Crown's Law Read online

  Crown’s Law

  A Sam Crown Mystery/Thriller

  by

  Wolf Wootan

  ©Copyright 2006, Wolf Wootan

  Smashwords Edition

  Published by Wolf Wootan on Smashwords in January 2011

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book my not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Prologue

  Friday, April 14, 1995

  Dana Point, CA

  Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) Homicide Investigator Sergeant Sam Crown had completed a witness interview in Laguna Niguel and was on the I-5 freeway heading south toward the sheriff’s San Clemente substation when he heard the call on his radio. There was a hostage situation in a house in Dana Point and the on-scene cops were calling for SWAT. The off-ramp for Dana Point Harbor was about a mile ahead. Sam glanced at the clock on the dashboard of his department Crown Victoria and noted that it was 4:01 P.M.

  This is none of my business, really. I should go type up my report, zap it to headquarters in Santa Ana, and spend the weekend at the beach house, just as I planned.

  He listened to the radio chatter as he drove. It sounded like a bad one ¾ the result of a domestic disturbance call.

  “What the hell,” he said under his breath. “Wouldn’t hurt to take a look.”

  Had he ignored the call, his life probably would have turned out differently. Instead, he zoomed onto the off-ramp and headed down to Pacific Coast Highway—PCH to the locals and into Dana Point, heading back north toward Copper Lantern, the street where the standoff was going down. It wasn’t one of his better decisions, but it was typical. He was known as “Crazy Crown” by most of Orange County’s law enforcement community—the “Dirty Harry” of OCSD.

  ***

  He parked behind a Sheriff’s black-and-white and stepped out onto the pavement. A uniformed deputy started walking toward him to shoo him away. Sam flashed his badge and the cop let him pass. The place was a madhouse—police cars, TV vans, rubbernecks, a paramedics vehicle. The cops were trying to establish a perimeter, pushing TV reporters and sightseers back away from the action.

  Sam made his way to a police cruiser with three men standing behind it—two in uniform, one in a rumpled tan suit. The man in the suit scowled in Sam’s direction.

  “Crown! What the hell are you doing here?” he hissed.

  “I could ask you the same thing, Jastro,” replied Sam with a shrug. “I was just passing by and heard the call for SWAT. What’s going on?”

  “The best we can put together by talking to neighbors is that a Mrs. Culvert and her 8-year-old daughter live here. They—the neighbors—think that her ex-husband is in there causing all this hell,” grumbled Jastro.

  “Domestic dispute, eh? How come you need SWAT? Just go knock on the door and calm the SOB down,” laughed Sam.

  Jastro glared at Sam and said, “That’s what the first two uniforms did when they got here. The asshole shot three times through the door. They were lucky they weren’t hit!”

  Sam glanced around and counted at least 20 deputies—there were probably more. Dana Point contracted their policing from OCSD.

  “Have you talked to the fucker?” asked Sam as he popped a piece of gum in his mouth. The eternal nicotine urge was upon him again, even though he hadn’t smoked in over 20 years.

  “No. He won’t answer the damned phone. I have a hostage negotiator on the way, but I doubt if it will help. I’ll let SWAT take care of him when they get here. I’m not risking any of these cops’ lives.”

  “He could hurt the woman and kid badly before SWAT gets here. You’ve got enough men here to storm the friggin’ Bastille! Just go in and get the asshole!” exclaimed Sam, annoyed at Jastro’s reluctance to act.

  “I’m in charge here, Sergeant Crown! Why don’t you just go about your business? This is not a homicide investigation!” fumed Jastro.

  “Not yet. Wait a few more minutes and it will be.”

  “I’m following the book on this,” replied Jastro.

  “It’s your funeral. Probably theirs, too,” murmured Sam.

  Sam shrugged and turned to leave when he heard the noise from inside the house. It sounded like a child wailing.

  “Daddy! Stop hurting Mommy! Please! Stop!”

  “Shut up, Sally! Get over there!” A man’s bellowing voice.

