Lethal Intent
Page 17
The next time the man appeared, he joined them all in a barbecue. He seemed the argumentative sort, though, and Billy didn’t take to him. Before long, Lee was fighting with him again and storming over to Billy, saying, ‘The sonofabitch thinks we’re gonna do a threesome with him! The hell with him!’
The man then left in a hurry. Billy’s snap assessment was that, like the rest of their male visitors, he merely wanted a piece of ass and showed no human kindness towards her. He was glad she kept the TV. Not that he had any particular love for Lee. And he was sure she could take care of herself. Underneath those sunglasses she always wore, he couldn’t help thinking a bizarre thought. Death-row eyes, that’s what Lee had. He and Cindy wouldn’t forget them.
Later, they’d recall (and question) the man with the TV, and the day Lee and Ty walked up the campsite driveway calling, ‘Look, Billy! Look! Me and Ty won the Lotto!’ and flashing around six one-hundred-dollar bills.
James Dalla Rosa picked Lee up in Port Orange. She’d been standing at the side of the road and he was out running some errands. Where did she want to go? Cutting straight to the chase, she told him that she was a professional prostitute and wanted to get to Orlando.
She showed him a picture of her two kids—a boy and a girl—and told him about a home she owned. He had a feeling all was not ‘as advertised’. She slipped the photos back in the purse she had on the floor between her feet, then produced a wallet full of business cards. Judges, state attorneys, police officers, were all her clients, she said. Keeping one eye on the road, he thought he spotted the outline of a sheriff’s star on one.
She listed her fees as $75 in the woods, $100 in a motel room. Straight sex. With condoms. Not exactly a direct proposition, but the offer was there.
Not wanting to offend her, he muttered something about taking a rain check.
‘It’s now or never!’ she retorted.
Then she changed dramatically. Went quiet on him. He could tell she was angry by the jerky way she was moving, and when he pulled to the side of the road to let her out, she slammed the door and stalked off without so much as a thank you.
17
Like Cammie Greene before her, Sandy Russell gravitated to Tyria Moore. The two women wrangled linens alongside one another in the Casa Del Mar’s sweat-inducing laundry room. Ty landed her job with the housekeeping department of the seven-storey, 150-room, upscale, ocean-front hotel in Ormond Beach in the autumn of 1989. Initially, this did not thrill Sandy, a delicately pretty, all-American blonde from West Virginia whose wide blue eyes, fair luscious lashes and translucent pale skin all contributed to her looking considerably younger than her 29 years. Ty’s arrival elbowed Sandy temporarily into the lobby area where, under the gaze of the paying public, she had to mop and sweep every inch of the huge floor. A tedious job she hated.
Yet despite this state of affairs, she and Ty clicked immediately. She admired Ty’s feisty personality and the two shared a wildly wacky, offbeat sense of humour and a love of sports. In so many other ways they were the veritable odd couple. Sandy so overtly feminine; almost girlishly so, with her wispy hair and equally wispy voice, and Ty so butch in dress, manner, and posture. Sandy liked men, and strongly suspected Ty didn’t share her taste. Not that that bothered her in the slightest.
If she liked Ty a lot, she was decidedly less sure about Lee whom she met at Thanksgiving and presumed to be Ty’s lover. The holiday fell on Thursday 23 November. Being far from their respective families, they all planned to have dinner together. Since Sandy and Ty were on duty at the Casa Del Mar, it fell to Lee to prepare their festive repast. No gourmet chef, Lee cooked an oven-ready, TV-style turkey dinner that was all pre-compartmentalised with vegetables, utilising the limited facilities of the Ocean Shores motel room in Ormond Beach, their home for the past month.
It seemed so peculiar to Sandy that even on a traditionally social occasion like Thanksgiving, Lee was obviously downright uncomfortable about dining with a stranger. In fact, she didn’t. She claimed to have already eaten, but Sandy didn’t believe her. It was downright unnerving, the way Lee sat there peering intently at her and Ty while they hungrily tucked into their food. She didn’t seem able to quite join in. She wondered if it was her presence somehow making her off-balance.
