by John L. Work
It’s a generally well-established practice for informants to give someone up to the police only if there is something of significant value to be gained by the informant, such as a deal on another case, or money – or both. No self respecting criminal tells on a friend, unless he’s absolutely desperate. Real criminals know when to mind their own business and keep their mouths closed, which is almost all of the time. Every once in awhile, though, someone gets himself into a big enough jam, such as the threat of being filed on as an Habitual Offender – or The Bitch, as the charge is regularly called by criminals and by attorneys – that he decides to forsake his self respect. Only then will he debase the honor among thieves code, break the unwritten law of silence, and give evidence to the cops that will get one of his friends into trouble – all to avoid a virtual life sentence under The Bitch statute.
Steve Reilly was beginning to think that his only hope for a break in the Slaikovitch murder and, as it would naturally follow, Welch’s only hope in the Sheila McCowell case, would be for someone who knew something to get into trouble with the cops and, thereby forced with the threat of a lengthy prison sentence on some other matter, come forward as a snitch. He didn’t like to wait around for snitches. Much of the time they didn’t materialize. And when they did come forward, many were unreliable. Police informants have a habit of mixing the larger part of the story, composed primarily of the truth, with a few lies. That propensity to lie, even when it’s not necessary for self preservation, creates immense problems during the prosecution of crimes. A competent defense attorney can make much of an informant who gets caught in one small lie within his story, and leverage the little fabrication to successfully argue to the jury members that if they can’t believe the obvious tiny fib, they shouldn’t believe anything else the informant told them. It’s a tried and tested method for discrediting a snitch – find one lie in the story and blow up the testimony in the prosecution’s face – directly in front of the jury.
Reilly was running out of places to go to find any useful information on his dead body. And thus far he hadn’t even had an unreliable snitch tell him anything that would tend to provide a clue toward solving the murder. Welch had allowed him to review the entire Roberts County case file on Sheila McCowell. The images of the crime scene photographs bothered him as much as they did Welch. He’d never seen anything like it, even with fifteen years on the job and hundreds of death investigations in his files. Murder is always an ugly proposition, but this one was beyond the experiences of both detectives. How a man could do to a woman, to anyone, what Slaikovitch had done to Sheila with a rock, was difficult to believe. They were two detectives working in the State of Colorado who hadn’t slept very well for quite a few weeks.
In the meantime, Welch continued his own quest to find Sheila McCowell’s mystery email friend, or lover, whatever the case might turn out to be. He carefully reviewed each of Reilly’s follow-up reports as he received them by fax.
Phil Jacoby’s interview came back to mind. The chef at Evans’ Coffee Shop said that he’d seen a man matching Slaikovitch’s description and a dark-haired woman drop off what had turned out to be Sheila’s BMW in the rear parking lot – and they’d left in a smaller black SUV – driven by the woman.
He asked for one of the records techs to run a Department of Motor Vehicles check on Janet Rogers, Marnie McCowell, Jimmie Slaikovitch, Jim McCowell and Samantha Newsom, looking for any among them who might own a compact black SUV. When the printout arrived at his desk he carefully combed through it.
Surprisingly, Slaikovitch actually owned a registered vehicle – it was a 1981 Chevy Blazer, blue in color. Now where had that old car gone? There was nothing in any of the existing police reports about it. That was interesting.
Jim McCowell’s vehicles were all Ford pickup trucks, big ones, and they were all white in color. Marnie had a red Volvo sedan. Samantha Newsom’s car was a four door green Buick Le Sabre.
And Janet Rogers owned a black 2001 Chevy Tracker. The detective had himself a dead center hit.
34
She shook his hand in the bank lobby and they went back into her office. He immediately put his micro cassette tape recorder on the desk. After she closed the door, she smiled at him and said, “Well, to what do I owe the honor of yet another visit from Detective Welch? People are going to get suspicious.”
He didn’t return her smile.
“May I record our conversation?”
“Of course.”
He did the usual on the record preliminaries to begin the interview.
“I need to ask you where you were from Friday, August the 9 to Sunday evening, August 11 of this year.”
Her face paled, much as it had when he’d told her about Jimmie Slaikovitch’s murder a few weeks ago.
“That’s the weekend Sheila was murdered, isn’t it.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Can I look at my calendar?”
“Sure. Take your time.”
She opened a leather covered book on her desk and fingered through the pages.
“Sammie took me home on that Friday after work. We quit early that day, I believe at three-thirty. And I was there alone at my home until Saturday morning, the 10. I had a breakfast meeting with Joan Thompson at ten o’clock. She’s one of my golfing partners. After we ate, Joan took me home again and I was there by myself all Saturday evening. I went to church on Sunday morning with Joan. We went to lunch and then she brought me home. Sammie came over at about three o’clock and we had dinner at the Black Angus. She brought me home after dinner and I was at home for the rest of the night.”