  Sam turned and peered intently at the house, listening, chewing his gum. There was a large picture window to the right of the front door—Sam’s right. Two smaller windows were on the other side of the door. It was a small house—most on this street were—but the yard was well cared for and the light blue paint covering the wooden exterior wasn’t peeling or faded. The white trim around the windows and white flower boxes filled with multi-colored blooms gave the house a friendly, homey look. Sam glanced at Jastro, knowing he wouldn’t do anything.

  “You can’t wait any longer, Jastro!” Sam spat out, getting angry now. “Things are getting out of hand in there!”

  “SWAT is only ten minutes away now,” shrugged Jastro as he listened to his handheld radio, not able to look Sam in the eye.

  There was more screaming from the house, then a gunshot.

  “Mommy, Mommy! What did you do to Mommy?” The child’s voice, wailing like a banshee.

  “Shit! That does it! I’m going in there, Jastro!” yelled Sam. “You’ve stood around here with your head up your ass and let that bastard kill someone!”

  The screaming child did not bring the horrible images of dying children in ’Nam to Sam’s brain—he no longer suffered that agony. Instead, he went straight to rage, wanting to hurt someone—cure the problem.

  He walked over to a deputy he knew and said, “Jim, let me borrow your windbreaker. I don’t want you guys to shoot me when I come back out of there!”

  Jim’s dark blue windbreaker had the word “POLICE” on its back in large white letters. Sam took off his sports coat and laid it on the hood of a car and donned the windbreaker. All the cops there knew—or knew of—Sergeant Sam “Crazy” Crown. He knew they were all watching in anticipation, wondering what he was going to do. Jastro approached Sam, fuming.

  “You can’t go in there, Crown! That’s an order!” he shouted, his finger in Sam’s face. “I don’t need any of your fucking Dirty Harry shit here today!”

  Sam looked quietly into Jastro’s eyes, then said, “I should have gone in earlier. You should have done something earlier. Stick your order up your ass!” growled Sam as he drew his Smith & Wesson .40 caliber and pulled the slide back, then let it go, snapping a cartridge into the firing chamber. He put it back into his shoulder rig—he wanted his hands free when he entered the house.

  “I’ll have your badge for this, Crown!”

  “Maybe. If that asshole shoots that kid, they’ll pin your badge on your ass! Get out of my way!”

  As Sam walked across the lawn toward the porch, a patrol cop named Mary Klink ran over to Sam and touched his arm.

  “Sarge! I’ll go in with you! Cover you!” she panted.

  “No, Mary! That’ll just get you in trouble with Jastro.”

  “I don’t care at this point,” she replied. He stared at her, saw that she was serious—willing to face Jastro’s wrath.

  “OK, then. You can help me, if you insist. I don’t want you going in with me though. See that flower pot over there? Get it, and when I signal you, throw it through th
at window on the far left. I’m going in through the picture window, and hopefully your toss will distract him for a second or two while I get my bearings.” He hesitated. “You don’t have to do this, Mary. Jastro can cause you some grief just for throwing the pot.”

  “Screw Jastro!” she said, then she crouched and dashed to the other side of the walkway, grabbing the flower pot on the way. She knelt down behind the white porch railing and looked in Sam’s direction. The child was still screaming.

  Sam eased onto the porch and picked up a wooden rocker that sat on the porch. He nodded at Mary. She stood and threw the pot as he threw the rocker through the plate glass window. He went in right behind it.

  Inside the house, Norman Culvert—enraged, drunk, and high on drugs—was standing at his wife’s feet, peering down at her bleeding body, when the flower pot came crashing through the living room window, about six feet from where he was standing. He was startled, so he snapped a shot in that direction, hitting a CD player on a table against the far wall. The child, Sally Culvert, was cowering behind a couch covered in a bright floral print—now spattered with her mother’s blood—crying, trying to catch her breath between sobs.

  Sam jumped through the dining room window and landed on his feet, but slipped on the glass-covered hardwood floor and smashed into the knotty pine dining room table. As Sam steadied himself against the table, he saw Culvert shoot at the sound of the flower pot smashing into the house. Then the drug-crazed man turned toward him.

