The Grab

By John Tuccillo

John Stella goes to Florida to help in the investigation of the murder of the sister of a good friend in his home of Hamilton, New Hampshire. He gets involved in the corrupt politics of Sarasota and uncovers a plot to kill and then grab the land owned by elderly nursing home residents. Their chosen instrument is a hardened felon they have" sponsored for release from state prison. The conspiracy includes leading politicians, developers and local boosters who are looking to reap large profits from a potential deal to locate an Olympic training facility adjacent to the land they are acquiring. Johnny begins working the case with homicide Detective Sargent Ellie Grasso, with whom he develops an intense personal relationship. After more homicides, they finally identify the conspiritors. In the process, Johnny has several ribs broken and gets beaten over the head a few times. But in the end, they solve the murders and put the bad guys behind bars (some on death row). During this time, Johnny has fallen in love with Sarasota (and Ellie and decides to spend his winters and springs in Sarasota.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667813936

Book preview

Chapter 1

It would all end today. She checked her hair and makeup one more time in the hall mirror.  It took a little longer these days. She had never been a pretty woman. That was left to her sister. But the hard life she’d led—with the physical toll of her work and the emotional scars of bad relationships—had lined her face. She looked at least a decade older than her forty-seven years. She wanted to look her best, to make herself believable. Her story would blow away the façade of respectability that masked the fat cats that ran this town, that covered the truth. She desperately wanted the police to take her seriously. She felt the weight of the envelope. The proof was right there, enough, she thought, to convince them. Yes, it would be over. Soon. The killing and corruption that she could now prove would end and the seemingly righteous punished.

She checked her purse for her keys, wallet and phone and placed the envelope carefully inside. She slung the purse over her shoulder and walked to the door. When she opened it, he was standing there, filling the entire doorframe. There was no hesitation. He ripped the purse from her arm, threw it to the floor and pushed her back against the wall, closing his massive hands around her neck. She was not a small woman but he was more than equal to his task, with arms that had been bulked up by twenty years of daily prison workouts. The smell of his latex gloves filled her nostrils as she fought to breathe. He raised her off the floor and tightened his grip. As she flailed, she reached up to try to pry his hands from her throat. No use. She pounded her fists against his shoulders. Again, no use. Her shoes flew off, her body twisted, but her struggle was still no use. She tried to scream but his grip had cut off her air. The end came very quickly. She stopped moving. Her hands and legs went limp. He loosened his grip and let her slide to the floor. She lay there, her arms and legs splayed out and her unseeing eyes fixed on the ceiling above.

He felt nothing. They were paying him to do a job. That’s all. Kill the woman and take the envelope. That’s all. Now to finish the job. He hated to do this. It offended his sense of order. The years he had spent in that small cell had impressed on him the need for order as his lifeline to sanity. But he had to do this.  He turned and carefully closed the door. He went around the house, ransacking each room, taking some valuables, to give the appearance of robbery, all the while looking for the papers he came after. He found them when he dumped the contents of her purse on the floor. Tucking the envelope into his waistband, he took her wallet and phone and carefully slipped out the back door.

He walked through the alley onto the street and casually strolled, moving up and down streets, crossing at random, doubling back, the six blocks to the bus stop, always careful to avoid the notice of the few pedestrians out at this hour. As he walked, he disposed of the things he had taken: credit cards and the jewelry he had ripped from her corpse and taken from her bedroom. As a souvenir, he kept her driver’s license and the cash. He didn’t use trash cans. He knew the cops would look there first. They’d find everything but he wanted to make it a little harder for them. He tucked credit cards behind rocks and broke the jewelry up and scattered the pieces in bushes and plants. When he got to the bus stop, he waited fifteen minutes and boarded a southbound bus. He’d get off at Clark Road and then take the long walk east to his cabin, away from buildings and people, back where he could be alone again. While he was waiting, he made two phone calls, each very brief. When he was done, he ripped the phone apart, dropped part of it in a trash can and the rest down a storm sewer.

He sat in his office waiting. It was taking longer than he thought it would and he was getting nervous. The whole deal was now on the line, threatened by this little, insignificant woman who happened to stumble on the one piece of their plan he had committed to paper. It had been stupid and he knew it and he had cursed himself for doing it. But he never thought that it could come back to bite him like this. They would be very angry when they found out that he had left some real evidence. Now he had to do something he hadn’t counted on. He didn’t like that. He liked order and predictability and they had set up the plan to be orderly and predictable. Now she had to be put away. It was messy and he didn’t like it.

Thank God for Fabian. He was efficient, remorseless and brilliant at staying off the grid. Their role in getting Fabian released and the support they had shown him when he got out of prison had paid off in many, many ways. A do-gooder had convinced them to sponsor an ex-con. Just think of the public relations value, she had argued, the good name you would be building, how it could build your standing in the community. She could not have ever conceived of how it would turn out, could never conceive of the consequences of this new partnership. Else she never would have approached him nor would she have advocated for Fabian’s early release.

