Lethal Invitation Read online

  Demetrius frowned in concentration. “Then why did you ask me here?”

  The professor cocked his head, folded his hands on his lap and leaned back in the chair. “Every semester I choose one student to try to become friends with. To mentor if you will.”

  The big tailback paused again in thought. “So… does that mean you choose me?”

  Dr. Smallwood smiled while adjusting his body in the chair, twisting slightly as he lifted himself with his arms. It was an apparent affirmative answer.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t ask unless you really want the answer.”

  The youngster contemplated for a few seconds. “I really do want an answer.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well, but remember, you asked.”

  Demetrius nodded.

  “I’ve watched you, Demetrius, not only in the classroom but on the field too. You’re good. I’ll admit that, but you have to realize there’s more to life than football. Most college players never make it to the NFL. The sooner you realize that, the better for you.” Smallwood paused to see the reaction and seemed pleasantly surprised at the stoic posture of the boy. He continued, “There are thousands upon thousands of college players who plan on making it to the pros, but do you know how many are actually drafted each year?”

  Demetrius breathed and blinked. “No.” He braced himself because the news had to be bad.

  “Just over two hundred and that’s for all positions. How many tailbacks go pro? Do you have any idea?”

  He shook his head.

  “Between five and ten.” The man in the chair paused while gazing intently at the boy. “Do you think you’ll be one of the top tailbacks in the nation when you’re a senior?” The professor’s eyes were ablaze with passion.

  Demetrius accepted the gaze with resignation, then studied his shoes. He thought of the previous season. He was only a freshman so he hadn’t expected to be high on the depth chart, especially with Dante doing so well, but as he contemplated what the professor said he realized he was not only behind Dante, but a junior and another freshman as well. How could he hope to be one of the top five in the nation when he could barely be top four at the University of Arizona? He looked up sadly. “Maybe if I work harder.”

  Dr. Smallwood smiled. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, and quite honestly, what I expected to hear. I don’t want you to give up your dreams. You should work hard for them. All I’m saying is you need to excel in school also. When you leave, whether you go to the NFL or not, you need to leave with a degree. I’ll help you all I can but the choice belongs to you and nobody else. Are you willing?”

  Demetrius remembered the test he’d passed without studying. He thought of Dante and the list. “But I’m a player. I’m on the list.”

  Dr. Smallwood cocked his head solemnly. “The list?”

  “Yeah, you know, the player list.”

  The professor handed the big, framed picture to Demetrius and pointed with his nose to its rightful place. Demetrius replaced it carefully then slid the glass closed before retaking his seat.

  “Let me tell you about the list.”

  Demetrius was all ears.

  “Truth is there’s no such thing as a list. At least not here at the University of Arizona.” He waved his arm in a broad sweep. “I’ll admit that occasionally an over-zealous TA and possibly even an infrequent professor might want to help a player, but those are few and far between. If you want to graduate you have to do the work yourself. There are no free rides. You have great potential, but the choice is yours. How bad do you want to graduate? Are you willing to put in the effort and are you willing to accept my help?”

  Demetrius swallowed hard, subdued as he recognized within himself the attitude shift brought about by this thirty-minute conversation with the professor. He studied the backs of his dark hands and picked absently at a small scab. Finally, he met the man’s eyes. “Yes, sir.”

  Dr. Smallwood wheeled closer and extended his hand, which Demetrius quickly grabbed for a shake.

  “Meet me here tomorrow morning at seven. We’ll get started.”

  “I’ll be here.” Demetrius smiled, suddenly anxious to get to work and prove he was capable of getting a degree.

  Chapter 3

  The sidewalk in front of the old chemistry building reflected the heat of the afternoon sun as Edward slowly made his way wearing a designer polo shirt, knee-length shorts and expensive tennis shoes with no socks. He could have easily cut across the new growth of green grass which had only recently sprouted for the winter lawn. A shortcut would have saved at least a hundred feet of walking, but the sign said KEEP OFF THE GRASS and he always followed instructions.

  He pulled the ancient, heavy wood and glass door to enter the building and was met immediately with the smell of years of bodies, chemicals and old wood. He wrinkled his nose in disgust then followed a narrow hall to the elevators. He frowned as he pushed number four, then impatiently tapped his foot while the doors opened with excruciating sluggishness.

  He felt the jerk as the elevator began its ascent and watched as the lighted numbers above the door blinked, indicating floors two and three were passed. The elevator jerked again, stopping with a groan as if to rest from the exertion. The doors finally opened, allowing him to step onto the polished but scarred, hard-wood floor. A small placard mounted above an intersecting hall indicated rooms 401 to 415. Edward shook his head, wondering again why he was even going to the professor’s office. Adjusting his backpack on his shoulders, he stepped into the hall.

  Professor Smallwood waited for him at the office entrance. As Edward approached, he studied the face. He had expected a frown, a scowl or at least an expression of displeasure, but the face was passive.

  “Glad you could come, Mr. Mitchell.”

  Edward made no comment, he simply waited for the professor to explain why he had been summoned. The two men stared at each other until the student became uncomfortable enough to initiate a conversation.

