by Sue Russell
Thompson and Padgett then got a message from Pasco County’s Tom Muck regarding his white, nude male victim who had also been found in a remote area near a major highway. Muck’s man had been shot nine times with a .22 and he was wondering if their homicide might be related. They all agreed it was well worth exploring.
Padgett and Thompson informed Sarasota’s Dottie Young of the positive i.d. on Spears, and she had news for them, too. Spears’ 1983 Dodge pick-up had already turned up on a highway ramp in Marion County.
In a thousand-to-one long shot, it had been spotted back on 28 May by Robert ‘Red’ Kerr, none other than Spears’ work supervisor. He and his wife Beverly had been driving back from a vacation in Nashville along I-75. As the Kerrs came out of Gainesville and passed ramp 318, Red spotted a truck sitting by the side of the highway, disabled by a flat. He turned to his wife and said, ‘That looks like Dave’s!’ He wasn’t sure until he reversed up the highway for a proper look, but it was not surprising he should recognise it, even with its tag missing. He’d sold it to Dave. Peering in the back, the pick-up’s past owner recognised an axle that he knew for sure belonged to Dave. He also noted an inflated spare along with a couple of jacks. Dave would have changed the flat in a second. But there was no sign of the tools Dave usually carried. The passenger window was ajar, and the truck was unlocked. The Kerrs pulled off at the next exit and called 911.
Scrutinising the vehicle down in Sarasota, Jerry Thompson couldn’t spot any overt signs of a struggle or of shooting inside the truck, but he did notice some dried blood on the driver’s side, just on the inner running board. The evidence technicians collected that along with their other scrapings and vacuumings. An empty condom packet was also found in the truck. Spears’ laundry was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the black panther he was taking to Dee.
With the murder investigation under way, the killer’s sex inevitably became an issue. Their extensive interviewing had given detectives no reason to suspect that Spears had ever engaged in any homosexual activities. Anyway, Jerry Thompson and the others knew it would be unusual for two males having sex to leave a condom behind. The prophylactics near the body weren’t proven to be Spears’, but did seem to indicate the presence of at least one woman somewhere along the line. Perhaps he was killed by a man and woman team? Or a woman acting solo? Or two women acting in concert?
Inevitably, the question arose: was there another woman in Dave’s life? Red felt it was possible. Dave and Dee’s relationship was very volatile and he indicated to officers that there’d been problems. There’d been a blow-up at the works once when Dee had accused Dave of fathering her son’s girlfriend’s child. She didn’t really think that. No way. But she was mad enough at him that day to hurl the accusation. Words, just words. It didn’t sound good, though, when Dave disappeared. He’d taken out life insurance that year. Only $12,000, not a fortune. He wasn’t a rich man. But Dee, the policy’s beneficiary, felt the timing made her look bad. And struggling to survive without him, she learned the hard facts of life for common-law wives. She didn’t qualify for any widow’s benefit because they weren’t legally married when he died.
Scared to death alone in her apartment, not knowing who had killed Dave, it seemed to her that the cops viewed her as a suspect. They thought he’d run off with a woman and that she’d got mad and shot him. They’d always fought. She never denied it. And if anyone was likely to lash out, it was Dee, not Dave. She provoked him sometimes, but he just stood there and took it.
Detectives learned that on Tuesdays, Dave patronised Ramano’s bar. Most other weekday afternoons, he and some colleagues usually fished off the dock of a closed-up marina in Sarasota, had a few beers and relaxed. Dave was generally home before dark. There was no evidence of any other woman in his life.
22
Peter Siems, a 65-year-old retired merchant marine living near Jupiter, Florida, loaded into his Sunbird his ever-present stack of Bibles. Mr Siems, a balding, bespectacled, part-time missionary, took spreading the Word seriously, both in his everyday life and as a member of the Christ Is The Answer Crusade. In his neighbourhood, he lent a hand transporting folk and landscaping the grounds around the church.
Ursula, Peter’s wife of over 25 years and a fellow missionary, was away in Europe working, as was their son, Leonard. Peter planned to drive I-95 all the way north to New Jersey to visit his mother, then, in July, to move on to Arkansas to spend a week with his 23-year-old son, Stefan, a mechanical engineer.
