Dark Specter (15 page)

“Hell, that old thing! My wife, Gertrude, gave me that for my birthday, way back in—”

“Here’s what I’m up for,” Kristine continued in her most hokey tone of voice. “You send me the notes on your case and I’ll send you the notes on mine. That way we both get a chance to compare and contrast. You’re probably right, there’s no there there. But just supposing there
is
some link, or we can make it look that way, you get to go right back on
AMW
and update the story. I guarantee to stay out of it. And you can have that in writing if you want.”

“Hell, Ms. Kjarstad, you should get a piece of the action too.”

Kristine turned on a mildly flirtatious voice.

“Well, in that case let’s get together and work something out.”

Poison laughed richly.

“Be more than my life’s worth, Ms. Kjarstad. Gertrude is one jealous woman. You got fax machines out there on the coast?”

The report on the Kansas City killings arrived on Kristine Kjarstad’s desk while she was typing up her case notes on an alleged sexual assault at a school in a town called Selleck. The first page was signed by the patrolman who had been called to the scene.

Kansas City Police Department

Case Number:
47-94-0076
Offense:
Homicide

Victim #1: Howard Selby W/M DOB: 03-16-27

Victim #2: Sandra Selby W/F 09-07-49

Victim #3: Unknown B/M unknown

Suspect #1: Unknown W/M

Suspect #2: Unknown W/M

Location: 2930 East 64th Street, #33

Details: Reporting officer arrived at scene at 14.35 hrs., in response to a reported disturbance. Complainant Wanda Neuberger, fifty-seven, resident at 2930 East 64th Street, #35, stated that she had heard cries for help from the neighboring apartment, inhabited by Howard Selby, who was confined to a wheelchair. She went to Selby’s apartment and knocked on the door, which was opened by two young men. One of them was drenched from head to foot in rose pink paint. The men pulled a gun and forced complainant to return with them to her apartment, where they confined her in a windowless bathroom off the kitchen and blocked the door by moving the refrigerator against it. Complainant struggled with the door for some fifteen minutes before succeeding in opening it enough to escape and telephone 911. Having conducted a search for the suspects, R/O proceeded to apt. 33, where he discovered the body of victs. 1 & 2 in the living room, and vict. 3 in the kitchen. He called in for assistance and remained at door to secure scene from intruders until arrival of detectives. Case was then turned over to Detective Fred Poison.

The following pages contained Poison’s report:

Kansas City Police Department

Case Number:
47-94-0076

In response to Officer Kimball’s request for detectives to work a reported multiple homicide, I went to 2930 East 64th Street, Apartment 33. Victim #1, identified to me by neighbor Wanda Neuberger as Howard Selby, was in living room sitting in a wheelchair. The chair was facing the north wall, the head slumped forward and the wrists taped to the arms of the chair. Gunshot entry wound visible at back of head. Victim #2, identified to me by same witness as Sandra Selby, daughter of vict. #1, was also in the living room, lying on floor under window in east wall. The body was lying on its right side, facing east, in a fetal crouch. Gunshot entry wound at back of head. Victim #3 was found in kitchen, which was being repainted, lying on back in middle of floor, right arm outstretched above head. Victim was wearing housepainter’s overalls. Three gunshot entry wounds were visible, in the mid-chest, right shoulder and forehead. A large irregular splash of pink paint lay on the floor to the northeast of the body. A series of clear shoe prints in the same paint were visible on the vinyl flooring, and more faintly on the living-room carpet leading to the front door of the apartment. I directed Crime Scene Technician Traci Moore to make a full investigation. I then took a full statement from Wanda Neuberger (see document attached) and put out an urgent call for the two individuals she described to me, including a description of the winter coat and scarf she reported missing from her wardrobe. At that point John Boychuk, the janitor of the apartment block, appeared at the scene and identified victim #3 as Winston Jones, of 4711 East 53rd Street, who did light maintenance work for many tenants in the building.

Kristine Kjarstad read through the neighbor’s statement, which added nothing of any substance to what she had told the patrolman. She then skimmed the lengthy supplemental reports by the CST, the pathologist and the forensic laboratory. Selby and his daughter had been shot at close range, Jones twice from a distance of several feet and once, to the forehead, at close range. The ammunition used was CCI Stinger .22 caliber. Traces of adhesive on the mouths of Howard and Sandra Selby matched that used on the duct tape used to secure Howard’s wrists to the arms of his wheelchair, indicating that they had been gagged. Marks on Sandra Selby’s wrists suggested that she had also been handcuffed.

But the piece of evidence that interested Kristine Kjarstad the most was hidden away in the dry catalog of the CST report. The shoe prints created by the paint on the vinyl flooring of the kitchen were so clear that there had been no problem in matching the make, model and year against the sample books which are supplied to police authorities by leading shoe manufacturers. In this case identification had been simplified still further by the fact that the sole of the Nike model in question featured the silhouetted figure of the basketball star Michael Jordan.

D
ETECTIVE
E
ILEEN
M
C
C
ANN
of the Evanston City Police did not see that particular episode
of America’s Most Wanted
. For one thing, she had gone into Chicago that evening to watch the Blackhawks fight a losing battle for a playoff spot in the Stanley Cup. For another, she didn’t own a television.

By this time, there had been a number of developments in the Maple Street case. One related to the murder weapon, which had been traced to a gun shop in Portland, Oregon. It had been sold eight years previously to a certain Willard Sumner, resident in the Errol Heights neighborhood of that city. One evening, Sumner returned home from work to find that his house had been burgled. Amongst the inventory of missing items he gave the police—two VCRs, a brand-new fax machine and a “priceless” collection of country and western CDs—was the .22-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 34 revolver which Sumner had bought over the counter at Joe’s Guns following a previous break-in at his house.

