“Mr. Petersen wishes to cooperate, Lieutenant,” he said. “He has instructed me to tell you that that on Wednesday afternoon, he was at home taking a nap before going in to work, and last night he worked at his store until eight pm, and then visited the mall on Stillwater Avenue to do some shopping. He left there and drove to the Sea and Shore Restaurant in Brewer for dinner, after which he went out to Hampden where he spent the evening with a friend. He returned to Bangor this morning and went directly to his place of business.”
“And the name of the friend?” asked Clipper.
“Mr. Petersen is not willing to release that information. However, he can and will provide credit card receipts for his shopping and dinner purchases.”
Clipper gave Barstow a hard stare. “Your client is going to want a much better alibi than that,” he said.
Barstow shrugged. “That may well be, but that is all we are going to say at this point.”
“Clement,” said Clipper, “Mister Petersen apparently has no witnesses and no real evidence to alibi his whereabouts during the times of three murders, one assault, and one attempted assault, all of which started with the rape and murder of his employee—the one he described to me as ‘real foxy.’ At this point he is the primary suspect in all of these cases, and he’s not being truthful. For instance, I know for a fact that he left his house three hours before he got to work on Wednesday.”
Barstow pushed his chair back. “Fine. I assume you’ll be in touch if—”
“No,” Petersen said. Then, to Clipper: “You’re right. I was out driving around for a while before I went to work on Wednesday, and I-I’ll tell you who I was with last night, but you have to keep her name out of it.”
“I can’t promise that,” Clipper said, “but I have no reason to release the names of alibi witnesses. If she can give you a credible alibi, it stops right there.”
“Her name is Ginny Palter. She’s a manager at Sears, but you can’t bother her at work.”
Clipper pushed a pad of paper across the table. “Write down her name and phone number,” he said. “Where did you drive to on Wednesday?”
“Nowhere, just around. I… I like to drive.” Petersen wrote something down and pushed the pad back to Clipper. “She’s working right now. Please wait till after,” he pleaded.
“You know I can’t do that,” Clipper said. “But I’ll make it quick.” He glanced at the pad and tapped the number into his cell phone.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Palter, this is Detective Lieutenant Thomas Clipper of the Bangor Police Department. I’m here with Harold Petersen, who says you can answer a question for me.”
“Is this for real?”
Clipper handed the phone to Petersen with a warning look.
“Ginny,” Petersen said, “just tell him whatever he wants to know. I’ll explain later.”
Clipper took the phone back. “Easy question,” he said. “When’s the last time you saw Harold?”
“About seven o’clock this morning, when I kicked his fat ass out of bed,” was the matter-of-fact reply. “He picked me up after work last night about eight-thirty, and we had supper and then went to my place in Hampden.”
“Were you both there all night?”
“Yup.”
After arranging with Palter to come to the station for a formal statement when she got off work, Clipper kicked Petersen loose and headed for his office to make a start on the already growing pile of weekend reports. He’d just gotten started when Ramon Rojas spoke from his office doorway.
“I saw your suspect leaving,” Ramon grated. “How many more college girls does he have to attack before you lock him up.”
Clipper stood slowly and, motioning Rojas into the office, walked over and closed the door. “Let’s get something straight,” he said. “You aren’t privy to the facts of this investigation and you’re a long damn ways out of your jurisdiction. I don’t know how you do it in New Mexico, but around here, we like to make our case before we make the arrest. Right now, Harold Petersen is still just a suspect.”
“In New Mexico we take perverts like that off the street.”
“And what do you do when the jury acquits them? This is your last warning, Sergeant: stand down. If you interfere with this thing, I’ll ship your ass back to New Mexico…or put you in a cell.”
Rojas’s eyes flashed his anger, but he nodded once, turned, and stalked stiffly out of the office brushing by Ken Thomas in the doorway.
“What’s his problem?”
“Pissed that we haven’t arrested Petersen yet,” Clipper said. “Man needs to be on a leash.”