Setting off on 7 June, besides the Bibles, Peter packed a suitcase and a small holdall from the family’s communal luggage pool—both navy blue, with a tan trim. He took the radio/tape-player Stefan had given him on their last visit, plus a few other distinctive items like his light windbreaker jacket and a yellow and black flashlight. He’d filled his toiletry bag with the usual basics and the favourite scissors he’d used to cut Stefan’s hair when he was a kid. Memories. How time flew.
His neighbours watched him pack up and leave at around 9 p.m. Helen Slattery would be keeping an eye on things while he was gone. Then he simply disappeared without trace.
Peter Siems headed north out of Jupiter. She’d recall him picking her up on I-95 near its intersection with 100, not far from Bunnell. Another time, she said they met in a coffee shop. She was drunk. Very drunk. That’s why she just couldn’t remember precisely where they drove. She thought they crossed the state line into Georgia. Or was it Carolina? She vaguely recalled stopping somewhere past Fort Stewart military reservation (just ouside Savannah), but retreating back to the car after being descended upon by hundreds of swarming flies. Finally, they found a spot about ten miles off I-95 in the woods, a spot she couldn’t pinpoint on a map.
Peter Siems, the missionary with the carful of Bibles, met his death after doing unspeakably sick things to her. So she said. When he carried a sleeping bag to lay out on the grass, she carried her murder bag.
They’d stripped off their clothes when the thought came. I’m not going to give you a chance to rape me. I don’t wanna shoot you. I know you were gonna rape me. The illogic of this preemptive thinking escaped her.
When the time came to do her deed, they struggled over her gun, a couple of accidental shots escaping, ringing out, melting unheard into the air above them. Finally ripping the gun back from him, she deftly flipped it from her left hand to her right and fired. She aimed straight for his torso, wanting no doubt that the bullet hit home.
After the first shot, she justifed the rest. Told herself, I don’t really want to do this to you, guy, but I’m gonna have to. If I did let you live, you’d tell who I am, and all this other jazz. And I’d probably get caught.
Why on earth did she drive so far with him? If he’d just turned out to be a trick, it would have spelled economic disaster. A major time investment for little return. Maybe she got him to tell her how much money he had on him. Maybe she’d decided it was going to be worth it.
When it was over, she rifled through his belongings like a hungry vulture picking over the bones, sifting out what might be saleable. She tossed the red sleeping bag in one direction, and threw his clothing in another.
She spotted the Bibles under the seat. Lots of them. What was this guy? A minister, or something? Curiosity aroused, she flipped open a cover, peering inside, expecting to see a reverend’s name. It was blank. Moving on, she opened his suitcase, finding not just the small vestiges of a man’s life but around four hundred dollars. One of her best hauls.
Odd, if he was a missionary. When she was a litle girl, you see, she’d always wanted to be a nun. Then, when she grew up, she thought of being a missionary herself. A missionary, or a cop. Matter of fact, she’d looked into being a cop. But you had to have all these grades she hadn’t got, not to mention a ton of money for the tuition. Thousands of dollars. She’d had to forget that idea real quick.
Depriving Peter Siems’s family of the finality of a funeral, her memory would falter irrevocably on where she left his supposedly naked body
to rot in obscurity. On the other hand, she’d remember that Ty was in bed asleep when she pulled up in the Sunbird. She crept in silently. When Ty awoke, Lee was under the covers beside her.
The same day that Peter Siems disappeared, Marion County police found Chuck Carskaddon’s brown, 1975 Cadillac just off I-75, just south of CR 484, pointing in a southerly direction. The licence plate had been taken off but the VIN number revealed the Missouri man’s name. By the time the car was actually impounded one week later (the day that a distraught Mrs Florence Carskaddon reported her only son as missing), its back seat had been ripped out by vandals and its headlights smashed. There was one satisfactory fingerprint and one only. Unfortunately, it was Carskaddon’s own.
It had turned into the bloodiest of summers, her pace accelerating into a veritable killing frenzy. Three lives snuffed out in less than three weeks. Three good men gone for ever. Three families devastated, just like that.
