Murder For Comfort

by John L. Work

  “It’s Frank Stanley, Chicago Police Department.”

  “Yes, I’ve been waiting for you to call. You found something interesting, right?”

  “McCowell was killed with a forty-five caliber semi. We found three two-hundred thirty grain copper-jacketed slugs.”

  “Where were they placed, Frank? Wait, let me guess. Two in the gut and the last one was dead center in his forehead.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’ll be Sammie Newsome for sure. That’s exactly how the guy that killed McCowell’s ex-wife’s was done – one in the noggin right above his nose.”

  “What else have you got?”

  “A lot. I got subpoenas outstanding for the ex-wife’s phone calls in Colorado Springs. I’m still waiting for your killer’s records, all the calls before she shut down her service. The phone company’s slower than hell. If I can tie your shooter to the ex-wife’s murder, I think we might have enough for a search warrant or two.”

  “Who’s working the other case – the murder of that guy that killed the ex-wife?”

  “A Park County detective named Steve Reilly. He’s been on vacation for a week, but he’s due back on Monday. We probably better get together on a conference call.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. Got an idea when?”

  “Let me get hold of Steve. After I have a chance to go through all the bills, I’ll give you a call back and we’ll set it up to compare notes.”

  “Okay. Let me know.”

  “By the way, we still have no idea where your shooter is or how she got to Chicago. If Sammie drove to your city and then headed for parts unknown on a plane, her car might still be back there somewhere. She had time to make the drive from here, because she quit her job and disappeared on the Wednesday before Jim McCowell was shot.”

  “Chicago’s a big city. I’d have a hell of a time finding an abandoned car, like a needle in a haystack. It could be in some alley behind a private home, inside somebody’s garage or who knows where. You got a make and model – a plate number?”

  “According to the Colorado Department of Revenue she drives a 2000 green Buick Le Sabre. I’ll get you the plate number and call you back.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks for the call. We may just solve this thing.”

  “We’ll see. Christ, what a mess. What the hell’s behind this one? Sex, money, drugs?”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure it’s money to begin with. Before he was killed, most of McCowell’s cash had already been moved to Grand Cayman, into an off-shore bank account. About twenty-five million dollars, but I’m not supposed to know that. That came from a confidential source at their bank. It’s got to be the grieving widow that made the money move. Her name is Marnie McCowell. Exactly what’s the connection between her and Sammie Newsom, I don’t know yet.”

  “You think maybe they’re lesbians – lovers?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe McCowell’s widow is bi-sexual. Hell, I don’t know. They must have some kind of love thing to go to all this trouble.”

  “Jesus. The things we do for love, huh?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be in touch.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  “Bye.”

  Solving complex crimes can be painstaking, frustrating, tedious work. Sometimes they’re never cleared by arrests and criminals get away with terrible acts. Then there are cases that break open with an unexplainable stroke of luck. The Son of Sam case came together because of a parking ticket that was written near one of the murder scenes. It eventually led the police to a car that was registered to a postal worker named David Berkowitz, who turned out to be the serial killer of six people in New York City.

  There were still many missing pieces of information that would have to be found before anyone could be arrested in these three murders. Welch hoped that somewhere along the line the cops would catch a big break.

  And by the way, where was Sammie Newsom these days?

  47

  The Independent State of Samoa, not to be confused with American Samoa, is situated in the South Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and New Zealand. Composed of two main islands, Savai’i and Upolu, along with several other smaller ones, it’s known by the native inhabitants as the place of origin for all Polynesian people. It has no dependent colonies or territories.

  As a tourist spot, the two main islands feature pristine beaches framed by coral reefs, thick forests, waterfalls, open-sided homes, and a large segment of the population which makes its living by fishing. Samoa is the tropical paradise dream of many city dwellers who long for an escape from the cacophony of civilization. There are lots of small villages in the tourism business, independent of the several international hotel chains that can be found in the capital city of Apia.

  Unless one has a boat or ship, there are only two ways for an American to get into the country – both of them by air – either through Fiji or New Zealand. Other than its natural beauty, quiet serenity, geographical isolation and ideal climate, there are two other major reasons that a couple of women like Sammie Newsom and Marnie McCowell would pick Samoa as a place of destination for permanent residency and safe harbor. First, it has an offshore banking industry – and more importantly, there is no extradition treaty with The United States of America. From purely an immigration standpoint, with the elected forty-nine members of the Samoan Parliament consisting, by tradition, of matai, or tribal chiefs, and the head of state’s official title being The Paramount Chief of Samoa, Sammie had figured it couldn’t be a particularly difficult proposition to become a permanent resident and eventually a citizen – especially with a few million American dollars at hand to grease some local palms and invest in a few aspiring local businesses.

