Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(17)

Late that morning, the body was transferred to the ME’s headquarters in Pontiac for autopsy.

Carol awoke late morning on Saturday. About noon, a staff member knocked and then popped her head through the door of her room.

“You okay? Like to talk?” the staffer asked brightly.

Carol declined the offer and said nothing else.

“I’ll be around if you need to talk,” she said, and closed the door behind her.

Carol only left her room to get something to eat and smoke a few cigarettes. She interacted with no one, appearing to many of the residents to be withdrawn. One resident, curious at this new arrival, did happen to approach her and ask, “Hey, how come you have such a large room?”

“Because I might pick up my two children to come here also,” Carol explained.

She never mentioned why she was really there, or that it might be a very long time before she saw her kids again. While Carol engaged in whatever rationalizations were necessary for her to get through the day, Tom Helton was busy.

Helton went to the prosecutor’s office and presented all of the information they had to that point. Kate McNamara, the on-call prosecutor, wanted Carol to take a polygraph. While not admissible in court, police look at it as an accurate method of assessing the veracity of a suspect’s story. But with its low crime rate, West Bloomfield Township really had no reason to maintain such a sophisticated polygraph setup. The Oakland County Sheriff’s Department, which covered the entire county, did. Helton contacted them to set up a polygraph for Carol Giles.

During a polygraph, systems of measurements are taken that measure the body’s response to a series of questions. The questions that make the subject want to lie create a psychological emergency. In turn, that results in changes to the autonomic nervous system: respiration, galvanic skin response, relative blood pressure and pulse. Those changes are noted and evaluated by the polygraph examiner, who then tells the detective where the suspect has been truthful and where the suspect has lied.

Unfortunately, it was Saturday. The Sheriff’s Office didn’t have a polygraph examiner on duty. Helton had never been in this situation before and didn’t know where to get one. He’d have to figure that out later. He needed to get Carol. Helton drove over to Haven to pick her up and soon ran into trouble.

The women who availed themselves of the shelter’s services did so because they had been battered and had a problem with trust. Haven, in turn, felt a responsibility to keep their clients’ names confidential. They wouldn’t confirm or deny that any one person was there, even to the police.

“But this is a murder case,” Helton explained to an administrator, “and I brought this woman, Carol Giles, here myself last night.”

The administrator explained that that didn’t make any difference. “But we brought her here last night,” Helton complained to one of Haven’s officials. “She’s a suspect in a homicide investigation!”

“Sorry,” said the official. “We can’t let you in. It’s against the rules.”

“How about just calling her and telling her to come out here and meet us? We’re the police. We’re not the batterers. We brought her here for safety.”

The official shook his head. He wouldn’t even confirm for Helton that Carol Giles was there. Helton squared his shoulders. Striding deliberately out into the corridor, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed.

“You’ve reached Haven,” said the operator who answered his call. “May I help you?”

“Yes, this is Officer Tom Helton of the West Bloomfield Township Police Department. I’d like to talk to Carol Giles. She’s one of your residents.”

“We don’t take messages here for residents.”

“Well, can you give her a message to call me? I’m out front and—”

“Look, Officer Helton, I can’t even acknowledge she’s here.”

“Well, I need to contact her. What will you do?”

“We’ll post a message on the bulletin board,” the receptionist explained. “If she gets it, she gets it, if she doesn’t, she doesn’t.”

“That’s not gonna work! That’s not good enough.”

Damn.

Helton called Kate McNamara, the prosecutor, who, in turn, called the director of Haven. After haggling and negotiating, eventually they got Carol to call Helton on his cell phone. Helton identified himself and told her he was out front on his cell phone.

“Carol, please come out. We need to talk to you.”

If she didn’t come out, Helton probably would have had to get a warrant for her arrest. They still wanted to go soft on her until they knew exactly what happened, but if it became necessary, hard would have to do just as well.

Luck, though, was with them.

Finally, Carol came out front. Helton met her and introduced her to a uniformed deputy who, he said, would escort her to police headquarters. After she left, Helton went home.

Helton had been on duty for twenty-four hours. He was no good to anyone if he couldn’t think because of exhaustion. While he settled into his bed for some much-needed rest, his supervisor, Sergeant Mike Messina, would be taking over.





Six

Because of various regulations requiring detectives to rotate back to uniformed duty, plus retirements, there was no man or woman in the West Bloomfield Township detective division with more than two years of experience in investigations. Most, actually, had less.