Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(33)

He wanted to get rid of any trace that she’d been there. Carol got Nancy’s purse, coat and all her other stuff. When she had finished, there were three bags sitting on the living room floor. Tim came out of their bedroom carrying a duffel.

“I’m going back to Flint. I’ll get rid of all this stuff there.”

Tim carried it all out to the Caddy and put it in the trunk. He said he’d call her later. Tim pulled out and onto the street, turned the wheel and was soon out of sight.

After he was gone, Carol waited a few minutes and got the kids up. Apparently, they had slept all through the night because they didn’t say anything. She dressed them for school and got them on the bus, as usual, at 7:40 A.M. And then she went upstairs and fell into a sound sleep.

Carol awoke at 1:30 P.M. and went to the bathroom. When she finished her business, she looked at the caller ID and didn’t see a number that looked like a Flint number. Kind of hungry, she got some crackers, began eating them, and drifted off to sleep again.

“Hello, is anybody home?”

It was L’il Man’s voice. The kids, they were home. It must have been after three o’clock.

“Mom, we’re home,” said L’il Man, who was suddenly standing in her doorway. Jesseca was standing beside him.

“Mom, Aunt Maddie called. She’s on the way,” said Jesseca.

“Maddie” was Jessie’s sister Madeline.

A few minutes later, Maddie came over to take the kids to the mall. She helped the kids on with their clothes. When they were just out the door, she turned and told Carol, “I forgot My mom was trying to call you. She couldn’t get through. Call her.”

Carol hesitated for a second before saying she would. Then Maddie and the kids left and for the first time in days, Carol was alone. She fell back to sleep.

The phone woke her up. It was Tim. He told her to get up to Pontiac, to meet him at a store there. He sounded anxious.

“And bring my black shoes.”

Carol raced down into the basement where Tim had left his shoes, the ones he’d been wearing when they killed Nancy and dumped the body. She put them in a shoe box and threw them on the front seat of the car and took off. Inside of an hour, they were meeting in a parking lot behind a fast-food restaurant in Pontiac.

Carol got out and sat down in the passenger side of the Caddy. She put the shoes down on the floorboards.

“They found Nancy’s body.”

Carol was startled.

“How do you know?”

Tim said that when he was over at his uncle’s house, something told him to drive by the park. He drove by and saw the yellow crime scene tape and the Oakland County Sheriff’s cars.

Looking at the cops swarming around the crime scene, he realized that the whole time he had been driving around, he had Nancy’s stuff in the car. It was all the stuff Carol had gathered up and thrown in the trunk. And Tim had forgotten to get rid of it. He turned around and drove away from the crime scene as casually as he could. He threw the clothing and other belongings in several Dumpsters along the way back.

Carol wanted to know what they would do now. Tim said they had to get rid of the curtains that matched the bedspread in which they had wrapped Nancy’s body. They didn’t want the cops matching them up.

Carol said she would do so, and Tim said he’d get rid of the shoes. Then he reminded her to get rid of the shoes she was wearing when they killed Nancy.

“I’ll call you later, Carol.”

They separated. Tim drove back up toward Flint to get rid of his shoes and the other evidence; Carol drove home.

Back at the house, Carol pulled the matching curtains off the windows, including the curtain ties, and threw them in a garbage bag along with the white shoes she had on when they killed Nancy. Then she threw the bag in the trunk of her car. She looked at her watch: 6:15 P.M.

She drove up the street, down the block; she really wasn’t sure where she was going, just looking for a good place. Suddenly she felt queasy. She pulled off to the side of the road, opened her door, and threw up. She wiped her mouth, looked up, and realized where she was.

Kmart. She saw it off on the right. Yeah, that was a good place.

She pulled into the lot. It was a cold November night. Few cars were parked. Business was slow.

She put the stuff in a Dumpster behind the store and then drove straight home. By the time she got back, she had missed Tim’s call. But it was on the machine.

“Meet me at the Orchard Lake Car Wash,” said Tim’s voice.

It was a local car wash. A few minutes later, she was there. Tim was already washing the Caddy. He told her that she needed to get rid of the acid on the shelf. She had to go back to the house as soon as she left and get rid of the acid and the syringes, too.

“But the kids.”

Putting it mildly, it would be difficult to get rid of the murder weapon with her kids around.

“I told Jesseca I’d call around nine.”

She might want to stay with her aunt, which would make things easier. She looked at her watch. It was just nine o’clock. Her cell phone connected her up instantly. Turned out that her daughter wanted to stay the night at Aunt Maddie’s. That was good, but what about L’il Man? And then she had to make sure she could rendezvous with Tim later. It was all so dizzying. Finally she came up with a plan to get rid of the acid while the kids were out with their aunt and then drive back to Flint to be with Tim.