No Place to Die

by James L. Thane

  “Tell me,” she said, picking up her pace to match mine.

  The door to the lieutenant’s office was standing open, but the lights were off and he was nowhere in evidence. Turning to his secretary, I said, “Where is he?”

  “In a meeting with the chief,” she answered. “He should be back in about an hour.”

  “Make sure he is,” I insisted. “Interrupt him if you have to, and I don’t care if he is with the chief. Tell him we’ll be back in an hour or less and that we have to see him about the Thompson case immediately. Get Pierce and Chickris in here too.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell him.”

  I headed Maggie in the direction of the stairs, and as we made our way over to the county jail, I described my conversations with Jack Collins and Tom Meagher. Fifteen minutes later, a guard brought Richard Petrovich into an interview room. He dropped into a chair and I said, “Carl McClain.”

  Petrovich shrugged. “What about him?”

  “You tell me.”

  Again he shrugged. “We were in Lewis together—we both worked in the shop for a while. McClain was in for murder. Like most everybody else in the joint, of course, he claimed that he was innocent. Only in his case, it turned out that he really was. Some other guy confessed to doing the murder and they turned Carl loose.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  “Yeah. When he got out he spent a few days sleeping on my couch while he was looking for a place to stay.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  Petrovich scratched his head. “Jesus, I dunno…Probably the end of November or early December. He rented a house somewhere and left my place. He said he’d stay in touch, but I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

  “Did he have a job?” Maggie asked.

  “Not that I know of. But I don’t think he was looking for one. He said he had some money coming to him and that he wouldn’t be needing to work for a while.”

  I nodded. “Do you know where the money was coming from?”

  “No, he didn’t tell me.”

  “Did he say where the house he rented was?” Maggie asked.

  Petrovich shook his head. “No. He just said that once he was settled, we should get together so that he could repay me for my hospitality.”

  “Did he talk at all about his plans?” I asked. “If he wasn’t looking for work, what did he intend to do with his time?”

  Again, he shook his head. “He didn’t say. He was really pissed about the fact that he’d spent seventeen years in the can for something he didn’t do. He said he was going to get a lawyer and sue everybody in sight. I told him that’s what I’d sure as hell do.”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” Maggie said. “You’re sure you haven’t seen or heard anything of him since?”

  “I told you, no.”

  “McClain didn’t come out of Lewis itching to get back at the people who put him there and ask you to help him?” she asked.

  “No,” he insisted. “Like I said, he told me he was going to sue the bastards for millions, but he didn’t say he was going to be sharing it. Besides, what the hell help could I give him? I’m a welder, not a fuckin’ lawyer.”

  “Well, then, Mr. Petrovich,” I said, “we’ve got a problem, because two of the people who put McClain in Lewis are dead. Another one is missing, and your hair was found at two of the three crime scenes.”

  Petrovich’s eyes widened. “That’s what this is about? The Thompson woman and the others you were asking me about—they’re tied in with Carl?”

  “Not anymore, they’re not,” I replied, “except for maybe Thompson.”

  “Well, Jesus,” he said, agitated. “I sure as hell didn’t have nothin’ to do with any of that. Like I said, the guy bunked with me for a couple of nights and I haven’t seen or talked to him since. I have no damn idea where he is or what he might be doing. And whatever it is, I sure as hell haven’t been helping him.”

  “But you see our problem, Mr. Petrovich,” Maggie said. “You and McClain are pals in the joint and he looks you up the first thing he gets out. You give him a place to stay and tell him what a raw deal he got. Then the next thing you know, the people who sent him to the pen start turning up dead and we’re finding your hair at the crime scenes. What are we supposed to think?”