She was propelled by uncontrollable rages, by dark impulses she couldn’t resist. She was driven on by a desperate need to somehow short-circuit the monumental fear and anxiety that welled up in her like poison. The pain and anger that tormented her were old and familiar. Pain and anger at knowing that Ty, Tracey, Sandy and their friend, Tammy, had piled merrily into Sandy’s car for a day of frivolity and fun at Universal Studios down in Orlando. Frivolity and fun that excluded her. It resurrected all the old aloneness, the hollow emptiness, the frightening isolation, carrying her back to her childhood and to being left out. Everyone was afraid of being left. To Lee, with her warped thinking, it was more than that. It became a matter of survival.
Lee was put out if Ty did anything at all with other people, and that summer, the summer of Tracey, she burned with jealousy.
It seemed to Lee that Ty’s bonds with the rest of the world were gathering strength and that she was slipping from Lee’s grasp, inch by inch.
Then again, purely pragmatically, her need to lay her hands on some big money also nudged her forward. Ever since she’d been a little girl, having money had soothed her. The trouble was, pulling tricks was no longer easy for her with her body swollen from beer and inertia. The generous bloom of youth had long since been overtaken by her unhealthy pallor, her neglected teeth, her wrinkling skin. Unpleasant reflections of her decaying life.
In her warped perception of the world and its inhabitants, it seemed that everyone was out to get her. So why the hell shouldn’t she get them first?
Upset by seeing Ty with Tracey—Ty entertaining Tracey, loving Tracey, caring about Tracey—an urgent lust had built up inside her. She needed power, needed control, and she was going to seize it with both hands.
While Ty and Tracey wedged some simple, almost childlike summer fun around their mundane work days in the laundry. Lee was off in an alien world. Spinning out of control. Living out a kind of madness. Although she kept one foot planted in their home life and maintained some semblance of normality, the veneer was increasingly fragile, and her other foot was precariously perched in an outlaw no-man’s-land. Crossing back and forth during her killing spree, those worlds were rudely punctuated, one by the other. The lawful and lawless. Evil was winning and soon there would be no way back.
23
The small, silver-grey Sunbird outside their apartment window was cause for alarm. Backed hard into their parking spot, jammed as close to the wall as Lee could get it, its ongoing presence was definitely suspicious. Lee brushed it off by saying she’d borrowed it from a friend in Orlando. Tracey might have bought that story, even Sandy might not have questioned it. But Ty knew that Lee didn’t have a cadre of rich, devoted friends with spare cars at their disposal. She also knew that last December when Lee had brought back a strange car, she had murdered its owner. A strange car, any car, would make her worry. Particularly when that car, unlike its predecessors, stayed and stayed. Particularly when Lee’s story kept changing. First she said she’d borrowed it, then she turned right around and maintained the only reason it was stuck outside the house was that there was something wrong with it. At other times still, she claimed she’d rented it.
Rented it! That was really a red flag. It would be tough for Ty to rationalise that away. How could Lee rent a car with her non-existent credit rating? Lee didn’t have any credit cards. Ty wasn’t sophisticated or worldly, but she wasn’t totally gullible either. But whatever annoying little doubts or questions flitted around in her head, they didn’t stop her riding around in Lee’s Sunbird.
As the days and weeks slipped by, Lee treated it as her own, which was the least likely of all possible scenarios. They were scratching to stay afloat financially. At the best of times, Lee would have been hard pressed to find a down payment. She certainly could never have conjured up a lump sum to buy a car outright; an ’88 at that. Still, she carried on as though it were hers, sitting easily back behind the wheel, even giving another of the laundry room women a ride in it.
She even bought a Florida Challenger space-shuttle licence plate (bearing an Eagle and an American flag design) from a novelty shop down near Titusville.
Then she spun yet another yarn, saying she couldn’t return the Sunbird to its owner because it was out of gas, and tapping Sandy for a loan so she could fill it up. That didn’t ring true either. And it wasn’t. The next time Sandy stopped by, there it sat, plain as day. Ty paid Sandy back her money.
