Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(12)

Shanlian knew that would explain the ligature marks he’d noticed on her wrists. Now we’re getting down to it, Shanlian thought.

“What happened then?”

“Nancy’s pants leg was off.”

Shanlian remembered that from the scene.

“And Tim was beating her with a .45,” Carol continued.

That explained the beating and bruise marks.

“I was scared because Tim pointed the gun at me, so I went upstairs.”

Now that was strange. If a guy pointed a gun at Shanlian, he’d freeze. Guy points a gun at Carol Giles and she responds by saying, “Excuse me, gotta go,” and leaving the room. That just didn’t make sense, unless she had more guts than any man or woman alive.

“I smoked two cigarettes upstairs and then Tim came up, and after that, I didn’t hear Nancy screaming anymore. Could I use the bathroom?”

“Sure.”

Shanlian got up and opened the door. He asked one of the detectives to show her to the ladies’ room.

“Stand outside while she does her business,” Shanlian advised.

With Carol gone, and his concentration momentarily broken, Shanlian was able to note how hot the interview room had gotten. Two bodies were in the overheated air and both reeked of sweat, one of fear. Shanlian stepped out into the corridor and ran into one of the local detectives. “I got her to open up,” he said.

“We know,” replied the cop.

“What?”

Shanlian was more than surprised; he was shocked. How the hell did they know what was happening inside the room? There wasn’t even a two-way mirror.

Turned out there was a microphone hidden in the room. The local cops had been listening all along. They heard every single word.

For a minute, Shanlian felt violated. How dare they listen in without him knowing? Then he calmed down and realized it didn’t make any difference. After all, he had gotten her to open up.

Shanlian was convinced Carol Giles knew more than she was willing to tell. She had too many details of the crime down pat for someone who was just on the scene. If she wasn’t a participant, then she definitely helped dump the body.

But what to do with her now? They didn’t have enough to charge her, and if they released her, they knew they would be SOL—shit out of luck. Giles could easily take a powder.

Ever since Officer Tom Helton had been promoted out of uniformed patrol and into the detective bureau a few months before, his life had gotten a lot more interesting.

Fender benders and domestic disturbances were now a thing of the past. He’d done that and the usual patrol stuff for eighteen years in uniform. Then when a position in the detective bureau opened up, he applied for it and was accepted.

Helton looked like the actor Ned Beatty had in his youth, but even more affable. He was intelligent and dedicated, and he loved his new job. It gave him a chance to investigate crimes in depth, crimes like robbery, credit card fraud and burglaries, which were common in the township.

As for murder, this wasn’t a big-city police department. Sure, the chief was a retired bigwig from Detroit, but that’s about as close as they got to a connection with big-city homicide.

In the eighteen years Helton had been on the force, Bloomfield averaged maybe one murder a year, and there were years when no one was murdered in the confines of the township. It was a nice, safe, secure place to live.

Like most of his friends at work, Helton couldn’t afford to live in the township. He lived in the next township over, in a plain A-frame house with his wife, Doris, and their two kids, eight-year-old Al and twelve-year-old Marie.

That Friday night, he was the on-call detective. That meant that if a crime occurred after 5:00 P.M. and before 8:00 A.M., he would be called in to investigate. More often than not, things were quiet and the on-call got a good night’s sleep.

Tom and his family had had dinner together. Afterward, he puttered around the house, reading a magazine, playing with the kids; then at ten o’clock, he turned on his favorite Friday night TV show, Homicide. After watching the local news and a little bit of Nightline, he turned in around 11:45 P.M. Five minutes later, the phone rang. He sighed, the way someone sighs when they know they’re about to get bad news.

“Hello?”

“Hi, this is Dispatcher Johnson at the station,” said a female voice. “This Officer Helton?”

“Yup.”

“Would you come in? We have a homicide. It looks like two women and a guy were partying and doing crack, some type of argument broke out and one of the women was killed.”

“I’ll be right there.”

As he got out of bed, Doris said, “You ought to get a regular job like I have.” Helton laughed, because his wife was more used to the crazy hours than he was—she ran the state’s crime lab and was frequently called out to crime scenes at all hours.

Still safely ensconced under the covers, Doris asked what was up. Helton quickly explained while changing into jeans and a T-shirt. He kissed Doris good-bye. He padded quietly out and down the darkened stairs to the garage, where he started up his 1996 Ford Taurus. He pressed the gray button on the plastic case attached to the visor.

With a grinding of gears and pulleys, the garage door slowly opened and Helton pulled out into the night to help work a case that, at least according to the dispatcher, sounded like a pretty simple murder. Ten minutes later, he got to headquarters and pulled around back to the parking lot reserved for uniformed and plain-clothes officers. The one out front was primarily for visitors.