Case of the Murdered Lovers Ch. 01

I went out front. Most of the blue lights had been shut off, though the ambulance's red and white lights were still on, and the entrance to the condo complex was blocked by a patrol car. I talked to Patrolmen Morton and Rudistan. Both were friendly enough officers, both a bit out of shape. Micah Rudistan had a bit of a mischievous reputation and often got into minor trouble. Chet Morton was husky and often ended up being the foil of jokes.

They were competent, though: they and Feeley had already taken car tag numbers of every vehicle in the complex and along the adjoining roads, complete with their locations, and had already spoken to several people who had congregated as gawkers. No one had anything of much relevance. Upon questioning, some of the onlookers who lived in the area had heard what they described as a car backfiring or doors slamming at various times ranging from 8:30 to 10:30.

Just as I turned to go inside, Tanya Perlman met me at the door. "They're ready to take the bodies out." she said. Knowing what I had to do, I entered the living room again. "Mr. Arruzio, I don't think you can stay here tonight. Would you like one of my patrolmen to take you to the University Hotel?" I had to get him out of there before they brought the bodies out.

"No no no." President Wellman interjected. "You'll stay with me tonight, Joe." I nodded and Dr. Wellman and Britt Maxwell helped Mr. Arruzio out to Dr. Wellman's car. I cautioned Arruzio that he needed to stay in town, and asked Dr. Wellman to be in custody of him. Dr. Wellman understood, even if Arruzio was still in shock.

As they drove off, I heard the commotion. "Let me in! I have something to tell the detective!" I heard an old woman's voice yelling. Looking over towards the end of the building, I saw Patrolmen Morton and Rudistan restraining Old Mrs. Boddiker. Mrs. Boddiker was a homeless woman, so she claimed, often found begging for money and occasionally coming in to the police station to report some wild crime that we could never find to have actually occurred. I went over.


"It's okay, guys." I said. "Mrs. Boddiker, what can you tell me?"


"It was him, Detective. It was him." the old woman said emphatically.

"It was who, ma'am?"

"Why, it was Joe Arruzio! I saw him, he was here!"

"When was that, Mrs. Boddiker?" I asked. The patrolmen had looks on their faces of wondering why I was talking to this quack woman. I knew that was one reason I was a Supervisor and a Detective and they were still Patrolmen.

"It was at 9:28, Detective, to the minute. I looked at my watch right here." she held out her wrist to show a worn timepiece... which was displaying the correct time according to my own watch. "I saw Joe Arruzio in front of this building. He walked to his car, got in and drove away."

"I see." I said, taking notes on my notepad. "Did you see or hear anything else?"

"Why yes I did, sir. I heard two noises, like doors slamming. That's why I came around front from behind the building." When I asked why she was behind the building, she said she was looking through the garbage cans. I asked her if she heard any people arguing, and she said she had not, just the door slamming.

"But it was him Detective. It was Joe Arruzio! He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and black pants, and he got in that car and drove off. It was him!"

I asked for the description of the car, and Mrs. Boddiker said it was an old car, dark color, and that was all she could make out of it. I asked if she had found anything in the trash that might be of use to our investigation; she had not. I thanked Mrs. Boddiker for her information and told Officer Feeley to walk with me as an excuse to get away from her.

"What did you think of that, Officer Feeley?" I asked the young patrolman.

"She sounds sure of herself." Officer Feeley replied, "but when I got here, Mr. Arruzio was telling Detective Perlman that he drove in from the City. He couldn't possibly have been here at that time if he was driving into Town."

"That's right." I said, but just as I was about to ask Feeley another question, I had to break it off because of who had just driven up: the Press.

The attractive redhead woman came hurrying up, with her cameraman in tow. Her name was Bettina Wurtzburg. She was the investigative reporter covering the Town and University police beats. She was short and in good shape. Her hair was light red, strawberry blonde. How she could run in high heels like she did I don't know, but she could cover ground with amazing speed. She had a way of showing up at exactly the wrong time. And this time she had me corralled. I just prayed to God that she had not overheard the conversation with Old Mrs. Boddiker or Officer Feeley.

"Detective, may I ask you a couple of questions?" Bettina said, deftly avoiding Officer Feeley, who was trying to protect me from her. I grudgingly allowed her to ask, knowing that her questions would let me know how much she knew.

