No Place to Die

by James L. Thane

  “I wouldn’t have thought so—certainly not without a very good reason. But I’m assuming that’s what she must have done.”

  The conversation paused for a few seconds, and then I said as sympathetically as I could, “I apologize in advance for even having to say this, sir. But as I hope you can understand, in a case like this our natural first step is to try to eliminate the surviving spouse from suspicion.”

  Collins blanched slightly and another tear rolled down his cheek. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, lowered his head to his chest, and began to sob quietly. We gave him a couple of minutes, and finally he composed himself again. Looking to the center of the table rather than at either of us, he said, “I understand, Detective. What do you need me to do?”

  “Again, sir, I’m sorry to ask,” Maggie said, “but were there any problems in your marriage?”

  Collins shook his head. “No, Detective. Like any other couple, Karen and I had our occasional disagreements, but we haven’t had a significant argument in years. She was enjoying her retirement, and I was looking forward to mine. We were going to travel and finally have a chance to enjoy life, just the two of us together.”

  Through his tears, he looked to Maggie and said, “I understand that you have to ask these questions, Detective, but I promise you that I did not kill my wife. I loved her.”

  “Mr. Collins,” I said, “do you own a gun?”

  For a second he seemed to come out of his trance and he shot me a withering look. Then he turned his eyes back to the center of the table. “No, Detective, I do not. Karen hated guns and would never allow one in the house.”

  “Okay, sir,” I sighed. “Again, we’re very sorry both for what’s happened here tonight and for having to put you through this ordeal. If you don’t mind, we’d like to have a technician come in and give you a gunshot residue test for the purpose of confirming the fact that you have not fired a gun this evening. After that, we’d like you to walk through the house with us and check to see if anything might be missing.”

  Collins nodded his assent, and Maggie stepped back out into the living room and asked one of the technicians to administer the test. The tech, whose name was Tom Schaeffer, came into the kitchen and took the seat that Maggie had vacated.

  Schaeffer pulled on a fresh pair of latex gloves, then opened an SEM examination kit and removed a small metal disc. He carefully dabbed Collins’s right hand with the adhesive side of the disk, then slipped the disc into an evidence bag that he labeled and sealed.

  He repeated the procedure on Collins’s left hand and sealed the second disc in a separate evidence bag. Back in the lab, Schaeffer would examine the discs using a scanning electron microscope, looking for tiny particles of lead, barium, and antimony. Though not totally conclusive, the presence of significant amounts of these elements would indicate that the tested subject had recently fired a gun.

  Once Schaeffer was finished, Collins walked us slowly through the house. But outside of the living room, the place seemed to be in perfect order. Nothing was disturbed, and Collins noted that nothing seemed to be missing.

  As we completed the tour back in the kitchen, I explained that he would not be able to remain in the house for the night, and Collins choked up again. Shaking his head, he said, “I doubt that I will ever be able to spend another night in this house, Detective.”

  There was nothing we could say to that, and so while Maggie went out to check on the results of the neighborhood canvass, I walked Collins back to his bedroom and waited while he packed a few clothes into an overnight bag. He was standing in front of the dresser, staring into a drawer, forcing himself to go through the motions of packing, when I said, “This may seem an odd question, Mr. Collins, but by any chance was your wife acquainted with either David or Beverly Thompson?”

  He looked away from the dresser, holding a pair of socks in his hand. “No, I don’t think so, Detective. I recognize the names from the news, and Karen and I talked about the abduction, but neither of us knew them. Do you think there might be some connection between that case and my wife’s murder?”

  “I’m not really sure,” I responded. “How about a woman named Alma Fletcher? Does that name mean anything to you?”

  Collins shook his head, clearly confused. “No, Detective. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name. But again, why do you ask?”

  “Well, sir, it’s just that Mrs. Fletcher was the victim of a similar crime last week. She was a few years older than Mrs. Collins, but she was alone in her home while her husband was at work. She apparently opened the door to someone who then shot her. As in the case here, nothing in the home was disturbed, and nothing was taken. We have reason to suspect that the person who killed Mrs. Fletcher was the same one who killed David Thompson and abducted Mrs. Thompson.

  “Naturally, we’ll be checking to see if the same weapon was used in this case as well. But the similarities between this crime and the one committed against Mrs. Fletcher are so strong that I naturally wondered if there might have been anything that linked Mrs. Collins and Mrs. Fletcher together.”

  Still holding the socks, he lowered his head and said in a sad voice, “No. I’m sorry, Detective Richardson, but I’ve never heard the name before.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  I left the Collins home a little after three A.M. and got to the nursing home fifteen minutes later. I kissed Julie hello and dropped, exhausted, into the chair next to her bed. A vase brimming with carnations had materialized on the table next to the bed. The card leaning up against the vase had been signed by Julie’s sister, Denise, expressing her love and assuring Julie that she was in her sister’s prayers. Shaking my head, I set the card back on the table. Apparently neither Denise nor Elizabeth was aware of the fact that the carnation had been perhaps Julie’s least favorite flower.

  Sitting there, I thought about the complicated relationship between Julie, her mother, and her sister. I also found myself thinking long and hard about the question the lieutenant had posed earlier in the morning.

