by Noel Hynd
She continued through the woods. Her eyes, frozen with tears, adjusted to the dim light. Given the terrifying circumstances, she found her way to the other side of the woods with relative ease. She guessed that she had been in the woods for half an hour.
She came out on Hillspoint Road.
Hillspoint, she knew, led to McSherry Street, where she lived. She shivered from the cold and from the sweat beneath her clothes. Her perspiration was freezing on her, but she kept walking.
Twice, sets of automobile headlights appeared on the road, both times from behind. Twice, in response to the lights, she hid in shrubbery by the roadside. It took seventy more minutes to find her way home.
She entered the house without her keys.
Her children were with Bill down in the playroom. Her husband came upstairs. He froze when he saw her. He was astonished at the sight of her.
“Becca?” He called her by her pet name. “What the…?” His brow knit into a deep frown. He opened his arms to her. “What happened?”
Her emotions released. Tears came so fast and so vehemently that she was unable to coherently tell him what had happened.
“Becca, kid. Just calm yourself,” he said tenderly. “Then tell me. What happened? Where’s the van? Are you all right?” He held her. “An accident? Did you have an accident?” She was shaking. She saw herself in the mirror. She looked a wreck. She still couldn’t talk. “Did someone hurt you?”
She couldn’t answer.
“Do you need a doctor?” he asked.
“No” she finally shook her head.
“The police?” He asked next.
She nodded.
“I want you to calm down first,” he said, his voice still soft and understanding. “I’m not leaving to go to the telephone with you in this state.”
Rebecca took her husband’s hand and clutched it. Bill Moore had never seen any woman this traumatized, much less his wife. He knew full well that something terrible had happened to her.
“I was about to come out with the other car to look for you,” he said. “Now what happened? Come on, honey. You need to tell me. What happened?”
Fortunately, Patrick and Karen stayed in the downstairs playroom. She was able, with trembling lips, with her husband’s trusted arm around her, to begin to tell what had transpired. He led her through the story, growing angrier as she recounted everything. Eventually, she collapsed and sobbed uncontrollably. Then, when she had told the entire story, Bill Moore picked up the telephone and called the Connecticut State Police.
“We’ll find this man,” Bill vowed as he dialed. “And we’ll make sure he never sees the light of day again.”
Chapter 2
Two police cars — three cops, two in uniform — responded within ten minutes. A young plainclothes sergeant named David Chandler was in charge.
Chandler was in his late twenties, big, strapping, and blond. He was alone in his car while the two uniformed men shared a patrol vehicle.
A neighbor watched Karen and Patrick as Sergeant Chandler drove the Moores back to the spot on Tremont Lane where Rebecca had left her van. The Dodge was still off the shoulder of the road in the snow of a shallow ravine. Someone had turned the ignition off, cut the headlights, and closed the door.
Bill Moore sat with his wife in the back of the detective’s car. He watched as the two uniformed men carried a pair of heavy flashlights, scanned the woods, and looked for clues. The snow was steadier now, bringing peace to what had been a tableau of violence. Yet the snow also covered any clues.
Too much snow had fallen to find footprints near the car, or tire tracks or skid marks. Chandler thought he could see the point where Rebecca Moore had entered the woods to flee, but he couldn’t be certain.
He walked back to the Moores’ Dodge and looked at the ground. Then he came back to his car. “Mrs. Moore, you said you hit the man with a baseball bat.”
“Two or three times,” she said. “A child’s bat. My son’s. I swung it hard.”
For a moment, Sergeant Chandler had a congratulatory look in his eye. “Did it draw blood?” he asked.
“I saw blood,” she said. “Right by the front window of my car.”
“What did you do with the bat?”
“I ran… and when I ran into the woods, I dropped it.”
Chandler nodded. The police radio crackled and the heat thundered out from under his dashboard.
“Just be calm,” Bill Moore whispered to his wife. “No one’s going to hurt you now.”