He had every faith that Fabian would do exactly what he wanted. Buy why was it taking this long? Finally, the phone rang. Once. After fifteen seconds, it rang again. Once. He smiled. It was over.

Pete Nelson poked his head around the corner of the neighboring cubicle at Sarasota police headquarters.

Hey, Sarge. Didn’t we have an appointment with that woman who claims to have information on a homicide?

Ellie Grasso looked up and then checked her watch.

Yeah, you’re right. Something about elder abuse, I think. Said it involved some very big names. She said she’d be in around ten, but it’s nearly ten thirty and no sign of her. I’ll check with the front desk.

She punched in four numbers on her phone, asked if there were any visitors for her, nodded and hung up. Nobody’s checked in. I guess she really didn’t have anything to say. Another paranoid nut job. I’ll give her one, though: she sounded credible. The problem is that we have no open homicides. So unless she was calling about a cold case, I have no idea what her issue was or if there was any real issue at all. And she sounded like this was something current, not old. Oh well, I’m sure we’ll hear something if there’s any substance here.

The phone rang. Ellie picked up and her face turned somber. She listened for a while, nodding, and then hung up. She turned to Nelson.

Well, now we do have a homicide. Woman up in the Rosemary district. Neighbors heard something and called 911. Patrol answered and found her dead in her living room. Place was a mess. Possibly cash and credit cards missing. Apparently, a burglary gone bad. We need to hump up there right now.

Why us? I thought Gannon and Cripps were first up.

They found a scrap of paper with my name and phone number on it with today’s date and ’10 a.m.’ I think we just found out why our appointment never showed.

They grabbed a car and drove the mile or so to the address they were given. Patrol had already taped off the house and the criminalists were processing the scene. Grasso walked in carefully and looked around. She moved with the experience of a veteran who knew how to look at a crime scene, to see what was and wasn’t there, without disturbing anything.

She had been in Sarasota ten years, but she’d done her twenty with the Philadelphia P.D. Philly had burned her out and she came down looking for a change of climate, but had found what she now considered paradise. The climate, the beauty of the Gulf, the good restaurants and the lack of congestion were all heaven-sent to her.

And the job wasn’t that tough either. Sarasota had a drug problem—didn’t everywhere?—but for the most part criminal activity was light, enough to keep her interested but not enough to remind her of the big city grind. It allowed her the time to enjoy this small town with all the comforts of a big city. Most of her case load was burglary, home invasions and the occasional stolen car.

When she did encounter a homicide, the case was fairly straightforward. A couple of homeless dudes fighting over a squat, love gone bad, family disputes or drug deals that blew up. Occasionally some idiot would get trigger-happy and shoot up a neighborhood. In the vast majority of these cases, there were ample fingers pointing at the perp and the cases were closed fairly quickly, leaving only the year or two wait until trial. The hardest part was remembering the facts of the case when she was called on to testify. Thank God the records people were very efficient in cuing up old reports. No, homicide tended to be a bit of a backwater for policing in Sarasota. The real fun was in undercover narcotics. Those guys really worked for their paycheck.

She pulled aside Jeremy Groves, the patrol officer who first responded to the call. Groves was a seven-year vet and had done a good job on the street. He was at the stage of his career when he would soon be adding collateral duty, probably SWAT, or moving from patrol into the Training Division, the plum assignment for a sworn officer.

Is this how you found her when you got here?

Yeah. I called for back up and checked for a pulse. She was dead, but still warm. You’ll have to get COD and the time from the meds. I looked around the house. Tried not to disturb anything. As you can see, it’s a mess. Almost every drawer had been opened and there was an empty jewel box in the bedroom. Her purse was lying near the body with what seemed to be the contents scattered on the floor. No money or credit cards. Her neighbors say her name was Sue Myslecki, in her late 40’s, and that she’d lived here for about five years. I called the name into HQ to see if we’ve got anything on her. No response yet.

What do you make of it?

Well, there was no sign of forced entry, so she might have opened the door for her killer. She was dressed as if she was going to an appointment.

Yeah, I know. I was the appointment.

Groves raised his eyebrows but didn’t pursue the topic. Normally, I’d say it was an addict looking for his next high. He was walking by, she was coming out the door. He saw his opportunity, pushed her back in the house. The rest you see. But things have been pretty quiet around here for the past few months or so. Not a lot in the way of break-ins or robberies. I think this had to be a freak coincidence. I can’t see a hype wandering around waiting for a door to open.

Homeless dude?

