Murder My Love (3 page)

Abby looked at him in silence. She took a long sip of her yellow nectar and gently placed the glass on the table. The tears began to flow.

It was a much different story in the Huff household. Steve lumbered into his living room and flopped in an easy chair. He had already removed his belt and weapon while walking up the steps to his porch. He placed them on the floor beside his sofa. His wife, Karen, took only one look at him and said,

“What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Waving his hand he said, “Don’t! Not now. If you knew what I saw today you wouldn’t say that.”

Steve and Karen had an amicable and loving marriage. Their only misgiving was that it was childless. They were sweethearts at an early age, living within three houses of each other. They both attended St Cecilia’s elementary school in Portland but were in different grades. Steve was two years older than Karen but that did not interfere with their playing after school and doing homework together. He was an average student while she excelled. Throughout high school they infrequently dated. He escorted her to proms and basketball games with a group of students, but never took her on a solo date. He preferred the company of other guys who liked to fish. He was a fixture on the banks of the Salmon River. If he weren’t fishing he’d be tromping through the woods hunting wild turkey or rabbits. His hobbies were his obsession. He was a man comfortable within himself.

Steve was a strapping figure in his early twenties. He was all of six feet tall and weighed a tad over 180 pounds. He never engaged in sports to the chagrin of the coaches who tried to recruit him for football and basketball. His relationship with Karen was essentially platonic until he graduated from high school and went to work at the ball bearing factory. Having a little money in his pocket changed everything. He became self-assured and out-going. In the summertime he would take Karen on picnics. They would ride for hours throughout the countryside in his second-hand Chevy convertible. In winter, he would drive her to Hartford to attend a rock concert or a movie. Attending college never was an option for Karen. Her parents struggled just to scrape by. Upon graduation she got a job as a secretary for an insurance company. Steve didn’t last long at the factory. The monotony of doing the same chore day after day prompted him to focus on his future. He decided one day that he would become a cop. He reasoned that it paid well, there were benefits and no one was ever fired from the police department. His physique was not an impediment. The financial security of being a cop allowed him to ask Karen to marry him.

Karen returned with a bottle of beer and handed it to her husband. He unscrewed the cap and took a swig.

“Was it really that bad?”

“Baby, I wish I had already been retired, than to see what I saw today.”

“Can’t you talk about it with me?” she implored.

Karen saw that tears began to well up in the corners of his eyes. Steve made believe he had choked on a swallow of beer. She knelt down by his feet and leaned her head on his belly. “We’ll get through this. Like all the other times.”

He ran his fingers through her hair. It seemed to comfort him.

“I can’t,” he murmured, as he took a swig from his bottle of beer.

They ate their dinner in absolute silence. He retired to the den and watched the Red Sox beat up on the Yankees. It gave him a modicum of pleasure and partially cleansed his mind of the images that had danced in his head all day. He went to bed later than usual. His large frame sagged the mattress causing Karen to roll over next to him. He put his arm around her and drew her closer. “Baby, when this is over, I’m putting in my papers. That’s a promise.”

Karen sighed and fell back to sleep.

Chapter 2

On the first day after the murders, Chief Abby Wilson entered police headquarters precisely at 7 A.M. She wore a crisply pressed full dress uniform. Having been at the crime scene in casual clothes, she intended that her appearance made a statement. It did. The brass insignia on her hat was polished to a gleam and the star on her white shirt collar glistened. The crease in her pants was sharp enough to cut paper. Her hair was tied in a twist and tucked neatly beneath her hat. Her appearance did not go unnoticed by the subordinates in her department. Chief Wilson was not physically imposing, but she was fit. She jogged five miles four times a week and played tennis at least twice a week. Image motivated her every move. She wanted to set an example for her subordinates by being physically fit, by her dress code, and even by the way she walked ramrod straight. On this morning she walked in like a marine. The rank and file took notice.

The police station was located on Main Street in the center of town. At one time the site featured a bread factory in a nondescript, decrepit brick building. It was an eyesore. Virtually every visitor held a negative opinion of West Warwick that impacted their intention to do business with its merchants. When Guido Gallarino ran for mayor, his platform was built on a theme that promoted the revitalization of the town. He told his constituents that if Main Street could be rehabilitated the remainder of town would benefit. He promised to seize the old bread factory under the law of eminent domain because the bakery had failed to pay property taxes for more than five years. When he was elected, his first order of business was to instruct the Town Council to petition the court to condemn the building. It took almost a year to gut the building and to dispose all of the equipment. It took yet another year to convert it into a state of the art police station. Taxpayers believed it was well worth the expense because the new two-story Police Station served as a seed pearl for downtown renewal. On the first floor, the street level double door entrance opened to a lobby where business with the desk sergeant could be conducted through an opening in bulletproof glass. Beyond the lobby, the first floor was subdivided into offices and cubicles replete with telecommunication equipment. Lining the outer wall were a series of small offices and rooms where interviews could be conducted. On the inner wall behind the lobby was a conference room overlooking Main Street. The Chief occupied the far corner office behind the conference room. The basement housed a temporary lock-up for overnight “guests,” mostly drunkards and disorderly types. A locker room with an expansive bathroom took up most of the second floor. An equipment storage area and small kitchen completed the second floor.

