Kindred Killers: A Stanford Carter Murder Mystery

by Gary Starta

  Lightning flashed. From the corner of Cheryl’s eye, she saw it had illuminated the sawhorses. Again, she couldn’t see a word or symbol on it. She doubted it was police issue. She also began to wonder where this woman’s car was. She had stalked out of the woods like some animal. But in the darkness of the storm, Cheryl couldn’t be sure a vehicle wasn’t concealed somewhere off the roadway, hidden by some brush or overgrowth. She began to plead with the officer. She kept a soft, even tone when pleading. She hoped a demure approach might garner her release. The officer grunted oddly, but Cheryl interpreted this as a confirmation of power. Just keep empowering this fucking bastard. She repeated this to herself.

  “Look, officer. Do you want money? I’ll pay you. I just can’t let my parents find me. My father is abusing me.”

  The woman behind her only grunted. This time, the grunt didn’t sound approving.

  “Look, I love my family. But things are complicated right now . . . ”

  “I don’t believe you’re sincere.” Cheryl heard the woman spit some rainwater out of her mouth.

  “It’s time to come clean with me.”

  Before Cheryl could think, the officer’s arm was wrapped about her neck as if it was a python, hoping to squeeze the life out of her.

  “Uh . . . oh God . . . please . . . ” Cheryl heard the words in her head. She couldn’t be sure she was verbalizing them. She felt as if she was somewhere else watching what was happening to her. She felt her feet lift off the ground. She kicked them but her boots flailed harmlessly against the woman’s shins as she was dangling in the air. The officer had Cheryl in a bear hug. One arm wrapped completely about her stomach, the other tightening its vice like grip about her windpipe.

  As Cheryl’s face turned blue, she wondered why she didn’t ask for the officer’s badge number. Did she cut the officer some slack because she was female? Did she think this woman would be any less unkind to her? And as the black of night engulfed Cheryl, she thought of this irony. She always thought she might die at the hands of some huge horny guy who thought the ‘no touch’ rule was for mamma’s boys; or perhaps at the hands of Tim, when she finally mustered the courage to betray him. The killer released her grip and Cheryl fell to the ground, lifeless as a marionette whose strings had been severed. The rain began to lighten and the only sound that could be heard was the slapping of windshield wipers on Tim’s beat up old Chevrolet.

  Chapter 10

  Everywhere Stanford Carter looked he saw detail officers. They were scattered all over the Fenway High School football field beneath him, and from a distance they reminded Carter of a colony of black ants. They worked frantically to cordon off the area, because, for all they knew the entire field was a crime scene. The police chopper transporting Carter and Jill Seacrest to the scene was seconds from landing on the fifty-yard line. The detective felt like some sort of celebrity about to join a very surreal and dreadfully macabre super bowl halftime show.

  The horror, which had drawn all of them here, was the dead woman strung to one of the football goal posts. She was dressed scantily, provocatively and entirely inappropriately for such a setting.

  It was now about an hour after sunrise. A landscaper hired by the school had discovered the woman’s hanging body at dawn. She was still tethered to one of the goal posts with a rope. The landscaper, who had hoped to get an early start on the day, had been sent away along with a horde of onlookers and news crews. Office Jamieson had requested backup from several surrounding police departments. The officer’s first task was to secure the crime scene by shooing away onlookers—most importantly, the media.

  As soon as Carter’s chopper landed, he jogged to the twenty-yard line to speak with Officer Jamieson. Seacrest raced to catch up with him while another helicopter buzzed directly overhead. It was a media crew. Carter competed with the aerial intrusion by shouting to Jamieson who squinted up in the harsh morning light, peering at the news copter as if it were a vulture waiting to swoop down on prey. Its buzz from above distracted Carter and he was angry about it, but did his best to keep a straight face for Officer Jamieson. He shoved his hands in pockets to keep them still.

  “Good job, officer.”

