No Place to Die

by James L. Thane

  “Sean? Jesus. It’s been a while,” he replied. “And no, you didn’t catch me at a bad time, I was just out in the garage puttering around. What’s up?”

  “I’ve got a problem and I need to talk to you about it. Can I come out?”

  “Sure. What sorta problem you got?”

  “Let me tell you when I get there. I’ll see you in about thirty minutes if that’s okay.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “You still drinkin’ ten Cokes a day?”

  “Probably not quite that many,” I laughed.

  “Well, I think I got one around here someplace. I’ll try to find it while I’m waiting for you.”

  Mike Miller was a tough detective from the old school who could have come straight out of Jack Webb’s Dragnet. I was twenty-nine when we were first partnered together; he was fifty-five and in the middle of his second divorce. We’d been teamed together for a year when he finally took his pension and went to work as a consultant for a home-security company.

  I pulled into the driveway of his home in northeast Phoenix and found him in his garage, waxing the red ’65 Mustang convertible that he’d spent years restoring in his spare time. The last time I’d seen the car, it hadn’t amounted to much more than a mass of loose parts scattered around the garage. Now it sat on the tiled garage floor, gleaming no doubt even brighter than it had the day it was first driven off the showroom floor more than forty years ago.

  Mike had weathered well. At sixty-two, he still looked to be in pretty good shape, save for the slight paunch he was developing. Never one to ape the latest styles, he’d always worn his hair in a brush cut, not much longer that it had been when he was a young marine. The hair was completely gray now, and he stood quietly, wiping his hands on a shop rag, as I stepped into the garage and walked slowly around the Mustang. “Beautiful,” I said, smiling.

  His pride in the car and in the job he’d done with it was written all over his face. Sticking out his hand, he said, “Thanks, Sean. It’s good to see you. How the hell are you?”

  His grip was as strong as ever, and once I’d extracted my hand, I shrugged and said, “Good, Mike. And you?”

  “Great. So how’s the job treating you?”

  “Well, actually, Mike, that’s what I needed to talk to you about.”

  He nodded. “Okay, why don’t we take ourselves out of this heat and into the air-conditioned kitchen?”

  He led me into the house, punching the button to close the garage door as he did. The house, like the garage, was spotless and everything was in its proper place, even down to the salt and pepper shakers that were aligned precisely in the middle of the kitchen table. Mike had always been a bit compulsive in that regard, and thus far three wives had tried but failed to live up to his standards of cleanliness and organization. He offered me a chair at the table and said, “I assume that you probably don’t want a beer at this point in your day?”

  “You’d assume wrong,” I said. “I’d love one. But I’d better just have a glass of water instead.”

  Opening the refrigerator door, he said, “I actually do have a Coke.”

  “Great. A Coke then, please.”

  He came out of the refrigerator with a Coke and a Bud Light. He dropped a few ice cubes into a glass, handed me the glass and the Coke, and saluted me with the beer. “Old times.”

  “Old times,” I agreed.

  I poured some Coke into the glass and we each took a long swallow of our drinks. Then Mike put down his glass and said, “So what’s the problem?”

  I looked at him across the table. “The problem is Carl McClain.”

  He sighed heavily. “Oh, shit.”

  A few seconds passed while he contemplated his beer. Then he looked up to meet my eyes. “Don’t tell me that somebody’s decided to open an investigation to see how we fucked up the case?”

  “No, that’s not it at all, Mike, although in reality that might be more welcome news. Unfortunately, it looks like McClain has decided to settle scores with the people who sent him to the pen. So far, two of the jurors from his trial have turned up shot to death. The woman who was his PD has been kidnapped, and her husband was killed in the process.”

  “You’re shitting me,” he said. “The dumb fuck gets out of jail a free man and goes on a rampage that’s going to put him right back in there?”

  “Looks like it.”

  He stared off out the window for a minute, then shook his head and took a long pull on the Bud.

  “Tell me about the case,” I said.