Other factors contributed to Sandy’s conclusion that Lee was odd. Sandy didn’t relish seeing Lee waving a gun around in a temper. Sandy was no stranger to firearms: her ex-husband owned a long-barrelled .357 that looked similar to Lee’s. She wasn’t afraid. She didn’t even know for sure the weapon was loaded, but that was hardly the point. Sandy knew enough about firearms to have a healthy respect for them. She didn’t want anyone waving a gun around in front of her, loaded or not.
Lee, who hoisted her shirt up over her beer-inflated stomach to show Sandy her bullet scar, was friendly enough and, in a slightly odd way, could be likeable. She was even affectionate. Hugging Sandy, she’d cry, ‘Oh Sandy, I love you like a sister!’ Yet Sandy couldn’t shake her deep misgivings about Ty’s mate. At first, it was more of a gut feeling than anything she could put a name to.
When Richard Charles Mallory of Clearwater, Florida, disappeared a week after Thanksgiving, near and dear ones didn’t exactly rise up in force. Fifty-one-year-old Mallory, who had his own VCR and TV repair shop in a strip shopping mall in Palm Harbor, was last seen on the night of Thursday 30 November 1989, and in a sad echo of his life, he seemed alone then, too.
Grey-haired, moustachioed Mallory was 5 feet 11 inches, with hazel eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He cut a trim figure, tipping the scales at just under 170 pounds. A longtime divorcé, he was a loner, a man who loved to party in the carnal sense, a frequenter of the kinds of establishments dedicated to catering to pleasures of the flesh. He was a sufficiently regular customer at the topless bars in the Tampa and Clearwater area on Florida’s west coast that the strippers, go-go dancers and hookers mostly knew him by sight, if not by name.
He paid some of those women quite generously for sex, either with cash or with his other viable currency, TVs and VCRs, and was known for being an extremely generous tipper. His special favourite on the sexual repertoire was watching two women together.
In his other life, he was depressed over a recent break-up with Jackie Davis, a warm, chestnut-haired, rather demure-looking woman who wore spectacles and floral dresses and with whom he’d been involved for about eighteen months. Jackie had got fed up with Richard’s lifestyle.
Richard had also been seeing a woman called Nancy he’d met through a dating group called MCI, but Nancy gave up on Richard when she learned that Jackie was still in the picture.
Richard Mallory’s solitary status and relationship difficulties were unlikely to be helped by his considerable appetite for encounters with women of the night.
He liked to drink and smoked a little pot. Jackie Davis found him kind and gentle but prone to mood swings. Sometimes he was sweet and easygoing, at others, he shrank back into his shell. He could be a little paranoid. Sometimes, he confided in Jackie, he felt as if he was being followed. In the three years he’d lived in his apartment at The Oaks, he’d had his lock changed at least eight times.
Jackie last spoke to Richard on 26 November. They’d talked about getting away for a long weekend in Daytona Beach. Jeff Davis, Jackie’s son, who worked part-time for Richard at Mallory Electronics, last saw him around 6.10 p.m. on the 30th, after closing up the shop. As always, he was clutching his black attaché case. He said he was off to do a service call.
Mallory was in dire financial straits: another predicament his rampant night life did nothing to ameliorate. Nor did his irresponsible behaviour. He’d been known to take off unannounced and even to fail to show up with the keys to open the shop, leaving his employees standing out on the street. He was almost $4,000 in arrears on his rent, and was due to be audited by the IRS.
He owned two vans, one white and the other maroon. But the night he disappeared, heading for Daytona (minus Jackie) for a week
end of what was euphemistically called socialising, he was driving his light beige, two-door, 1977 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, with its brown interior and racily tinted windows. A vehicle better suited to the pursuit.
By early evening, a handful of northbound rides from Fort Myers had deposited her outside Tampa on I-4, right at the point where it passes under I-75. She was lingering there when Richard Mallory stopped to pick her up. They had a common destination in Daytona so he invited her to hop in. They whiled away a pleasant drive across the state, chatting companionably and drinking. Richard smoked a little pot, but she wouldn’t join him. Not a drug she’d ever cared for, herself. It made her heart race and her hands and feet swell up, she complained. He stirred her a vodka and orange. Somewhere along the highway they made a pit-stop and he bought her a six-pack. A die-hard beer drinker, she was more at home with that.