  As Culvert finished his turn and raised his arm, pointing his gun at Sam, Sam spun left to face him but lost his footing again on the glass shards and slipped to his right knee as a slug whistled over his head, missing him by scant inches. Sam drew his weapon in a smooth, fluid motion unmatched by most shooters. It was “cocked and locked”—safety on, hammer cocked—so his thumb flipped the safety off as his finger squeezed the trigger and fired a shot into the middle of the man’s chest. The force of the slug knocked Culvert backwards and he fell to the floor on his back, his weapon flying across the room.

  Sam stood and strode over to the man and checked his pulse. He was dead. Then Sam heard the woman moan—he had assumed that she was dead. He knelt beside her and checked the pulse in her neck, finding a weak one. If he got the paramedics in here fast enough she might make it!

  The child, Sally, ran from behind the couch, still sobbing, and Sam snatched her into his arms and rushed to the front door. He opened it and went out onto the porch.

  “It’s OK, Sally,” he cooed to her. “It’s OK.”

  Then he yelled, “Paramedics! The woman is still alive! Hurry, before she bleeds out!”

  He crossed the lawn and approached Jastro as four paramedics rushed into the house with their equipment. Deputy Mary Klink appeared and took Sally from Sam. Sam knew that TV cameras and long-range digital cameras were recording the incident for posterity.

  “Where are the CPS people?” Sam asked. “This kid needs immediate help!”

  Jastro—shuffling from one foot to the other—replied, “They must be around here somewhere. I followed procedures! Klink, see if you can find them!”

  “You’re really on top of things, Jastro!” Sam said. “You can cancel SWAT. That asshole won’t be causing any more trouble. The woman still has a trace of a pulse, but I don’t know if she’ll make it. She certainly wouldn’t have if we had waited any longer. I’ll be leaving now.”

  “The hell you will!” snapped Jastro. “We have an officer-involved shooting here! Yet another one for you! Not even mentioning that you disobeyed a direct order! I’ll take your gun pending an investigation!”

  Sam moved closer to Jastro and said softly, “Screw you, Jastro! You’re on TV, you know! Why don’t you pull yourself together and figure out a way to take credit for how well you handled things here. Tell Internal Investigations I’ll be at the San Clemente substation for about the next hour, then I’ll be at my parents’ house on Beach Road in Capo Beach. They have the address on file. Otherwise, they can wait until I get in on Monday.”

  With that, he spun around and walked in the direction of the car where he had left his jacket. He gave the windbreaker back to the cop who had loaned it to him, then put on his jacket. He saw the press and the TV reporters poised like a pack of hyenas between him and his car. He looked skyward and saw several TV choppers hovering. As he scanned the hyena pack again, he spotted Chandra Claudet (she pronounced it Claw-day) and her camera crew.

  Good! he thought. A friend among the vultures! I’ll probably need a friend for this one!

  He made his way toward the yellow tape, knowing he had to run the gauntlet to get to his car.

  Chandra Claudet was a beautiful woman in her middle thirties with black hair, dark brown eyes, and soft features with skin the color of coffee with cream. She was 5' 8" with D-cup breasts, and long, shapely legs. She worked “breaking stories” in Orange County for L.A.’s Channel 5 News, and Sam had bedded her more than once.

  As the throng converged on Sam with their mikes and cameras, he went straight to Chandra and whispered in her ear.

  “Meet me at Sonny’s at 6 o’clock.”

  Then he pushed through the mass of people and made it to his car and drove away without even saying “No comment.” He headed toward the San Clemente substation to file his report.

  ***

  Sonny’s is an Italian restaurant on PCH in San Clemente frequented by not only the locals, but by people from miles around. The restaurant has both inside and outside patio dining, and Sam found Chandra waiting for him on the patio at a round table—covered with a red-checkered table cloth—with four chairs. She was sipping from a glass of red wine and munching on hot garlic bread. She wore a dark green pant suit with a cream-colored, low-cut blouse, and Sam thought she looked especially sexy this evening—maybe because her suit coat was hanging on a chair and her ample breasts were stretching her blouse to its limits.

