Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(20)

She was a witness to a murder, Messina felt, and her veracity needed to be determined before they put her on the stand. The hope was that she would testify against Tim. Unfortunately, she couldn’t. At least, not yet.

By her own admission, she couldn’t pass a polygraph. What was she leaving out? Something isn’t making sense here, thought Messina.

He was convinced that the reason she wouldn’t take the polygraph was that she was more involved in Nancy’s murder than she was letting on. She was probably worried that the polygraph would trip her up.

“Okay, Carol, we’re going to go over this one more time with you,” Messina began. “What I’d like you to do is before we start—first I want to ask you, do you know you’re being taped at this time?”

“Yes,” Carol answered, looking down at the tape recorder that Messina had just turned on.

“Okay, and it’s with your permission?”

“It’s fine,” she answered.

Once more, Messina went over her Miranda rights, the speech anyone who has ever watched a police show can recite verbatim. Except that in real life, after the cop reads the suspect her rights, the suspect signs a waiver that she has been informed and is waiving those rights. That way, the suspect can never claim she didn’t know what she was doing. It was actually the second waiver Carol signed that day, the first for the polygraph that never took place.

“Okay, I’m gonna witness it,” said Messina, signing next to her name. Then he looked at his watch. “The time is 6:10 P.M.”

Messina now adopted the posture of sympathetic listener. No matter what he thought of her personally, whether she was a scumbag or an abused woman caught in the middle, he had to treat her sympathetically. Otherwise, she’d clam up.

“Do you need a rest room, or if you’d like to get something to eat? Do you feel okay?”

“I’m fine,” Carol reassured him.

“Okay, then, fine. I’d like you to tell me what happened regarding the death of Nancy. Start at the beginning and just tell it like it was. I want you to make sure that you don’t leave out anything regarding what happened before or after, so make sure that you include everything in your statement. First, before we start, I want you to tell me what your full name is.”

“Carol Lynn Giles.”

“And, Carol, what is your date of birth?”

“November 4 of ’71.”

Only twenty-six and already involved in a murder.

Inside, the detective shook his head in weary acceptance. Outside, he remained emotionless. He had seen all too many women who, for one reason or another, pick the wrong people to partner with.

“Okay, how do you feel now? Physically, are you okay?”

Translation: Have we beaten you in any way? Or, are you too ill to talk?

“Physically, I’m fine.”

“All right, go ahead and start, Carol.”

Good cops really listen and Messina was one of the best.

Listening intently, he realized that this wasn’t a simple case. Forget about how easy it was to identify the body. Figuring out who did exactly what, and why, that was going to be the real challenge.





PART TWO





Seven

When she was younger, Carol claimed, her dad molested her. That had been a long time ago. Yet with all those years between then and now, when her father touched her, she still didn’t feel comfortable.

Carol was so scarred that even today, there was no way she’d go to her dad’s house in Port Huron, north and east of Detroit, unless there was someone else accompanying her. She hated the son of a bitch. She wanted her father dead.

She’d fantasized about the details, but so far, it was still fantasy. The problem with making it into reality was that there might be other people around when it was done. What then?

Tim always said you never leave witnesses. Which brought her right back to Jessie. It was in 1986 when fifteen-year-old Carol met Jessie Giles who, at the time, was thirty-three years old.

Carol had begun to rebel during her early teenage years. She had to, to survive the horrors of home. But she took a teenager’s rebellion a step further, repudiating her middle-class white father and upbringing by taking up with a black man.

At six feet tall and 468 pounds, Jessie was a big, proud black man. To Carol, he was the father she never had. To Jessie, Carol was the daughter he wanted. Their own personal neuroses fit together nicely.

Jessie managed Carol like she was his daughter. Though they didn’t marry until 1993, Carol would eventually function not only as his wife but also as his business associate.

Jessie worked in maintenance at Mercy Hospital in Pontiac, but that was his day job; the vocation that netted him the easy money was dealing drugs. According to Carol, she helped out on some of his business dealings, going so far as to sleep with clients to cement deals. The latter is not an uncommon occurrence in drug-dealing circles.

If she had any sense of self, Carol would have bailed. But her sense of self had apparently been destroyed by incest. In turn, incest had left her with a strong sense of survival. Carol did what she needed to get by from day to day.

And sex was different. If Jessie got on top of her and started pumping, all that weight would crush her chest. She wouldn’t be able to breathe.

So they made love … carefully.