She was tired. She’d spent a profitable day turning tricks in the Fort Myers area and was on her way home, but as they hit the fringes of Daytona close to midnight, Richard asked: ‘Do you mind if we stop somewhere to talk some more?’ She suggested a spot near Bunnell where they parked again, talking and drinking, while Richard poured out a few of his troubles. He complimented her; she was a good listener. She thought he was nice, too. At first, she maintained the pressure-cleaning charade, then she admitted to being a professional call girl.
‘Do you want to help me make some money, ’cause I need some money for rent and everything?’ she asked. He was ready, willing and able, so they talked prices and moved to a still more deserted spot in the woods.
It was around 5 a.m. when Richard finally initiated sex. She peeled off her clothes before he did. It was her custom to make her clients more comfortable. She made self-deprecating references to her stretch marks and beer belly but he reassured her. ‘You’ll do,’ he’d said, switching on the dome light for a better look. They hugged and kissed a little.
‘Why don’t you take off your clothes? It will hurt if you don’t,’ she said finally, referring to his blue jeans’ metal studs and zipper. But Richard didn’t want to undress. His old demon paranoia was surfacing. Naked, he would have felt horribly vulnerable. What if she ran off or robbed him? No, he’d just unzip his pants, thank you very much.
Colliding with his mental machinations was a woman with plenty of her own. In her mind, she was in jeopardy. What if this guy took back the money he’d given her, or rolled her? What if he was going to rape her?
Two individuals beleaguered by their separate mind games. A potentially lethal combination.
Yet, given the pleasant hours preceding this exchange, there was no way that Richard could possibly have imagined the sudden and horrific turn of events. This usually unduly cautious man had made a fatal error in judgement.
He was still sitting in a non-threatening position behind his steering wheel when she made her move. She had been standing just outside the open passenger door when suddenly she reached in, making a grab for her small blue bag containing her spare clothes which lay on the car floor.
How could he have known that she always kept its zipper partially undone for easy access?
How could he have known she was carrying a loaded, nine-shot, .22-calibre revolver?
Yet, instinctively, he smelled danger and lunged across to try to stop her getting the bag. The struggle was brief. She already had a firm grasp on it and quickly wrenched it out of his reach. Moving at lightning speed, utilising all her hours of practice, she yanked out her gun and aimed it towards her companion.
‘You sonofabitch! I knew you were going to rape me!’
‘No, I wasn’t! No, I wasn’t!’ he protested.
Without more ado, she leaned into the car and fired quickly, pumping a bullet that first hit his right arm, then travelled lethally onward, striking him in the right side.
His blood flowed onto the car upholstery behind him.
Fighting for his very survival in the midst of darkness with this apparently crazy woman, he had no time to think. He had but one potential escape route and he took it, crawling out of the driver’s door, slamming it behind him, trying desperately to put something between him and his attacker.
She had not finished. She ran around the front of the car to where he stood, disabled. ‘If you don’t stop, man, right now, I’ll keep shooting!’ she growled. She liked the .22’s hairpin trigger and now she put it to the test, mercilessly firing a second bullet, which hit him in the torso, knocking him back up and making him fall to the ground.
Then a third.
Then a fourth.
He did not die immediately. But the bullet that struck the right side of his chest had gone on to penetrate his left lung, travelling through it and out the other side, coming to rest in the chest cavity. It caused a massive and fatal haemorrhage.
Lying there, with the life blood seeping from him, death was inevitable. But he gasped for air, desperately trying to suck in the oxygen he needed, desperately trying to cling on. He struggled for ten, maybe even twenty, long minutes.
And she watched him die.
When he was gone, she did not attempt to drag her victim’s lifeless body away, but just moved him enough to get at his pockets, taking his identification and money. (She’d later say she only found about forty dollars, but Mallory customarily carried several hundred dollars; possibly more on a trip.)