  I’d wanted to be honest with him, and I didn’t want to let him down. Even more important, of course, I didn’t want a deranged psychopath running loose in the city, shooting and kidnapping defenseless citizens because I’d been distracted and had missed a vital clue or had failed to make a logical deduction from the little evidence that we had uncovered.

  I desperately wanted to believe that even though Julie never left my thoughts, I could successfully compartmentalize the pressure and the pain of my life off duty, and thus prevent them from compromising my ability to lead the investigation effectively. Nonetheless, in moments like this, alone in my solitude, I sometimes wondered if I was up to the job.

  And what if I wasn’t? Would I ever be able to admit it—even to myself, let alone to the lieutenant? I felt like I’d aged five years in the last eighteen months. I was sleeping only fitfully and even then for only a few hours on most nights. Even though I continued to exercise on a regular basis, I wasn’t eating as well as I should, and that too was beginning to take a toll.

  My social life, which had once been fairly active, was now nonexistent. Before the accident, my circle of friends had consisted almost exclusively of other couples that Julie and I had hung out with. For the first few months after the accident, they had all been genuinely concerned for my well-being, and they continued to call and to show up at the door with the occasional casserole.

  They also attempted to include me in their activities, but on the handful of occasions when I accepted an invitation to dinner or to a party, the relationships seemed increasingly strained and awkward. Beyond expressing their sympathy, no one knew quite what to say, and I had little or no interest in the topics of conversation that even a few months earlier would have seemed so normal and compelling. Fairly quickly I began declining virtually every invitation, until the invitations stopped coming altogether.

  The focus of my entire world had now narrowed down almost exclusively to my responsibilities to Julie an
d to my job. And the truth was that, with Julie lost to me, the job was the only thing keeping me sane. In any given day it afforded me several hours of relatively normal human contact. It provided some sense of structure, logic, and purpose in a world that otherwise seemed increasingly chaotic and devoid of meaning. And I was clinging to it like a drowning man. Without it, I would be lost.

  By four A.M., I was no closer to a resolution of the question than I had been thirty minutes earlier. And so, reluctantly, I pulled myself out of the chair and kissed Julie good night.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Beverly was sleeping fitfully when the siren came screaming down the street in the middle of the night on Thursday.

  McClain snapped awake about ten seconds after she did. As Beverly sat up, he bolted off the bed and stood in the middle of the darkened room, listening as the siren moaned and died, sounding as if it were only a few yards away from the bedroom. McClain turned back, grabbed Beverly by the throat, and threw her down on the mattress. Squeezing the breath out of her, he whispered, “Do not move from this bed, Beverly, and don’t make a single fucking sound. If you do, I will kill you in a heartbeat.”

  With that, he released her and raced from the room, leaving the bedroom door open in his wake. As ordered, Beverly lay quiet and still on the bed, her heart pounding so hard she could almost hear it. Thirty seconds later, McClain stormed back into the room with a pistol in his hand. He grabbed Beverly’s arm and jerked her to her feet. Moving behind her, he circled her waist with his left arm, pinning her arms to her sides, and pulled her tightly against his own body. He tapped Beverly’s right ear with the pistol and whispered, “Walk with me, Beverly. And keep perfectly quiet.”

  With that, he began pushing her in the direction of the bedroom door. The cable that was tethered to Beverly’s ankle trailed along the floor behind them, and halfway across the room, McClain accidentally stepped on the cable. Beverly nearly tripped to the floor, taking him with her, but at the last second he regained his footing and righted them. Guiding her more carefully now, he took her to the open door, which was as far as the cable would stretch. Still holding Beverly’s body tightly to his own, McClain leaned back against the doorframe and listened intently.

  From somewhere to their left, Beverly could hear the sounds of footsteps bounding onto what was apparently the front porch, and then the raised voices of at least two people talking to each other. She strained to hear, but could not make out what the voices were saying. Then someone pounded on the door and shouted, “Police! Open up!”

  Behind her, Beverly felt her captor tense. He laid the barrel of the pistol against the right side of her head. Into her ear, he whispered, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on here, Beverly, but if you make a single sound, or if those assholes attempt to get through that door, I’ll blow your goddamn brains out.”

  Again, someone hammered on the door. Her mind racing nearly as fast as her pulse, Beverly weighed the option of crying out for help. She had no doubt that the man would kill her as he had promised. However, she was fairly certain that he would ultimately kill her anyway, and at least by dying now, she could be sure of the fact that David’s death as well as her own would ultimately be avenged.

  But, she thought, what if the police did have the house surrounded? Perhaps she still might be rescued and saved. If it ultimately became clear that he had no hope of escape, perhaps her captor would surrender and allow her to live, rather than killing her and making things even worse for himself than they already were. Perhaps she still might survive to see the bastard pay for murdering David, and that was now the sweetest revenge she could possibly imagine.

  Desperate to hear what was happening out on the porch, Beverly leaned forward, as though straining to close the distance between herself and her potential saviors by even the slightest couple of inches. For a long thirty seconds, only silence issued from the porch, and then came the sound of a voice saying something about “the wrong address” and “the house next door.”