  Jamieson nodded, acknowledging his efforts to preserve the crime scene. “Just hope it helps you get the bastard.” Carter observed the mixture of fear, anger and disgust swirling in the tempest of Jamieson’s eyes—the combination of anger and concession officers felt when they came across the work of a serial killer. How many hate crimes could you absorb before it changed you? Jamieson had also suggested, Carter recalled, that a serial had killed Dan Collins. Maybe this officer equated everything with a serial. Carter wondered if this time it just might be true. Either way, the media was going to run with this story, headlining it, no matter if Carter deemed it a serial or a crime of passion.

  “That’s Channel Five up there,” Jamieson said, pointing a finger toward the sky. “They were right on the field when I arrived. I chased them off but I believe they had already taken footage. I just hope they have the decency not to show the woman’s private parts on air.”

  “Well, Officer Jamieson, we know the media isn’t about decency. I trust you didn’t give them a comment?”

  “No, Detective Carter. Of course not.”

  “We should have her down soon. I’m not going to have her memory degraded like this. I just won’t stand for it. You know what I mean, officer?” Carter was becoming angrier by the minute. How was he going to test for shoe prints now that the field had most likely been trampled upon by scores of newshounds? He didn’t blame Jamieson. The officer had done his best to preserve the scene. Yellow tape danced in the wind from end zone to end zone confirming his effort. Carter watched it with a fire burning in his eyes. Fortunately, it was July and school was not in session. If it had been, dozens of children on their way to school might have witnessed the nearly naked corpse. At the moment, Carter felt he was at a tipping point. His normally placid expression had been replaced by one of rage.

  Jamieson nodded and smiled uncomfortably in response to the senior officer’s declaration.

  Jill stood in the distance, hearing about half of their conversation, but she knew from the look on Carter’s face that he was struggling to contain his emotions. They were the same kind of dark emotions Jill freely embraced whenever she became upset. Unlike Carter, she did not want to contain her feelings, refusing his offers to master breathing techniques. Carter walked toward the hanging woman. She appeared to have been redressed. Her skimpy aqua bikini was crooked, barely covering her voluptuous breasts and genitalia. Medical Examiner Robert Lee Shirley had already been on the scene for half an hour. He stood atop a ladder, checking the ropes tied about her midsection that bound her to one of the goal posts. Her skin pallor was blue.

  Carter nodded to Shirley and then crouched. He folded his hands together and appeared to be in prayer.

  Another officer strode toward Officer Jamieson and said, “Looks like we got another visit by Quai Chang Caine.”

  “Huh?” Jamieson responded. The two men were standing at the twenty-yard line, out of verbal range.

  “You know the Shaolin priest portrayed by David Carradine?” He laughed and folded his arms across his chest. “Take the pebble from my hand, grasshopper.”

  “Yeah, I guess I watched the show once or twice as a kid. What of it?”

  “Detective Carter here was supposedly into some kind of Zen meditation. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen him chanting by a dead body like some sort of monk. Probably won’t be the last.” He spat. “These sick bastards are just getting more and more creative all the time. I hear you found a guy with needles stuck into him.”

  Officer Jamieson nodded.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Jamieson, I’m not disparaging Carter, these vics are lucky they’ve got someone like Carter who gives a rat’s ass. But I don’t like it, just the same.”

  “Well,” Jamieson said to the officer, “If you’re right we’ll probably all be s
tanding around crime scenes like monks sooner or later. Carter may be good, but one man can’t make much of a difference. I mean, he’s no superman.”

  “Speak for yourself Jamieson. I happen to love Superman and Carter’s the closest thing we’ve got to him. Still, I’m not ready to shave my head and worship Buddha just yet.”

  Despite the joke, neither officer laughed. They were too unnerved by the blue-faced woman in the blue bikini who straddled the goal post before them. They didn’t even notice the young CSI with the wind blown hair that had stood behind them, hearing every word of their conversation. Jill felt a mix of anger and guilt. She didn’t want her love for Carter to affect his job, but she also refused to lose his love.

  Carter finished his chant and looked up. Shirley was working on a ladder, parallel to the victim. “My initial observation was that she died from asphyxiation.”