The luminous moon shone brightly. Casting glances all around her, she spied some cardboard and a discarded piece of red carpeting and she dragged those over to where he lay. First she put the cardboard over his body, then she stretched out the carpeting on top to hide as much of him as it would. (Later she’d say that she didn’t want the birds picking at his body.) Only the tips of his hands were exposed.
Still naked, she found the ignition keys and moved the Cadillac to Quail Run, another isolated spot nearby, where she hastily dressed. She drank her last beer while pondering her next move.
She considered putting the car through a car wash before going home to shower, then thought better of it. She didn’t have time. But she was forced to stop to get gas. She threw some of the dead man’s clothing into the woods, far from his body. Later, she would throw the rest into trash Dumpsters.
Finally, she drove back to the Ocean Shores motel. Back to her woman.
The sun was still inching towards its first peek through the early morning haze as Ty’s peaceful sleep was shattered by a knock on the door, signalling that Lee wanted to be let in. Ty, who didn’t need to be at the Casa Del Mar until 9 a.m., had been counting on the alarm to wake her. She didn’t know it as that first day of December dawned, but by nightfall she would be sleeping in a new home.
She and Lee had already looked into renting a converted garage apartment over on Burleigh Avenue in nearby Holly Hill. Some of their belongings were already in boxes because they planned to move soon—but not that day. Suddenly, as Ty was stretching and yawning herself awake, Lee was urging her on, telling her to get ready, she’d got the money they needed. They were going to move right that minute, before she went to work.
‘I made a lot of money, and some guy loaned me this car,’ Lee told her, ‘and we can get our stuff moved over to the other apartment. ’
Ty could smell the alcohol wafting on her drunken partner’s breath, but Lee was perfectly coherent. Just her usual self. Nothing out of the ordinary. She set to and helped Ty pack, handing Ty a man’s grey, Members Only jacket with a zip-in, fur-type lining, and a scarf. Boxing their belongings, Ty noted a few other items she hadn’t seen before. A suitcase, a blanket, a box of papers. She made no comment.
Loading their worldly possessions into Richard Mallory’s beige Cadillac, they were off. Ty, not having seen the car before, registered the University of Florida Gators tag on the front and the tinted windows. Within minutes, they were dropping their stuff at the new place. Without stopping to unpack, Lee then quickly ferried Ty the 9.3 miles back to the Ocean Shores motel. Just in time for Ty to pick up her moped and make it to work.
Executing the next part of her plan, she stashed her ten-speed bicycle in the boot, and drove twelve or so miles to a deserted dirt trail near the beach. She took everything out of the car, scooped a hole in the sandy soil and buried it, then she methodically wiped away all her fingerprints with a red towel. Next she retrieved her bicycle and rode away from the dead man’s car, tossing his keys into the bushes of someone’s yard on the way. It was over.
By the time Ty came home from work, the ‘borrowed’ car had vanished and she never saw it again.
Alarm bells were sounded that very same day after Richard Mallory’s car was spotted, apparently abandoned, by Deputy Bonnevier of the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office who was out on routine patrol.
The Cadillac had been backed roughly thirty feet into a narrow, wooded dirt road that ran east–west off John Anderson Drive in Ormond Beach. John Anderson Drive was frequented only by those folk who used it to reach their homes. The fire trail itself was one of several that had been carved through the undergrowth ready to give access for more building developments that were already in the works.
Bonnevier ran the Cadillac’s VIN number and tags which promptly threw up the owner’s name of Richard Mallory. Finding the car out there in the bushes near the sand dunes with no sign of its owner, Bonnevier immediately suspected that something was amiss. It was Bonnevier’s guess that the Cadillac had been driven within a couple of hours of him finding it.
Hastily buried in a small depression about thirty feet behind the car was a blue nylon wallet containing two long-expired credit cards and car ownership papers, a red car caddy, Richard Mallory’s business cards and some miscellaneous papers. A piece of white cloth lay like a curious camouflage between the items and their thin, sandy covering. A sinister discovery.