“Good morning, Lieutenant.” Norris glanced at his watch. “We need to talk about your overtime budget if you’ve got a few minutes.”
“Morning, Chief. We just found a young woman raped and beat to death out on Outer Broadway, so I’m going to be tied for a while.”
“Another one besides the one you called me about on Saturday?”
“Yup. This one just happened last night.”
“Humph. Well, get back to me as soon as you can. This overtime issue is important.”
They parted ways, with Clipper bemusedly wondering how an overtime budget could be more important than two homicides.
The Criminal Division consisted of a large bullpen with Paula Sellers, the division secretary, in front and dividers for eight desks filling the main room. There was a conference room in back and three small interview rooms and a single office against the outside wall. Clipper went into his office, followed by John Peters and detective Ed Angelo. He filled them in quickly.
To Peters, he said: “Her boss is in Interview One. He got a little hinky when I asked him where he was last night, so try to pin him down, but not too hard. Let’s just get him on the record. Afterwards, take him back out and have him ID the body before it goes to Augusta, and then go through the store with him.” Clipper knew Peters would take careful note of Petersen’s reaction to the sight of his dead employee. “See what you can find out about last night’s customers.” He turned to Angelo. “Ed, track down her family, and get some help to start a door-to-door around the store.”
When Peters returned two hours later, Clipper was working on case reviews.
“Petersen’s got no alibi for last night. Says he was home alone all night with no witnesses, but you’re right, there’s something there. I couldn’t shake him, so I dropped it, but I’ll talk to his neighbors and see what I can dig up. He made the ID, and everything appears normal inside the store. Nothing missing, nothing damaged, and the night deposit was in the safe, so I kicked him loose. Her family’s down in Waterville and Ed's already made the call. She was a student at U of M; had an apartment on Center Street. I'm going to meet the building owner there if you want to come along.”
They drove to the address on Center Street and found Amburg’s apartment. The owner of the building let them into two rooms and a bath on the second floor, with thrift shop furnishings and a faint smell of Pine-Sol in the air—clean enough, with the typical college student clutter. There was a cup and plate in the drainer beside the tiny kitchen sink, and the single bed was neatly made in the bedroom, with a small stuffed dog perched on the pillow. They found nothing suspicious in a thirty-minute search; grabbed a laptop computer, an iPad and a small stack of unopened mail; and placed a police department seal on the door as they left.
When they got back to the station, a wrecker was just backing Amburg’s car into the large evidence bay, and middle-aged couple were sitting with Ed Angelo in the division’s conference room.
“Mister and Missus Amburg? My name’s Lieutenant Thomas Clipper, and this is Sergeant Peters.”
The man half-rose and extended a large, callused hand. He was a beefy man wearing a khaki shirt with an oil company emblem on the chest. “Roland Amburg,” he said in a strained voice. “My wife, Brenda.”
The woman looked up and nodded, eyes swollen. “Where is my daughter?” she demanded hoarsely.
Clipper pulled up a chair and sat. “She's on the way to the state lab in Augusta. They'll tell us exactly what happened to her.”
“Who did this?” Roland Amburg grated. “Who killed her?
“We don’t know, yet,” Clipper said. “It looks like she was attacked in the parking lot when she left work last night. My identification people are still at the scene, and we’ve brought her car and her computer in for processing. We’ve also had a look at her apartment, and so far there’s nothing to suggest that this was anything but a random act. We haven't found her purse or any jewelry, so it may have started as a robbery. Can you think of any identifiable piece of jewelry she may have been wearing, or tell us what her handbag looked like?”
Brenda Amburg shook her head. “Chelsea doesn't wear much jewelry. Maybe a small chain or, or...” She took a deep breath. “She didn't like clutter. She would maybe carry her phone in one pocket and a small wallet in the other.”
“We've found one credit card account which we're going to put a stop on. Did she have others?”
“No, just one for gas and like that.”