  “You seen the paperwork?”

  “No, I haven’t dug it out yet. I only just discovered what was happening a couple of hours ago, and I wanted to talk to you first. I figured I’d get a lot better sense of the situation hearing it directly from you.”

  Miller nodded. He took a moment to collect his thoughts, then said, “The victim was a pross named Gloria Kelly—twenty-three, as I recall. She’d been strangled with a piece of clothesline rope and dumped in an alley immediately after giving somebody a blow job. A grocery store owner discovered the body when he came to open up the next morning. Kelly was still wearing the clothesline, and the ME figured she’d been dead for five to eight hours by then. Ed Quigly and I caught the case—Jesus, there’s a guy I haven’t thought of in a long time.”

  He paused for another sip of beer, apparently thinking about his old partner, then continued. “Vice told us that Kelly was in the stable of a pimp named Charlie Woolsey—a white guy who had a string of seven or eight girls that he was running. We rousted Woolsey, who told us that the vic had been working the previous night with another girl, whose street name was Bambi.

  “I forget what her real name was—not that it matters—but we found her. She told us that Kelly had gone off with a trick a little after ten the night before, and that was the last she saw of her.

  “Anyhow, the girls had a system where they wrote down the license numbers of each other’s johns. The idea was that if a party started to get rough, the girl could warn the guy that her friend had copied down his number. Bambi gave us the plate number of Kelly’s last customer and it ran back to Carl McClain’s five-year-old Pontiac.

  “We got a warrant for the Pontiac and found McClain at work. His first story was that he was nowhere near downtown that night—that he’d just gone out for a ride. He claimed that he’d stopped in a biker bar somewhere on Cave Creek Road for a drink. But he couldn’t remember the name of the bar and he said he didn’t see anybody that he knew in there anyway.

  “We tossed the car of course, and we found one of Kelly’s earrings. She was wearing one when the body was found; the other had rolled under the front seat of McClain’s Pontiac.”

  I nodded, saying nothing, drinking my Coke and letting Mike tell the tale his own way. He drained the beer and got another one out of the refrigerator. He popped the top, threw the cap in the garbage can under the sink, and sat back down at the table. Without breaking stride in his story, he continued.

  “We hauled him in and gave him what passed for the third degree back in those days. His second story was that he had been with Kelly. He said he hadn’t been straight with us at first because he didn’t want to get dragged into a murder investigation. Even more important, he didn’t want his old lady to find out that he’d been with a hooker—he said she’d of cut his balls off.

  “He admitted that he paid Kelly forty bucks for a blow job, and claimed that she’d put a rubber on him before she did it. When it was over, he said, he pitched the rubber out the window into the alley. Then he took Kelly back to the corner where he picked her up. He claimed that everything was copacetic. Kelly told him to be sure and come again. He said he would. He said that when they got back to the corner, Bambi was nowhere in sight. Afterward, he said, he drove straight home and went to bed.

  “Naturally, we checked the alley, and we found about ten used rubbers. Apparently both Kelly and Bambi took johns down there on a regular basis. It was possible that Kelly might have used one o
f the rubbers on McClain, but who could tell?”

  “Sure,” I agreed.

  “McClain gave us a blood sample. He was a type A secretor and so was the guy who’d left the semen in Kelly’s throat. In addition, McClain’s blood had an enzyme profile that matched only about ten percent of the adult male population. The semen had the same profile. Of course back then, we couldn’t do anything more sophisticated than that—we didn’t have any of this DNA and CSI shit that makes the job so easy for you kids today.”

  “In your fuckin’ dreams,” I snorted.

  He laughed at that and went on. “Anyhow, we got a warrant for McClain’s house, looking to see maybe did he have any clothesline lying around somewhere. And would you believe that when we got to the place we found his old lady hanging out the wash on the clothesline in the backyard?”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit,” he answered, taking another hit on the beer. “And there’s about ten more feet of it coiled up in his storage shed.

