The May Day Murders

by Scott Wittenburg

  She took a sip of Pepsi and watched the weather report. Smithtown was presently being hammered by thunderstorms, but the meteorologist gave his assurance that the storms would stay to the south of the state and avert central Ohio. By morning it was supposed to be fair and turn much colder in Columbus.

  Ann reached for the romance novel she had been reading and read until she had to fight to keep her eyes open. Then she decided to go to bed, stopping at the bathroom on the way. After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she happened to notice that the mini blinds were fully open as it occurred to her that this was the second time in the last week that they hadn’t been in their usually closed position. The first time she’d given it little thought, aware that Amy occasionally opened the blinds as well as the window a little to vent out the steam when she took a shower But Amy hadn’t taken a shower today because she was running late for school earlier that morning and hadn’t had time.

  Then she had gone straight to Amanda’s after school instead of coming home first.

  Ann felt a pang of dread as she struggled to recall if the blinds had been open when she had gotten ready for her date with Jerry Rankin. She was almost certain that they had been closed then; otherwise she would have noticed. Wouldn’t she have? Of course she would have. Being modest by nature her entire life, she had always made a point of closing the blinds whenever she was in the bathroom.

  So someone had opened the blinds while she had been out with Jerry.

  But who?

  A thought suddenly came to mind: Amy. Perhaps Amy had come home while she’d been out with Jerry. She hadn’t mentioned it on the phone when she’d spoken to her earlier, but that was no real surprise. It probably hadn’t seemed worth mentioning…

  Ann looked at the bathroom window. It was closed and locked. So if Amy had come home earlier, it hadn’t been to take a shower. The window would still be cracked open.

  So why had Amy come home, then?

  Had she come home to do something she shouldn’t have been doing? Ann wondered. Like sneaking boys in, or drinking with her friends? That might explain why she had seemed so suspiciously “cheery” on the phone earlier. But surely Amy wouldn’t have taken that great of risk, Ann thought. She would have had no idea how long she and Jerry would be gone or whether she’d have enough time to pull off some kind of caper. And besides that, it would have been nearly impossible for her to avoid being found out somehow if she had been drinking alcohol in this house. Amy was much too sloppy and careless to have been able to cover her tracks so well.

  Ann heaved a sigh of exasperation as she closed the blinds. Whatever had happened, she was going to get to the bottom of it. Tomorrow she would have a few questions to ask her daughter about all of this. And if Amy tried to lie her way out of it, she would be able to tell.

  And if Amy told her that she hadn’t come home and she was telling the truth, then what?

  Ann didn’t even want to think about it…

  She turned off the light, went upstairs and went to bed.

  It took Ann Middleton a very long time to get to sleep that night…

  CHAPTER 12

  Radiant sun poured through Sam’s bedroom window when he finally decided to get up. He’d heard the phone ring earlier and his answering machine come on, but he hadn’t been able to make out whom the caller was or what he was saying. He’d felt too wasted to get up and check it out at the time but now realized that the call might have been important and that he’d better go see what it was all about.

  He was definitely hung over in a very bad way and it wasn’t until he rolled over onto his back and saw Shelly Hatcher lying fast asleep beside him that the events of the following night began registering in his groggy head. She lay with her back facing him and the covers drawn up to her waist. Sam sat up and pulled the covers over her shoulders before slipping quietly out of bed. After throwing on a pair of sweats, he left the bedroom and made his way to the den.

  When he pressed the message replay button, Roger Hagstrom’s gruff voice crackled through the tiny speaker:

  “Get the fuck out of bed, ya drunk!” his old friend chided. After a short pause, he continued: “I’ve got a ton of shit to tell you man, so give me a call as soon as you get your sick ass out of bed. It’s 8:42 now and I’ll probably be at the station by the time you hear this. Call me there.”

  Sam glanced over at the clock. Just past noon. He immediately picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Smithtown Police Department.

  “Detective Hagstrom, please.”