“When was the last time you saw or talked to Chelsea?”
Roland Amburg answered. “We talked on the phone yesterday afternoon. She was coming home next weekend.”
“Did she mention any problems; seem worried about anything?”
Brenda shook her head. “She was happy.”
“Did Chelsea have a boyfriend?” asked John Peters.
Again, the woman shook her head. “Her boyfriend is a student at Boston University. They… they were both going to be home next weekend.”
“Has there been any trouble between them?”
“No, they've been pals since the eighth grade. Greg's going to be an engineer. He's in ROTC, and he's going to be an Army engineer when he graduates.”
“What’s Greg’s last name?” asked Peters.
“Ayres. Gregory Ayres.
“Do you have a number for him?”
Mrs. Amburg fumbled in her pocketbook. “Yes, oh God…how can we tell him?”
Peters got to his feet. “We’ll take care of that,” he said gently.
Clipper was returning to his office when Paula Sellers flagged him, pointing at the telephone. "Line two," she said.
Settling in his chair, Clipper picked up the phone. "Lieutenant Clipper."
"Lieutenant, this is Truman Webster, the Pastor at Bangor Congregational? I saw in the paper this morning that Kristen Pollack's body has been found? Can you tell me what happened?"
Clipper remembered the mousy Congregational Minister who spoke mostly in questions. He had been one of the last people to see Kristen Pollack alive and had called almost daily for weeks following her disappearance.
"I'm sorry to tell you it looks like she was murdered, Mr. Webster. Her body was found out in Howland."
"Oh, no. How did...do you know who did it?"
"Well, we'll know more after the autopsy,” Clipper said, “but I really can't tell you anything at this point."
"Of course, of course. Well, I won’t bother you. I must visit her parents.”
At two-thirty, Dave Adams returned, and Clipper called his troops into the conference room for a progress report. Adams was succinct.
“I’d say she was grabbed in the parking lot—her car doors were still locked—and probably knocked unconscious. There’s a large gash on the back of her head that bled a lot, and some blood spatter on the car and pavement. We found some tire tracks in the mud at the edge of the lot on the other side of the store—we’ll be able to get some casts of those—but aside from her keys and some blood on the ground, that's it for the parking lot. Where she was found, there was a lot of blood from the head gash on the ground under her, so it looks like someone hit her over the head in the lot and then carried her out back and raped her. Doc thinks she was hit multiple times again there—that piece of re-bar beside her is probably the weapon. We checked all around the area, but we didn’t find any sign of a cell phone, jewelry, or pocketbook. I’m thinking maybe the killer took some souvenirs.” Adams started for the door. “I’m headed to Augusta. The ME says he can do the post tonight. Randy and Ben Osso are finishing up the scene, working on the tire cast and pics.”
John Peters stood. “I went through the store with the owner. There’s nothing unusual inside; last night's receipts are in the safe and we got credit card transactions for seven gas purchases between ten and midnight. Ed and Ellen are tracking them down now, and I’m going to have them sit on the store tonight to see if we can generate any witnesses. Randy had a quick look at the vic’s computer, and t
here’s nothing suspicious in the emails or browser history. I spoke to her boyfriend at Boston University. He said he was at a party with friends last night. I’ve got campus security checking it out, but he sounded clean to me. Allen and I will work her recent history, but it’s starting to look pretty damn random.” He started to sit. “Oh. The store owner remembered she sometimes carried a small, brown pocketbook,” he said holding his hands about six inches apart.
Clipper nodded. “I’ll handle roll-call briefs and the media. The rest of you get on your snitches.”
Clipper returned to his office and wrote a brief press release which he took to Lieutenant Josh Preston, the department’s public affairs officer, and at four o’clock; he attended the p.m. crew roll call and briefed the oncoming officers as well. He couldn’t give them much hard information, but armed with the knowledge of what had happened, they’d be a little more vigilant. Before calling it a day, he called Max Trimble to ask about any new developments at the Pollack scene and briefed him on the Amburg murder.
