Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(26)

“Leave the bank there for now,” Tim ordered.

Carol went out back and looked at the kitchen door, the one Nancy said the burglar broke to get in. There was one big hole, boarded up. Nobody but a midget could have climbed through that. And anybody who did climb through would have gotten cut.

Nancy never mentioned anything about blood on the kitchen floor.

“Why don’t we see if we can find the stuff that was stolen,” Tim suggested.

They took the Caddy and traveled around town to three different pawnshops, trying to find the jewelry that had been stolen. Carol knew that if the stuff had been pawned, there would be a name on the pawn ticket.

No dice. The pawnshops were a dead end.

They got back home at about 2:45 P.M It was still the same day, November 12. They agreed to let Nancy continue using the car to go to work. Then, when she got home, they would check the trunk. If she got rid of the piggy bank, they would know for sure.

“What do you want to do now?” Carol asked

“I’m going into Detroit to get some drugs,” Tim replied.

When the kids got back an hour later, they were surprised and delighted to see their mother home. Nancy, meanwhile, changed into her work uniform, and Carol volunteered to drive her to work.

In the interview room, Messina leaned back in his chair.

That didn’t make sense, Messina thought. That just didn’t make sense. As Carol continued to talk, he tried to figure it out.

They were going to let Nancy take the car to see if she got rid of the piggy bank. If she did, that would prove her guilt. Instead, Carol had inexplicably deviated from their plan?

Why? Unless, there never was a plan and she was making that part of her statement up.

“Anyway, when I got home after dropping Nancy off at work, I opened the trunk and took the piggy bank inside,” Carol continued.

By 6:30 P.M., Tim still wasn’t back. Everyone was hungry, so they left Tim a note saying they were going down to the Ram’s Horn for dinner. They had a nice dinner and returned by 7:30 P.M. Tim still wasn’t back.

The bus ride, and the tension of the break-in, had made Carol very tired; she told the kids to be quiet for a half hour and she took a nap. While she lay on her bed upstairs, she could hear the kids watching TV downstairs in the living room.

She didn’t realize that a half hour had turned into two hours until Tim woke her at 9:30 P.M. She got up quickly and put the kids to bed. By ten o’clock, they were tucked in. Carol went into her bedroom where Tim was seated on the bed.

From the front of his belt, he pulled a revolver that he liked to carry. He said that when he was in Detroit, he had to prove himself.

“Reload it,” Tim ordered.

Apparently, he had shot someone. Carol didn’t ask any questions; she knew better.

From a shelf in the closet, Carol took down a box of shells. She pressed the release on the side of the automatic and the clip popped down. It was empty. Unless he had fired some of the bullets at another time, he must have fired them in Detroit.

She reloaded the weapon—there was space for eight bullets, she said—and pushed the clip back into the stock. Then she handed it over to Tim, who put it away. Later, a little bit after 11:00 P.M., Carol was washing the dishes in the kitchen when Bill, a friend of Nancy’s, drove the waitress home and dropped her off. After coming in, she asked Carol:

“You got any drugs?”

“No,” Carol replied.

Just then, Tim walked into the kitchen.

“I do,” he said brightly.

Carol didn’t want her kids waking up to see them smoking and insisted they go downstairs. So they all went downstairs into the basement. It was furnished with a few sofas, tables and an extra bed that Carol immediately went to lounge on.

Nancy had an abnormal fear of spiders. She was afraid spiders would crawl on her if she slept in the bed in the basement. Instead, she slept upstairs on an uncomfortable couch. Carol thought her fear was silly, especially since she sacrificed her comfort for it. Nancy, though, had no problems sitting on the bed when others were there.

Nancy loaded up her crack pipe and came over to sit at the foot of the bed, where she began smoking. Tim sat on a chair in front of her with his elbows back, lounging. Carol pulled out a cigarette from a pack and lit up. Periodically she took a swig from a one-liter Pepsi she had brought down with her.

The conversation went back and forth breezily, about California and about Nancy’s work, until Carol asked Tim what time it was. He looked at his watch.

“One o’clock,” he answered.

Nancy made a phone call about 1:20 A.M. to see if her friend Bill, who had dropped her off, had made it home safely. He had and she felt relieved. Carol put the phone on the bed so she could see it ring, because the ringer was broken but an incoming call would light up the dial.

“So, Nancy, tell me about the break-in again,” Tim asked.

He wanted to know how she knew where the safe was.

“What safe? Tim, I didn’t break into the house; I wouldn’t, you know. I wouldn’t steal anything from Carol.”

Carol explained that the stuff that was stolen was her deceased husband’s jewelry.

“It’s wrong to steal from a dead man,” Carol said.

Nancy readily agreed.

“I think you’re lying,” Tim said, looking her dead in the eye. “I think you know where the stuff is. What do you think, Carol?”