No Place to Die (12 page)

McClain appeared to be in an excellent mood when he got back to the house a little after one o’clock. Beverly listened as he unlocked the door, then watched as it swung open into the bedroom. He was carrying two large McDonald’s bags, and Beverly could smell the burgers and fries from across the room. Behind him, she could see the backpack sitting on the floor out in the hall.

Since climbing down from the chair in the shower twenty-six hours earlier, Beverly had been trying to focus as tightly as she could on even the smallest details of her surroundings. When McClain went out this morning, the backpack had been laying on its side. Now it was standing up, resting on its bottom end. She assumed, then, that he must have taken the backpack with him and set it back on the floor before unlocking the door.

Without being obvious about it, she tried to look carefully at the outside of the door, looking again for some sign that it either was or was not wired with explosives.

She reasoned that if McClain was telling the truth, the device would not be so obvious as to alert any unsuspecting person who might try to open the door. It would have to be concealed, probably above the door, where someone entering the room would be least likely to notice it. When she had watched him walk out through the door this morning, Beverly had spotted
what looked like a metal ring attached to the door only an inch or so down from the top.

As usual, before leaving for the day, McClain had set out Beverly’s breakfast—the same meal of orange juice and cereal that he’d served her every morning of her captivity. This morning, she’d asked him if he’d please leave her the box of cereal as well. He was often gone all day, she explained, and the one bowl of cereal was not enough to keep her from getting very hungry by the middle of the afternoon. Couldn’t he at least allow her the opportunity to have a bowl of dry cereal to tide her over if she needed it?

McClain decided that he could. He went out to the kitchen, returned with the box of Kellogg’s Low Fat Granola, and set it on the card table. “Bon appetit!” he said, smiling. “Enjoy your day, darling.”

Once he’d gone, Beverly drank the juice and ate the cereal. Then she rinsed off the bowl and spoon in the bathroom sink and set them on the card table to dry in the air.

Up until this morning, she’d spent the bulk of the daytime hours sitting on the bed, leaning up against the wall opposite the door, because this was the most comfortable position she had found. But after finishing breakfast, she moved the card table and the two chairs closer to the door, near the foot of the bed. She sat down in a chair facing the door, poured another cup or so of cereal into the bowl, and settled in to wait.

When she finally heard McClain’s key in the door, she spooned some of the dry cereal into her mouth and began chewing it slowly. He walked through the door to find her apparently eating the cereal for lunch. From this new vantage point, she could see that what she’d thought was a metal ring near the top of the door was actually a hook that had been screwed into the door.

She looked immediately back to McClain, who closed the door behind him and then slipped the key ring into the right front pocket of his jeans. He stood for a moment just inside the room, watching Beverly chew her cereal. Stating the obvious, he said, “You moved the furniture?”

Beverly set her spoon down in the bowl. “Do you mind?” she asked in a quiet voice. “It’s just that where you had it before, it was right between the bed and the bathroom. Every time I walked back and forth to the bathroom, I kept getting the cable tangled up in the table and chairs. So I moved them.”

He looked at her for a long moment as if trying to gauge the honesty of her response. Beverly returned the look with what she hoped he’d read as an expression of supplication on her face. Then he gave a small shrug. “Fine by me, princess. Anything to make you more comfortable.” He set the McDonald’s bags on the table between them and said, “Let’s eat.”

McClain took the chair on the opposite side of the table and pulled two medium Diet Cokes and a pile of paper napkins out of the first bag. From the second, he produced two Quarter Pounders with Cheese and two large fries. He set one of each in front of her. “I know you’re probably getting tired of the junk food,” he said. “Believe me, so am I. I’ll bet I’ve gained five pounds eating this shit over the last few days. But tonight I’ll cook at home—something reasonably healthy like a salad and some chicken or something.”

“Thank you,” she replied.

As McClain dove into his food, Beverly slowly ate a couple of fries and then unwrapped the burger. She
was
hungry, and even the lukewarm fast food tasted good. McClain swallowed a bite of the hamburger and said, “I had a very good day at the office, in case you’re interested. Things are suddenly coming together very well.”