The two uniformed men joined Chandler. They discussed something among themselves. One of the uniformed men grimaced. Then two of them went to the edge of the woods and looked in vain for footprints in the fresh snow.
Chandler pushed a booted toe through the freshly fallen stuff near Rebecca’s vehicle. Like the officers at the edge of the woods, he found nothing.
He opened the driver’s door to the Dodge Caravan, leaned in and pulled out the baseball bat. He walked back to where the Moores sat in his car. “Is this the bat?” he asked.
Rebecca looked at it.
“Yes, it is.”
“It was in your car.”
“Then someone put it back”
“It’s clean,” he said, inspecting it. “Clean and dry.” He paused, raising his eyes, and studied her for a moment. “No blood on it. But I can have it checked for prints as well as a serology test.” She stared at it, also.
“The man was wearing gloves,” she said. “I remember.”
“Uh huh.” He looked at her again. “I’ll have it checked for prints, anyhow,” Chandler said.
“Did you find any blood? In the snow?”
“No. None on the car door, either.”
Chandler trudged thoughtfully to his two uniformed men.
He said something to them, and then came back to his own vehicle.
“I’d like to take you to the station to get a statement from you, Mrs. Moore,” he said. “I’d also like to take your van into our garage for fingerprints. May we do that?”
Bill Moore put his hand on his wife’s. “My wife already told you that her assailant was wearing gloves, didn’t she?” he asked.
“Her attacker might have taken them off,” Chandler said. “Plus there are paint scratches where another vehicle hit your front left fender.”
“That’s from when he ran me off the road,” she said.
“Then I need to take some paint samples,” Chandler said. “See, Mr. and Mrs. Moore, it’s your call. But I can’t do anything without your help. Can I take the van?”
“How long do you need it?” Bill Moore asked.
“Two days maximum.” Rebecca sighed.
“I don’t think I’ll be up for driving tomorrow, anyway,” she said.
“You can take it,” Bill told the detective. They went back to the supermarket parking lot and drove around, looking for the car that had run her off the road.
Rebecca didn’t see it. Nor did she see the man with the wraparound sunglasses who had tried to kill her except in her mind where she saw him continually.
Then they went to the State Police headquarters just off Interstate 95 in Westport.
Another detective, a woman named Rhonda Larsen, joined the inquiry. Detective Larsen asked Rebecca to run through her story again. She obliged. Then she told it a third time when detectives from the Town of Fairfield joined them.
Rebecca then spent an hour looking at photographs, her husband watching her the whole time, offering her support.
“Anything?” Sergeant Chandler eventually asked.
Rebecca shook her head. The answer was the same after an hour. At one point, Chandler turned to Bill Moore.
“What sort of work are you in, sir?”
“I’m an architect,” he said.
“You work locally? Commute to New York?”
“Both. I do freelance assignments when they’re subcontracted to me.”
A slight pause and he added truthfully, “I’m trying to open my
own business.”
Chandler nodded.
“So you work out of your home? Or have an office somewhere?”
“Out of my home,” he said. “Went to the University of Virginia School of Architecture. My former roommate’s got his own firm in Southern California. He’s been trying to get me to go out West and join him.”
“Don’t want to relocate to California, huh?” Chandler asked.
“I’ve given it some thought. Both Rebecca and I have.”
“You must like it here.” Bill glanced at Rebecca.
“Up until this evening I did,” he said. “Now …? Never thought this type of thing would happen to us. Know what I mean?”
Chandler nodded, commiserating. Rebecca quietly continued through a digital database, prom shots of violent felons. “The whole country’s turning into a jungle,” Chandler added philosophically. “Stuff like this is everywhere. Drugs. Guns. You even get violence on kids’ TV shows.” He shrugged. “You won’t find California any safer. Maybe you’ll find it worse.”
“I just want to make a living,” Bill Moore said. “And I want my family to be safe.” Sergeant Chandler nodded.