Thomas nodded, “Or on a plane back to wherever he came from,” he said. “Anyway, it looks like we might have a break on those two homicides. Nelson Miller just called. Cynthia Day was engaged, but not to the guy she was found with.” He glanced at his notepad. “Robert Kline, age twenty-two, lives on campus but is currently missing and reported to be extremely jealous. They got out a picture and a B.O.L.O. on his vehicle and we’ve got the troops alerted.”
“Good.” Clipper nodded tiredly and turned back to his paperwork.
By one o’clock Clipper had had enough and called Dave Adams, still at the scene, to let him know he’d be at home. When he pulled into his driveway, Douglas Holland’s old pickup was parked beside Janice’s Buick, and he found the two of them at the kitchen table with Janice’s new rifle.
“Whatcha got?” he asked, grabbing a beer from the refrigerator.
“It’s a Remington 700,” Janice said. “.308, and we got a scope and a bipod that attaches to the sling thingy to go with it.”
Clipper eyed the plain walnut stock and blued finish of the rifle. “I expected to see something a little more exotic looking,” he said.
Holland chuckled. “Some of those rifles the kids use nowadays look pretty strange, but it’s hard to beat the basic 700, at least for a starter gun. Some people like the Winchester model 70—six of one, half dozen of the other, I guess—but I’ve always preferred the Remington. With this scope and bipod, it’s pretty close to the M-24s we used in the Army.”
He picked up the rifle. “We’ll do a little bedding work on the stock—maybe add a butt pad—and as Janice learns to shoot we may want to upgrade the trigger but with some match grade ammo, this’ll do just fine out to eight hundred or a thousand yards. Although Clipper had done some rifle shooting in his three-year Army stint and was a state certified police rifle marksman, he had become something of a specialist in the art of combat shooting with a handgun. Nonetheless, he was intrigued at the thought of hitting a target up to half a mile away.
“Where do you find a thousand-yard range around here?” he asked.
“Oh, I got a couple of long-distance ranges set up at my place,” Holland said, “but we’ll only need a couple hundred yards to start. You’re both welcome to come out and shoot anytime.”
After Holland left, Clipper grabbed a pad of graph paper and sat down to sketch out a design for a new rifle rack.
On Sunday, Clipper slept in, then took a rare day off, spending the morning in his workshop with his cell phone close at hand. He ran several maple boards through the planer in preparation for the planned rifle rack which, on paper, had grown to accommodate half a dozen rifles and shotguns, with a drawer for ammo and cleaning supplies. After lunch, he settled in to watch some football and ended up asleep in his chair—frankly, an excellent way to spend a badly-needed day off.
He was sure the week ahead wouldn’t leave a lot of time for relaxing.
Chapter Thirteen
When Clipper got to the office on Monday morning, he met Ellen Davis leading a skinny, pasty-faced youth out of the interrogation room. He looked to be eighteen or nineteen, with long, lank, black hair hanging down over a thin face, and his despair was evident in his bowed head and the dejected slump of his shoulders.
Davis slowed down, and a broad grin split her face. “Lieutenant,” she said, “I’d like you to meet Jimmy Drew, fo
rmer Little City burglar, now retired.”
It took a second for the name to register. “Drew?” Clipper asked.
“That’s right. Allison Drew’s grandson. We got him coming out of a window on Congress Street and he copped to everything.” Her face softened. “We got there just in time, too; he was being chased out the window by the homeowner with a gun. Got kind of tense there for a minute, but nobody died. We just sat down with the reports, and he helped us make sure we got them all. Closed nine cases.”
When Clipper got to his desk, his phone was ringing. It was Cal Ettenger, the City Manager. “I hope you got an airtight case on Allison Drew’s grandson,” he said without preamble.
Clipper sighed. “I wondered if she’d start with you or the governor.”
“Kidding aside, Clip, she just hung up on me when I tried to reason with her, and she’s headed your way.”
“Thanks, Cal, but we got the kid coming out of a window and he confessed to a whole string of burglaries, so I guess she’s just going to have to deal with it.”
