasy). He also learned to perform certain acts of devotion, such as sticking pins through his cheeks and lying on a bed of nails.

  Susannah was duly impressed. “Did you ever levitate?”

  “No,” he replied smiling. “It takes thirty years to master Laghina. But in India I found lots of other ways to get high.”

  They both laughed, and he told Susannah he was still a Hindu in the spiritual sense, but he was long past his hippie-dippy phase and was now into the karma of capitalism.

  “But I’m monopolizing the conversation,” he said. “Tell me about yourself.”

  She described coming to the Big Apple in hopes of making it as a dancer. When she got to the part about the Martha Graham Company, she felt comfortable enough to admit she’d lied to feel better about herself. He smiled, touched her hand, and said that he had told a few whoppers in his life, for the same reason.

  Later he took her home in a cab. On the way, she asked what he did for a living, and he said she’d get a package the next day containing the answer. He gave her a peck on the cheek as he dropped her off at her apartment.

  In the morning the package arrived by messenger. It contained a game of Monopoly with a note saying, “Check the rule book.” In it she saw a section highlighted in neon yellow:

  The object of the game is to become the wealthiest player, through buying, renting and selling property.

  When Burt had first proposed marriage, Susannah was hesitant. But all he wanted, he explained, was companionship. His first wife had died of heart disease several years before and grief had robbed him of all sexual desire. At his age, he said with a rueful smile, sex wasn’t that much of a much anyway. In return for her company, Burt would give her the security she’d never had, a lavish lifestyle, and he would make sure her ailing father had the best of care.

  Susannah knew she didn’t love him. But they got along well, she trusted him, and she could depend on him. No, it wasn’t love, but maybe it could develop into that. Things like that did happen...

  A year later, as she sat sipping coffee on the teakwood deck of her Gwathmey-Siegal designed beach house in Montauk, Susannah Dahlgren Cascadden was painfully aware of what she had become: property.

  CHAPTER 3

  Siren whooping, red and white roof lights flashing, the squad car raced along Pantigo Road, passing nervous motorists who hit the brakes and tried looking casual to avoid a speeding ticket.

  Detective Neil Jericho slowed at the East Hampton traffic light, then swung right onto Newtown Lane and headed toward the high school. He was responding to a 911 report of a rare occurrence in this peaceful town — a knife attack, phoned in at 9:35 a.m. from the high school gym. Chief Manos had assigned Jericho to the case because of his prior NYPD experience with violent crime.

  Jericho could feel the adrenaline kicking in, his brain on red alert. Jesus, he thought, I’ve really missed this feeling.

  Up ahead was a road sign warning “Slow — School Zone — Speed limit 20.” Jericho turned onto a long gravel driveway leading to the high school football field.

  The crunching sound of tires over pebbles grated on his nerves. He gripped the steering wheel hard and his testicles tightened against his crotch. It was a sensation he knew well, a signal that he was ready for anything.

  His hand moved unconsciously to his service revolver. The gun was optional for EHTPD detectives — in fact the Chief suggested his men not wear them on routine calls, because the town board preferred a non-threatening look. But after years of homicide duty in the city, Jericho never felt comfortable unless he was strapped.

  Jericho parked outside the athletic equipment building. A burly, balding man in a sweat suit with a whistle around his neck was waiting for him. Jericho flashed his badge and ID. The guy ushered him in to the scene of the attack.

  Someone had slashed three tackling dummies.

  Knife attack, he thought. Shit. Obviously Chief Manos is yanking my chain.

  The green dummy had the nickname Big Block, printed on its front. The red dummy was The Hulk, and the blue one was Backer. All three were stand-up dummies, with weights in their bottoms so they’d always remain upright. They had been viciously stabbed, their vinyl-coated nylon covers rent by multiple knife wounds exposing their white poly-filled innards.

  “And look what they did to the blocking sled pads,” the man said.

  It was more of the same. They were brutally slashed, the stuffing hanging out and strewn on the floor.

  Jericho took out his spiral notebook and questioned the witness. Virgil Conforti was head football coach of East Hampton High. Virgil said he’d discovered the crime when he arrived that morning. Upon entering the equipment building he saw that its single window, which had been locked, was smashed and open.

  “The perp must have broken in during the night,” he said.

  “Who do you think this perp was?” Jericho asked.

  “I couldn’t tell ya who,” Virgil replied. “But I’m damn sure it was someone from Southam
pton High. We play them in a few weeks and they’re scared we’re gonna whup their butts.”

  Jericho checked out the crime scene and noticed right away that the dummies and sled pads had plastic patches and adhesive tape on them, indicating they hadn’t been in such great shape even before the slashings. He went outside and saw two footprints on the ground under the broken window. Looking closely he could make out the words “GET SOME!” and the brand name Saucony in the sole patterns made by the shoe.

  He looked at the open window. It was double-hung and both the top and bottom windowpanes had been smashed. He brought out his Canon PowerShot camera and took some pictures.

  Jericho went back into the building where Conforti sat waiting. The coach was wearing street shoes.

  “No sneakers?” Jericho said.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Loafers are not exactly usual attire for football practice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saw footprints outside the window — made by Saucony running shoes. You do own Sauconys, right?”

  Virgil’s eyes glazed over.

  “We can easily find out,” Jericho said. “I could ask your wife...”

  “Okay. I do have a pair.. But those footprints aren’t mine.”

  “My guess is, this morning you noticed your sneakers were muddy and figured maybe you left footprints, so it’d be better not to come in wearing them.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Look, Coach,” Jericho went on. “I know you broke that window. You did it after you cut up your dummies. Your mistake was you shouldn’t have opened the window from inside. ‘Cause afterwards, when you went outside and smashed the glass, you broke not only the upper pane but the lower one as well, which was right behind it, you see, because you’d just raised it up. Now, if that window had been locked, you’d’ve only needed to break the top pane to get to the latch. You following me?”