Clipper and his girlfriend, Janice Owens, lived in a nineteenth-century farmhouse on the outskirts of Bangor. A lifelong bachelor, Clipper had lovingly restored the old two-story house over a period of years, modernizing only the kitchen and bathroom and adding a large back deck; when Janice had moved in, a year ago, she’d added her touch in the form of colorful flower beds on the spacious property. For both of them, the old house was a sanctuary—a place to lock out the world in stressful times.
Appreciatively sniffing the aroma of simmering spaghetti sauce, Clipper grabbed a beer and wandered out onto the back deck, where he found Janice wrapped in a blanket and reading in the late afternoon sun.
Janice, a petite thirty-eight-year-old brunette, put her book down and stretched when Clipper stepped onto the deck. “Hey,” she said softly. “Bad day?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Well, that frown looks like a bad day… and the news story sounded like a bad day.”
“She was just thrown away,” he muttered. “Used up and thrown away like a broken toy.”
Her eyes softened and she patted the seat of the chair beside her. “That does sound like a bad day. Tell me.”
And, relaxing into the chair, Clipper told her all of it.
Chapter Five
The next morning, Clipper was at his desk before seven, plowing through the past day’s incident reports—setting some aside for follow-up assignment, absorbing them all. Taking the pulse of his city.
At seven-thirty, John Peters stuck his head in the door. “Nothing on the credit card customers. The last one was a woman who was there at eleven-thirty, and she thinks the lot was empty when she left. The others were quite a bit earlier in the evening, none of them went inside and they all look like ordinary citizens.” He slumped into one of Clipper’s visitor’s chairs. “We were out there from eleven to one. Not much traffic; no delivery vehicles. We can publish a request for anyone who saw anything to come forward, but I think we’re out of luck as far as witnesses go. I’ve got Allen and Ed talking to her friends and classmates, but apparently she was a serious student and really didn’t hang much with anybody outside of school.”
At that moment, Randy Bissonette came in and dropped a stack of photos on Clipper’s desk. “We didn’t get a lot at the Amburg scene. The only prints on her keys or car were hers, and there was nothing else in the parking lot. We never did find her pocketbook or phone, and there was nothing else there except that piece of rebar.”
“What about the tire casts?”
“The tread’s a Goodyear 195/70/R14; probably not more than a billion of them out there.” Bissonette brightened a little. “There are some good incidentals, though. Find the tire, and we’ll match it, but there's really nothing to tie the tracks to the victim.”
Clipper thought. “We've got a stop and hold on her credit card. Let's see what we can do with her phone.”
Peters nodded. “Already in the works. And Randy’s going to hit her apartment again first thing this morning, just to get it out of the way.”
Clipper didn't expect they would find anything in the apartment, but it had to be checked more thoroughly than their rudimentary search of the previous day.
“I’ve also got Evan and Ed started tracking down past offenders.”
With no immediate suspect, the division faced the daunting task of finding and interviewing known sexual offenders, hoping for the random hint that would lead to a killer.
A moment later, Dave Adams called from the State Lab. “The ME says multiple blows to the back and left side of her head are what killed her. The skull was too badly crushed to make out the shape of the weapon, but there were some cuts on the skin that were consistent with that rebar. She was five-four, and it looks like most of the blows came from the side, right where she was laying. Zero blood alcohol, nothing under her nails, no bite marks, and no fingerprints. She was definitely raped, but we got no semen and or pubic hair. The doc found traces of condom lube, but whoever did it was damned careful. They moved the Pollack post up—going to start in a few minutes—but it’s going to take a while because they’ve got to call in a dental specialist. I’ll check in when I know anything.”
When the others left, Clipper called Carol Murphy at the Channel Two news department. Murphy was a feisty young reporter, bright and inquisitive, whom Clipper had worked with in the past and trusted.