"Is it true that Marie Arruzio has been found dead? How did she die?" Bettina asked, her second question assuming the answer to the first. She knew that much, I surmised.

"There has been a murder committed. The names of the deceased have not been released pending identification and notification of next of kin." I said.

"Was Joe Arruzio involved in the crime? Is he dead or wounded? Was anyone else involved?" Either she doesn't know about Arruzio or she's faking that. And she knows someone else is involved, I reasoned.

"We're still ascertaining the details. We'll have more information for you in the morning. If you'll excuse me..." I began walking off. Bettina Wurtzburg tried to follow, but this time Patrolman Chet Morton was an immovable mountain between us. Still, her cameraman got excellent film of two bodies covered in sheets being removed from Joe Arruzio's condo and loaded into the ambulance. That was not a good start to this case, and a reproach to my management of it.

Part 3 - The Alibi

"Okay, what do we have?" Chief Griswold gruffly asked.

We were in the conference room next to the chief's office. It was 6:30 am. Britt Maxwell and I had been up all night. At 4:00 am I had to make the call to bring Myron Milton, my IT data expert, into the office. I thought he'd be grumpy about it, but to the contrary he came in excited to be working on something *big* and got to work immediately after I briefed him.

Present at the morning meeting were the Chief, Tanya Perlman, Hugh Hewitt, Cindy Ross, myself, Britt Maxwell, but also Captain Harold Malone, Steve Ikea, Tim Geiger, and Teresa Croyle. Why the Chief had invited the Vice team in on a murder case I didn't understand, but they were there.

It was my place to speak, but I asked Tanya Perlman to give the details of the crime scene, which she did with thoroughness and efficiency. I then said that my IT team was gathering information on Marie Arruzio and Joe Arruzio such as financial records, credit card records, and other information that might be useful in giving clues to any possible motives for the crimes. The other man had not yet been identified. Myron was running all the car tags in the area to see if any of them might belong to the dead man.

"After this meeting, we're going to check out Arruzio's story. We'll have to go to the City to do that."

"That means you and Lt. Maxwell. You're the only State operatives here." Chief Griswold said. He was right. Although we were employed by the University, we technically could pretend to have State-wide authority, whereas the Town (and County) Force had no authority two counties over. We could ask the City Police for help, but everyone present, even Ikea, knew why that was something to be avoided unless we absolutely had to do it.

"If you run into anything, contact Ventura with the City Police." Robin Ventura was a city police officer, but more importantly to us she was the daughter of University Police Commissioner Dexter Robinson. She was the only person reasonably trustworthy that would work with us in a way we could get something done, and quickly.

"We don't need to contact her." Malone interjected, and I knew what his problem with Ventura was. She was black, and Malone had a problem with that. I moved quickly to steer the conversation away.

"We'll handle it, Chief." I said. "For now, we're just going to check and see how Arruzio's story checks out."

"Any ideas or theories right now?" the chief asked me.

"None," I replied, "until we identify the dead man and confirm Arruzio's alibi." Oops, I thought to myself, I'd just used the word "alibi". Hopefully no one caught my slip of the tongue.

"Shouldn't we arrest Joe Arruzio now?" Steve Ikea suddenly said. We all looked at him, some of us incredulously, some reverently.

"On what grounds?" the Chief asked. 

"Suspicion of murder. He could be a flight risk. And he probably did it; it's just a matter of getting the corroborating evidence." Ikea said haughtily.

"And what makes you think he did it?" the Chief asked, his voice becoming withering.

"It's always the husband. That's what he says." Ikea said, pointing rudely at me. I exchanged a glance with Tanya Perlman; Ikea apparently had once heard me telling her that it's always the spouse... except that I had first said "According to Agatha Christie..." While the spouse was always an initial suspect, Ikea was jumping the gun like crazy on this one.

"We need evidence to get an arrest warrant first." Chief Griswold said. He then instructed us to follow up on Arruzio's story and any other information pertaining to him that might come up. He then instructed the Vice team to check for any drug-related issues the Arruzios might have had, and he also wanted the Vice team to "assist" us in identifying who the dead man was and then following up on anything that would explain the dead man's involvement... "beyond the obvious fact that he was fucking Marie Arruzio." the chief added drily.

