Betrayal

by Victor Uribe

Private Detective Vincent Tuscani is hired to help a troubled 15-year-old boy charged with murder. The boy says he can remember nothing before the police arrived to find him holding a dead exotic dancer in his arms. What was the woman doing at the boy's house and if he is innocent, how did she die? Can Vincent save him?

ISBN 1-59431-415-2 Mystery / Suspense / Young Adult

Cover Art by Victor Uribe

Also available in RTF and HTML formats.

Part One

On an afternoon, late August, Vincent Tuscani, a private investigator, was waiting for Chepene and Rosalina Ramireson, at his office on the 20th floor of the Venetian building located ov Lake Shore Drive, Chicago. The Ramireson's 15-year-old son, Armandus, had been charged with the brutal murder of Katisha Flanderini, an exotic dancer, and the boy was currently in detention at Hope House, a facility for socially deviant minors, on the south side of Chicago. Vincent sighed, wondering why he had agreed to see them. From what he had heard on the news, the evidence against the boy was overwhelming.

His mind on the case, Vincent walked to the window and looked down at the restless waters of Lake Michigan below. Today, they looked grey under dark and lowering skies. Unusual weather for August, he thought, as he took out a cigar, but didn't light it, then dropped into his desk chair of caiman leather. Vincent wondered what the parents thought he could do when the boy had already confessed. He stroked his thick mustache, picked up the case file, and wished he could offer them some hope.

Miss Flanderini had been stabbed numerous times by her frenzied attacker. The prosecutor already was talking about trying the boy as an adult because of the heinous nature of the crime. His mouth dry, Vincent caught up a soft tan leather wine boot, and squeezed out a sip of Manzanilla, his favorite Spanish Jerez wine.

The sharp taste brought back memories of Pamplona and running with the bulls under the hot Spanish sun. A moment of courage, a time of measuring his valor as a man. Would Armandus Ramireson ever find for himself such a moment of courage?

Vincent drank again, savoring the taste of the wine and the memory of a time when he had felt strong and invincible. But on this day, he felt defeated, before he had begun. This case, the boy, only fifteen…If they tried him as an adult, he could get the death penalty.

Like most of Chicago, Vincent had first heard of the Flanderini murder two weeks earlier on the TV news after the Chicago police had released a 911 tape. The victim's panicky voice, her sobs and anguish made the words hard to understand, but the news had helpfully run a crawl of her words under the confused sobbing, and the woman's voice gasping out her last words, while the calm voice of the dispatcher kept asking her name, and where she was while she sobbed and pleaded. Help me. I'm Katisha Flanderini...I was stabbed... Then there was the sound of the receiver being dropped and silence. Not even the sound of labored breathing could be heard through the phone line.

Tracing the call, the dispatcher had sent police and paramedics to the Ramireson's home. According to police reports, they had entered Armandus Ramireson's bedroom, and found the half-naked body of 30-year-old Katisha Flanderini, dead of multiple stab wounds. Her blouse and underwear had been ripped away. One of the wounds had struck an artery and blood spattered the walls, the floor, the telephone table. Armandus Ramireson sat on the floor, holding her body cradled in his arms and sobbing uncontrollably. There were blood stains on the knees of his trousers and smears of her blood on his white shirt. A bloody kitchen knife lay within his reach and bloody fingerprints on the handle could be seen with the naked eye. Armandus's hands had been smeared with blood that forensic tests later showed to belong to the victim.

Though the woman was clearly dead, paramedics had worked over her body while an officer handcuffed the still-sobbing boy, reciting by rote his Miranda rights.