Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(15)
He saw the headlights in his rearview mirror. They approached slowly, down the east side of the street, then turned in. The car parked right behind him. Car doors slammed. Two guys came out of the gold-colored Caddy.
“Hey, what the hell you doing—”
“Police,” said Sampson.
The short, handsome man looked behind him and saw a marked police car pull in behind his Caddy.
“Are you Tim Collier?” Sampson asked.
“Yeah, what’s this—”
“Put your hands on the car and spread your legs.”
“Hey!” said the guy Collier was with.
“Hey, sir,” said Sampson, who kicked Collier’s feet apart, frisked him quickly, and then snapped on the cuffs.
“Hey, sir, what’s—”
“Check this guy out and if he’s clean, let him go,” said Sampson to the two uniforms. Collier was hustled over to the unmarked car, while the uniforms checked on Tim’s companion.
Over at the unmarked vehicle, Sampson pushed Tim’s head down, ensuring it didn’t hit the top of the car, into the backseat behind the chicken wire.
“There’s some people who’d like to talk to you, Tim.”
“Really?” said Collier.
“Yeah,” said Sampson, smiling down at him from outside the car, “and they’ve been waiting all night.”
Sampson pulled out, but the marked car stayed at the scene. Inside it, the central processing unit (CPU) in a portable computer hummed. It was tied into a mainframe at headquarters a few blocks away.
The name of Tim’s companion was John Ellis. The uniforms had punched Ellis’s name in. They were waiting for the readout. The CPU hummed and clicked and onto the screen came John Ellis’s record:
? Failure to Appear—$100 Bond
? Non-Moving Traffic Violation—$100 Bond
? Non-Moving Traffic Violation—$100 Bond
? Failure to Appear—$150 Bond
? Non-Moving Traffic Violation—$100 Bond
? Non-Moving Traffic Violation—$100 Bond
? Non-Moving Traffic Violation—$500 Bond
“Looks like you were hanging out with the wrong guy at the wrong time,” said one of the uniforms. He put Ellis in the car for transport to police headquarters.
“Why am I being arrested?” Ellis asked as the car took off.
One of the uniforms looked at the screen.
“How about five unpaid tickets and two failures to appear?”
“You’re taking me in for that?”
Then Ellis thought a minute.
“Was there a murder, killing, beating or what?”
The two uniforms in the front seat looked at each other.
“Man, whatever he did, it must have been bad,” Ellis said ruefully.
Helton had walked into the outer vestibule. Bulletproof glass covered the processing station at the front. Behind it sat two cops at desks who acted as receptionists. They answered calls and began prisoner processing.
As Helton watched, the large double doors to the parking lot opened. Sampson walked in with a handcuffed Tim Collier and escorted him into the detective area on the left for fingerprinting and mug shots.
In his many years as a street cop, Helton had seen all kinds of people—druggies, prostitutes, killers. There were also all kinds in each category, and sometimes, there was something about a suspect, something indefinable, that you couldn’t put your finger on.
Despite Collier’s muscular build and handsome, chiseled features, his stature—five feet six inches—did not make him look particularly dangerous. No, it was the air about him, the vibe he gave off.
Helton had seen some guys who cultivated it, bad guy wanna-bes who were better off going to Hollywood than trying to make it on the street. Collier, though, was different. He was the genuine article; he felt mean.
They took Collier to the same interview room previously occupied by his lover and read him Carol’s written statement. He showed little outward reaction. Inside, he must have been boiling.
“Did you kill Nancy Billiter?” Helton asked.
“Why would I kill her?” he countered.
“Do you know of any reason why Carol Giles would accuse you of murdering Nancy Billiter?”
“No. But I want to hear Carol say that at trial.”
“Did Giles participate in this murder and should she be held?”
“That’s for you to find out.”
Tim said that he didn’t want to answer any more questions about the murder until he talked to an attorney. Eventually, though, he relented and gave police this written statement:
“Carol, Nancy and I were sitting in her basement. Me and Nancy were getting high, we were loading our stems (get high equipment) when Carol told Nancy that she thought she was the one who ripped her off, reason being that we found the piggy bank in the trunk of Carol’s car and also knowing that the person Nancy suspected of breaking in was too fat to go or reach through that doors amongst all that glass. Nancy kept saying she loved Carol; and she thought they were closer than that and she wouldn’t do anything like that. Carol hit her with the piggy bank and dazed her. I continued getting high and walked towards the Ping-Pong table where the cat was at and took a couple of hits and walked back over to wear [sic] Carol was in the process of tying her off with the pantyhose and asked, what do she do next and I told her ‘handle your business.’ Nancy kept saying ‘I love you,’ he has come between us and something to that nature and me and Carol told her to shut up. Carol injected bleach and battery acid into Nan and then when she realized it was taking too long for her to die, a wet towel was placed over her face to suffocate her to death. When she was dead, we put her in the trunk of Carol’s car and put the mattresses in the garage and that night, I helped her get rid of Nancy’s body in Flint.”