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We were on the highway driving to the City. Hugh Hewitt was driving, having gotten some sleep the night before. Britt Maxwell was in the backseat and had fallen sound asleep within a few minutes of our car pulling out of the headquarters parking lot. Hugh and I had bantered about his date the night before; he had gotten some pussy from a hot married blonde.

"One big coitus interruptus!" Britt said from the backseat when Hugh asked how my date with Britt had gone (how did everyone know so much about that?). We all laughed, then talked a few minutes about the case before Britt fell asleep. I began looking at the newspapers I had picked up when Hugh stopped to get gas.

The Town and City papers had front page headlines about the murders. Marie Arruzio was a Socialite in the City as well as the wife of a well-known businessman and University patron, and the details of the murder were scant, especially in that they did not yet give details that she'd been murdered while being fucked by young man who was not her husband.

Another article from the City paper caught my eye, as an event had occurred in San Francisco, where Melina and Laura were. The article said that a Chinese diplomat had been murdered in the Chinatown district. He had been protected by bodyguards, but he had been shot by one well-placed bullet to the head. The police and the FBI were at a loss to understand how a sniper had been able to accomplish the feat, and the Chinese Government was raising a diplomatic stink over the incident.

I had a stopwatch running, timing the trip from the time we left Town until we arrived at the office building where Arruzio had been. I was assuming that the Saturday morning traffic would be similar to or lighter than Friday night traffic, and we had no delays. Sure enough, the time was just under 90 minutes. We also noted six highway patrol cars from either the State or a County. The road was indeed well-patrolled, and would've been even moreso on a Friday night where University students might be drinking and driving.

Arriving at the building in late morning, we expected the bar to be closed but were in luck that the restaurant manager was also the bartender the previous night and was there. We simply said we were the police investigating a murder, and asked if Joe Arruzio had been at the bar the night before. 

"Oh yeah, he was here." the man said. "In fact, I've still got last night's security camera tape." He replayed it for us, and while the film quality was bad, it showed Joe Arruzio in a gray sweater and slacks, sitting at the bar with several people around, toasting something.

We asked if we could make a copy of the tape on equipment we had brought, admitting that we could not confiscate the tape without a warrant, but that we were just establishing Arruzio's whereabouts. The man said no problem. As the tape was being copied, we asked a few questions.

"Did Mr. Arruzio come into the bar often?" Britt Maxwell asked.

"No, he might come in once every four months or so, and usually with clients or business partners. That's why I noticed him last night. He came in alone, and he bought everyone a round."

"Did he say what he was celebrating?" I asked.

"No, he said something vague about business, but I didn't catch anything specific." The bartender verified the times, which matched with Arruzio: he'd come in about 8:30 that night and left about an hour later.

"Did he make any cell phone calls? or receive any?" I asked, seemingly as an afterthought.

"I think I saw him on his cell phone just before he left, but I don't really remember. Maybe the tape will show it." In fact, I had already noticed that the tape had shown that Arruzio had a phone to his ear just before leaving.

We thanked the man and got out of there with our copied tape. Having copied it while out of jurisdiction and leaving the original behind, it had ceased to be admissible evidence. But we weren't worried about that.

"Looks like Mr. Arruzio's alibi holds up." Britt Maxwell said as we drove out of the city. "There is no way he could've committed the murder at 9:30 or even 8:30 and been in the City. Looks like that old woman was wrong."

"Yep." I said. "At least 10 witnesses he was buying drinks for, and he's on tape. Everything checks out so far, right down to the cell phone calls... the... cell phone..."

I had fallen into a brown study of thought. I almost jumped out of my skin as Britt shook my shoulder. "You okay?" she asked?

"Uh, yeah... I just was trying to think of something." I said. Britt and Hugh asked what I was thinking about but I shrugged it off, saying I needed to be sure to have Myron verify the cell phone calls.

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Police work is tedious. It is not the glamour of the television shows. Cases are not solved by exciting chases shooting at the bad guys, but by poring over reams of data and looking for anything out of place... not even knowing what "out of place" would be.

