Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(41)

He had, Upchurch answered. In a duffel bag.

“When was the next time you saw Mr. Collier?”

“Maybe around nine or ten that same evening.”

Shanlian knew he had to be off. Carol said it was past midnight when they got there. He couldn’t alter the man’s statement, but unless he clarified it, a good defense attorney could rip holes in it because of inconsistencies with Carol’s statements.

“Okay, it was late at night, it was dark out?” Shanlian asked.

Upchurch said it was.

“And he comes by with his girlfriend?”

Upchurch said yes. He’d seen her with him before. The girlfriend was white, a blonde, slim. She was tall and wore glasses. Clearly, it was Carol Giles.

“We were just setting and in the living room, just talking anyhow, they were just talking about, you know, everyday things really. Really, nothing really that I can remember.”

“Did they seem agitated or upset?”

Upchurch said no.

“Did they appear nervous?”

He said they didn’t appear nervous, either.

“Did they seem like they were sad over something?”

“No, they just seemed like they were just regular, you know, just like nothing happened.”

“Were they smoking crack cocaine at that point?”

“Yes, well, he was; I never seen her smoke anything. Anyway, he went back in the bathroom a couple of times. I heard the lighter flick while he was in the tub.”

Apparently, Collier had decided to take another bath. Maybe he was washing Billiter’s blood off.

“So he was smoking crack there and they were just acting normal? How long did you talk to them?”

“Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes or so.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I went to my bedroom and watched TV. I was tired. I was sitting on the bed there and that’s when he was talking about getting the gas and stuff out of the car. And he comes in and says, ‘You want some gas?’ He asked me, ‘Did I need some charcoal; could I use some charcoal lighter fluid?’ I told him, ‘Yeah, I could use it.’ He said, ‘Well, I got some gas,’ but he wanted the gas can back.”

There was only about a gallon of gas in the gas can, Upchurch remembered. Shanlian knew that the rest of it was back in the park, on Nancy Billiter’s body and the trail leading up to it.

It was a good thing that neither Collier nor Giles was a firefighter or arsonist. Otherwise, they would have been successful at burning Billiter and then the cops’ job would have been doubly hard.

A burned body was exceptionally hard to identify. If the features were beyond recognition, or the fingers burned to the point they couldn’t lift a print, the police had to rely on a forensic dentist to do the ID off the victim’s teeth.

Shanlian wanted to know who brought the gas can and stuff in. Upchurch said “the girlfriend” did. Then Sammy Upchurch put all the stuff in the hallway upstairs.

“And that’s where [the items] stayed the whole time until I called?” Shanlian asked.

“The lighter fluid did, but the gas can was up there about three hours and I didn’t want to take a chance. I was cooking, you know, baking some cakes and pies, but I thought about them.”

Uncle Sammy Upchurch hardly seemed like the Martha Stewart type, but who knows? Maybe he was a good chef.

“I had the oven door open,” Upchurch continued, “and I didn’t want that gas can by my door, so I moved the can myself down to the bottom of the steps. I poured the gallon of gas in my car and put the gas can in my car so the can wouldn’t be in my house and put no fumes in my house.”

After they gave him the gas, they stayed maybe another hour and then left.

“When was the next time that you saw Mr. Collier?”

Upchurch had gone out on Friday, November 14, but his cousin had stayed over and it was his cousin who said Tim came to visit later that day. They went to a local motorcycle club, hung out there for a while. But all Tim did was visit. He brought nothing with him, left with nothing, and according to the cousin, he discussed nothing unusual or suspicious.

“Has Tim contacted you since?”

“No.”

“Are you involved in any way, including helping dispose of the body of Nancy Billiter?”

“No!”

“Did you assist Mr. Collier or Mrs. Giles in any way with this homicide?”

“No!”

“Did you have any knowledge of this homicide prior to newspaper reports or TV reports?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“At no time did Mr. Collier advise you that he had committed a homicide?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“At no time did Mr. Collier appear upset or nervous or sad or anything like that in that time frame that you dealt with him?”

“No. But I did hear one thing, though.”

Shanlian was curious.

“Which was?”

“My cousin told me that before they went to the motorcycle club on Friday, Tim was over there and Tim doesn’t usually drink, but that night he did.”

“So he drank quite a bit that night?”

“That’s all.”

At approximately 5:10 P.M., Shanlian released the vehicle back to Sammy Upchurch so he could drive home. The search of Upchurch’s vehicle had produced no further evidence.