I don’t think so. They’re in the neighborhood, but mostly they just sit around the park. If they get some money they might go up to the convenience store for a bottle, but then it’s right back to their bench. If anything, they’re too passive to do something like this.

Okay. Just in case you’re right, get a team to fan out in a six-block radius and check every garbage can and dumpster for anything that might have belonged to Ms. Myslecki. Also check out the homeless squats and see if any of the residentially challenged know anything. Let me know what you find as soon as you can.

Grasso stood back and tried to envision what had happened. Groves may be right. But there could have been more to it. This looked like a blitz attack and very personal. A straight up homicide. The burglary evidence may have been faked to cover the real reason for the attack. If Myslecki was her 10 o’clock appointment, this could have been a targeted hit connected to what she was going to tell the cops. 

Chapter 2

John Stella stretched out in the back of the black town car that would take him from Tampa to Sarasota. It was a pleasure to extend his long legs after the flight from Boston. He didn’t fly much, but when he did he had two problems. He was well over six feet tall and the legroom, of course, was insufficient. There was simply no way he could get comfortable. But even more wearing on him was the shoulder room. Years of high school and college summer construction labor had broadened his shoulders and the regular physical training in the police force had bulked them up. So, every flight would up a combination ballet and sumo match with whomever was sitting beside him to see who would get the armrest and who would have to keep his hands up in the air and out of the way. Even burying himself in the Times puzzle couldn’t make him ignore his discomfort. Thank God for aisle seats. Otherwise it would have been a real melee.

While he was still physically fit, his more sedentary lifestyle (he laughed when this thought popped into his head, thinking of Coupeville), age and gravity had begun to erode his midsection. Even running as often as he did couldn’t reverse the inevitable.

He settled back into the soft seat and looked around him. He wasn’t in New Hampshire anymore. All around him stretched a vast expanse of blue-green water shimmering toward a far horizon under a cloudless sky. The bay was filled with sails, some freighters and even a cruise ship. Closer in to shore, parasailers filled the sky with brightly colored chutes as they twisted to take advantage of the wind and skitter across the water.

Off to his right, the remnants of the old bridge, converted in to a fishing pier, were filled with anglers, dangling their lines. They were closely watched by pelicans perched on pilings, letting the fishermen serve as advance scouts. Occasionally, one or two of the birds would take off and glide over the water, then rise straight up and dive straight down, finally surfacing with a bit of lunch. It would have made a great commercial for headache relief. Off to the left he could make out in the far distance the modest skyline of St. Petersburg. In front of him soared the majestic Sunshine Skyway Bridge, a minimalist span of golden yellow that connected the peninsula of St. Pete Beach with mainland at Palmetto.

He knew this would be different, but he sat in awe of the openness, the colors and the sheer beauty of it all. You would never see this in New Hampshire where every place seemed hemmed in by forests of towering evergreens, even on the top of Mount Monadnock.  He felt whatever was the opposite of claustrophobia, unease in the presence of far horizons. And this just six hours after he been traveling in a van down to the Boston airport in the pre-dawn darkness through sub-freezing temperatures and a landscape of snow. He had come to a place where the sun was shining and the temperature was over 70 degrees. And it was still February! But this was Florida. He knew the reality would fall far short of the scenery.

It was a good hour’s drive from the Tampa airport to Sarasota, so he had time to reflect on the chain of events that brought him to Florida, a place to which he had never had the least desire to go, even in the middle of a New England winter. It had started that Saturday morning at Rick’s when he and Frank were bemoaning the state of their beloved Yankees. They hadn’t been together for Saturday breakfast since Johnny had come back from Whidbey Island. He’d gone there to grieve Helen’s death and wound up dealing with another series of murders.

I swear we’re never going to make it to the series again, grumbled Frank.

Cheer up, buddy. It’s not nearly as bad as the early 70’s, or for that matter the early 90’s, countered Johnny. All it’s going to take is for the Steinbrenners to open their checkbook and we’ll be right back. What bothers me is that the damn Red Sox are already spending like drunken sailors and may get back there before we do.

He thoroughly enjoyed these Saturdays with Frank. He always showed up early so he could do the Times puzzle before Frank got there and today was no different. He didn’t know how he could get along without his daily dose of Will Shortz, and he didn’t want to find out. He and Frank had met thirty years earlier on the job in Philadelphia. Eventually, they’d both found their way to Hamilton, Frank as Chief of Detectives and Stella as a professor at Windham College. They shared the experience of law enforcement, similar backgrounds on the streets of Queens and a devotion to the Yankees.

Even though Hamilton was just a small college town in southern New England, it was far from uneventful for them. Since they both arrived in Hamilton, Johnny had saved Frank’s job and his marriage by cracking a couple of murder cases. Frank had saved Johnny’s life twice, once in Hamilton