  Petrovich slumped in his chair and a tear welled up in his eye. “I don’t know, Detective,” he said, plaintively. “I don’t fuckin’ know. But I swear to God, I didn’t have anything to do with any of it.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Even though it was still only February, and even though it was still only ten o’clock in the morning, the temperature was already in the high seventies. And even though he’d only walked a block and a half, McClain was sweating like hell in his gas-company jacket. Jesus, he thought, wiping the perspiration off his brow. Maybe there is something to this global warming bullshit after all.

  Yesterday he’d called the law offices of Kutsunis, Trumbull, and Roe only to learn that Mr. Roe was on vacation this week. “Lucky guy,” McClain had observed. “Did he get to go someplace exotic?”

  Roe’s secretary laughed. “Not this time,” she volunteered. “He’s just taking some time at home to relax. Did you want to leave a message?”

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” McClain responded politely. “It’s a minor matter. I’ll try him again next week.”

  At nine fifteen this morning, McClain had called the Roe home from a pay phone and asked for Mrs. Roe. Mr. Roe interrupted his vacation long enough to answer the phone and explain that his wife was out for the morning and that she’d be back by the middle of the afternoon. Again, McClain declined the offer to leave a message, and at five after ten, clipboard in hand, he punched Roe’s doorbell.

  Roe answered the door almost immediately, and McClain explained that a gas leak had been reported in the neighborhood. Had Mr. Roe smelled any gas?

  “No, I haven’t,” Roe responded.

  McClain made a note on the clipboard. “I’m really sorry to bother you, sir, but could I take a quick look at your furnace and water heater?”

  “I suppose so,” Roe said.

  McClain stepped into the foyer of the expensive home, and Roe closed the door behind him. Then he turned and said, “This way.”

  McClain knew that Roe had abandoned the prosecutor’s office two years after his trial for the more lucrative rewards of private practice, and looking around the house, it seemed clear that the move had paid off. The place had obviously been decorated by a professional, and everything—the furniture and all the accessories—fit perfectly together. The artwork was contemporary and looked expensive, although McClain realized that he didn’t know shit about art.

  He did know that Harold Roe was now somewhere in his fifties, but it looked like the guy had aged twenty-five years rather than only seventeen. He was thick around the middle and had lost most of his hair. He wore aviator-type glasses with thick bifocal lenses, and he shuffled ahead of McClain like an old man. As they passed Roe’s home study, Roe looked over his shoulder to McClain and said, “The utility room is right down here.”

  Roe turned back to face ahead, and McClain grabbed him by the shirt collar with his left hand. Dropping the clipboard, he pulled the Glock from his jacket pocket and jammed it up against Roe’s neck. “Oh, that’s all right, Harold,” he said. “In here will do just fine.”

  He pushed the lawyer into the study and practically threw him into a large easy chair that faced a mahogany desk. “What the hell?” Roe blustered.

  McClain brushed a pile of papers and a couple of framed photos off the corner of the desk onto the floor. Then he perched on the desk and faced the older man. “Well, Harold,” he said, “it looks like you’ve done well by yourself.”

  Roe sat trembling in the chair, but made a game effort to pretend that he wasn’t intimidated. “Who the hell are you?” he asked. “And what do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m the Spirit of Christmas Pa
st,” McClain said, smiling. “And I have a score to settle with you.”

  “What score? What the hell are you talking about?”

  McClain leaned forward, invading the lawyer’s personal space. “I’m Carl McClain, you fat prick.”

  Roe seemed genuinely surprised. Shaking his head, he said, “McClain? My God, I never would have recognized you.”

  “Yeah,” McClain laughed, leaning back again. “I’m hearing that a lot these days.”

  “And you want to settle a score with me? Why?”

  Now McClain was surprised. “Why do you think, you stupid fuck? You sent me to prison for life for a crime I didn’t do!”

  Roe came half out of the chair, then sat down quickly again when McClain gestured at him with the gun. “Jesus, McClain, I was just doing my job! And it’s not like there wasn’t any evidence against you. You admitted to being with the woman. The semen that was found in her matched your blood type. A jury found you guilty, and the judge agreed with them. It’s not like it was all my fault!”