  A moment later his friend answered.

  “Hagstrom.”

  “What the hell are you doing back from N.Y.C. already?” Sam said.

  Roger’s voice was low as he spoke. “It’s a long story, but in a nutshell there was a lot more happening here than there was there, so I took the first flight out this morning.”

  “What happened?” Sam asked. He could tell by his friend’s tone of voice that he was onto something major.

  “I can’t tell you right now-I’m in the middle of a briefing. Can you get down her in say, a half hour or so?”

  “No problem. Can you give me a hint? Something to do with the Bradley case?” Sam prodded, feeling a surge of adrenalin kick in, in spite of his hangover.

  “Could well be,” Lieutenant Hagstrom replied in his typically vague fashion. “I’ll fill you in when you get here. Gotta go.”

  He hung up the phone.

  Wondering what the hell had come up to get the normally complacent Roger Hagstrom so fired up, Sam made a beeline for the kitchen and quickly got the coffee brewing. He suddenly recalled that Shelley Hatcher’s car was mired-up in his driveway and that it would have to be moved before he could go to the police station.

  He went back into the den to get a cigarette and stood there for a moment debating what he was going to do about Shelley and her car. He wanted to meet Roger ASAP and find out what was going on but he also wanted, no, needed to take a hot shower so that he could feel at least halfway human again. He wasn’t going to have enough time to get Shelley’s car out of the mud and shower unless the road had by chance dried out enough to enable him to get the car out under its own power. The first priority, Sam decided, was to drive the Jeep down and check out Shelley’s car.

  He started to leave the room and stopped himself cold as he realized that he was going to need Shelley’s car keys, which most likely were in her purse. He didn’t particularly want to go rummaging through Shelley’s purse without her knowing it, so it looked like he was going to have to wake her up after all. He’d wanted to avoid awaking Shelley any sooner than needed and Sam now seriously considered why this was so. The reality of having to confront her after last night, perhaps..?

  Yup. You got it.

  Sam let out a groan and made his way back to the bedroom. Shelley was still fast asleep when he entered. He walked quietly over to the side of the bed and touched her shoulder.

  “Shelley?” he said softly.

  She mumbled something and opened her eyes. She smiled when she saw him.

  “Hi,” she whispered sweetly.

  Even after a long and crazy night of heavy drinking and unbridled sex, Shelley Hatcher still looked like a million bucks. Her silky blonde hair partially covered her lovely face and her deep blue eyes were just as wide and enchanting as they’d been the night before. Her full lips still had that sultry, seductive look that he had always found hard to resist.

  “How are you feeling?” Sam asked, testing the waters.

  She feigned a groan and replied, “Tired, but content. Last night was wonderful, Sam,” she purred with a playful grin.

  “I have to agree with you there,” Sam said, knowing full well that he meant it. How the holy hell he was going to deal with all of this later, he didn’t have a clue. “Unfortunately, I have to go into town on some business now, so I’m going to try and move your car out of the way. Where are the keys?”

  Shelley thought a moment before replying. “
I left them in the ignition. I figured they probably wouldn’t get very far if somebody tried to steal it. But you can probably drive around it, Sam. It’s sort of off to the side in a ditch.”

  Great, Sam thought. “Do you need to be anywhere in the next couple of hours or so?”

  “No, I don’t have any plans.”

  “Good. Then why don’t you just go back to sleep and I’ll take care of your car when I get back,” he suggested.

  Shelley grinned. “I sort of hoped you would say that.”

  Sam just smiled and said, “Okay. I’m going to take a quick shower then shove off. Just make yourself at home and I’ll call you if I’m going to be any longer than a couple of hours.”

  “Thanks, Sam.” She sat up and gave him a kiss, the sheet falling down and exposing half of her luscious body. The kiss was short, but long enough to remind Sam of what had happened the night before.

  “See you later,” he said, almost regretfully, before turning around and leaving the room.