It was fifteen minutes before the call came from the chief’s office, and when Clipper was shown in by a silent Miss Elliot, he found Chief Norris standing behind his desk as though defending himself from physical attack.
Though small in stature, Allison Drew dominated the room, radiating anger like an enraged bull. She whirled on Clipper as he entered the emotion-charged space
“You bastard,” she hissed. “You cowardly bastard! Afraid of me, so you pick on my grandson. Well, you’re all done. I’ll have your badge for this and his, too.” She extended a rigid arm to point at Chief Norris, who winced, but said nothing. “You cops think you call the shots around here, but you’re going to find out different. I’m going to—”
“You’re going to quiet down and listen to facts,” said Clipper. “Number one, if I thought a politician could take my badge, I wouldn’t be wearing it in the first place. Secondly, you’re damn lucky we were there to arrest your grandson. The owner was home at the house he broke into, and he had a gun. When my officers got there, he was just about to shoot Jimmy in the head.”
Drew goggled, whether at Clip’s no-nonsense tone or the fact that her grandson might have been shot, Clipper couldn’t tell, but her mouth was moving soundlessly, so he quickly continued.
“Now, Jimmy willingly cooperated with the investigator and helped us clear up an entire string of burglaries in your neighborhood. That’s something in his favor, and I think Detective Davis might be inclined to add a good word on his behalf as well. The best thing you could do right now is go down to the jail and talk to him. Show him some support and try to find out why he did this, then go talk to the district attorney. There are some good intervention programs out there for first-time offenders.” He let his voice soften. “Ms. Drew, I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but getting arrested is probably the best thing that could have happened to Jimmy.”
Drew held Clipper in her fierce stare for a moment longer, but then her shoulders abruptly sagged and her eyes glistened. “He’s not a bad boy,” she said almost inaudibly. “His mother’s all alone and she can’t…” Her voice ran down and her back stiffened as she turned to walk out of the office, pulling her dignity around her like a cape. She stopped briefly at the door. “I’d like to talk more, later,” she said to Chief Norris. “We can’t let this keep happening.”
When Drew was gone, an unnaturally subdued Norris stepped out from behind his desk and held his hand out to Clipper.
“I, I…thank you,” he said simply.
Later, as Clipper was reading follow-up reports at his desk, he got a call from Truman Webster. “Lieutenant Clipper? This is Pastor Webster. The service for Kristen Pollack is tomorrow, and I wondered if you have any new information I could share with the family?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Webster. The investigation is active and ongoing, but I can’t comment beyond that.”
“I understand. I see that more girls are being attacked? At least the family can be thankful that Kristen wasn’t molested like those other poor girls. I certainly hope you can find the person responsible.”
“Thank you, Mr. Webster, I’m sure we will.” Clipper hung up and was making a note to remind Evan Paul to attend the funeral when Miss Elliot called to tell him the chief wanted to see him again. When she showed him into the office, Cal Ettenger was there with the chief.
“Come to see if we survived?” asked Clipper, dropping into a chair.
Ettenger smiled. “Chief Norris tells me you handled it without bloodshed,” he said. “I appreciate that, but actually I’m here on a different matter. By my count, you’ve got six unsolved attacks on women in the last week or so. I’m starting to take some heat from the council, which is fine, but I’m also being asked by the media about a serial killer and a suspect who’s being ignored, which is not so fine. What the hell’s going on?”
Chief Norris had regained some of his usual bluster. “You can’t blame us for a body found in Eddington and an attack on some girl at the University,” he said, looking to Clipper for support. “And two of the killings that did happen in Bangor are probably tied to the college as well.”
Ettenger ignored the chief and looked at Clipper.
Clipper shrugged. “We’ve got a pretty good lead on the last two murders — looks like it may be a jealous boyfriend — but the media may be right about the others. I think it’s too early to say, but we can’t ignore the possibility of a serial rapist. As for the suspect, you don’t want to believe everything you hear. We’re looking at Chelsea Amburg’s employer, but he came up with a pretty good alibi for the Saturday killings, and we really can’t tie him to the Mosier attack either.”