  “Well, I’m here. What do you want to talk to me about?” He had tried hard not to sneer but the tone of his voice left no doubt as to his attitude. He decided he didn’t care. Why should he care what this sorry excuse for a man thought?

  Professor Smallwood paused and seemed to be making a decision. He cocked his head, then grasped the wheels to roll himself back and away. “Never mind.” He made a turn in the chair. “I was obviously mistaken. You may go.”

  Edward smirked, then started to turn to retreat down the hall to the elevator. Suddenly his curiosity got the better of him. He turned back to stare at the man unhurriedly wheeling the chair in the opposite direction. “Mistaken about what?”

  The professor stopped slowly then reversed the chair in a smooth motion to gaze up at the boy. He paused, once again seeming to be in the midst of a decision. At length, he rolled closer and looked up into Edward’s eyes. “I thought you might be a young man who could use some direction. I thought perhaps I could offer some advice.” He waited for the reaction, composed and almost serene.

  Edward gazed down at the pathetic shell of a man in the wheelchair. “Advice? From you?” He spat the words. “What could you possibly tell me?”

  Professor Smallwood took the sarcasm with no visible reaction, he simply nodded, then unhurriedly wheeled the chair, leaving the boy standing in the hall as he retreated.

  Edward watched him go. Who did the man think he was, anyway? Why would Edward need advice from the likes of him? The man was just a college professor teaching of all things, meteorology. Nothing more than a glorified weatherman.

  With a grunt, Edward turned and paced to the elevator. The more he walked, the madder he got. His mood grew even worse as he walked into the scorching afternoon heat. His anger was at boiling stage as he approached his upscale apartment building five blocks from campus. He glanced toward the apartment door on the second floor and noticed his roommate lounging in the shade eating M&Ms from a
bag.

  Edward hurried up the steps. “Are those mine?”

  The young man looked up, unperturbed at the venom in his roommate’s voice.

  “Yep. They’re good. Thanks.” He tossed the bag toward Edward who caught it in an upside down position allowing the candies to fall to the concrete walkway and bounce and roll in all directions. The roommate looked at the mess then, with a shrug and no offer to help, turned to stroll into the apartment. Edward exploded in rage, screaming and cursing at the boy who was his roommate simply because their fathers were friends. He threw the nearly empty bag at the boy’s back, then turned and ran down the stairs to his car. He could feel the veins in his neck and up the side of his head as they bulged. He was so mad he screamed profanities all the way to his car.

  The tires of the brand new Mustang convertible squealed as he left the parking lot. He continued his screaming in the car. “I’m going to kill somebody.”

  He drove the streets of Tucson for three hours, tired of being the good guy, always doing what he was told. By the end of the driving session, he wondered what would happen if he did kill someone. The more he thought about it, the more he decided it would be a perfect, meticulously planned and executed crime. He was smart and he could do it. The planning would start this very night.

  ◆◆◆

  Demetrius Crown grunted as his muscular arms pushed the bar upward. He had turned thirty-nine only four days earlier, but he proudly acknowledged he could still lift almost as much as he had while a student-athlete at the University.

  Carlos, his work-out partner grinned as he helped set the four hundred pound bar and weights on the rack. “You’re making me jealous again you big show off. That’s it for today. I’ve got to get home to Gladys. Are you and Wanda going to be at the game tomorrow?”

  Demetrius’s first child and only son, Adam, was on the same high school junior varsity football team as Carlos’s son. The ex-football player rolled to a sitting position on the bench. Sweat rolled down his massive chest over the rippled stomach muscles. He took the towel offered by his friend and wiped the sweat from his face and shoulders before flipping it over his neck.

  “We’ll be there.”

  ◆◆◆

  The sparse crowd sat in the bleachers that Saturday morning at Flowing Wells High School for the first junior varsity game of the season. The start time of the game was to be nine o’clock to take advantage of the morning coolness of late summer. Still, even at the early hour, the Tucson heat smothered the grounds and the people, most of whom held umbrellas to ward off the intense sun. Demetrius and Wanda, under a red and blue University of Arizona umbrella, gazed across the field watching their son in pregame warm-ups.

  The cell phone in his shirt pocket vibrated. He frowned at the interruption, knowing instinctively it would not be good news. His frown deepened as he looked at the caller ID. It was a work-related call.

  “Hello.” He answered more cheerfully than he felt.

  “Detective Crown, this is Dorothy from Central Investigations. We know it’s your day off, but the Deputy Lieutenant wanted me to give you a call to see if you could help out on a case this morning?”

  Demetrius glanced at his pretty wife with a shrug. “I suppose so. Whatcha got?”

  “The body was found a couple of hours ago. Caucasian male, about forty, shot in the back of the head at close range—and both thumbs cut off.”

  The big man frowned at the mental picture conjured by the description. He had seen his share of murder victims and the scene was never pretty, but both thumbs cut off? What was that about? He thought quickly of his years on the force and couldn’t remember any murders in which the thumbs had been cut off. A close-range shot to the back of the head was almost certainly an execution, likely drug related. The cut thumbs could be some type of message.

  Dorothy continued, “Mike Cox is the detective on the case but he called and asked if you’d be willing to take a look.”