Chief Wilson was the most senior in rank but not the oldest person on the police force. At forty-six, several officers surpassed her in age, a few by almost a decade. During the time she was a detective in the Greenwich police department, there was not one female Chief of Police in any major city in Connecticut and it was unlikely that a position with such responsibility would become available any time soon. When the former chief of West Warwick retired, she applied for his position. It was hubris on her part to think she was that qualified for the position, but she lobbied for it aggressively. The appointment was somewhat contentious because Mayor Gallarino lobbied the town council to hire her rather than promote someone from within the department. Gallarino could trace his lineage in West Warwick back several generations. He attended its college and soon after held political office. He graduated from college about the same time as Abby. They had met several times at political and police conferences and established a durable friendship. The mayor encouraged her to apply for the position. He lobbied behind the scene reminding the search committee that Abigail Wilson had not only graduated from its state college
summa cum laude
but she had also earned certificate degrees in criminal justice from the State University of New York in Westchester County. She had risen through the ranks to become a detective, helped in no small measure by her graduate education. It was there that she’d hit the glass ceiling. Gallarino knew she deserved better. Her professional career was without blemish and her credentials were impeccable. Gallarino took great pains to remind the committee that gender should not be a factor in making their decision.

Rather than make the long arduous commute to the central office in Hartford every day, Dr. Otto Kruger had set up an office in the stationhouse. He chose a corner of the upstairs storage area away from pedestrian traffic, peering eyes and busybodies. He much preferred isolation than to be among the hubbub. He secured a room in the Warwick Motel that was only a stone’s throw from the police station. The motel itself was a testament to renewal. At one time it served as an armory. The final product was an achievement worthy of Architectural Digest magazine. At every campus function parents of collegians filled the motel to capacity. It was a far cry from the grubby roadside motels to which they had become accustomed. The Warwick Motel became emblematic of a town in the process of gentrification.

Kruger elected not to bring the bodies back to Hartford. Instead, he commandeered space in the county hospital morgue to perform the gruesome task of conducting an autopsy. He reasoned that transferring the bodies to Hartford and commuting each day would take up too much of his time. The Hartford morgue was overwhelmed and Kruger wanted to collect as much data as soon as possible. He knew that time was of the essence, that most crimes were solved quickly when data was collected expeditiously. Although the cause of death was somewhat obvious, it was his responsibility to catalog the evidence and the exact cause of death of both victims. This way he could refute any objection that a defense attorney might make, should the case ever go to trial. It appeared to some observers that all he needed to do was retrieve the bullet slugs and take tissue samples. Several policemen voiced opinions that an autopsy was a waste of time, as the crime scene could not have made the cause of death more obvious. Their objections had fallen on deaf ears, as none had any significant homicide experience. Dr. Kruger was most patient with their nattering. He was a meticulous pathologist who had been on the job for over three decades and was well versed in forensic science. He took nothing for granted. On his first full day after he had inspected the crime scene, he sat at his office desk pouring over the photographs.

Wilson strode directly to Kruger’s office. She stood at his desk for a moment quietly observing him.

“Anything I should know about?” Wilson asked.

“Not really. Just studying the pics,” Kruger replied.

“What are you looking for? You visited the crime scene. You saw it first hand,” she persisted.

Kruger looked at her for an instant and returned his gaze to the photo before him. His disinterest in conversation irritated Wilson but there was no recourse. Kruger was in charge of this aspect of the crime, at least for the time being. Wilson lingered by his desk, perhaps to engage the doctor but certainly to send a message that she was displeased. She took notice of Kruger’s gray curly unkempt hair and tried to assess his age. His rumpled clothes betrayed an indifference to style. Kruger still wore thick horn-rimmed glasses that bore the style of a bygone era. His shirt was wrinkled and ill fitting. His trousers were absent a crease. She couldn’t see his shoes that were tucked under the desk but imagined they were not polished. Wilson wondered if Kruger was up to speed and if he possessed the competence to assess the clues this case demanded. At last, Kruger looked up. “Have you learned anything more, Chief?”

Wilson shrugged. The question put Wilson on the defensive. It had effectively dismissed her without being rude. Wilson had yet to learn anything from her staff. “I’m meeting with my staff after roll call but I wanted to see you first,” she offered.

“You may have to call in the Cavalry, Chief.”

“You mean the State Police?”

“Precisely.”

“I’ll hold off as long as possible,” she replied. “I’m confident we can solve this one.”

“Your call,” he said as he returned to studying his photographs.

“The only call I’m making is to the District Attorney.”