  Beverly heard the sound of footsteps shuffling off the porch and she opened her mouth to scream. But as she drew in the breath to do so, McClain clamped his hand over her mouth. Beverly shook her head violently and attempted to bite his fingers, while at the same time she tried to kick back at him. Unfazed, McClain simply tightened his grip on her mouth and slapped the right side of her head with the gun.

  McClain listened as the sounds retreated from the porch. Then he dragged Beverly back in the direction of the bed. She fought him every inch of the way, but he was simply too strong, and when they reached the bed, McClain threw her down on her stomach, straddled her back, and pressed her facedown into the pillow.

  Leaning forward, he used his chest to keep her trapped in that position, barely able to draw a breath, let alone to cry out. Beverly heard the sound of fabric ripping and a moment later, McClain pulled her head back and stuffed a rag into her mouth. He tied a second strip of cloth around her head, holding the gag in place, then shuffled backward so that he was now straddling her thighs. He grabbed Beverly’s left wrist, tied a piece of cloth around it, and then bound her left wrist to her right. He tested the knots and then, apparently satisfied with his work, he leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Stay perfectly still, bitch, or you’ll be even deader than your fuckin’ husband.”

  With that, McClain moved off of her and she heard him leave the room and close the door behind him. Despite his threat, Beverly struggled against her bonds, but in doing so succeeded only in making them tighter. Working feverishly, she tried to cup her hands in a way that would allow her fingers to work at the knots that bound her wrists, but it was impossible to do so.

  Weeping out of a mixture of anger, fear, and frustration, Beverly inched her way forward on the bed, placed her face against the wall, and attempted to use the pressure of her face against the rough surface of the wall to push the gag away from her mouth. Fifteen minutes later, McClain opened the door and slipped back into the room. He closed the door, walked across the room, and turned on the lamp next to the bed to find Beverly sobbing and still attempting vainly to free herself from the gag.

  McClain stood beside the bed and watched her struggle for another thirty seconds or so. Then he touched a hand to her leg, sighed heavily, and said, “Sorry, babe. Close, but no cigar. Fortunately for the both of us, the cops weren’t here to rescue you. They were called out to a domestic complaint next door and wound up on the wrong goddamn porch.”

  McClain removed his hand from Beverly’s leg, and a moment later, a knife slashed through the torn pillowcase he had used to bind her hands. “You can finish untying yourself,” he said, sighing again. “I need a fuckin’ drink.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  At ten o’clock on Friday morning, I got a call from a tech in the crime lab, indicating that the same weapon that had been used to kill Alma Fletcher and David Thompson had also been used in the shooting of Karen Collins. I’d just hung up the phone when Chris Doyle walked through the door, plopped into the chair next to my desk, and said, “Martin says I’m supposed to work with you and the girlfriend on the murders you caught. I know that you’re the lead, and I can live with that, even though I was working cases like this while you were still trying to cop your first feel in the backseat of your daddy’s Oldsmobile. But I hope I don’t have to tell you that I’m not taking orders from Aunt Jemima.”

  I looked at him and shook my head, not even trying to hide my disgust.

  Doyle was, without question, the unit’s premier example of the negative consequences of the protections afforded by civil-service law. He’d rarely ever helped resolve a case of any real complexity, and the few killers he had caught as a member of the Homicide Unit had mostly been poor, stupid mopes that he’d found standing drunk or stoned over the bodies of their spouses, the murder weapon still in their hands, just waiting to confess to the first cop who came walking through the door.

  As long as I’d been a member of the unit, Doyle had been skating close
to the line of getting his butt kicked out of the department. But he put in just enough hours and did just enough work to avoid crossing over the line. He was eighteen months shy of taking his pension and made absolutely no secret of the fact that getting there was the only thing about the job that still motivated him.

  For a number of years Doyle had been teamed with Randy Wandstadt, another troglodyte who shared Doyle’s general views about gender, race, politics, and the world as a whole. Wandstadt had finally retired a few months earlier, leaving Doyle as the only single in the squad when Maggie won her transfer into Homicide. The lieutenant paired them together, but their partnership was a disaster from day one, and after the first week, Maggie could have easily filed a complaint accusing Doyle of both racial and sexual harassment.

  They were any number of witnesses who could have confirmed Doyle’s pattern of behavior and who doubtless would have happily offered evidence against him. Maggie realized, though, that making such a complaint would have branded her forever and would have greatly frustrated, if not destroyed altogether, her ambition to be accepted as a team player and a valued member of the unit. So she stuck it out, giving as good as she got, and demonstrated by her own conduct what a miserable excuse for a human being her “partner” really was.

  She endured the situation for nine weeks and then, figuring that she’d proved her mettle, went to see the lieutenant. He granted Maggie a divorce, no questions asked, and given that my partner had just transferred over to Burglary, the lieutenant put us together. I’d admired Maggie’s work during her first two months in the unit, and was impressed by the way she’d handled the situation with Doyle. I counted myself lucky to be teamed with her, and we’d settled almost immediately into a very comfortable working relationship. Thus far, we’d also had a very good run of clearing cases, which certainly seemed to validate the lieutenant’s decision to put us together.