A Cop and A Killer

By Kerri Croake

This story is loosely inspired by true events that occurred in the 80s in New York City when violent crimes were abundant on every street corner. When a delinquent group of older teenage boys parked their hostile gang on the corner across the street from Cassie Wayne’s house, she started having more visions about their heinous crimes. One of teenagers had been charged with the brutal rape and murder of his girlfriend and another would eventually join the NYPD Police Academy. Cassie’s father was a seasoned police officer, and the neighborhood wanted their peaceful street back. Cassie’s visions of the crime made her the only real “witness”, but her father wanted to keep her talent hidden from the world even if a murderer went free. Her visions also came with an unfortunate price tag- a deadly brain tumor. Her only chance to survive was to seek counsel from a legendary ghost, but this ghost wanted something in return if she wanted to live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663261311

Book preview

A COP AND

A KILLER

KERRI CROAKE

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A COP AND A KILLER

Copyright © 2024 Kerri Croake.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6085-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6086-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-6131-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024905418

iUniverse rev. date: 04/08/2024

Contents

Chapter 1 The Punk Problem

Chapter 2 Trouble

Chapter 3 The Watcher in the Tree

Chapter 4 Mess With the Wayne Family and You Get the Horns

Chapter 5 Cassie’s Nightmare

Chapter 6 The Aftermath

Chapter 7 What Happens Now?

Chapter 8 Schrodinger’s Law

Chapter 9 In Hiding

Chapter 10 Why Now and Why Her?

Chapter 11 All Rise

Chapter 12 Life with No Parole

Chapter 13 The Trial

Chapter 14 The Truth about Cassie

Chapter 15 The Crazy Man

Chapter 16 A Hard Choice

Chapter 17 Shattered Hearts

Chapter 18 End of the Road

Chapter 19 Everybody Hurts

Chapter 20 The Cop

Chapter 21 The Confrontation

Chapter 22 The Second Trial of Russo

Chapter 23 Cassie’s Greatest Challenge

Chapter 24 Broken

Chapter 25 Cemetery Gates

Chapter 26 The Melon Heads

Chapter 27 The Dirt Path and Back

Chapter 28 Cassie’s Resurrection

Home Crap Home

Epilogue

Dedication

To the families of unsolved crimes, may you find justice and peace in life. Never forget and never give up your fight. Know that you are supported and loved. I will remember.

To the NYPD for fighting the good fight without fear.

And to my father, George Croake ESU Truck 5

-Kerri Croake 7/27/23

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

—Aristotle

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One

THE PUNK PROBLEM

Cassie Wayne will always remember the summer when a mob of guido punk tweakers invaded her street. They chugged brown liquor out of large, glass bottles that ended up in shards in her street. The punks chain smoked and smoked marijuana that smelled like actual shit. They knew where to buy the good stuff but took pride in shaking down teenagers waiting for the train. Cassie watched the depravity go down across the street from her bedroom window. They were loud, obnoxious to everyone, and didn’t take shit from the adults in the New York City neighborhood where she grew up.

A few grown-ups had tried to shield themselves and the innocent children riding their bikes or Big Wheels up and down her street. It gave them a sense of notoriety that no one in their right minds would want. However, these jerks probably couldn’t spell right minds. They looked like the villains in comic books or in the movies. Yet those stories had a caped crusader that swooped down and could eliminate the bad guys from her field of vision and out of her life. Cassie doubted they would volunteer to offer help. Even superheroes had a code and the greasy hair sported by the tweakers would be hard to grab. She also surmised that there were no hot showers in their homes. Their noxious odor could be smelled by anyone standing within a few feet. The aggressive acne on their sweaty faces looked painful. They were scary to directly look at or from her second-floor bedroom window across the corner of the street. The clothes they chose to wear every day were full of holes and had stains from unknown sources that a forensic scientist couldn’t identify. Cassie did not know that men wore jewelry. She thought it was odd to spend money on gold necklaces and watches but did not care about the simpler things such as showering and hair brushing. It was their personal look and how they wanted people to view them. The yellow teeth from cigarette smoking and drinking from a youthful age made them dangerous and unapproachable. Cassie thought if she got close enough to any of them, she would be devoured. However, that summer, many came to the harsh realization that it was not worth it to try more than once to help rid the streets of the tweakers. They had learned to steer clear of the lit cigarette butts flicked at them. The kids who lived and played in the same streets infected by these punks gradually faded out of Cassie’s life. These tweaker-ass, punk-faced losers had a bogus air of entitlement. They used threats of physical violence and foul language to endear themselves as formidable opponents against the terrified families who only knew tidy and clean lifestyles.

Cassie and her two sisters lived in a time when blood was thicker than water and the close friends in life were the ones who truly mattered. The punk-ass tweakers were bothersome in her youth and grew up to be criminals. Only three lived to the age of thirty. One became a police officer to reconcile his past. He is gutless and incapable of dealing with his anguish and the child he once was. One tweaker beat his girlfriend to death and received life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was a hard man who lived a hard life and paid for it behind bars. He was almost killed in his cell by the AB. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that he could meet his end because of his fondness for being a jackass and his loud mouth.

The bulk of the guinea tweaker punks spent their lives in and out of jail or on the run. Their presence was an attempt to steal the young adults’ innocence with their clout. The mere fact that no one stopped the tweaker punks from making a move against them only bolstered their confidence and influence in the neighborhood. Cassie’s brave attempts to insulate her sisters from the evil world of tweaker punks that assembled every day across the street never discouraged her resolve.

Cassie and her younger sister Rebecca shared bunk beds in their bedroom. They had front row seats from one of their small street-facing windows. They witnessed a Shakespearean tragedy before they had the chance to read Shakespeare.

Their father was on the job for most of their young adult lives. He had to work overtime to support his family. He made up for it in spades because he loved his four girls: his wife Pat and their three daughters Cassie, Rebecca, and Aileen.

One Christmas morning, they joyfully woke up to roller skates under the tree. Unfortunately, all three girls also woke up with chicken pox. No one would be skating that day. However, that also meant they didn’t have to rush to open presents, fight over the shower in the one bathroom the family shared, or go to church. Cassie never cared about who was first to use the bathroom when there was a hoard of presents under the Christmas tree. She moved at her own pace, and that pace was considered slow by the rest of her family. That meant she was always forced to go first, or her family might be late for mass (God forbid). That Christmas wasn’t about presents from Santa, but reclamation of their neighborhood and the criminal trial.

The city had paved their street in May. No potholes plus new tar meant one thing: during the daytime, the children from the neighborhood finally had a place to skate and ride their bikes. Cassie’s house was on the corner, which gave the Wayne girls unique access. It was their street and they had first dibs.

It was also the summer that they were harassed by the older dudes who staked a claim across the street from their corner house. The tweakers littered the corner with themselves and their cigarettes, shenanigans, loud music, double-parked cars, and foul mouths. Those guidos thought they hit the lottery. They were much older, so no one riding a Big Wheel or tricycle presented a problem for their self-appointed turf. They taunted anyone who came close to poaching their spot. They grew in number exponentially until there was no room for the kids who lived on the block.

The carefree attitude with which they tried to make everyone miserable pissed off Cassie. Anyone brave enough to talk back to them had better be a fast skater. The guinea punk tweakers on the corner took no prisoners. Cassie, her sisters, and their friends learned some colorful words that summer from an era long gone, if measured in time.

She often wished she couldn’t see the future during those hot, miserable days. She had a special gift that she didn’t always understand and could not explain. Her visions were always correct, and she was left hostage to the revelation that she was unable to bring real change in others. Her ability to glimmer into minds