Bill Moore had the feeling that the policeman’s questions had been probing for something. But whatever the cop had been looking for, Moore had apparently satisfied him. Chandler dropped the line of questioning and they went back to the mug shots.
Still nothing. After another hour, the police took the Moores home.
Rebecca took a sedative to be able to sleep that night. But she found herself awake toward 3:00 A.M., aware of every nighttime creak of the house. Bill slept soundly beside her. She was grateful for her husband’s presence.
The town police said they would watch her block for the next few nights. Once, at 3:30 A.M., she rose from her bed and looked out a window. She saw a police cruiser sitting right in front of the house, like a dark oblong phantom nestled in the falling snow and the muffled moonlight. The car’s engine was running; she could see the exhaust and the light was on within the vehicle. The policeman was probably reading, she figured.
She took the occasion to check Patrick and Karen in their individual bedrooms. Both were safe, sleeping blissfully. Little angels. She kissed them both. Never had she thought that she wouldn’t live to see them grow up. Never had she been more appreciative of being alive.
When she re-awakened at 4:00 A.M. and checked the front window again, the police cruiser was gone. But it was back again at a few minutes past five. Rebecca’s senses were so on edge that, lying in bed, she could hear the police car’s engine.
Then, from five to six-thirty, she managed to sleep. Her clock radio alarm beeped at its usual hour and, heavily fatigued, thinking back on the previous evening as if it had been some horrible nightmare, she rose to get her children off to school.
For the next few days, Bill was greatly indulgent with her, taking care to defer to her wishes on all things, allay her fears, and tell her that he loved her. The police returned the Dodge Caravan a day later. The crime lab had taken the paint sample and searched the vehicle for fingerprints. But nothing had turned up.
Similarly, the baseball bat that Rebecca recalled dropping in the snow revealed no prints other than her own and those of her son. Nor did it even appear to have been in the snow. If it had been moved, it had been moved by a gloved hand. Nonetheless, the Fairfield police continued to keep their block under surveillance. State Police cars came by frequently, too, making a display of their presence.
Detective Chandler made every effort to attain some progress in the case. He sat with Rebecca as she went over thousands of mug shots of violent felons provided by neighboring communities, from the Bronx to Massachusetts. Again, Rebecca found nothing. A police artist did a composite photo from Rebecca’s description of her attacker. The computerized likeness of her assailant was an excellent one. It ran in the local newspapers. There were a few crank calls, but in the end, nothing emerged there, either.
Emotionally, Rebecca was a wreck. Her nerves were shattered. Little inexplicable noises in her home, a cranky radiator or a creaking floorboard, were enough to send her heart racing. Twice in the days after the attack, members of her family appeared in her bedroom quietly and unexpectedly. Once it was Bill, the other time it was Karen. On both occasions Rebecca let out a shriek.
Her husband conferred with the family physician. There was a psychiatrist in Southport, the doctor suggested, named Todd Miller. Dr. Miller had had considerable success helping stressed-out crime victims. The Moores made an appointment. Rebecca felt comfortable talking to Dr. Miller every Thursday morning.
Detective Chandler made a file of every newspaper article Rebecca had written for Westpress in her six years as a reporter. He created a list of people of whom she might have written unfavorably. He searched for someone she might have harmed. Some violent sorehead with a grievance. He came up with a dozen names. Ten men and two women.
“Any of these people?” he asked. “Would any of them feel strongly enough to have you attacked?”
Rebecca and her husband narrowed the list to three names, all men. Chandler followed the leads until they disintegrated. There was no progress here, either.
Quietly, Chandler even made inquiries locally about Bill Moore. In Connecticut at least, he had been a model citizen for the last seven years. Chandler dropped that line: it was proving as fruitless as the others.