  McClain shook his head. “Oh, Harold, for chrissake, I’m not blaming you all by yourself. I know that you aren’t the only one who’s guilty here, and the other people involved are paying the price as well. It’s just that this morning it’s your turn.”

  “But this is insane,” Roe pleaded. “The state admitted its mistake, McClain. You’re a free man.”

  “Yeah, Harold, but you know what they say in the old song. ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.’ My wife is long gone, and my daughter along with her. Once I was arrested, my wife aborted my other kid. My mamma died while I was in the can, so I’ve got no family to welcome me back. And on top of all that, I’ve lost what should have been the seventeen most productive years of my life. So what the hell do you expect me to do, Harold—shake hands all around and say, ‘Hey, that’s all right, guys. We all make mistakes’?”

  “No, of course not,” Roe protested. “I expect you to be good and pissed. Christ, I sure as hell would be. But it was a mistake. Nobody deliberately tried to frame you for something you didn’t do.”

  McClain slammed his fist onto the desk. “Bullshit, Harold! None of you cared whether you had the right guy or not. The cops simply wanted to clear the goddamn case. The judge was anxious to get me off his docket as fast as he could so he could get back to the fuckin’ golf course. You wanted another notch on your belt for sending a cold-blooded killer away for life, and those mindless assholes on the jury just nodded their heads and swallowed all the crap you fed them. And the attorney that the county so generously provided for me was so goddamn young and green that she didn’t have the slightest idea what to do about it all. Shit, by the time you were done, you had her convinced I was guilty.”

  Roe sunk back into the chair and McClain shook his head. In a much softer voice, he continued, “I told you pricks that you had the wrong man, Harold. I told you that I didn’t do it. But none of you gave a shit. I was a convenient scapegoat—somebody you could pin the rap on. And none of you could spare the time to make sure that I really was guilty. I didn’t get the chance to watch you preen on the TV at the end of the trial, but I read what you said in the paper the next day. You were pretty full of yourself, Harold.”

  Roe twisted in the chair, sweating and begging now. “But I thought I’d done a good job. I thought I’d sent a guilty man to jail. You can’t believe how awful I felt when I read that you really were innocent. And besides,” he pleaded, “all I did was present the evidence that the police had gathered in the case. If you’re going to be angry with someone, you should be angry with them.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” McClain assured him. “The cops will pay as well. But you didn’t just ‘present’ the evidence, Harold. You jammed it down the jury’s throat, and you enjoyed doing it. For that week, you were a star, Harold. And don’t tell me you weren’t getting off on it—remember, I was there every goddamn day.”

  “I do remember,” Roe said, starting to tear up. “And I am sorry. But killing me won’t bring back your family or give you back the time that you lost.”

  “No, you’re right about that, Harold,” McClain conceded. “But at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that the people who took those things away from me have paid the price for doing it.”

  McClain raised the pistol, and Roe began to sob in earnest. “Please, Mr. McClain. Please don’t to this.”

  McClain let him cry for a minute, then shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Harold,” he said disgustedly. “Don’t be such a pussy. At least take it like a man.”

  Roe looked up at him. “Please,” he said again through the tears. “Please.”

  “Oh, fuck it,” McClain said, raising the Glock.

  He shot Roe through the left eye and then, just for good measure, put a bullet in his heart as well. The shots caused the lawyer’s body to jerk, and then he slumped forward in the chair. McClain slipped the pistol into the right pocket of his jacket. From the left pocket he pulled a small Ziploc bag with a few of Richard Petrovich’s hairs in it—the last of the three bags that he’d collected.

  McClain had never known a guy with that much body hair—Christ, the guy shed like an Old English sheepdog. McClain had carefully collected the hair from Petrovich’s bed one day while his host was at work.