Welch asked, “Did you make any phone calls from your home on Friday the 9, something that would have created a record to help verify that you were there?”
“I don’t remember. I can get you my phone bills and you can look for yourself. It sounds like I’ve become a suspect. What’s going on? Do I need a lawyer?”
“I’m sorry to have to ask these questions. I know this must seem very disconcerting to you. I’d very much appreciate it if you’ll provide me the bills from your home telephone. It might save me the trouble of a subpoena or a search warrant.”
“Of course. I can have them for you this afternoon, as soon as I get home and dig through my file cabinet.”
“Thank you. If it’s okay, I can swing by your place at about six o’clock and pick them up?”
She looked directly into his eyes and said, “Okay. I’ll look for you at six.”
“Do you still own a black Chevrolet Tracker?”
She rocked back in her chair, placed her hands on the fronts of the arm rests and answered, “Yes. You’ve been checking up on me.”
“Was the car in your garage on the afternoon and evening of August 9?”
“No. Sammie borrowed it. She said she had to move some boxes and small pieces of furniture from a self storage unit into her apartment. I let her use my car from Friday afternoon to Sunday.”
“Thanks for your cooperation. Is there anything else you think I should know?”
“No.”
He turned off his recorder and dropped it into his satchel. She stood up and extended her hand, taking his own with a firm grip. She was strong, this woman. Welch looked beyond her shoulder at the credenza behind her. He saw an eight and a half by eleven color photo of her with Sheila McCowell – and in that photograph Janet’s hair was dark brown.
“By the way, when was that photo taken?” He pointed behind her.
“Oh, about two months ago. I went blonde right around the time Sheila disappeared.”
“Really.”
“Yes. That’s my natural color in the picture.”
“Thanks, Janet. I’ll be by your home at six o’clock sharp to grab those phone records.”
“See you then. Can I brew you a cup of coffee when you get to my place?”
She stepped around the desk and damned if he just had to take a quick look at her well conditioned legs. She was wearing a knee length sk
irt that displayed them too effectively for him to ignore. And then there was her deeply v-necked white sweater. She noticed his wandering glance and smiled. He looked at her green eyes, saw her firm jaw line and full mouth, and, would you look at that – she still had a dimple in her left cheek.
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you. No. I’ll pass this time.”
But maybe another time, he thought. His heart was pounding. God, have mercy. How unprofessional of him. And how human, too.
At six o’clock he stopped at Janet’s home and knocked on the door. She lived in a nice, middle class tract neighborhood. The landscaping had pretty well matured, so the trees were beginning to provide a sort of canopy. When the door opened she stood there with the phone statements in her hand – and she was smiling again.
“Would you like to come in for coffee? I just brewed some fresh.”
“I really can’t stay, ‘though the coffee sounds wonderful. I’ve got another appointment in a half hour. But thank you, again.”
He was lying through his teeth and she knew it.
“Perhaps another time, after all this murder business is over and done?”
She handed him the papers – still smiling and looking right into his eyes. He stared at that dimple, then her eyes, and couldn’t help returning the smile. She was on to him and he knew it.
“Perhaps. Thank you. Well, good night.”
“Good night, Detective.”
He did the best he could to concentrate on the drive back to his office. What scent was that she was wearing? Not at all obvious, but just so subtly spicy. He gave himself a mental kick and stepped harder on the accelerator. Back at his desk he thumbed through Janet’s August phone bill, looking to see if she’d made any calls from her home on that August 9 evening – something that could go to proving her presence there on the probable night of Sheila McCowell’s disappearance. There were no such calls that showed on the bills. But then he thought that the only itemized numbers on a home phone would be long distance charges. He’d have to request her to arrange for the phone company to produce all of the records of calls from her number on that weekend. That meant he’d have to at least call her again – which didn’t displease him in the least at the moment. He was very attracted to Janet Rogers and that was bothering him – both because he had a job to do and she wasn’t yet cleared as a suspect in a high-profile murder case. He decided to play it safe, forego another call to her and just get another subpoena for her telephone records from Don Alcomb at the District Attorney’s Office.
35
Welch was deep in thought about all of the new information he’d gathered. According to Janet Rogers, Sammie Newsom had been in possession of the black compact SUV during the entire weekend of Sheila McCowell’s murder. Could he believe Janet? Or was she the one who drove Jimmie up there? And by sheer chance Phil Jacoby had stumbled upon the two suspects getting out of the victim’s car in the rear parking lot of Evans’ Coffee Shop. Could Janet have been the one with Slaikovitch on Friday evening, August 9, driving her own black compact SUV?