Such was the case when I arrived back in my office in the IT dungeon. Myron had been very good at collecting data, perhaps too good. He and I brought boxes of printed data up to the MCD room, and Hugh and I spent hours looking over data.

Joe Arruzio had called his wife about 8:00 pm, and the data showed the origination was from on the west side of the the City, which showed he was in the city at 8:00 pm. Meanwhile, Marie Arruzio had made a cell call to a prepaid cell phone immediately after receiving the call from her husband.

"So what this means," I told Teresa Croyle and Cindy Ross, who had joined us, "is that Marie Arruzio believed her husband was staying in the City. She called her lover to come over for sex, believing the coast was clear. So now I'm looking for a record of his attempted call when he was about to leave the bar. Hmm, there's one... but hmmm, it's incoming, not outgoing. Well, the tape did show Arruzio was on the phone about 9:25-9:30."

"What about 8:30?" Cindy asked. "Didn't Mr. Arruzio say he tried to call when his meeting was cancelled, but didn't connect?"

"Yep, and...." I said, looking at the data in that timeframe... "there it is. It connected, but for one minute. That's the minimum time recorded though, he may have gotten voicemail and hung up."

""He's still got a huge alibi here." Cindy said.

"Yep, gotta agree." I said. We turned to the financial records, which Myron had summarized for us. He came in with more data and I asked him to fill us in.

Joe Arruzio had done many deals of various types. Sometimes he financed deals, sometimes brokered deals for others. Most of his deals were related to real estate or construction projects. Most were successful, though he had had a few failures that had dented him pretty hard. But there was noting visibly out of the ordinary.

"Do we know what his latest deal is, and who he was doing business with, the guys that cancelled on him?" I asked. When Myron said no, I told Hugh that we, meaning he, needed to check on that.

"Now Marie Arruzio..." Myron said, relishing his words, "she's a lot more interesting. First, she comes from a very wealthy family and she has a trust fund. Fifty million dollars." We all sat up straight. "And before you ask, her husband cannot touch the trust fund and he wouldn't get it if she died. Now that she's dead, it's going to pay out dividends to several charities that she's listed in her will. Don't know what the will says, so don't know exactly who benefits."

"Principal can't be touched, though, except through special Court order and only for extreme hardship." I said, glancing at the data. "So nobody is getting a big windfall. What's next, Myron?"


"Next are credit card records, and I got them going back 30 years. For most of their marriage, she spent money but not really big amounts. Clothes, shoes, some jewelry. A few vacation trips. Steady spending but nothing really huge, except... during the last four months." Myron handed us some printed data. "During the last four months she's been spending a lot more. She's also been transferring money out of her bank accounts and into other recently opened bank accounts. And one other thing: Most of her spending before the last few months had been in the City, at the same malls, same Nordstroms, same jewelry stores. The last few months, most of her spending has been here in Town; she's only gone to the City a few times."

"What about Joe? Has he been staying in the City, or here?" Hugh asked.

"The City!" a voice called out. It was Tanya Perlman, who had just walked into the room. As she walked up, she looked meaningfully at me. "That's what you meant by the contents of the closet, isn't it?"

I smiled. "Yes it is. Explain to them."

"Marie had a lot of clothes in the closet and in the dresser, as well as plenty of jewelry." Tanya said. "Joe had a couple of suits, a few shirts in the dresser. Almost nothing else. At first, I thought you meant he'd moved out and left her behind, but then I realized he never did live there, but she apparently took up residence. So they were pretty much living separately."

"Yes." I said. "And from what we just learned here, she's been living here the last four months. Now why is that?" Silence. "Anyone?" No one answered, so I finished. "I would guess her affair with this now dead man began about four months ago, and she's been living here to be around him." Everyone nodded, ahh'd and ooh'd over that deduction. Perhaps sarcastically, knowing these guys...

Part 4 - Desires Unleashed and Released

The 7:00 pm meeting in the Chief's office lasted two long, frustrating hours. First, when we confirmed Arruzio's alibi, Ikea was crestfallen. He kept bringing up points of contention that might have been valid if they hadn't been floundering and trying to twist facts to support a theory. We then had to go through the financial information in great detail in order to make the Chief and Captain Malone fully understand, and they seemed to be unswervingly refusing to understand.