Needle Work: Battery Acid, Heroin, and Double Murder(6)

“What was Mr. Bernhard like when he came back?” Shanlian asked.

“Like how?”

“Was he upset? Were his clothes disheveled?”

“No. No. He was real calm.”

“Was there anything out of place in your car? Anything that looked upset?”

Translation: Any blood or weapons in the car? How about a dead body?

“No. It was the same as when I gave him the keys.”

“How was Nancy acting in the last week?” Shanlian asked. “Was everything all right with her?”

“Well, Nancy was upset last week because her roommate, Carol, was accusing her of stealing from her. Nancy had told Carol that someone had broken into her house, but Carol was suspicious. She didn’t believe that.”

Yvonne wasn’t sure what Carol’s last name was, but she thought it might be “Giles.” She thought that Carol lived on Orchard Lake Road in Bloomfield but couldn’t be sure.

Edwards told the Flint cops that West Bloomfield was the next town over. He went out to the pay phone and called Information, trying to get an address for Bill Bernhard. But Bernhard wasn’t listed with Information and Edwards didn’t want to take the time right then to check with motor vehicles. Besides, it didn’t sound like Bernhard had had anything to do with the murder.

On his second call to Information, Edwards was able to locate an address for a Carol Giles. She lived on Walnut Lake Road in West Bloomfield Township.

At 9:00 P.M., the cops left the restaurant. The Slocum address Grant had given them, where Nancy Billiter lived with her mother, was only a few blocks from the restaurant. They pulled up to the modest house at 9:07 P.M. The name on the curbside mailbox was BURKE. Shanlian figured that must be the mother’s name. Walking up the tree-lined driveway, they felt the chill wind picking up.

It was Phyllis Burke, Nancy Billiter’s sixty-four-year-old mother, who answered the doorbell. She opened the door and looked at three tall, burly-looking men in overcoats.

Edwards flashed the tin. He explained that they were police officers investigating a crime and that her daughter might be involved. The three men stepped inside; Burke had enough presence of mind to close the door behind them. Immediately, Shanlian asked her if she had a photograph of Nancy Billiter. His tone was gentle, considering the urgency of the circumstances.

Not saying a word, with a creeping dread in her heart, Phyllis Burke went into the living room and came back with a framed snapshot of a smiling middle-aged woman. Shanlian pulled the picture from his pocket and compared them.

The woman was the same in both photographs.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but Nancy has been murdered.”

Burke began sobbing, great heaves of grief. She called her two daughters, Susan Garrison and Karen Clason, and told them, “The police are here. They say Nancy has been murdered.” The girls said they’d be right there.

“Mrs. Burke, when was the last time you saw your daughter?” Edwards asked.

“Not for over a week,” she replied, wiping tears from her face.

They had had a big argument and she had asked her daughter to leave. Shanlian figured it must have been one hell of an argument.

“When was that?” Melki asked.

“Early October, I think it was the ninth. Even though Nancy was the legal guardian, I been taking care of my great-grandson since.”

Just then, the front door opened and an attractive woman walked in.

“Oh, Mom,” she said, and ran to her mother and put her arms around her. They hugged for a long, interminable moment, the cops shuffling their feet awkwardly, until they broke the embrace and the woman introduced herself.

“I’m Karen Clason, Nancy’s sister.”

Shanlian sized her up as a woman in her late thirties or early forties. A moment later, the door opened and another woman ran in, looking a lot like the other two in the room. She, too, embraced Burke and then introduced herself as Susan Garrison, Nancy’s other sister.

Shanlian suggested that while Melki and Edwards talk to Mrs. Burke, the sisters and he go into another room to talk. The two sisters followed him into a bedroom, where they began to talk about their sister.

Nancy Billiter’s partner, the one she lived with day and night, thought about, and worked her ass off for, was cocaine.

Sober, Nancy could function at work, but as soon as she was off, she craved that hit that made her forget her troubles and put her into another, safer, warmer place.

Susan Garrison was aware that her older sister Nancy Billiter had a problem with drugs, but Billiter had reassured her that that was in the past. Garrison had no reason to doubt her.

Nancy and her siblings, Susan, Karen and Doug, had grown up as part of a close-knit family in the middle-class Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills. Headquarters for the Chrysler Corporation, the town was a combination of upper-and middle-class families. The former were the executives, the latter the workers, either in the auto plant or the various businesses that fed off the business of building cars.

Growing up, the Burke children were happy. Then, when Nancy was eight years old, their father was killed in a car accident. At twenty-six, Phyllis Burke was left a widow with five kids. She didn’t work.

Garrison recalled that they lived off SSI and from people helping out. The siblings became very self-sufficient in helping out their mother. They became even closer knit.