Cars were not the only spoils of Lee’s business forays. It wasn’t unusual for Ty to see her come in armed with a motley assortment of goods—cameras, fishing rods, tools, you name it. Lee said they were bonuses from customers, or had been given to her in lieu of cash. There was an unfamiliar Bible on top of the refrigerator; another new acquisition. ‘He must have been a religious man,’ Lee muttered, flicking through its pages.
Since their cash-flow problem was no great secret, the sight of Lee flashing wads of bills made definite impressions on Tracey and Sandy. If only they’d made a note of the dates: but who could have guessed the significance?
Sandy vividly remembered Lee prancing in all smiles, bragging about having $600, then waving a fistful of bills in front of her and Ty’s faces. It was May or June, that much she knew. And Tracey wasn’t there. Tracey retained her own Technicolor memory. She and Ty were kicking back one night, relaxing in front of the TV, when Lee burst in. She seemed in almost deliriously good spirits about her windfall, crowing that some people who owed her money had finally paid her back. Unlike Sandy, Tracey could later pinpoint that occasion: it was precisely the night Lee first rolled up in the Sunbird.
After making her grand entrance with the cash, Lee ran upstairs and fetched her stereo, blasting out the thumping beat louder than ever. Magnanimously, Lee told Ty she could now take Tracey to Sea World and have some fun. Clearly lapping up the role of benefactor, she then decided to treat them all to hamburgers. As she swept out of the apartment, she also promised Ty that she’d take care of the rent problem.
Fridays and Saturdays were Ty’s and Tracey’s hard-earned days of rest and they savoured every minute of freedom from the laundry room. Ty, who was determined to show her little sister a great time in Florida, had lined up movies, trips to the beach, and various outings. A day trip to Sea World had long been high on the agenda. Better yet, as a perk of working at Casa Del Mar, Ty had acquired three discount tickets. One for her, one for Tracey, and one for Lee.
And how convenient: the Sunbird and the cash materialised right before the Saturday they were scheduled to go.
Worn down by Lee, Tracey finally went off to bed that night, but sleep did not come. The music blared out relentlessly, accompanied by the wavering strains of Lee singing along.
Lee knew that Tracey was unhappy and was thinking of packing up and returning to Ohio ahead of time. The little troublemaker was going to go crying home, which Lee knew would upset Ty, whose family meant the world to her.
One day, armed with a few drinks inside her, Lee confronted Tracey, blaming her for things not working out between them. She didn
’t exactly threaten her, not in so many words, but the message got across and Tracey was intimidated and left in no doubt about the sinister subtext. She thought Lee was going to kill her, and even voiced her fears at the Casa Del Mar. Tracey had never actually seen Lee’s gun, but she didn’t for one second doubt its existence, and she finally had no wish to find out the hard way. Relations between Lee, Ty and Tracey were on fragile ground. Despite Ty’s best efforts as mediator, Tracey’s stay was turning into a torturous ordeal for everyone.
When the Sea World outing rolled around, Lee joined them as planned, seeming quite keen at first to drive them there, but the good humour didn’t last. The outing definitely wasn’t turning into the festive occasion Ty had envisaged. Drinking hard, Lee slipped into one of her sour, obnoxious moods. Suddenly she was behaving as if she was doing them a huge favour by acting as chauffeur and really didn’t want to be there at all. Then she flatly refused to go into the park. Ty firmly refused to let Lee ruin their day. Lee could do what she wanted but she and Tracey were going to stay! Finally, in a truce of sorts, they agreed to meet outside later and Lee left. Inside, the sisters managed to have fun, but the black cloud of Lee’s behaviour cast an unavoidable shadow.
Emerging several hours later, they looked around for their churlish companion and saw no sign of her. They sat down and waited. And waited. Finally, Ty spotted Lee off on the far side of the parking lot. She said she had been there the whole time. She was mad. Later, she made sarcastic cracks about not being included in any of the day’s photographs, carefully ignoring the fact that it was she who had elected to leave.
Ty was mad, too. She’d wasted the price of a ticket and Lee had succeeded in spoiling everything.