  “Are the news reports true, then?” Carter asked Shirley. “WMEX says the woman had been hung. But I don’t see any rope tied to her neck.”

  Shirley paused and looked down at Carter. “I can’t be 100 percent certain, but I don’t see any ligature marks about her neck. I doubt she was ‘hanged’ as the radio station would have you believe. More likely, she was strangled by the same pair of strong hands that were able to haul her up onto this goalpost.” The woman hung crucifix style with hands tethered to the two uprights about halfway up the posts. Because of the twenty foot gap between the posts, she drooped and her legs dangled resting on the crossbar. Corded rope was tethered about her midsection linked with spikes to provide anchorage. Positioning of the body was most likely the reason reporters had labeled it a hanging.

  “Oh, Mr. Shirley, I don’t believe a word when it’s the media talking. But I do believe ‘a hanging’ should draw them a good share of listeners.”

  Shirley grunted in sarcastic agreement. In the moment of silence, the two men heard some cries and screams in the distance. Apparently some neighborhood children had also witnessed the perverted spectacle. An adult voice was shouting for the children to come into the house. Shirley winced and continued.

  “The only cord I see is the one strapped about her stomach. See how it leads down to the field?”

  Carter looked and observed three spikes buried into the end zone. Each held a piece of rope, tautly twined to it. Shirley continued. “My guess is this woman was already dead. She was hung up here for show, made to look like a stripper, riding a dance pole.”

  “And if she was indeed a dancer, maybe she didn’t die here.”

  “Whoever did this must have been pretty strong or very good with rope. It would take a lot of muster to tie this cord around the woman and then piece it through spikes to hold everything in place. And if she were already dead then it would make the job all the more difficult.”

  Carter latched onto Shirley’s use of the word ‘job.’ Maybe her killer thinks it was his job to do this. Kill her and then degrade her by showing the world what she had become. Thanks to the media the killer got his wish.

  Carter considered there might have been more than one killer involved. But until Shirley could get the body to the lab, Carter could do little more than speculate. He looked up into the clear blue sky watching the news helicopter fade into nothingness. He rolled his shoulders, hoping to let some tension slide off his back. He wouldn’t be any good to the victim if he allowed the media to anger him. I won’t let them depersonalize you. We’ll catch them and then they will be depersonalized.

  He needed to identify her ASAP. The woman hanging before him—her head thrown back, legs wrapped about a pole, her right arm pointing lifelessly at Ipswich Street—needed to be humanized and quickly. She was not trash. She was not a media headline story. She was not just a Jane Doe. She was a person who didn’t deserve to die this way. Would newscasters and reporters portray this murder as the work of a serial killer? Panicking the populace never solved a crime. Yet the media wasn’t concerned about solving crimes—only ratings. He realized he had been fortunate to keep the Dan Collins’ murder low profile. What would the media have done with those pictures? A man slumped in a car, stuck with a hundred needles. He had to wonder if Officer Jamieson’s initial observations might have been correct after all. If this was a serial, maybe the killer had stepped up the game. Maybe he craved more attention. Yet, why not ID this victim? The killer had made sure police knew who Dan Collins was by leaving his license at the scene. Maybe this high school football field wasn’t the crime scene. And maybe wherever she was killed would tell him who she was. If so, this was all a big game. If the two murders were connected, it was also quite possible that Mrs. Collins, Dr. Wong and PI Jay Fishburne could be eliminated as suspects.

  Carter motioned for officers to help bring the woman down. Your suffering is over, he promised. Now it’s the killer’s turn.

  Jill Seacrest walked past Carter and without a word and traded places with the ME on the ladder. She began checking the pole for prints.