“So why am I hearing about him from the media?”
“Because someone’s got a big mouth,” Clipper said.
“Well, Channel Two’s looking to do a piece on serial crimes and called to ask me why he hasn’t been arrested. They know he’s under surveillance and that we’ve lost him at least once, and that he’s got a lawyer. Is all that true?”
Clipper sighed. “Yes, it’s all true, but all it proves is that someone at Channel Two’s got a snitch, either here or at UMPD. None of it’s proof we can use.”
Ettenger was a realist. “Okay. What do you need to get on top of this?”
“We’re already getting some help from UMPD, but the overtime budget’s going to take a big hit,” Clipper said, glancing at Chief Norris.
Ettenger waved off the obvious. “Besides that.”
“A little luck wouldn’t hurt.” Clipper got to his feet. “Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can do to quiet down the media.”
As Clipper was leaving the Chief’s office, Mandy Sikes was stifling a jaw-cracking yawn as she pulled onto the Kenduskeag Stream Parkway. Not tired, but totally bored, the rookie officer was in the last week of her three-month day-shift training rotation, and thoroughly done with the tedium of school crossings and daytime traffic stops. Thinking about next week’s move to the action-packed PM shift, she didn’t notice the vehicle parked at an angle on the narrow dirt road until she was only thirty feet away from it. One startled glance, which lingered in her mind like a flash card as she glanced away to grab the radio mike, was enough. The blue Chevy Nova with the young man leaning against the front fender was the U Maine BOLO.
The man pushed away from the car and stood calmly watching Sikes. He was a big, bulky blond kid wearing blue jeans and a University of Maine sweatshirt. Both shirt and pants were stained black with dried blood, and heavily bloodshot eyes stared out at her over an expressionless face covered with coarse blond stubble.
“’782, Bangor. I’ve got UMPD’s blue Chevy with one male suspect on the KD Stream Parkway.”
Sikes watched the man slowly turn and reach back through the Nova’s open front window. In her focus and haste to exit the cruiser, she ignored the dispatcher’s reply. “Bangor, 782. Do not approach, wait for backup.”
Her right hand dropped t
o the butt of her Glock 17, a small part of her mind marveling at how loud a sound the safety strap made as she thumbed it off. She completed her draw and crouched forward into a solid two-handed combat stance as the male turned back from the car with a rifle in his hands. He stood without speaking, eyes locked on Sikes.
“Drop the gun!” Sikes screamed. “On the ground! Put it on the ground!”
The man held the rifle at his waist and swung the barrel toward Sikes. He took a step forward, shaking his head slowly.
“Drop it now! Drop it or I’ll shoot!”
He took another silent step, the rifle pointed towards the ground at Sikes’s feet.
Winchester 94, thought Sikes irrationally. Prob’ly should be Model 94 Winchester carbine in the report.
Still staring intently, the man took another step and raised the rifle. As Sikes pulled the trigger, she noticed, too late, that the man’s right hand was simply wrapped around the receiver, his fingers nowhere near the trigger, and that his blank expression was transforming into the beginnings of a smile. The 140-grain hollow-point bullet took him in the center of the chest, and the smile froze as his shredded heart convulsed and stopped.
He fell back against the Nova and slid down, dead before he hit the ground.
When Clipper got to the scene, the watch commander and evidence techs were already there. He parked by the gathering press and other onlookers and was logged in by the officer holding them at bay a hundred yards back. Ignoring their shouted questions, he walked past the waiting ambulance and approached the group standing around the body.
“Got I.D.?” he asked David Adams.
“Yup. Wallet in his pocket. It’s Kline. We got a note, too.” He nodded towards the Nova. “Looks like maybe he was working up the courage to do it himself, but Sikes came along first.”
“Was it even loaded?” Clipper looked at the Winchester lying on the hood of Randy Bissonette’s car while the detective wrote out an evidence tag.
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