  Demetrius knew Cox well. The younger man had been promoted to detective in the Violent Crimes Division only a couple of weeks before. He was a good cop and a good man.

  At a sudden thought, Demetrius frowned. Mike had been assigned to Ben Sturdevant, one of the veterans in the division so he wondered for an instant why he had been called. He decided to ask. “I’ll be glad to help. Isn’t Ben there?”

  “Detective Sturdevant called in sick today.”

  At the thought of the newbie on his first murder case with no help, the big man looked unseeing to the football field as he recalled his own beginnings as a homicide detective. He had climbed through the ranks of the Tucson Police Department over the past sixteen years, starting as a uniformed cop immediately after graduating from the university with a degree in criminal justice, a degree he readily admitted he probably never would have earned if not for the encouragement of Dr. Smallwood.

  Demetrius thought quickly of his first murder case and how nervous he had been. He could easily understand Mike’s request for someone with a little more experience to assist with the initial investigation.

  “I’ll go home and change and be right there. What’s the address?”

  ◆◆◆

  Detective Crown parked his car next to the waiting coroner’s van at the edge of an unpaved road leading into the dry riverbed on the north side of town. He stepped onto the dirt with his polished shoes and stood to nod at the attendants before walking on the trail through the mesquite thicket. His semi-formal attire seemed out of place as he ducked through and around the thorny desert trees. The shirt and tie, his self-decided detective uniform, was one of his idiosyncrasies. During his first years on the force, one of the older detectives, and probably the best detective, always came to work in a tie. Demetrius was so impressed with the man that he vowed if he ever made detective, he would do the same. Although teased by his co-workers, he had been true to his vow and always wore a tie no matter how hot it was—and in winter months when cool enough, he donned a sports coat.

  A uniformed policeman stood guard at the edge of the thicket. “Hello, Detective Crown.”

  “Good morning.” Demetrius nodded while glancing at the yellow crime scene tape stretched from one scraggly mesquite tree to another. He slipped under the tape and followed the pointing of the policeman, then strolled through the sand to several men gathered in a small, grassy clearing.

  The new detective, Mike, and a photographer at his side stepped back to allow Demetrius to see the crime scene. He immediately concluded his initial reaction of an execution had been correct. The dead man lay on the sand in an upturned plastic pool chair with his hands tied behind him. The sand had soaked up the most of the blood and a relatively small entrance hole at the back of the victim’s head was barely visible through his matted hair. Demetrius walked wide around the body to see the bullet had exited through the man’s right eye socket.

  His first impression was the man had been executed while sitting in the chair. His suspicion was confirmed as he studied the scene. The man’s thumbs lay on the sand behind indentations from the chair legs. Blood trails indicated they had been severed while the man was still alive. Demetrius shuddered at the thought of the pain and wondered how long the man might have suffered before he was killed.

  He finally looked up with a grim expression. “No footprints?”

  Detective Cox and the photographer shook their heads. “Too sandy.”

  “The bullet exited the eye socket. Depending on the angle of the shot it could be undamaged in the sand. Have you called for the metal detector?”

  Both men nodded.

  Demetrius glanced to both with appreciation. “Anything else?”

  “We found this.” Mike held up a small plastic bag with a spent nine-millimeter casing inside. He passed it to Demetrius who held the plastic gingerly between thumb and finger to study the casing in the light. It was a standard Remington casing, one of hundreds sold every day in Tucson.

  “Probably a semi-auto since it was ejected. Who found him?
”

  “A jogger called it in. He met the patrolman and led him here, but he didn’t see anyone or know anything. We were waiting for you before we searched the body. If it’s okay with you, we’ll do that now.”

  Demetrius took one last look at the murder scene before turning with a nod of permission. He watched as the new detective expertly searched the body for identification or any other clues.

  Consistent with what Demetrius knew about executions, no one was surprised when nothing more was found.

  Chapter 4

  It was the fourth quarter by the time he parked his car and strolled toward the bleacher seats at the game. A quick glance at the scoreboard with his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun told him his son’s team was leading by thirty-six, and at a perusal of the field, he knew all the starters had been replaced by the second string. Wanda held the umbrella higher to allow him to sit next to her. He tugged at his collar and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  “How did he play?”

  “Good. He made a couple of unassisted tackles and a quarterback sack. If only he was faster.” She smiled and patted her husband on the knee. They both knew the boy had inherited his father’s size but not his mobility.

  ◆◆◆

  Edward left his apartment, needing to get away because he couldn’t concentrate while his roommate banged around. During his driving the night before, his greatest desire was to murder his roommate, but remembering the lecture about murderers making the mistake of killing someone they knew, he reluctantly decided to change his target. His thinking turned to the other person who was the cause of his anger, Professor Smallwood. The more he thought about it, the more perfect the choice seemed to be. He was not a personal acquaintance of the man but merely one of several hundred students in the professor’s class. He also determined that as a target, the limited mobility of the professor would be a plus. All Edward needed to do was study the cripple and start making plans. A late morning drive to the coolness of adjacent Mount Lemon was just what he needed to start putting a plan in place.