  He opened the bag and shook the hairs out over Roe’s body. It was a lousy way to repay the guy for his hospitality, but McClain figured that Petrovich wouldn’t suffer all that much as a result. He assumed that the cops would match the hair up to Petrovich and that they’d hassle him for a while, long enough at least for Petrovich to be a convenient distraction while McClain attended to business. But sooner or later, they’d finally figure out what was really happening and turn Petrovich loose. McClain only hoped that it would be later rather than sooner.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Just after eleven thirty, Maggie and I climbed the stairs back up to the Homicide Unit to find the lieutenant waiting for us. We collected Pierce and Chickris and adjourned to the conference room, where we brought them up to date with respect to the morning’s developments.

  “I don’t know what role, if any, Petrovich is playing in all of this,” I said. “But clearly the guy we need to be looking for is Carl McClain. And obviously, we need to warn all the other people who were involved in his arrest and conviction that they may be in danger as well.”

  “Okay,” Martin agreed. “Issue a crime-information bulletin on McClain, noting that he may be driving a black van, license plate unknown, and that he should be considered armed and dangerous. Get his last prison mug shot and we’ll release it to the media, asking anyone who may have seen him to come forward. Then start tracking the son of a bitch.”

  Turning to Elaine and Greg, he said, “You two get into the records. Get names and addresses for the judge, the rest of the jurors, and anybody else who was involved in the case. Then let them know what’s going on.”

  Chickris nodded. “Of course the first thing they’re gonna do is demand police protection. What do we tell ’em?”

  Martin shook his head. “Unfortunately, there’s just no way. We have no idea how many people this jerk might actually be targeting, but even if there are only twenty people or so directly connected with McClain’s trial, that still gives him about twenty potential targets. We know from what he’s done already that he may well strike at any time of the day or night, and to put even a loose net around that many people twenty-four-seven would require more bodies than we can possibly manage.

  “Tell people to be careful; tell them not to open their doors to strangers, and tell them to let us know immediately if anyone seems to be paying them undue attention. But for the moment, we can’t offer anyone around-the-clock bodyguards.”

  The meeting broke up and Maggie called Dispatch to issue the CIB while I phoned the Department of Corrections and told them to pull McClain’s complete file. I asked Maggie to start checking with the local utilities to see if McClain
had recently applied for new electric, gas, water, phone, or cable service, while I went over to the DOC offices on Jefferson Street.

  Thirty minutes later, I was back at my desk looking at a copy of Carl McClain’s prison records. He’d done just under seventeen years by the time the mistake was discovered, and at least according to the file, he’d kept his nose clean. Through the years, he’d worked in the prison library, in the kitchen, and in the shop, which is where he’d met Richard Petrovich. He’d apparently stayed clear of the prison gangs and had been written up for only a few minor infractions of the prison rules. In all that time, the only visitor he’d ever had was his mother, and according to the file, she had died two years ago.

  The file said that on arriving at the prison, McClain had been five feet eleven inches tall and had weighed two hundred and sixty-five pounds. The most recent photo in the file was seven months old and showed a man with wavy dark hair and a prominent nose, wearing a pair of glasses that looked as if they might once have belonged to Buddy Holly. In the picture, he was still a little pudgy, although it didn’t look like the head and shoulders belonged on a guy who weighed two sixty-five.

  I walked the photo down the stairs and gave it to the sergeant in charge of media relations. He promised to get it out in a hurry. “Make sure they tell people not to approach him,” I cautioned. “Tell them just to find the nearest phone and call nine-one-one.”

  Back upstairs, I walked over to Maggie’s office. “Anything?” I asked.

  “No phone, and no cable,” she replied. “I’m still working on the other.”

  I nodded, crossed the hall to my own office, and grabbed the phone book. Mike Miller was still listed, and apparently still in the same house he’d owned when we were partnered together. I dialed the number and listened to it ring on the other end. I was just about to hang up when Miller answered, sounding as if he was out of breath.

  “Mike? Sean Richardson. Did I catch you at a bad time?”