  “Of course, clothesline being clothesline, we couldn’t make a solid match between the rope around the hooker’s neck and the stuff that was strung across McClain’s backyard. All we could tell was that the piece that had been used in the murder looked to be about the same age as McClain’s.

  “Anyhow, by the end of the day McClain had admitted to being on the scene at about the time Kelly was killed. He admitted to having oral sex with her, and the semen in her throat matched up to his blood type. We had her earring in his Pontiac. We had the testimony of the second pross, and then, of course, there was the clothesline.

  “Taken separately, none of the pieces would have been enough to hang him for it, but all of it together was enough—especially considering that his PD was completely wet behind the ears. Harold Roe was the prosecutor and he steamrollered the poor girl—and McClain along with her, of course. The jury came back with murder in the first. The judge gave him life, and then it turns out that he didn’t do it.”

  As tactfully as I could, I said, “There was no reason after to think that the conviction might have been a mistake?”

  He shook his head. Looking me straight in the eye, he said, “None. At least not until last fall. Shit, you know how it is, Sean. By the time McClain finally came to trial, Quigly and I were already several cases down the line with new ones comin’ in every week. We stopped long enough to accept the pats on the back we thought we deserved and then went on to other business and forgot all about Carl McClain.”

  “I can sure as hell understand that,” I conceded.

  “Damn right,” he said, somewhat defensively. Shaking his head, he said, “Ever since I read about the pimp confessing, I’ve been waiting for the shit to start raining down, but we did it by the book, Sean.

  “At the time, two or three people alibied Woolsey. His other girls claimed that they didn’t know anybody who would have had a reason to kill Kelly, and none of them suggested that there was any trouble between her and the pimp. Apparently, even Bambi didn’t know that Kelly was holding out on him—or at least she didn’t admit to knowing it, and so we had no reason to look at him.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it,” I agreed.

  The conversation paused and I said, “Do you have any idea where Quigly is these days?”

  Miller pointed north. “Montana somewhere, that is if he’s not dead by now. He took his pension three or four years after the McClain case and got the hell out of the desert. Said he’d rather shovel snow and freeze his ass off than spend another summer frying down here. Why do you ask—you gonna talk to him too?”

  “No point.” I shrugged. “We’re warning everybody who was associated with the McClain case that he’s out, apparently looking for revenge. But if Quigly’s hidden away somewhere in Montana, he’s probably not a likely target.”

  “And I am, I suppose?”

  “I’d certainly think so, Mike,” I sighed. “I can’t believe that the guy intends to stop with a couple of jurors and his defense attorney. If he blames her for what happened, you gotta think he’s pretty pissed at you too.”

  “No doubt,” he agreed.

  He thought about that for a few minutes, then said, “You got a recent photo?”

  “About seven months old. We’ve given it to the media. I’d imagine it’s on the air by now.”

  “I’ll take a look,” he said. “In the meantime, I’ve still got a permit to carry, so if he does come after me, I’ll be ready.”

  Miller walked me back out through the garage, and again I admired the Mustang. As we stood in the driveway, he said, “So what’s it like, workin’ with a girl?”

  “Shit, Mike,” I laughed, “if Maggie heard you say that, she’d hand you your fuckin’ lunch. The woman’s tougher than you are, and the mouth on her would make you sound like an altar boy.”

  He arched his eyebrows, and I said, “Seriously, Mike, she’s a damn good detective and she more than holds her own in the unit. It’s not like the old days, working with you, of course, but it’s a helluva big improvement over being saddled with Snyder.”

  “Yeah, well, working with Homer Simpson would be an improvement over Snyder,” he conceded. “So, you gonna catch this bastard, Sean?”

  “I hope so,” I said, getting into my Chevy. “But in the meantime, be careful Mike—I mean it. This cocksucker is serious.”

  “I get the message,” he replied. “So you and your tough new partner get out there and find him.”

  Leaning on the door of my car, he looked up and down the street as if evaluating his defensive perimeter. Then, looking back to me, he said, “What the hell do you suppose the bastard did with Thompson?”