  ***

  Roger Hagstrom was standing beside his unmarked car when Sam pulled into the Smithtown Police parking lot. He pulled up beside his friend and rolled down the window.

  “What’s shakin’?”

  Roger came over to the Cherokee. He looked as though he’d been put through a wringer. “I need to get the hell out of here for a while. Had lunch yet?”

  “Fuck, I haven’t even had breakfast yet!” Sam said.

  “Let’s go over to the K amp;L, then,” Roger said as he walked around to the other side of the Jeep and got in.

  Roger fumbled for a cigarette in his coat pocket, lit one up and looked over at Sam grimly. “Before you start grilling me, I’d better level with you first. Thompson’s in a real fucked up mood and just ordered me, in so many unpleasant words, to refrain from leaking police business to the press-referring of course to your ass. He’s at the end of his rope with the Bradley case and has decided to take it out on yours truly-like I’ve been just sitting around with my finger stuck up my ass all this time or something. Anyway, he has somehow managed to find out that I’ve let you have copies of the police reports and he’s ultra-pissed about that too. The chief is a real prick when he gets into this mode, as you well know. So, to make a long story short, we’re going to have to start being a little more discreet from here on out before the son of a bitch decides to fire my ass.”

  “Great,” Sam groaned as he pulled out onto Court Street.

  What Roger had just told him didn’t surprise him-it had happened a few times before in the past. The chief of police usually gave Roger Hagstrom considerable slack as far as Sam’s tagging along was concerned, but he had his limits. Especially when things weren’t going particularly well, as they apparently weren’t now.

  “At any rate,” the detective continued, “I’ll start at the beginning. New York was a real bitch, any way you look at it. I met with the infamous Lieutenant Mancuso at his precinct and you might say that the two of us didn’t exactly hit it off together. The guy’s one of those arrogant Italian Stallion types who gets off on bossing everybody around, if you know what I mean. So here I am, Mister Small-Town Cop in the Big City, and Mancuso is constantly reminding me of my minor existence in the huge scheme of things-not in his words so much as in his goddamn condescending demeanor.

  “Anyway, once we finally got down to business, he lightened up on me ever so little. I guess my natural charm and charisma eventually wore him down, eh? We went over our respective reports and theories on the Bradley and Hunt murders and then interrogated the witness who had claimed that he’d seen a man on the fire escape outside of what he believed to be Sara Hunt’s apartment on the night she was murdered. This guy lives across the alley from Sara’s apartment building-about a hundred yards away. He told us that he just happened to be looking out his window when he noticed a man climb out of the window and stand on the fire escape for a couple of minutes. He couldn’t see very well-it was late and pretty dark then-but he was able to make out some of the guy’s features.

  “The man was fairly tall, about six-two, Caucasian, medium build, and had long, dark hair and a beard. He was wearing an overcoat, like a London Fog, and had a small carrying case of some kind slung over his shoulders-possibly a camera or binocular case. The man looked real suspicious, the guy said, because it seemed more than obvious that he didn’t want to be seen by anyone. He kept looking around nervously and kept his back glued to the wall. After a couple of minutes, the man went back inside and closed the window, then pulled down the blinds.

  “The witness kept watching after the man had gone back inside. About a minute or so later, he saw several bright flashes of light come from the window-like a camera flash going off. He said that he observed five or six flashes within the span of a couple of minutes, then no more after that.”

  “I knew it!” Sam exclaimed. “The bastard was taking pictures of the body, wasn’t he?”

  Roger eyed him curiously. “Yeah, I’d say that’s a very strong possibility. Are you going to tell me now that you already had that figured out?”

  Sam nodded excitedly. “I was comparing the crime scene photos of Marsha’s and Sara’s bodies yesterday evening and noticed how the positions were practically identical. Then it suddenly dawned on me that the killer had purposely arranged their bodies that way because he wanted an identically composed shot of each victim. I must admit that I was a little surprised nobody had noticed it before,” Sam added just a little too smugly.