Beverly paused, a French fry halfway to her mouth.
Carefully, she set it down on the hamburger wrapper in front of her. Looking up at McClain, she said, “Can’t you please tell me what this is all about? What do you mean when you say that things are coming together? And what’s my part in all of this? Why are you holding me here?”

Toying with a French fry of his own, McClain said, “Your role is evolving, Beverly. For the moment, your part in this little drama is to keep me entertained while I attend to some other pressing business. But I promise that you have a much more important role ahead of you, and I won’t keep you in the dark much longer. I can tell you, though, that I met an old friend of yours today. I’m sure that if he were able, he’d want to send along his regards.”

Shaking her head, she said, “What old friend? Who?”

He laughed. “Nobody you have to worry about now, sweetheart. Just finish your lunch.”

McClain ate his burger and polished off the last of his fries. Then he sat back and slowly sipped at his Coke while he watched Beverly finish her lunch. She ate the last of her fries, wiped her mouth with a paper napkin, and took a drink of the Coke. She set the paper cup back on the table and McClain said, “Stand up, Beverly.”

For a long moment, she looked down at the center of the table. Then she swallowed hard and stood up, backing a couple of feet away from her chair. He looked at her for a couple of seconds, then said, “Take off your blouse.”

Saying nothing, she slowly unbuttoned the blouse and set it over the back of the chair in front of her.

“Now your bra,” he said.

She did as instructed, laying the bra over the blouse. Nearly a minute passed as McClain stared at her, looking from her eyes to her breasts and finally back to her eyes again. Holding her eyes with his, he picked up
the cup and took a long sip of Coke. Then he gestured with the cup in the direction of her skirt.

Again, Beverly swallowed hard. Looking away from him toward the door, she released the clasp of her belt and unbuttoned the wraparound skirt. Reluctantly, she drew the skirt away and held it at her side.

McClain had torn off her panties the first night, and thus she now stood before him completely naked. Again, he stared at her body. Then he said quietly, “Go lie down on the bed, Beverly.”

She dropped the skirt on the seat of the chair and did as she was told. McClain walked over to the side of the bed and stripped off his own clothes, watching her expression as he did. He was already hard and he forced himself into her with no preliminaries whatsoever. Beverly lay below him, gritting her teeth, but making no effort to resist as he thrust himself into her with a mounting intensity.

As she felt McClain building to a climax, Beverly said a silent prayer to David, begging his understanding and forgiveness for what she was about to do. Then she reached up and grabbed McClain’s arms, digging her fingernails into his biceps. Arching her back slightly, she squeezed her thighs together and gave a small shudder. Then she quickly dropped her hands from his arms and let her legs go slack. Shaking her head, she began to cry. “No,” she said through the tears. “No.”

McClain thrust himself into her twice more, then froze and moaned at his release. He held his position for a long minute, then withdrew and dropped down to Beverly’s side. She turned her face away from him, sobbing harder now.

McClain lay beside her for a couple of minutes, listening to her cry. Then he reached over and took her by the chin, forcing her to look at him. “Well, what do you know about that?” he said. “What do you know about that?”

Richard Petrovich lived in a small, cheap apartment on the city’s south side, about two miles from the shop where he worked. The neighborhood was a mixture of residences and small businesses, and at least half of the signage in the area was in Spanish. Most of the people out on the street were Hispanic, and several homeless men were camped out with their shopping carts in a tiny park a block from the building where Petrovich lived.

The apartment was above a small neighborhood grocery store that looked more like a miniature fortress. The few tiny windows were secured with thick iron bars, and a heavy wrought-iron gate protected the front door. As we pulled to a stop in front of the store, a tall, emaciated blonde stumbled out the door with an open beer in one hand and the balance of a six-pack dangling from the other. Paying no attention to us whatsoever, she wandered uncertainly down the middle of the street for half a block or so and then crossed into the yard of a tiny house on the other side of the street.

Maggie and I watched her go into the house, then walked into the dimly lighted store. A heavyset clerk behind the counter took a brief look at our shields and IDs, then went into the back room and returned with the owner-manager. We showed him our search warrant for Petrovich’s apartment, and he led us out and around the side of the building to a rickety set of stairs. We followed him up to the second-floor landing, and
he used one key to open the metal gate that guarded the apartment door and a second to open the door itself. Then he stood aside and gestured us in.