“Hey,” he said, “how’re chances of you giving us a little airtime on the Amburg murder? We need anyone who might have been around Hal’s Handy Stop last night to come forward.”
“No problem. Anything new on the investigation?”
“Well, it appears that she was taken by surprise right after she closed the store for the night, and attacked right there in the lot.”
Murphy fell easily into her interview mode. “And she was raped and beaten to death?”
Clipper grinned. They had not released the cause of death. “We’re not going to talk about that right now, but I’d be interested in knowing why you think so.”
Murphy laughed. “It’s a small town and I have big ears. Got a suspect?”
Clipper hesitated. “It appears that this was stranger-to-stranger. We’re looking at a number of possibilities.”
“Uh huh. Well, I’ll let you know if I hear anything,”
Clipper went to find John Peters, and they grabbed an unmarked car and drove to Harold Petersen’s address.
The store owner lived out by the golf course on Bangor’s west side, in a run-down ranch with a detached one-car garage. Sporting several loose clapboards and flaking brown paint, the 50s vintage house and garage squatted dejectedly on a weedy expanse of overgrown brown lawn. It was the last lot on the left side of a dead-end street, surrounded on the back and right side by scrubby undergrowth. Clipper pulled into the empty driveway and they walked to the front door and knocked.
When there was no answer, Clipper walked the perimeter of the house, looking through dirty windows into cluttered rooms. The house looked as disreputable on the inside as it did on the outside, but he saw nothing to implicate Petersen in the murder.
Back in the car, Clipper turned back the way they’d come and drove about fifty yards to the house before Petersen’s. This house was older but, unlike Petersen’s, solid-looking and in good repair. Small beds of fall flowers lined the walk, and the late fall grass was beautifully manicured. The elderly woman who answered their knock was short and slender, birdlike with bright eyes peering inquisitively out from beneath a shock of startlingly white hair as she examined Clipper’s badge.
“Cops,” she called over her shoulder. “I told you they’d catch on sooner or later.” She turned back to Clipper, and her voice was sober. “You’d better come in. I think he’ll go peacefully.”
The woman stepped back from the door, and Clipper entered cautiously while Peters hung back slightly, hand near the gun beneath his sports coat. The door opened directly into a large living room filled with substanti
al wooden furniture that had been expensive when it was new, many decades in the past. Faded wallpaper and oil paintings in fancy frames covered the walls and a large oriental carpet splashed muted color on the gleaming hardwood floor. The one jarringly modern item was a high-tech black-and-chrome wheelchair sitting in front of a beautiful old console television. The television was off; the only sounds in the room were muted strains of classical music and the rhythmic wheezing of the mechanical ventilator the elderly man in the chair wore clamped around his chest.
Clipper turned to find the woman’s hand outstretched in greeting. “Martha Collins,” she said with a pixyish grin at her playful deception. “This is my husband, Oliver. Please be seated and tell us how we can help you.”
Clipper nodded to the man in the wheelchair, who seemed only semi-conscious and oblivious to his presence, then sat on the edge of a large couch as Martha Collins settled into an armchair and smiled at him expectantly.
“Well,” said Clipper, “we’re looking into an incident that happened Sunday night, and I was wondering if you noticed any unusual activity in the neighborhood.”
“Sunday night.” Collins fixed Clipper with a shrewd gaze for a moment. “I’m old, Mr. Clipper, not stupid,” she said briskly. “This is a very quiet neighborhood, and the only noteworthy thing to happen in the entire city Sunday night was the murder of that poor girl on the other side of town. And the only reason you could possibly have to ask us about that would be our neighbor, Mr. Petersen.”
Clipper grinned at the rebuke. “Oh?” he said. “Why do you think we’d be asking about him?”
Collins hesitated again. “I generally hold that one should remain quiet if one cannot say anything good about another,” she said primly, “but in this instance I’ll be happy to tell you whatever I can about that sleazy bastard.”
Past Master Page 3