Looking for a motive for someone trying to kill Rebecca was as elusive as finding bullets in the freshly fallen snow. The bullets and the motives had one thing in common: they just weren’t there. And, of course, neither were the tire tracks. Nor was there blood from the man she had said she had hit. Or any foot prints. Even the paint marks on the front of her van failed to help. The paint could have been from anywhere.
The whole thing seemed elusive. And eventually, it seemed suspicious. That was the only angle, in fact, which began to emerge for Chandler. The absence of everything.
Three weeks passed. Then a full month. April arrived, and with it a thaw from the worst winter of Rebecca’s life. Sergeant Chandler went back to Rebecca’s husband as a suspect. The detective played around with theories again, some of them even involving Bill as the attacker or Bill as the instigator.
But then he ditched them. That line of thought didn’t work. Or at least Chandler couldn’t make it work. Bill Moore seemed so supportive. He needed his wife. He wanted his wife. As much as could be seen, Bill Moore appeared to love his wife.
So where was a motive in this case? Where was financial profit? The Moores had a bundle of life insurance, but who didn’t in Fairfield County? Was sex a motive? Chandler couldn’t make that one fly, either. True, Rebecca had seemed like an intended target. But increasingly, the assault looked like a random act.
It could have happened to any woman. Or, following another theoretical line, had the assault happened at all?
Sergeant Chandler was at his desk one night seven weeks after the initial incident. He put his feet up and kicked back. For almost half an hour, he worked on a theory that he had been playing with but hadn’t voiced.
Then his chair returned to earth. He took out his file and looked through it again, examining Rebecca Moore’s sworn statement from the day following the alleged incident. He examined her statement against the thorough lack of any supporting evidence.
Then he began to fine-tune his theory. Two days later, he saw Bill Moore’s car parked near Hazelwood’s Appliances on Main Street in Fairfield.
Chandler parked his car and waited. Bill Moore came out of a paint store two doors down from Hazelwood’s. He was just placing a hand on his own car door when he heard a familiar voice.
“Mr. Moore? How are you?” Moore turned and, startled, recognized the policeman.
“I’m fine,” he answered.
“I saw your car, see?” Chandler said. “So I waited.” Bill Moore gave the policeman a nervous smile.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Anything new on Becc
a’s case?”
“Nothing new,” the cop said, “but I need to talk to you.” Now it was Bill Moore’s turn to break a sweat.
“Can we talk here?” he asked.
“Is your wife with you right now?” Chandler asked.
“No. She’s not. So tell me what’s going on,” Moore asked.
Sergeant Chandler walked Moore toward his police car. Bill Moore looked jittery, as if he were going to be arrested. But he had long ago been eliminated as a suspect.
“In a case like this,” Sergeant Chandler began carefully, “we can use computers, work out theories, speculate, make a hundred phone calls, and wear out a lot of shoe leather. But in the end, all we really have is what’s in front of us. We work up all the evidence and draw our conclusions. Still with me?”
Moore was. Nervously, he was right with it.
“Taking your wife’s case,” the policeman continued, “we have a damaged car, deep brown paint on the front left side. The paint, the bump, the scratches. These things could have come from anywhere. Then we had some skid marks in the snow where her car went off the road. And we found some footprints where your wife ran toward the woods. But nothing really in the woods themselves.” There was a long pause. “We have photographs of that. But then again, the snow fell heavily between the time of the alleged attack and the time we went to the woods. And against this, we found no fingerprints, no blood, no footprints, and no witnesses.”
“So what are you suggesting?” Bill Moore asked. Chandler drew a long sigh. “How have you been getting on with your wife?” the detective inquired. “How were you two getting along at the time of the incident?” Bill Moore bristled. He was instantly defensive.
“We get along fine,” he said. “We love each other. Look, where’s this leading?” Moore asked. “What do you want me to say? Rebecca and I have had our bad days like any married couple. But what are you implying? That I attacked her?”
“Mr. Moore? Would she have come to you if she had a serious problem?”
“What do you call this?” Moore asked. “This was a serious problem.”