  “God only knows,” I sighed. “On the plus side, we haven’t found her body yet, which may mean that she’s still alive. But if she is, that may not be so good, either.”

  “Yeah, I get your meaning.”

  He tapped the roof of the car a couple of times and then said, “Okay, Richardson, get on it, just like I showed you how. And don’t be such a stranger.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Beverly was lying awake on the bed when she heard McClain’s key in the lock a little after noon. She sat up and watched apprehensively as he opened the door, wondering what sort of mood he’d be in. After seeming to soften a bit during dinner the night before, he’d left the house and returned an hour later, apparently furious.

  Beverly had no idea what might have set him off. She was sure that she hadn’t done anything to upset him, but he’d burst into the room and slammed the door shut behind him. Without saying a word, he’d stripped off his clothes and dropped them onto the floor. Then, moving very deliberately, he had picked Beverly up from the chair where she’d been sitting at the card table and thrown her onto the bed.

  She’d pleaded with him, begging him to tell her what was wrong, but he’d refused to make any response. Straddling her on the bed, he ripped her blouse off, sending the buttons scattering across the floor of the room. Then he tore off her bra and her skirt and raped her more violently than at any time since the night he’d abducted her. When he was finished, he’d left her sobbing on the bed, snatched up his clothes, and left the room again, slamming the door behind him. Through the entire ordeal, he’d not spoken a single word.

  A couple of hours later, he’d come back into the room, obviously drunk. It was the first time Beverly had known him to drink anything, save for the beer he’d consumed with the chicken dinner. He fell onto the bed beside her, then reached out to pull her to him. She pushed herself away and got off of the bed. McClain reached out in her direction, then let his arm fall limply onto the bed. “Aw, fuck it,” he said, and then passed out.

  Beverly lay awake through most of the night watching him sleep, speculating about what might have caused his behavior to change so dramatically from the early evening and trying to calculate how she should react to it. Finally, she’d fallen asleep herself, and when she’d awakened about seven thirty in the morning, McClain was no longer in the roo
m.

  He returned a little after eight, still quiet, but apparently no longer angry. Avoiding any eye contact with Beverly, he set her breakfast on the card table, leaving the box of granola along with it. He left the room for a minute again, then returned with a clean white long-sleeve shirt. He draped the shirt over the back of one of the chairs. Without looking at Beverly, he pointed at the box of cereal. “I should be back with lunch a little after noon, but if you get hungry…”

  Leaving the sentence unfinished, he had turned, left the room, and locked the door behind him. Beverly watched him go, unable to fathom what he might be thinking. Finally, she got up from the bed and showered. Her own clothes were completely ruined, and so she’d put on the shirt he had left and then had eaten her breakfast.

  Now, as she watched him come into the room, she sensed that the fury of last night had passed, at least for the moment. McClain set two Subway bags on the card table and looked directly at her for the first time today. Then, looking quickly away again, he said, “Lunch is ready if you are.”

  She watched as he set two sandwiches and two drinks on the card table. Then he crumpled up the bags and set them on the floor beside him. Saying nothing, Beverly got up from the bed and sat down across from him.

  “There’s one tuna salad and one turkey,” he said. “You can take your pick.”

  She looked at him, waiting until he raised his eyes to meet hers. “Either’s fine with me,” she replied. “Really. If you have a preference, take it.”

  McClain shrugged and reached for the tuna salad. They unwrapped their sandwiches and ate quietly for several minutes. McClain seemed lost in thought. There was almost a contrite air about him, and he continued to look practically anywhere except directly at Beverly. Finally, she set down her sandwich and broke the silence. In a quiet voice, she said, “I’m sorry, but could I ask a favor?”

  McClain set his sandwich on the table and picked up his soft drink. Looking at her across the top of the cup, he said, “What?”

  “Well, it’s just…I was wondering if you’d mind bringing me something to wear? My own clothes…”