After that, there was no further trace of the weapon. Evanston Police circulated its ballistic characteristics to law enforcement agencies in the Northwest, hoping that they might match a set held on record in relation to other crimes, but without result. The burglar who stripped Sumner’s house might have kept the revolver for his own use, or sold it privately to one of the many people whose professional activities require the use of firearms but who prefer to avoid the formalities associated with the mandatory five-day waiting period. That purchaser might then have experienced a temporary cash-flow problem and sold the gun to someone else. There was no way of knowing how many hands the gun had passed through before it turned up in Evanston.

But the major breakthrough concerned the identity of the third victim and presumed perpetrator of the killings. By the time it happened, Eileen McCann had almost given up hope of ever being able to tie a name tag to the anonymous cadaver which was stored, like some artwork of dubious provenance, in the basement of the city morgue. An extensive poster and media blitz immediately following the shootings had induced a flurry of claims to recognize the unknown man, but these had always failed to hold up to sustained scrutiny. Then, when all the furor had died down, along came one that stuck.

The informant was a private investigator named Lou Gelen, with an office in Decatur, Illinois. He had been hired three years earlier by a local couple named Watson to find their son. Gelen had managed to trace Dale Watson as far as Boise, Idaho, where the boy had worked briefly in a lumber yard. There the trail ended, until Gelen visited a police station in South Chicago to look up a friend and happened to see one of the posters featuring a tastefully retouched photograph of the unknown individual in the Evanston killings.

Lou Gelen immediately contacted the Watsons, then the Evanston Police. The next day, Eileen McCann drove down to Decatur, bringing with her a portfolio of photographs of the dead man. Joseph Watson returned with McCann to Evanston, where he viewed the body in the morgue and positively identified it as that of his son.

Hopes of a swift breakthrough in the case rapidly faded, however. Bank, medical, telephone, utility, DMV, voter’s registration, IRS, consumer credit and Social Security agency records were all checked, without effect. Dale Watson’s name did not feature on the National Crime Investigation Computer, and there was no record that he had ever been charged with a crime.

By interviewing the parents and following up leads provided by them, the police gradually built up a profile of Dale Watson’s life. He had been born in Shelby County and raised in Decatur, where the family moved in the mid-seventies. He had achieved average grades at school. People remembered him, if at all, as a pleasant, unexceptional young man. The caption to his high school yearbook photograph read: “Noted for his ready smile, Dale participated in Frosh football and Varsity baseball … he belonged to the Baptist Youth group outside of school… he will remember shop class because of Mr. Booker’s inspirational teaching … his secret ambition is to travel throughout the world … Dale plans to attend college next year.”

But he hadn’t. Instead he’d gone to Chicago, where he’d worked at a variety of low-paid jobs from pumping gas to delivering pizzas. If his parents were worried by his lack of ambition, they didn’t make a big deal of it. Joseph and Olive Watson were plain folks—he ran a garage, she took care of the house—and made a clear distinction between “doing well for yourself” and “getting above yourself.” Going to college wasn’t needful for the former, the way they saw it, and could all too easily lead to the latter, if not to worse things. As long as Dale continued to fear the Lord, it wouldn’t do him any harm to have a taste of big city life, get it out of his system. Then he could come home to Decatur, find some nice girl and settle down to a steady job.

The first sign that this modest scenario might not work out was when the Watsons received a letter postmarked Omaha, Nebraska:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Well, as you see I’ve moved out West for a while, I guess I just got the travel bug. I got work at a garage, nothing fancy, but I can do lube jobs and replace shocks like you showed me, Dad. Once I get a few bucks together I might head on a little farther, try and see something of this great country of ours. Hope you’re well. Say hi to Trish and Howie. Did Ronda have her baby yet? I guess she must.

Love,
Dale

For the next eighteen months, similar letters arrived irregularly from towns and cities all over the western states. On special occasions—Christmas, his parents’ birthdays—Dale would telephone, but his calls were as brief and vague as his letters. He never left a forwarding address or phone number where his parents could contact him, explaining that he would soon be moving on.

One of the letters had been sent from Portland, Oregon, and for a moment Eileen McCann thought she might be on to something. But it was dated six months before the burglary at Willard Sumner’s house, by which time Dale Watson had once again “moved on,” and she reluctantly conceded that this was a mere coincidence.

Mr. and Mrs. Watson had not been too happy about Dale’s continuing and indefinite absence, and still less with his nomadic way of life, but they had other problems to contend with, notably Olive’s health—a kidney infection—and the marriage of Dale’s sister Patricia, which was well on its way to becoming Topic A in the community.

Just over a year earlier, they had received yet another of Dale’s letters, this one from Los Angeles. It mentioned that he intended to “head south for a while, maybe go to Mexico.” There was nothing else remarkable about it, certainly nothing to suggest that this was the last contact they would ever have with their son. But there the series ended. When two months went by without any more letters or phone calls, the Watsons—alarmed more than anything else by that word “Mexico”—notified the police.

About a million Americans are reported missing each year, and the numerous city, county, state and federal agencies whose job it is to locate them are understaffed and underfunded. As the months went by without any news, the Watsons reluctantly decided to employ a private investigator. Lou Gelen did not find their son, but he discovered a tragic and possibly significant secret which Dale Watson had been keeping from his parents.

As one of his routine search procedures, Gelen contacted the Illinois Drivers Services Section in Springfield, hoping that Dale might have registered a change of address which would give him a starting point to work from. He drew a blank there, but Dale’s accident history showed that he had been involved in a traffic-related fatality in Idaho the previous year. Gelen applied to the Motor Vehicle Division of the Idaho Department of Law Enforcement, enclosing the search fee of five dollars, and ten days later received a copy of the accident report.