  Roger cast him a wry grin. “Hate to rain on your parade, buddy, but Mancuso had already made that very same observation prior to our interview with this guy. Gotta admit, I was pretty pissed off at myself for letting it slip by, but what the fuck? It gave Mancuso another feather in his cap while helping to boost my ratings as Mister Small-Town Cop at the same time,” Roger added acidly. “At any rate, this witness’s account more or less corroborated both yours and Mancuso’s hunch that the murderer might have taken some pictures at the scene.”

  Sam could tell that his friend was taking his own oversight a little too hard, so he chose not to gloat. “The important thing is that we’re finally starting to get somewhere with this thing. But why in the hell did this witness take so long to come forth? This information surely would have helped a lot more a month ago,” Sam said as he pulled into the K amp;L Restaurant parking lot.

  “Apparently he didn’t want to get involved at first, but his conscience eventually got the best of him. So he finally called the police-anonymously, I might add-and Mancuso managed to talk him into coming into the station to talk about it. You know, it never ceases to amaze me how people never want to get involved in a criminal investigation. One of the tenants in Sara Hunt’s apartment building also came forward with some pertinent information just recently, as a matter of fact.”

  Sam pulled into a parking space and turned off the engine.

  “What do you mean? Another late witness?”

  Roger nodded. “Better late than never, I reckon. Anyway, Sara Hunt apparently had a nasty habit of turning up her stereo really loud whenever she listened to music, according to this neighbor of hers. On the night she was murdered, it had been cranked up to the max, so this guy, some crotchety old-timer who lived on Sara’s floor, started beating on Sara’s door and threatened to go tell the super if she didn’t turn it down. Sara had had run-ins with him before over her music and it soon became obvious to this guy that she wasn’t going to comply since she never responded and the music kept on blasting. So, he finally informed her through her door that he was going to get the super.

  “As it turns out though, the old geezer had just been bluffing. He returned to his apartment instead of blowing the whistle on Sara. A few minutes later, however, someone did finally turn down her stereo.”

  “Someone?” Sam said.

  “We think it was the murderer who turned it down.”

  Sam stared intently at his friend. “What makes you think that?”

  Roger opened
the car door. “Let’s go in and order some grub, then I’ll tell you. I’m famished.”

  Sam nodded. They went inside and chose a table near a window away from the small lunch crowd. After placing their orders, Roger resumed the conversation, keeping his voice low.

  “We’ve come up with a theory of what might have happened the night that Sara was murdered,” he said as he lit up another cigarette. “When the neighbor came to Sara’s door complaining about the loud music, we think the murderer just so happened to be in the process of strangling her at that very moment. The music of course probably drowned out any sounds of a struggle. And because of the murderer’s preoccupation with Sara, he was unable to turn down the stereo and avoid a possible confrontation by the super if and when he arrived. Once he had strangled Sara to death, the murderer ran over to the stereo and turned it down, then made a quick exit through the window onto the fire escape; no doubt praying that the neighbor had only been bluffing about calling the super. Once he was fairly certain that the super wasn’t going to show up, he went back inside and wasted little time in taking a few quick shots of Sara’s body before splitting the scene. We’re fairly sure that he fled through Sara’s door, just as he had entered, because the first witness said that he had continued watching the fire escape for at least an hour or so and never saw him again. Gutsy son of a bitch, eh? You’d think her assailant would have tried to make it out by the fire escape instead of risking being seen by the tenants.”

  Sam shook his head slowly. “No shit. This bastard is as lucky as he is gutsy. What about the lipstick mark? Do you suppose he was unable to finish his little message on Sara’s body because he started getting a little panicky?”

  Roger nodded. “Yup, that’s my guess. Everything sort of all falls into place when you think about it. Up until the moment when the neighbor knocked on Sara’s door complaining about the music, this guy evidently had everything pretty much under control. But once that happened, it threw the murderer’s game plan off and forced him to hurry up the process.”