  He plopped down in a chair next to her and said, “Thanks for coming, Chandra. It’s good seeing you again! It’s been awhile.”

  She smiled, flashing straight white teeth. “I’ve been working up in North County. I was just lucky to catch this hostage thing. I got some good film—long range, of course, but our optics are exceptional. The boss even let me go live with ‘breaking news’ when you went into the house, so I got you coming out with the kid. You’re a hero! Are you going to tell me what it’s all about? I need a wrap-up for the eleven o’clock and morning news. The little piece the viewers saw live just whetted their appetites—they’ll want the details of what went on inside the house. And what was that shit with Jastro?”

  Sam poured himself a glass of wine and took a sip as he watched the cars zip along PCH. He pondered his options with Chandra. She had always been fair to him, but she was, after all, a reporter in search of a story. How she presented the story was important to Sam.

  “Let’s go off the record for now, Chandra. OK?” he finally said.

  “Sure, Sam. But give me something I can use before I leave?”

  “Something. I don’t know what. Look, I’m having a hard time keeping my hands off you here in public. Why don’t I buy us some dinner, then move this discussion to the beach house. My parents are in Hawaii so we’ll be alone there,” Sam said.

  She laughed, pushed a strand of hair out of her face, then replied, “A sudden hankering for black poontang, eh?”

  “Chandra! You know I don’t think that way! I have a hankering for you though! For Christ’s sake, you’re an octoroon! You’re seven-eighths New Orleans French! I’d call that French poontang if I had to choose between the two! Why stress the black?”

  “I don’t make the rules, sweetie. One drop of black blood makes you black in this country. Why do you think I’m stuck in this dead-end job chasing ambulances? I should have had an anchor slot long ago!”

  “And you blame that on your African-American blood? I think it’s just that there are so few openings for anchors. Some of them never leave,” sai
d Sam.

  “Bullshit! They owe me! It’s not my fault that some slave owner screwed one of his slaves years ago!”

  “Calm down, Chandra! Your day will come,” replied Sam.

  “OK, OK. Enough of that. I’d love to go to the beach house with you, but let’s eat first.”

  The two of them split a pizza and finished off the bottle of wine, then Chandra followed Sam home to Capistrano Beach—through the guard gate and down Beach Road, which paralleled the Pacific Ocean. They went directly to Sam’s bedroom and he took her into his arms and kissed her.

  “It’s been too long, Chandra!” he whispered in her ear as he nibbled on it.

  “Yes, it has, Sam! And we make such good music together!” she replied—emphasizing her southern drawl—as she began undressing. “Undo my bra, sweetie, and turn these hush puppies loose for a breather.”

  ***

  Afterwards, Sam fixed a couple of cognacs and they went out on the large deck and watched the waves roll in. Chandra lit a filtered cigarette and blew smoke into the dark, star-speckled sky. She was still naked under one of Sam’s terry cloth robes, as was he. She raised her snifter of brandy and touched it to his.

  “Here’s to us, Sam. I use you, you use me. The perfect formula for a perfect relationship!” she laughed.

  “And the sex is good, too!” he chortled.

  “Only good? I must be slipping! I gave us 5 stars!”

  They sipped their drinks and were silent for a moment. Then Chandra said, “OK, Sam, let’s use each other again. You tell me what happened in that house, and I’ll give it whatever spin you want. But I need the story!”

  “OK, Chandra,” he answered, then told her as much of the story as he wanted her to know, while he ran his hand under her robe and absently stroked the inside of her thigh.

  ***

  Monday morning, Sam was in Captain Charles Reese’s office at 10 A.M. Sam brought a cup of coffee in his own mug—one with the U.S. Marine Corps emblem on it. Reese waved him into one of the visitor’s chairs and Sam eased into it.