  She’d been researching this place for the past year, since she first got her job at the bank. Now all of the ground work was coming to fruition. The First Colonial American Bank cash assets from the McCowell fortune had been routed into a joint offshore account – in Marnie’s and Sammie’s names. What the authorities probably didn’t yet know was that the new Mrs. McCowell had also liquidated all of their jointly held stock and bond positions on the Wednesday before Jim left for Chicago. On the Friday morning that Sammie pulled the trigger on him, Marnie had left clicked a computer mouse and wired most of those funds into the same Grand Cayman account. Following her arrival in Samoa, Sammie had transferred most of the money into yet another jointly held Samoan offshore account they’d opened a month ago. Yes, it was all going quite smoothly.

  She’d presented her visa and passport at the Apia airport. She rented a car and drove into the city. The view was breathtaking, with the spectacular panorama of Apia’s harbor and the crystal clear South Pacific Ocean before her. She paid cash for a week’s accommodations at the Coconuts Beach Resort and immediately went shopping for some clothes. There was no way she could have packed her entire wardrobe into one suitcase, traveling lightly as she was during her departure from O’Hare. She’d figured that a week should give her enough time to do some preliminary reconnaissance in search of more permanent housing.

  She went to the beach every day, sunned herself by the pool, and lifted weights in the exercise room. Occasionally, it pleased her to notice a few longing glances quickly cast her way by some of the male tourists and hotel staff. Men amused her – they were so predictable – so shallow. She could think of no other species on earth which can more easily be manipulated by a female than the male homo sapiens between the ages of twelve and eighty. And she’d observed that most of them operate with only two objectives in life – eating food and sexual intercourse with a woman. A female with half a brain and a body like Sammie’s could get a man in need to do just about anything – up to and including murder. Mark Twain wrote about men and sex – that they’ll risk their reputations, families, and even their very lives in the pursuit thereof. It had all been so easy. Jimmie Slaikovitch looked her over at the A.A. club and snapped up the bait. Once they’d been in bed, she knew he’d d
o whatever it might take to keep getting her there. He’d actually shaken uncontrollably before she allowed him to enter her the first time they had sex. She was merciless in making him wait. She wanted him to remember and come back for more. And he had come back, many times.

  She probably should’ve picked someone a little smarter. The screw up with his cheap hand gun that misfired, and taking Sheila out of the house in her own car, instead of using something else to kill her right there, had made getting rid of her a lot messier than Sammie had planned. But Jimmie had the mindset she’d been looking for. He’d been in chronic trouble with the law, he had a history of violence, he was broke, he had no job, he was chemically dependent and, most importantly for her plan of attack, he’d been sexually deprived for a long time. He was a loser. His wide eyed open mouthed stare at her naked body and urgent eagerness during their first get together told her all she needed to know. She had him hooked and she could use him for the much larger purpose in her life. He’d instantly become her willing implement.

  Now in Samoa, she and her special someone would be able to do some island hopping later on, in search of land for a permanent residence they would soon have constructed. There’d be plenty of time for that. The first objective was to get them back together, out of The United States. She was pretty confident that the cops couldn’t yet have tied her and Marnie together, so that would give the grieving widow time to put on a good faith show of bereavement before the next move in the game.

  48

  The conference call came two days after Welch’s conversation with Frank Stanley. All three detectives decided to tape it for use in preparing search or arrest warrants. They began to swap the information they’d gathered up during their individual investigations, starting with the most recent murder. Stanley talked first.

  “McCowell checked into the Grayson Chicago O’Hare Hotel on Friday afternoon. He was in town for a convention of some national association of construction business owners that was supposed to start on Saturday morning. First he used his room phone and called his home in Colorado Springs. Then he asked the Bell Captain to get him a cab. We ran all these guys down through the taxi company’s dispatch records. The cab driver said he took McCowell to the Capital Grille steak house and dropped him off there. The hostess at the Capital Grille said he sat by himself while he ate.

  “Another cabbie picked him up and brought him back to the hotel a couple of hours later. The second driver said he could smell some booze on McCowell’s breath, which checks out with the toxicology reports from the autopsy. His blood alcohol concentration was at point one three percent, so he did his share of drinking at the restaurant. We also found a glass with some whiskey in it inside his room, so he got started with the booze before he went out to dinner. There wasn’t any evidence that anyone besides him was in the room.