The temperature outside was in the low eighties; inside the small apartment it had to be well over a hundred degrees. We quickly opened the windows and I turned on one small window air conditioner in the living room and another in the bedroom. Listening to them clatter to life, I sincerely doubted that they were up to the job.

We began by making a brief tour through the place. In addition to the living room and bedroom, Petrovich’s living space consisted of a tiny kitchen and an even smaller bathroom. All the rooms appeared clean and tidy. A few magazines and newspapers were stacked neatly on a table in the living room, which also contained a well-worn couch and a matching easy chair. A small Panasonic television set rested on an aluminum stand opposite the chair. On top of the television set was a framed photo of the little girl whose picture I had seen in Petrovich’s wallet.

The kitchen appliances and counters had been wiped down. A bowl, a glass, and a spoon had been washed and left in a dish drainer next to the sink. The bed had been made. The clothes that constituted Petrovich’s limited wardrobe had been folded and put away or hung in the closet. In the bathroom, the tub and the sink had been scrubbed clean, and a few toiletries were lined up neatly in the medicine cabinet above the sink. And Beverly Thompson was obviously not in residence.

We spent an hour searching the sweltering apartment to no avail. Petrovich had created a small hiding place behind a baseboard in the bedroom, and in it I found a few photographs and papers that he apparently was attempting to protect in case a burglar targeted the apartment. I also found a small .22-caliber
revolver. But the weapon that had been used in our killings was a nine-millimeter pistol, not a .22, and we found nothing that tied Petrovich in any way to any of our victims.

Careful to preserve any fingerprints that might be on the gun, I slipped it into an evidence bag. Then we locked up the apartment and returned the keys to the owner. Once back in the car, Maggie and I both pitched our jackets into the backseat and I cranked the AC to high. As the cool air rushed over us, I turned to Maggie and said, “Thoughts?”

“Jesus, Sean, I don’t know,” she sighed. “The DNA match aside, this guy just doesn’t look or feel at all right to me. He gives every impression of being exactly as his parole officer described him.”

“I know,” I agreed. “That’s my sense too. I think he was genuinely surprised when we asked him about Thompson and Collins. I’d swear he never heard of either woman except on the news, and on the basis of what we’ve seen so far, I’ll bet you a dinner at the Zinc Bistro that the lab guys are not going to find anything in his car, either.”

“No bet,” she replied.

Back at the department, I left Maggie in her office and walked down to the holding cell where we’d left Richard Petrovich. He eyed me warily as I entered the cell, and I told him to sit down. He sank onto a bench built into the back wall of the cell.

“Okay, Mr. Petrovich,” I said. “The technicians are still going through your car, but I have no idea what’s going on with that. My partner and I have been through your apartment. We didn’t find anything there to tie you to our killings.”

He looked up at me expectantly. “So as soon as they discover there’s nothing in my car, I can go?”

I slowly shook my head. “No, I’m afraid you can’t.
We didn’t see any evidence in your apartment linking you to Collins and Thompson, but we did find your hidey-hole. I’ve got your gun. It’s down in the trunk of my car. And as you pointed out this morning, that violates your parole.”

Petrovich paled, then gave me a look of despair. “Jesus Christ, Detective, you saw that neighborhood. Would you live down there without a gun?”

“No, probably not,” I admitted. “But then I’m not fresh out on parole.”

Petrovich looked away, staring off into space, and the silence built for a long minute. Finally I said in a quiet voice, “Look, Mr. Petrovich, there’s two ways you can play this. You can demand a lawyer, and assuming that we don’t come up with anything in your car, a judge will probably rule that we can’t hold you on the DNA evidence alone. But if that’s the way you want to go, we’ll have to report the weapons violation to your parole officer and you’ll be on your way back to Lewis.”

He looked down at the floor and began slowly shaking his head. “On the other hand,” I continued, “we might hold you as a material witness for a few days while we try to figure out what your DNA is doing at our crime scenes. If you went along with that and didn’t jump up and down asking for a lawyer to get you out right away…well, my car’s got a big trunk. There’s a lot of junk in it. You never know, your gun might accidentally get lost in there.”

Petrovich looked back up at me and swallowed hard. Then, with a resigned look on his face, he nodded his head.