No. He believed Janet Rogers’ story. Welch thought he could now narrow his search for Iron Maiden’s identity to Sammie Newsom – at least for the time being. Then his mind filled with a list of improbabilities. Sammie must be the one he’d been searching for. If that turned out to be true, then all he had left to do on the case would be to:
1. Get her to confess to being the online person who called herself Iron Maiden.
2. Induce her to confess to sending that down-girl control-yourself email to Sheila McCowell’s computer.
3. Listen to her confess to being present when Jimmie bashed in Sheila’s skull and left her for dead.
4. Entreat her to confess to dumping Sheila’s BMW in the parking lot at Evans’ Coffee Shop and driving Jimmie Slaikovitch to safety in the getaway car after Sheila’s murder.
5. Take down her confession to shooting Jimmie Slaikovitch to death in the mountains of Park County and burying him there – later to be dug up and eaten by a bear – then disposing of his old beater Chevy Blazer.
Yes, a confession would be so simple, he thought, wryly. Just call her in for an interview, ask her to give it up and arrest her for First Degree Murder. Case closed.
Then he came back to reality and began to think seriously again. Why would Sammie Newsom participate as an accessory after the fact in murdering Sheila and then eliminate the killer – if that was what had really happened? What did she stand to gain from Sheila’s death? Were they lovers and Sheila called it off? That wasn’t likely, based on Sheila’s desperate sounding email to Iron Maiden. But for any number of reasons – infidelity, a lie, a lover’s quarrel, jealousy – either of the two women could have suddenly broken off the relationship. And broken relationships can result in the death of one or both partners.
But what if Sammie wasn’t, in fact, the person who killed Jimmie Slaikovitch? Jimmie was a fringe-dwelling druggie criminal and he probably owed a lot of people money. There was undoubtedly more than one handful of dope dealers who’d celebrated when his murder was published in the back pages of the Denver papers. And some of them might have been just angry enough to kill him – or arrange to have him killed. Sometimes it’s good for a real criminal to make an example of someone like Slaikovitch – just to warn the others around him not to screw up.
It was true that Sammie fit the general description of the woman who reportedly sat with Jimmie at the A.A. meetings – and so did a lot of other women in the world, including Janet Rogers with her natural hair color. Welch’s newest theory that Sammie may have killed Jimmie was just that – a theory without a shred of physical evidence to support it. He had two witness statements to strongly suggest that Sammie was the woman who drove Janet Rogers’ SUV away from Evans’ Coffee Shop parking lot. But Phil Jacoby wasn’t close enough from his back dock viewpoint at the coffee shop to credibly make a photo line-up identification. He had told Welch and Reilly that he couldn’t make out her features from his vantage point – just that she was white and had dark hair under the ball cap she wore. If Jacoby somehow pointed her out in a line-up, a good defense attorney would have a fun time on cross examination, because of the initial statement. And Janet Rogers? Welch wasn’t sure about her yet. She could have lied to him about who had her SUV over the weekend that Sheila McCowell was killed. Even if it turned out to be true that she loaned her SUV to Sammie, how many black compact sport utility vehicles were there in Denver – let alone in the entire state?
There had to be more to this puzzle – pieces Welch hadn’t found yet. There was no way he’d gathered close to enough evidence to arrest anyone other than Slaikovitch for First Degree Murder. And most of Jimmie was now just a big pile of bear shit somewhere up in the God forsaken woods of Park County. For his theory to go any further than the back corners of his weary mind, he had to be able to show a Deputy District Attorney, then a Judge and eventually a jury that there was a real connection between Samantha Newsom and James Patrick Slaikovitch.
Then it came to him. There was one person who might be able to identify Sammie from a photo lineup and at the same time place her in the same location as Slaikovitch. Her criminal history was empty – she had no record. He didn’t have enough evidence yet to get a Court Order pursuant to Rule 41.1 of the Colorado Rules of Evidence, which would allow him to temporarily detain her for collection of non-testimonial evidence, such as fingerprints, blood, hair, saliva, handwriting samples – and most importantly, a mug photograph for insertion into a lineup. He was operating on a well reasoned detective’s hunch. There wasn’t yet a body of evidence sufficient to meet the legal definition of reasonable grounds that he would have to articulate for a Deputy District Attorney and a judge in a Court of Law, who could then legally endorse his seizure of the evidence. No. There wouldn’t be a Court ordered temporary detention of Sammie Newsom – at least not at this point. She might eventually be cleared of wrong-doing, anyway.