Wilson walked out of the room and returned to her office. She had barely passed the doorjamb when Officer Huff approached her. He seemed to fill the doorway. Huff appeared larger than usual. His uniform was always wrinkled no matter how well his wife starched and pressed it. His shirt collar was askew. His belt buckle was slung under his bountiful belly, his weapon dangling almost to his knee. When he walked he resembled a scoop of Jell-O in the bottom of a bowl. It was impossible to determine in which direction his belly, jowls, arms and legs would move. Were it not that he was soon to retire, he would have been severely reprimanded or, at least, ordered to go on a diet. He waddled up to the Chief and stood in front of her, impeding her progress.

“What is it now, Huff?”

“I know the female victim.”

“And how do you know her?”

“She works at Community Hospital.”

“Huff, are you sure?”

Officer Huff proceeded to tell the Chief that the victim was Linda Greenwell and how he’d known her. He related how she had helped his father-in-law with his diabetic diet, how she’d come to his home and showed him how to shop for food and the proper way to prepare his meals. He went on to tell her what he knew, that she was not married, that as far as anyone knew she lived alone, that she was never seen around town with anyone. She seemed to be a loner.

“Why didn’t you say something yesterday?” she inquired.

“I’m sorry, chief. Seeing her savaged like that, someone I knew and admired.” His voice trailed off. He swallowed several times and continued, “I guess my mind was somewhere else. She was so good to Karen’s father.”

The Chief asked if he recognized the young man who was shot to death. Huff shook his head. He said he’d never seen him before. The Chief patted Huff on the shoulder.

“O.K., Huff. Good work. Now I want you to go to Community Hospital and snoop around. Find out all you can from the people she worked with.”

Huff left the stationhouse relishing his assignment. For once in his career, he felt he could participate in serious police work, now that he was given something important to do. He began to fantasize that one of his final assignments would be like a drum roll ushering him into retirement. He thought that sometimes it took decades for fate to give meaning to a career. This assignment was light years better than handing out traffic tickets or refereeing domestic violence.

Chief Wilson returned to her desk and was barely seated when a senior officer knocked on the door and walked in.

“What?” the Chief bellowed.

“I found the lady!”

“What lady?”

“The one who called in the shooting to Skinner on Sunday.”

“And…”

Detective Sgt. Devlin had knocked on every door on Elm Street asking if anyone knew Linda Greenwell. He’d asked them if they had heard anything unusual that day. Most of the residents were at church. Of the ones who were home, all were housewives except for one old man who was stone deaf and couldn’t possibly have heard anything. None of the housewives said they’d heard a thing. They were in their kitchens in the rear of their homes busy preparing their Sunday meals. All of them claimed that they knew nothing of the woman who lived in their neighborhood. On a hunch, Devlin went around to Maple Street and canvassed the homes whose back yards abutted the ones on Elm. To his surprise, he found a resident who knew something. She was a woman in her eighties. She wore a print dress that hung loosely on a frail body. Her short gray hair was neatly combed. She wore rimless eyeglasses and her wrinkled face bore no signs of makeup. Her back yard was one house removed from 172 Elm. On her back porch, there was one lonely potted geranium on a plastic table next to a wicker chair where she was seated. Devlin noted there was no fence or shrubbery to impede her sight of the house. She said she’d been sitting on her back porch on Sunday having a cup of tea and reading the newspaper when she heard a commotion across the yard. Devlin asked her to recount the events as best as she could remember. The old lady invited Sgt. Devlin into her house and asked him to take a seat in her living room. He sat in an easy chair and took noticed of a room that displayed old but elegant furniture, a couch, a side chair and a coffee table. The walls were papered with a flowered pattern. An ornate table lamp with its fringed shade caught his eye. A threadbare Persian carpet filled the room. Its bay window faced south and flooded the room with sunshine. A wedding photograph in a gilded frame hung over the fireplace. The room reminded him of his grandmother’s home. The lady offered him hard candy from a Wedgewood plate. He politely refused. She offered him home made cookies from a Waterford crystal jar. Again, he declined. He sensed that it would not be easy to extract information from the lonely old woman. He sensed that she wanted company more than to relate what she’d seen and heard. Then he wondered if her loneliness could have influenced her recollection.

After an exchange of pleasantries, he said, “Miss …”

“Eileen O’Malley,” she offered.

“O’Malley?”

“Yes. I’m probably the only Irish woman on the block. Nothing but Italians around here.”

Devlin did not respond and the old lady took his silence to indicate that he did not want to pursue that line of conversation. She began to reconstruct the events of the previous day. She said, “I was sipping tea on my back porch and reading the papers when I heard two sharp sounds and a lot of screaming.”

“Where did the sounds come from,” Devlin asked.

Pointing at the house across the yard, she said, “Over there.”

At first she couldn’t be sure what the sounds were. She’d then heard wild yelling and screaming, more like shrieking.

“The shrieking and screaming was horrible. It sounded like an injured animal,” she said, as she turned her head away as though to erase the memory.

“What happened next?”