  “The hotel doorman saw him get out of the taxi and pay his fare. The driver pulled away and didn’t see the shooting. There was a plane flying in for a landing as he got out of the cab, and the doorman is hard of hearing, so he saw the flashes, but couldn’t hear the shots. He saw our favorite lady take something out of McCowell’s coat pocket and pick something up from the pavement, probably the shell casings, before she walked away toward the hotel parking lot.

  “The slugs we got, three of them, were copper-jacketed two-hundred thirty grain forty-five caliber – two in his lower abdomen and the last one went clear through his head. His wallet was gone. Like I said, we got no shell casings, because she picked them up before she walked away. We haven’t yet found any trace of her or any car.”

  It was Welch’s turn.

  “The phone records I subpoenaed show that someone, probably Marnie McCowell, called Sammie Newsom’s cell phone right after the call that Jim made to his home number – just before he went out to dinner. His kids had left for Pennsylvania on Friday morning, so it’s reasonable to think that Marnie answered the home phone and then used her cell phone to call Sammie in Chicago, to let her know he was about to go out to have dinner. Jim called Marnie again on his cell phone about fifteen minutes before he got back to the hotel, probably to let her know he was on his way to his room. Marnie immediately used her cell again after that call and made another call to Sammie’s phone. So Sammie had just decided to park herself on that bench in front of the hotel sometime after he left for dinner, and she waited for him to come back. We don’t have any direct evidence that Jim had ever seen Sammie, or met her, but Marnie could’ve shown Sammie a photo of him so she’d recognize him when he got out of the cab.”

  Stanley said, “I think that about gives us enough to call her in for an interview and confront her with what we’ve got. Maybe I should fly out there for a face to face sit down. It’s damned near close enough for me to ask for an arrest warrant for both of them. What do you think, Welch?”

  Reilly stepped into the conversation. “I don’t think it’s enough for a warrant, but we should have a very interesting interview – unless she lawyers up first and closes her mouth. And Frank, in case you didn’t know yet, my dead guy, Slaikovitch, died from one shot in his forehead. It was a copper-jacketed two-hundred thirty grain forty-five caliber slug, too.”

  Stanley said, “Right. Welch filled me in on that the last time we talked. That’s why I called back after I got the autopsy report. Should we try to catch Marnie for an interview by surprise at home, off guard, or should we schedule an appointment at the Colorado Springs Police Department?”

  Welch jumped back in. “I think we should ask her to meet us in Colorado Springs for an interview and see if she’ll agree to that. If she refuses, that’ll tell us a lot about her involvement, even if it won’t be admissible in Court. Frank?”

  “Sounds good to me. You gonna call me and give me a little lead time to get a plane ticket?”

  “You bet. Steve?”

  “Okay by me.”

  “Okay, guys. I’ll shoot for next Monday. That’s four days away. Is that enough time, Frank?”

  “I think so. I’ll talk to my sergeant about buying the ticket and I should be able to do that.”

  “I’ll be in touch with both of you.”

  49

  Bill Frederickson and his girlfriend, Cassie Betts, got into the big stretch cab pickup truck in the cheapest outlying parking lot at O’Hare airport. The lot was full, even this far out from the terminal and it had taken them quite a while to walk from their plane to where he’d parked. He didn’t care. They could pull their luggage on wheels and it was a lot cheaper to park there for a two week vacation than to pay for close in parking. They loaded the suitcases into the rear passenger compartment and got into their seats. It was nice to be so near to arriving home, even though they’d enjoyed their getaway immensely. He started the engine and backed out quickly, too quickly – turning his wheel hard to the left as he did so. He heard a sickening thump and felt the impact before he remembered that he still had that damned detachable trailer hitch on the back of the truck’s frame. It was nice for pulling his boat or camper when he and Jenny left home for their recreational activities around Lake Michigan, but it was a real collision hazard when backing out of parking spaces.

  He got out of the truck to see what he’d hit and found himself staring at a dusty green Buick Le Sabre, a late model, with a good-sized dent in the left rear corner panel. The left rear tail light was broken out.

  “Christ. Just what I need. Now I gotta call the cops and report this.”

  Cassie got out of her seat and walked over to him. “No, you don’t need to call the cops. Let’s just get back in the truck and go. No one’ll ever know this happened. Look around, there’s no one here. I don’t see any surveillance cameras. Come on, Bill. Let’s go, now.”

  He shook his head. “No. It’s not right. A backing ticket I can deal with. A hit and run charge would be a disaster. I’m gonna call ‘em.”

  He reached into his pants pocket and removed his phone, then punched in a number.

  “Chicago Police, do you hav
e an emergency?”

  “No, but I just backed into a car here in the parking lot at the airport and I need to make an accident report.”