  ***

  An autopsy began about two hours later. Dr. Shirley was hoping he could determine a time of death. He had already ascertained the manner, oxygen deprivation. The woman’s windpipe had been seriously damaged. A faint redness appeared about it. Because of this, Carter was almost nearly certain the public display had nothing to do with her physical death. Again, similar to the Dan Collins’ murder, the killer risked exposure, dressing up the body in a dramatic fashion for public view. So now Carter asked himself: if the killer had been intimate with the dead woman was this a personal attack on a specific individual—or did the victim simply represent a way of life the killer might have disapproved of? A call transferred to Carter’s cell phone gave him hope of answering that question. It was Captain Moorhead of the Methuen PD. He informed Carter an abandoned car has been found in a wooded section of Methuen. In the car was a duffel bag containing female articles of clothing and a cell phone. The car was disabled, its battery dead. A key was still in the ignition. “Perhaps, Moorhead theorized, “This may have been your victim’s vehicle.”

  Carter agreed and immediately asked permission to share in the investigation.

  “Thanks for your cooperation, Captain Moorhead. I’ll be sending one of my CSI’s up to begin processing the vehicle. We’ll obviously want to match DNA of the clothing to our vic.”

  “You might want to accompany your CSI,” Moorhead said. “We’ve run the plate and the car belongs to a local man, Tim Pressler. He lives about a mile away from where the car broke down. I’d be happy to share the interview with you.”

  “You don’t have to ask twice, Captain. I’ll be there.”

  Chapter 11

  “We don’t get many homicides up here,” Methuen Police Detective Dean Mallow informed Carter as he barreled his cruiser into Tim Pressler’s long, narrow driveway. That last minute confession let Carter know he could take the lead in the questioning.

  “Let’s just hope we can keep it that way, Officer Mallow.”

  Mallow squinted in affirmation, parking the car. He fished for his cap in the backseat. “Going to be brutal out there,” he said. Carter believed the officer might be referring to more than the 90 plus degree July temperature. The sun beat down on the Pressler property, reflecting off the front windows. As the men approached the house, Carter noticed the blinds had been all drawn. He instinctively laid a hand over his holster and Mallow followed suit. Pressler was a recluse and gleaning any information from the man was going to be harder than pulling teeth out of a tiger. And that might be the best-case scenario, because Mr. Pressler had no immediate neighbors, so drawn blinds might also mean their suspect was lying in wait.

  “We’ll give Mr. Pressler a chance to explain,” Carter said to Mallow, relieved they had reached the door without incident. He knocked. Nearly two minutes passed and Pressler finally arrived at the front door. Unkempt and ill mannered.

  “Oh, God. Oh, shit.” They were the first words out of Pressler’s mouth. He was lean and lanky. His hair was black, curly and nearly to
uched his shoulders. He was wearing a T-shirt with a rip underneath his left armpit and a pair of black shirts with what looked like mustard stains over the crotch area.

  Carter sized Tim up as the suspect ran a hand through unkempt hair.

  Officer Mallow gave Carter a sidelong glance, suspicion written all over the twenty something detective’s face. Both detectives had noticed there was no other car on the property. Perhaps the victim had borrowed Pressler’s car to go dancing at a local strip club.

  Carter showed Tim a photo. “Who is she?”

  “She’s dead—she’s dead, isn’t she?” Pressler responded. Carter found it odd Pressler hadn’t made the connection from the TV coverage. It was possible he had heard about a death staged at a football field and not connected it to Cheryl. The press had not released the victim’s name. It was also possible that Pressler was backpedaling and trying to wriggle out of a jam.

  Carter nodded. “Did she live with you, Mr. Pressler?”

  “Uh, yeah, but only for the past couple of weeks. Her name was Cheryl Thomas. I was never supposed to tell anyone her real name. She went by the name Cherry.”

  Carter surmised Tim was trying to explain away some guilt. He leaned his left shoulder against the doorframe, pensive, taking time to digest the news.

  “So how did you two meet?” Mallow asked. His arms were folded across his chest but failed to restrain anger, a tightened jaw and audible breaths were dead giveaways. Carter all but winced at the rookie’s approach; veins were bulging in Mallow’s neck. Carter was certain the rookie already had his mind made up, that Pressler was somehow involved with Cheryl’s death, despite a non-confrontational posture.

  Carter could almost hear the young detective’s inner voice speaking to him. It was the voice of a young cop, eager to get a confession before there was even evidence. It was also a voice that might spook the suspect into silence.